Spy Bases: 9 Secretive HQs of the World's Intelligence Agencies

Architecture is a language, one used by institutions to say something about themselves.

The same basic principle is true for the world's spy agencies. All show their secrecy in their buildings, while some may appear starkly utilitarian, and some may even be frightening and alienating. But they also have their quirks and differences, whether it be an isolated complex hidden by trees, in a location that's never been officially disclosed, or a prominent complex built by superstar architects and put on prominent display in the middle of a capital city.

From Virginia to Berlin to Moscow, here are nine of them.

Above:

United States: Central Intelligence Agency

If John Brennan becomes the next CIA director ' a likely event ' he'll be working from inside a complex that could blend into a business park anywhere in America. But this park contains the headquarters of America's foreign intelligence agency.

Protected from prying eyes by a wooded belt in suburban Langley, Virginia, just northwest of Washington, D.C., the complex is actually two sets of buildings connected to a central core, with each set built at different times. The first half of the building and designed by New York architecture firm Harrison and Abramovitz ' who had a role in designing the United Nations headquarters ' dates back to 1963. It's a sign of its times, and built from sterile pre-fabricated concrete. Though the Headquarters Auditorium (seen at top), also known as "The Bubble" took its cue from post-war futurism. But by the 1980s, the agency was running out of space. Today, the complex is much larger, with an added west wing of two glass office towers, designed by Detroit architects Smith, Hinchman & Grylls in the 1980s.

The CIA also has a penchant for art and assorted knick-knacks. The agency has a chunk of the Berlin Wall on display, and an A-12 Oxcar spy plane. There's a museum inside the building with all sorts of weird memorabilia inside, from a robotic fish to a Cold War-era mini-submarine (seen above). Outside the cafeteria on the grounds of the headquarters' new wing is the copper sculpture Kryptos, containing 869 encrypted characters on four plates. The final plate, with its 97 characters, is still unbroken. The cafeteria is remarkably pleasant and airy for a government building, actually, with enormous windows and green views. (The food, however, is not quite as pleasing.)

Photos: Central Intelligence Agency

With Cash and Commandos, U.S. Escalates Its Battle Against the Mexican Cartels

The U.S. military is getting ready to send its elite troops to help in the fight against Mexico's drug lords. American special operations forces will expand their training of Mexican commando teams, teaching them to hunt cartel chieftains like they were al-Qaida extremists. It's a sign the U.S. is preparing for a long shadow war against the cartels.

The training, detailed in documents obtained by the Associated Press, will be reportedly conducted under an expanded special operations program based at the U.S. Army Northern Command's headquarters ' which oversees the Pentagon's military operations on the continent. The program has previously tutored 'Mexican military, intelligence, and law enforcement officials to study U.S. counterterrorist operations,' according to the AP. But in a memo reportedly obtained by the news agency, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta authorized an expansion of the program that could 'eventually triple from 30 [people] to 150,' placing a general instead of a lieutenant colonel in charge, and creating a new headquarters.

That doesn't mean the U.S troops will be hunting the cartels themselves. American officials reportedly deny that special forces will be operating within Mexico, due to Mexican laws preventing foreign agents from operating on national soil with weapons. But the U.S. government has other means to attack the cartels ' including the power of the purse.

The Treasury Department on Thursday slapped sanctions on an obscure but deadly drug cartel that's been gaining strength of late. The Treasury Department calls them the Meza Flores Drug Trafficking Organization, named after its leader, Isidro Meza Flores or 'Chapito Isidro.' And on Thursday, the department announced it has added the group to its list of designated foreign narcotics traffickers. Under a U.S. law called the Kingpin Act, that freezes the group's assets within U.S. borders and allows the government to slap hefty penalties on U.S. citizens caught doing business with them.

But in Mexico, the group has gone by other names, such Los Mazatlecos and La Oficina, or 'The Office.' They are 'one of the primary rivals to the Sinaloa Cartel in the Mexican state of Sinaloa,' the Treasury Department noted in a statement. Because of this, the cartel has fought an 'extremely violent turf war ' which has resulted in the quadrupling of drug-war killings in the last four years and an increase in kidnappings and arson within the state of Sinaloa.'

The cartel is also responsible for smuggling vast amounts of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine into the United States, according to the Treasury Department. In addition to sanctioning the cartel, the U.S. has also moved to add Chapito Isidro's family to its list, including his wife, parents, sister and uncles. Also on the list are several companies allegedly owned by the family, including a gas station, a 'grain transportation company,' and a construction company.

But Chapito Isidro and his gang have also been a thorn in the side of the Sinaloa Cartel for several years. His group first came to public attention after kidnapping and killing two people 'as a threat to their criminal rivals,' according to Tijuana news magazine Zeta. He's 'considered a young man, shrewd and very bloody,' noted the magazine. He's been allegedly involved in the drug trade since the 1990s, and the U.S. believes he's operated out of the town of Guasave, Sinaloa, since 2000. He also reportedly controls territory throughout northern Sinaloa and the Baja California resort towns of Los Cabos and La Paz, and has been bolstered by an alliance with drug lord Hector Beltran Leyva, the surviving leader of the fading Beltran Leyva Cartel.

It's also a wonder how he's survived deep in Sinaloa's home territory. One theory has it that Chapito Isidro has used Sinaloa's mountains north of Guasave ' near the town of Choix ' to outmaneuver both the Sinaloa Cartel and the military, mounting ambushes in narrow passes with the help of gunmen and vehicles sent by allies among the Zetas.

The cartel has also been referred to as an amalgam of gangsters from different groups all out to destroy the Sinaloa Cartel. But the Mexican attorney general's office has since considers the group to be 'a new criminal organization reaching the rank of cartel' with the 'structure, violence and danger,' according to Zeta. That's not good news, because it wasn't like we were running low on drug cartels. But there's seemingly no shortage of U.S. and Mexican commandos either.

Air Force Evacuates Some Hostages Freed from Algeria Oil Field Chaos

Updated, 10:17 a.m.

A U.S. Air Force C-130 medical transport plane landed in Algeria on Friday morning to evacuate some of the hostages freed from their terrorist captors during a chaotic Algerian military operation. But confusing reports indicate the chaos at the In Amenas oil field continues into its third day.

CNN first reported that the heavy cargo plane landed in Algeria to evacuate '10-20 hostages' freed after the Algerian military launched a helicopter-borne assault on terrorists who captured the oil field on Wednesday. The plane, outfitted to carry medical equipment and treat wounded passengers, has been 'on the ground since earlier this morning,' Benjamin Benson, a spokesman for the U.S. Africa Command, told Danger Room. Its destination has yet to be determined.

There may still be hostages at In Amenas or otherwise in the custody of the group that seized the oil field. 'I don't know if it's everybody' on board the C-130, Benson said. While the ex-hostages are of 'various nationalities,' it's unclear if Americans are among them.

'I don't know the conditions, and if there are any deceased people, I don't know,' Benson said, describing the medical evacuation as occurring 'in coordination with Algeria.'

About 30 people were believed to be taken hostage by a terror group described as aligned with al-Qaida, first described as a response to France's military strike on Islamic extremists in nearby northern Mali. But the ability of the insurgents to surprise, seize and hold an oil field where over 600 people worked suggests to some, like Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chairs the House intelligence committee, that the operation was planned long in advance.

The Algerians launched a counterstrike on the oil field on Thursday that appears not to have resolved the situation. While details about the strike are unclear, the Algerian government used helicopter strikes and commandos to free the hostages, but at least six of them were killed in an effort that the Associated Press describes as 'bloody chaos.' An unarmed U.S. surveillance drone was dispatched to the scene.

Algeria is apparently sensitive to the perception that it requires the help of the United States to free the oil field. A U.S. official said late Thursday afternoon that Algeria did not alert Washington in advance of the counterstrike, and the administration had urged the Algerian government to prioritize the safety of the hostages.

Pentagon officials are declining all comment, an indication that the hostage crisis continues.

The AP cited Mauritanian media as indicating the extremist group wishes to trade two U.S. hostages still in its custody for the freedom of 'jailed terror figures.' Reuters reports that those figures aren't in Algerian custody, but U.S. jails, and they're major luminaries in the Islamic-extremist world: 'Blind Sheikh' Omar Abdul Rahman and Aafia Siddiqui, sentenced in 2010 for conspiracy to murder Americans in Afghanistan. (Terrorist expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross calls it a 'boilerplate demand' indicating the group doesn't intend to negotiate.) Algerian state media reports that about 60 foreign hostages remain unaccounted for. Algerian state media reported later in the morning that 'nearly 100' of the 132 non-Algerians believed to have been kidnapped are now free.

In a statement released Friday, BP, one of the oil companies that worked on the oil field, indicated that some of its personnel may still be in captivity.

'There is a small number of BP employees at In Amenas whose current location and situation remain uncertain,' the company stated. 'BP is working with the Algerian government and authorities to confirm their status. We do not intend to publicly comment on details of the number, nationalities or identities of these staff.'

We'll update this post as we acquire more information.

Secret Nuclear Redesign Will Keep U.S. Subs Running Silently for 50 Years

The U.S. Navy is betting the future of its submarine force on a secret and revolutionary nuclear drive system that aspires to be more efficient and quieter than anything under the water today.

The heart of the planned ballistic missile Ohio Replacement (OR) program will be built around a drive that will not need to be refueled for the 50-year life of the boats and cuts out potentially noisy direct mechanical connection to the drive train. In other words, the Navy's next-gen subs could be almost silent, and keep running for a half-century straight.

The Navy's ballistic missile fleet, or boomers, rely on stealth to hide from rival boats, ships and sub-hunting aircraft. The quieter the boat, the harder it is to find. (And these boats are big: the current Ohio boomer is more than a football field and half long displacing 19,000 tons.)

Now the Navy is developing an innovation that attempts to give OR boomers the quietest nuclear engine yet by 'going to [an] electric drive,' Sean Stackley, the Navy's chief weapons buyer, said in a January interview with the U.S. Naval Institute.

Current boomers have a direct mechanical connection to the props that drive the boat. Steam turbines driven by the nuclear power plant go through a series of mechanical gears that translate the high torque power from the nuclear plant into lower torque energy needed to propel the ship. All of those mechanical connections can generate noise, the bane of the submariner.

Moving forward, the Navy wants to use the power from the reactor to create an elaborate electrical grid inside of the submarine. The reactor power would feed the grid and in turn the electric motors that would drive the boats. Eliminating the mechanical connection would mean less noise under water. The set up would also free up power previously devoted to driving the ship. Currently anywhere from 75 to 80 percent of the power from a nuclear submarine is devoted to driving the ship through the water. Extra power could be routed to other systems like sonars and potentially unmanned underwater vehicles.

This will be the second try for the Navy to use electric drive subs. The service experimented with the technology in the 1960s and 1970s but found the boats equipped with the drives to be underpowered and maintenance heavy.

Unlike other programs, the Navy hasn't gone out of its way to tout the electric drive technology it plans to use for the OR boomers. A 2010 Analysis of Alternatives for the OR program, then known as the SSBN(X), was closely held by the service. Gene Taylor, the chairman of the Seapower subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee at the time, demanded publicly that Congress get a chance to evaluate the proposal. He lost his 2010 election and the Navy kept specifics mostly quiet.

Among the details they have discussed, in addition to the electric drive, is the development of a new nuclear power plant for the OR boats.

'There is investment in the front end in the reactor plant to arrive at a core that will last the life of the boat,' Stackley said.

Now, the Navy's nuclear fleet requires a mid-life refueling and overhaul that can keep a ship or submarine out of commission for almost three years with a cost in the billions.

'By eliminating that midlife refueling, you effectively get greater operational availability out of the boat,' Stackley said.

The standard ratio for ballistic missile submarines on patrol to subs in port is about four to one. Currently the navy fields 14 Ohio-class boomers packing 24 Trident II D5 intercontinental ballistic missiles. (The first four Ohios were converted to carry missiles with conventional warheads).

'There are still going to be midlife upgrades but the refueling portion is effectively eliminated which allows us to reduce from today's 14 Ohios to reduce down to 12 Ohio Replacements,' Stackley said.

The original Ohio-class builder General Dynamics Electric Boat hasn't built a boomer in more than 20 years and the durability of the drive and the boats to last until 2080 is a tall order.

Added to the pressure is a Pentagon imposed cost cap that reduce the cost of the boat from about $7 to 8 billion down to $4.9 billion. But the Navy will have little margin for error if they want to keep the price tag that low.

The Navy has already delayed work two years as part of its 2013 budget. Currently the first OR boat is scheduled to begin construction in 2021 for a decade-long construction and development process. The super-silent boat is scheduled to make its first patrol in 2031. After that, you may never hear from it again.

U.S. Shoots Down Secret Report That Syria Used a Hallucinogen Weapon

The State Department is publicly discounting claims made by its own diplomats about a chemical weapons attack in Syria.

On Tuesday, Foreign Policy detailed a secret and previously unknown cable from the U.S. consulate in Istanbul which came to the explosive conclusion that Syrian government forces dropped a hallucinogen known as 'Agent 15' on rebels in the town of Homs on December 23.

But less than a day later, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland has denied the report, saying that the Foreign Policy story 'did not accurately convey the anecdotal information that we had received from a third party regarding an alleged incident in Syria in December.'

'At the time we looked into the allegations that were made and the information that we had received, and we found no credible evidence to corroborate or to confirm that chemical weapons were used,' she added. That's a major deal, because the international community has repeatedly told the Assad Regime in Syria that the use of chemical weapons is beyond unacceptable. The White House issued a statement along similar lines.

U.S. officials contacted by Danger Room said the information in the cable originated from a contractor hired by the State Department to monitor opposition media coming from Syria. After the attack in Homs, rebel activists posted gut-wrenching videos to YouTube of gasping victims crying out in agony. In the clips, opposition figures claimed that they had been hit with a poison gas ' maybe a nerve agent, maybe a hallucinogen.

American experts could find little in the videos that corroborated either chemical weapons story. (For one thing, hallucinogens and nerve agents have almost opposite symptoms and treatment regimes.) In the hours after the attack, U.S. officials expressed skepticism about the rebel claims. The bit about Agent 15 seemed particularly odd; while the U.S. military experimented on its own troops with hallucinogens, there was yet to be a proven case of the the agent being used in anger on the battlefield. Nevertheless, according to CNN, the State Department did ask 'a U.S. partner' to follow up, interviewing Syrian doctors and chemical weapons specialists.

CNN says that the gas was determined to be a 'riot control agent' ' a broad category of weapons that includes tear gas, pepper spray, and Agent 15. None of these agents are designed to be deadly. But they're also not designed to be inhaled in large quantities. 'Just like with tear gas, if you breathe in an entire canister, that can have a severe effect on your lungs and other organs,' one official tells CNN.

In other words, if a chemical was used in Homs, it wasn't a weapon of mass destruction.

It almost certainly wasn't a hallucinogen, either. CNN also interviewed a doctor who said he treated victims in Homs with atropine. If that's true, it rules out the use of a hallucinogen like Agent 15. Both are anticholinergic agents, blocking the neurotransmitters in the parasympathetic nervous system. One would only enhance the effect of the other. CNN says experts concluded that the Homs attack 'was later determined not to be Agent 15.'

The issue of chemical weapons continues to loom over the conflict in Syria. The regime's stockpiles are enormous, and they'be shown the willingness to prepare at least some of the agents for a possible attack. But for now, the U.S. government appears to have decided that, whatever happened in Homs, it didn't cross the chemical 'red line' that the President on down had pledged would trigger outside intervention into the civil war.

This Is The Arsenal Hitting Mali's Militants

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

By air and by land, the French military is on the attack in the embattled West African state of Mali. Ten months after the takeover of the country's north by al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic militants, a sudden assault by rebel forces towards the capital of Bamako on Friday provoked a powerful response by France, Mali's former colonial ruler.

French drones scouted targets as warplanes dropped bombs and helicopter gunships launched missiles. Tanker planes supported the aerial armada while rented and borrowed airlifters hauled in troops and armored vehicles to Bamako. On Wednesday French and Malian ground forces headed north from the capital to do battle with the militants.

"The real question is, now what?" said Army Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command. The Pentagon is considering adding it own drones and support forces to the French "Operation Serval," but U.S. leaders are understandably reluctant given the tenacity of rebel resistance and the potential for a drawn-out conflict.

What follows are the 10 most important weapons of the fighting so far in Mali. Most of them are French, although Paris' allies and one private company have also contributed hardware. If the war drags on much longer and the U.S. gets involved, the major weaponry of the Mali war could start looking a lot more familiar to American audiences.

Franco-Drone

The French Ministry of Defense operates just a handful of drones, incuding the Harfang, a version of Israel's Heron Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The Harfangs have stayed busy supporting French forces in Afghanistan in recent years, but with France on its way out of that country, the drones became available again. Last fall Paris reportedly deployed unspecified UAVs to southern Mali to monitor rebel troops controlling the north. The drones undoubtedly helped locate targets in advance of a potential large-scale intervention. "It is no secret that there is military planning going on," an unnamed diplomatic source told The Guardian at the time.

Photo: French Ministry of Defense

Pentagon Swears It Won't Sell Killer Drones to Afghanistan, Just Spy Ones

Yesterday, when Afghan president Hamid Karzai boasted that the U.S. was about to give him his own fleet of drones, you may have been tempted to see the mercurial leader with his hand on the joystick of an armed Predator. Please disabuse yourself of that notion. The Pentagon confirmed on Tuesday that it's in talks to sell the Afghans drones. But the drones will be tiny, low-flying, and unarmed.

The Defense Department is currently negotiating with the Afghan government to sell it military helicopters, airlift transport planes and other hardware. That weapons package 'does include unmanned systems,' Lt. Cmdr. William Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman, tells Danger Room.

But don't expect the Afghans to suddenly get Predators ' or anything like them. The iconic armed American drone can stay aloft for an entire day until it takes out a suspected militant with a Hellfire missile. The Afghans will likely get the Raven, a four-pound, hand-launched surveillance drone that can fly for an hour or so. The U.S. Army alone has over 5,300 unarmed Ravens at last count. Replace the high-end infrared camera with something more modest, and you buy something awfully similar yourself for a couple hundred bucks.

The possible drone sale came up during discussions at the Pentagon last week between Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and President Karzai. Upon returning to Afghanistan, Karzai told a press conference that the U.S. would soon supply the Afghan security forces with the unarmed drones. 'They will train Afghans to fly them, use them and maintain them,' Karzai said on Monday, per The New York Times.

Karzai is slightly ahead of the Pentagon. There's no finalized deal for the drone fleet. The Pentagon is still talking with the Afghans about how many small spy drones it's willing to sell the Afghans. Nor do Pentagon officials have a sense of when they'll finalize a deal for the weapons sales. Apparently the drones are not the highest priorities for either military in the forthcoming arms deal: transport aircraft are. Drones were not part of the Afghans' 'wish list' for weapons purchases, first reported last month by The Wall Street Journal.

Ravens are among the easier drones to operate. Unlike Predators or Reapers, which require giant refrigerated boxes to house their remote pilots and all the hardware needed to fly them, Raven operators stare into a kind of viewfinder-type doohickey to fly the drones one way or another and see what the camera picks up. (Here's a video demonstrating it.) It's much less complicated than flying a helicopter.

There's some sleight of hand about the degree to which the impending deal can be called a weapons purchase. After all, the U.S. bankrolls the Afghan National Security Forces: The Obama administration asked for $5.7 billion for the Afghans in the defense bill that Congress still hasn't finished. In a sense, the U.S. would be handing the Afghans money to buy its drones, making it more of a weapons transfer than a sale.

Semantics aside, the likely transfer/sale means that Afghanistan's skies won't be free of drones after the U.S. completes its handover of security to the Afghan military in 2014. Afghanistan is already the epicenter of the U.S.' drone wars: Air Force statistics released Monday record 504 drone strikes in Afghanistan in 2012, vastly more than the 43 fired into neighboring Pakistan last year. (Chances are, if U.S. forces remain in Afghanistan after 2014, so will their drones, especially to continue striking Pakistan.) Afghanistan's future drone fleet won't be nearly as deadly, but Afghans will still be watched from the skies.

Biggest irony of all of the impending sale: Should the Taliban actually negotiate a deal with Karzai's government to end the war, the Taliban might gain access to the small drones that its U.S. adversaries used to spy on them.