Inside the CIA (27 page)

“Dulles saw the property and fell in love with it,” Walter N. Elder, an assistant to Dulles at the time, said.
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The CIA obtained 225.5 acres of the land for its headquarters. The Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center, which tests highway barriers and cars for crash worthiness, still occupies a tract that the roads agency retained outside the CIA’s acres.

On a map, the CIA’s compound looks like a giant weather balloon, with its top jutting toward the northeast just below a crook in the Potomac River. The mouth of the balloon forms the entrance to the compound, which is where Dolley Madison Boulevard and Georgetown Pike come together, forming the apex of a triangle.

In the records of Fairfax County, the CIA is part of Parcel 22-3-01-00-40, with land assessed at $235,932,200. This parcel extends northeast well beyond the CIA compound to the Potomac River and includes the highway research center, which is northwest of the CIA. Because it is all held in the name of the U.S. government, the assessors do not distinguish between the portion held by the CIA and the portion used by the roads agency.

In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill authorizing $46 million for the construction of the CIA headquarters complex. On September 20, 1961, the first employees began to move into the new building, a concrete and glass structure that consists of 1.4 million square feet. There was one problem. The Public Roads Administration, in assembling the original land, had been unable to obtain a last 32.5 acres that jutted like an iceberg into the tract where the CIA planned its compound. Moreover, it was right at the mouth of the property, just to the left of the access drive that the CIA wanted as its main entrance off Dolley Madison Boulevard.

The land had been purchased in 1933 by Margaret Scattergood, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College who had worked for the original American Federation of Labor doing economics research. With Florence C. Thorne, a friend and coworker, she purchased the home, along with a tenant farmer’s house and a maid’s house that sat on the property.

When the federal government tried to take the property, she got a private law passed allowing her to stay there undisturbed until she died. In the meantime, title passed to the government, and she received $54,189 for the property immediately.
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In the records of the Fairfax County assessor, this parcel is designated as 22-3-01-00-40A and is assessed at $6,492,000.

When they came to work each day, CIA employees drove past Scattergood’s home with its wide front porch and columns. Few knew anything about her and what she stood for. The daughter of a wealthy dye maker in Philadelphia, Scattergood was a Quaker and a pacifist. The CIA, in her view, meant war and killing—everything she was against. Scattergood helped civil rights organizations and was corresponding clerk of the Langley Hill Friends Meeting in McLean. But she spent most of her time doling out money from a trust fund left by her father to antiwar and other liberal causes. Meanwhile, she wrote letters to members of Congress urging cuts in the military and intelligence budgets. She also gave sanctuary to refugees from Nicaragua and Guatemala—illegal aliens fleeing the turmoil in the two countries where the CIA was heavily involved. Occasionally they ended up at the CIA’s gate as they tried to find Scattergood’s driveway, which was off an access drive to the CIA’s rear entrances.

“She had an income of $100,000 to $125,000 a year perhaps. But she had no mortgage, no taxes. She lived a simple life, she and Miss Thorne. So she gave away between a third and a half of her money each year,” Nancy H. Blanchet, a grandniece and executor of her will, said.
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When the CIA began widening its front access drive in 1983, Harry E. Fitzwater, the CIA’s deputy director for administration under William Casey, learned that Scattergood was worried that the agency would intrude on her property. For some time, Fitzwater had been concerned about Scattergood’s welfare. Since her home extended into the CIA’s grounds, it was probably more secure than the White House. But Scattergood was advancing in age. Since Thome’s death in 1973, she had lived alone. Fitzwater had had the CIA’s guards patrol her property to make sure she was okay.
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Fitzwater invited Scattergood and a grandniece, Sylvia Blanchet, to have lunch in the director’s dining room and to tour the CIA. After they sipped sherry, Casey dropped in, and they had lunch with him. When the subject turned to the American Revolution, the subject of Casey’s 1976 book.
Where and How the War Was Fought: An Armchair Tour of the American Revolution,
Scattergood said, “My relatives were in jail at the time.”

“What do you mean?” one of the CIA people asked.

“They were Quakers and were doing civil disobedience. They don’t believe in war and don’t believe in killing other people and would rather go to jail and lose everything rather than participate in war,” Scattergood replied.
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Scattergood died on November 7, 1986, at the age of ninety-two, after a stroke. She had lived on the property twenty-five years after the CIA occupied its headquarters building—a last show of disobedience.
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After Scattergood’s death, the CIA extended its chain-link fence to include her property. The house is used for training sessions and will eventually be used for CIA conferences. On part of the property just to the left of the front gate the CIA built a day-care center for 104 of its employees’ offspring. Each child is enrolled by code number. From Soviet satellites, it looks like the CIA is training midgets, or so the joke goes.

To the right of the CIA’s front access ramp stands a massive, nineteen-room brick home. Built in 1988, the home at 1124 Savile Lanes sat unsold for two years. A new broker, Cathie Gill, got a bright idea: Why not sell it to the CIA as the home of the director? She approached both the CIA and members of Congress, who took up the cause with William Webster. But the agency wanted no part of it, and a Saudi diplomat eventually bought it in 1991.

Besides the main entrance, the CIA has two rear entrances off Georgetown Pike and a side entrance off the George Washington Memorial Parkway that runs along the Potomac River. In 1977, three Marine officers saw the security measures as a challenge. They got drunk in Washington’s Georgetown section and decided to prove their manhood by scaling the CIA’s fence. Well past midnight, they parked their car along the
George Washington Memorial Parkway and made a run for the fence near the side entrance.

Alarms went off in the duty office just behind the CIA’s main lobby, pinpointing the exact location of the intrusion. By the time armed security guards reached the area, one of the Marines was already inside the compound. The guards drew their guns and stopped the Marine. With the help of Fairfax County police, they caught the other two as they ran back toward their car. The CIA reported the incident to Quantico Marine base, where the officers were assigned. Each got two weeks in the brig.

Organizations opposed to the CIA occasionally station members near the CIA’s entrances so they can write down or photograph employees’ license plates. In the 1970s, these efforts led to publication of some names of CIA employees. Soviets masquerading as picnickers did the same thing. Since then, state motor vehicle departments have made it tougher to obtain the names of owners of motor vehicles.

The CIA’s rear entrances are off an access drive that leads from Georgetown Pike to the Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. Trucks with deliveries for the CIA use the first entrance. Across the street from the second rear entrance is Claude Moore Colonial Farm at Turkey Run, a 100-acre replica of a Virginia colonial homestead that is open to the public. Occasionally, 250-pound razorback hogs, denizens of the farm that resemble boar, squeeze out of their pens and amble past the CIA’s guard posts onto CIA property.

Other lost souls may get less gentle treatment. At the height of the Persian Gulf War, motorists who wound up at the CIA’s rear entrances while looking for the Turner-Fairbank Research Center or the Claude Moore Farm found themselves confronted by CIA guards, who ordered them out of their cars before they would give them directions. Guard dogs, normally inside the guard posts, stood at the ready outside the gates.

In 1985, construction began on an addition to the CIA at the rear of the compound behind the old building. The first employees began moving into the addition in June 1988. The
new building has 1.1 million square feet. Unlike the old building, which has tiny slits for windows, the new building makes use of large expanses of green-tinted glass, giving it the appearance of a multicolored silicon chip. With the new building, the CIA’s land and structures, along with the Turner-Fairbank Research Center, are assessed at just over half a billion dollars.

Just over half the CIA’s 22,000 employees work at Langley. Fifteen percent work overseas, and the rest work in some twenty-two CIA offices scattered throughout Washington, or in the CIA’s domestic stations.

Visitors to the CIA may be directed either to a lot on top of a parking garage in front of the new building, or to the VIP parking lot in front and slightly to the left of the old or original building. Inside the compound, there are tall oak trees that occasionally sprout closed-circuit television cameras. Near the front entrance of the old building are weeping cherry, magnolia, and tulip trees. At various times, azaleas and rhododendron bloom near the old building, and daffodils and tiger lilies adorn the beds.

A futuristic concrete bus shelter rises in front and slightly to the right of the old building. Here, blue and white shuttle buses pause on their way to other CIA offices around Washington, and Metro buses let off employees who take the McLean-Crystal City line. In the late 1970s, a Soviet diplomat got off the bus in an apparent attempt to test CIA security. A CIA guard who checks building passes as passengers alight put the man back on the bus.

Just behind the bus stop is the CIA’s 7,000-square-foot auditorium. Because of its globular appearance, the auditorium is known as the “bubble.” A tunnel connects it to the old building. Next to the auditorium stands a statue of Nathan Hale. During the American Revolution, Hale volunteered to go behind British lines and spy. The British captured him on September 21, 1776, and hanged him the next day. His last words were said to be, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Fifteen doors at the main entrance lead to a lobby of different shades of gray and white Georgia marble. Along the
left wall is a statue of William J. (“Wild Bill”) Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA. On the wall is a biblical inscription from John 8:32: And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

Along the right wall are fifty-three gold stars flanked by an American flag on the left and a flag with the seal of the CIA on the right. Each star represents a CIA officer who lost his or her life in the service of the agency. Beneath the memorial stars is a glass case that displays a book listing the years when the officers died. In some cases, the names of the officers are listed—Richard Welch, for example, who was killed by terrorists in Athens in December 1975, after the English-language
Athens News
published his name and home address. Most of the names are not listed because the officers were operating under cover, and their affiliation never came out.

When Adm. Stansfield Turner was director of Central Intelligence, the memorial book disappeared for two weeks. Turner’s assistants were frantic. Could someone have stolen one of the CIA’s most revered possessions, a symbol of the dedication and sacrifice of every CIA officer? The Office of Security was called in to investigate, but it could find no clues. Finally, just as suddenly as it had disappeared, the book reappeared in the display case. It turned out that a CIA employee who was supposed to add a new name to the book had gotten tired of waiting for the Office of Security to give him the key to the case. So he pried it open without telling anyone.

Visitors present their signed visitor forms to one of the receptionists at the far end of the lobby. The receptionist calls the employee listed on the form, and the employee comes down to escort the visitor. If the visitor is going to the director’s suite on the seventh floor, he is usually taken to the director’s elevator to the left of the lobby. From the elevator, the director can descend to the garage, where thirty of the agency’s top officials are allowed to park.

In July 1991, Dr. Stanley Moskowitz, the agency’s director of congressional affairs and formerly associate deputy director for intelligence, left his car in the garage. Later in the day,
the Office of Security called him. Would he mind stepping into the garage and opening his trunk?

It seems a dog trained to sense explosives had fingered his trunk for harboring a bomb. Because of Dr. Moskowitz’s status, a second dog was called in. The dog confirmed the diagnosis.

No problem, Moskowitz said. He opened the trunk to reveal the item that had offended the dogs’ senses—workout clothes concealed in a gym bag.

The director’s elevator operates only with a key that is given to those who report to the director. Other visitors—and employees routinely going to work—use one of six turnstiles to enter the rest of the building.

Armed guards watch as the escort first inserts his or her identification card in the turnstile and punches in a code. Then the visitor inserts his or her visitor card. The card must be inserted again when leaving the building. Each time a card is inserted, a second bar closes behind the person using the machine. If there is anything wrong, he or she is trapped.

Every hour or two, there is the sound of a buzzer and nervous laughter as a quirky turnstile malfunctions and traps an employee or visitor trying to enter or leave the building. The guards usually explain that the turnstiles are malfunctioning. They lower the gate to let the embarrassed employee pass.

The new building has its own entrance, with sixteen turnstiles at the end of an arched skylight of green-tinted glass. The addition is airy, with escalators and an atrium filled with potted palms. Because the new building is on higher land, the fourth floor of the old building connects to the lobby of the new building.