(National Security Certified cruiser in the rolling hills of Virginia. Photo Socotra.)
So, I wandered out of the front door of Refuge Farm yesterday morning. The light was coming up over the pastures, and the weather had changed. Someone had knocked the sky clear of clouds and the last brilliant stars were fading as the world came alive and awake again.
I needed the coffee, but that is par for this course, anyway.
I sipped some of the last of the pot in a travel cup as the Bluesmobile hurtled down Rt 29 mostly on its own direction toward the rendezvous at our office at Charlottesville.
Thirty miles down the fine four-lane road, I saw the bulk of the first building I had helped throw up against the Virginia sky. You have to know what you are looking for, since there is no advertising or logo on the building for all the obvious reasons. It had been necessary to replace the old facility in the former Federal Court House downtown by the University due to overcrowding by a burgeoning government. While it was ‘in the program’ when I had the chance to run it, I always felt a certain proprietary interest in the vast expanse of glass and brick.
The bulk of the Ground Intelligence Center concealed the other, newer building that the Agency had dropped out of the sky. My pal Patrick had brought me on task to Support the Base Reallocation and Closure round of 2005 as a private contractor in the weird time just after I retired from formal government service.
We were the Agency reps to the big reorganization that Uncle Don Rumsfeld intended to use as part of his reinvention of the Defense business. In the opening remarks of the Intelligence Panel, we heard the plea of a sister agency for a new campus to replace the odd assortment of ramshackle facilities that it currently occupied.
Patrick looked over at me across the big conference table surrounded by representatives from the other parties in the fractious Intelligence Community.
My eyes widened as I saw the play- if you have attended enough of these endless Government meetings, you can tell when something unusual (and productive) is about to happen. It was a revelation: Patrick intended to support the requirement of our sister agency on the proviso that they supported one for ours- you know, a continuity of government site. Those were all the rage in the post-9/11 world, even if people seem to have forgotten how nice it is to have a place to go work if people have blown up your usual office.
I was thinking about that as I wheeled the police cruiser around the corner to Lewis & Clark Drive, and up to the office complex that my company shares with the other usual suspects in the defense contracting business.
I was donating a Sunday to the delivery of a complex process. The Government requirement was a secret. I mean, it is not one of those things that is a big secret- like the coming war with Iran- if you thought a bit about what is going on, but the Government said it was a secret, and if you make your living off this convoluted process, you take them seriously and at their word.
That is why Kristy was there in her second trimester to unlock her safe and hand over the double-wrapped packages so I could get them from central Virginia to the placid flat lands at Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia, and get a toe-hold in a new mission area.
That meant a moderate road trip, and contrary to what the meteorologists had predicted, a dynamite sky and cool but not chill temperatures. It would have been nice to just stay at the farm, but there was a mission to accomplish.
I stopped at the grocery store and gas station before the transfer, so I would not have to leave the material unattended in the car. I was counting on not having a break-down- that would be problematic in the extreme.
Kristy was glad to get the packages off her plate and into the trunk of the Bluesmobile. The whole process gets complicated when the Government is soliciting a response to a secret requirement. They do all their business on a super-secure communications system whose terminals all end in Government facilities. That adds to the excitement in trying to even read what they are asking for, much less the complications of writing a response on computers certified to process classified information in a facility accredited to store the stuff.
Like the trunk of the Bluesmobile. I produced my courier badge from the sheaf of credentials I wear on the lanyard around my neck and countersigned Kristy’s custody log, and then I was responsible for the small part of the National Security that would fit in the trunk of the police car. I gave her a wave and then floored it out of the parking lot, and back onto 29 for the hundred-mile race to the capital.
100-miles away and upwind from the Capital is the magic number for COOP sites, by the way, and that is why all this stuff is down in the gentle rolling hills of north central Virginia.
I wished I could get rid of the stuff immediately, but no one was working at the Government, or at least the contracting end of it, and so I had to stop at the office and secure the boxes in my safe. The chances of anyone breaking into the car or my apartment were so slim as to be ludicrous, but like I said, we take the government seriously, and you never know when you will be summoned for a polygraph inquisition, and you may as well just follow the regulations.
The National Industrial Security Policy was very much on my mind as I guided the big blue car down into the garage under the office and slid it into the first vacant spot. I used the key fob to access the after-hours pad on the elevator, swiped by company badge on the card reader at the front door, and used the special key to enter the room we have had accredited for storage of classified material. I filled out the logs, reversed the magnetic sign from “Closed” to “Open,” and spun the X-09 lock on the level-5 approved safe.
(X-09 high security lock of the type affixed to my Level 5 GSA-approved security safe.)
It is handy. We can’t keep SCI-level material in it, of course, but it was fine for plain garden-variety Secret like the proposal. The safe is certified, and could also be used for storage of Federal Evidence, weapons & ammunition, narcotics, access control keys and documents like these. I saw no weapons or ammunition, and someone must have cleaned out the cool other stuff.
I chunked the boxes into the top and middle drawers and reversed the process, spinning the lock closed and erasing the combination, reversing the magnet to “closed,” and retraced my steps to the elevator and the basement.
Clear of any national security encumbering, I drove home, not caring now whether or not I had the car in constant line-of-site. When I got upstairs, I pulled out my copy of Neil Gaiman’s surreal novel ‘American Gods’ and went out on the balcony to read and doze in the sun.
Like Gaiman’s other stuff, this is filled with the curious intersecting with the miraculous. I was opening the book to the place I had marked the last time I had a minute to do almost nothing, and realized that I was not at all sure what was the more surreal: the book, or life?
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com