Harvey Point

by Frank M. Roberts

November 2016

Me? A snitch? Perish the thought!

When I moved to Hertford, N. C. from Jacksonville, N. C. two of my first visitors came to find out why I had set up housekeeping next door to a gentleman who worked at one of the nation's most super-secret facilities - the Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity Training Facility, where 'classified' is the by-word.

They finally left my humble abode after deciding I posed no threat to Uncle Sam. My Slovenian wife was not considered a threat. Initially, those two serious gentlemen were worried about me spilling my guts, in print, about the hush-hush base. That was in 1968 and I had just been hired by the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.

My nice neighbor owned two handsome boxers (Rocky and Ali -- just kiddin'). As over-the-fence friends we talked about everything except, of course, anything connected with his work at what later became a duplicate of Osama Bin Laden's hideaway. (Gotta practice somewhere).

The great majority of federal employees there were in uniform. There were about 40 civilian employees who worked as cooks and guards. All were sworn to secrecy, and that includes their nosey families.

Much of the secret came out later thanks to former Navy SEAL Matt Bisonette's book, "No Easy Day," written under the pseudonym of Mark Owen.

Several websites are dedicated to the not-so-secret hideaway, almost all of them containing aeral photographs of the compound, some even offering before-and-after pictures showing the changes in the house where Bin Laden slept until May 2, 2011.

Harvey Point treained 18,000 foreign intelligence operatives from 50 different countries, according to the New York Times.

For a couple of years, I was a part-time director of the local Chamber Of Commerce. At one point, several area officials were invited to visit. As a Chamber director, I was on the list.

Our instructions were simple. We were marched around, winding up in a dining area watched over by a gourmet chef. Paul Gregory, a good friend and former county manager (Perquimans) said the execs who showed us around were real nice folks.

"They said they would show us around the base. Well, they did NOT show us around the base, but for the most part they told us the truth as to what they did show us.

"Basically, they explode things. They blow up cars, they blow up safes. They blow stuff up," he said. "They try to reconstruct an explosion that took place somewhere in the world." (Welcome to Mystery Theater).

Harvey Point's military history goes back to '42 when it was established as Naval Air Station Harvey Point by the Navy, using it as an operating base for seaplanes conducting anti-submarine surveillance off the Atlantic coast.

The bargain-hunting Navy purchased the 1,200 acres for $41,751. Four families living there were evicted when the Navy seized the area for its use, according to records in the Perquimans County Courthouse. (heave-ho, matey).

In the 1670's it was occupied by the Harvey family (now, you know the rest of the story), including North Carolina's first native-born governor, Thomas Harvey. The family graveyard remains at the base. The last of that family line was his great-great-great granddaughter, Emily Skinner who died in 1946 in Hertford. The area is supposedly where Blackbeard's body is buried. (On Yo-Ho-Ho Street).

After World War 2, the naval air station was de-activated. In '58 it served as testing grounds for an experimental jet-powered long-range seaplance bomber, an experiment that did 'bomb' but not as intended.

The installation has landing fields and is (was?) jointly administered by the Navy and the Central Intelligence Agency who used it for paramilitary and counter-terrorism courses, according to Wikipedia. High explosives and ballistics are the order of the day.

The biggest newsmaker, of course, was its use as a training base for Navy SEAL Team Six to train for the raid that knocked off Bin Laden. Rehearsals for that successful activity were in the building that duplicated the once-secret compound.

When the book about Harvey Point came out a few years ago, the New York Post noted, in big, black, bold headlines that the Central Intelligence Agency "is operating a paramilitary training course" in Perquimans County's backyard. It is about four miles from my house.

But, if you are in a tourist-y mood, save your gas. The base is located at the end of Harvey Point Road, about three miles from downtown Hertford. Visitors come to a highly fenced area where they can see nothing of importance. People living nearby often hear a lot of'boom-boom type noise.

My late father-in-law, Billy White, was a guard there. And, that's all I know - honestly, sir.

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You knew this was coming -- speaking of the Navy, here is the dumbest joke I could remember: "He was a toadman in the Navy. That's like a frogman, but he also gives the enemy warts." (World Warts 3).