America's Book of Secrets (2012–2014): Season 1, Episode 10 - Black Ops - full transcript
They are top-secret missions manned by specially trained intelligence and military elite. Covert operations using unconventional tactics outside the standard protocol. This episode uncovers the clandestine activities and state-of-the-art training of the U.S. Special Forces that undertake the most dangerous surveillance, reconnaissance, and intelligence collecting missions on Earth.
It is the epicenter
of America's military operations.
A five-sided fortress
with a single purpose:
to defend the United States
and its citizens.
But behind the concrete walls
and reinforced windows
of the Pentagon are secrets.
Secrets so guarded...
The country's
most sensitive secrets
are held within this building
and within certain minds.
...so incredible...
She crawled out with people
hanging onto her legs to get out.
...so alarming...
We are already experiencing
our 9/11 in cyberspace.
...that they must
be kept hidden from the public
until now.
There are those who believe
in the existence of a book.
A book that contains
the most highly guarded secrets
of the United States of America.
A book whose very existence
is known to only a select few.
But if such a book exists,
what would it contain?
Secret histories?
Secret plans?
Secret lies?
Does there really exist
America's Book of Secrets?
It proudly stands
on the west bank of the Potomac River
on the edge of Washington, DC.
A building, an institution,
a symbol of America's military might.
The Pentagon.
Here, headquartered under one roof,
is the Department of Defense,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and the five branches
of the U.S. military.
Commands issued
from behind these walls
direct the actions of U.S. forces
around the world.
The Pentagon is the heart,
the soul, the brain
of our national military community.
It does house the entire top
of the defense establishment
of the United States.
It is regarded as an icon, if you will,
for enemies and allies.
I was always excited in the Pentagon.
It was always a place where things
could happen or be made to happen,
or they happened to you.
But it was never dull.
There was always adventure.
Perhaps most famous
for its unique design,
the Pentagon is the largest low-rise
office building in the world.
It occupies more than six million
square feet of floor space
and spans an area
equal to five city blocks.
Called The Puzzle Palace
by insiders,
the labyrinth of hallways and corridors
that run through the building
measure 17-and-a-half miles
in length.
Yet despite its vast size,
the Pentagon's unusual design
allows for quick access
to any of its five equal sides.
This design allows someone
to get from any point in the building,
the furthest spot you might imagine,
from corridor ten
all the way around to corridor two,
three or five in seven minutes or less.
But for many, the Pentagon
is much more
than a monumental building,
it is a living entity.
It's one of the few buildings
that you could say that speaks.
You see it in the newspaper quite often,
"The Pentagon said..."
If there were an American Book
of Secrets, I think what it would say
about the Pentagon
is this really is
where the nation's
defenses really begin.
Approximately 23,000 people,
both military and civilian,
work at the Pentagon every day.
The building is fully
operational around the clock,
and includes
an infrastructure of transportation,
food services and retail shops enlisted
to support the enormous staff.
But what is the secret to keeping
the Pentagon operational 24/7?
I think what would surprise
most people, and it certainly did me
when I came to work at the Pentagon,
is that it's not just an office building.
It's really a city unto itself.
The amenities that are available,
I doubt very many people realize
that there's a drugstore,
there's a shoe store,
there's a Best Buy.
It really is a secret city.
The daily operation
of this unofficial city
are handled by a civilian administrator
appointed by the Secretary of Defense,
a role insiders refer to as "the mayor."
When you have 23,000 people
who come to work here every day,
probably another 3,000
to 5,000 visitors every day,
you are essentially
managing a small city.
We have hospitals,
clinics, restaurants.
We have a Pentagon
conference center and library.
We have the Pentagon
athletic center.
We have police force,
a firefighting unit.
This is quite a complex organism,
as all cities are.
For those who work
at the Pentagon,
the main entrance to the building
is on the southeast side.
But for the military's top brass
and the nation's leaders,
there are special VIP entrances.
We're at the Grand Ceremonial
River Entrance to the Pentagon.
This is the entrance
where the Secretary of Defense
goes to work every morning.
That's his office up there.
This is where the President
of the United States comes
when he visits the Pentagon,
as well as other ministers of defense
and chiefs of defense staff
from around the world
greeted in a parade
on that parade field there.
Called the River Entrance
because, of course,
there is the Potomac River.
This is the second ceremonial entrance
of the Pentagon called the Mall Entrance.
It's the entrance
for the Secretary of the Army
and the Secretary of the Navy,
whose offices are behind me
on the third and fourth floors.
With its five sides,
five floors and five concentric rings,
the original plans
for a military headquarters
were nearly scrapped
in favor of something more traditional.
The five-sided shape of the Pentagon
is an accident of history.
The initial spot that they'd chosen
for the building
up near Memorial Bridge
was five-sided.
It eventually ended up moving
to a different spot of land
that was not five-sided.
So when they moved the building
from the first site
to the second site,
they could have changed
the five sides.
But the architects
had come to realize
a five-sided shape
worked better than a big rectangle.
Although the Pentagon
was first conceived
as a temporary structure,
were the original plans redrawn
and the design rapidly repurposed
for a more secret reason?
Why was the construction
of the Pentagon begun
on September 11, 1941,
three months before the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor?
Were the nation's leaders
secretly preparing America for war?
A war that they knew was inevitable?
The War Department
was scattered in 17 buildings
all around Washington.
It was horribly decentralized.
And General George C. Marshall,
the army Chief of Staff,
gave orders to his chief of construction
to come up with some sort of plan
that would allow them to consolidate
this War Department.
President Roosevelt,
when he approved the plans
for this huge building in secret,
had a vision of this building being
used after the war as an archives
for all the paperwork
that was filling up Washington.
December 7, 1941.
The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.
A date which will live in infamy.
The United States goes to war,
and the pace of construction
of the Pentagon picked up.
A centralized location
for the War Department
now became a matter
of national urgency and public pride.
At that point, they had about 4,000 people
working on it up until Pearl Harbor.
When Pearl Harbor came,
all stops were off.
We will gain the inevitable triumph,
so help us God.
The sky
was the limit at that point.
More people were added
so that, at the peak,
it reached about 15,000 people.
The Pentagon
was built in a race against time.
The architects and draftsmen
were, literally, sometimes
just one step ahead of the pile drivers.
There was this incredible surge
of patriotism and panic
to get this building ready.
Completed in only 16 months,
the home of the War Department
has remained
the central command post
of the U.S. Military
for nearly 70 years.
We're standing
in the center courtyard of the Pentagon.
Behind me, they erected a gazebo.
And you can see it
in its present iteration.
It's a snack bar.
And on top
of that gazebo is a little owl.
When the people were here
during the Cold War period,
and, actually, my service began
in the Pentagon during that period,
this area quickly gained
the nickname of Ground Zero.
People that worked
in the Pentagon were convinced
that there was a nuclear bomb
with its crosshairs
right on that owl at the gazebo.
So I have to tell you,
as a young officer working here,
as I worked my way
through the corridors,
sometimes I took a shortcut
through the courtyard.
And I have to tell you,
when I got to the center,
the hair
on the back of my neck stood up.
I was sure that a nuclear round
was going to drop
on me at any moment.
But what military strategies
and war games
are played out
at a 21st century Pentagon?
Much of it is really
an office building.
A lot of the work that goes on there is,
you know, fairly routine, fairly mundane.
But a lot of the more secretive things,
a lot of the planning,
a lot of the operational elements,
intelligence analysis,
the high-level meetings, strategy,
all of that is going to be
well out of public view.
But it is all happening right there.
Probably more
than any place else in the United States,
the Pentagon is a clearinghouse
for every important decision
that gets made in the U.S. military.
As the home
to America's military masterminds,
the Pentagon has also proven
to be a five-sided target for terrorism.
It's a target
because it's the symbol
of American military power.
And that five-sided building does have
the home of the Department of Defense
and every senior service leader
of the armed forces of the United States.
September 11, 2001.
Al-Qaeda operatives
execute a terrorist plot
to attack the U.S. using
commercial aircraft as their weapons.
Their targets:
places of strategic economic,
political
and military importance.
On the morning of September 11,
I was just going around a normal day,
when about, I don't know,
9:15-ish or so,
one of my coworkers came over to me
and asked me
if I knew what was going on in New York.
And so I said, "No."
She said,
"Well, you have to come see."
We were watching what was going on
in New York at that time,
so we knew
something was going on.
Amidst the chaos,
American Airlines Flight 77,
which had taken off
from Dulles International Airport
earlier that morning,
had been hijacked over Ohio.
What those at the military
headquarters could not predict
was that the Boeing 757
was heading straight for the Pentagon.
As it was getting close to the Pentagon,
it actually did a 360.
So it flew basically over
the Pentagon, flew around once,
and while it was doing that,
it was descending.
I just walked in the door
to my office.
It was like a low rumbling noise
for a few seconds.
And then the light fixtures
in the room were just vibrating.
At 9:37 a.m.,
the plane carrying six crew,
53 passengers and five hijackers
hit the Pentagon's western wall.
The aircraft tore through the Pentagon
at an estimated 530 miles per hour.
With thousands of gallons of fuel
onboard, it exploded on impact.
In an instant, the western side
of the building was engulfed in flames.
I'm standing there when there
was just this tremendous explosion,
like nothing I'd ever heard before.
I remember a ball of fire coming
from behind me and from my left
as it rolled across the ceiling.
And then there was just this...
This intense heat,
like nothing I've ever...
I've ever felt before.
And I had no idea
what was going on.
This building shook.
This mammoth hunk
of concrete and steel
absolutely shook
with the impact of that airplane.
The plane was boring
through three of the five rings.
It was just basically shredded
by the concrete columns.
So you had thousands of gallons
of fuel that were exploding
at the same time and sending
fireballs down the hallway,
just blowing offices up.
I remember
being blown through the air,
and I didn't know where I landed.
Didn't have a clue.
It's like somebody picked up
the room and just shook it
like a dollhouse.
So I just started reaching out
with my hands
'cause I can't see anything,
and everything
I touched burned me.
Even the floor
was hot from the fire.
I just started crawling around,
trying to find my way out.
As firefighters
battled to control the raging inferno,
rescue workers raced to find survivors
amid the maze of rubble.
There were guys that went in,
got blown over by a fireball
and got up burned,
and went to drag people out.
There was a lady who was safe
and went back in to get people
and got burned.
And she crawled out with people
hanging on to her legs to get out.
There were people that saw
people banging on glass
to try and get out and they went in
to try to help them,
but there were insufficient tools,
and they used their bare hands.
Secretary Rumsfeld
came all the way
to the other side of the building,
much to the chagrin
of his security detail,
and helped pick up litters
and gurneys.
And it was
pretty extraordinary.
It was one
of the greatest sights in the world,
was watching the workers
who had evacuated,
then go back to the building
to rescue their fellow employees.
And, in many cases,
they would just have to yell to them,
you know, "Follow my voice,"
because they couldn't see them.
And this voice said go out
through this one particular door.
Which was at the far end of the room.
And I really wasn't sure
where I was at the time,
but I just started crawling
towards that voice.
And I knew I was going
in the right direction
because the farther I crawled,
the less hot it got.
So I just crawled
until I ran headfirst into a wall,
and I just turned right
and made my way
through all of the little aisleways
and everything until I got out
into the corridor.
I was standing
in the middle of five people,
and I'm the only one
that walked out.
Firefighters and emergency workers
battled heavy smoke and intense heat
as they began the search
for the estimated 800 missing personnel
who worked in the area.
It was very difficult
for this fire to vent
because of the unusual structure
of going into such a wide
and such a low building.
The fire in many parts
of the building, for hours,
was hotter than firefighting equipment
is designed to handle.
Usually it's very easy
to persuade people to leave a fire
and stay away from a fire,
but at the Pentagon,
firefighters encountered
lots of service members
who were determined
to get back in.
They treated this like it was a war.
Had the fire commanders
had their way,
they would have
ordered everybody out
of the National Military
Command Center,
but they got into a minor standoff
with officers there who said,
"We're not leaving.
The nation's under attack.
It is imperative to keep
this part of the Pentagon operating."
So firefighters had to do something
that they're not accustomed to doing,
which is putting out a fire
in one part of the building
while keeping another part
of the building operational.
But just how perilous was
the situation inside the building?
And what dangers did the destruction
really pose to national security?
Only a few knew the true extent
of the damage caused by the attack:
The Army General Staff Office
as well as the Navy Command Center,
a critical intelligence facility,
were both completely obliterated
by the fuselage.
The National Military Command
Center was untouched,
but it was in jeopardy
as the blazing fire
threatened to shut it down.
To make matters worse,
a shift in the weather
would fuel the fire
to an even greater threat.
It was very windy,
and all of a sudden, I looked up
and I saw flames
hooting out of the roof.
The fire commanders
started to rush crews
up to the top,
up to the roof of the Pentagon.
So, they mounted
a kind of an all-hands effort
to get that fire out on the roof,
because now this had become
a national security issue to them.
The fire was moving towards satellite
and computer equipment on the roof.
If it continued to spread,
the Pentagon would lose
a vital communications link
to troops and commanders
throughout the world.
But how could an attack
such as 9/11
affect the Pentagon's top-secret
military operations?
The National Military
Command Center is a steel box,
in which you have
all the sensitive communications
that reach around the globe.
And 24 by 7, 365 days a year,
it is manned.
And from that command center,
the President of the United States
will be receiving,
as does the Secretary of Defense,
the information with respect
to the crisis of the moment,
and only the president
and the Secretary of Defense
can push the button.
It needed to remain functioning
for the sake of keeping
the U.S. military in operation,
and things like the cooling system
in the Pentagon, the electrical system.
If the fire interfered with those things,
the first thing it would do is,
it would shut down
all the computers.
Without computers,
there's no connectivity
and without communications,
you can't run a military.
The building operations people realized
that they needed to keep
water pressure in the building up
so that the fire department
would be able to fight the fire.
Some of the building
operation people
risked their lives to close off pipes
even as smoke was pouring down
into some of those areas,
so that they could keep
the command centers operating
despite the danger
from the fire and smoke.
With critical military
missions underway around the world,
in the midst of the rescue efforts,
the Pentagon's Security Service
was urgently retrieving
top-secret information
now lying exposed
in the wreckage.
But what vital military information
were they trying to save?
The Security Service was trying
to just basically retrieve all the safes
and filing cabinets
that contain classified information.
Navy SEALs, for instance, said,
"Listen, we need
to get back to our office
because we've got stuff
in there that basically entails
how we operate,
intelligence that our troops
have gathered out in the field,
all sorts of things
that are essential
to the functioning of the Navy SEALs,
and it's sitting up there in an office
that nobody's guarding right now."
Firefighters who were in there
said they saw
documents labeled top-secret
literally floating
on wafts of smoky air.
When the smoke cleared,
189 lives were lost
and hundreds injured.
Neither the Pentagon
or the United States
would ever be the same.
September 12, 2001.
As the sun rose
over the Pentagon
on the morning after
the terrorist attack,
the first of many extraordinary
events began to unfold.
The next day was a very unusual sight
watching people coming
from the Pentagon City Metro Station,
walking to work,
and the Pentagon is still on fire.
But people were coming to work.
Every person
who worked here came to work.
This building was still burning.
This side of the building
had collapsed.
Everyone came to work the next day.
Forty eight hours
after the impact,
firefighters finally got the blaze
under control,
and the recovery effort could begin.
It took them a couple of days
to get the roof fire under control.
Eventually they did.
It was a very hazardous,
very difficult thing to do.
Rows C, D and E
of the area known as Wedge One
were destroyed by the impact
and resulting fires.
But with an average daily work
force of 25,000 people at the Pentagon,
how was it possible
there weren't even more casualties?
The Pentagon
was undergoing a renovation program,
and Wedge One
was just being completed.
Had these planes
hit a month either way,
there would have been
a lot more people killed,
because there would have been
a lot more people in the building.
Where the aircraft hit
was the only part of the building
that had fire sprinklers
throughout the section.
It was the only part of the building
that had blast-resistant windows.
It was the only part of the building
that had structural support.
It was the only part that had
this Kevlar-type skin
that would protect against
fragments of glass and stone.
Overnight, the existing
renovation work
turned to reconstruction.
But what was the secret
behind the rapid rebuild of the Pentagon?
It was considered
a mission-critical thing
to get the Pentagon back online,
not to mention an extremely important
symbolic act
to completely rebuild the Pentagon
and make it better than it ever was.
The workers themselves
came up with this plan
to restore the building
by the first anniversary of the attacks.
So within one year, they would have
the building back to its original state.
And they called it
the Phoenix Project.
It was a huge matter of pride
and patriotism for everybody there.
We had a total, at times,
of 4,000 people working there.
The way the majority of those people
felt was that we were going to show
people like these terrorists
what Americans could do
when you came
and did what they did to us.
A lot of people were working
the whole 20 or 22 hours.
I would leave for two or three hours,
I'd come back,
and there were guys
sleeping on the floor
or the heliport on the concrete
so they could talk me
as soon as I got back about things.
But while working around the clock
helped speed up their schedule,
it was not enough to make
their self-imposed, one-year deadline.
So what unconventional measures
did they take
to finish even sooner
than they had originally hoped?
The first thing we did
was tell everybody what to build that day
and follow it up with drawings,
instead of doing drawings first.
There was one particular spot,
supposed to be a wall
and then some pipes in the wall.
Well, the pipes were going first,
the wall wasn't ready yet.
So the guys ran their pipes
and they had to build the wall
around the pipes,
which isn't the way it usually happens.
It's just everybody
stepped out of box at all times.
In addition to repairing the building,
new high-security safeguards
were also constructed,
ones that would prevent
or at least provide greater protection
for the Pentagon staff
in case of a similar attack or worse.
We moved Route 110
further to the east.
We reinforced
the west side of the building.
We got the berm over there
and the blast wall.
Suffice it to say
there are other defenses
that are now in place
that protect this building,
and were a plane to enter
into restricted airspace
and be determined to be hostile,
I don't think it would make it
to this building.
They certainly incorporated
new security features into the building.
Many of those are not public
and they shouldn't be public,
because they could give
future terrorists ideas
about how to attack
the Pentagon again.
What you can see at the Pentagon
is the direct affect
of what happened on 9/11/01,
and the reality that there are people,
bad people,
who would do great damage
if they could.
Inside the Pentagon,
reconstruction also extended
to other areas of the building.
Areas hidden from the public.
And built according
to top-secret specifications.
There are a number of areas
which need to support
the mission itself,
including the operation centers
and the regular tenant spaces itself.
That's all I can go there.
We don't always know about those.
And if we knew about them,
we probably couldn't tell you
everything about them.
Wedge One renovations
covered an area
of one million square feet of space.
Building improvements
included blast-resistant windows
and a new
communications infrastructure.
The Phoenix Project finished
one month ahead of schedule.
A fitting end
to what is globally considered
to be the most incredible
reconstruction project in history.
We actually rebuilt the building
and had butts in chairs
on September 11, 2002.
I don't think there's a person
that worked on that site
that wouldn't say that was
the most important thing
in at least their construction life.
We claim this ground
in remembrance
of the events of September 11, 2001.
The steps directly behind me
are where the impact took place.
And, of course,
the blackened limestone block,
now etched with that fateful day,
put into place after Project Phoenix
concluded one year to the day later,
September 11, 2002.
In the wake of the 9/11 attack,
improved security was initiated
to both the physical structure
and the surrounding area
of the Pentagon.
But within the walls
of the military compound,
security measures
were also upgraded.
Prior to 9/11, the Pentagon
did have essentially a police force,
a security guard force, if you like.
After 9/11, that group
became a new unit,
the Pentagon Force
Protection Agency.
The Pentagon
Force Protection Agency,
otherwise known as the Pentagon police,
are an annoyance
to everybody who works there,
because they make it hard to get in.
If your badge is not in order,
they won't let you in.
But they're extremely important
to keeping the Pentagon secure.
The Pentagon uses
the most up-to-date technology
in terms of access control systems.
All the different technologies
are constantly changing.
They've gone to retina scan,
hand geometry scans,
to all kinds of devices.
The Pentagon Force
Protection Agency
is tasked with being
an all-threats agency.
In addition to security,
the agency
is trained to handle chemical,
biological, radiological
and even nuclear threats.
I developed a motto which is
"We Protect Those
Who Protect Our Nation,"
It makes the organization feel
that we're doing our part
in the overall mission
of the Department of Defense.
But beyond the threat
of another physical attack,
the Pentagon must maintain
the highest level of security
to protect
the nation's greatest secret-keepers,
who work deep inside the compound.
Some of the country's most sensitive
secrets, as you can understand,
are held within this building.
And in some cases
they're held within certain minds.
The Defense
Intelligence Agency, DIA,
is one of the other, sort of primary,
the big intelligence agencies
within the intelligence community.
And it's really focused
on missions pertaining
to the Defense Department's business,
so, fighting war.
And, really, in the past ten years,
particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan,
DIA has been the place to produce
or to handle the intelligence
that goes out to soldiers in the field.
But the DIA is not
the only information-gathering agency
housed at the Pentagon.
The biggest
and most covert intelligence unit,
the National Security Agency,
also operates
within the military headquarters.
National Security Agency,
or the NSA,
is the government's eavesdropper.
It collects what's called
signals intelligence,
which means phone calls,
fax transmissions,
e-mails, text messages.
If it goes over a wire,
or over a wavelength in the air,
NSA grabs it.
They have a global system
for electronic intelligence collection
that includes satellites,
wire taps,
monitoring of Internet networks.
Their job is if it's electronic,
if it's data and it's moving around,
they grab it.
If I had to put money on which agency
has the most secrets,
I would say it's the NSA.
The NSA is certainly collecting
the most information.
But when secret information
must be shared inside the Pentagon,
what special protocols
are put into action?
And how is sensitive information
stored inside the Pentagon kept safe,
and accessed
only on a need to know basis?
Paper documents
are transferred by hand
by a cleared person, in some cases,
inside a locked briefcase.
In a building
where 23,000 people work,
there are a lot of secret documents.
And part of my job is to keep
those documents safe and secure,
and out of the hands of people
that would do our nation harm.
There's different classifications
for different types of information.
And based upon your need to know
and your background
investigation level, you get access.
Your duties require
you to have access
in order to get it accomplished.
There are levels
of classified documents
from "for official use only"
all the way up to "top secret"
SCI clearances,
Special Compartmentalized
Intelligence.
Conversations
about classified information
are strictly forbidden
in the Pentagon.
But there is one place
that the military's ultimate top secrets
can be discussed openly.
In the steel box offices
known as SCIFs.
There are lots and lots
of classified spaces inside the Pentagon.
Some of them are known as
Sensitive Compartmented
Information Facilities.
The acronym for that is SCIF.
They're not just places
with limited access,
where people are cleared to discuss
classified information.
They're actually hardened
against electronic eavesdropping.
So there might be wire structure
built around those cages.
There might be materials in there
that are intended to defeat
any kind of electronic eavesdropping,
particularly audio devices that
somebody could point at the Pentagon.
Even the disposing
of classified documents
leaves little room for secret information
to fall into the wrong hands.
A burn bag is a specially
marked brown paper bag
that classified material,
or even sensitive,
unclassified material. is put into.
And then every day they have pickup
here at the building,
it's put into the back of a van,
it's taken out to the incinerator
plant that they have here,
and it's burned.
Information is power
in the intelligence community,
and secrets are the most valuable
kind of information.
But what kinds of secrets
are the Pentagon's best military minds
ultimately trying to find?
I think what they're really after
in the intelligence world
is anything that can tell them
about what's going to happen next.
It's used in a way
almost like a crystal ball.
You look to data
to almost see the future.
In July of 2011,
the Department of Defense
released its first official strategy
for operating in the digital age.
Traditionally tasked
with keeping America safe by land,
air and sea, the Pentagon
is now taking steps to investigate,
eliminate and annihilate threats
from cyberspace.
The Pentagon has not only
been the target of physical attacks;
it's also been the target of hundreds
of cyber attacks
on a day-to-day basis.
It is target number one
for adversaries
who want to try to penetrate
our communications,
our computers, our hardware,
software and literally shut down
the national security apparatus
of the United States.
We are already experiencing our 9/11
in cyberspace.
It's already happening.
We've lost trillions of dollars
over the last two years
of intellectual property.
The hard thing
about cyber security
is you don't know
that the asset's gone.
If someone takes your data,
you're still using your data.
If someone takes your submarine,
you know the submarine's gone.
The most significant breach
of U.S. Military networks
occurred in 2008
when a foreign intelligence agent
inserted an infected flash drive
into one of the government's laptops
in the Middle East.
The malicious code spread undetected
through classified systems,
uploaded itself onto a network run
by the U.S. Central Command
and put its servers
under enemy control.
What we found in 2008
is that attacks can be launched
even when an agency
or a department
is offline
and not on the Internet.
It can happen through
malicious software being carried
from one place to another
and inserted onto an offline network
using such technology
as a USB drive.
This is really analogous to,
in the old days of the Cold War,
you would send a spy
into a government facility,
posing as a visitor,
who would then try
and physically steal the documents.
Cyber Command
is the official unit
tasked with protecting
the country's digital infrastructure
in the 21st century.
While its mission
is to protect military assets,
has Cyber Command
already launched
any counterattacks of its own?
We saw something
very interesting happen in Iran
recently with this so-called
Stuxnet virus.
This apparently was a virus
that was able to effectively shut down
the nuclear program there,
and by some estimates,
set it back by one to three years.
That is a profound capability
if we do, in fact, have that capability.
But who are the secret stalkers
plotting to hack the servers
and systems at the Pentagon?
I think it's widely believed
that the Chinese,
the Russians,
perhaps even some of our allies,
pay very close attention
to the Pentagon all the time.
If you look at the people
who are trying to get
into military networks, it's going to be
everyone from foreign spies
to potentially even corporations
who are trying to get information
on their competitors.
But increasingly what the Pentagon
is really most worried about
are other governments,
militaries, foreign spies,
particularly in China,
which has been the source
of many of the attempted intrusions
and some of the successful ones.
And also in Russia,
where the intelligence services
are still very much interested
in what we are doing in our military.
If the Internet is anonymous,
that means the attackers
have the full scope of the cyberspace
to be able to launch an attack
without being known
who they actually are.
So that's one of the big challenges
that we need to solve,
is know who the attacker is.
As long as America
has enemies wishing to do it harm,
the Pentagon will be a tempting target
for a cyber or physical attack.
It is a giant building.
It's very difficult to protect,
as 9/11 proved.
The military has put,
at various locations around Washington,
portable missile batteries
that are there in case
someone were to try and fly a plane
into the Pentagon or another building.
While the Pentagon
is the central headquarters
to the U.S. military,
are there secret outposts
that allow the armed forces
to operate
outside the Washington compound?
There are secure, undisclosed locations
that are in various places
that I will not tell you where they are.
Some believe
there is a secret facility
built into the side of a mountain
in Raven Rock, Pennsylvania,
known as Site R.
Might this,
in fact, be a top secret location
of a second Pentagon?
It's a very sophisticated, big cave
that is built into the side of a mountain.
And this is the place where,
in the event of a nuclear war,
our country's leaders
were supposed to go
and continue running the country,
regardless of what had happened.
It is designed to withstand
a nuclear blast.
What you have inside
are all of the communications systems
that you need, that the president
and the defense secretary
would need
to give orders to the military.
The ability to launch
the strategic nuclear arsenal,
if necessary.
For seven decades,
the Pentagon has been an icon
of American strength
and military excellence.
But for those who know
the structure best,
the secret to its national importance
extends far beyond the building itself.
The most extraordinary aspect
of this building is not the concrete.
It's not the limestone.
It's not the 17 and a half miles
of corridors.
It's the 23,000 people
who come to work here every day.
They are the most special part
of this building.
This is where all
of the thinking about the future
of what threats look like occurs.
There probably is no more greater
collection of secrets
than what you have
within those five walls,
because, truly,
it is all about the preservation
of the national security
of the United States.
When people go to bed at nighttime
and go to sleep,
the Pentagon is always working.
There's people there
who are watching
what is going on around the world,
making sure our country is safe.
While their methods
may be covert,
the men and women who work
at the Pentagon every day
are dedicated
to the building's core mission:
to defend and protect
the United States
from those
who would do America harm.
of America's military operations.
A five-sided fortress
with a single purpose:
to defend the United States
and its citizens.
But behind the concrete walls
and reinforced windows
of the Pentagon are secrets.
Secrets so guarded...
The country's
most sensitive secrets
are held within this building
and within certain minds.
...so incredible...
She crawled out with people
hanging onto her legs to get out.
...so alarming...
We are already experiencing
our 9/11 in cyberspace.
...that they must
be kept hidden from the public
until now.
There are those who believe
in the existence of a book.
A book that contains
the most highly guarded secrets
of the United States of America.
A book whose very existence
is known to only a select few.
But if such a book exists,
what would it contain?
Secret histories?
Secret plans?
Secret lies?
Does there really exist
America's Book of Secrets?
It proudly stands
on the west bank of the Potomac River
on the edge of Washington, DC.
A building, an institution,
a symbol of America's military might.
The Pentagon.
Here, headquartered under one roof,
is the Department of Defense,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and the five branches
of the U.S. military.
Commands issued
from behind these walls
direct the actions of U.S. forces
around the world.
The Pentagon is the heart,
the soul, the brain
of our national military community.
It does house the entire top
of the defense establishment
of the United States.
It is regarded as an icon, if you will,
for enemies and allies.
I was always excited in the Pentagon.
It was always a place where things
could happen or be made to happen,
or they happened to you.
But it was never dull.
There was always adventure.
Perhaps most famous
for its unique design,
the Pentagon is the largest low-rise
office building in the world.
It occupies more than six million
square feet of floor space
and spans an area
equal to five city blocks.
Called The Puzzle Palace
by insiders,
the labyrinth of hallways and corridors
that run through the building
measure 17-and-a-half miles
in length.
Yet despite its vast size,
the Pentagon's unusual design
allows for quick access
to any of its five equal sides.
This design allows someone
to get from any point in the building,
the furthest spot you might imagine,
from corridor ten
all the way around to corridor two,
three or five in seven minutes or less.
But for many, the Pentagon
is much more
than a monumental building,
it is a living entity.
It's one of the few buildings
that you could say that speaks.
You see it in the newspaper quite often,
"The Pentagon said..."
If there were an American Book
of Secrets, I think what it would say
about the Pentagon
is this really is
where the nation's
defenses really begin.
Approximately 23,000 people,
both military and civilian,
work at the Pentagon every day.
The building is fully
operational around the clock,
and includes
an infrastructure of transportation,
food services and retail shops enlisted
to support the enormous staff.
But what is the secret to keeping
the Pentagon operational 24/7?
I think what would surprise
most people, and it certainly did me
when I came to work at the Pentagon,
is that it's not just an office building.
It's really a city unto itself.
The amenities that are available,
I doubt very many people realize
that there's a drugstore,
there's a shoe store,
there's a Best Buy.
It really is a secret city.
The daily operation
of this unofficial city
are handled by a civilian administrator
appointed by the Secretary of Defense,
a role insiders refer to as "the mayor."
When you have 23,000 people
who come to work here every day,
probably another 3,000
to 5,000 visitors every day,
you are essentially
managing a small city.
We have hospitals,
clinics, restaurants.
We have a Pentagon
conference center and library.
We have the Pentagon
athletic center.
We have police force,
a firefighting unit.
This is quite a complex organism,
as all cities are.
For those who work
at the Pentagon,
the main entrance to the building
is on the southeast side.
But for the military's top brass
and the nation's leaders,
there are special VIP entrances.
We're at the Grand Ceremonial
River Entrance to the Pentagon.
This is the entrance
where the Secretary of Defense
goes to work every morning.
That's his office up there.
This is where the President
of the United States comes
when he visits the Pentagon,
as well as other ministers of defense
and chiefs of defense staff
from around the world
greeted in a parade
on that parade field there.
Called the River Entrance
because, of course,
there is the Potomac River.
This is the second ceremonial entrance
of the Pentagon called the Mall Entrance.
It's the entrance
for the Secretary of the Army
and the Secretary of the Navy,
whose offices are behind me
on the third and fourth floors.
With its five sides,
five floors and five concentric rings,
the original plans
for a military headquarters
were nearly scrapped
in favor of something more traditional.
The five-sided shape of the Pentagon
is an accident of history.
The initial spot that they'd chosen
for the building
up near Memorial Bridge
was five-sided.
It eventually ended up moving
to a different spot of land
that was not five-sided.
So when they moved the building
from the first site
to the second site,
they could have changed
the five sides.
But the architects
had come to realize
a five-sided shape
worked better than a big rectangle.
Although the Pentagon
was first conceived
as a temporary structure,
were the original plans redrawn
and the design rapidly repurposed
for a more secret reason?
Why was the construction
of the Pentagon begun
on September 11, 1941,
three months before the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor?
Were the nation's leaders
secretly preparing America for war?
A war that they knew was inevitable?
The War Department
was scattered in 17 buildings
all around Washington.
It was horribly decentralized.
And General George C. Marshall,
the army Chief of Staff,
gave orders to his chief of construction
to come up with some sort of plan
that would allow them to consolidate
this War Department.
President Roosevelt,
when he approved the plans
for this huge building in secret,
had a vision of this building being
used after the war as an archives
for all the paperwork
that was filling up Washington.
December 7, 1941.
The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.
A date which will live in infamy.
The United States goes to war,
and the pace of construction
of the Pentagon picked up.
A centralized location
for the War Department
now became a matter
of national urgency and public pride.
At that point, they had about 4,000 people
working on it up until Pearl Harbor.
When Pearl Harbor came,
all stops were off.
We will gain the inevitable triumph,
so help us God.
The sky
was the limit at that point.
More people were added
so that, at the peak,
it reached about 15,000 people.
The Pentagon
was built in a race against time.
The architects and draftsmen
were, literally, sometimes
just one step ahead of the pile drivers.
There was this incredible surge
of patriotism and panic
to get this building ready.
Completed in only 16 months,
the home of the War Department
has remained
the central command post
of the U.S. Military
for nearly 70 years.
We're standing
in the center courtyard of the Pentagon.
Behind me, they erected a gazebo.
And you can see it
in its present iteration.
It's a snack bar.
And on top
of that gazebo is a little owl.
When the people were here
during the Cold War period,
and, actually, my service began
in the Pentagon during that period,
this area quickly gained
the nickname of Ground Zero.
People that worked
in the Pentagon were convinced
that there was a nuclear bomb
with its crosshairs
right on that owl at the gazebo.
So I have to tell you,
as a young officer working here,
as I worked my way
through the corridors,
sometimes I took a shortcut
through the courtyard.
And I have to tell you,
when I got to the center,
the hair
on the back of my neck stood up.
I was sure that a nuclear round
was going to drop
on me at any moment.
But what military strategies
and war games
are played out
at a 21st century Pentagon?
Much of it is really
an office building.
A lot of the work that goes on there is,
you know, fairly routine, fairly mundane.
But a lot of the more secretive things,
a lot of the planning,
a lot of the operational elements,
intelligence analysis,
the high-level meetings, strategy,
all of that is going to be
well out of public view.
But it is all happening right there.
Probably more
than any place else in the United States,
the Pentagon is a clearinghouse
for every important decision
that gets made in the U.S. military.
As the home
to America's military masterminds,
the Pentagon has also proven
to be a five-sided target for terrorism.
It's a target
because it's the symbol
of American military power.
And that five-sided building does have
the home of the Department of Defense
and every senior service leader
of the armed forces of the United States.
September 11, 2001.
Al-Qaeda operatives
execute a terrorist plot
to attack the U.S. using
commercial aircraft as their weapons.
Their targets:
places of strategic economic,
political
and military importance.
On the morning of September 11,
I was just going around a normal day,
when about, I don't know,
9:15-ish or so,
one of my coworkers came over to me
and asked me
if I knew what was going on in New York.
And so I said, "No."
She said,
"Well, you have to come see."
We were watching what was going on
in New York at that time,
so we knew
something was going on.
Amidst the chaos,
American Airlines Flight 77,
which had taken off
from Dulles International Airport
earlier that morning,
had been hijacked over Ohio.
What those at the military
headquarters could not predict
was that the Boeing 757
was heading straight for the Pentagon.
As it was getting close to the Pentagon,
it actually did a 360.
So it flew basically over
the Pentagon, flew around once,
and while it was doing that,
it was descending.
I just walked in the door
to my office.
It was like a low rumbling noise
for a few seconds.
And then the light fixtures
in the room were just vibrating.
At 9:37 a.m.,
the plane carrying six crew,
53 passengers and five hijackers
hit the Pentagon's western wall.
The aircraft tore through the Pentagon
at an estimated 530 miles per hour.
With thousands of gallons of fuel
onboard, it exploded on impact.
In an instant, the western side
of the building was engulfed in flames.
I'm standing there when there
was just this tremendous explosion,
like nothing I'd ever heard before.
I remember a ball of fire coming
from behind me and from my left
as it rolled across the ceiling.
And then there was just this...
This intense heat,
like nothing I've ever...
I've ever felt before.
And I had no idea
what was going on.
This building shook.
This mammoth hunk
of concrete and steel
absolutely shook
with the impact of that airplane.
The plane was boring
through three of the five rings.
It was just basically shredded
by the concrete columns.
So you had thousands of gallons
of fuel that were exploding
at the same time and sending
fireballs down the hallway,
just blowing offices up.
I remember
being blown through the air,
and I didn't know where I landed.
Didn't have a clue.
It's like somebody picked up
the room and just shook it
like a dollhouse.
So I just started reaching out
with my hands
'cause I can't see anything,
and everything
I touched burned me.
Even the floor
was hot from the fire.
I just started crawling around,
trying to find my way out.
As firefighters
battled to control the raging inferno,
rescue workers raced to find survivors
amid the maze of rubble.
There were guys that went in,
got blown over by a fireball
and got up burned,
and went to drag people out.
There was a lady who was safe
and went back in to get people
and got burned.
And she crawled out with people
hanging on to her legs to get out.
There were people that saw
people banging on glass
to try and get out and they went in
to try to help them,
but there were insufficient tools,
and they used their bare hands.
Secretary Rumsfeld
came all the way
to the other side of the building,
much to the chagrin
of his security detail,
and helped pick up litters
and gurneys.
And it was
pretty extraordinary.
It was one
of the greatest sights in the world,
was watching the workers
who had evacuated,
then go back to the building
to rescue their fellow employees.
And, in many cases,
they would just have to yell to them,
you know, "Follow my voice,"
because they couldn't see them.
And this voice said go out
through this one particular door.
Which was at the far end of the room.
And I really wasn't sure
where I was at the time,
but I just started crawling
towards that voice.
And I knew I was going
in the right direction
because the farther I crawled,
the less hot it got.
So I just crawled
until I ran headfirst into a wall,
and I just turned right
and made my way
through all of the little aisleways
and everything until I got out
into the corridor.
I was standing
in the middle of five people,
and I'm the only one
that walked out.
Firefighters and emergency workers
battled heavy smoke and intense heat
as they began the search
for the estimated 800 missing personnel
who worked in the area.
It was very difficult
for this fire to vent
because of the unusual structure
of going into such a wide
and such a low building.
The fire in many parts
of the building, for hours,
was hotter than firefighting equipment
is designed to handle.
Usually it's very easy
to persuade people to leave a fire
and stay away from a fire,
but at the Pentagon,
firefighters encountered
lots of service members
who were determined
to get back in.
They treated this like it was a war.
Had the fire commanders
had their way,
they would have
ordered everybody out
of the National Military
Command Center,
but they got into a minor standoff
with officers there who said,
"We're not leaving.
The nation's under attack.
It is imperative to keep
this part of the Pentagon operating."
So firefighters had to do something
that they're not accustomed to doing,
which is putting out a fire
in one part of the building
while keeping another part
of the building operational.
But just how perilous was
the situation inside the building?
And what dangers did the destruction
really pose to national security?
Only a few knew the true extent
of the damage caused by the attack:
The Army General Staff Office
as well as the Navy Command Center,
a critical intelligence facility,
were both completely obliterated
by the fuselage.
The National Military Command
Center was untouched,
but it was in jeopardy
as the blazing fire
threatened to shut it down.
To make matters worse,
a shift in the weather
would fuel the fire
to an even greater threat.
It was very windy,
and all of a sudden, I looked up
and I saw flames
hooting out of the roof.
The fire commanders
started to rush crews
up to the top,
up to the roof of the Pentagon.
So, they mounted
a kind of an all-hands effort
to get that fire out on the roof,
because now this had become
a national security issue to them.
The fire was moving towards satellite
and computer equipment on the roof.
If it continued to spread,
the Pentagon would lose
a vital communications link
to troops and commanders
throughout the world.
But how could an attack
such as 9/11
affect the Pentagon's top-secret
military operations?
The National Military
Command Center is a steel box,
in which you have
all the sensitive communications
that reach around the globe.
And 24 by 7, 365 days a year,
it is manned.
And from that command center,
the President of the United States
will be receiving,
as does the Secretary of Defense,
the information with respect
to the crisis of the moment,
and only the president
and the Secretary of Defense
can push the button.
It needed to remain functioning
for the sake of keeping
the U.S. military in operation,
and things like the cooling system
in the Pentagon, the electrical system.
If the fire interfered with those things,
the first thing it would do is,
it would shut down
all the computers.
Without computers,
there's no connectivity
and without communications,
you can't run a military.
The building operations people realized
that they needed to keep
water pressure in the building up
so that the fire department
would be able to fight the fire.
Some of the building
operation people
risked their lives to close off pipes
even as smoke was pouring down
into some of those areas,
so that they could keep
the command centers operating
despite the danger
from the fire and smoke.
With critical military
missions underway around the world,
in the midst of the rescue efforts,
the Pentagon's Security Service
was urgently retrieving
top-secret information
now lying exposed
in the wreckage.
But what vital military information
were they trying to save?
The Security Service was trying
to just basically retrieve all the safes
and filing cabinets
that contain classified information.
Navy SEALs, for instance, said,
"Listen, we need
to get back to our office
because we've got stuff
in there that basically entails
how we operate,
intelligence that our troops
have gathered out in the field,
all sorts of things
that are essential
to the functioning of the Navy SEALs,
and it's sitting up there in an office
that nobody's guarding right now."
Firefighters who were in there
said they saw
documents labeled top-secret
literally floating
on wafts of smoky air.
When the smoke cleared,
189 lives were lost
and hundreds injured.
Neither the Pentagon
or the United States
would ever be the same.
September 12, 2001.
As the sun rose
over the Pentagon
on the morning after
the terrorist attack,
the first of many extraordinary
events began to unfold.
The next day was a very unusual sight
watching people coming
from the Pentagon City Metro Station,
walking to work,
and the Pentagon is still on fire.
But people were coming to work.
Every person
who worked here came to work.
This building was still burning.
This side of the building
had collapsed.
Everyone came to work the next day.
Forty eight hours
after the impact,
firefighters finally got the blaze
under control,
and the recovery effort could begin.
It took them a couple of days
to get the roof fire under control.
Eventually they did.
It was a very hazardous,
very difficult thing to do.
Rows C, D and E
of the area known as Wedge One
were destroyed by the impact
and resulting fires.
But with an average daily work
force of 25,000 people at the Pentagon,
how was it possible
there weren't even more casualties?
The Pentagon
was undergoing a renovation program,
and Wedge One
was just being completed.
Had these planes
hit a month either way,
there would have been
a lot more people killed,
because there would have been
a lot more people in the building.
Where the aircraft hit
was the only part of the building
that had fire sprinklers
throughout the section.
It was the only part of the building
that had blast-resistant windows.
It was the only part of the building
that had structural support.
It was the only part that had
this Kevlar-type skin
that would protect against
fragments of glass and stone.
Overnight, the existing
renovation work
turned to reconstruction.
But what was the secret
behind the rapid rebuild of the Pentagon?
It was considered
a mission-critical thing
to get the Pentagon back online,
not to mention an extremely important
symbolic act
to completely rebuild the Pentagon
and make it better than it ever was.
The workers themselves
came up with this plan
to restore the building
by the first anniversary of the attacks.
So within one year, they would have
the building back to its original state.
And they called it
the Phoenix Project.
It was a huge matter of pride
and patriotism for everybody there.
We had a total, at times,
of 4,000 people working there.
The way the majority of those people
felt was that we were going to show
people like these terrorists
what Americans could do
when you came
and did what they did to us.
A lot of people were working
the whole 20 or 22 hours.
I would leave for two or three hours,
I'd come back,
and there were guys
sleeping on the floor
or the heliport on the concrete
so they could talk me
as soon as I got back about things.
But while working around the clock
helped speed up their schedule,
it was not enough to make
their self-imposed, one-year deadline.
So what unconventional measures
did they take
to finish even sooner
than they had originally hoped?
The first thing we did
was tell everybody what to build that day
and follow it up with drawings,
instead of doing drawings first.
There was one particular spot,
supposed to be a wall
and then some pipes in the wall.
Well, the pipes were going first,
the wall wasn't ready yet.
So the guys ran their pipes
and they had to build the wall
around the pipes,
which isn't the way it usually happens.
It's just everybody
stepped out of box at all times.
In addition to repairing the building,
new high-security safeguards
were also constructed,
ones that would prevent
or at least provide greater protection
for the Pentagon staff
in case of a similar attack or worse.
We moved Route 110
further to the east.
We reinforced
the west side of the building.
We got the berm over there
and the blast wall.
Suffice it to say
there are other defenses
that are now in place
that protect this building,
and were a plane to enter
into restricted airspace
and be determined to be hostile,
I don't think it would make it
to this building.
They certainly incorporated
new security features into the building.
Many of those are not public
and they shouldn't be public,
because they could give
future terrorists ideas
about how to attack
the Pentagon again.
What you can see at the Pentagon
is the direct affect
of what happened on 9/11/01,
and the reality that there are people,
bad people,
who would do great damage
if they could.
Inside the Pentagon,
reconstruction also extended
to other areas of the building.
Areas hidden from the public.
And built according
to top-secret specifications.
There are a number of areas
which need to support
the mission itself,
including the operation centers
and the regular tenant spaces itself.
That's all I can go there.
We don't always know about those.
And if we knew about them,
we probably couldn't tell you
everything about them.
Wedge One renovations
covered an area
of one million square feet of space.
Building improvements
included blast-resistant windows
and a new
communications infrastructure.
The Phoenix Project finished
one month ahead of schedule.
A fitting end
to what is globally considered
to be the most incredible
reconstruction project in history.
We actually rebuilt the building
and had butts in chairs
on September 11, 2002.
I don't think there's a person
that worked on that site
that wouldn't say that was
the most important thing
in at least their construction life.
We claim this ground
in remembrance
of the events of September 11, 2001.
The steps directly behind me
are where the impact took place.
And, of course,
the blackened limestone block,
now etched with that fateful day,
put into place after Project Phoenix
concluded one year to the day later,
September 11, 2002.
In the wake of the 9/11 attack,
improved security was initiated
to both the physical structure
and the surrounding area
of the Pentagon.
But within the walls
of the military compound,
security measures
were also upgraded.
Prior to 9/11, the Pentagon
did have essentially a police force,
a security guard force, if you like.
After 9/11, that group
became a new unit,
the Pentagon Force
Protection Agency.
The Pentagon
Force Protection Agency,
otherwise known as the Pentagon police,
are an annoyance
to everybody who works there,
because they make it hard to get in.
If your badge is not in order,
they won't let you in.
But they're extremely important
to keeping the Pentagon secure.
The Pentagon uses
the most up-to-date technology
in terms of access control systems.
All the different technologies
are constantly changing.
They've gone to retina scan,
hand geometry scans,
to all kinds of devices.
The Pentagon Force
Protection Agency
is tasked with being
an all-threats agency.
In addition to security,
the agency
is trained to handle chemical,
biological, radiological
and even nuclear threats.
I developed a motto which is
"We Protect Those
Who Protect Our Nation,"
It makes the organization feel
that we're doing our part
in the overall mission
of the Department of Defense.
But beyond the threat
of another physical attack,
the Pentagon must maintain
the highest level of security
to protect
the nation's greatest secret-keepers,
who work deep inside the compound.
Some of the country's most sensitive
secrets, as you can understand,
are held within this building.
And in some cases
they're held within certain minds.
The Defense
Intelligence Agency, DIA,
is one of the other, sort of primary,
the big intelligence agencies
within the intelligence community.
And it's really focused
on missions pertaining
to the Defense Department's business,
so, fighting war.
And, really, in the past ten years,
particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan,
DIA has been the place to produce
or to handle the intelligence
that goes out to soldiers in the field.
But the DIA is not
the only information-gathering agency
housed at the Pentagon.
The biggest
and most covert intelligence unit,
the National Security Agency,
also operates
within the military headquarters.
National Security Agency,
or the NSA,
is the government's eavesdropper.
It collects what's called
signals intelligence,
which means phone calls,
fax transmissions,
e-mails, text messages.
If it goes over a wire,
or over a wavelength in the air,
NSA grabs it.
They have a global system
for electronic intelligence collection
that includes satellites,
wire taps,
monitoring of Internet networks.
Their job is if it's electronic,
if it's data and it's moving around,
they grab it.
If I had to put money on which agency
has the most secrets,
I would say it's the NSA.
The NSA is certainly collecting
the most information.
But when secret information
must be shared inside the Pentagon,
what special protocols
are put into action?
And how is sensitive information
stored inside the Pentagon kept safe,
and accessed
only on a need to know basis?
Paper documents
are transferred by hand
by a cleared person, in some cases,
inside a locked briefcase.
In a building
where 23,000 people work,
there are a lot of secret documents.
And part of my job is to keep
those documents safe and secure,
and out of the hands of people
that would do our nation harm.
There's different classifications
for different types of information.
And based upon your need to know
and your background
investigation level, you get access.
Your duties require
you to have access
in order to get it accomplished.
There are levels
of classified documents
from "for official use only"
all the way up to "top secret"
SCI clearances,
Special Compartmentalized
Intelligence.
Conversations
about classified information
are strictly forbidden
in the Pentagon.
But there is one place
that the military's ultimate top secrets
can be discussed openly.
In the steel box offices
known as SCIFs.
There are lots and lots
of classified spaces inside the Pentagon.
Some of them are known as
Sensitive Compartmented
Information Facilities.
The acronym for that is SCIF.
They're not just places
with limited access,
where people are cleared to discuss
classified information.
They're actually hardened
against electronic eavesdropping.
So there might be wire structure
built around those cages.
There might be materials in there
that are intended to defeat
any kind of electronic eavesdropping,
particularly audio devices that
somebody could point at the Pentagon.
Even the disposing
of classified documents
leaves little room for secret information
to fall into the wrong hands.
A burn bag is a specially
marked brown paper bag
that classified material,
or even sensitive,
unclassified material. is put into.
And then every day they have pickup
here at the building,
it's put into the back of a van,
it's taken out to the incinerator
plant that they have here,
and it's burned.
Information is power
in the intelligence community,
and secrets are the most valuable
kind of information.
But what kinds of secrets
are the Pentagon's best military minds
ultimately trying to find?
I think what they're really after
in the intelligence world
is anything that can tell them
about what's going to happen next.
It's used in a way
almost like a crystal ball.
You look to data
to almost see the future.
In July of 2011,
the Department of Defense
released its first official strategy
for operating in the digital age.
Traditionally tasked
with keeping America safe by land,
air and sea, the Pentagon
is now taking steps to investigate,
eliminate and annihilate threats
from cyberspace.
The Pentagon has not only
been the target of physical attacks;
it's also been the target of hundreds
of cyber attacks
on a day-to-day basis.
It is target number one
for adversaries
who want to try to penetrate
our communications,
our computers, our hardware,
software and literally shut down
the national security apparatus
of the United States.
We are already experiencing our 9/11
in cyberspace.
It's already happening.
We've lost trillions of dollars
over the last two years
of intellectual property.
The hard thing
about cyber security
is you don't know
that the asset's gone.
If someone takes your data,
you're still using your data.
If someone takes your submarine,
you know the submarine's gone.
The most significant breach
of U.S. Military networks
occurred in 2008
when a foreign intelligence agent
inserted an infected flash drive
into one of the government's laptops
in the Middle East.
The malicious code spread undetected
through classified systems,
uploaded itself onto a network run
by the U.S. Central Command
and put its servers
under enemy control.
What we found in 2008
is that attacks can be launched
even when an agency
or a department
is offline
and not on the Internet.
It can happen through
malicious software being carried
from one place to another
and inserted onto an offline network
using such technology
as a USB drive.
This is really analogous to,
in the old days of the Cold War,
you would send a spy
into a government facility,
posing as a visitor,
who would then try
and physically steal the documents.
Cyber Command
is the official unit
tasked with protecting
the country's digital infrastructure
in the 21st century.
While its mission
is to protect military assets,
has Cyber Command
already launched
any counterattacks of its own?
We saw something
very interesting happen in Iran
recently with this so-called
Stuxnet virus.
This apparently was a virus
that was able to effectively shut down
the nuclear program there,
and by some estimates,
set it back by one to three years.
That is a profound capability
if we do, in fact, have that capability.
But who are the secret stalkers
plotting to hack the servers
and systems at the Pentagon?
I think it's widely believed
that the Chinese,
the Russians,
perhaps even some of our allies,
pay very close attention
to the Pentagon all the time.
If you look at the people
who are trying to get
into military networks, it's going to be
everyone from foreign spies
to potentially even corporations
who are trying to get information
on their competitors.
But increasingly what the Pentagon
is really most worried about
are other governments,
militaries, foreign spies,
particularly in China,
which has been the source
of many of the attempted intrusions
and some of the successful ones.
And also in Russia,
where the intelligence services
are still very much interested
in what we are doing in our military.
If the Internet is anonymous,
that means the attackers
have the full scope of the cyberspace
to be able to launch an attack
without being known
who they actually are.
So that's one of the big challenges
that we need to solve,
is know who the attacker is.
As long as America
has enemies wishing to do it harm,
the Pentagon will be a tempting target
for a cyber or physical attack.
It is a giant building.
It's very difficult to protect,
as 9/11 proved.
The military has put,
at various locations around Washington,
portable missile batteries
that are there in case
someone were to try and fly a plane
into the Pentagon or another building.
While the Pentagon
is the central headquarters
to the U.S. military,
are there secret outposts
that allow the armed forces
to operate
outside the Washington compound?
There are secure, undisclosed locations
that are in various places
that I will not tell you where they are.
Some believe
there is a secret facility
built into the side of a mountain
in Raven Rock, Pennsylvania,
known as Site R.
Might this,
in fact, be a top secret location
of a second Pentagon?
It's a very sophisticated, big cave
that is built into the side of a mountain.
And this is the place where,
in the event of a nuclear war,
our country's leaders
were supposed to go
and continue running the country,
regardless of what had happened.
It is designed to withstand
a nuclear blast.
What you have inside
are all of the communications systems
that you need, that the president
and the defense secretary
would need
to give orders to the military.
The ability to launch
the strategic nuclear arsenal,
if necessary.
For seven decades,
the Pentagon has been an icon
of American strength
and military excellence.
But for those who know
the structure best,
the secret to its national importance
extends far beyond the building itself.
The most extraordinary aspect
of this building is not the concrete.
It's not the limestone.
It's not the 17 and a half miles
of corridors.
It's the 23,000 people
who come to work here every day.
They are the most special part
of this building.
This is where all
of the thinking about the future
of what threats look like occurs.
There probably is no more greater
collection of secrets
than what you have
within those five walls,
because, truly,
it is all about the preservation
of the national security
of the United States.
When people go to bed at nighttime
and go to sleep,
the Pentagon is always working.
There's people there
who are watching
what is going on around the world,
making sure our country is safe.
While their methods
may be covert,
the men and women who work
at the Pentagon every day
are dedicated
to the building's core mission:
to defend and protect
the United States
from those
who would do America harm.