Congressional Country Club, in Bethesda, was used as an OSS training facility during WWII (Photo: Keith Allison)
Spying might seem like a high-stakes battle of wits rooted in the Cold War, but the trail of espionage in and around the nation's capital traces back more than 200 years to spymaster George Washington’s study at Mount Vernon. Moles and sleuths have trod the terrain ever since in under-the-radar operations at hundreds of sites in the area.
From the halls of government to suburban neighborhoods there are scores of dead drops, covert meeting places, and secret facilities—a constellation of clandestine sites unknown to even the most avid history buff. H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace uncover spy histories spanning the Civil War to the modern-day war on terror, weaving incredible true stories of derring-do and double-crosses that put even the best spy fiction to shame.
Wallace is the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency's Office of Technical Service, and Melton is an intelligence historian and author. Their book, Spy Sites of Washington, DC (Georgetown University Press) is available for sale and signing after the program.
