Don't call it a Y2K war room or bunker....Or, If it walks like a duck...

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'Don't call it a Y2K war room or bunker' So it's not a bunker. Or a war room. But 'it' -- the White House's Information Coordination Center -- is open and ready for any Y2K shenanigans. By Max Smetannikov, Inter@ctive Week

UPDATED December 10, 1999 6:20 PM PT

"Don't call it a war room or a bunker," a White House source pleaded. "We are on the top floor of an office building, for Christ's sake."

Call it what you will, the Information Coordination Center (ICC) set up by the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion at 1800 G Street, three blocks from the White House, is ready.

Representatives of the Internet, telecommunications, airline, electric power, financial service, oil and gas, pharmaceutical and retail industries, as well as military and security operatives, will all be at the facility while the rest of us are celebrating the dawn of the millennium.

Starting Dec. 27 and ending Jan. 5, 2000, the group of about 200 people occupying the eighth floor of the building will have access to more information on U.S. vital industries and government operations than any single peacetime body.

Information will also be coming in from foreign companies and governments participating in the effort to give colleagues in the U.S. early warning of any year-2000 (Y2K) problems headed their way. If your bankcard doesn't work on Dec. 31, the people at 1800 G Street will likely already know it. They will even be watching each other. The room will not have any cubicles so that individuals can spot any signs of disturbance in the group.

The effort won't happen in a vacuum. Lucky chaps from the media will be waiting for the news up on the 10th floor. John Koskinen, chair of the President's Council, was originally supposed to come out and brief reporters every four hours.

"That was changed a couple of weeks ago," one ICC official said. "We didn't want Koskinen to get out in front of the national media every four hours to say that nothing is happening."

The hope that nothing will happen is the leitmotiv of all conversations with company representatives and government officials involved in the Y2K monitoring. Many Internet carriers will dial into a conference call that will last 36 to 48 hours, a part of the operation dubbed "Silent Night."

"We hope Internet service providers and vendors that participate in this will have nothing to report but a regular roll call, hence the name of the project," said Ira Richer, executive director at the Internet Operators Group, an organization of ISPs that will be represented at the ICC.

ISPs and carriers involved in the effort include AboveNet Communications, America Online, Cable & Wireless, Conxion, EarthLink Network, GTE Internetworking, Qwest Communications International, Sprint and UUnet Technologies.

Some participants in the ICC effort said the government has set up failure-proof lines of communication between agencies, industry organizations and companies that will stay up even if the traditional communications infrastructure -- telephones, faxes and e-mail -- fails. Representatives of the ICC itself, however, said they have no knowledge of such facilities.

Panic attack The biggest concern that everybody appears to have so close to D-Day is that the slightest deviation from the normal course of events might cause panic on New Year's Eve. The ICC's officers refused to discuss which disaster scenarios they are rehearsing.

Private companies that feed into the ICC from the very bottom of the food chain were more open about their Y2K preparation measures.

"We have run a couple of war games this week to test how all systems will work," said Nathan Kantor, president and chief operating officer at broadband competitive local exchange carrier Winstar Communications.

Standing in the middle of the company's brand-new Network Operations Center (NOC) in Herndon, Va., Kantor was not shy about calling things what they are. To his left was a large conference room with laptop hookups, a large TV monitor and a dozen telephones; the sign outside said "War Room."

"We have done a drill simulating a frame relay outage, a severe snow storm, a switch failure and a power outage, among others," said James Jackson, the Winstar vice president responsible for network management services, who will act as a liaison between the War Room and the NOC team if the Y2K bug bites. "As they say, you never know what you don't know."

For that crucial information, Winstar will be calling into the ICC. Information officers there will know well in advance of New Year's night what, if anything, has gone wrong in countries that have experienced the rollover hours before.

"We hope to get a running start on potential problems if we learn of something we couldn't foresee," Jackson said.



-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), December 10, 1999

Answers

Too funny. It would take a polly idiot to see something normal about this.

-- haha (haha@haha.com), December 10, 1999.

I call it a sham. The real monitoring will be going on in VA, at the not No Such Agency.

-- Squid (Itsdark@down.here), December 10, 1999.

Their communication systems no doubt have the ability to take over all the transmissions of TV and radio (all the stations have those little black FEMA boxes). With today's technology, they can create or alter vidio footage of any scenario that they would like the American people to witness...and could therefore be used as a means to put E.O.'s in motion.

-- Texas Terri (DeepintheHeart@Texas.com), December 10, 1999.

Many e-mails PGP encrypted may be sent that night...No Such Agency may be preoccupied whth matters having little to do with Y2K.

-- Z (Z@Z.Z), December 10, 1999.

Silent Night means the blackout they're going to enforce upon Y2K news; no peep of failures allowed to seep.

Yet another Transparency.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), December 10, 1999.



The program director at the station where I am a reporter/DJ said the same thing I did. The black box will only take over until we UNPLUG it!

-- Sheri (wncy2k@nccn.net), December 10, 1999.

The Internet will no doubt be a very busy place starting around 8 AM, Washington time (when Sydney rolls over to Jan. 1).

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), December 10, 1999.

Actual photo of the y2k bunker taken during a recent photo op.....



-- Sure M. Worried (SureMWorried@bout.Y2K.coming), December 10, 1999.


The above is not an actual photo from the bunker. It is, rather, a still photo from the movie John Koskinen, or "How I Learned to Love Y2k".

Just trying to avoid any rumors and such.

-- Steve (hartsman@ticon.net), December 10, 1999.


More incredible stupidity! Doesn't anyone here see the INCREDIBLE idiocy of putting a very expensive, supposedly CRITICAL information center(?)on the EIGHTH FLOOR OF AN OFFICE BUILDING THAT CAN BE SEEN/ WATCHED BY ALMOST ANYONE?

Remember, this is THE site that is supposed to coordinate ALL Y2K info from around the world!

Something STINKS here. I can only think that this site is a "strawman" site--the REAL one is in a location that we will NEVER know about!

With the FBI drawing up its list of susceptible targets that may be hit to cause extra chaos on dec. 31, it's not hard to see how one or several of the many "missing" Stinger missiles, or anything else that the Chinese have bought/stolen, could be turned around in short order.

-- profit of doom (doom@helltopay.ca), December 10, 1999.



From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

We didn't want Koskinen to get out in front of the national media every four hours to say that nothing is happening.

He'll be in the real bunker.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), December 11, 1999.


I agree with some of the other posters. The main purpose of this center will be to influence the press in thier reporting of problems. The really important decisions will be made somewhere else.

-- Danny (dcox@ix.netcom.com), December 11, 1999.

An "Information Coordination Center" that will not allow the press in (a few "lucky chaps" will be on the 10th floor... not in the ICC)... now wouldn't George Orwell love this one.

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), December 12, 1999.

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