This cache is NOT located on private property and does NOT require opening anything. Be stealthy. Note that there is a school nearby. Congrats to FTF: NatsGeo6.
On October 13, 1993, at around 6:30am, CIA employee Aldrich Ames left a horizontal chalk mark on a blue USPS mailbox that once stood on this corner. That same morning, an employee of the Russian embassy drove by and observed the mark. The mark appears to have signalled Ames’ agreement to a meeting with Russian intelligence officers in Bogota, Colombia the next month. Ames had been passing CIA secrets to the Russians since 1985. Ames didn’t know he had been under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for months. He was arrested near his home in Arlington the next February.
Ames, with some assistance from his wife, had betrayed the identities of a number of CIA spies to the Russians and their Soviet predecessors. Several of these spies were executed. Ames served a life sentence in federal prison, where he died in 2026.
Information on Ames’ computer indicated he used the code name “Smile” for this site. Several other Ames signal sites are in this area. Note that “signal sites” differ from “dead drops,” which spies use to exchange materials with their handlers by hiding the materials in an agreed location. Both signal sites and dead drops enable spies and their handlers to contact one another without ever encountering each other in person. This makes it harder to catch them, since surveillance of one party won’t indicate who the other party is. This signal site was located in an area that was likely a Russian intelligence officer’s regular route between the Russian embassy compound (north of here on Wisconsin Avenue) and the Russian ambassador’s residence (east of here on 16th Street NW). The Russian officer would have been able to see the signal without doing anything noticeably different from routine, making American counterintelligence officers’ work harder. Indeed, Ames was caught due to years of work by a CIA team; he had fallen under suspicion for his heavy spending - spending enabled by the significant funds his KGB and SVRR handlers had given him for secrets.
You can read the criminal complaint against Ames, which has many details on his activities and arrest, here: https://cryptome.org/jya/ames.htm. There is also a historical marker on the old call box across the street.