Index

Group Identifies Mystery AT&T Building

The Washington Post Tuesday, July 18, 2000; Page B03

The receptionist across the street from a facility in Finksburg thinks it's an underground bunker. A Jiffy Mart clerk thinks it's a tunnel to the White House. And the AT&T employees who work at the facility itself never say a thing. The four-story building buried beneath a microwave tower has generated a lot of suspicion in the Carroll County town about 30 miles from Baltimore. But there's a reason for the secrecy: Workers help keep spies from listening in on top-secret phone calls, an intelligence watchdog group says. The windowless office is the nerve center of a supersecret operation run by the National Security Agency that keeps track of thousands of computer keys that unlock high-tech telephones used by military and government leaders, according to the Federation of American Scientists.