The George Bush Center for Intelligence is the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency located in the unincorporated community of Langley in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States.
The headquarters is a conglomeration of the Original Headquarters Building (OHB) and the New Headquarters Building (NHB) that sits on a total of 258 acres (1.04Â km2) of land.
Name
Prior to its current name, the CIA headquarters was formally unnamed. On April 26, 1999, the complex was officially named in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 for George H. W. Bush, who had served as the Director of Central Intelligence for 357 days, between January 30, 1976 and January 20, 1977, and had later served as the 41st President of the United States.
History
The Original Headquarters Building was designed by the New York firm Harrison & Abramovitz in the 1950s and contains 1,400,000 square feet (130,000Â m2) of space. The ground was broken for construction on November 3, 1959, with President Dwight Eisenhower laying the cornerstone, and the building was completed in March 1961.
The New Headquarters Building, designed by Smith, Hinchman and Grylls Associates, was completed in March 1991 after the ground was broken for construction on May 24, 1984. It is a complex that adjoins two six-story office towers and is fully connected via a tunnel to the OHB.
On January 25, 1993, Mir Qazi, a Pakistani resident of the United States, killed two CIA employees and wounded three others on the road to the CIA headquarters, claiming that it was revenge for the US government's policy in the Middle East, "particularly toward the Palestinian people".
Location and facilities
The Center is located at 1000 Colonial Farm Road in McLean, Virginia, and can be reached via George Washington Memorial Parkway. However, due to a need for secrecy, the complex may only be accessed by those with authorization (e.g., appropriate credentials) or by appointment; only authorized vehicles may access the private road leading to the complex from George Washington Memorial Parkway.
The location of the building in Langley, Virginia has arisen to the name "Langley" being used as a colloquial metonym for the CIA headquarters, despite the presence of other non-CIA-related government buildings in the community of Langley, such as the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. This is similar to how "Foggy Bottom" is colloquially used to identify the headquarters of the United States Department of State, despite the name also being used to refer to the neighborhood of D.C. in which the building is located.
The CIA Museum (also known as the National History Collection or National Intelligence Council (NIC) Collection) is located within the Center. The museum holds declassified items such as artifacts associated with the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services and foreign intelligence organizations, including historical spy gadgets and weapons, and photographs. As it is located within the CIA compound, it is not accessible by the general public. An Enigma machine and Osama bin Laden's AKMS are held in the museum.
There is a Starbucks located on the site of the CIA headquarters.
Kryptos is an infamous encrypted sculpture that sits on the grounds of the CIA's headquarters.
In a nod to American covert intelligence-gathering activities from an earlier era, a statue of Nathan Hale, the captured colonial spy hanged by the British during the American Revolution, stands on the grounds of the CIA headquarters complex.
See also
- Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters
- 1993 shootings at CIA Headquarters
- The Crystal Palace (destroyed by fire in 1936)
References
External links
- Headquarters Virtual Tourâ€"A virtual tour of the CIA headquarters
- Three Things About the CIA's Langley Headquarters
