Wednesday, December 01, 2004

There's something going on here.

Does anyone know what it is?

What are these boys up to? More cover-ups?

Shortly after dawn on a recent morning, two
dump trucks and a water tanker pulled up to a
new, unmarked complex of buildings at East
Potomac Park, the grassy peninsula near the
Jefferson Memorial. The drivers exited their
cabs, knocked at a gatehouse with blacked-out
windows and waited for a security guard to emerge
from behind a locked door.

A few minutes later, a panel of 10-foot-high
security fence slid open, and the trucks
disappeared inside, leaving the joggers and
cyclists along the waterfront none the wiser
about their mission.

What goes on beyond the fence is a mystery. The
multi-agency review normally required to erect
anything on federal parkland did not apply to the
beige, metal buildings. The Navy, which operates
the site at Ohio and Buckeye drives SW, calls the
work a "utility assessment and upgrade" and
volunteers nothing more.

"As a matter of policy, we can't go into the
particulars," said a Navy spokesman, Lt. Cmdr.
Joseph A. Surette.


All of it.