Inside the CIA’s top secret museum

America’s spy agency the CIA has many secrets to keep but to market 70 fifth anniversaries house usually opened up a little about its policy inviting a select few to visit its normally undercover museum all security correspondent Gordon Carreiro was the only

International

international broker calls to be let in this is what diesel. One of the most secret organizations in the world offers a rare glimpse inside its operations to market 70 fifth

anniversary of the CIA opening the doors to its in-house museum. Those to the public we were among a select few given access inside this most unusual of museums are exhibits and artifacts mocking the CIA’s history and its operations right from its foundation soon after

Display

World War 2 through the Cold War I’m right up to the present day. Among the 600 artifacts on display are dead rats in which messages have hidden a pigeon with a spy camera

attached and even then exploding martini gloss. But that’s the museum’s director showed me a tool they were also detailed more high-profile operations and how this model uses the agency this model is used to brief top policymakers including the president on

Compound

displays a scale model of the compound where it was suspected al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was hiding in 2011. The level of detail gave president Obama the confidence to

approve the mission to go off to bin Laden who was killed in the raid. Here we have our newest artifacts in the collection the most recent exhibit is another model this time of the compound in Kabul Afghanistan where bin laden’s successor Ayman al Zawahiri was killed

Destruction

this July. Some failures like plots in Cuba and Iraq’s missing weapons of mass destruction do get a mention although other controversies like torture and downplaying or absent

the intended audience a primarily CIA stuff this museum is not just a museum for history’s sake this is an operational museum we are taking CIA officers exploring our history both good and bad we make sure that our officers understand their history so that

worked

they can do a better job in the future the story begins amongst the more bizarre stories of how the CIA worked with an eccentric billionaire to come up with a cover story saying that a ship could secretly try to cover a wrecked Soviet submarine in July of 1974 the

gigantic clock goes to the bottom of the ocean scoops up that submarine instructs bringing it to the surface that story may now be public but there are other officials say it still too classified even for the secret museum golden Carrera BBC news CIA headquarters.