By Neal Pierce
For Release Sunday, May 29, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense is suggesting it’s too dangerous,
in this terror-threatened time, to leave thousands of its civilian workers in
commercial office buildings right across the Potomac from the Nation’s Capital.
But if that’s true, shouldn’t the Pentagon, also right across the
river, also be relocated itself to some far-off spot? Indeed, hasn’t the
Pentagon been a terrorist target already? And if we want to be ultra-safe, why
not reconstruct the White House in some mountainous underground bunker?
Buried in the new Base Realignment and Closure Plan (BRAC), released by the
Defense Department May 13, are repeated references to a secretly-formulated policy
by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to disperse facilities away from the nation’s
capital. Also at play: new Pentagon requirements that buildings with DOD offices
anywhere be set at least 82 feet back from traffic, to protect against truck bombs.
So Rumsfeld’s department wants to shift tens of thousands of defense
jobs away from accessible, Metro-rail-served centers in the northern Virginia
suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria, close to the Pentagon. And in large measure
(18,000 jobs alone) to Fort Belvoir, in an already traffic-clogged and transit-inaccessible
area 18 miles southwest of Washington.
Are these “security trumps all” policies part of some anti-city,
pro-dispersal plan for all of American society? Some people suspect so, but there’s
no clear evidence; the nationwide base closures on the BRAC list, for example,
hit Republican as well as Democratic areas.
Still, if one wanted to undercut urban America and its dense cities and inner
suburbs, then federally-dictated dispersal and requirements for bunkered buildings
with big setbacks would be a nifty strategy. Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden
could, as some suggest, be recognized as the most influential urban architects
of the 21st century.
There are two massive problems with letting such a scenario play out.
The first is the tricky nature of true “security.” Robert Peck,
now president of the Washington Board of Trade, and a former commissioner of the
federal government’s Public Building Service, notes that “the Pentagon
on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was as well defended against a truck bomb as
anyone can imagine. So our enemy simply flew their bomb in over the jersey barriers.”
Peck quotes a U.S. ambassador to a Middle East country at a security conference
in 2000 saying the U.S. had built an embassy with every security guideline imaginable:
“We’re behind a wall, on the outskirts of town, and 20 minutes from
all government offices. It looks like the walled Soviet embassies we used to make
fun of. But now we’re 20 minutes from the country’s downtown government
offices, which means I have to drive and fear I’ll be ambushed and kidnapped
along the way.”
As for transferring so many of today’s Arlington and Alexandria defense
workers to Ft. Belvoir, Peck notes: “It’s a medieval view-- put everyone
behind the moat, and they’ll be safe.” Christopher Miller, president
of the Piedmont Environmental Council, is even more blunt: “What’s
the gain? Fort Belvoir will become a target in and of itself.”
And, adds Miller: “If you can’t protect your capital, what place is
safe?”
The second massive flaw in the Pentagon’s urban dispersement push is
its destructive impact on thoughtful growth practices -- how the Washington region,
for example, has been trying to slow sprawl and focus jobs and housing near public
transit inside the Capital Beltway.
Jay Fisette, chairman of the Arlington County Board, spoke for many when he
declared: “This single decision by an isolated federal agency contradicts
all the vision and planning and progress of the region over the past decade ...
in terms of ‘smart growth.’”
Oftentimes the Pentagon couches its location decisions on the basis of costs;
the nationwide set of BRAC proposals now pending are claimed, for example, to
save nearly $49 billion over 20 years.
But there are other critical impacts to consider, notes Peck -- impact on growth
patterns, transportation, public transit, our regions’ heavy reliance on
cars. “The cost to society has to be considered -- not just the cost to
the Pentagon budget,” he insists.
The even deeper issue is that a single federal agency, with literally zero
public debate, has decided to use its secretly-reached security decisions and
its claimed budget savings to play havoc with growth and transit plans carefully
conceived, discussed and moved toward reality by local governments, businesses
and civic groups.
The precedent, especially if other federal departments start to emulate it,
is an ominous one -- not just for the Washington region, but communities across
the United States. The hearings before the BRAC commission, which makes its recommendations
to President Bush on Sept. 8, may be crucial.
Will the concrete heel of federally-decreed security measures start to devastate
urban merica? Without a strong, nationwide chorus of protect, it could happen.
© 2005 Washington Post Writers Group
