Washington Dulles International Airport and is on pace to exceed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport's annual passenger numbers for 2018 after having fewer passengers ever since 2015. However, Dulles Airport still ranks behind Baltimore–Washington International Airport (BWI) in total annual passenger boardings, despite being a larger facility with more gates. Prior to World War II, Hoover Field was the main commercial airport serving Washington, on the site now occupied by The Pentagon and its parking lots. It was replaced by Washington National Airport in 1941, a short distance southeast. After the war, in 1948, the Civil Aeronautics Administration began to consider sites for a
Allen Dulles New York firm where his brother, John Foster Dulles, was a partner. He became a director of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1927, the first new director since the Council's founding in 1921. He was the Council's secretary from 1933 to 1944. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, he served as legal adviser to the delegations on arms limitation at the League of Nations. There he had the opportunity to meet with Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, and the leaders of Britain and France. In 1935 Dulles returned from a business trip to Germany