Langley, Virginia



Langley is an unincorporated community in the census-designated place of McLean in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. The name "Langley" often occurs as a metonym for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whose headquarters, the George Bush Center for Intelligence, is in Langley.

The land which makes up Langley today once belonged to Thomas Lee, former Crown Governor of the Colony of Virginia from 1749 to 1750. Lee's land was named Langley in honor of Langley Hall, which formed part of the Lee home estate in Shropshire, England. In 1839 Benjamin Mackall purchased 700 acres of land from the Lee family, while keeping the name.

The community was essentially absorbed into McLean many years ago, although there is still a Langley High School. In addition to its roles as a bedroom community for Washington, D.C., and as home to the CIA's headquarters, the area is the site of the Federal Highway Administration's Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center and formerly the Claude Moore Colonial Farm of the National Park Service, now permanently closed.

In popular culture
In the animated series American Dad!, the city of Langley Falls, Virginia, in which the show takes place, is loosely based on Langley, being depicted as a somewhat larger city as well as the headquarters of the CIA, where main character Stan Smith works as an agent.

"Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Party in the CIA" starts with the line "I moved out to Langley recently".

In the expansion to the CD Projekt game Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty, there is a location of the Military Medical Center located in Langley.

A member of the group of three conspiracy theorist hackers in the hit 1990s television series, The X-Files, is named Richard “Ringo” Langley. He and his two cronies, John Fizgerald Byers and Melvin Frohike, referred to themselves as The Lone Gunmen, after the theory that only one man killed John F. Kennedy. Later, the Lone Gunmen were given their own spinoff by 20th Century Fox, but with low ratings, the show only lasted for one season.

Many Twitter users who use the popular NAFO hashtag used in support of Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine War use Langley as a joke location.