Ssssh: Top-Secret Baristas Work at 'Stealthy Starbucks' at CIA Headquarters

We’ve heard of people working for the CIA who have to keep their jobs a secret, but covert baristas?

Apparently, baristas who work at the nicknamed “Stealthy Starbucks,” at CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia not only go through intense background checks before they can serve up lattes at Langley, they’re also not allowed to tell people where they work, according to a recent report by WUSA-9 and The Washington Post.

Other ways they do things a little differently at “Stealthy Starbucks” (or Starbucks Number 1, as its receipts reportedly say): They don’t take reward cards (data concerns) and the store isn’t even listed on a Starbucks locator map. Google will show the closest Starbucks actually being 2.8 miles away, over on Dolley Madison Boulevard in McLean.

You also won’t find baristas at the “Stealthy Starbucks” scribbling any names on a cup — apparently that makes the spies in line a little too nervous, according to a recent story about the store in The Washington Post.

Vince Houghton, an intelligence expert and curator at the International Spy Museum told the Post: “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.”

Read The Washington Post story here.