Shhhh…. it’s still super secretive and you still can’t go in... but the CIA Museum is now digitizing its collections so you can view them online, as reported by Smithsonian. Established 75 years ago for CIA personnel and other insiders only, today about 200 of the 3,500 artifacts are viewable online, with more to come.
These are fascinating objects, such as a model of the sunken and deteriorated K-129 Russian submarine, which sank mysteriously in 1968 (theories abound), and which the US tried to recover in a Cold War program called Project Azorian. Only portions were able to be recovered—some key bits of wreckage fell out of the grip of the claw—and the wreck’s location is still an official secret.
Some James Bond-ish items include a hollow silver dollar which can hide messages or film, a robotic fish which can be swum via a wireless radio handset, and a dragonfly insectothopter from the 1970s which flits around to collect intelligence while just looking like a regular dragonfly. You can see a camera concealed in a cigarette pack, a radio receiver hidden in a pipe and lots of other spy equipment.
In case you’ve ever wondered how the president receives their daily intelligence briefing, the collections include the serious-looking embossed document cover created for President Biden when he was president-elect. There’s a letter removal device that goes into a sealed envelope, winds the letter into a coil and removes it. There’s an Al-Qa’ida training manual with burn marks from US ordnance. And the list goes on.
The organization’s history may not be as light as this article suggests, but regardless, the artifacts are work visiting through the CIA Museum’s website. There are also “Debrief: Behind the Artifact” videos on YouTube which are brief explorations of particular objects or programs, such as the spy pigeon with a camera strapped to its chest (still in use today!). One video looks at the ‘drop dead rat,’ a literal but eviscerated rat into whose hollow shell secret messages can be placed for an asset to later collect, since no one would stoop to pick up or examine a deceased rodent. Although of course, now you probably will.
As for the actual brick and mortar museum, it’s at the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. Good luck getting in; you might have to use the key concealed in a sardine can.