CIA paramilitary training base in N.C.

Harvey Point N.C. houses a secret training base for an elite CIA unit known as the SAS (Special Activities Staff). While not much is known about the group it is known that it is paramilitary and chock full of ex Navy Seals and Army Special Applications Group (Delta Force). This base is the bomb training school for CIA paramilitary types.

The very first American casualty in the war in Afghanistan, Johnny "Mike" Spann was a member of the secret CIA unit and likely trained at Harvey point.

I was wondering if anyone else knew of any other training bases in the U.S.? I mean besides the "officially non-existant" Camp Peary aka "The Farm" near Williamsburg, VA.

Here are some links about Harvey Point

cryptome.org...
With Sat. Photo's!!!!!

www.indyweek.com...
After 41 years of explosive training at a secret base in eastern North Carolina, the CIA's paramilitary wing is back on the front lines. For the base's neighbors in nearby Hertford, the echo of bombs is business as usual--and nobody's business.

www.globalsecurity.org...
"At the end of the day, the most important aspect of these operations is that no one knows about them," Mr. Heyman explained, adding that the CIA will go to extraordinary lengths to protect the identities and activities of its paramilitary agents.

"One of the great worries is that one of these guys is going to get killed. No man is irreplaceable, but these guys almost are. They are almost the jewel in the crown," he said. "They are so out of the ordinary, so valuable, that losing one or two of them can be an absolute disaster."

looks pretty interesting stuff might see what i can find out about it. Maybe a look at Google Earth too.

The CIA faces far fewer accountability problems with Congress than does the Pentagon, said John Pike, director of the Washington-based nonprofit policy group GlobalSecurity.org.

"The CIA's capabilities and activities are intended to be unacknowledged. They are employed in countries where the fact of an American military presence would be damaging," he said.

Mr. Heyman concurred: "It's terribly political. It means the secretary of defense or the president can stand up before Congress and declare, 'We do not have any military forces in this area.' The CIA can do what it has to do in isolation."

those statements just stood out to me. not only can covert military operations be plausibly denied, but countless other "operations" can be as well -- from UFO's to sanctioned assassinations.

Originally posted by el cid

The CIA faces far fewer accountability problems with Congress than does the Pentagon, said John Pike, director of the Washington-based nonprofit policy group GlobalSecurity.org.

"The CIA's capabilities and activities are intended to be unacknowledged. They are employed in countries where the fact of an American military presence would be damaging," he said.

Mr. Heyman concurred: "It's terribly political. It means the secretary of defense or the president can stand up before Congress and declare, 'We do not have any military forces in this area.' The CIA can do what it has to do in isolation."

those statements just stood out to me. not only can covert military operations be plausibly denied, but countless other "operations" can be as well -- from UFO's to sanctioned assassinations.

I agree, anytime a beaurocrat insinuates that an a department within the Federal Government is immune to scrutiny it's cause for concern.

What else bothers me is this close to residentials areas, what is in the compounds that make up military explosives and how contamination is getting into the ground and water supply.

I do understand the need to train competent agents in the dark arts needed to keep us safe but sometimes I wonder about excessive secrecy.

Impressive. You're the only guy I've seen that knew about it. At all.

They're under OMA, and yes, they're mainly staffed by SOCOM 'graduates'. It's sort of like a real-life 'mission impossible' group. Working SAS or SAS support is a plum job. There's usually about 75 in the active side and maybe 150-200 in the support team.

People don't understand what these people do or the value of their missions. They sure as hell can't understand the commitment it must take and fortitude it requires to get to that point. The CIA gets a bad wrap, some earned some not.

What bothers me though is that beaurocrats get to use them as pawns and then get to deny knowledge when things get too "hot".

Well, first you have to be the very best from what's already an elite group. Then you have to be willing to take your military career, and chunk it. That sort of weeds through the candidates, I'd suspect.

The support side guys are all top notch too. PhD's with attitudes, 160th 'graduates', no-nonsense engineering types culled from LANL and the like. They have to give up what they're doing too. You won't be publishing any scholarly works from SAS, you just drop off the face of the world for a while, and the family/personal life would have to be pretty damned abnormal.

On your first question about other training camps, are you confident that you understand the rules for soliciting restricted information? I know there's some legal questions in that woodpile, if you actually get an answer having solicited the info, it may be possible to hit you with a conspiracy charge if They®'re really irritated about it. I'm not sure anyone's ever actually been hit with that, but I do know it's a class of thing They® really do react to in a less than positive way.

ps
Not that I care in a personal way, but I know at least one alphabet soup agency that actively scans these forums for solicitations and pays visits. I don't know if CIA gives a rip. A couple of the other ones, they do, and in a big way at times.

[edit on 14-7-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

You have a good point. Maybe it's best to word things a little wiser. I get curious as do alot of people and my intentions are not malicious but I know anything can be made to look that way. I appreciate the advice, I wonder though, what does it say about us when we live in a world where curiousity really can kill the cat.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discourage you. I'm a techie not a spook, so in theory I couldn't care less.

It's just that a lot of the first and second hand stories I know of where rude people with pointed questions are dispatched to someone's houses involve solicitation. Oddly enough it's one of those things that pisses them right off. Some agencies will blow a fuse for that faster than just about anything else, DIA comes to mind. I don't know about CIA. But I could imagine SAS + solicitation might be a hot button.

There's some particular way to do it that seems to be acceptable, I'm not aware of what the rules are. Some guys (Janes, Aviation Leak) just nakedly solicit for classified info and don't seem to be bothered, go figure what's up with that.

ps having considered it, it may be that They® have some level of quid-pro-quo with "professional journalists" that solicit and actually obtain this sort of material, and Janes may let them know they're going to publish on topic X. With a random guy on the net, it might be instant spill, and a lot less professional negotiation room than they have with Av Week.

[edit on 14-7-2006 by Tom Bedlam]