Foxstone Park is a

park A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are urban green space, green spaces set aside for recreation inside t ...

located at 1910 Creek Crossing Road in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Fairfax County Fairfax County, officially the County of Fairfax, is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is part of Northern Virginia and borders both the city of Alexandria and Arlington County and forms part of the suburban ring of Washington, D.C. ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

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and run by the

Fairfax County Park Authority The Fairfax County Park Authority is a department of the Fairfax County, Virginia county government responsible for developing and maintaining the various parks, historical sites, and recreational areas owned or administered by Fairfax County. Figu ...

Robert Hanssen

Robert Hanssen Robert Philip Hanssen (born April 18, 1944) is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) double agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described ...

, who was convicted of

spying Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...

for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

, conducted dead drops there. One account relates:

Within a mile of his home, Foxstone Park meanders along Wolftrap Creek through Hanssen's neighborhood and a golf course. He used Foxstone Park's rustic wooden sign as his signal site, marking it with a piece of Johnson & Johnson medical adhesive tape placed vertically, to signal he had loaded the dead drop in the other side of the road... The drop site codenamed ELLIS was a dark, damp place under a footbridge

Another account relates:

He was caught one evening, minutes after leaving a dead drop under a footbridge at Wolftrap Creek in Foxstone Park, near his house in Vienna, Virginia. FBI agents also found $50,000 the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR...) left for him at another site.

Hanssen was arrested on February 18, 2001 at the park, which lies near his home (also in Vienna). Ellis dead drop

He was charged with selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and subsequently the Russian Federation for more than US$1.4 million in cash and diamonds over a 22-year period.

References

External links

FBI photos

Fairfax County Park Authority's description

Reston Paths - Foxstone Park
Park description page
Google Maps
Satellite view of the park from

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

. Virginia municipal and county parks Parks in Fairfax County, Virginia Vienna, Virginia {{FairfaxCountyVA-geo-stub