CIA AT LANGLEY STATEMENT OF(SANITIZED) OF MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP63T00245R000100170008-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 17, 2006
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: July 15, 1955
• Content Type: SPEECH

Approved For Release 2006/10/1W. CIA-RAP '3 T , 6 OO 1JO0O,
CIA at Langley
July..i5s 1955:
s.tatgmentof I b! Mgt ~ , ,.
by name is I live between Langley and
Great Falls, in Fairfax County, Virginia, and I am here today
to speak on behalf of citizens who are opposed to the location
of a new headquarters building for the Central Intelligence
Agency in Langley.
. - We greatly appreciate the committee's
courtesy in la tt ng us appear and tistify. 'It was publicly
announced last April 7 that CIA had given up arty plan to locate
in Langley. The agency has never openly changed that decision.
Nevertheless within the last two weeks it has suddenly become
apparent that the Langley site is again being considered. After
a closed hearing with no notice to the residents of the area
or others opposed, an authorization was approved which would
allow CIA extra funds for a road if it builds in Langley.
Our local citizens association invited CIA representatives to
speak to us on their reasons for considering the Langley site,
but the invitation was turned down.
- We beliive the
publicly available acs demonstrate that there are.serious
objections to locating CIA in Langley.
r E s . - The Langley site would cost taxpayers
an estimated million more than other sites being considered--
$8.5 million in Federal funds for a highway, $2. 'million in
State funds for road improvements, $2 million in County funds
for utilities.
Residential - Langley is .now a unique rural.
residentia area of-ane-family houses, country places, and
farms. There are no apartment buildings. The only commercial
development in 10 miles along the road to Great Falls are two
filling stations. The area has virtually no public water or
sewerage facilities, the majority of .hoses being served by
wells and septic fields.
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Into such an area it is ro ssd
i building would be the second
largest Government office building in the United States--second
only to the Pentagon, It would contain approximately 1,610,000
net square feet of usable office space. The CIA structure
would be more than two and one half times as large as the.
Justice Department building and six times as large as NNew.State.
At the reported figure of 100 square teat of office space_por
employee, the CIA building Mould Barre room for over 1
EXDeCtOl The Fairfax Count 74,
y, p ":stiff
y
estimated conservatively that a building for onl
000 to
10,000 employees would bring with it an additional
X3,000
,
residents, including the necessary service workers;. other'
estimates have been higher. Within a decade the planning staff
said the population of the Langley area Wad "nearly double."
Inevitably, that huge population'increase would mean
commercial construction, mass housing and other drastic changes
in a rural-residential section. This is what Paul C. Watt,
director of the National Capital Regional Planning Council,
found after study: "The impact of,such apropos installation
would require . . . a greater area for medium to low density
single-.family lots possibly some duplex and multi.family
areas and a proportionate increase in commercial and industrial
land use. There would be pressure on the planning and overn-
ing bodies to probably go beyond what they might feel is
reasonable in view of assumed population growth and capital
improvement costs. . . The impact of the proposed agency upon
the land use and zoning practices would be.depeadent to a great
extent upon the ability of the local planning agency and the
county governing body to maintain reasonable control. of. land.
development. Past experience in similar circumstances indicate
that this is demanding an almost impossible task of these
citizen bodies in view of the.normal land speculation that
follows."
And this impact will fall on a'community already coping
with i
d
na
equate public facilities. For examples
It has been proposed to rush extension of the
George Was ton tiemorial Parkway the, Langley site, and
the State of Virginia has agreed o 'improve -a section of...the
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road from Chain Bridge. It has been sugteated that this will.....
meet the road problem. One might as well say that to build
the Shirley Highway from Washington to the Pentagon and stop
it there would have been adequate for that installation.
Even with the pproposed expenditure of over ;10,000 000
for roads there will be both built-in bottlenecks and dead
ends. Chain Bridge, a two-lane crossing with inadequate
approaches, will be a major problem for the huge new streams
of traffic. Both the parkway and the four-lane road from
Chain Bridge will come to a dead-end at Langley. Presumably
all traffic generated by the Parkway and all traffic to the
installation from Fairfax County are to travel over the
existing two-lane road through the village of McLean or the
18-foot wide winding road to Great Falls. Direct access from
Maryland would have to await the far-distant date -- not even
on a priority schedule -- when Congress considers still another
bridge beyond the one now being discussed.
Use of the area's slim allotment of Virginia road funds
on one major, otherwise unscheduled project will mean little
help for local roads for years. Furthermore, it is now assumed
that existing appropriations will cover the right of way costs
for the Parkway, but fir. Watt warned in his report: "In view
of the publicity relating to this installation there is serious
doubt that the funds now available would be sufficient because
of probable speculative raises in land values." And. Arlington
County has expressed the belief that, with CIA traffic, a six-
lane instead of the planned four-lane highway would be needed.
Othgr Facilitlelt - Arrangements are said to have
been may to supply a CIA building itself with water and
sewerage. But this will do nothing to service the large new
population. The water table is already falling in the area,
and accelerated development will dry up existing wells.
The Langley-McLean area now has only one public school.
The Fairfax planning staff estimated that the additional
population brought in by CIA would include enough school-age
children to fill at least three more schools in the immediate
area, and six in the whole county.
In other words, we believe it is not enough'to may, as..,..
CIA has said, 'that it will build a dignified building and have
some grass and trees around it no the neighborhood will be un-_
disturbed. Putting a "Little Pentagon" in a rural=residential
area will have a major and damaging impact.
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We thinit the situati9r6was summed up accurately by
Mr. Max S. Wehrly directly' of the Urban Land Institute and
member of the Regional Planning Council, who reported after
study:
"The particular site [Langley l proposed for
this installation lies in one of the sections of
Northern Virginia least able to accomodate it in
terms of existing or foreseeable access, utilities
and services, or its disruptive effect upon the
present character and desirable development of the
area."
Potential Park Land. - I would guess that many of yyo~u
are unaware that congress, in the Capper-Crampton Act of 1930,
authorized the National Capital Planning Commission to take
over all or most of the proposed site at Langley for ppaark pur
poses. (46 Stat. 482) This land is the only substantial Cpi en
of U.S. Government property on the Virginia shore above
Bridge. It has meadows, forests and a mile and a half of river
front overlooking the magnificent Potomac gorge which Congress
sought to preserve in establishing the George Washington
Memorial Parkway system. Plans for a park are now being
actively pressed independently of this dispute over.the CIA build-
I-A
that it was ending
ing. After the CIA indi
consideration of Langley Is resident of the area
and former president of the 11cLean Citizens, Association, asked
the Undersecretary of Commerce to prepare a statement of what
part of the Langley tract was. needed by the Bureau Public STAT
Roads and what could be made available for a park.
has been informed that the statement is being draf e . Trie
McLean Citizens, Association has voted, recommending the designa-
tion STAT
of the bulk of the tract for a park and recreation area.
We have requested the National Capital Planning Commission to
consider exercising its statutory authority to set the area aside
for park purposes and we understand the matter will be taken
up at the Commission's next meeting, in August.
Local S mie . - The McLean Citizens' Association,
drawing i s members from the entire area, has voted to. oppose
location of a new CIA building in Langley. Of several sites
now being considered by CIA Langley is the only one in which
the local citizens association has objected. Alexandria, for
example, has warmly invited CIA to locate on a tract which is
already served by all utilities and by a super-highway approach-
ing from both north and south, and a tract which would cost the
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taxpayers less than one twenty-fifth as much as Langley in the
non-building costs connected with a CIA headquarters. The
Alexandria site exactly fits a formal recommendation by the
Nat4onal Capital Planning Commission on April 8 that, if CIA
wishes to locate in Virginia, it choose
"a locality where there is already established a
nucleus for an urban environment which an establish-
ment of such size would stimulate and where public
facilities and services are already available or can
readily be extended such as in the southern part
of Fairfax County, in Springfield, or in the newly
annexed portion of Alexandria."
We believe that if any other agency of Government came
to Congress and said it had to locate its headquarters on
potential park land, in the middle of a residential suburb,
against; the wishes of the locality and at a cost greatly exceed-
ing that of normal sites for an office building, Congress would
quickly end such ideas. We respect CIA and its director, and
we recognize the agency's important function in the Cold War.
But we do not know any reason why CIA, to perform that function,
rust violate all the principles of economy and good planning.
I would like to urge the Congress Dot to appropriate
the extra y8.5 million or more which the Langley site entails.
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