The crazy CIA ship that became an engineering historical landmark

My dad used to have a small sailboat that he kept in a marina not far from the ship. We used to pass it going out and coming back in. The teen shutterbug in me got a few shots of it. It was moored right near the twin drawbridges in LA (seen in a lot of movies, and location of Tony Scott’s swansong swan dive). The hangar that used to house the Spruce Goose was there too, even with a little control tower attached. At the time we had no clue what was in it.