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Cold War Intel


During the Cold War, Soviet leaders concluded the small, unassuming building (above) in the middle of the Pentagon courtyard was the entrance to an underground bunker, so they aimed nuclear weapons at it. Little did they know the myste- rious building was simply the Pentagon’s hot dog stand.


Jan. 15, 1943. Its original planned 4 million square feet of offi ce space was now 6.24 million, and the estimated cost of $35 million had ballooned to roughly $83 mil- lion — its fi rst, and by no means last, cost overrun. But those dol- lars bought a building that was a virtual fortress, and its rugged construction would serve its oc- cupants well in ways no one could have predicted.


A phoenix rises Fifty years later, the Pentagon was showing its age. Water and sewer pipes were bursting on a regular basis, the ceilings were


full of asbestos, and the building was plagued with regular power outages. After some false starts, renovation began in earnest in late 1998 with the gutting of Wedge One. Crews began installing blast-resistant windows and reinforcing the walls with steel, along with other safety upgrades. All furniture and equipment was replaced, and when the fi rst work- ers began moving back into the Navy Command Center in August 2001, it looked like a brand-new building. At 9:37 a.m. Sept. 11, 2001, 60 years


to the day after construction began, American Airlines Flight 77, a 757 commandeered by fi ve al-Qaida ter- rorists, slammed into the recently renovated wedge at the fi rst- fl oor level, sending a fi reball and burning debris tunneling some 310 feet through the E, D, and C rings. The blast killed all 64 airline passengers, including the hijackers, and 125 people in the building. The fi rst fi refi ght- ers, who showed up within two minutes, were aghast to see a gaping hole in the build- ing as fi res raged all around. Remarkably, the upper fl oors held without support until 10:10 a.m., allowing employees on the fourth and fi fth fl oors to escape. As horrifi c as the attack


The National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial remembers victims of the attack on the site with benches over pools of water.


60 MILITARY OFFICER SEPTEMBER 2016


had been, the plane’s impact point on the newly renovated, partially occupied Wedge One prevented many more casual- ties. The blaze was mostly under control by the next day, although it took several days to extinguish persistent, small- er fi res. The plan to rebuild the Pentagon after the attack, named the Phoenix Project, was estimated to take three years. However, the construc- tion workers were determined to fi nish it in a year, and they beat their own goal by nearly


PHOTOS: LEFT, GLYNNIS JONES/SHUTTERSTOCK; TOP, STEVEN DONALD SMITH


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