Saturday, November 29, 2008

White House Operations?



I caught an interesting program on the History Channel the other night. It was sort of a companion program to the inside look at Air Force One that aired a few months ago. This program was an inside look at the White House.

Although the program focused mainly on the history of this building and had some interesting stories of what goes on behind the scenes, there were some subtle clues to communications that goes on within the White House fences.

There were several camera shots of various maintenance workers doing things like vacuuming or moving furniture around. Many seemed to have radios on their belts. Unfortunately, even in high-definition, I couldn't tell what band they were on.

That got me thinking about all the various Washington DC scanning resources that have logged many of the security & Secret Service channels used at the White House, but I don't recall seeing anything identified as being maintenance or operations (non-security) related. I would guess that even these communications may be secure, as there is all kinds of interesting intelligence that might be gleaned from routine maintenance communications.

Is there anyone out there that may have some information on what the routine operations & maintenance folks at the White House might use for communications?

I also noticed that the program dealt extensively with the layout and history of the first and second floors of the White House, but only mentioned the later-added third story in passing. Any idea what is up on the third floor?

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all the Fed Files fans out there. This holiday weekend finds me working in Ontario, CA. I haven't had a lot of time for listening to the scanner, but here are a few things I have heard from my hotel location:

164.9375 MHz, 103.5 - Angeles National Forest
166,9125 MHz, N245 - CBP Border Patrol "MA-4 SP", part of the So Cal EVRP network
167.3125 MHz, 167.9 - FBI
171.4750 MHz, 103.5 - Unknown
172.1500 MHz, N002 - DHS TSA at Ontario Int'l
172.6750 MHz, 146.2 - Unknown, running 10-28's
173.7375 MHz, 167.9 - FBI, simplex