VISIT TO CRYSTAL CITY

Surrounding the Pentagon are two complexes of offices that constitute the Jefferson Davis Corridor. Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederacy, the confederation of southern states that succeeded from the US and initiated the Civil War. Although the Confederacy and their president Jefferson Davis were defeated in the 1865, the name of the defender of slavery is alive and thriving in this Virginia mega-development, which has two parts: Pentagon City and Crystal City— the gleaming buildings that surround the military headquarters.


Eddie checks the map.

The buildings in Crystal City are not factories. These buildings are not for manufacturing weapons and hardware. This is not heavy industry. What they produce is paper, or increasingly pdf documents. They house the strategic planning offices of the Military industries. There is a reason they are within a short walk of the Pentagon, and there are many noon time meetings at the restaurants and bars of Crystal City. And the “revolving door” between the military and these corporations mean that ex-generals can continue to hang out at their favorite pub when after their retirement they go to work for the contractors they know and love.

One of the architectural problems of Crystal City is that the buildings are too close to the streets. Since the Oklahoma bombing and 9/11, the “security perimeter” now recommended is 80 feet. So the Crystal City buildings are obsolete. There have been discussions of creating “green zones” for military contractors: of actually moving their offices to within military bases to optimize their security. So some of the other offices of the war industries are close at hand in Virginia and Maryland. Again these are not manufacturing locations, but more secure offices which can coordinate the interactions between the corporations with the government.