Archive image: Elon Musk, South African entrepreneur, business magnate and investor, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and X (formely Twitter).
Musk’s CIA blunder: Secret spy base accidentally exposed by Doge in government sell-off.
Credit: Shutterstock, cristiano barni
A top-secret CIA base in northern Virginia was reportedly blown wide open after it featured in a government property sell-off list – only to vanish from the final draft in an apparent bid to keep it under wraps.
The covert site was included in a recent inventory of buildings to be sold off by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (known as Doge), according to Bloomberg. Although more than 500 properties initially appeared on Doge’s cost-cutting rollcall, around 100 were quietly cut from the final version – among them this top-secret facility.
Officials hope the property purge will slash costs for the federal government, which shells out a staggering $5.23 billion a year on office leases. “Why are American taxpayer dollars being spent to maintain empty buildings?” the official Doge account posted in 2024.
America’s ‘worst kept secret’
Local residents, however, were hardly stunned. The base’s presence has long been rumoured, with Wired magazine describing it as the area’s “worst kept secret”. Still, the CIA seems keen to stay low-key – nothing on-site indicates it belongs to Langley’s finest, suggesting the agency isn’t keen for any added attention. Back in 2012, the Business Journal was allegedly the first to report that the CIA’s presence at the facility was widely considered an open secret, but the mystery remains.
The White House has stayed tight-lipped so far. Unsurprisingly, the CIA has refused to comment as well, apparently preferring to maintain a cloak of secrecy over the now not-so-secret facility.
Whether further confidential sites remain hidden away on government property lists is anyone’s guess, but this slip-up has certainly given the public a peek behind the spooks’ curtain. Now, as Doge marches on with its property purge, the intrigue is sure to follow.
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