Discover the CIA museum, secret even to the public

Two US intelligence agencies have completed a complete renovation of their spy museums, displaying dramatic stories of notable American spies and informants, as well as objects connected with intelligence work. One of these museums, however, will remain out of reach of the public.

In time for its 75th anniversary this year, the CIA has renovated and reorganized its museum of secrets, with fascinating and beautifully displayed artifacts from important operations. The location features successful spy devices (a dead mouse covered in hot sauce to hide messages) or less so (a pigeon-mounted camera and a spy minidrone designed to look like a dragonfly).

However, the CIA Museum is located on the agency’s heavily guarded campus in Langley, Virginia, which is not open to the public unless one is summoned to its headquarters. The CIA opened the renovated museum to family members of employees over a weekend and to members of the press on Saturday.

Many of the artifacts are celebrations of the agency’s triumphs. The museum has a model of Osama bin Laden’s complex and a brick taken from the site. There is an illustration by the great comic artist Jack Kirby, used by the CIA as concept art of a fake film production company in a diplomatic rescue operation in Iran (depicted in the 2012 film “Argo”). There are even disguises worn by people who worked to rescue the wreckage of a Soviet submarine carrying nuclear missiles from the ocean floor.

The museum also exhibits a reconstruction of the tunnel under East Berlin that allowed the United States to access Soviet communications for nearly 18 months.

One of the latest additions to the memorabilia is a model of the building in Kabul where Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri was hiding when he was killed by a US drone strike last July. The CIA placed the model in a wooden box when it was brought to President Joe Biden to discuss the operation, and the bottom of the box can be seen in the CIA’s window.

Perhaps in part because it is restricted to the general public, the CIA Museum does not shy away from the agency’s failures: agents captured by governments, spies who turned in informants, the consensus on the Iraq War, the Bay of Pigs in Cuba.

“Much of this museum is for our officers and for them to learn the lessons of the past,” said Robert Byer, director of the CIA Museum. “For that reason, we can’t just sugarcoat our story or flaunt our successes. We really need to make sure it’s a complete CIA story so they can understand their story and do a better job of it.”

Among the museum’s carefully crafted exhibits is the story of Martha Peterson, the first female officer sent to work in Moscow. Her task was to collect and pass information to an agent who was a Soviet diplomat, to whom she would also provide a suicide pill for him to use if he was captured. The diplomat was eventually detained and died by suicide, leading to Peterson’s arrest when she placed a message in a secret location.

NSA Museum reopens to the public

While the CIA collects intelligence, conducts analysis and carries out covert operations, the National Security Agency (NSA) focuses on capturing electronic communications and creating and deciphering codes. And that’s the focus of his reimagined showcase at the National Cryptological Museum in Annapolis Junction, Maryland.

The NSA museum, sometimes called the “No Such Agency” [não existe tal agência] in allusion to its secret practices, it was designed to be accessible to the public, a contrast to the CIA Museum.

“It is a wonderful paradox that the ‘No Such Agency’ has the only museum in the US intelligence community that is fully open to the public,” said Vince Houghton, director of the agency.

The Cryptological Museum closed in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, and Houghton, a former historian and curator at Washington’s popular International Spy Museum, took advantage of the time to renovate the building and painstakingly research the National Security Agency’s equipment archives.

“There are things that people didn’t know existed, and there are things that people thought were lost for decades,” he said.

At the museum, which reopens Oct. 8, Houghton highlights unique artifacts amid exhibits filled with strangely fascinating machines for creating and deciphering codes. His collection spans from the early days of the United States to the present. From World War II, there is the machine that broke Japan’s diplomatic encryption and another that deciphered German naval codes. There is also an Enigma machine used by Adolf Hitler, displayed behind glass, and others that visitors can touch and use.

Houghton said that nearly every artifact he displays meets one of three criteria: being the only remaining object of its kind, being the first of something, or having been used by a specific person. “I call it the holy trinity of artifacts,” he said.

The museum maintains its mission of explaining cryptology to a wide audience. He acknowledges some shortcomings: there is a memorial wall and exhibits that tell the stories of cryptologists killed in combat, but for the most part, the focus is on the machines and the codebreakers that ran them.

There’s not much about turncoats, though. An exhibit showcases the tools John Walker, a Navy warrant officer and Soviet spy, used to try to steal American codes for the Russians. But there is no mention of Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who revealed many of the agency’s secrets and then fled to Russia. (As the Snowden case is an ongoing Justice Department investigation, the museum is limited in what it can tell.)

The CIA Museum, on the other hand, has several examples of spy games that ended in failure or tragedy. He highlights the stories of CIA officers wrongfully accused of being spies and exposes the damage done by Soviet agents.

Among the contributors whose work is celebrated is Adolf Tolkachev, an aviation electronics engineer who has approached the CIA several times for help, angered by the persecution of his wife’s parents under Josef Stalin. In 1978, he reached the Americans and used miniature cameras to broadcast footage of Russian secrets.

The value of Tolkachev’s information, which vastly expanded American knowledge of Soviet missiles and fighter planes, earned him the nickname “the $1 billion spy.” Although he was good at getting documents, he wasn’t much for taking pictures. The museum includes a camera the CIA built for Tolkachev, with a fixed focal length to ensure the photos were less blurry.

But his story also ends badly. Aldrich Ames and Edward Lee Howard, CIA officers working for the Russians, revealed Tolkachev’s identity. He was arrested in June 1985 and executed in 1986.

“I feel like I have a responsibility: It can’t be an enthusiastic version of the story,” Byer said. “Museums need to tell the truth.”