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ARLINGTON, Va. —The fortress has not been well-fortified for some time.

Planes fly over it. Buses drive up to it. The subway stops underit. And until this year, commercial trucks were able to drive rightinto it.

The Pentagon, built to be as strong and impenetrable as this countryalways hoped its military would be, has been the focus of intenseconcern for more than a decade among the people charged with keepingits workers and its secrets secure.

Defense officials Saturday credited safety measures instituted as partof a massive renovation effort, which began in 1994, with saving livesand preventing further damage from Tuesday's crash of a hijackedAmerican Airlines jet.

In addition to the 64 people killed aboard the plane, 125 civilians andmilitary personnel died from the impact and resulting inferno.

But the renovation--estimated to end up costing more than $1billion--is still less than one-fifth complete. On top of that, it willcost at least $300 million to repair the damage from the attack,officials estimate. If plans for the remodeling go forward on schedule,it won't be done until 2014.

And even when it is, the vast complex that houses the military'scentral nervous system will remain vulnerable to attack in critical anduncorrectable ways, defense officials said.

"The existing Pentagon is not compliant with fire safety codes. Theexisting Pentagon is not compliant with any codes," said Lee Evey,program manager for the renovation.

"It is one of the most likely terrorist targets in town. It is an oldbuilding. More than 25,000 people work here. There's no way we coulddesign this building or any building to be 100% protected."

The weight of the challenge began to emerge Saturday, even as fire andrescue workers and construction crews continued to move gingerlythrough the collapsed, torn, burnt and flooded areas of the buildinglooking for remains and for clues that could help in the investigation.

Video footage shot by Air Force combat photographers showed thebuilding missing an entire section, like a giant cake with a slice cutout. Melted plastic hung like icicles from fluorescent light fixtures.Fire crews moved through the muck wearing protective suits,respirators, goggles and helmets. A pair of reading glasses sat on adesk in a room that had otherwise been blown away. Next to them was abowl, its brightly colored candies spilling out.

But the video also showed how much worse the damage could have been.

American Airlines Flight 77 struck a portion of the building that hadalready been renovated. It was the only area of the Pentagon with asprinkler system, and it had been reconstructed with a web of steelcolumns and bars to withstand bomb blasts. The steel reinforcement,bolted together to form a continuous structure through all of thePentagon's five floors, kept that section of the building fromcollapsing for 30 minutes--enough time for hundreds of people to crawlout to safety.

The area struck by the plane also had blast-resistant windows--2 inchesthick and 2,500 pounds each--that stayed intact during the crash andfire. It had fire doors that opened automatically and newly built exitsthat allowed people to get out.

"This was a terrible tragedy, but I'm here to tell you that if we hadnot undertaken these efforts in the building, this could have beenmuch, much worse," Evey said. "The fact that they happened to hit anarea that we had built so sturdily was a wonderful gift."

The rest of the Pentagon would not have fared as well.

The fire that swept through the building caused the greatest damage inan unrenovated section with no sprinkler system, heavy windows or steelreinforcements. But many of the offices there were empty inanticipation of the renovation.

While perhaps 4,500 people normally would have been working in thehardest-hit areas, because of the renovation work only about 800 werethere Tuesday, officials said.

The building is packed with thousands of tons of asbestos, brushed withlead-based paint and constructed with mercury and PCBs. When ground wasbroken on the building--eerily, on Sept. 11, 1941, exactly 60 yearsbefore Tuesday's attack--it was a state-of-the-art bunker. Now it is astill-vulnerable target, both to an attack and to security breachesthat could give enemies access to U.S. military secrets.

"I thought in general our security needed to be improved; I worked veryhard at it," said John Hamre, who as a deputy secretary of defense inthe Clinton administration made security a focus of his tenure.

"I always thought that was the third-most likely terrorist target inthe town, behind the White House and the Capitol," Hamre said. "Itremains a potent target because of the larger symbol it conveys thatthe American military is susceptible to attack at its heart, at itscentral nervous system."

The Pentagon has always sought to toe an uneasy line between securityand public access. It sits between a network of freeways and just a fewmiles from one of the area's major airports.

Planners built a subway stop next to the Pentagon with an escalatorthat leads straight up to the building to allow employees to get towork. Today, more than 15,000 ride the Metro to the building every day.

But a bomb planted on the Metro platform would send much of its blastinto the Pentagon. The subway stop is also vulnerable to a biologicalweapon or a gas attack.

"The subway was a major concern and it remains a major concern," Hamresaid. "Right now, if there was an explosion, the blast effects wouldjust be pulled up into the building like a chimney."