At CIA's 'Stealthy Starbucks,' even baristas stay covert

WASHINGTON - 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 around the world do.

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for all I care," said a food services supervisor at the Central Intelligence Agency, asking that his identity remain unpublished for security reasons.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, Va.

Welcome to the "Stealthy Starbucks," as a few officers affectionately call it.

Or "Store Number 1," as the receipts cryptically say.

The baristas go through rigorous interviews and background checks, and 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 secret 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, both in the morning and midafternoon, can stretch down the hallway. According to agency lore, one senior official, annoyed by the amount of time employees were wasting, was known to approach someone at the back of the line and whisper, "What have you done for your country today?"

This coffee shop looks pretty much like any other Starbucks, with blond wooden chairs and tables, blueberry and raspberry scones lining the bakery cases, and progressive folk rock floating from the speakers. (There are plans to redecorate, possibly including spy paraphernalia from over the decades.)

But the manager said this shop "has a special mission," to help humanize the environment for employees, who work under high pressure, often in windowless offices, and can't fiddle with their smartphones during downtime. For security, they have to leave the phones in their cars.

One agent said she occasionally runs into old high school and college friends in line at Starbucks. Until then, they didn't know they worked together. Such surprise reunions are not uncommon. Working at the agency is not something to e-mail or write Facebook posts about, she said.

"Coffee culture is just huge in the military, and many in the CIA come from that culture," said Vince Houghton, an intelligence expert and curator at the International Spy Museum in Washington. "Urban myth says the CIA Starbucks is the busiest in the world, and to me that makes perfect sense. This is a population who have to be alert and spend hours poring through documents. If they miss a word, people can die."

The nine baristas who work here are frequently briefed about security risks.

"We say, if someone is really interested in where they work and asks too many questions, then they need to tell us," the supervisor said.