Odd Security Measures
In my Top Secret days with Barnes Engineering, I made a number of visits to Langley. We were involved with several spacecraft programs with mission direction and funding from that outfit. In the most part, the CIA headquarters is just a lavish, very modern office building. There is lots of security, some of it odd. They weighed you and all that you are carrying on the way into certain areas and then weighed you again as you leave. I presume you would have to explain a weight change larger than drinking coffee or peeing. But, if you did both on a visit, you would probably be right on target.
Sadly, while I vaguely remember the big copper sculpture outside, pictured here.
However, I went through a much odder security measures on a single visit to another, hidden government facility. I was invited to visit at a specific time, given a street address (no GPS in those days), and arrived at a nondescript, ten-story apartment building in an ordinary Washington suburb. My “papers", which had been mailed to me, instructed me to see the lobby concierge. After a phone call, he directed me to one of the three elevator banks across the lobby and the door opened as I approached. He pushed the button remotely, I presumed.
I was surprised when the elevator started and went down instead of up. Down a long way. No lights to indicate floors on the panel. Maybe no panel at all, I don’t remember.
When the doors opened, I was in a typical, low ceilinged, loud, crowded office environment with clattering typewriters and folks in cubicles looking only partly interested in what they were doing. At the “desk” I again presented my “papers" and was directed to a conference room, where a nice enough fellow brought me the classified information I’d been asked to review. It was in a dull-looking, serial-numbered cardboard file box clearly marked “READ ONLY.” No note-taking was allowed and the fellow who delivered the box just sat there reading something while I studied the information I’d come to see. He was just a babysitter.
After I was there for quite a while, I asked to go to the men’s room, and he simply looked up and said, "turn left and left again.” I didn’t have to be escorted and seemed to have a free run of the place. He waited in the room guarding the file box of papers. In the men’s room. I was very surprised when a well-turned-out young lady approached the urinals, hiked up her skirt, and proceeded to pee. I had that moment when I thought "Oh no, I wandered into the ladies’ room by mistake.” But he turned to me and casually said, as if I were just another new guy in the office, “You’ll get over it” and walked out.
Much, much later, in the same conference room, I met with folks who were very intense and a lot more professional. They immediately dismissed the babysitter. I was there to give my opinion on the contents of the box. Even though the cold war was a long time ago, I will not discuss the nature of the inquiry. It was intense, surprisingly well informed, focussed, and important.
