Museum at the cia. Mr. Byer, whats the point of having a museum that isnt open to the public . This is the museum for so many different parts of our agency. Its an operational museum, meaning that we learn from the lessons of our past so that we can become better in the future in our operations and its also to inform our guests, people who come to headquarters, our partners, help them understand our history, what weve done in the past and also, on shows like this, helping the American Public understand the role of intelligence in our democracy. Well, the cia is about 75 years old right now. Is this the point of opening up the newly classified parts of this museum . Not only is this museum coming online just in time for the 75th anniversary of cia, it is also the 50th anniversary of cia museum. On the 25th anniversary of cia, we were asked to create a museum. Not that i was around for that, but thats where the museum started as a way to preserve the agencys history and so, its a double anniversary this year. So, what are we going to see when we go inside . So, this is, like i said, a brand new museum. We have changed the whole structure of the museum to reflect our new mission. Instead of it being stove piped by directate, we have five core mission threads woven through the entire museum. In addition to the threads, we have chronological history of cia not just through the artifacts, but as you look on the ceiling, you will see theres a chronological history of codes on our ceiling, starting off with morris code from the beginning and by the time its in the digital age, its in binary code. How can you become the director of the cia museum . Whats your background . So, interestingly enough, i came to the agency as a film producer. They needed to do a documentary series about the history of cia and it was a wonderful experience. Ive been swimming in the history of the agency ever since. My guess is that there are added difficulties because of the classifications and secrets that the cia naturally have and creating a museum. Theres a security overlay at cia that we all have to Pay Attention to in order to make sure our operations are kept closely guarded, so that were able to be successful in our operations now and in the future. But at the same time, we look for artifacts that we can show to the public so everything you will see in this museum has been declassified. Nothing in our museums that well walk through is still classified, but that doesnt mean in our collection that we dont have quite a few of those as well. So how often do you have guests here, do cia employees come through . Whats wonderful about our museum is that its actually in the hallway space of the agency. The motto of cia museum is to instruct, inform and inspire by having it in the all hallway space of the cia, allows our officers on the way to work to see their history, to see an artifact or something that might relate to what theyre doing today. Well, why dont we take a tour . Great, lets go. So, rob byer, were at the beginning of the museum, its 1947. Whats going on with the cia . Does it exist . Well, before we get to the emergence of cia, we actually have to go back to 1941, pearl harbor. There are dots of intelligence all throughout the u. S. Government, but theyre not able to be put together in order to warn the president of an incoming attack. Because of pearl harbor, the office of Strategic Services is created. Oss. Oss. Major General Donovan is in charge and basically they create the modern intelligence apparatus. All of the directates here at cia are created during world war ii and a lot of the ways that we do our operations today, the lineage goes all the way back to the oss. One of our Great Stories is about the gold coins of the oss that we now have on display. These are 20 gold coins from the 1800s. Theyre worth thousands of dollars now, but back then in world war ii, donovan created or collected almost 2 million worth of these gold coins with the idea that in denied areas in france, norway, all throughout europe that they needed a way to pay for things for their existence in those countries and these gold coins were the perfect way in order to buy things that they needed, supplies, guns, food, anything. If you have gold, you have a way of being able to buy what you need. How long were they in use . They were used all throughout the war and the oss, whats amazing about it, is four of our cia directors come out of the oss. We have our special operations with their lineage back to the oss and so, after 9 11 when we go into afghanistan, the types of operations were doing behind enemy lines in afghanistan really no different than what were doing with the oss in world war ii. So what should we know about wild bill donovan . Wild bill donovan is such an interesting character. He was a medal of honor winner during world war i. During the inner war period becomes a very successful businessman, lawyer, collecting information from all over the world. In fact, he was invited to witness the 1938 invasion by italy. So he would take this information and report it back to a very good friend of his, a guy named Franklin Delano roosevelt so because of this, roosevelt knew that he would be a good person to head up an Intelligence Organization. So, rob byer, 1947, harry truman is on a mural behind you on the wall. Was it his idea to incorporate the cia or was that bill donovans idea . Donovan had always been pushing for a peace time Intelligence Organization. At the end of world war ii, so many war time organizations just were dissolved bus everyone wanted to come home, but truman realized that he was going to need a peace time Intelligence Organization to take on the soviet union. So, within a couple of years, all those elements of the oss are brought back together in the Central Intelligence agency. One of the things that truman wanted was a newspaper that would give him information that he couldnt get anywhere else, so, starting with the daily summary, which is a collection of all the different cables from state department and other places coming together for him, that will evolve into the president s daily brief. Something every morning delivered not only to the president of the United States, but to our top policy makers to help them, inform them, on information they literally cant get anywhere else. The most exclusive reading list of all time . One of the most interesting things about cia that people dont realize is that were truly a newspaper, right . We send our reporters out into the field, known as case officers. They collect that information. Bring it back to the agency for our analysts to write and deliver to the smallest circulation of any newspaper in the world, to the president of the United States. And you have a daily brief here on display. What are we looking at . So, the one we have on display is actually the president s intelligence checklist. And this is a special intelligence checklist. The pickle, as it was known, because the acronym for the president s intelligence checklist is picl. Were known as the pickle factory in the 1960s. And all of these types of newspapers, as it were, theyre especially created for each president. President kennedy wanted something new, he wanted something to put in his pocket, look at during the day, so they created the checklist, the picl, and it was Something Special for president kennedy. So on 22 november, 1963, the date that president kennedy is assassinated, the picl staff created a very special edition of the president s intelligence checklist. As you see, its really a poem in honor of president kennedy and his life, and it shows how the president is our first customer and how important they are to us here at cia. Now, you have the daily brief for President Biden or at least the cover, as well, and for president elect biden. The president elect gets a daily brief as well. Thanks to truman, that policy has continued to this day. When truman came into office he didnt know what was going on. He didnt know about the manhattan project, didnt know about any war plans and felt that anyone who was going to become the president of the United States, needed to have this information ahead of time. And so, when Adlai Stevenson and general eisenhower were up for election, he gave them access to the daily summary so that they could know what he was seeing and help them prepare. And when the candidate becomes the president elect, they get the full president s daily brief. No different than the president himself. So, robert byer, we continue our tour of the cia museum. The cold war is in full swing. A lot of spy gadgets come out of that, dont they . There really was an iron curtain over the soviet block and it was incredibly hard to get in there, get what we call, as our assets, our sources of information, to help us understand what was going on behind that soviet iron curtain. And so, we needed disguises. We needed equipment that would help our assets get the information we needed, things like the microdot camera that would basically take a picture of a document and shrink it down to the size of a dot. These are the types of things that we would give to our assets in order to collect that information. And youve got on display here a can and a miniature book. What are we looking at . In 1949, the cia is given covert action authority. What that does, is it gives cia the role of being the hidden hand of the United States government, that gray area between direct military action and diplomacy. And so, with this iron curtain spread out over the soviet area, we needed a way to get information into the soviet union as well. And one of the ways was taking a Nobel Prize Winning author and his book and shrink it go down to a miniature version, so we took the gulag archipelago, and put it in a can and seal it in there. Those are examples of how we would get information into the soviet union and then it would be circulated around the soviet union so people could understand what were the conditions of the gulag. What was it like to be in siberia so that people in the soviet union would understand better what was actually going on in their own country. And when you say can, just an ordinary food can or household can, correct . The great thing about intelligence work if you try to be ordinary. You try to make everything look like nothing is out of place. So, if youre going to smuggle something in, you want to use Something Like an ordinary can to put your contraband, your books that cant be produced in that country, in that can and then get it into the country. Also on display are bags and disguises. How were those used during the cold war . So, one of the hardest things about operating in the soviet union is the constant surveillance. The kgb is everywhere, they know everyone, theyre looking at everything. So when our officers are going out to meet with our assets, it is a very dangerous proposition, so if theyre photographed together, that could mean disaster for that asset. And so, disguise is a great way to make sure that the kgb at least for a little while isnt able to follow our officers as theyre doing their mission. Now, rob byer, one of the goal of the cia is to turn assets, turn soviets into assets and youve got photos of some of the soviets who were cia agents and also how they communicated with the u. S. Our first big asset in the soviet union was a guy named popov and he gave us information and unfortunately he was caught. While in jail cell he wanted to communicate whatever information we were getting from him, we should realize it was suspect, that the kgb had gotten to him so on toilet paper in his jail cell, wrote down this note and had his wife smuggle it out to us so that we would know what had happened to him and to make sure that we werent being fooled by the new information the kgb was trying to plant through him. And thats very delicate and very small print, that was that hard to maintain over the years . When you look at this artifact, you realize, a, you know, the passion and commitment that popov had to doing whatever he could do to bring down the soviet regime and even in his jail cell with only a pen and toilet paper around him, he made sure to figure out a way to get a message out to us. And so, luckily, that toilet paper, from the soviet union, is very sturdy stuff and weve been able to make sure its preserved all of these years. As you can see, its kept in this drawer to keep the light levels low on it and to make sure its wellpreserved for generations to come. Is popov considered a cia hero . Popov and all of these assets on the wall are all considered heroes. A lot of them gave their lives for this cause. Some of them refused to be exfiltrated out ever the soviet union because they were so committed to getting as much information as they could. Another one thats on this wall, oleg penkoskie, he was the colonel in the intelligence. Many, many times we asked to exfiltrate him out and he said im here until the end. I want to get you as much information as i can. Rob byer, how would we identify each other if we were on streets of moscow and we wanted to know whether or not it was safe to talk . One of our legendary case officers the handler for them was Charles Keith walter and he wanted a system so that an asset would know his handler in public. They might not have ever met before. So one way he came up with an idea was to have both of them have the identical cuff links. So you can see on display over here, those cuff links that were used in one of these operations, so that popov could know that the cia handler was who they said they were. Before we move on, i want to reference the ceiling and where we are when it comes to coded messages. Right. So if you look at our ceiling, at the very beginning with start off with morris cold. During the cold war, we have a message hidden in cyrillic. Eventually were going to get all of these hidden messages up online so people can try their hand at decoding these messages and you know, let us know what they find out. By the way, some of the artifacts that were seeing today in the museum, are they available for people to see online . We have on cia. Gov a very robust catalog of many different artifacts you can see in the museum. Check out cia. Gov. We have a twitter account as well and you can look at many different artifacts there as well. In the early part of the 1950s, the cia had a real problem. It was extremely hard to get into the soviet union to get information out. And so, the cia decided, well, if you cant go in, what if you go over . And there was this period of time of incredible creativity to try and figure out this security issue. It first started off with the bomber gap. The idea that the soviet union had many more Nuclear Bombers than the u. S. Did. And that really worried people over here. So president eisenhower came to cia and said, we need to know, and so, what did the cia do . If 18 months go from the drawing board to operational status of the u2 airplane. It flies at 70,000 feet and it flies so high that neither missiles more airplanes from the soviet union can get to it. And on its very first pass over the soviet union it collects information on their military air bases and dispells the bomber gap. In fact, we had many, many more bombers than they did. And so, president eisenhower refers to the photograph from the u2, its a Million Dollar photograph because every photograph that showed one less bomber than we thought meant that he didnt have to build another bomber here. So, worth a Million Dollars at least. Because of the u2 program and how important it was, we recognized that eventually the soviet union would figure out a way to get to an airplane at 70,000 feet. And so, we came up with two different overhead reconnaissance platforms. The first was going to be a follow on aircraft. Its called the a12 and its a technological marvel. In the late 50s, youre talking about a plane that flew at 90,000 feet, thats miles higher than the u2. Flew it over mach3, thats so fast, it could outrace missiles fired at it and made out of titanium material that gave it stealth capabilities in the 1950s. However, the technological leap cause add lot of delays so the over overhead reconnaissance platform came online faster than the a12 and that was the corona satellite system. Literally months after the u2 was shot down in 1960, the first corona satellite system was put up into orbit. In its first pass over the soviet union it collected more information than all u2 flights combined. And this was a special satellite. It had two cameras that would point down to the area on earth, take photos of it. And then, that photograph, those bucket from the corona satellite would be ejected and float down and parachute down where a plane would snag it out of the air and developed the film and our photo interpreters would look at this material on very special equipment. In fact, because there were two cameras pointing to one point on earth, we needed a special reading device and as you can see here, there are two places for the film to go and be looked at under the microscope. Basically this creates stereoscopic vision that enables the interpreters to glean more from that overhead imagery. Now, thats a pretty technical and that seems like a top secret thing you told us about corona and u2. The information from our satellite systems was perhaps some of the most guarded information, some of the most closely held information by the u. S. Government. And it still is to this day. Luckily, for us, the corona system has been declassified at this point. We have other ways of getting information from satellites, other than ejecting them out of space and floating down to earth so that we can show this information with you today. Everybody knows the name gary powers. He was a u2 pilot. What happened and what happened to his plane . Theres a movie called the bridge of spies, a wonderful movie about the u2 program. And the one thing i would take issue, portrays gary powers as an inexperienced pilot just going over the soviet union for the first time when he gets shot down. Francis gary powers was one of our most experienced u2 pilots. He had been a part of the program for many years. He knew everything about the u2 plane and so, when he was shot down in 1960, it was definitely a shock to us here in the United States and when he came back to the United States,