The Secret Spy History of Camp David | Catoctin Mountain Park

Thanks a lot for being here and enjoy the episode.

This summer, LL Bean wants to help you feel great out there with gear, tips and advice for heading outdoors and exploring all the possibilities of the season. Here's a game changing tip. For the beach. Bring a fitted sheet As nice as a nap in the sun is the sheet isn't for making up the bed. It's a smart way to keep sand off your beach towels.

Since the corners of a fitted sheet naturally lift, all you need to do is add weighted objects to each corner. And you'll have a nifty pocket of space. You can hang out in sand-free. For more fun ideas, easy how-tos and inspiring stories, visit Llbean..com slash guide.

Catoctin Mountain Park was originally sub-marginal land, purchased by the government in 1936 to be developed into a recreational facility. It was to demonstrate how rough terrain and eroded soil could be turned into productive land. Again, the new deals works Progress Administration. The WPA began the work in the newly created Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area, joined by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1939. Camp Misty Mount was first used by the Maryland League for crippled children. After the first year. The league moved to a second camp in 1938 because Camp Misty Mount's terrain was difficult to negotiate. In a wheelchair?

A third camp, Camp, High Catoctin, was completed in the winter of 1938 and was used for three years as a family camp for federal employees. These recreation areas, lovely as they were, would prove to be much more valuable to the nation. As an elite spy training school and a home for respite for the president of the United States. As World War II heated up in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was fearful of British collapse. At the advice of his Navy Secretary, Frank Knox, Roosevelt sent William J.

Wild Bill Donovan to assess the chances of Britain's survival if invaded by the Nazis. Donovan was a successful Wall Street attorney, a World War I hero and a recipient of the Medal of Honor. Upon his return to the U.S, Donovan met with the president. And they determined that the British would only be able to survive with assistance. In direct anticipation for the need to gather intelligence if the U.S were to enter the war, in July of 1941, Roosevelt created a civilian agency within the White House to oversee American intelligence.

He appointed Donovan, head of the newly created office, as the Coordinator of Information, or COI, at Donovan's request. The military joint Chiefs of staff incorporated the Office of the COI to improve trust and share military resources. After the U...S. entered the war, the office grew. On June 13, 1942, Roosevelt issued an executive order, creating the Office of Strategic Services, or the OSS.

The COI was dissolved, but Donovan received a commission as an army general and became the head of the new agency. The Office of Strategic Services is considered America's first centralized intelligence agency, the predecessor of our current CIA and the forerunner of today's special forces. The basic mission of the OSS was to obtain information and to sabotage the military efforts of enemy nations. During the war, agents of the OSS fought a covert war. Full of daring and adventure. Many insiders would sarcastically refer to it as oh-so-secret.

Some famous members included movie actors Douglas Fairbanks and Sterling Hayden, baseball player Moe Berg, chef Julia Child. Yes, really. Future CIA director William Casey and movie directors Marion Cooper and six-time Academy Award winner John Ford. The OSS specialized in dropping operatives behind enemy lines to carry out sabotage, demolition, counter-propaganda and disinformation activities. Agents aided and supported resistance fighters, as well as gathered information on enemy resources and troop movements. Individuals were recruited for skills rather than background. Prospective members would undergo a battery of mental and physical tests.

They were chosen based on a combination of intelligence, imagination, creativity, courage and ruthlessness. Men and women from all walks of life from around the world were recruited, including psychiatrists, gunsmiths, engineers, chemists, police detectives, prisoners, safe-crackers, bankers, journalists and gangsters. In addition to U..S. citizens, the OSS trained German and Austrian individuals for missions inside Germany after the creation of the OSS. There was a need for a secret location with ideal terrain, close to Washington, D..C.

To train operatives. Nestled within the Blue Ridge mountains, Catoctin was the perfect place. The Secretary of the Interior granted a permit for Catoctin Recreational Demonstration area to be used for military training. And officers and enlisted men from Donovan's organization began to arrive in April of 1942. They quickly began converting their part of the park into a paramilitary training school. Although the area at Catoctin available for field exercises and maneuvers, included several thousand acres in the northwestern part of the park. The center of the training area was Cabin Camp 2, known as Greentop today. And the OSS headquarters would eventually move down the slope to the former CCC camp near today's Round Meadow.

Within the park, closed to the public, the National Park service personnel were reduced to three a park manager, a clerk and a handyman-slash-mechanic. Although Donovan's organization controlled the northern half of the park, the National Park Service retained several facilities within that area. The Park Office, located on the site of what is today? the visitor Center, the park manager's residence, then located behind the office, and the park maintenance facility at What is today? Round Meadow. The area around what became known as Camp B-2 was soon converted into a commando-style training camp. Training involved learning to handle various weapons and munitions, developing knife fighting and other close combat techniques. It also meant learning about explosions for sabotage.

It meant becoming familiar with guerrilla field operations. And, perhaps above all, it required developing and maintaining top physical and mental condition and a predominant attitude of self-confidence, daring and initiative. The basic special operations course at Camp B-2, therefore, required a number of specialized facilities not found in the park.

Among the first to be constructed was a pistol range for target practice with the U.

S Army's standard sidearm, the .45-caliber Colt automatic, as well as handguns from allied and enemy countries. Stationary targets were augmented for advanced students, with targets that popped up from behind shrubs or other types of concealment. A facility dubbed as the House of Horrors was soon built to help reproduce the disorientation, the confusion, the stress and fear of actual combat. It was modeled after training structures used by the British.

A small house with a rectangular floor plan 40 by 78 feet was complex and costly. It was the most expensive structure built by the OSS at Area B. Trainees were awakened in the middle of the night, given a .45-caliber pistol and two clips of live ammunition and sent into the house, where they were told to expect Nazi guards. Sometimes they were told to kick open the front door and be ready to shoot at once. As they moved through the darkened corridors and rooms, cardboard cutouts of armed enemy soldiers, or papier-mâché Nazis with pistols would suddenly pop up to test the trainees instinctive firing abilities.

In a darkened hall, about four feet wide, the floor would drop some six to eight inches and a papier-mâché enemy would appear. Even though they were thrown off balance, they had to fire from the hip and hit their adversary in the head. In the next instant, the head popped back up and they had to fire again.

For training and practice in the use of explosives and hand grenades, the O.S.S. instructors used what they called a demolition area. It was about 15 acres overall, but army engineers bulldozed part of the woods to make a level 100 by 100 foot square. The 1,000 cubic yards of material from making that cut was then pushed by bulldozers to make an embankment as a backstop.

Getting the trainees into top condition to build up their physical abilities and mental and emotional self-confidence was a priority. As important to OSS as teaching them particular skills in the field. In the front of today's dining hall at Camp Cabin 2, the instructional staff constructed several pieces of equipment designed to enhance physical conditioning. There were ropes for hand-over-hand climbing, a football tackler's dummy that was used to simulate an enemy. In jiu-jitsu, there was a wooden platform erected over a sand pit to facilitate practice in jumping and tumbling.

Its eight-foot height provided about the same shock that a parachutist felt upon landing. There were several large, 30-by-30-foot square but shallow, open pits dug in the training field in front of the mess hall. They were mainly filled with sawdust and sand. The pits were used for wrestling, knife fighting and other close combat exercises that involved throwing opponents over and down. A piece of training equipment called the Trainesium was located in the field in front of the mess hall.

It consisted of tall log posts, like telephone poles, in two parallel rows of three poles, each nearly two stories above. The each of the six vertical posts was connected horizontally by narrower rounded poles, forming a wooden grid about 20 by 20 feet and almost 18 feet in the air. It was designed to build the trainees self-confidence, to build up their physical strength and dexterity. Using their legs and arms and upper body. To maneuver around in tight, narrow places, and to make them agile on narrow, high places, trainees ran along narrow boards high above the ground to get them used to running over housetops. If they slipped, they plummeted into a net.

Even more demanding and dangerous was the obstacle course that traversed a creek. Part of it included a thick piece of wire tied to trees on opposite banks and stretched taut across the rushing stream. A rope line was run parallel to the wire, but several feet above it. Trainees, sometimes wearing full field packs, were required to make their way along the swaying wire while holding on to the rope. Successfully crossing over the stream or falling into the cascading, often freezing waters below, more intricate and even more hazardous, was a demolition trail.

Trainees were ordered to move stealthily and carefully along the trail in the woods, keeping their heads down and eyes open, looking for booby traps along the way. Traps were trip wires tied to small charges of TNT on tree branches away from the trail. A trip of the wire would set off a small but real explosion nearby.

For respites from the heat and humidity of Washington in the summer. President Roosevelt had long used his family estate on the Hudson River at Hyde Park, New York. Or the camp for polio victims like himself at Warm Springs in the mountains of western Georgia. For relaxation, closer to the nation's capital, he had favored cruises on the presidential yacht, the U.S.S Potomac, in Chesapeake Bay. With the nation at war, however, the White House began to look for a more secure and secret alternative for summer weekend retreats. In late March of 1942. Roosevelt asked the National Park Service director to find a mountain cabin or small lodge fairly close to Washington for his occasional use. Within about 50 miles or a 90-minute drive from the capital. After the park, service had checked on seven or eight mountainous sites in Maryland and Virginia with utilities in adequate rows and within the prescribed radius. The president was driven up to Catoctin in April and asked staff to proceed immediately with plans and estimates.

Since cabins, lodges and even a swimming pool already existed there, the presidential retreat could be created at a comparatively minimal cost and within a short time. The total cost was $18,650. And the camp for federal employees families became the camp of one federal employee, the president of the United States. Roosevelt quickly named the camp Shangri-la from James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon. When he visited, the OSS had to stop explosives training immediately. It became a place presidents favored for diplomatic retreats.

In 1943, Roosevelt welcomed Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the camp in order to discuss the war and the Allied efforts, including early planning for the D-Day invasion. At the close of World War II, there was some debate over the future of both Shangri-la and the OSS facility. Should it be returned to the National Park Service, should it be maintained as a national shrine or a monument? Should it be transferred to the Maryland State Forest and Park System, as was originally the plan of the demonstration area?

In a letter to Maryland Governor Herbert R O'Connor, President Truman wrote Quote I have decided, because of the historical events, of national and international interest. Now associated with the Catoctin Recreation area, that this property should be retained by the National Park Service of the Department of the Interior. This action is in accord with the position expressed by the late President Roosevelt before his death in 1952. Truman approved a compromise under which the land north of Maryland Route 77 would remain Catoctin Mountain Park, operated by the National Park Service, and the land south would become Cunningham Falls State Park. The official transfer took effect in 1954..

President Eisenhower then renamed the retreat Camp David, after his grandson, Camp David, continues to serve as the presidential retreat. Today, it's a private, secluded place for recreation, contemplation, rest and relaxation. Many historical events have occurred at the presidential retreat, the Eisenhower-Khrushchev meetings, Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, discussion of the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam War, and many other meetings. With foreign dignitaries and guests, maintaining the privacy and secluded atmosphere of the retreat is an important role for Catoctin Mountain Park.

Though the presidential retreat at Camp David is not open to the public, you can still visit Catoctin Mountain Park. It's not officially listed as a national Park, a national monument, a national recreation area, but it is a unit of the National Park Service. It boasts about 25 miles of hiking trails, popular trout fishing, streams, camping, horseback riding and more, along with lodging at Misty Mountain, Cabin Camp Greentop and Camp Round Meadow for individuals, families and groups.

This episode of America's National Parks was written with help from the National Park Service and the Central Intelligence Agency. I'm your host, Jason Epperson, and if you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving us a rating and a review. If you're new here, make sure to subscribe to the podcast to get new episodes delivered to your feed. If you're looking for photos and tips about visiting national parks, check out our America's National Parks Facebook Group. And if you're interested in RV travel, we hope you'll also check out our RV Miles podcast and YouTube channel. Today's show was sponsored by L..L.

Bean Follow the hashtag Beanoutsider and visit llBean.com to find great gear for exploring the national parks.