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CIA’s security theater, Les Earnest (les at cs.stanford.edu)

I was first exposed to CIA culture when I was invited to visit their Washington headquarters in the early 1960s and learned that they liked to view everything as secret even when that made no sense. I was given driving directions from the airport to their headquarters in the part of Washington called Foggy Bottom but was admonished not to reveal to my taxi driver where I was going. When I climbed in the taxi and gave the driver the directions, however, he replied, “Oh, CIA.”

When I arrived at their “hidden” facility I was greeted by a friendly high level administrator named Paul Howerton and shown around the place consisting of an abandoned roller skating rink and an old pickle factory next door, both retaining their original exteriors.

http:// web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/cia.htm