Via BBC -
In a Washington suburb, I am on a journey. No address, no postcode. Just the phone number of a US government official known only as "T".
After months of requests, he has granted us permission to visit one of America's newest and most secret establishments: the National Counterterrorism Center, the NCTC.
It is a nondescript building, but inside is the beating heart of America's counter-terrorism nerve centre.
"This is where we maintain a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week operational watch in the counter-terrorism intelligence community and monitor situational awareness in the world of counterterrorism," says Vice Admiral Don Loren, one of the watch officers in the Operations Room.
The Operations Room is a large open-plan chamber filled with desks and computer terminals.
It is here in this room three times a day, every day, that America's specialists in counter-terrorism gather to share information.
But today it is almost empty. Because we are media, all the undercover agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency who would normally sit here have been moved out of sight.
But up on the wall is a giant plasma screen showing every plane approaching the United States.
"Right now, you're looking at the Eastern Seaboard air corridor, and we use that to monitor events of special interest and to keep an eye should there be any reports of what we call no-fly activity," Vice Adm Loren says.
A "no-fly" means a plane with a passenger suspicious enough that the flight can even get turned back over the mid-Atlantic.
In everyone's minds is the thought: "9/11, never again."
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