Bailey’s Crossroads office building played a key role in the Cold War

A soon-to-be-demolished office building in Bailey’s Crossroads once housed a company that played an important played a role in the Cold War.

The two-story cinderblock building at 5623 Leesburg Pike has a glass facade with red, yellow, and blue stripes. It is being torn down to facilitate a second drive-through lane and an expanded parking lot for the McDonald’s next door.

For many years, the building was the home of the nonprofit Analytic Services Inc. (ANSER), one of the original “beltway bandits,” reports Mark Emlet.

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Emlet’s parents moved to Northern Virginia in 1957, and his father was one of the first employees at ANSER, a think tank working under contract for the U.S. Air Force. The company worked on ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), flight systems, and related projects, he says. “It was mostly very hush-hush.”

“This was of course during the height of the Cold War and shortly after the McCarthy era,” Emlet says. “Dad recounted a story during the peak of the Cuban missile crisis when he got roused out of bed in the middle of the night to be rushed to the White House to brief President Kennedy on all things ICBM.”

Because of the weapons research going on inside, ANSER’s nondescript building was “a high-security island in the middle of the Bailey’s Crossroads commercial strip,” Emlet says. There were conference rooms in the interior of the building with no windows, and all telephone lines were cut off during meetings.

At that time, he says, there was a Roy Rogers at the corner of Leesburg Pike and Carlin Springs Road, where the McDonald’s is now. The Washington-Virginia Airport was nearby from about 1945 to 1970, when it was demolished to make way for the construction of the Skyline Plaza Towers complex.

At one point, when his father worked at ANSER, Emlet says, a small plane had just taken off from that airport when its wing clipped the western edge of ANSER’s roof as it plummeted onto several cars in the building’s parking lot.

“Needless to say, this caused quite a kerfuffle,” he said, “particularly when staff rushed out to lend aid and were unable to find a pilot. That is until emergency vehicles of all stripes – Fairfax County police, the fire department, Virginia state police, a posse of FBI agents, some ‘Men in Black’ (possibly CIA or NSA), and a squad of soldiers from Fort Myers – arrived.”

“The pilot had been thrown clear and had rolled under one of the cars. Fortunately, all the damage was limited to several cars and the plane itself,” Emlet continued. “I can’t even imagine how long the pilot was in interrogation.”

He says ANSER moved to Crystal City in the late 1970s or early 80s. It’s currently headquartered back in its old neighborhood, at 5275 Leesburg Pike at the Skyline Center.