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The Washington Post

The new supervisor thought his idea was innocent enough. He wanted the baristas to write the names of customers on their cups to speed up lines and ease confusion, just like other Starbucks do around the world.
But these aren't just any customers. They are regulars at the CIA Starbucks.
"They could use the alias 'Polly-O string cheese' for all I care," said a food-services supervisor at the Central Intelligence Agency, asking that his identity remain unpublished for security reasons.
"But giving any name at all was making people - you know, the undercover agents - feel very uncomfortable. It just didn't work for this location."
This purveyor of skinny lattes and double cappuccinos is deep inside the agency's forested compound in Langley, Virginia.
Welcome to the "Stealthy Starbucks", as a few officers affectionately call it.
Or "Store Number 1", as the receipts cryptically say.
The baristas need to be escorted by agency "minders" to leave their work area. There are no frequent-customer award cards, because officials fear the data stored on the cards could be mined by marketers and fall into the wrong hands, outing agents.
It is one of the busiest Starbucks in the country, with a captive caffeine-craving audience of thousands of analysts and agents, economists and engineers, geographers and cartographers working on gathering intelligence and launching covert operations inside some of the most vexing and violent places around the world.
"Obviously," one officer said, "we are caffeine-addicted personality types."
Because the campus is a highly secured island, few people leave for coffee, and the lines at the Starbucks can stretch down the hallway.
Amid pretty posters for Kenyan beans and pumpkin spice lattes, nestled in the corner where leather armchairs form a cosy nook, the supervisor said he often heard customers practising foreign languages such as German or Arabic.
The shop is also the site of many job interviews for agents looking to move within the CIA, such as from a counterterrorism post to a nuclear non-proliferation gig. "Coffee goes well with those conversations," one officer said.
The chief of the team that helped find Osama bin Laden, for instance, recruited a key deputy for the effort at the Starbucks, said another officer who could not be named.
A female barista who commutes from the District of Columbia before sunrise said she initially applied to work for a catering company that services federal buildings in the region, not knowing where she might be assigned. She said she underwent extensive vetting "that was more than just a credit check".
The 27-year-old woman was offered a job and told that she would be working in food services in Langley. On her first morning of work, she recalled, she put a location in her GPS and nothing came up. So she called the person who had hired her and got an explanation of the address. "Before I knew it, I realised I was now working for the Starbucks at the CIA," she said.
 

Secret Service bungled response to 2011 White House gunman: report
It took the US Secret Service five days before realising a man had shot at the White House in 2011 while one of President Barack Obama's daughters was inside, The Washington Post reported.
The report comes amid renewed scrutiny on the agency tasked with protecting the president after recent security lapses, including one that saw an intruder armed with a knife jump over the fence and burst into the president's residence.
Although Obama and his wife were out of town the night of the November 11, 2011, shooting, their younger daughter Sasha was inside with her grandmother Marian Robinson, the Post revealed.
At least seven bullets struck the upstairs residence of the White House, fired from a car parked some 700 metres away across the South Lawn.
And while Secret Service officers initially rushed to respond, they received a surprise order from a supervisor saying "no shots have been fired ... stand down".
The Washington Post, Agence France-Presse


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Starbucks

Patrons at CIA Starbucks in Langley, Virginia prefer not to use names

The CIA branch is always busy.

News

World

Outlet at US spy agency's headquarters keeps the cups and customer cards blank, and gives its baristas an extensive background check


The new supervisor thought his idea was innocent enough. He wanted the baristas to write the names of customers on their cups to speed up lines and ease confusion, just like other Starbucks do around the world.


Patrons at CIA Starbucks in Langley, Virginia prefer not to use names

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Outlet at US spy agency's headquarters keeps the cups and customer cards blank, and gives its baristas an extensive background check

Outlet at US spy agency's headquarters keeps the cups and customer cards blank, and gives its baristas an extensive background check