What hides the “most secret” museum in the world

It is perhaps the most unusual and exclusive museum in the world, full of artifacts that have shaped history. But its doors are firmly closed to the public.

It is the only place where a visitor can see the gun found with Osama bin Laden when he was assassinated, along with Saddam Hussein’s leather jacket.

welcome to highly secret internal CIA museum.

Located inside the United States intelligence agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the collection has just been renovated to commemorate the agency’s 75th anniversary.

A small group of journalists, including the BBC, were given exclusive access, albeit with a security escort constantly at our side.

Among the 600 objects on display are the Kinds of Cold War Spy Gadgets One Might Expect.

A ‘dead rat’ in which messages can be hidden, a hidden camera inside a pack of cigarettes, a pigeon with its own spy camera, and even an exploding martini glass.

But there are also details about some of the most famous and even recent operations of the CIA.

On display is a scale model of the compound where Osama bin Laden was discovered in Pakistan.

President Obama was shown this scale model before approving the raid that killed al-Qaeda leader in 2011.

“Being able to see things in 3D actually helped legislators, as well as our operators to plan the mission“, explains Robert Z Byer, director of the museum who accompanied the journalists during the tour.

On July 30 of this year, an American missile hit another compound, this time in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The goal was the al-Qaeda’s new leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

And the most recent addition to the museum, recently declassified, is another scale model of the building used to brief President Biden on July 1, 2022 on the proposal for the mission.

Zawahiri was hit while on the balcony after the US intelligence community spent months studying his movements.

“Reveals how counter-terrorist agents observe the pattern of life of the lens,” explains Byer.

The first half of the museum is organized in chronological order, from the founding of the CIA in 1947 to the Cold Warwith the attacks of September 11, 2001 as a clear shift in focus in the fight against terrorism.

There are even items on display donated by some of those who lost relatives or friends in the attack.

Visitors to the museum are the CIA’s own personnel, as well as official visitors.

But the museum doesn’t just focus on successful operations.

There is a section on Bay of Pigs fiasco when a CIA mission to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba went disastrously wrong.

There are also references to failure in search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“This museum is not just a museum for history’s sake. It’s an operational museum. We bring CIA officers here to explore our history, both the good and the bad,” says Byer.

“We make sure our officers understand our history, so they can do a better job in the future. We have to learn from our successes and our failures to improve“.

However, some of the more controversial aspects of the CIA’s work are less visible, for example its 1953 joint operation with MI6, to overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran

Or his most recent involvement in the torture of terror suspects after 2001.

The second half of the museum focuses in detail on a few specific operations.

The phrase “we can neither confirm nor deny” is quite familiar to those reporting on intelligence agencies and its origins lie in a specific history of the museum that collects items never seen before.

In the late 1960s, a Soviet Union submarine was lost somewhere on the bottom of the ocean.

After the United States located it, the CIA worked with billionaire Howard Hughes to try to recover the wreck and the technology on board.

To do this, he invented a cover story in which Hughes was supposed to mine the bottom of the ocean using a ship called the Glomar Explorer.

The museum contains a model of the Soviet submarine, as well as clothes, ashtrays and mail bags created to maintain the Glomar cover story.

There is even a wig on display that was used by the deputy director of the CIA to disguise himself during a visit to the ship.

The mission was only partially successful because the submarine broke apart when the Glomar’s steel claws tried to pull it outalthough some parts were recovered.

“Most of what they found on board that sub is still classified,” says Byer.

When news broke of what was known as Project Azorian before the rest of the submarine could be extracted, officials were told to say they “could neither confirm nor deny” what had happened.

A phrase known as the “Glomar Response” and is still widely used.

There are also items used to build the story of a fake movie poster called Argo.

This would allow the rescue of diplomats held in Iran after the 1979 revolution, a story that was later made into a Hollywood movie.

On display is concept art from the fake movie the rescue team pretended to be making.

Art was designed to be deliberately difficult to decipher or understand.

And when it comes to deciphering, the ceiling of the new museum also contains hidden messages in different types of code.

The goal, CIA officials say, is for images are shared with the public on social media to see if they can figure them out.

Some of the exhibits will also be available to view online.

But for now, that may be as close as most people can get to this museum.

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