well, joining us now on american history tv is robert byer. he is the director of the museum at the cia. mr. buyer. what's the point of having a music film that isn't open to the public? this is the museum for so many different parts. our agency, it's an operation or museum, meaning that we learn from the lessons of our past. so that we can become better in the future, in our operations. it's also to inform guests, people who come to headquarters, our partners, help them understand our history we've 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 just 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, three of cia museum. on the 25th anniversary of cia, we were asked to, create a museum. not that i was around for that, but that's where the museum started as a way to preserve the agency's history. and so it's a it's 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 stovepipe shaped by directorate, we now have five core mission threads that are interwoven throughout the entire

museum. in addition to, the mission threads, we also have a chronological history of cia, not just through the artifacts, but as you look on the ceiling, you will see there's a chronological history of codes in our ceiling starting off with morse code at the beginning. and by the time you get to the digital age, it's in binary code. how did you become the director of the cia museum? what's your background? so in arrestingly 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. i've been swimming in the history of the agency ever since. my guess is that they're added difficulties because of the classified nations and secrets that the cia naturally has. they're creating a museum. there's a security overlay at cia that we all have to pay attention to in order to make

sure our operations are kept closely so that we're able to be in our operations now and in the future. but at the same time, we look for artifice acts that we can show to the public. so everything you will see in this museum has been declassified. nothing in our museum that we'll walk through is still classified. but that doesn't mean in our that we don't have quite a few of those as well. so how often do you have guests in here? do cia employees come through? what's wonderful about our museum is that it is actually in the hallways space of the agency. the motto of cia museum is to instruct, inform and inspire by having it in the actual hallways space of cia. it allows our officers, as they're on their way, work to see their history, to see an artifact or something that might or might relate to what they're

doing today. well, why don't we take it to her? great. let's go. so, robert byer we're at the beginning of the museum. it's 1947. what's going with the cia? does it exist? well, before we get to the emergence of, we actually have to go back to 1941, pearl harbor. they are dots of intelligence all throughout the us government, but they're not able to be put together in order to warn the president of an incumbent incoming attack because of pearl harbor, the office of strategic is created or says the uss major general donovan is in charge and basically they create the modern intelligence apparatus. all of the directorate s that are here at cia are created during world war two. and a lot of the ways that we do our operations today, the lineage goes all the way back to the uss, one of our great

stories is about the gold coins of the office that we now have on display. these are $20 gold coins from the 1800s. they're worth thousands of dollars now. but back then in world war two, donovan created or collected almost $2 million worth of these gold coins with the idea that in denied areas in france and norway, all throughout europe, that they needed a way to pay for things for their existence. 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 ss. what's amazing about it is four of our cia directors come out of the office as we have our

special operations with their lineage back to the ss. and so at after 911, when we go afghanistan, the types of operations we're doing behind enemy lines in afghanistan, really no different than what we're doing with the left in world war two. 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 one. he during the interwar period, becomes a very successful businessman lawyer collecting information from all over the world. in fact, he was invited to witness the 1938 invasion of abyssinia by italy. so he would take this information and report it back to a very good friend of his, a guy named franklin roosevelt. and so because of this, roosevelt knew that he would be a good person to head up an intelligence organization. so robert byer it's 1947.

harry truman is behind you. and a mural on the wall. was it his idea to incorporate the cia or was that bill donovan? the idea donovan had always been pushing for a peacetime intelligence organization at the end of world war two. so many wartime organizations just were dissolved because everyone wanted to come home. but truman realized that he was going to need a peacetime intelligence organization to take on the soviet union. so within a couple of years, all those elements of the ss are brought back together in the central intelligence agency. one of the things that truman wanted was a newspaper that would give him information he couldn't 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 that every morning is delivered not only to the president of the united states, but to our top policymakers to help them inform them on on information they literally can't get anywhere else. the most exclu sive reading list of all time on one of the most interesting things about cia that people don't realize is that we're 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 analysts to write, 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 pickle. we are actually known as the pickle factory in the 1960s. and this was, you know, all of these types of newspapers, as it were. they're specially created for each president. president kennedy wanted something new. he wanted something could put in his pocket, look it during the day. and so they created this checklist, the typical oh, and it was something special for president kennedy. so on 22 november, 1963, the date that president kennedy was assassinated, the pickle staff created a very special edition of the president's intelligence checklist. yeah. so you see, it's 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, president elect get the daily brief as well. thanks to, truman. a policy was implemented that has continued to this very day. when truman came into office, he didn't know anything about what was going on. he didn't know about the manhattan project. he didn't know about any war plans. and so he felt that anyone who was going to become the president of the united states needed to have this information ahead of time. and so adlai stevenson and general eisenhower were 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. so robert byer as we continue our tour of cia museum, the cold war is in full swing. a lot of spy gadgets come out of that, don't they? there really was an iron curtain over the soviet bloc. and it was incredibly to get in there, get what we call is 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 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 you've got on

display here a can and a miniature book. what are we looking at? in 1949, the cia was given covert action authority. what that does is it gives cia the role of being the hidden hand of the united states. that gray area between direct military and diplomacy. and so with this iron curtain spread out over soviet area, we needed a way to get information to the soviet union as well and one of the ways was taking a nobel prize winning author and his book and shrinking it to a miniature version. so we took the gulag archipelago by solzhenitsyn. we would put in things like a can and seal it in there. those are just 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? and so that people in soviet in the soviet union would better what was actually going on in their own country and. when you say can just an audience free food can or household can correct. the great thing about intelligence work is you try to be ordinary. you to make everything look like nothing is out of place. so if you're going to smuggle something in, you want to use something like an ordinary can to put your control band, your books that can't be produced in that country, in that can, and then get it into the country also on display are bags and disguises how are those used during the cold war so one of the hardest things about operating in the soviet union is

a constant surveillance. the kgb is everywhere they know everyone, they're looking at everything. and so when our officers are going out to meet with our assets it is a very dangerous proposition. and so if their photograph together that could mean a disaster for that that asset and so disguise is a great way to make sure that the kgb, at least for a little while, is able to follow our officers as they're doing their missions now. robert byer one of the one of the goals of the cia is to turn assets, turn soviets into assets correct and you've got some photo on display of some of the soviets who were cia agents. but you also have how they communicated with the u.s., our first big asset in the soviet union was a guy named popoff and

he gave us incredible information. but unfortunately he was caught and while he was his jail cell, he wanted a way to communicate to us that whatever information we were getting from we should realize it was suspect that the kgb had gotten to him. so on toilet paper, his jail cell, he wrote down this note and had his wife it out to us. so that we would know what happened to him and to make sure that we weren't being fooled by the new information. the kgb was trying to plant through him and. that's very delicate. and very small print that that was that hard to maintain over the years. when you look at this artifact, you realize a you know, the passion and commitment pop up had to doing whatever he could to bring down the soviet regime. and so even there, while he was

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 we've been able to make sure it's preserved all these years. but as can see, it's kept in this drawer to keep it. the light levels low on it and to make sure it's well preserved generations to come is popoff considered a cia hero pop up and all 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 of the soviet union because they were so committed to getting as much information they could. another one that's on this wall, oleg pincus, caskey. he was a soviet colonel in their

gru, their military intelligence, many, many times. we asked to exfiltrate him out and he said, i'm here till the end. i want to get you as much information as i can. so robert byer how would you and i identify each if were on the streets of moscow and we wanted to know whether or not it was safe to talk. one of our legendary caves officers who both the handler for pop up in, ben koski, was george caves walter and key spotter wanted a system so that an asset would know his handler in they might not have ever met before and so one way he came up with an idea was to have both of them have the identical cufflinks and so you can see on display over here those cuff links that were used in one of these operations so that popoff could know that the cia handler was who they said they were. now, 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 our ceiling at the very beginning, we start off with morse code. but during the cold war, we have a message hidden in cyrillic. eventually we're going to get all 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 we're seeing today in the museum, are they available for people to see online? we have on cia archive a very robust catalog of many different artifacts that you can see here in the museum. so go check out c.i.a. we also 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 extremely hard to get into the soviet union to get information out. and so the cia decided, well, if you can't go in, what if you go over and was this period of time incredible creativity to try and figure out the secure ity issue? it first started off with the bomber. the idea that the soviet union had many more nuclear bombers than the us did, and that really worried over here. so president eisenhower came to cia and said, we to know. and so what is cia do in 18 months? they go from the drawing board to operational status of the u-2 airplane. it flies at 70,000 feet and it flies so high that neither missiles nor airplanes from the soviet union get to it and on its very first pass over the soviet union collects

information on their military airbases and dispels the bomber gap. in fact, we had many, many more bombers than they did, and so president eisenhower refers to the the photographs from the u-2 as million dollar photographs, because every photograph that showed one less bomber than we thought, that he didn't have to build another bomber here. so worth $1,000,000, at least because of the u-2 and how important it was. we recognize that events only 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 platforms. the first was going to be a follow on aircraft. it's called the a-12 and it is a technological marvel. in the late fifties, you're talking about a plane that flew at 90,000 feet. that's miles higher than the you

two flew it over. mock three. that's so fast that it could outrace missiles fired at it and was made out of a titanium material that gave it stealth capability in the 1950s. however, the technological leap caused a lot of delays. and so the other overhead reconnaissance platform came online faster than the a-12, and that was the corona satellite system, literally months after the u-2 was shot down in 1960, the first crew on a satellite system was put up into orbit in its first pass over the soviet union. it collected more information than all u-2 flights combined. and this was a special satellite. it had two cameras that would point down to that area on earth, take photos of it, and then that photographs those the bucket from the corona satellite

would be ejected. it would float down, parachute down to earth, where a plane would literally snag it out of the air. and then they developed the film. and our photo interpreter 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, there are two places for the film to go and be looked at under the under the microscope it basically this creates stereoscopic vision which enables the photo interpreters to glean even more information from that overhead imagery. now, that's a pretty technical and that seems like a top secret thing you just told us about corona and youtube, the from our satellite systems was perhaps some of the most guarded information, some of the most closely out information by the

us government. and it still is to this day. luckily for us, the system has been declassified at this point. we have other waves of getting information from satellites other than ejecting them out of space and floating down earth so that we can show this information with you today. everybody knows the name gary powers. he was a u-2 pilot. what happened? and what happened to his plane. there's a movie called the bridge of spies. it's a wonderful movie about. the u-2 program. the one thing i would take issue with the film is it portrays gary powers as an inexperienced pilot, just going over the soviet union for the first time. when he gets shot down. francis gary was one of our most experienced stu, two pilots. he had been a part of the program for many. he knew everything about the uta

plane. and so when he was shot. in 1960, it was definitely a shock to us here in the united states and when he came back to the states, he testified front of congress to explain what had gone wrong and why his plane had been shot down. and we the actual artifact of that plane, that he used to testify in front of congress the model in 1962, when he was testifying. right. we have that model on display here at. cia. so robert byer when people come in, film producers and want to make movies about the cia, how often in your view do they get it right and do they use this museum a resource? do they use you as a resource? a lot of movies come to cia hoping to learn more about our history and then show it to the

public. and it's great. be able to show them all the different artifacts here and help them inform them on the movies that they're working on. in my opinion, sometimes get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. one thing you always know about hollywood is that they're going to converge stories together instead of 30 people involved in a operation like, for instance, the story of argo. it's not just tony mendez, it's the whole crew, whole operational crew. make that story happen. but of course, you can't follow all those threads in a movie. so you have to follow info focus on just one person. well, let's learn the story of argo. argo is an incredibly fascinating story for cia because. it utilizes so many different things. it utilizes our partnership with canada in order to get the documents that we need in order to exfiltrate six state

department officers who are hidden in. the canadian embassy at that time. this is a period of time when iranian militants had taken over the us embassy in 1979 and luckily these six state department officers were out and about day. and so when they saw what had happened and they took refuge with the canadians because of that, we had to figure out a way of how are we getting them out of the country? and so, tony mendez, who is the the architect of the idea, he said he came up with the best bad they could. they could think of. and this was what is sort of the back story of the people who are there and are they, you know, leaving their country. and so the back story was that they were part of a location scouting crew for a movie a movie called argo and the

history of argo is that we knew of the makeup artist on who was brought in to consult on the initial script for argo and so he knew tony and so when tony said i need a script that would have a middle east location to it can you think of a movie? and he said, i got the perfect one for you. it's called argo. it didn't go anywhere. so they bought it for a few thousand bucks over a weekend. they set up a whole production crew out, a production studio out in hollywood. they even out ads in variety magazine about argo. they even have reading of the script. argo bringing in actors to read it over. and so people are getting interest it in this movie, argo. but the real story is it's just going to be a back story so that when tony goes with his partner over to to iran and they go through that airport it to leave

the country if they're questioned by anyone, they'll say well, we're part of a location crew for the movie argo and they'll be able tell them all about what they've done and show the back story ads and variety magazine, that sort of thing. so that, you know, we make sure to get them out safely. my favorite part of the story is that when tony mendez on the flight to leave one of the state department officers looks at him and says, tony, you guys thought of everything? and tony goes, what do you mean? and well, this was a swissair flight. and so they had painted the plane to reflect one of the cities in switzerland. and so that was the the city of argo that they were getting on that plane. so i think that's a great, you know, end to the story. they get on the plane and and off to freedom and a lot of the movie argo is pretty accurate it sounds like in the movie argo

there's a lot of of historical accuracy to the movie. in fact, filmed here at headquarters to make sure they had that historical accuracy, which is something we don't normally do. but they also do. you know, by the end of the movie, i think maybe go a little bit astray. i don't think there was gunfire on the tarmac as the plane was leaving, but hollywood, you know, you got to you got it you sit up. the truth is there are many different parts to the movie argo and it's reflected in the movie about complex it was to carry it out. well you mentioned anthony mendez and he's he's passed his wife is the widow is still alive i believe jonna mendez. but they've written books about their work with the cia. what was his role, tony mendez was the chief disguise here at cia, and he was also part of the exfil transition team. we have a painting here that

shows him and his partner. his partner still undercover to this day. so you don't know about his partner. that's also a bit of something here at cia. it's very different. it's you might learn about one part of the story, but there's a whole part of the story that might take years or even decades before you find out the whole story. and one day, perhaps this partner will tell his side of the story and you'll learn even more about the of argo is tony mendez is work on display here in the museum. if you look through the artifacts of argo you can see what tony did. in fact, he did the artwork for, the variety ad. he was a graphics artist. he after he retired became a painter. so it's great to have his. tradecraft on display here at

cia. so back to the argo operation and tehran, that was a pretty risky operation for the canadians to undertake. and americans. one thing i'm impressed about the of argo is just how important are and our relationship with canada obviously a long time relationship with canada. they were so instrumental in to making sure this was a successful operation and it just highlights how risky some of these operations and our work here at cia actually can be. we send people all all over the world into sometimes either denied areas or actual war zones. in fact, we have in the museum innovator cases that highlight individuals here at cia, in one of the innovator cases, we focus on. barbara robbins.

barbara was only 21 years old when she was over in saigon during, the vietnam war, a truck carrying explosives from the vietcong exploded in front of her at the us embassy and killed her. she is the youngest on our memorial wall and the first female officer die in the line of duty. president johnson sent her family a telegram, a condolence letter, and we now have that on display, along with a posthumous medal that was given to her family. they donated to us just this past year, thanks to her brother. we were able to get these artifacts and have them on display here at headquarters. so it's something we're very honored to have. we're glad we can show the sacrifice and the heroism of barbara robbins. so it's the story of barbara robbins, been known for a long time, was at a classified story or deaths of cia officers

declassified over years on our memorial wall you'll notice that there are many names that are not actually in the book of honor and every year the director of cia looks at those names and decides if any of them can be released a few years ago we had two of our officers who were killed in the attacks, benghazi director pompeo released their names to the public. and so every year as i said, the directors always looking to see if those can be shared. but because the nature of operations, the nature of equities that we hold people that we work, they're definitely when we need to keep those names undercover, sometimes for decades. well, one of the more recent parts of cia history is assassination of osama bin laden. why don't we look at some of the artifacts you have there.

seeing that this was really tively recent history when? was this declassified? is this newly declassified stuff that we're talking about to see the abbottabad raid was. 2011. and so shortly thereafter, the related to it were d classified. the newest artifact that i'll get to in a little bit the boots that belonged to one of the members of the assault team officer that are now on display here in the museum. so the story, of course, begins with the attacks of 911. we three artifacts from the three different attack sites got a safe from the world trade center buildings. we've got the gym bag belonged to the youngest passenger on flight 93. she was headed to college that day when the plane crashed in shanksville, pennsylvania, and

her bag was found in the wreckage. and then finally, we have a metal and ribbon that belonged to a young naval officer who was in the pentagon day. and when that plane crashed into the pentagon, the jet fuel over his body burned 70% of his body with third degree burns. it took him a couple of years to recover and president bush came to pay him a visit at the hospital and said, is there anything i can do for you? and he said, i have one request. i want to go work at cia and i want to be a part of the targeting team that finds osama bin laden. so he was actually here when that assault team came in after, that raid, and he gave them a coin that only 9/11 survivors give out from the pentagon, gave it to each member of the assault team to thank them for the mission they had just accomplished. and that mission that happens 2011, almost ten years after 911 starts with cia tracking a

courier to our to osama bin laden, back to a compound in abbottabad. and that's what you see behind me. it's the actual national geospatial intelligence model there, rendering that the is used to brief the and having this type of model really gives people an understanding of why there was so much suspicion about this compound who was living there and if osama laden was actually there. so president obama saw this model that we're looking at here. so this model is a replica national geospatial intelligence agency has the actual model that was used to brief the president. but that model shop is something we work very closely with and they made sure to make sure we had one as well. now, you talked about your most recent artifact when it came to the 911 bin laden story.

so this model is used to brief president and from that, he makes the decision to carry out a raid. and luckily, thanks to one of our secret facilities, we build basically a false size model of the compound of abbottabad so that the assault team officers can practice on that and know everything about where they're going to go. and so even when that helicopter crashes into dirt at abbottabad, the officers get out and they're able to make sure they are able to do the mission successfully. one of those officers on that helicopter after this was his operation before he retired. and so we have his boots in our collection and we're really honored to have them. you can actually see that the dirt on the boots is from abbottabad because this was his

last operation. so that's something we're really happy to have here in the collection. and what is the rifle that's in that display case as well? so next to the boots is the rifle that was found right next to the body, osama bin laden. so for all intents and purposes, that was his rifle that we recovered that night we robert byer again, as we go through the museum, the ceiling keeps changing. where are we when comes to the ceiling right now. so at this juncture in the museum, we are at end of the chronological history of cia. and so we get into the digital age and as you look up and the ceiling, you'll see that it's now in binary code. so for the age where the next frontier of intelligence, we wanted to make sure, we had a bit of the binary and the digital age in our in our ceiling as well.

robert byer we've talked some of the assets that the cia able to turn in moscow, but the us has had trade or problems as well, correct. i think one of the most damaging traders we've had in our midst is rick ames. basically he caused the death of dozens of cia assets in the soviet union. and thanks to the team of jean verdoux faye and all the people worked with her hunting down rick ames. we were able to minimize the full extent of his damages and it just shows sort of how important countering is here at cia to make sure we protect our information, our resources and so we have this rogue's gallery in the museum of some of the most damaging spies, not only at

cia, the entire intelligence community. robert hanssen over at fbi. and an amount has she was a spy for cuba, worked for the defense intelligence agency. so these people, it's so painful when you find out that they betrayed your trust. and so this gallery shows why it's so important to make sure we keep our counter measures strong here at cia. so in in this gallery, we have a lot of different artifacts related to these traitors. we have the monitor that aims at his computer station, got a card from robert hanssen, as well as the badge for for an a montez who was just released from prison after serving 20 years for spying on us for cuba.

a double agent working at the defense intelligence agency here at cia, many different parts of media, a website, cia gov through twitter, through facebook, we have our artifacts on display for the american to see. they might not be able to come to this museum to see physically because we are here at cia headquarters and that security overlay doesn't allow visitors to come in from off the street. but we hope that the american public can see these artifacts through media and understand the role of cia in our democracy a little better. robert byer is the director of the cia museum and we appreciate your time. thank you so much for coming in today.