Intellectual Property Law

Construction Crew Severs Secret ?Black Line?

By Kim Zetter

A Verizon lineman grips the strands contained in a fiber optic cable in Massapequa Park, N.Y. on May 11, 2006. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

A construction crew working on an office building in Virginia in 2000 severed a fiber optic cable that wasn’t on anyone’s map. Apparently it was a ‘black line’ used for carrying secret intelligence data, according to sources who spoke recently with the Washington Post.

Within minutes of cutting the cable, three black SUV’s pulled up carrying men in suits who complained that their line was severed.

“The construction manager was shocked,” a worker told the Washington Post. “He had never seen a line get cut and people show up within seconds. Usually you’ve got to figure out whose line it is. To garner that kind of response that quickly was amazing.”

AT&T crews arrived the same day to fix the line, an unusually prompt response. When AT&T tried to bill the construction company $300,000, the company balked and the charges “just disappeared.”

The cut occurred in the Tysons Corner region, where the neighbors include the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center. The Central Intelligence Agency is a few miles away.

Tysons is also home to a site belonging to the Warrenton Training Center, a communications training center and support facility for the National Communications System that is suspected of handling some communication for the CIA.

Full post as published by Threat Level on June 01, 2009 (boomark / email).