Camp Peary
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Camp Peary is a military reservation in York County near Williamsburg, Virginia. Officially it is referred to as the Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity (AFETA) under the auspices of the Department of Defense, but it is widely believed to be the location of a covert CIA training facility known as "The Farm". It has a sister facility, "The Point", located in Hertford, North Carolina.
Camp Peary has about 9,275 acres (38 km²) of land, of which about 8,000 acres are unimproved or only partially improved. The 100 acre (400,000 m²) Biglers Millpond occupies the site adjacent to the York River. It has been closed to the public since 1951, and as of 2007 access still is highly restricted.
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[edit] World War II, relocations of residents
During World War II, beginning in 1942, the U.S. Navy took over a large area on the north side of the Virginia Peninsula in York County, Virginia which became known as Camp Peary, initially for use as a Seabee training base. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) extended a spur track from its Richmond-Newport News main line tracks to the site from nearby Williamsburg and established Magruder Station near the former unincorporated town of Magruder.
As part of the process of converting the property to a military reservation, all residents of the entire towns of Magruder and Bigler's Mill had to vacate. The town of Magruder was a traditionally African-American community established for freedmen after the American Civil War. It had been named for Confederate General John B. Magruder. A civil war field hospital had occupied the site of Bigler's Mill near the York River.
Although the graves in the church cemetery were not moved, many of the residents and the local Mount Gilead Baptist Church were relocated to the Grove community, located on U.S. Route 60 in adjacent James City County a few miles away, where a number of displaced residents from Lackey had earlier relocated under similar circumstances during World War I when what is now the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown was created.
[edit] Seabee training
The first WW II Seabee recruits were the men who helped build Boulder Dam, America's highways and New York City skyscrapers. At Naval Construction Training Centers and Advanced Base Depots established on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, Seabees were taught military discipline and the use of light arms.
At the outset of the War, the preliminary training of the Seabees had been carried out at various Naval Training Stations throughout the country. In Virginia, after completing three weeks of boot training at Camp Allen, and later its successor, Camp Peary, the Seabees were formed into construction battalions or other types of construction units. Soon, however, another mission had been idnetified for Camp Peary. All preliminary and advanced specialized training for Seabees was changed to be conducted at Camp Allen and Camp Bradford at Norfolk, Virginia, where both were an integral part of the Naval Operating Base.
[edit] German prisoners-of-war
The mission of Camp Peary changed as the War progressed and a new need presented itself to the U.S. Navy. It became a stockade for special German prisoners-of-war. The prisoners-of-war kept at Camp Peary were not just an ordinary sort, but rather, many came from captured German submarine and ship crews which the Germans had thought lost-at-sea with crews presumed dead. Thus, extra secrecy was necessary.
[edit] Post World War II use
Turned loose by the Navy in 1946, Camp Peary became a Virginia state forestry and game reserve for five years. Then, in 1951, the Navy returned to the property and announced it closed to the public; it has been that way ever since.
In June of 1961, two months after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Navy announced it was officially opening a new facility at Harvey Point base, in Hertford, North Carolina. A spokesman said that all four branches of the military would conduct "testing and evaluation of various classified materials and equipment" at the new site. He added that some of the training "now being done at Camp Perry, Va., will be transferred to Harvey Point."
[edit] The Farm
Camp Peary later became well-known as "The Farm", a training facility for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), although this has never been formally acknowledged by the U.S. Government. The roads and many structures of Magruder and Bigler's Mill are apparently still there and many are occupied. An airport with a 5000 foot runway was added to the facility near the site of Bigler's Mill.
In 1972, the Virginia Gazette newspaper of Williamsburg reported that CIA agents were trained as assassins on base. The CIA replied that was nonsense. "None of its people," the agency said, "had ever been trained or used as assassins."
[edit] Involvement in extraordinary renditions
At least 11 of the flights involved in the CIA's network of so-called extraordinary rendition flights are known to have landed at the airstrip at Camp Peary.[citation needed]
[edit] Trivia
- Many of the German prisoners-of-war who were secretly kept at Camp Peary during World War II did local farm work, and some liked the area so much that they remained and applied to become U.S. citizens afterwards.
- The town of Magruder is considered one of the Lost counties, cities and towns of Virginia. This, as well as the current reported uses of Camp Peary, may be somewhat ironic as the town's namesake, General "Prince John" Magruder, was considered a master of deceptive tactics in the Confederate Army.
- While most of Camp Peary is in York County, a small portion of the large military reservation near Skimino Creek at the western edge is actually located in James City County.
- "Porto Bello", the hunting lodge of Lord Dunmore, last royal governor of Virginia, still stands on the grounds of Camp Peary. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
