The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely
to see.
—Sir Winston Churchill
Central Intelligence Agency officers are reminded of the
Agency’s past every time they walk through the halls of Headquarters in McLean, Va.
One CIA institution shines a light on the past to illuminate the future: the CIA Museum,
under the aegis of the Center for the Study of Intelligence.
Mission Focused
“We’re here to inform, instruct and inspire the operational
mission,” said CIA Museum Curator Toni Hiley.
First and foremost, the CIA Museum
is geared toward supporting the workforce in its training, operational and
recruitment missions.
In 1952, Sherman Kent—a former member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and later the head of the Office of
National Estimates— said:
“In my view, the only reason for reconstructing
the history of a government agency is to further the operational efficiency of
that agency. This cannot be history for history’s sake. It must be history for
the improvement of today’s and tomorrow’s operations.”
Hiley emphasizes using a past artifact that might be the
exemplar in that particular field to build new capabilities.
“If the Directorate of Science & Technology (DS&T)
wanted to look back and see how a certain technology was used, we might have
the only Agency artifact that could be useful,” she said. “We can make the
technical lessons learned—what worked and what didn’t—available. The current
initiative doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
Share the Wealth
The CIA
Museum also reaches out
to other members of the Intelligence Community.
“We brief the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of
State, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office
and many other members of the Intelligence Community,” Hiley said. “The CIA Museum
has been a benchmark for other agencies that have seen what we’ve done in a
building that was not meant be a museum and how we’ve created education
exhibits to ensure that our history remains accessible to our workforce and
visitors.”
Going beyond the Intelligence Community, the CIA Museum
outreaches to:
- Presidential
Libraries
- museums—federal
and private
- historical
societies and associations
- collectors
and donors.
“In 2002, we collaborated with the Reagan Presidential
Library and fielded 200 artifacts for an exhibit about intelligence as a
presidential decision-making tool,” Hiley said. “About 93,000 people saw our
exhibit. It received worldwide coverage, even in the former Soviet
Union.”
The CIA
Museum has also loaned an
artifact to the Newseum in support of its FBI exhibit. One of the pigeon
cameras currently resides in a military museum in the Netherlands.
“We look for opportunities to collaborate with national
museums in order to tell the story of the role of intelligence in democracy,” Hiley
said. “The role of intelligence in a democracy is something that the American
people should have a better understanding of and the Agency is best suited to
share the story.”
History
The CIA
Museum was created in
1972—the Agency’s 25th anniversary—at the request of the Executive
Director William Colby. He sent a memo to the Fine Arts Commission and the
Historical Intelligence Collection (HIC) curator to look into the possibility
of establishing a “modest little museum.”
Walter Pforzheimer, the HIC curator at the time, asked the leaders
of the Agency’s directorates to identify any items of historical importance.
“It was this little nugget of a collection that was held for
many years within the HIC,” said Hiley.
In the mid-1980s, the HIC curator lobbied for a formal
museum space in the New Headquarters Building. The museum was allotted
400 square feet to start with and the museum curator position was established.
Growing Pains
The CIA
Museum had a growth spurt
in 1997 when the exhibits expanded again with the 50th anniversary
of the Agency; during this time the Cold War Gallery was created.
The staff of the Center for the Study of Intelligence,
working in collaboration with collector and historian H. Keith Melton,
established this exhibit. It showcases some of Melton’s 6,000 clandestine
espionage artifacts from the United States,
the former Soviet Union, and East
Germany. These artifacts are currently on
loan by Melton.
The next addition to the museum was the OSS
Gallery, which was added in 2002 for the 60th anniversary of the OSS. The OSS Gallery features General Donovan’s World
War II accoutrements.
“We wanted an exhibit that would connect the workforce with
the “daring-do” of the 13,000 men and women who served under General Donovan
during WWII in the field of intelligence for the Office of Strategic Services,”
Hiley said.
For more than 50 years, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) has informed US presidents and other policymakers about what’s going on in theworld around them. To honor the DI’s 50th anniversary, the CIA Museum established a DI exhibit in 2002. At the time, the DI Gallery was the only
exhibit on intelligence analysis in the country.
The Directorate of Science & Technology also established
an exhibit commemorating its 40th anniversary in 2003. This gallery
provides a glimpse into the secret world where such innovative devices as the
insectothopter were developed.
As part of the Agency’s 60th anniversary in 2007,
the Afghan exhibit was established. The exhibit provides a look at how the
Agency’s efforts during Operation Enduring Freedom parallel the history of the OSS during World War II.
“As I was interviewing many of the Agency officers who were
first on the ground, the leader of the first paramilitary team in Afghanistan
commented that he and his officers felt just like the Jedburghs of World War II
as they flew in behind enemy lines,” said Hiley. “This gave us the concept for
the exhibit—the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
To illustrate this, OSS
artifacts are place next to current day artifacts for comparison. A World War
II welbike (a collapsible motorcycle that fit into a standard parachute
canister) is displayed next to an Uzbek saddle similar to one used by CIA’s
paramilitary teams while riding with indigenous forces in Afghanistan to
demonstrate unusual means of field-expedient transportation.
Since its inception in 1972, the CIA Museum
has grown from 400 square feet to 11,000 square feet. The original collection
has amassed more than 6,000 artifacts. Only 10 percent of these artifacts are
on display at any given time. The museum also comprises a large classified
collection, but only unclassified items can be displayed in the exhibits at
Headquarters.
Favorite Finds
Many treasures can be found among the unclassified items on
display at the CIA
Museum. The
insectothopter is one of the favorite artifacts on exhibit. It was developed as
a listening device that would be flown to the vicinity of its target. In other
words, insectothopter could be thought of as a bug that was a bug. Although it
was never used operationally, it was first in flight for an insect-sized
machine.
“The insectothopter confirms to a lot of people the
creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that CIA uses to create technology
firsts,” Hiley said. “That was created more than 30 years ago. Imagine what
capabilities we must have now.”
Some Civil War minié balls found during the construction of
the Original Headquarters Building represent the oldest artifacts in the
museum’s collection.
“Not many people know that the CIA compound is located on
property that included two Civil War camps—Camp
Griffin and Camp Pierpont,”
Hiley said.
The minié balls and their story is yet another example of
how the CIA Museum is using the past to inspire the
future.
A V.I.P. Tour
Since the CIA
Museum is located at CIA
Headquarters it is not open to the public. However, the public can catch a
glimpse of the amazing artifacts the museum holds by taking a virtual tour
of the museum.
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