In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

Saigon to Washington [35]
It is a thirty-minute ride from Dulles Airport to the CIA headquarters
building in Langley, Virginia, ten miles from downtown
Washington. Situated high over the Potomac, overlooking the
George Washington Parkway, headquarters is three miles from
McLean, Virginia, where CIA employees often have lunch and shop
in the International Safeway. Ten minutes down the parkway is
Roslyn, Virginia, where the CIA D,omestic Contacts Division has its
offices. The State Department, which relates closely to the CIA, is
a mile beyond that, across the river.
My taxi took me through the Dolly Madison entrance, one of three
gates at Langley; a guard wrote my name on a clipboard and waved
us in. Dozens of employees were enjoying the sun and the campuslike
grounds-walking off lunch, reading, napping on the grass. Joggers
came from the basement and went into the Bureau of Public Roads
grounds next door~ shedding their T-shirts as they cleared the CIA
gate.
It always felt good to come back. The white marble walls and
columns of the gigantic foyer meant the beginnings of security, exclusivity.
It reminded me that I was one of a small group of favored
employees in the world's second largest intelligence organization,•
and that while I was here I was safe from a hostile world. But how
much longer? For the first time I was troubled by the CIA motto,
etched boldly on the foyer wall: "Ye shall know the truth and the
truth shall make you free."
The two guards who stood by a desk at the end of the foyer, waved
me toward the badge office up a flight of steps on the right. I
had been through this routine dozens of time; it never varied.
Two women gave me my badge without asking for any identification,
only glancing from my badge photograph to my face. I initialed a
form.
Back in the foyer, I flashed the badge for the guards' visual inspection
and brushed by. They did not check the contents of my suitcase
or travel bag. There were no electronic machines, codes, or recognition
signals. Watching 15,000 employees file in and out daily, hundreds
every hour, each holding a badge out for inspection, had
mesmerized the guards. Legend had it that people had entered the
*T~e ~.G_B i_s_ by far the world's largest, the Israeli probably the best, and the Iranian --£:\ ~Y
and South Korean .-the ·g~~lies t . . . . · ..