Confidential from Cryptome – White House Missile Battery

BERND PULCH, CONFIDENTIAL, THE WHITE HOUSE 1 Minute
Shepherd Johnson sends:I found the White House missile battery. It’s on top of the New Executive Office building.

“A rare glimpse of the missile battery on the roof of the “New Executive Office Building” [Eisenhower Executive Office Building], which is next to the White House, being checked by a soldier after a small airplane apparently strayed into restricted White House airspace in Washington, DC, USA 22 November 2010 – AP.” [AP has removed its photo of the battery from its archive, and apparently tracking down all postings of it to successfully demand removal.]

[Image]

[Image]

Missile battery on top of a U.S. government building is secured after the all clear is given following a White House lockdown in Washington, November 22, 2010. Reuters

[Image]
August 28, 2010 Google Earth

[Image]
http://www.emforum.org/vforum/lc051116.htmLet’s hypothesize that there is a surface-to-air missile battery (shown as a light blue symbol in the upper left) and that this battery is a method of protecting the annotated facilities. So knowledge of it might be “useful” to an adversary and the annotated image passes the “usefulness” test. On to the “uniqueness” part of the test.

[Image]
Source

It turns out, however, that the battery is not hypothetical and our geospatial data are not the only source of this information. In fact, as illustrated by the newspaper clippings, the information is quite well known and is readily observable. (If you’re ever walking north on 17th Street in front of the Old Executive Office Building, look up.) So the annotated image fails the “uniqueness” test and safeguards are not justified.

[Image]

 
Published