At CIA Starbucks, even the baristas are covert

WaPo ^ | September 27, 2014 | Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

[COUNTrecount]

The new supervisor thought his idea was innocent enough. He wanted the baristas to write the names of customers on their cups to speed up lines and ease confusion, just like other Starbucks do around the world.

But these aren’t just any customers. They are regulars at the CIA Starbucks.

“They could use the alias ‘Polly-O string cheese’ for all I care,” said a food services supervisor at the Central Intelligence Agency, asking that his identity remain unpublished for security reasons. “But giving any name at all was making people — you know, the undercover agents — feel very uncomfortable. It just didn’t work for this location.”

This purveyor of skinny lattes and double cappuccinos is deep inside the agency’s forested Langley, Va., compound.

Welcome to the “Stealthy Starbucks,” as a few officers affectionately call it.

Or “Store Number 1,” as the receipts cryptically say.

The baristas go through rigorous interviews and background checks and need to be escorted by agency “minders” to leave their work area. There are no frequent-customer award cards, because officials fear the data stored on the cards could be mined by marketers and fall into the wrong hands, outing secret agents.

[Alter Kaker]

Maybe it’s because the CIA director is a Muslim. Muzzies drink lots of coffee because alcohol is forbidden them (in the ME, coffee is known as “Arab wine”). Ever notice when there’s an ME or Paki riot of thousands of Muslim males (with never a female in sight), just how jacked up & frenzied they appear? It’s not just Islamic fanaticism, it’s gallons of caffeine blowing a collective gasket. Never been in a Starbucks, never will be. A cup of plain ol’ joe gets my day started, thank you.

Do you live in America? Not sure if you've ever been to that strange country, but America is filled with coffee drinkers. Many of whom aren't even Muslim! Maybe they're proto-terrorists in I-can't-fall-a-sleeper-cells...

[Alter Kaker]

It’s because muslims chew khat all day long which is an amphetamine.

Most Muslims have probably never heard of khat. It's popular in Somalia, Yemen and a few other Muslim countries, but it's essentially unknown elsewhere in the Muslim world. You'd have a lot easier time getting alcohol in Iraq or Afghanistan than you would khat.

[Alter Kaker]

Today I read through comments on this story and see a simple and kind of funny quirky story about Starbucks at the CIA... and the comments degenerate to blaming Islam and homosexuals. And all I can do is shake my head in disbelief. Really people?

Don't you know that coffee drinking causes Islamist terrorism?

[rabidralph]

Spoken like a true, government-trained, academy grad :-)

[Darksheare]

“I-can’t-fall-a-sleeper-cells”

Yes, terrible people they are, hands jittering all over, eyes bloodshot, three in the morning, sometimes they are coders bashing away on keyboards in a mental fog.
Grown, in a lab, farmed, created for one purpose: to imbibe coffee to stay awake, work to death, and be replaced with another clone.
[Sounds like a scy fy original movie. Cue the cheesy CGI.]

[Starstruck]

A cup of plain ol’ joe gets my day started, thank you.

What does that mean? You can get a plain coffee at Starbucks.

[rabidralph]

I just watche Zero Dark-Thirty this morning and I was curious about the high-level CIA official, portrayed in the movie, who was rolling up his prayer rug as another official came into his office to speak to him. I can’t believe they would have a muslim running the agency.

[Jack Hydrazine]

I would!

[Darksheare]

Burned plain coffee.

[Alter Kaker]

Yes, terrible people they are, hands jittering all over, eyes bloodshot, three in the morning, sometimes they are coders bashing away on keyboards in a mental fog.

The coffee-pushing "Patriots" who dumped all that tea in Boston harbor were just setting this country up to fail. Damn every last one of them.

[COUNTrecount]

Yes.I agree.

[elcid1970]

WTF?

[Darksheare]

“And when they drink too much coffee, they will all explode!”
*villainous laugh*

[Starstruck]

Burned plain coffee.

I actually agree. But I do buy the beans, grind them and make a really good brew.

[Safetgiver]

What? The f’n government can’t afford a Mr. Coffee?

[Safetgiver]

Never been in a Starbucks,..You are lucky. Burnt coffee just isn’t good.

[Darksheare]

Ah, self brew!
Doesn’t get burned that way.

[Alter Kaker]

WTF?

I was just going to ask you that. After all, you're the weirdo who sees a correlation between terrorism and coffee drinking.

BTW hate to confuse you with facts, but coffee consumption in Saudi Arabia: 1.6 kilograms / person. Coffee consumption in the United States: 4.2 kilograms / person.
Source

[elcid1970]

Whatever.

[Wordkraft]

Whenever they ask me for my name I always answer, “I am Spartacus!”
It confuses some of the younger baristas when some other geezers stand up and chime in with,”No! I am Spartacus!”