Slashdot Mirror
Biden Reveals Location of Secret VP Bunker
Hugh Pickens writes "Fox News reports that 'Vice President Joe Biden, well-known for his verbal gaffes, may have finally outdone himself, divulging potentially classified information meant to save the life of a sitting vice president.' According to the report, while recently attending the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an annual event where powerful politicians and media elite get a chance to cozy up to one another, Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old US Naval Observatory, which is now the home of the vice president. Although earlier reports had placed the Vice-Presidential hide-out in a highly secure complex of buildings inside Raven Rock Mountain near Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, Fox News reports that the Naval Observatory bunker is believed to be the secure, undisclosed location former Vice President Dick Cheney remained under protection in secret after the 9/11 attacks. According to the report, Biden 'said a young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment.' According to Eleanor Clift, Newsweek magazine's Washington contributing editor 'the officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed, an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn't be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall.' In December 2002, neighbors complained of loud construction work being done at the Naval Observatory, which has been used as a residence by vice presidents since 1974. The upset neighbors were sent a letter by the observatory's superintendent, calling the work 'sensitive in nature' and 'classified' and that it was urgent it be completed on a highly accelerated schedule."
Sounds like one of those open secrets like "When did the shuttle launch?"
"Sorry, it's carrying a classified military payload and we cannot comment on it."
"I heard a loud rumble at 2pm and saw a pillar of fire rising from the Cape. Was that the shuttle?"
"We can neither confirm nor deny."
"Then I'll post it on the internet."
"ZOMG!!!! Teh tarrists know everything now! Throw this man in prison!"
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Ahh, the Dem. version of Dan Quayle.
Conservative, mod down for violating
Does anyone currently have the job of following Biden around at all times with a tape player handy, ready to play the "Whaaah whaaah whhhaaaaaaahhhhh" sound whenever it's needed? Because that sounds like it would be a sweet gig.
Even if this is accurate -- which, given the source, I kinda doubt -- so freakin' what? Looks like /. is taking a page from the Fark playbook and posting flamebait worthy articles to drum up page clicks.
Now THAT is how government transparency is done!
The old US Naval Observatory was located in Foggy Bottom, just across from where the Kennedy Center is now. If you are coming in from Virginia across the Roosevelt Bridge, you can see at one point the old dome for the 26 inch telescope, where Hall discovered the moons of Mars.
This site is now the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery for the Navy. I bet that the article is referring to a bunker at Observatory Circle.
Somehow it's a major gaffe and security lapse to let on that there's a secure bunker under the official residence of the Vice President? I think if you'd asked me if there was one before reading this story, I'd just have assumed so.
Sorry, this is making a story out of basically nothing. I think Biden's kind of a putz sometimes, but this is just kinda bullshitty.
It should read, "Biden reveals location of Vice President's House". I lived in DC for a long time, and I'm pretty sure every one there knows where the Vice President lives.
This is the worst article I've seen on slashdot in a long time. Not only is the content nonsensical, most of the submission is copied directly from the foxnews "article", but it doesn't have quotes around the copied text.
down there right now playing poker and smoking weed
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Excuse me, but it isn't a secret when EVERYONE already knows guys. If you didn't know, you must have missed the news regarding all of the construction at the house when Dick was in residence. All of the neighbors complaining about the round the clock heavy equipment use making the ground shake. That is when everyone was saying that they were probably expanding/renovating the bunker under the house.
But hey, keep the non-news coming.
Open secret is right. I live about three quarters of a mile from the Naval Observatory and the government had to pay for damage, caused by the blasting, to the foundations of nearby residences (including at least one embassy). The local community governmental organization gathered and disseminated the procedures for getting such payments. Why is this considered news and even in Slashdot?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2559617.stm Seems the BBC revealed the "secret" location long before Biden. Yet another Fox news lets make a story out of nothing event.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is this the vault where all the clones go nuts and kill everyone or the one with the virus that makes all the super mutants?
Ask the pizza delivery drivers.
No joke, I was assigned to a tactical response unit while I was in the Marine Corps. I can't discuss much of the specifics, but we would get locked up in a highly secure facility just out side of Washington in case of an "emergency". The existence of the facility at the time was considered top secret.
Unfortunately, the local staff would often order out for food, and have it delivered.
So the secret wasn't all that secret, and is even less so now, seeing as how /. is posting about it.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Seriously. Obama had the diversity thing down. That's good, however there are many voters who that sort of thing worries. They find comfort in "experience". in politics, that means an old white guy. You can argue they shouldn't care, but they do. Yes, even democrats. That's what Biden brought. He also brought connections to special interest groups, who are powerful in terms of elections. Obama himself didn't have many of those connections, since he is a young politician. Biden on the other hand is deep within Hollywood's pocket, among others.
Now I'm sure to you these aren't bonus points and I'm not saying they are for me either. Just saying that's what they brought to Obama. McCain had the experienced, old white guy thing down. That was one thing he could sell really strongly: "I know about politics and war. I've been there, and done that. You can trust me to make decisions from a position of experience." Biden was to help balance that.
Same deal with Palin on the other side. McCain brought her in for two reasons:
1) To solidify the fundy base. The fundies were none too happy with his nomination. They wanted another fundy president and deluded themselves in to thinking the nation would go with it. So there was a real risk of losing them. No, they wouldn't vote for Obama, but they might get disenfranchised and not vote. Palin cemented them in for McCain.
2) To get the diversity vote. A young, and rather attractive, female. Goes well to deal with Obama's diversity. This is doubly true since there were women's groups that were bitter about Clinton losing. Stupid, but they really did vote for McCain because he chose a female vice president.
Of course what McCain didn't count on was that she was as big a nit wit as she is, and that the press would give her so much play. Normally vice presidents are rather non-entities. They are picked for the reason I stated: To make the president look good in various ways with various groups. However the media really let Palin have it and gave her a chance to sit her foot firmly in her mouth. Gave plenty of people pause when they realized how crazy she was.
With a "dumb" electorate, you get "leaders" who have little or no training in economics, business, international relations or governance. Thus we get people who often have money or married it and smile enough in good looking cloths with cute one sentence sound bites to amuse people who get their news & "analysis" in one sentence sound bites and the electorate then ELECT those, hmm, 'political actors'. We should not be surprised at the empty heads in WDC. Rather to be expected.
Or perhaps they want us to think that. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The location and description of this bunker is in Bob Woodward's latest book, The War Within , published by Simon & Schuster on 8 September 2008.
Maybe it's just a broom closet. The secret service just tell Biden to practice "covering" in there whenever they need a break from him.
I ate that apple. Some of the best and worst times of my life. Some of the best and worst of society are contained in there.
Now, what exactly did I give away? That I was assigned to a unit? That we would be stationed at a facility? That's hardly telling anything of merit.
The facility had been (when I was in) top secret. While I was in the Corps, I was aware of civilian delivers to the facility. Since I have left active duty, I have learned that the facility I would have been working at has been declassified.
zOMG, string me up like a traitor for leaking vague references to a facility that is no longer top secret and has had it's location plastered on the front page of /.
I tell ya what, go down to your local recruiter and join up. You appear to hold Marines in quite high regard, so why not be all you can be? I can assure you, surviving even just a 4 year tour will be far more rewarding to your life than any amount of keyboard jockeying.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama.
I think you may want to look into look into the percentage of African Americans that vote Democrat regardless of race.
You mean John Sidney McCain?
That is so far from being newsworthy, it's almost funny.
It's pretty much a given that any facility that a world leader will spend a lot of time in, will have a safe room (bunker, if you will). I'd be fairly confident that the Whitehouse has one. The Pentagon is one. :) Camp David has a back entrance to Site-R/Raven Rock Mountain Complex. There's a ring of underground facilities in a 300 mile radius of DC (except for under the water, I assume) that may or may not be connected by a series of tunnels. It's not hard to find information on quite a few of them.
They aren't new. But, they're likely new to people who are surprised by the possibility of a safe room under the VP's residence.
And no, it's not a evil government conspiracy. It's good security. With a whole variety of safe locations to put the people you're suppose to protect, an aggressive attempt by a foreign power would be dramatically spread out to take every possible bunker location. Even with inside information, unless it's someone in the immediate proximity of the President, it would be very difficult for an aggressor to find him.
For example, say I was a secret service agent assigned to the POTUS. I know that there is an aggressive assault on known locations. I also know that someone inside is providing location details to the aggressor. I call in that he is now being transferred by limo to a site Northwest of DC. We send a driver in the limo by himself (with escort following) and then we take a rather plain looking suburban Southwest to another site. Ok, so the President is missing, but he's safe.
Would the aggressor know until the limo stops? Possibly. So instead of one or two known sites, it's almost anywhere in America. Once they can get on a VC-25, E-4B, C-32, or C-40 it becomes anywhere in the world. As far as that goes, he could end up on any sufficiently supplied aircraft (armor, flight range, etc). If they stay up long enough, it'd be a matter of maybe following refueling planes, unless they stop at random large airports for refueling. It may be a foreign government nervous if Air Force One lands at an arbitrary international airport with two fighters circling. :) It would be virtually impossible for a foreign aggressor to monitor every airport capable of taking large aircraft.
The large aircraft requirement gets interesting. In looking for the requirements of those planes, it appears 6k feet can get one down and back up safely. In that thread, someone mentions a C-5 landing a MKC (7k foot runway), and another person mentions a 747 landing at QRA. If it's not loaded down with baggage and passengers, and fuel is kept reasonable, they can get up and down on pretty short runways. It may not be quite as comfortable for the passenger, but I'm sure POTUS will understand in an emergency condition. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
You're ignoring the primary contests (mentioned above) between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both democrats. Given a choice between two (more or less) identical Democrats, black voters overwhelmingly chose the black candidate. Women voters sometimes preferred the woman candidate, but not consistently and not by the margins seen with race-based voting.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Given a choice between two (more or less) identical Democrats
Ah yes. And thus does our progress towards completely losing our ability to distinguish continue apace.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yes, she did in fact say it.
Stealing link from AC above:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nokTjEdaUGg
No, she didn't. The GP falsely stated that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from Wasilla. Palin never said this. In your link, she never said that. She's never said that she could Russia from her house. She did say that you can see Russia from parts of Alaska, and it turns out that is true.
However, in your link, Palin did say that Alaska sits between Russia and Canada. Now, I don't know how well you know your geography, but if you wander over a globe, map or even launch Google Earth, you will see that Alaska really does sit between Canada and Russia.
It's sad when someone says something that is 100% true (and not classified), and gets ridiculed for it by the ignorant.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I'll pick a few here:
Teh GAYS are coming to steal yer marriages!!!!11
Never heard this from a Republican
You are a liar. Bush's "re-election" (his first actual election) was won primarily because they snuck so many anti-equality laws on the ballots. The bigoted wingnuts came out of the woodwork and voted for Bush while they were there.
We're the party of fiscal responsibility!
I would have agreed with this last year. But since the current party has tripled the deficit, it turns out that it's true!
Yes, I am absolutely certain that Obama, in 100 days, managed to triple the deficit, compared to 8 years of Bush spending like a drunken frat boy.
I totally believe that, because, apparently, I am an idiot.
They're not prisoners of war, so the Geneva Convention doesn't apply!
Were any of these guys wearing a uniform? No? then the Geneva Convention does not apply. Why is this so hard to understand?
Because I have a soul, and the idea of shoving flashlights up little kid's asses in front of the kid's mother is abhorrent to me.
Oh, and here's a POW being waterboarded:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/
Iraq had something, anything to do with 9/11!
I have never heard a Republican say this, yet it keeps getting repeated over and over as if it's true. And what do you know, many of the exceedingly ignorant and borderline retarded believe it.
Liar.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3119676.stm
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/21/bush-on-911/
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/bush-team-peddles-911-iraq-link-torture
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/lieberman-peddles-the-old_b_77198.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10164478
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0511/S00247.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0321-02.htm
Not only that, it turns out we were torturing people to death and shoving flashlights up children's bums specifically to try and GET a fake link between Iraq and 9/11. Whoops!
Yeah, I posted a mea culpa and you are right.
It's ridiculed, because what she said didn't make much sense. She was asked if she had foreign policy experience. Being in close proximity to a foreign country does not count. Maybe the reason Fey's statement is linked so much to the actual statement is because it was a good summation.
It doesn't particularly matter. Politicians say dumb things.
Your signature is oddly appropriate in this case.
However, I don't think Obama and Hillary were at all "more or less identical". Except to people who weren't interested in voting for either of them in the first place.
Democrats were fairly polarized over Hillary vs. Obama, and for once it wasn't because the candidates were overwhelmingly the same--it was because they were overwhelmingly different.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Agents that tortured
Don't hear too many protests about that one. And of course, there's the famous outing of Air America, and its successor in Latin America. You have Dianne Feinstein confirming covert American operations in Pakistan, and so on.
Pretty much, Democrats don't really care about the secrecy of anything in the CIA, unless it suits them. 99% of the outrage over Valerie Plame's outing is obviously and utterly false.
This is my sig.
> his most trusted aides
Can't believe this has gone overlooked so far. Dick Cheney has got aides!
He steadfastly supports draconian copyright measures and the like. Now maybe he's just doing it because he's a dumbass, I suppose there's that. However I think it is more likely that the man owes big media in some way, and thus tows their party line.
That is why people accuse him of being owned by Hollywood. It isn't because of anything secret or shady, it is because of voting record. He routinely pushes for laws with regards to copyright that many would call unconstitutional, and nearly all would call unfair to the consumer.
So you tell me, what's your theory as to why he votes this way?
You appear to hold Marines in quite high regard, so why not be all you can be?
Heh.. that's the Army. Don't think any Marine would ever make that mistake. Although you could say "Accelerate your life," since Marines are just the hiking division of the Navy. :P
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
My subtle attempt at military humor was not lost ;)
As for being a department of the Navy, that is correct.
We are the Mens department.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I wonder if I'm the only who instantly disregards what someone is saying when they use Obama's middle name every time he is referenced.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Eh, true, but it's the same as noting that the sky is blue when asking what the weather outside is like: it's completely irrelevant. Sure you can see Russia from parts of Alaska. So what does that have to do with foreign policy experience? And I'm sure Alaska geographically sits between Canada and Russia. But again, where does foreign policy come into play?
She could have, when mentioning Canada, bring up examples of resource disputes and such with the Canadian government. But no, it seems she decided to imply that Alaska's geographical location has some relevance to foreign policy, which is in and of itself, ridiculous.
But the specifics of her statments doesn't really matter overall. That she doesn't realize that she's made a nonsensical remark by failing to further clarify or otherwise specify her comments is even more telling than the fact that she made the comment.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
These are private security contractors. Mercenaries. They were paid a fee; they were not protected as an undercover agent is and they certainly did not have Non-Official Cover status. And there's no evidence that a "Democrat" blew their covers. In fact, it sounds like the CIA leaked their names themselves.
She's (rightly) ridiculed for it because it wasn't a geography quiz, it was her response to inquiries about her foreign policy experience. Only someone trying to put some sort of positive spin on Sarah Palin would defend her saying this. It was a laughably dumb response, "100% true" or not.
Erecting the wall of separation between church and state is absolutely essential in a free society. - Thomas Jefferson