Sculpture of the father of Central Intelligence. Donovan was tapped by president roosevelt in 1942 to head the office of Strategic Services. That organization had grown out of an earlier one hold the called the coordinator of information, our countrys first nondepartmental intelligence agency, established by president roosevelt to coordinate intelligence with the war growing overseas. The single star behind us commemorates the loss of 116 ossers who served during world war ii. The cia seal is a piece everyone sees as a first come into the lobby. Some people do not like to walk across it. Some people will walk around it. You see museums filmed in the movies filmed in the lobby, people crossing the seal. It was an interesting piece, in designed by the same group that designed the tomb of the unknown soldier. It has the eagle. Our nations symbol of vigilance, the eagle. Everybody here works for the president of the United States. We carry on our badge is the great seal of the United States. If you look at the great seal, you see an eagle with its wings spread. It is called an eagle rampant in heraldic terms. The eagle holds the all in branch of peace. And the 13 arrows for war for the original 13 colonies. During world war ii, a war eagle looked to the left, to those arrows. After the war, president truman decided we would no longer project a bellicose image. Truman had the eagle flipped. Postwar, our eagle looked to the right, in an advancing position, to the olive branch of peace. There is a defense shield. Intelligence is our countrys first line of defense. In the center, you will see a 16 point compass rose that symbolizes information coming from all points of the globe to a central point. Our Mission Statement states that we are the nations first line of defense. We accomplish what others cannot accomplish, and go where others cannot go. We collect intelligence that matters. We provide strategic intelligence analysis. We conduct covert action at the behest of the u. S. President , in support of u. S. Policy objectives. And we provide worldclass support services to enable all of those functions. Our job is to collect intelligence and to transmit that intelligence via various products, like the president s Daily Briefing to the policymakers, so they can make informed decisions about our National Security. In 1972, cia celebrates its 25th, and that is the beginning of the look back over its history. The request to commemorate comes in, and the request to have a modest is him starts as well. Modest museum starts van as well. The executive director at the time is william colby, and he says, let us look into the possibility of having a modest little museum. And he asks another osser, walter, to create a collection. Walter had been asked by allen dulles to create a special collection in the library on intelligence. That now numbers over 25 thousand volumes on intelligence. Maybe a quarter are in english. The oldest is a codebook that goes back to 1606. It is walters job to build a tangible collection of items. It grew by bits and pieces. Sometimes, people would simply drop objects on walters desk. Not a lot of documentation in the early days. Other museums will appreciate the fact that one of our largest donors is found in collection. The objects we take him today we have best practices in place, and the objects we take into the collection today are welldocumented. It is our job to collect the agencies tangible heritage and the agencys tangible heritage and to preserve and document that tangible heritage, which is now over 18,000 objects, and to put those objects in educational exhibits to help give our visitors, and by extension the american people, through our traveling exhibit, our loans to other institutions, our website, a better understanding of the role intelligence plays in our country. We are in our legacy gallery. This gallery is dedicated to the derringdo of the 14,000 men and women who served the cias predecessor, the office of Strategic Services. That organization was our countrys first nondepartmental intelligence agency. It would not have existed but for two men, president roosevelt and general wild bill donovan. It is 1940, and the war winds are blowing, and resident president roosevelt asks that agencies that collect foreign intelligence coordinate it better. That would have been diplomats posted abroad, defense attaches posted abroad. In 1940, the fbi receives a brief to collect foreign intelligence in the western hemisphere. We know from our history books the coordination was not great enough. In frustration, president roosevelt dispatches a world war i hero, donovan, to britain, to meet with British Intelligence. Donovan had been meeting in the United States with william stephenson, canadian official assigned to British Intelligence. Stephenson was running a covert Action Campaign to get the u. S. Involved in the war. We consider him to be an architect of Central Intelligence, along with donovan. When stephenson finds out that donovan is going to britain to meet with reddish intelligence, he cables ahead and asks British Intelligence to open their doors to donovan. He knows donovan has the ear of the u. S. President. Both men had gone to colombia together. They knew each other. But they were not close. Donovan wrote detailed intelligence reports and gave the president recommendations after he traveled. Roosevelt decides he is going to create a new bureaucracy in 1941. He is going to call it the coordinator of information, attach it to himself at the white house, and have donovan had it. Donovan head it. This is established on july 11, 1941. Pearl harbor hits that december. Coi is reorganized. The overt operations are put under the office of war, and the covert operations are put in an office named covert Strategic Services. June 13, 1942. In building his organization donovan is reaching out to , people like you. He wants the best and the brightest in our country. He reaches into the military. He reaches into academic and private industry. If he has an operation that requires a document specialist, a forger or lock pick, you will reach into prison if you need that kind of talent. This picture you are about to see is the first cinematic study of the preparation, arrival, and establishment of permanent cover for secret agents. Over the course of its 3. 5 year history, maybe 25,000 men and women have passed through its ranks. At its peak, 13,000 men and women served. One of the gentlemen donovan brought on board to help train was William Fairburn a british , special Operations Executive major, who had been training the militia in shanghai. He taught handtohand combat, and one of the people he caught was richard helms. Richard helms, before the war, was a newspaper correspondent. He served in the navy as Lieutenant Commander. He had just returned from three weeks of temporary sea duty. He got a letter from a friend at oss saying, you might be interested in applying. He sends back a telegram. Received your letter. Am intrigued. Will be in touch. Helms signs up will stop one of signs up. He trains with fairburn. One of the things he is taught is handed him her using a knife. Hand to hand combat and using a knife. The trainer even wrote a book called get tough. The first thing he tells you to do is bring a gun to a knife fight. You do not want to be in a knife fight. If anybody pulls a gun on you, run like the dickens. We will meet richard harms helms again. He does not know he is going to become director of Central Intelligence in 1966 and serve until 1973. One of the more remarkable women who served with oss was Virginia Hall, a baltimore native who served as a clerk in the state department in the 1930s, with various postings. Warsaw, visit venice, turkey. While in turkey, she had a hunting accident. The trigger of her weapon caught and discharged the weapon into her left foot. Gangrene eventually set in and the doctor was forced to take her leg below the knee. She also had a wooden leg. She had been with state for about five years and was eager to join the diplomatic corps, but back then, there was a regulation that states would not post officers abroad who were missing major limbs. In frustration, she resigned and decided to travel in europe anyway, and got caught in france when world war ii broke out. She had studied in france and was fluent. So she stayed. She drove an ambulance for a while. Then British Special operations the same organization fairburn worked for, recruited Virginia Hall to be the Radio Operator for an agent network. Allied pilots who had been shot down past through her hands to safety. Eventually, she was betrayed by one of her own agents, and had to escape. The gestapo put a warrant out, describing her as one of the most dangerous allied agents in france at the time. They called her the limping lady in french. She had nicknamed the leg cuthbert. Virginia, cuthbert, and her radio escaped over the pyrenees into spain. She was chased by klaus barbie, the butcher of lyon. When she got out, she radioed to she was incarcerated for about six months after being captured by the spanish, and when she got out, she radioed to london that she was safe, and mentioned in her message that cuthbert was giving her problems. She had never informed london of the nickname for the leg. She got back the message, if cuthbert is giving you problems, have him eliminated. She was eager to get back into france to continue fighting the war. In march of 1944, the office of Strategic Services inserted Virginia Hall back into occupied france two months in advance of dday. While there, she would take cheese that she had made into the local village as part of her cover for counting german troop movements and drop zones for the engagement. For the invasion. Early in the morning and other times late at night from a , different barn each time, as the painting we have in her collection shows, she sent 37 intelligence messages back to london. At the end of the war, president truman invites her to the white house to receive the only distinguished Service Cross presented to a female during the war. This is one of our highest awards for valor. She is still in france and does not want the attention, so she declines the offer to go to the white house. Instead General Donovan sideth her mother at his presented the award to her three , days before oss was resolved. Was dissolved. She remained in the field of intelligence and became one of cias first female case officers, retiring in 1966, and passed away in 1982. If you had been a spy during the civil war and needed a piece of espionage equipment, maybe you would have gone down to the local cobbler, and he would have made a special pair of boots with a secret compartment. So you could carry secret messages. The during world war ii, we are fighting a Global Intelligence war. Rather than having espionage equipment crafted for the individual, we need thousands of pieces. This necessitates a contract with private industry. The world war ii liberator pistol is a good example of that. There was a contract with the guideline division of General Motors to make an inexpensive weapon that could be airdropped into the resistance. For about 1. 72 each, about a million of them were made. That was in a threemonth time span. About 500,000 went to britain. 300,000 went to china. About 15,000 went to the philippines. It is a single shot 45. You used it to liberate a better weapon from your enemy. Called a liberator, or a woolworth dime, because of its un, because ofo its inexpensive price. In intelligence, there is no such thing as technology too old for operations. In the mid1960s, cia looked back and created what we called a denied area weapon. It is called a dear pistol. The standard ammunition was nine millimeter. Large stocks had been put aside for bay of pigs in 1960 one. This Program Comes along in the mid1960s, which specifically makes a nine millimeter weapon to use of the stocks. Airdropped in with a styrofoam case, cartoon instructions, no english required. The bullets turned upside down date from bay of pigs stock. No expensive deployment of this weapon. The recharge Committee Hearings in 1975, and the agency was investigated by congress for alleged assassinations and rogue activities, and these stocks were ordered destroyed. It is very rare to even see one. I know of maybe four agencywide. This is the only one we have that is complete. The final gallery is dedicated to donovans office. In the photo above the desk, donovan is actually seated at his desk. This was his desk when he was director. Oss headquarters was down at 2430 e street. Donovans office was in the east building. Donovan was the most highly decorated officer of world war i, and the only american to receive our nations highest for medals the medal of honor, distinguished Service Cross, distinguished service medal, and National Security metal. National security medal. Donovan was in france since 1918. He is there with the fighting 69th out of new york. They received in order to pull back. Instead, donovan stands up in front of his man, with his rank showered, a lieutenant colonel. He says, look at me. They cannot hit me, they cannot hit you. He led his men to take the german position. They are under attack on three sides. He is wounded in the leg, but refuses to be evacuated from the battlefield until his man and his men and the position are secure. In about five days of action, his battalion had 600 casualties, dead and wounded. He never forgot the sacrifice, and when he became director of the oss, he insisted his extension be 600. On his desk, you see a sears and roebuck style catalog called the oss weapons catalog, ap stanley a piece that stanley lowells Group Generated in 1942 that went out to various bases and stations around the world. Depending on your operation, you could pick so many grenades or so many liberator pistols, or so many acetone cellulose delay devices, or so many 22 caliber guns. Whatever you needed for your operational case, you could find it in this catalog. As the war was drawing to an end in 1945, General Donovan was very passionate about there being some sort of a postwar centralized intelligence agency, and he wrote memo after memo to both president roosevelt and truman, advocating for a postwar intelligence agency. But he lost the battle when it seemed one of those memos was released to the press. September 20, 1945, donovan received a letter from the white house that said, basically, we loved what you did for us during the war but do not need you anymore. Love and kisses, harry. Donovan was given just 10 days to dissolve his organization. By october 1945, oss was history. It is not until 1947, with the National Security act, that we have the position of secretary of defense, the National Security council, the u. S. Air force, and cia. Donovan served on the nuremberg trials for a while. Eventually, president eisenhower names him as ambassador to thailand, but by then, donovan is already starting to show the ravages of arterial sclerosis of the brain, each eventually claims him on february 9, 1959. He is laid to rest in arlington cemetery, up on the hill with some of the Major Military leaders from our countrys history. And you would go there expecting to see a monumental headstone to General Donovan, the father of Central Intelligence, the military hero, this highly decorated american officer of world war i. But instead, you will see the ordinary soldiers headstone. But it will say medal of honor on it. You remember young Lieutenant Commander richard helms. We met him earlier in the gallery. At the end of the war, it seems he may have been one of the First AmericanIntelligence Officers to get into hitlers bunker in bavaria, where he very well could have picked up this piece of hitlers letterhead. The historical record does not indicate exactly where he may have picked it up. But on victory in europe day, he writes this note to his threeyearold son. Dear dennis, the man some might who might have written on this card once controlled europe three short years ago. When you are born today, he is dead. His memory despised, his country in ruins. He had a thirst for power and a low opinion of man as an individual. He was a force for evil in the world. His passing, his defeat, a boon for mankind. But thousands died that it might be so. The price is always high. He was a newspaperman before the war. He knew how to write. I marvel that this young father had the sense of history to create an artifact for his son. 66 years later, dennis directs this piece to our collection. We received it the very day that we, as well as you, heard that bin laden was dead. The price for ridding society of bad is always high. So when the agency was created in 1947, it occupied the headquarters of its world war ii predecessor, the office of Strategic Services. Those headquarters were down at 2430 e street. Today, by the state department. Between the Kennedy Center and the state department. This is the original headquarters sign. It has an interesting story behind it. It seems that eisenhower and his brother milton were on their way home from church one fine sunday, and ike turned to his brother and says, i need you to see allen dulles at cia