ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Washington is awash in secrets, some better kept than others. Because of that, shredders are a fact of life inside the Beltway.
"This is probably the shredder capital of the planet," said Greg DiGioia, president and owner of Capital Shredders in Rockville, just outside the nation's capital.Where there's government, a shredder isn't far.
The Postal Service shreds outdated stamps, and the Treasury Department shreds worn-out money. Even the Smithsonian Institution shredded controversial nude photos taken of Yale University students during a medical study.
At CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., an entire building is devoted to shredding. The Classified Waste Disposal Facility chops and burns five to 10 tons of documents per day, agency spokesman Tom Crispell said.
The oldest of Washington's shredding firms is Whitaker Brothers of Rockville, which bills itself as the No. 1 government shredder supplier.
Founded in 1945, Whitaker sold perhaps the world's two most infamous shredders: the Republican National Committee shredder used by White House operative G. Gordon Liddy and the model 007-S used by Oliver North to "clean things up."
Co-owner Vince Del Vecchio hauls out a company scrapbook with a copy of a 1972 sales receipt from the Committee to Re-Elect President Nixon with what looks like the signature of Watergate burglar and committee security chief James McCord.
The company bought it back from the committee, and today the 800-pound machine sits in a company warehouse -- still adorned with a small U.S. flag attached by the president's men.
"It is hard to believe, but it's a piece of history," said Linda Robbins of Whitaker Brothers. "There's an aura."
Still, it's considered an old-timer. Its paper strips could be painstakingly reassembled, as they were by militants who took over the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979.
High-security shredders -- which cost thousands of dollars -- now cut each page of sensitive material into at least 10,000 wisps of paper.
The ultra-secret National Security Agency sets the standard for these top-secret shredders, estimating it would take about 10 years for someone to reassemble a single sheet of paper.