Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 10, 1994 TAG: 9408100061
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHANTILLY, VA LENGTH: Medium
As officials scrambled Tuesday to explain how a $310 million intelligence building complex found its way into the federal budget, Defense Secretary William Perry said he is not certain the project will go forward.
Perry told reporters at the Pentagon that he has asked for a full investigation of the project, ``not only the circumstances surrounding the approval and initial award of contracts, but also, more currently, the state of the project and the extent to which it should be continued.''
It may be too late to put the brakes on the headquarters for the National Reconnaissance Office. The complex, five miles south of Dulles International Airport, looks nearly complete from the outside. Three of its four mid-rise buildings are finished; the fourth awaits its skin of glass.
With about 1 million square feet of floor space, the complex is about one-fifth the size of the Pentagon.
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee disclosed the existence of the project in a news conference Monday. They said the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department, beginning in the late 1980s, had failed to fully disclose the total cost, location and purpose of the complex.
President Clinton learned about the project only last week through the chairman of the intelligence committee, Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., who learned of it through a committee audit.
White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers said the administration's goal is to complete the project as ``cost effectively as possible.''
The new headquarters was intended to consolidate various intelligence offices that collect and analyze high-resolution pictures of intelligence targets from the sky and eavesdrop on electronic communications. Until 1992, the agency's very existence was classified.
According to DeConcini, the new building's price tag is nearly double what his committee had been led to believe. He said committee members knew a building was being constructed, but budget estimates and project details were given to the committee piecemeal and buried in larger intelligence accounts.
It seems the committee members had difficulty communicating among themselves on this project. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, a committee member and chairman of a task force that oversees federal construction projects, said, ``I knew nothing at all about it.''
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the ranking Republican on the committee, said, ``Yes, we very definitely knew about it. I'm proud to say that this is in my state.'' Still, Warner said after touring the site Monday, ``I was absolutely astonished at the magnitude and proportions of this structure.''
The project was disguised as a private development by defense contractor Rockwell International. Fairfax County records show Rockwell as the owner - and county building inspector Brian Smith said the complex will be taxed as private property.
The House and Senate Intelligence committees planned to examine the project in hearings today.
by CNB