house and senate floors, two congressional hearings, party briefings and meetings. c-span gives you a front row seat to issues debated and decided with no commentary, no interruptions, completely unfiltered. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. ♪ american history tv saturdays on cspan2 exploring people and events that tell the american stories. 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures of history university of akron professor talks about the men from ohio who are elected a president clinton's seven who serve between 1858 and 1920. rutherford hayes, james a garfield, benjamin harrison william mckinley, william taft and warren harding. at 9:00 p.m. eastern tom hanks active executive producer of the

animated short film to rig an election. the racist history of 1876 presidential contest talks about the controversial race between candidates rutherford b hayes and senate tilden. explored the american story watch american history tv saturdays on cspan2. find a full schedule on your program guide or watch oin anytime at c-span.org/history. cooks joining us now on american history tv is robert byer he is the director of the museum at the cia. what is the point of having a museum that is not open to the public? >> this is a museum for so many different parts of our agency. it is an operational museum we learn from the lessons of our past so we can become better in the future and our operations. it is also to inform our guests,

people who come to headquarters of partners help them understand our history, what was done in the past. and also on shows like this helping the american public understand the role of intelligence in our democracy. >> 's cia is about 70 years old right now. is this the point opening up the newlyfi 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 the cia museum for the 25th anniversary of cia we were asked to create a museum. not that i was around for that but that is where the museum started as a way to preserve the agency's history. and so it is a double anniversary this year. >> what are we going to seemingly go inside?

>> like i said this is a brand-new museum. we have changed the whole structure ofeu that museum to reflect our new mission. instead of it being stovepipe by directorate we now have five court mission that are interwoven throughout the entire museum. in addition to the mission threads we also have chronological history of cia. not just of the artifacts but as you look on the ceiling you will see there is a chronological history of codes in our ceiling with morse code at the beginning and by the time you get to the digital age and is in a binary code. >> having to become the director of the cia agency what is your background? >> interestingly enough i came to the agency asse a film producer. they need to do a documentary series about the history of cia. it was a wonderful experience. been swimming in the history of the agency ever since. lex my guess is thereau are addd

difficulties because of the classifications and secrets the cia naturally has. worked or is a security overlay it cia that we all have to pay attention to in order to make sure ourur operations are kept closely guarded so that we are able to be successful . in our operations now and in the t future.why don't we take a to.

>> we are at the beginning of the museum. it's 1947.a? what's going on with the cia? >> before we get to the emergence of cia we've got to go back to 1941, pearl harbor. they've got intelligence throughout the u.s. government but they are not able to be put together in order to warn the president fan incoming attack. because of pearl harbor, the office of strategic service is created. a major general donovan is in charge and basically they create

the modern intelligence apparatus. all of the directorates that are here at the cia are created during world war ii and a lot of the ways that we do operations today the lineage goes all the way back. one of the greatest stories about the gold coins that we now have on display these are $20gold coins from the 1800s. they are 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 it's denied areas like france and europe and that they needed a way to pay for things for their existence to the countries and the gold coins were the perfect way in order to buy things they needed, supplies, guns, food, anything. if you have it you have a way of buying anything you need.

>> how long were they in use? >> all throughout the war. what's amazing about it is forever our directors come out of the oss. we have our special operations with of their lineage and so after 9/11 when we go into afghanistan the type of operations wein are doing behind enemy lines in afghanistan is no different than what we are doing with world war ii. >> so what should we know about wild full donovan? >> wild bill donovan is such an interesting character. he was a medal of honor winner in world war i. coduring the interwar period he becomes a veryfu successful businessman collecting information from all over the world. in fact he was invited to witness the 1938 invasion by

italy. so the guy named franklin and eleanor roosevelt and because of this, roosevelt knew that he would be a good person to head up and intelligence organization. >> so it's 1947. truman is behind you in a mural on the wall. was it his idea to incorporate the cia or was that bill donovan's idea? >> donovan had always been pushing for the peacetime intelligence organization. at the end of world war ii, so many wartime organizations were dissolved because everyone wanted to come home but truman realized that he was going to needig a peacetime intelligence organization to take on the soviet union so within a couple of years all those elements of the oss are brought together in the central intelligence agency. one of the things truman wanted was a newspaper that would give

him information he couldn't get anywhere else. soy, starting with the daily summary which is a collection of all the different cables from state departments into 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 the top policymakers to help them inform them on information they literally can't get anywhere else. >> the most exclusive reading lists of all time. >> one of the most interesting things people don't realize is that we are truly a newspaper. we send reporters to the field. they collect that information, bring it back to the agency for the analysts to write and deliver to the small circulation of any newspaper in the world to the president of the united

states.er >> and you have a daily brief here on display. >> the one we have on display is actually the president's intelligence checklist. this is a special intelligence checklist. the pickle as it was known because the acronym for the president's intelligence checklist this was all of these type of newspapers as it were they are created for each president. president kennedy wanted to somethingut new, something he could put in his pocket and look at during the day so they created a checklist and it was something special for president kennedy. as of 22, november 1963, the day thatt president kennedy is assassinated, they created a very special edition of the president's checklist.

so it is a poem in honor of president kennedy and his life andre it shows how the president is the first customer and how important they are at the cia. >> now you have the daily brief for president biden or at least the cover and for president elect biden they get the daily brief as well. >> thanks to truman policy was implemented. when truman came into office he didn't know anything about what was going on. he didn't know about the manhattan project or any war plans. when adlai stevenson and a genel eisenhower were up for election

he gave them access to the daily summary so that they could no what he was seeing and help them prepare. when the candidate becomes a presidentey elect, they get the full president's daily brief. of the cold war is in full swing. a lot of gadgets come out of that, don't they? >> there was an iron curtain over the soviet bloc and it was incredibly hard to get in what we call our assets, our sources of information to help us understand what was going on behind that soviet iron curtain. so we needed disguises, equipment that would help the assets get the information we

needed, things like the camera that would basically take a picture of a document. these are the type ofat things e would give to the assets in order to collect that information. >> you've gott on display here a book what are we looking at? >> the cia has given covert action authority.th what that does is the role of the hidden hand of the united states government, that area between direct military action and diplomacy. as the width of the iron curtain spread out over the soviet area we needed a way to get information into the soviet union as well. one of the ways was taking a nobel prize-winning author in this book and shrinking it down to a miniature version so we took and what to put it in

things like -- those are examples of how we would get information into the soviet union and the senate would be de circulated around the soviet union so people could understand what were the conditions of the gulags andnd what was it like to be in siberia. some people will understand what was going on in their own country. >> an ordinary camp, correct? >> you try to make everything look like nothing is out of place. so if you are going to smuggle something in you want to use something like an ordinary can to put your contraband, your books and then get it into the

country. >> also on display are bags and disguises.ol how are those used during the cold war? >> one of the hardest things about operating in the soviet union is a constant surveillance. the kgb isve everywhere. they know everyone. they are looking at everything. so when our officers are going out to meet with our assets it is a very dangerous proposition and so if they are photographed together it could mean disaster. so disguises a great way to make sure that at least for a little while they are able to follow the officers asmi they are doing their mission. >> one of the goals of the cia is to turn assets, turn soviets into assets, correct? you've got some photos on

display who are cia agents but you also have how they communicate. >> the first big asset in the soviet union gave us incredible information but unfortunately, he was called and while he was in his jail cell he wanted a way to communicate to us whatever information we were getting from him, we should realize it was suspect that the kgb had gotten to him. so in his jail cell he wrote down this note and had his wife smuggle itha out to us so that e would know what happened to him and to make sure that we were notn. being fooled by the new information the kgb was trying to plan through them. >> that is very delicate and a small print. was thatou hard to maintain over

the years? >> when you look at this artifact, you realize they were doing whatever they could to bring down theis soviet regime o while he's in his jail cell with only a pen and toilet paper around him he made sure to figure out a way to get the message out to us and so luckily from the soviet union it's a very sturdy stuff and we've been able to make sure it's preserved all these years. but as you can see it's captain this drawer to keep the light levels low and to make sure it's well preserved for generations to come. >> is the popoff considered a cia hero? >> all of these assets on the wall arere considered heroes. they gave their lives for this cause and some refused to be

exfiltrate it out of the soviet union be the cause they were so committed to getting as much information as they could. another was a soviet colonel in the military intelligence. many times we asked to exfiltrate them out and he said i'm here until the end. i want to get as much information as i can. >> how would you identify each other if we were on the streets ofr moscow and we wanted to knw whether or not it was safe to talk? >> one of our legendary case officers who was a handler for pop-up was george coulter. he wanted a system so that an asset would know his handler in public. they might not havee ever met before. one way he came up with an idea was to have both of them have

the identical couplings and a so soyou can see on display over he the couplings that were used in one of the operations so they could no the cia handler was who they said they were. >> before we move on i want to reference the ceiling and where we are whenn it comes to the messages. >> if you look at the very beginning we start off with morse code but during the cold war, we have a message hidden. we getes all these hidden messas online so people can try their hand at decoding the messages and letting us know what they find out. >> some of the artifacts that we are seeing today, are they available for people to see online? >> we have very robust catalog of artifacts so check out a cia

.gov ande we also have a twittr account as well. you can look at many different artifacts there as well. >> in the early part of the 1950s, the cia had a problem. it was extremely hard to get into the soviet union to get information out. so the cia decided if you can't go in, what if you go over and there was a period of time of creativityre to try to figure ot the security issue so what does the cia do? they go from the drawing board to operational status of the u-2

airplane. they fly 70,000 feet and it flies so high that either missiles more airplanes from the soviet union can get to it. on its very first pass it arcollects information on their military airbases t and dispels bomber gap. in fact we had many more than they did. so president eisenhower refers to the photographs, milliondollar photographs becauy photographs that showed one less bomber than we thought meant that het didn't have to build another bomber w here with a million dollars at least. because of the program and how important it was, we recognized that eventually the soviet union would figure out a way to get to an airplane of 70,000 feet so we came up with two different overhead reconnaissance

platforms. the first was going to be a follow-on aircraft called the age 12 and it's a technological marvel. in the late 50s you're talking about a plane that flew at 90,000 feet but smiles higher, flew over so fast that it could operate missiles a fired at it. and it's made of a titanium material but gave stealth capabilities in the 1950s. however, the technological elite caused a lot of delay and so the other overhead reconnaissance platform came online faster than the age 12 and that was the corona satellite system. literally months after it was shot down in 1960, the first corona satellite system was put into orbit. in its first pass over the soviet union and collected more information than all flights combined.

and this was a special satellite. it had two cameras that would point down to the area on earth, earth,take photos of it and thet photograph, the bucket from the satellite would be ejected. it would float down, parachuted down to earth where a plane would literallyr. grab it out of the air and then they developed developthe 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 to be looked at under the microscope. basically this creates the vision that enables the photo interpreters to gleam even more information from that overhead imagery. >> that is a pretty technical --

that seems like a top-secret thing that you just told us. >> the information from our satellite systems was perhaps some of the most guarded information, some of my of the most closely held information by the u.s. government and it still is to this day. luckily for us, the system has been declassified at this point. we have other ways of getting information from satellites otherg than ejecting them out f 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 pilot. what happened and what happened to his plan? >> there's a movie called the bridge of spies. it's a wonderful movie about the program. the one thing i would take issue with the film is it portrays gary as he and an experienced pilot. just going over the soviet union

for the first time when he gets shot down. francis gary powers was one of the most experienced pilots. he had been ae part of the program for many years. he knew everything about the 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 he testified in front of congress to explain what had gone wrong and why his plane had been shot down and we have the actual artifact of that e that he used to testify. >> the modelel in 1962 when he s testifying. >> right, we have that model on display here. >> so when people come in, self producers, hollywood and want to make movies about the cia, how often in your view do they get it right?

and do they use this as a resource? a lot of movies, hoping to learn more about the history and then show it to the public and it's great to be ableff to show them all the different artifacts here and help them inform them on the movies they are working on. in my opinion sometimes they get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. one thing you know as they are e going to converge stories together instead of 30 people involved in an operation like the story of argo it's not just tony mendez it's a whole crew, whole operational crew that makes the story happened but of course you can't follow all those threats in the movies so you have to follow and focus on just one person.

>> it's an incredibly fascinating story because it utilizes so many different things it utilizes our partnership with canada to get the documents that we need in order toxf exfiltrate six department officers who are hidden in the canadian embassy at that time. they've taken over the u.s. embassy in 1979 and luckily the state department officers were out and about that day so when they saw what had happened 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. so tony mendez who is the architect of the idea he said he came up with the best bad idea that he could think of and this was wanda's sword of the back story of the people who are

veryand why are they leaving tht country so the back story was that they were part of a location scouting crew for the movie called argo and the history is that we knew of the makeup artist who was brought into consult on the initial scrt and so he knew tony and when he said i need a script that would have a middle east locationon to it can you think of a movie and he said i've got the perfect one for you. it didn't go anywhere so they bought it for a few thousand dollars over a weekend they set up a whole production crew at a production studio in hollywood. they even take out ads in variety magazine about argo and they have a reading of the script bringing in actors to read it over and so people are

getting interested in this movie. but thego real story is it's jut going to be a back story so that when he goes with his partner over to iran through the airport to leave the country if they are questioned by anyone they would say we are part of the location crew and they would be able to tell them all about what they've done to show the back story so we make sure to get them out safely. mymy favorite part of the storys that when he gets on the flight to leave iran, one of the state department officers says. so they painted the plane to reflect one of the cities and so

that is the city they were getting on that plane so i think that is a great ending to the story. they get on the plane and often freedom. >> so a lot of the movie is pretty accurate? >> in the movief there's a lot f historical accuracies to the movie. in fact they filmed here at headquarters to make sure they had that historical accuracy which is something we don't normally do, but they also by the end of the movie maybe go a little bit astray. i don't think there was gunfire on the tarmac as the plane was leaving. but that's hollywood. you've got to juice it up. the truth was there were so many different parts to the movie and it's reflected in the movie about how complex it was to carry it out. >> you mentioned anthony mendez and he's passed away. his wife, his widow is still alive i believe, but they've

written books about their work with the cia. what was his role? >> tony mendez was the chief of disguise here at the cia and also partl of the exfiltration team. we have a painting here that shows him and his partner and his partner is still undercover to this day so you don't know about his partner. that's also a bit of something here at cia that's very different. 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. so, one day perhaps this partner will tell his side of the story and you will learn even more about the story. >> is tony mendez work on display? >> if you look through the artifacts, you can see what tony did. in fact he did the artwork for the variety add.

he was a graphic artist. after he retired he became a painter, so it's great to have his tradecraft on display here at the cia. >> so back to the argo operation, that was a pretty risky operation for the canadians to undertake and the americans. >> one thing about theis story f argo is how important the partnershipsna are and our relationship with canada. obviously a longtime relationship with canada. they were so instrumental to making suree this was a successful operation and it highlights how risky some of the operations andnd our work here t the cia actually can be. we send people all over the world into sometimes either denied areas or actual war zones

in fact we have in the museum these innovator cases that highlightvi individuals here at cia and one of the cases we focus on barbara robbins. barbara was only 21-years-old when she was over in saigon during thena vietnam war. a truck carrying explosives from the vietcong exploded in front of her at the u.s. embassy and killed her. she is the youngest person on the memorial wall and first female officer to die in the line of duty. president johnson sent her family a telegram a condolence letter and we now have that on display with a metal that was given to her family. they donated it to us just this past year thanks to her brother we were able to get these artifacts and have them on display at headquarters so something we are honored to have and we are glad we can show the

sacrifice and heroism. >> so was the story known for a long time? was the classified story? are the guests classified over years? >> on the memorial wall you will notice that there are many names that are not actually in the book of honor and every year the director of the cia looks at the names and decides if any of them can be released. a few years ago we had two of the officers who were killed in the attacks in benghazi. their names were released to the public and so every year as i said, the directors always looking toto see if the names cn be shared but because of the nature of operations and equity is that we hold, people that we work with, they are definitely times when we need k to keep the names undercover sometimes for

decades. >> one of the more recent parts of the cia history is the assassination of osama bin laden. why don't we look atti some of e artifacts you have there. >> seeing that this is relatively recent history, when was this declassified is this stuff -- >> it was 2011 and so pretty shortly thereafter the artifacts related to it were declassified. the newest artifact i will get to in a little bit are the foods that belong to one of the members of the assault team officer that are now on display here in the museum. as will the story of course begins with the attacks of 9/11. we have three architects from the sites and have a save from

the world trade center building. we've got the gym bag that belonged to the youngest passengers on flight 93 headed back to college that day when the plane crashed in shanksville pennsylvania and her gym bag was found in the wreckage and then finally we have a metal and a ribbon that belonged to a young naval officer in the pentagon that day and when the plane crashed into the pentagon, the jet fuel washed over his body and burned 70% with third-degree burns. it took a couple of years to recover and president bush came toe pay him a visit at the hospitals and said is there anything i can do for you. he said i have one request. i want to go work at the cia and be a part of the targeting team that finds osama bin laden so he was actually here when that assault team came in after the raid and he gave them a coin only 9/11 survivors give out from the pentagon, gave it to each members of the assault team

to thank them for the mission they had just accomplished. the mission that happened in 2011 almost ten years after 9/11 starts with cia tracking a career to osama bin laden back to a compound and that's what you see behind me. it's the actual agency model rendering that this is used to brief the president. having this type of model gives people an understanding of why there was so much suspicion about the compounding who was living there and if osama bin laden was actually there. as gimmicks of president obama's all the model wee are looking at here? >> so this is a replica. national geospatial intelligence agency has the actual model that was used to briefie the presidet

but it's something we work very closely with and they made sure to make sure we had one as well. >> you talked about the most recent artifact when it came to the 9/11 bin laden story. >> so this is used to brief president obama and from that he makes the decision to carry out the raid and luckily thanks to one of the secret facilities, we build basically a full scale model of the compound so that the assault team officers can practice on that and know everything about where they are going to go and so even when that helicopter crashes into the dirt, the officers get out and they are able to make sure they are able to do the mission successfully. one of those officers on that helicopter this was his last

operation before he retired and so he -- we have his boots in our collection and we are honored to have them. you can actually see the dirt on the boots is from because this was his last operation so that's something we are really happy to have here in the collection. >> and what is the rifle that is in the display case as well? >> 's so the rifle found right next to the body of osama bin laden's will for all intents and purposes that was his rifle that we recovered that night. >> as we go through the museum, the ceiling keeps changing. where are we when it comes to the ceiling right now? >> at this juncture we are at the end of the chronological history of the cia so we get into the digital age and as you look up on the ceiling you will see that it's now in binary code so t for the digital age where e

next frontier of the intelligence we wanted to make sure we had a bit of the binary code and the digital age and our ceiling as well. >> we've talked about some of the assets the cia was able to turn in moscow but the u.s. has had trade problems as well, correct? >> i think one of the most damaging we have had is rick ames basically caused the death of thousands of cia assets in the soviet union and thanks to the team and all the people that worked with her, we were able to minimize the full extent of the damages and it shows how important counterintelligence is

here to make sure we protect our information and resources. so, we have this gallery in the museum as some of the most damaging spies not only at the cia but the entire intelligence community. robert hansen at fbi. and anna montes was a spy for cuba and 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 the counterintelligence measures strong here at the cia. >> in the gallery we have a lot of different artifacts related to the traders. we have the monitor that aims the computer station, we've got

a card from robert hansen as well as the badge for anna montes 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 the cia through many different parts of social media websites, cia adult ago, through wetwitter, through facebook, we have our artifacts on display for the public to see. they might not be able to come to see it physically because we are here at cia headquarters and the security overlay doesn't allow visitors to come in from off the street, but we hope the american public can see these artifacts through social media andd understand the role of the cia and our democracy a little better. >> the director of the cia museum and we appreciate your

time. >> thank you so much for coming in today.

>> to talk about their ordeal half a century ago. here is captain charlie plumb and admiral shoemaker describing the first time they communicated through their prison. >> i was in this little cell not with one guy but a total of four and we knew through somebody over there and actually there were about 5 feet that separated us, these are all concrete cells. they were one on top of the other hand in the corner -- [laughter] it was a drain hole to wash out the cells.

you could imagine how crowded we were with four people in the cell. at one end were some stockades where they could claim your ankles in them but anyways somehow found a piece of wire and it wasn't quite as stiff as a coat hanger but nearly so and it was about 5 feet long. there was an alleyway between us here filled with a bunch of drunk and so the guards would take a siesta every afternoon. so i would get down and speak this wire through all this peter -- paraphernalia. >> so i tugged on the wire, he tugged back and it disappeared. i sat back down thinking i had really done something bad and waited for the guards to come in and beat me up again when the wire came back. this time it had a note wrapped

around the end of it written on a dirty piece of toilet paper. i could barely make it out but it said memorize this code then eat this note. i did it. i memorized the code and ate the note. the code is what bob shoemaker passed along to me and it was absolutely a lifesaver in my life. not that we were packing around the top secret escape plans but just the simple validation of another human being in that prison cell because in some of the camps we were in it was dark and we were alone in solitary confinement and you begin to wonder if you were even alive or dead. the symbol tugged on a wire meant two things, somebody is trying to communicate with me, i'm alive,