(The bizarrely colored former CIA training facility prior to commencement demolition. The Ballston neighborhood was Spook Central- the Original NIS/NCIS HQ was across the street and the Original NSA and DIA was about a half mile away. Photo CoStar).
It is a tough time to have opinions about anything these days, and as you know, I have them in spades. So it came as a relief to turn away from them when I got a note from Down Under. I have a pal who teaches university classes on the craft of Intelligence and is cooking up a plan to bring a dozen of them up here to Spook Central and show them a bit about how the secret world works.
I got a little excited. I outlined a hotel or two that might meet cost and location requirements. The Embassy Suites Washington D.C. – Convention Center is a possibility. For logistics, I recommended a bus from a company like “Chariots for Hire,” which could whisk them around the sprawling national security apparatus in the National Capital Region.
Then I started to get fired up. When the company sent a group of us to Detroit to attend the big IT convention, I hired a bus and driver and took a small group on the “Fabulous Ruins of Detroit” tour with beer and vodka and had one of the more memorable afternoons of the decade. I thought about what we could do here in the middle of the secret world.
Maryland is dominated by the sprawling National Security Agency- we talked about that on Monday when the armed transvestites tried to crash the gate. The Fort is the third largest employer in the state and the campus is highly protected. The National Cryptologic Museum isn’t, though. It is outside the security perimeter and is both accessible and fascinating. Downtown, there is the Spy Museum, which is kind of hokey but fun. And all the bolt-holes of things that were- the warren of the original Selective Service on F Street, near the Old Executive Office Building (Lunch at the Army-Navy Club on Farragut Square?) That is where Mac worked when he tried to figure out how to implement the direction of the Pike and Church commissions to remedy the wild CIA excesses of MK-ULTRA and all the rest of the Crown Jewels.
Some buildings are open to the public, or have been re-purposed, but much of the hidden history is either forgotten or inaccessible to ordinary mortals, and the bus could take the group to the places and give lectures on what they were in the Day, with the actual buildings as the backdrop.
For example, Navy Hill was the original OSS/CIA at Foggy Bottom. DIA at Joint Base Bolling-Anacosita really doesn’t have much, but a glimpse of the building and the looming and somewhat ominous mass of the new DHS complex on the grounds of at St. Elizabeth Mental Hospital are both interesting backdrops, as is the Nebraska Avenue complex (Station NEGAT in WWII) in the District. Some of the Philby Spy Ring- Burgess and McLean- lived nearby and you can still get a street view of where real Soviet agents lived and their target.
(The fastest jet ever flown on a stick at the Langley campus of CIA. Photo CIA).
The Agency museum at Langley may- or may not- be accessible to private educational groups but is really cool. I like the OXCART A-12 Mach-three reconnaissance jet that CIA Director Mike Hayden procured to demonstrate some of the technical achievements in high-speed espionage.
(Arlington Hall Station, where Army codebreakers worked on Japanese diplomatic codes and the VENONA decryption of Soviet communications was conducted. Photo US Army).
Also over in Virginia, there is the Pentagon, NRO at Chantilly, and Arlington Hall. The last is now a State Department training facility, but was, by turns, the Army Security Agency (WWII) Armed Forces Security Agency, 1948-50, NSA (briefly) and the first home of DIA. It is across the street from Big Pink.
About a mile away they are just now tearing down the World’s Ugliest Building- the pale-blue Marymount University in Ballston that was the CIA training facility.
I might include the Air and Space museum downtown and the Udvar-Hazy collection out by Dulles for a look at the first satellites and SR-71.
The Cold War Museum is at the former Vint Hill SIGINT Station, about 45 minutes SW of the District and might also be of interest- it is run by the son of U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers. And while out there, perhaps a stop at the Fairfax County park that FBI traitor Robert Hanssen used for his dead-drop deliveries to the KGB.
And Aldrich Ame’s former home. And that of creepie Jonathon Pollard, who sold out the Navy’s secrets, and the apartment of Anna Montes who gave DIA secrets to the Cubans.
I stared at the keyboard with sudden awareness. That is a different itinerary- the traitor tour. This could be fun, I thought. Maybe I should buy a bus and go into the business?
It would certainly beat the hell out of what I am doing now.
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303