Security fears help

August 13, 2005 1:40 am

By MICHAEL ZITZ

Last week, President Bush introduced 1st District Rep. Jo Ann Davis to a National Scout Jamboree crowd of 60,000, and thanked her for helping to keep the event at Fort. A.P. Hill. She co-sponsored a bill to blunt a court challenge to the legality of the government hosting the quasi-religious organization.

Davis, a Republican whose district extends from Stafford County to the Hampton Roads area, hopes that before too long she'll be in the position of returning the favor--thanking the president for help in bringing a national intelligence agency to the same Caroline County Army installation.

She's been lobbying the White House recently in favor of locating the fledgling office of the National Intelligence Director, mandated by the Sept. 11 Commission, in the Fredericksburg area.

And Davis, who lives in Gloucester, has been working for two years to get Homeland Security, the department created in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, moved to Fort A.P. Hill.

W. Rodger Provo, a commercial real estate developer and broker, said this week that some real estate speculation going on in Caroline and Spotsylvania counties has to do with the expectation that such a move is likely.

Provo, a Fredericksburg resident, said housing developments near New Post in Spotsylvania County are at least partly inspired by the expectation that as many as 15,000 jobs could come to nearby Fort A.P. Hill.

If that were to happen, Provo said, "It would be like another Dahlgren [Navy Base]" was plopped down in the Fredericksburg area. He suspects that many of the jobs would be filled by federal workers and contractors who live here and commute north.

Prospects of the intelligence and security agencies relocating here became more promising when Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the House Select Committee on Homeland Security recently that he wants to move out of D.C. The agency is temporarily based at the Nebraska Avenue Complex in Northwest Washington, once a Navy installation. DHS has about 10,000 D.C.-area employees. Chertoff wants one campus-type setting away from the capital. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration already have such campuses at Quantico Marine Base.

Concerns that a terrorist group might detonate a nuclear device in Washington could push Homeland Security and NID a safe distance from the capital so the agencies could continue to operate in the event of such a disaster.

John D. Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, has an office near the White House and his embryonic staff uses space at CIA headquarters in Langley. According to The Washington Post, there are plans to house NID temporarily at Bolling Air Force Base in D.C.

"I think there's a strong argument that it ought not to be located in downtown Washington because of the desire to have some distance, you know, between ourselves and some other buildings," DHS head Chertoff also told the house select committee.

Mark Rozell, head of the master's of public policy program at George Mason University in Fairfax, said Chertoff may have been being genteel in referring to a scenario that has the intelligence community worried.

"It doesn't take much to read between the lines that fear of fallout from a horrific attack is a part of his calculation," Rozell said. "Understandably, many of us near D.C. find such talk chilling, but he probably has access to intelligence that suggests this should be a real concern."

Gene Bailey of the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance called it: "The Pearl Harbor theory. At Pearl Harbor, we had all our vessels and planes parked in one place. If we keep everything right on top of a Metro stop, we may not have learned anything from Pearl Harbor."

If there is a nuclear detonation in the nation's capital, "it's gonna do an awful lot of damage at one time," Bailey said. And, he said, the Fredericksburg area has the advantage of being far enough away from Washington to be safe, but not so far away as to be unworkable.

A safe distance, he said, is greater than the 10 to 20 miles some competing Northern Virginia communities would provide.

Bailey said the 35 to 65 miles from Washington to the Fredericksburg area, combined with access to VRE, Amtrak and Interstate 95, make the region a viable option for intelligence agencies.

And he said the agencies may want large tracts of land to provide buffers for greater security--and that also works in the Fredericksburg area's favor.

"It makes no sense to lump these buildings together," agreed Chris Connelly, an aide to Rep. Davis. "These agencies need to look outside the Beltway and there's no better region to look at than the Fredericksburg region.

The area would seem to be a safe distance from Washington in the event of a terrorist attack; and yet close enough for intelligence officials to have regular face-to-face meetings.

"It's an ideal location, within driving distance of Washington, yet removed from the immediate area," Connelly said.

He said Davis has stressed the "wealth of educated workers in the area" to the Bush administration.

"It's very feasible," said Connelly, that either agency--or both--could end up in the Fredericksburg area."

Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and is a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Select Committee on Intelligence. He wields considerable influence in Washington.

John Ullyot, an aide to Warner, said that if Northern Virginia locations appear on a list of those being looked at by NID or DHS, "the senator stands ready to work with those communities."

Eleventh District Rep. Tom Davis, a Republican with formidable clout, is a member of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. His Northern Virginia district is close to D.C.--some might argue too close--but it seems likely that he'll support efforts to plant the DHS and NID plums there. Davis represents Fairfax and Fort Belvoir, which is already slated to get the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency--now based in Bethesda, Md., with offices in D.C. and Northern Virginia--at the end of the decade. That move was recommended by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the independent Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission.

Rep. Eric Cantor, the 7th District Republican whose district includes parts of Spotsylvania and Caroline counties, said a Homeland Security move to the Old Dominion would be "great news for Virginia." Cantor, who is chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, said he's confident the administration will choose "the best location for the DHS to help protect the safety of all Americans."

Political power is likely to play more of a role than strategic planning in any agency site selection, GMU's Rozell said.

"These kinds of decisions inevitably are based more on politics than rational planning," said Rozell. "If [West Virginia] Sen. [Robert] Byrd could have his way, every department and agency of the federal government would end up in West Virginia. That's how the game is played of course, and certainly, Sen. Warner is no different."