Little Falls Dam (Potomac River)

The Intelligence Community Campus-Bethesda (ICC-B) is a campus in Brookmont, Maryland containing offices for several agencies of the United States Intelligence Community. The campus was created in 1945 and initially served as the headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and its predecessor organizations. In 2012, it was transferred to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and substantially renovated into an architecturally and functionally modern design.

Brookmont is a census-designated place and unincorporated area in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 3,751. Brookmont is often considered part of neighboring Bethesda because it falls within Bethesda's 20816 zip code.

Merrywood is a historic home located in McLean, Virginia on the Palisades overlooking the Potomac River that has hosted several presidents and members of the British royal family. The Georgian Revival style brick dwelling was built in 1919 for Newbold Noyes.

Fort Sumner was built during the American Civil War by the Union Army in the Brookmont section of Bethesda, Maryland, just northwest of Washington, D.C.

The Washington Waldorf School is a private K-12 school in Bethesda, Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C., on a 6-acre campus the school rents from Montgomery County. As a Waldorf school, the curriculum is based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. Washington Waldorf School is one of over 1000 Waldorf schools worldwide and 150 Waldorf schools in North America. The school has one of the few outdoor kindergarten programs in the Washington, D.C., area.

Fort Marcy was a Union fortification protecting Washington, D.C. during the American Civil War. Its remains are now administered by the National Park Service as part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Fairfax County, Virginia.

The Dalecarlia Tunnel in Brookmont, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. is a former railroad tunnel that presently carries the Capital Crescent Trail underneath MacArthur Boulevard and the Washington Aqueduct. It was built in 1910 as part of the Georgetown Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. It is a Roman arch tunnel, measuring 18 feet (5.5 m) wide by 340 feet (100 m) long. It features decorative brick facings on both ends and is lined with brick throughout its length. CSX Transportation, the successor to the B&O Railroad, ceased train operations through the tunnel in 1985 and officially abandoned the rail line in 1986.

Little Falls Branch, a 3.8-mile-long (6.1 km) tributary stream of the Potomac River, is located in Montgomery County, Maryland. In the 19th century, the stream was also called Powder Mill Branch. It drains portions of Bethesda, Somerset, Friendship Heights, and Washington, D.C., flows under the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O), and empties into the Potomac at Little Falls rapids, which marks the upper end of the tidal Potomac.

Kryptos is a sculpture by the American artist Jim Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters, the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the four encrypted messages it bears. Of these four messages, the first three have been solved, while the fourth message remains one of the most famous unsolved codes in the world. The sculpture continues to be of interest to cryptanalysts, both amateur and professional, who are attempting to decipher the fourth passage. The artist has so far given four clues to this passage.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. Following the dissolution of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is a domestic security service, the CIA has no law enforcement function and is mainly focused on overseas intelligence gathering, with only limited domestic intelligence collection. The CIA serves as the national manager for HUMINT, coordinating activities across the IC. It also carries out covert action at the behest of the President. It exerts foreign political influence through its paramilitary operations units, such as the Special Activities Center. The CIA was instrumental in establishing intelligence services in many countries, such as Germany's BND. It has also provided support to several foreign political groups and governments, including planning, coordinating, training in torture, and technical support. It was involved in many regime changes, and carrying out terrorist attacks and planned assassinations of foreign leaders.Since 2004, the CIA is organized under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Despite having had some of its powers transferred to the DNI, the CIA has grown in size as a response to the September 11 attacks. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that in the fiscal year 2010, the CIA had the largest budget of all IC agencies, exceeding previous estimates.The CIA has increasingly expanded its role, including covert paramilitary operations. One of its largest divisions, the Information Operations Center (IOC), has officially shifted focus from counterterrorism to offensive cyber operations.The agency has been the subject of many controversies, including human rights violations, domestic wiretapping, propaganda, and allegations of drug trafficking.

The Marden House is a residence in McLean, Virginia designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It is located just off Chain Bridge Road and overlooks the Potomac River. Also known as "Fontinalis," it is named after Luis Marden (1913–2003), a writer, photographer, and explorer for National Geographic. It was designed by Wright in 1952 and was completed in 1959 at a cost of $76,000. The spot had caught Marden's eye in 1944 when he and his wife and had been fishing along the Potomac. After purchasing a plot of land, Marden continued the correspondence he had maintained with Wright since 1940, asking the architect to design a home for him. It was not until 1952 that the designs finally came. After Marden moved to a nursing home in 1998, the house was purchased by Jim Kimsey, co-founder of AOL, in 2000 for $2.5 million.

The CIA Museum, administered by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, is a national archive for the collection, preservation, documentation and exhibition of intelligence artifacts, culture, and history. The collection, which in 2005 numbered 3,500 items, consists of artifacts that have been declassified, however since the museum is on the compound of the George Bush Center for Intelligence it is not accessible to the public. Since the museum cannot be visited by the public, the CIA Museum has partnerships with Presidential Libraries and other major museums and institutions to develop public exhibitions dedicated to understanding the craft of intelligence and its role in the broader American experience. The CIA Museum has counterparts at other agencies in the United States Intelligence Community. The National Cryptologic Museum (which is open to the public in Annapolis Junction, Maryland) is the NSA counterpart to the CIA Museum and focuses on cryptology as opposed to human intelligence. The DIA Museum (Defense Intelligence Agency) is not public, is housed at its headquarters and focuses on the history of military intelligence and DIA's role. The FBI Museum housed at its headquarters is also off-limits to the public, and is focused on its history as a federal law enforcement, counterintelligence, and counter-terrorism organization.