Rebuilding the Pentagon DATA NETWORKS: Coming Through Loud and Clear

May 2002

The Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon killed nearly 200 military personnel and civilians and severely damaged parts of the building’s communications network. Shortly after the attack, employees of The MITRE Corporation who worked in The Pentagon began the critical task of helping to assess the damage and stabilize the building’s communications capacity. More than six months later, they are still there, lending their expertise to a long-term effort aimed at protecting crucial functions from future attacks.

When American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, it created an explosion that entered one of the building’s wedge-shaped sections and spread out at a 45-degree angle damaging three major corridors and a second section. Though no one could have known it would make a difference so soon, work already done under the Pentagon Renovation Program—which MITRE has supported for the past nine years—helped prevent an even greater disaster. The reason: the first section already had blast-resistant windows and structural steel reinforcements, and the second section was largely empty because it was the next area on the renovation list. But there is still much more to do—and MITRE’s expertise remains in demand.

The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense and the nerve center for command and control, houses approximately 23,000 military and civilian employees and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel dedicated to protecting our national interests.

A backup plan

Beyond the immediate response, MITRE has also become involved in a longer term project: enhancing the communications network to ensure continuity of the Pentagon’s communications if something similar were to happen ever again. MITRE employees on five different working groups continue to work with engineers, contractors, and others involved with implementing changes to the Pentagon’s IT architecture that will increase mobility of data and enhance security and survivability of key command systems.

"We are actively involved in these problems," said Ron Cossa, an information systems engineer with the Army Enterprise Department and a member of MITRE’s Information Management and Telecommunications (IM&T) team at the Pentagon.

MITRE has also produced a plan to provide alternate-site capability.

"An alternate site must be created where all of the systems have a backup facility in case of another attack," said Susmit Patel, also in the Army Enterprise Department and a member of the IM&T team. "Anything is possible now after 9/11."

In addition, MITRE is working on other pressing issues, including enhancing the security of communications networks and redesigning them to make them easier to implement and reconstruct if needed.

"How do you predict what the impact is going to be? You can’t," said Cossa. "But you can make a network more modular, more readily backed up and available, [have] alternate communications and data sources available. That’s all being done."

After MITRE team members contacted family members and colleagues to tell them they were safe, the next priority was assessing the damage. Overall, the Information Technology (IT) backbone of the Pentagon withstood the attack with minimal interruption of service, but there was still significant damage.

In the hours after the attack, Charlie Richardson, who leads the MITRE team at the Pentagon, stayed in touch with MITRE managers and IT experts to assist in restoring communications. Using their expertise in telecommunication networking and knowledge of the Pentagon IT backbone, team members began working with contractors and government employees to get affected servers and data files back online and solve the other urgent problems.

Keith Reck, a MITRE project leader, was in his Pentagon office during the attack. "We had been watching the news on the attacks on the towers. I said, ‘this is the perfect time to hit the Pentagon’ seconds before the plane hit. Several of us were knocked over, but no one in DCSOPS (Deputy Chief of Staff Operations) sustained any serious injuries."

Within minutes, Reck and the DCSOPS staff made it outside to the central courtyard, where burning pieces of the wrecked plane had fallen. Dozens of seriously injured people poured out of the impact area; some whose clothes were burned completely off. Security forced the crowd to leave the courtyard for the South parking lot. Reck worked his way to the impact site and assisted some medics giving first aid to the injured.

"There was an Army general giving oxygen to a wounded woman," Reck said. "The evacuees started forming up by service, and leaders canvassed them for medical training experience, and dispatched first aid help where it was most needed."

Reck assisted the DCSOPS staff over the next several days to recover as many servers as possible and to reconstitute the office space, until he was called to facilitate the Data and Servers Disaster Recovery Working Group. The Pentagon Renovation Program’s rapid work allowed the DCSOPS workers to return to their pre-9/11 spaces in February.

MITRE’s involvement in the reconstitution effort has won recognition from the Department of Defense. On March 1, MITRE honored its Pentagon team by presenting each employee with a plaque featuring a letter signed by Army Secretary Thomas E. White and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki that thanked the corporation for its efforts. The plaque was provided to the Army Enterprise Department as a token of appreciation for all those who provided post-9/11 support. Additionally, MITRE and The Washington Center for Command, Control and Communications recognized each employee’s efforts with the presentation of individual plaques.

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