Leaders to offer details on 'spy center'

State and federal leaders apparently are ready to officially confirm and give some details about a new $1.9 billion "spy center" at Camp Williams.

Gov. Gary Herbert, members of Utah's congressional delegation and U.S. Deputy Director of National Intelligence Glenn Gaffney have scheduled a joint news conference Friday at the state Capitol "to announce a major project at Camp Williams," according to a news release.

But the secret has been out for months.

In July, the Deseret News and other media reported plans — based on congressional funding requests — by the super-secretive National Security Agency to build a huge data center at Camp Williams. Essentially, it will house supercomputers to help spy on communications.

Many spy novels, especially those by Tom Clancy, have described how the NSA and its satellites and supercomputers can listen for key words or certain voices in cell phone, radio, computer and other communications worldwide that may reveal terrorist plans and movements.

Funding requests to Congress said the center would sit on 120 acres at Camp Williams and would deliver "responsive, reliable, effective and expert signals-intelligence and information-assurance products and services" to enable "network-warfare operations to gain a decisive information advantage."

When plans first gained public notice in July, Utah's congressional delegation and the Utah National Guard (landlord at Camp Williams) declined to talk much about it, saying they did not want to accidentally step over any lines about what could and could not be disclosed.

They referred inquiries to the NSA, which provided only a brief statement confirming the computer center is coming to Utah. The NSA said then that after "evaluation of several potential data-center locations throughout the United States, Camp Williams in Utah emerged as the best choice of location."

It added, "Over the coming months, the project-management team will begin the design phase, and this will be followed by the issuance of a request for proposal in order to competitively select a developer for the project."

In June, President Barack Obama signed into law a supplemental war-spending bill that included the first $169.5 million for construction at the center (after another $207.4 million had been spent on planning it).