Episode 4: The CIA's Secret Museum

Tucked away deep inside the intelligence agency’s headquarters in Langley, VA is a museum most of us will never see. It chronicles the organization’s history — including some of its most important missions and greatest failures. The public isn’t allowed in, but in this episode you get a peek inside.

Please note: Our show is produced for the ear and made to be heard. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the audio before quoting in print.

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When you think about the CIA you might imagine the stuff of Hollywood movies like Mission Impossible, where action heroes take out the bad guys.

ARCHIVAL Mission Impossible Speaker: Good morning, Mr. Phelps. The man you're looking at is Alexander Golitsyn, an attache at our embassy in Prague. He is also a traitor.

People running around stealing secrets, leading secret lives, cloak and dagger kinda stuff.

ARCHIVAL Spy Games Speaker: I can train you as an agent. Central Intelligence. You’d be working for me, mostly undercover. Undercover….

Or maybe you think of the long list of cases where the CIA interfered in the politics of another country, to support a coup to overthrow an elected leader. There's Iran, Guatemala, Chile, to name a few.It was part of a strategy — particularly after WWII — to help prevent the spread of communism.

And yes, the CIA does do covert operations but they also do a lot of other things. Although the secrecy part, well that’s pretty accurate…

So what if I told you there's a place — a museum actually, hidden deep inside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where you can learn all about the CIA — its history, its missions, its successes and some of its greatest failures?

The thing is — this museum, well — it’s ACTUALLY kind of a secret. At least for the public. They're not allowed in.

I’m Peter Bergen and guess what, on this episode of In The Room, you’re going in.

Peter Bergen: So we're walking into the CIA headquarters, which is, uh, very wooded area. As you can imagine a lot of fencing around the place. In front of us, there's a 10 foot high fence. The CIA understands that it's been a target and its officers have been killed, not just in the line of duty, but even right outside headquarters. So the security here is super, super intense. It's the most intense security that I've ever encountered in Washington.

So about a half an hour later, we’re finally in. Our producer, our audio engineer, and myself. It’s the first time they've ever let a podcast team inside.

All our gear has been cleared but we don’t appear to be done with all the security. There are five REALLY fit security officials who seem to follow us everywhere we go. Along with another very serious looking woman who I’ll just call Mary. She’s got a clipboard she keeps checking.

Anyway, we’re finally ready to take the tour. Everyone’s gotten mic’d up.

Rob Byer: So now I've got this on mm-hmm. Um, can you just tell me about your favorite breakfast? Sure I, I love Wheaties. It's the Breakfast of Champions.

Janelle Neisis: That’s kind of nice not having to be on camera, to hide anything.

That's Janelle Neisis.

Janelle Neisis: I'm the deputy director of the CIA Museum.

And also:

Rob Byer: I'm Robert Byer. I'm the director of CIA Museum.

And to be clear, Rob and Janelle, they're smiling, they seem pretty friendly. But they do often refer to people as “assets,” so I know we're in good hands.

Rob Byer: So, here at CIA Museum we have decided…

[SOUNDS OF WALKING, QUIET MURMURING]

The museum looks and feels like a real museum — there are exhibit cases and there's text on the walls. It's hushed and dark — no windows and no natural light.

Rob Byer: This museum is located at CIA headquarters, one of the most secure facilities in this country. While everything in here is unclassified uh because of the security restrictions the American public can't come in.

So, it's kind of a big deal they let us in because it’s not like you can get yourself on a waiting list.

Peter Bergen: There's no admission fee?

Rob Byer: Uh, for you 10 bucks… [PETER LAUGHS] But otherwise, no no.

Peter Bergen: So a lot of Americans, when they come to D.C., they go to the Spy Museum which is obviously open to the public. What's the difference between this museum and say the Spy Museum?

Rob Byer: We got the real goods.

Janelle Neisis: Yeah, we, our artifacts are so much cooler.

So we’re standing in what is essentially a very long hallway, as in, people need to walk through this hallway to get to their offices and other parts of the building.

Janelle Neisis: Which is on purpose so that our officers can go to meetings and lunch and different things and take time to learn about their history throughout the day.

So you might be wondering, why does the CIA have a secret museum?

Rob Byer: It really is to preserve our operational history for our officers, our partners, and it's also to show that this isn't just history for history's sake. We need to be able to use this history in order to make sure in the future, CIA does a better job. Most of our visitors are internal officers. We also, um, have partners throughout the U.S. government who come in and we want them to be able to talk about the different operations we've done over the years and how we've worked with them and how we can work with them in the future.

[MUSIC]

Since we're probably not getting back inside this museum anytime soon, we should probably go and see some stuff.

But then I happen to notice something on the ceiling — some kind of code. The code is written in white against the black ceiling.

It consists of a series of lines and dots, but the pattern is different on each line.

Peter Bergen: Um, tell us about the ceilings.

Rob Byer: In our ceiling we have sort of a chronological history of cryptology, starting with Morse code at the very beginning of the museum and by the time you get into the digital age, we have binary code.

Peter Bergen: So is there a solution to this particular code?

Janelle Neisis: There is definitely a solution to this ceiling.

Some knowing looks are exchanged, but no one seems to want to tell me what the code means. Alright, so now we head to the first exhibit. It’s a replica of a Soviet submarine that carried nuclear warheads.And it’s metal, about three feet long and looks like something that was pulled from the bottom of the ocean.

I push the interactive display button.

ARCHIVAL Interactive Display 1: In February 1968, the Soviet Golf II diesel submarine carrying SS-N-5 nuclear missiles sailed from the Kamchatka Peninsula to patrol in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Hawaii. Soon after, the Soviets lost contact with the sub.

Rob Byer: There was an explosion that caused the submarine to sink.When it fell to the bottom of the Ocean it broke into many parts, and then the Soviets looked for it, but couldn't find it. But the U.S. government was able to locate it and it was at that point that CIA raised their hands and said, can we go get it?

ARCHIVAL Interactive Display 2: In 1970, after careful study, a team of CIA engineers and contractors determined that the only technically feasible approach was to use a large mechanical claw to grasp the hull and a heavy duty hydraulic system to lift it.

Rob Byer: No one had ever done anything like this before. To actually go down to the bottom of the ocean, pick up a 1700 ton thing, and bring it to the surface of the sea.

If the CIA could recover the submarine they could learn a lot about how Soviet nuclear weapons were designed, and also gather other intelligence.So the U.S. government didn’t want the Soviets to even know that they’d found the submarine.

Rob Byer: We needed a great cover story. And so I think we came up with one of the best cover stories ever.

ARCHIVAL 1930s Newscaster: The goal of aviators is now the non-stop flight around the world, And Howard Hughes has taken a big step towards attaining it.

Rob Byer: Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire, was completely on board with being the public face of this story.

ARCHIVAL 1970s Newscaster: Hughes the sportsman and pilot, engineer, eccentric, but most of all billionaire.

Rob Byer: In fact, it's rumored that the agreement was basically a handshake on a runway before he got on one of his planes.

ARCHIVAL 1970s Newscaster: He designed his own airplanes, flew them, broke aviation speed records.

Rob Byer: Howard Hughes, said, I'm gonna build this gigantic ship called the Glomar Explorer.

ARCHIVAL Documentary Narrator: Arriving on station, Glomar Explorer drops her seabed sound beacons. Their signals, plus wind, wave and tide data are used by computers to operate the ship's bow and stern thrusters, so to keep it locked over one location.

Rob Byer: And he said this ship is gonna sail to the Pacific Ocean and mine the ocean floor for manganese nodules.

ARCHIVAL Documentary Narrator: As the robot miner hangs 160 feet under the ship, just below her circular nodule processing section, pipe attachment begins.

Rob Byer: And we know it was a very successful cover story because immediately there was a boom in deep sea mining.

ARCHIVAL Documentary Narrator: Deep sea nodules continue to hold many scientific mysteries, but with deep sea mining engineering now feasible, they also promise a way to meet resource needs for centuries.

Rob Byer: So the Glomar Explorer heads for the site 1500 miles northwest of Hawaii where three miles down below the surface of the ocean the K-129 is waiting. The Glomar pulls up to that spot and then using 60-foot pipe stems that are attached one after another to the gigantic claw, it lowers that claw all the way down to the bottom of the ocean where it scoops up that part of the submarine and starts bringing it to the surface. It gets about 50% of the way there when disaster strikes. Two of the claws fatigue and break, and a portion of the sub breaks off and falls back down to the bottom of the ocean. But there's still a portion in the claw, and that's taken back to the United States to be analyzed.

Peter Bergen: And what was in there?

Rob Byer: Most of what is aboard that submarine is still classified to this day. What I can tell you, uh, is that they found two nuclear tipped torpedoes. They also find six dead Soviet submariners, uh, buried them at sea in a very respectful ceremony, with the flag, the Soviet flag and anthem playing.

ARCHIVAL Funeral Officiant: The officers and men of this ill-fated USSR submarine, pendant number 722, whom we honor here today, have reached their journey’s end…

Rob Byer: And, in 1975, we were gonna go out and get the rest of the submarine because we knew where it was, we knew how to get it, and unfortunately, the story leaked to the press.

ARCHIVAL 1970s Newscaster: All across the country today Americans were debating the value of the Glomar Explorer, the ship Howard Hughes built for the CIA

Peter Bergen: Oh, the press, they're the worst.

Rob Byer: Yeah those darn people in the press.

ARCHIVAL 1970s Newscaster: And the official spokesman for Howard Hughes, Dick Hannah, refused to comment.

ARCHIVAL Dick Hannah: I've read the story and I have heard the reports, and we've heard these rumors for a long time. Now, as far as any involvement with the CIA or any other agency is concerned, we just have, uh, a position of, we have no comment about that. We don't, uh, deny it, confirm it.

ARCHIVAL 1970s Newscaster: The net result of the disclosure is deepening concern about super secret, super expensive, and possibly the super dangerous activities of CIA.

Rob Byer: At that point, really the operation is over because the Soviets said it would be an act of war for us to recover the rest of the submarine.

But this leads to an interesting epilogue. The Freedom of Information Act had just been made law about a year before. So all of a sudden we start getting FOIA requests saying ‘Hey, I, I heard you just raised a submarine from the bottom of the ocean. I'd like more information about that.’ So it's, it's a law. We are supposed to give information to the public. At the same time it would infringe on national security. So the people of Public Affairs come up with a phrase that I know you've heard before, but this is when it really enters the English language. They say, we can neither confirm nor deny the story, and even if we could, this story is classified and we can't tell you anyway…

Peter Bergen: [PETER LAUGHS] Is that the motto of this museum?

Rob Byer: [BYER LAUGHS] It's actually known as the Glomar response. And it's what the US government uses to this day whenever there's a FOIA request that infringes on national security.

Peter Bergen: I've always wondered, cuz I've, I've heard this Glomar response, now I understand what it means.

Rob Byer: Yep.

Peter Bergen: It means that we're not really gonna be that helpful. Just this one time.

Rob Byer: That is, that is where it comes from. Now you know.

Peter Bergen: What should we do next?

[SOUNDS OF FOOTSTEPS]

Peter Bergen: So this looks like a very dead rat.

Janelle Neisis: It is a real dead rat. We were using it in parts of the Soviet Union and Africa during the Cold War. It is what we call a dead drop. So at the CIA, a lot of times our officers, in this case, a case officer overseas, isn't able to meet with their asset because it's, it's too risky. And so instead of meeting in person to exchange things and information, you would deploy a dead drop. And usually with a dead drop, you want it to be something that blends in or something that's so disgusting that no one would ever pick it up. And no one's gonna pick up a dead rat.

And so what our officers did — they would take a dead rat. They would cut it open in the middle, like on its belly, and then they'd spread it and create a cavity inside. And once you had that cavity and everything was treated, you could put a small miniature camera. You could put money in the rat, sew it up, and then place it in the drop location. On this display, you see a little bottle of Tabasco sauce. So during the testing phases, cats started stealing our dead drops

Peter Bergen: Hmm.

Janelle Neisis: And now you've got two people risking their lives, passing information back and forth, and cats are getting in the way. And so our officers tried things like Tabasco sauce, things like wormwood oil and cayenne pepper, and they settled on wormwood oil. It just has a smell to it that animals don't like.

Peter Bergen: Ah.

Janelle Neisis: So you would spread it on the rat and you would leave it in the dead drop location and then the cats and dogs would leave the dead drop alone.

[MUSIC]

In the same case as the rat, there's a bunch of other gadgets. There's a pigeon with a little camera around its neck. There's also a pack of Parliament cigarettes that conceals a tiny camera. Down below is a compact mirror — the kind someone might carry in their purse — that hides a secret code.

And around the back of this case full of gadgets there’s something very different...

Peter Bergen: I'm very excited to see this one because I've spent a lot of time writing and thinking about it over the years. So tell us what this is.

Rob Byer: In 2001, director of Central Intelligence, also the head of CIA, George Tenet, was sounding the alarm that there was an impending attack against the United States by al-Qaeda.

Peter Bergen: Yeah.

Rob Byer: Then on August 6th, 2001 a, um, PDB is issued —

Peter Bergen: A PDB is the Presidential Daily Brief.

Rob Byer: Absolutely. Um, the Presidential Daily Brief is issued specifically warning about an impending attack on American soil.

Peter Bergen: Why don't you read the title of this, uh, Presidential Daily Brief?

Rob Byer: Bin Laden is Determined to Strike in U.S.

Peter Bergen: It was August the sixth, 2001, so it was five weeks before 9/11.

Rob Byer: Right in this PDB, it lays out all the ways that al-Qaeda has been trying to attack the United States and how we anticipate an attack to be coming uh imminently but like all intelligence, it doesn't always tell everything you wanna know. It is what we could collect at that time, but it doesn't say how, when or where, and those are big things, but that's what, uh, happens with intelligence.

Peter Bergen: This was briefed to George W. Bush when he was at his ranch in Texas?

Rob Byer: Correct, this was briefed to President Bush and you know, it's one of those moments in history. Uh, it has a lot of significance because five weeks later, everything changes.

[AMBIENT SOUNDS OF CHAOS FROM 9/11 ATTACK]

ARCHIVAL Voice 1: I heard a noise like a sonic boom almost, and then a blast… the building swayed.

ARCHIVAL Voice 2: We have a number of floors on fire. It looked like the plane...

ARCHIVAL Voice 3: We cannot get out.

[AMBIENT SOUNDS OF DEBRIS FALLING DURING 9/11 ATTACK]

As I was looking at this PDB document in the museum I was reminded about what happened after the 9/11 Commission began to dig deeper into what the Bush administration DID and DIDN’T know. The commission discovered the CIA had warned senior Bush administration officials repeatedly about possible al-Qaeda plots during the summer of 2001.

Arguably the biggest moment during the 9/11 hearings was when one of the commissioners forced Bush’s Secretary of State Condolezza Rice to read the title of that President’s Daily Brief.

ARCHIVAL Richard Ben-Veniste: I want to ask you some questions about the August 6th, 2001, PDB. And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

ARCHIVAL Condoleezza Rice: I believe the title was "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States."

ARCHIVAL Richard Ben-Veniste: Uh,

ARCHIVAL Condoleezza Rice: Now, the, uh,

ARCHIVAL Richard Ben-Veniste: Thank you.

ARCHIVAL Condoleezza Rice: The PDB? No. Mr. Ben-Veniste, you,

ARCHIVAL Richard Ben-Veniste: I will get into the,

ARCHIVAL Condoleezza Rice: I would like to, to finish my point here.

Rice was adamant the PDB did not contain any new threat information.

ARCHIVAL Condoleezza Rice: Uh, there was nothing in this memo that suggested that an attack was coming on New York or Washington, D.C. There was nothing in this memo as to time, place, how or where. This was not a threat report, uh, to the president or threat report to me.

ARCHIVAL Richard Ben-Veniste: We agree that there were no specifics. Let me move on if I may.

Rob Byer: This has been debated, uh, a lot about this PDB, but the truth is it shows how we don't always have pieces of the puzzle.We have some pieces, but not the entire puzzle, and so we can tell the president, here's what we know at this time and, and why it's important.

Peter Bergen: This document seems to me to be a perfect example of what the CIA is actually supposed to do, because we've spent, you know, more than two decades after 9/11, a lot of people probably think the CIA is counterterrorism operations, you know, sort of direct action, sort of this paramilitary organization, and that's partly true, but ultimately your job is to provide strategic warning to policy makers, right?

Rob Byer: When CIA was first created, one of the major tasks of CIA was to provide strategic warning to the president, and that's exactly what you see with this Presidential Daily Brief on August 6th, 2001.

Peter Bergen: Because after 9/11 a lot of people characterized it as an intelligence failure. To me, that's completely wrong. Five weeks before 9/11, you produced this document very clearly warning that this was a strong possibility, uh, that Bin Laden might attack the United States or was planning to. To me it was more of a policy failure because I think President George W. Bush heard these warnings but didn't process them as a real issue.

Rob Byer: I think for the intelligence community, the real lessons learned from 9/11 is the fact that for all of these different agencies across, uh, the intelligence community that we have to work together better and without, you know, worrying about our, our fiefdoms as it were. That communication between different intelligence communities and making sure that, for instance, between FBI and CIA, that we are working together as opposed to having a feeling of mutual, uh, distrust.

Peter Bergen: Yeah.

Rob Byer: Um, perhaps one of the biggest groups that come to CIA are FBI agents because we want them to know how we operate and how we can work with them.

[MUSIC]

We keep walking. And I notice another code on the ceiling above. This one looks like dominoes, rows of dominoes. But I can’t figure out what the pattern might be.

[PETER WHISPERS] Note to self: don’t leave here without finding out what these codes actually mean.

Peter Bergen: Um, what is, what's this?

Janelle Neisis: It's a gold gun that belonged to Saddam Hussein.

Peter Bergen: How was that picked up?

Janelle Neisis: Sometimes how we get things can't be discussed. But obviously the CIA was in certain areas of the world at this time trying to gather intelligence.

Peter Bergen: And does Saddam have a lot of these gold weapons?

[JANELLE WHISPERS TO “MARY”]

There was a long pause.

Janelle looked over at “Mary” who gave her a look, like, ‘are you sure you should be talking about this kinda thing’...

Janelle Neisis: Yes. Saddam Hussein was somebody who liked to plate things in precious metals and things like gold.

Peter Bergen: Gotcha.

But Saddam’s gold weapons — they’re not the weapons I was most interested in talking about. It’s been 20 years since the start of the Iraq War. A war that began with faulty intelligence about the Iraqi leader supposedly possessing weapons of mass destruction.

ARCHIVAL George W. Bush: I take the fact that he develops weapons of mass destruction very seriously.

ARCHIVAL Colin Powell: Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.

ARCHIVAL Donald Rumsfeld: As we know there are known knowns, there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there's some things we do not know.

ARCHIVAL Dick Cheney: Simply stated there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

Peter Bergen: Yeah, so how do you memorialize the fact that the CIA got this one wrong. How do you memorialize that in, in an exhibit?

Janelle Neisis: So the weapons of mass destruction was a time in our history where we can actually look back and learn a lot from it. This museum is really an educational tool for our officers. In fact, after the weapons of mass destruction didn't pan out the way we thought, we created something called ‘lessons learned’ here at CIA, and that was to take a look at ,sort of, what are we doing? What went right, what didn't go right, and actually creating actionable, um, programs to make sure it doesn't happen again. To make sure that we don't get tunnel vision, right? That we look at other possibilities to make sure that our intelligence always stays timely, factual, and non-politicized.

Peter Bergen: And of course, um, during that time there was a lot of discussion of, uh, Saddam's purported links to al-Qaeda and the agency really pushed back on that with the Bush administration, uh, but clearly not on the weapons of mass destruction issue.

Janelle Neisis: I think the biggest takeaway from here, it’s speaking truth to power. Um, our organization doesn't make policy, right? We inform policymakers. We're here to give them intelligence that hopefully will give them the time and space to make the best decisions possible for this country. And sometimes, it's hard to tell someone, especially if it's the president, that they need to look at other things, that we, we think it might be something else.

Peter Bergen: So the role of the CIA is to provide what to policymakers?

Janelle Neisis: Information, intelligence. We are collecting intelligence. We conceal how we collect the intelligence, and then we take all of it and piece it together to provide policy makers with essentially a product that may not have all the answers. It has the information, it has the intelligence, and then it gives them the time and space to make decisions on behalf of the American public.

[MUSIC]

Peter Bergen: So what's the process for your decision about what to exhibit and how does that work, and do you grab onto things that you know are gonna be important?

Janelle Neisis: One of the things we do at the CIA museum is we try to collect in real time. So if something happens in the world, if the CIA is working on a mission that we know is going to be important for learning exercises in the future, and just to preserve that history, we try to get artifacts related to that mission right away, knowing that it could take 20, 40 — sometimes longer — years to actually put it on display.

[SOUNDS OF FOOTSTEPS]

Peter Bergen: Yeah so, Janelle, tell us about this exhibit.

Janelle Neisis: What you're looking at here is a piece of the wall that the CIA built, a full practice facility for the assault team to practice on before they actually went to Abbottabad to get bin Laden. So, the teams needed to be able to practice with an understanding of everything they were going to encounter. And we just did this over and over until they felt like they had tried every option so that when they got there for the actual raid, they felt comfortable with whatever possibility was in front of them.

This case has the shoes that were worn by one of the members of the assault team. They're one of my favorite artifacts actually, because they really talk about how people like CIA officers are able to be just ordinary people, but they go off and do extraordinary things on behalf of the American public.

And so these shoes are so rare, even though you could buy them probably at any store. And what makes them rare is if you look in the tread, there's soil, and that's the soil of our secret practice facility. And this specific person was selected for the raid at Abbottabad. So they also have the soil from, um, where bin Laden was found. And then you can see the rope burns. They took this so seriously. They did practice after practice of rappelling from that helicopter down. So much so that it burned actual marks in the inside of the shoe.

Nearby is a scale model of bin Laden’s compound. It’s an almost perfect replica. It’s about three feet by four feet.You can see all the details down to the individual trees and shrubs.

I was super interested in this exhibit as I was the only outside observer allowed to tour Bin Laden’s compound before it was demolished so it wouldn't become a shrine for his followers.

Janelle Neisis: When we want to brief the president on something, one of the best ways to do it, especially in the case of this, uh, Abbottabad raid, was to create a detailed, scaled model. And then once we have used this to brief him on why we think that he might be here. What are the plans? Are we going to do an airstrike? What are the pros and cons of that? Are we going to send in a team?

So the model was something that was really important to sort of show policy makers and the president, what are the reasons we think bin Laden is here. Um, it was a highly fortified compound. It didn't really match the rest of the neighborhood. So that was a first red flag. And you can see that in the model. It has these high walls, and then you've got the house itself. The third floor would have this great view. Usually when you have a terrace, you don't block your view. Well, they built a very high wall so that no one could see them. That’s another red flag. They were growing their own crops, but they also burned all their own garbage. They didn't want anyone to get ahold of toothbrushes, hairbrushes, you know, chewed up apple cores, things of that nature.

Peter Bergen: Well, that's pretty sophisticated thinking, right, because they were also thinking about they didn't want DNA evidence.

Janelle Neisis: Exactly. Once you put your trash out, it's public domain and anyone can grab it. And so they were very protective of anything that could give their identities away, and that's why this model is so important. It really kind of helps paint that picture. Briefings are very important, the written word, diagrams, you know, maps. But having something detailed like this was really key in explaining why we thought Bin Laden was here and now what are we going to do about it?

The next exhibit is a reminder of just what’s at stake when you’re a CIA officer. It can be your life. This display case has seven stars in it. These stars come from an actual memorial the CIA erected in Afghanistan to remember seven CIA officers and contractors who were killed by an al-Qaeda suicide bomber. And underneath the stars is the battered assault rifle that belonged to CIA officer Mike Spann.

ARCHIVAL 2000s Newscaster: The flag at CIA headquarters is lowered to half staff today. It's a rare public display of grief over the loss of one of its own.

Mike Spann was the first American to be killed in Afghanistan after 9/11.

ARCHIVAL 2000s Newscaster: Scores of CIA operatives have been on the ground working side by side with U.S. Special Forces.

Spann was inside a prison, interviewing members of the Taliban who’d been captured, when they revolted.

ARCHIVAL 2000s Newscaster: The Taliban prisoners jump their guards and seize their weapons. Mike struggles to hang onto his side arm, but is quickly overpowered and fatally shot.

Janelle Neisis: He had this weapon, um, when he was attacked. Uh, these boots right here actually belong to one of his partners, Dave.

ARCHIVAL 2000s Newscaster: As the battle rages on, you hear David frantically radio to U.S. military forces.

ARCHIVAL David: There's hundreds of dead here, at least, and I'm not, I don't know how many Americans are killed.

Janelle Neisis: Dave wasn't able to get to Mike in time. He fought his way to try to save Mike's life. He emptied out his weapon, actually trying to get to Mike, and when he got there, he took Mike's weapon knowing that he had already been killed and used it to fight his way out to safety. And so that is how the, the weapon made its way back to the agency was because of his teammate using it.

What comes through as you walk around this museum and see exhibits about people like Mike Spann, is that working for the CIA can be an incredibly tough job. The stakes are high. The risks are high. It takes real dedication.

Still, there are some parts of the CIA’s history that are noticeably absent. For example, there’s no exhibit about how the CIA waterboarded al-Qaeda suspects to try to get them to talk.

Peter Bergen: Obviously that's part of the CIA history, which is, let's call it the coercive interrogation program because I think it's, uh, no one can disagree it was coercive. Is there an exhibit about that here? Are you planning to do something, or?

Janelle Neisis: There are things within more recent history that are still too classified on our end to actually have an exhibit. But we at the museum plan to refresh the museum every, you know, five to 10 years on those deep dive lessons learned. And so yes, the CIA Museum will continue to put more out as it becomes declassified and as we are able to kind of collect, uh, artifacts and things related to that topic.

“It’s still classified” is both a true and a convenient answer.

And since this museum isn’t really for the public — but for the CIA, it’s probably a question the agency will have to grapple with itself. Still, the museum offers an amazing opportunity for its officers and analysts to see how the CIA has changed and evolved since it was first created by President Truman in 1947.

[MUSIC]

There was just one last thing — those ceiling codes. The ones above us are just regular letters of the alphabet. In four columns.I make one more attempt.

Peter Bergen: Um, are you gonna tell us what the answer is here?

Janelle Neisis: I actually do know, but in the form of the Glomar response, I probably should say I can't confirm nor deny that I know what it is, but I totally know what it is.

Peter Bergen: Will it one day be revealed?

Rob Byer: You gotta figure it out.

Peter Bergen: I don’t think I have time… or competence.

[PLAYFUL, SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

ARCHIVAL Mission Impossible Speaker: This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.

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If you want to know more about some of the stories and issues that we discussed in this episode: The Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program is authoritative.

I’ve got a book too: The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, which details bin Laden's life on his Abbottabad compound and the CIA hunt that found him.

The Showtime film THE LONGEST WAR recounts the CIA’s lengthy history in Afghanistan, directed by Greg Barker and produced by my wife Tresha Mabile and myself.

Robert Draper’s To Start A War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq is a deeply reported account of the weapons of mass destruction fiasco.

We also recommend The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History by Josh Dean.

CREDITS:
In the Room with Peter Bergen is an Audible Original.
Produced by Audible Studios and Fresh Produce Media.

This episode was produced by Alexandra Salomon, with help from Luke Cregan.
It was sound designed by Steven Jackson.
Our field producer was Ellen Rolfes.
Our executive producer is Alison Craiglow.
Katie McMurran is our technical director.
Our staff also includes Laura Tillman, Erik German, Holly DeMuth, and Sandy Melara.
Theme music is by Joel Pickard.

Our Executive Producers for Fresh Produce are Colin Moore and Jason Ross.
Our Head of Development is Julian Ambler
Our Head of Production is Elena Bawiec
Eliza Lambert is our Supervising producer
Maureen Traynor is our Head of Operations
Our Production Manager is Herminio Ochoa
Our Production Coordinator is Henry Koch
And our Delivery Coordinator is Ana Paula-Martinez

Head of Production at Audible Studios: Mike Charzuk
Head of US Content: Rachel Ghiazza Head of Audible Studios: Zola Mashariki
Head of Content Acquisition & Development and Partnerships: Pat Shah
Special thanks to Marlon Calbi, Allison Weber, and Vanessa Harris

Copyright 2023 by Audible Originals, LLC
Sound recording copyright 2023 by Audible Originals, LLC