THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602210048
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K3 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: OBSCURE TOUR
LOCAL LANDMARKS THE TOUR BOOKS NEVER MENTION
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
WHERE CAMP PEARY is, is no deep secret: Signs on Interstate 64 near Williamsburg point the way to this sprawling government installation on the York River.
What goes on inside its barbed-wire fencing is another matter.
For nearly 45 years, maps and the feds have referred to the 9,275-acre base as the Armed Forces Experimental Training Facility.
By reputation, however, Camp Peary is ``The Farm,'' also known as ``Spy U.'' - a super-secret training ground for agents of the Central Intelligence Agency and other espionage outfits.
Here, if you believe the buzz, the nation's spy recruits learn skills vital to their craft - lock-picking, escape and evasion, tailing bad guys and defensive driving, among others.
Washington usually declines to comment on such reports.
Peary's grounds were privately held, and included the now-vanished hamlet of Magruder, when the Navy snapped up the property for use as a Seabee training base and stockade for German P.O.W.s during World War II.
Turned loose by the feds in 1946, it did service as a state forestry and game reserve for five years. Then, in 1951, the Navy returned to the property and announced it closed to the public. It's been that way ever since.
In 1961, however, eyebrows were raised when a government invitation for construction bids described a need for six reinforced-concrete buildings fitted with heavy steel doors and X-ray protection.
And 11 years later, the Virginia Gazette of Williamsburg reported that CIA agents were trained as assassins on base.
The CIA replied that was nonsense. None of its people, the agency said, had ever been trained or used as assassins. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS/File
Camp Peary near Williamsburg is shown in this Virginia Department of
Transportation composite aerial photo.
by CNB