Pentagon's 9/11 Memorial Puzzle

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The Nation's First 9/11 Memorial

Seven years after the tragic events of 9/11, the memorial park, featuring 184 light benches for the 184 victims that lost their life at the Pentagon, will be dedicated.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

"History chose that site, but the Pentagon was designed to keep people out," said Reinhold Martin, a historian of modern architecture at Columbia University who has studied the building and was a mentor to Kaseman. The memorial, he said, "takes on this problem by being open and public in a positive way."

Added Martin, "It will be interesting to see if the Pentagon can tolerate that degree of openness."

From a security standpoint, the site will require a shift in enforcement approach that tends to view the public warily and equate increased access with increased risk.

As PFPA officials said, thousands of people pass close to the building's walls each day to use the Pentagon Metro station and adjacent transit center or the bicycle path nearby. Special events such as the Marine Corps Marathon and the Army Ten-Miler are held there each year, drawing large crowds. The public is not prevented from driving into several of the Pentagon's oceanic parking lots or along the roads adjacent to the building.

But those visitors, by and large, do not come to the Pentagon as tourists. If, as planned, the Sept. 11 memorial is added to the popular Tourmobile circuit that includes nearby Arlington National Cemetery, it is likely to draw a sizable portion of that destination's 4 million annual visitors. Shuttles and tour buses taking riders to the site will drop them off near the Metro station to avoid creating backups at the memorial.

Those who want to drive to the Sept. 11 memorial will have to park at Pentagon City and walk through a pedestrian tunnel beneath Interstate 395 to reach the site, a five- to 10-minute trek. Five spaces in the Pentagon's south parking lot will be reserved for handicapped parking, but that will be the extent of visitor parking -- even on nights and weekends. Tour buses won't be able to pull up next to the site, either.

"We already have a near-gridlocked situation," said Calvery, a former Interior Department official who helped develop enhanced security plans for several major National Park Service sites after the Sept. 11 attacks. "We'd back up traffic down to Richmond," he said.

That many visitors are expected to come to the memorial at night presents another challenge for Pentagon security officials, given that the public will have round-the-clock access to the site. The memorial's architects have designed it to offer visitors an entirely different experience after sundown, when the pools of circulating water beneath each bench will illuminate their stainless steel undersides, producing a shimmering glow.

But that also means security officials cannot flood the site with bright lighting, which would ruin the intended visual effect.

"It's going to be a solemn and almost sacred place, and we realize that," Calvery said. "We're trying not to over-enforce."

Part of the security challenge, he said, is creating a visible enforcement presence that discourages threats while not making visitors uncomfortable with an overwhelming police presence. This will involve some compromise for the agency, which will change its long-standing policy against photography to allow people to take pictures of the site -- even if they want to take pictures of the building from within the memorial.

"People will want to take pictures of the crash site, obviously, and we're going to allow that," he said.

But several restrictions will remain. Signs posted outside the memorial and along the walkway to its entrance will warn visitors not to photograph the building from outside the memorial site. Security personnel will reserve the right to confiscate visitors' cameras if they suspect anything undue.

The memorial will offer no access to the building itself. A metal fence with vertical bars will separate it from the wall of the Pentagon and the roadway that skirts the building, with guard booths at either end of the fence. State-of-the-art surveillance equipment is also being deployed to the site, which Calvery declined to discuss in detail.

He also indicated that plans might change as needs arise, given that Pentagon security officials aren't accustomed to hosting tourists and can't be sure how many people will visit the memorial. The rules and protocols in place reflect a compromise hashed out over several years but will remain flexible, Calvery said.

Victims' family members are expected to visit the memorial frequently and spend time with the benches that have been engraved with the names of their lost loved ones. But what isn't clear is to what degree the country as a whole will adopt the site as an outlet for the swirling emotions that remain raw nearly seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

There has been no place to channel them, for the most part, until now. As Beckman says, "When they rebuilt the Pentagon site, they erased all evidence [of the attack] in less than a year.

"This will be the first of the three sites that were attacked to finally have a place for people to go and deal with their thoughts, anxieties, frustrations and grief."