By Linda Chant, October 14, 2019 — After American Airlines crashed Flight 77 into the Pentagon, three wings were destroyed and 55 military personnel and 70 civilians were killed within the building. After that happened, what I was responsible for doing when I worked at Fort Monmouth was to coordinate and award a contract that specifically ran the communications equipment through the Pentagon and the wing that was destroyed.
When I say communications, it’s telephone lines, VTC equipment (video teleconferencing) lines and audio-visual equipment. One of the things I was responsible for doing was making sure that the first thing awarded was the president’s telephone’s lines with one of them being the red line or the line that went from Moscow to Washington. I was to ensure audio and phone lines were installed properly within the Pentagon and that had to be done in a short time frame, as they were building that in certain junctures and had to run the lines. At the time, the president used a STU-III secure telephone line, and I had to ensure that this line was still connected under a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility). But Fort Monmouth was instrumental with a bunch of things they did post 9/11. The firemen at the site of the WTC [World Trade Center] used special systems developed by Ft. Monmouth to be used within the wreckage that allowed vibrations to be picked up to see if there were any survivors. While that went on, I went to the Pentagon as it was rebuilt and had to wear a hard hat. Me and my boss went down there to check out the progress.