langley cia tour

See Inside the Rarely Seen and Newly Reimagined CIA Museum

Off-limits to all but a few in-person visitors, the museum is starting to welcome the public, online at least

Molly Enking

Daily Correspondent

The CIA Museum has always been closed to the public; only the agency’s employees, their family members and other government officials can visit. Most of us will never see it in person—but online, the museum is beginning to allow civilians a peek inside its vast collection.

This year, in honor of the agency’s 75th anniversary, the CIA updated and restructured the physical museum space. Now, it is publishing a series of YouTube videos , which walk viewers through some of the displays. The agency is also publicizing its existing  online catalog , which contains a selection of the museum’s artifacts. 

The museum holds more than 3,500 items in total, according to Atlas Obscura ’s Line Sidonie Talla Mafotsing. So far, the online catalog features about 200 artifacts, though the digitization process is ongoing. Items on display digitally include forged passports, counterfeit Nazi propaganda, Che Guevara’s flashlight , and a small portion of a written psychological analysis of Adolf Hitler , among many others.

Per NPR ’s Greg Myre, one of the items on view in the physical museum is a replica of the house in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the CIA found and killed Osama bin Laden ’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri , earlier this summer. Agents used the model house to brief President Joe Biden on the intelligence agency’s strategy.

The museum’s new ceiling is covered with black and white codes and ciphers. These aren’t just decorative—all of them can be broken—and they will be uploaded to the online catalog, as well.

But according to the  Washington Post ‘s Gillian Brockell, certain unflattering chapters from the CIA’s history are missing from the showcase. “The entire African continent is hardly mentioned, with no information on the CIA’s purported involvement in the 1961 assassination of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba, the 1962 arrest of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela or other key events,” she writes. “Waterboarding also does not appear to be mentioned.”

The CIA Museum walks a fine line, maintaining secrecy while opening the organization up, even in a small way, to public view. So why do it at all?

“Every day, CIA officers help to shape the course of world events,” Toni Hiley, the museum’s former director, told Smithsonian magazine ’s David Wise, who was given a private tour of the museum in 2014. “The CIA has a rich history, and our museum is where we touch that history.”

The digitalization efforts are another step toward that goal, says Gina Weinstein, the museum’s exhibition specialist, to Atlas Obscura . “Figuring out how we are able to … provide this history, this information and these artifacts to the public is important to us, because there are important stories to tell.”

Former CIA director William Colby first proposed the idea for a museum in 1972. Since then, the agency has moved forward with caution; the first exhibition didn’t open until 1991. Located in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia, often simply referred to as “Langley,” the museum is part of the CIA’s headquarters.

The new virtual resources seem to be part of a larger effort to share, if only to a limited degree, what goes on at Langley. The agency also launched a podcast this year as part of the anniversary celebration.

“We do usually operate in the shadows, out of sight, out of mind,” William Burns, the CIA’s director, says in the first episode . “But I think it’s important to explain ourselves the best we can and to demystify a little bit of what we do.”

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Molly Enking | READ MORE

Molly Enking is a writer, editor and producer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work can be found in Wired , Rolling Stone , PBS NewsHour, Grist , Gothamist and others. She covers health disparities, space, the environment, scientific discoveries and oddities, food and travel, as well as how art, pop culture and history impact the way we view the world. 

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National Security

Marking 75 years, the cia opens a new museum and launches a podcast.

The entrance to the newly renovated CIA museum at the agency headquarters in Langley, Va. The ceiling features a variety of spy codes. This one is in Morse Code. The CIA plans to put them all online to see if they can be broken. Courtesy of CIA hide caption

The entrance to the newly renovated CIA museum at the agency headquarters in Langley, Va. The ceiling features a variety of spy codes. This one is in Morse Code. The CIA plans to put them all online to see if they can be broken.

The CIA is marking its 75th anniversary by doing something extremely rare: actively seeking public attention.

The spy agency has just launched a podcast, and over the weekend it gave a small number of journalists a peek inside its newly renovated and greatly expanded museum at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

Perhaps the most unusual touch is the ceiling, covered with a variety of white and black spy codes. There's a section in Morse code, another displays dominoes in code, as well as ciphers, and what looks like a crossword puzzle filled with letters in various foreign languages, jumbled together.

3 things the strike on al-Zawahiri tell us about the U.S. counterterrorism strategy

The CIA has never opened its museum to the public and isn't about to start. The target audience is the CIA staff and official visitors. But the agency is planning to put the exhibits — and these spy codes — online.

"Every code can be broken. There are actual words and meaning behind everything," said the museum's deputy director, Janelle Neises, who gave the tour. "We're very curious to see how fast and who breaks it."

The exhibit features some of the CIA's best-known operations since its founding in 1947, right up to a high-profile operations carried out less than two months ago.

There's a table-top model of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, where the al-Qaida leader was killed by Navy SEALS in 2011. The CIA also built a life-size model as well where the SEAL team trained for the raid.

President Biden meets with his national security team on July 1 to discuss the drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on July 31. CIA Director William Burns is on the left. The wooden box in front of the president contains a replica of the house where al-Zawahiri was living in Kabul, Afghanistan. The model is now on display at the CIA museum. White House hide caption

President Biden meets with his national security team on July 1 to discuss the drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on July 31. CIA Director William Burns is on the left. The wooden box in front of the president contains a replica of the house where al-Zawahiri was living in Kabul, Afghanistan. The model is now on display at the CIA museum.

Also on display is the bread-box size replica of the house in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the CIA tracked bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri , and killed him in a missile strike in July.

"This model was actually used to brief President Biden on the pattern of life that had been established, why we thought Zawahiri was here with his family, and what our plan was to go and get him," said Neises.

The museum tells stories well-known inside the intelligence community, though much less so outside the CIA's walls.

Latin America

Cuban missile crisis passes quietly, 50 years later.

Like the work of Oleg Penkovsky, a colonel in Soviet military intelligence. He provided the U.S. with critical information that allowed President John F. Kennedy to confront the Soviets over their secret plans to place ballistic missiles in Cuba in 1962.

"Col. Oleg Penkovsky was one of our most important assets during the Cold War," said Neises. "He's known as the 'spy who saved the world' for a reason."

The Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba. They also uncovered Penkovsky's spying and executed him the following year.

A separate exhibit features the CIA's own Aldrich Ames, who passed secrets to Moscow for millions in cash until he was arrested in suburban Washington in 1994. He's serving a life sentence.

These tales, and several others, are pointed reminders that spy stories often end badly.

Operations gone wrong

The museum also includes some CIA failures, like the Bay of Pigs, the disastrous 1961 attempt to oust Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

This was just one of many CIA attempts against Castro, who eventually stepped down due to failing health and died six years ago at age 90. But he's memorialized at the CIA museum with a small statue carved with coconuts and known as "Coconut Castro."

In The CIA's 1st Plot Against The Castros, Fidel Wasn't The Target

The caption offers not hint it had anything to do with the many plots directed at him. It says only that the unnamed owner — presumably a former CIA official — would turn it to face away from the television during Castro's marathon speeches in hopes it would bring them to an end more quickly.

"I honestly don't know who made it and why," said Neises.

Still, it seems to capture the agency's long-running obsession with the Cuban dictator.

The CIA's model of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. It was presented to President Barak Obama before he authorized the raid that killed the al-Qaida leader in 2011. Courtesy of CIA hide caption

The CIA's model of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. It was presented to President Barak Obama before he authorized the raid that killed the al-Qaida leader in 2011.

"Looking at the 75-year track record of CIA, it has enhanced American security by giving us much better information about the world through science and technology and the serious information-gathering side of the agency," said Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, a private group in Washington that keeps watch on the intelligence community.

But Blanton says the CIA's covert paramilitary operations, like the many attempts aimed at Castro, "have driven up the possibilities of war and confrontation."

While the CIA museum is off-limits to the public, the agency is reaching out in another way, with its first podcast, called The Langley Files, a nod to the agency's location in suburban Washington.

Hosted by Dee and Walter — first names only for these CIA employees — the first guest last week was CIA Director William Burns, who explains the thinking behind the media venture.

"We do usually operate in the shadows, out of sight, out of mind, but I think it's important to explain ourselves the best we can and to demystify a little bit of what we do." In recent years, former top intelligence officials have been much more willing to speak publicly, from cable television appearances to social media accounts. And a former deputy director at the CIA, Michael Morell, already has his own podcast, Intelligence Matters.

A statue of Harriet Tubman was recently placed near the entrance of CIA headquarters to commemorate her intelligence work on behalf of the Union Army in the Civil War. Courtesy of CIA hide caption

A statue of Harriet Tubman was recently placed near the entrance of CIA headquarters to commemorate her intelligence work on behalf of the Union Army in the Civil War.

A Harriet Tubman statue outside CIA headquarters

CIA headquarters features a number of statues as well as paintings of former agency directors and others who had distinguished intelligence careers. Almost all were white men.

But just weeks ago, the agency put up a statue, near the headquarters entrance, of Harriet Tubman. While famous for leading enslaved blacks to freedom during the Civil War period, she was at the same time serving as a valuable spy for the Union Army. "As she's doing her work, she's learning different things about the Confederate Army, and she's able to pass that information on to the Union soldiers," Neises said. "She was running intelligence before (the CIA) existed. We really felt that Harriet Tubman was someone who deserved to be on our compound."

By CIA standards, all these recent events surrounding the agency's 75th anniversary seem like a full-scale publicity blitz.

Yet the CIA had already taken unusually public steps earlier this year in advance of Russia's war in Ukraine. The Biden administration and the U.S. intelligence community declassified some of the information that they said pointed to a Russian invasion.

Despite initial skepticism in both the U.S. and abroad, the U.S. intelligence has proven accurate and has been seen as crucial in building domestic and international support for Ukraine.

Greg Myre is an NPR national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1.

• Central Intelligence Agency

CIA Museum Tour

American History TV toured the CIA Museum at the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. Director and curator Robert Byer highlighted cove… read more

American History TV toured the CIA Museum at the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. Director and curator Robert Byer highlighted covert action tools of the trade in the CIA’s collection, dating from the Cold War to 21st century terrorism. The museum was created primarily for CIA employees - as a resource for their ongoing work - and is not open to the general public. close

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Killing of Osama bin Laden

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Closed to the Public

1941 to 1947

The Cold War

All Not So Quiet Along the Potomac

The Civil War in Northern Virginia & Beyond

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Tour of langley, virginia: it's not just the cia.

In other times this must have been a pleasant resort. . . .  Here Gen. MCCALL has his headquarters now, and around him lay the legions of the Pennsylvania Reserve. They moved over from Tennally Town to make room for the latest arrivals from New-England and New-York. In drill they have the precision of veterans, and the discipline of the camps seems as near perfection as it is possible for volunteers to attain. But even the best discipline of the camp is but a softened name for destruction. The fences disappear, the shrubbery is destroyed, the fruit is gone, the door yard down and the building defaced, before Discipline comes up with the encampment of an advancing army. She seems to be always lagging behind on the old camping ground, seeing that everything worthless is moved on, and only gets to the front when the mischief is done.

Here was a striking illustration of how close the dividing lines are, which this unhappy war has drawn. Two taverns stand on the two sides of the road, nearly opposite. The landlord of one was a Secessionist, and had to flee, leaving his place to be trod by the reckless soldiery. The other was a Union man, and is still plying his vocation as unmolested as in times of peace.

The seats of painted pine had been covered with planks, and a sick man lay above every pew. At the ringing of my spurs in the threshold, some of the sufferers looked up through the red eyes of fever, and the faces of others were spectrally white. A few groaned as they turned with difficulty, and some shrank in pain from the glare of the light. Medicines were kept in the altarplace, and a doctor's clerk was writing requisitions in the pulpit. The sickening smell of the hospital forbade me to enter. . . .

I grew up about a quarter mile from here on Old Georgetown Pike, and went to Felicity Day School in the old Mackall house in the early 1950's. Thanks for this great post. It brings back many memories. Bill Compton

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Secret history: a (virtual) tour of the CIA’s museum

T he CIA has a museum. But you can’t go into it. That would be telling. However, there are signs that the museum, housed within CIA’s headquarters in Virginia, is becoming a little more outward-facing. Recently, it has given a tour to digital media outlets such as Smithsonian and Yahoo . Its director Toni Hiley even has a Linked-In profile . Ordinary mortals not in possession of a friend with a pass card for Langley HQ can enjoy an official virtual tour of some of the most notable of the 26,000 items in the museum’s collection that have been added since it was founded in 1972, on the CIA’s 25th birthday.

Some of the exhibits show the agency’s inventiveness – such as a tiny precursor to the drone, with the size and looks of a dragonfly. It never flew in “theatre” but only in a test flight, and bears the brilliant name of insectothopter . Others are surprisingly basic – one of two pairs of gold cufflinks showing the head of the goddess Athena, each worn by US agent George Kisevalter and his Soviet “asset”, as Homeland has taught us to call them, Petr Semenovich Popov. When they met, they flashed their cufflinks in order to be sure they were speaking to the right person. (This secret code wouldn’t work so well now that you can buy Athena cufflinks on Etsy ). At the less hi-tech end of agency devices is the rat carcass. It was once hollowed out to contain messages. Apparently, this device was successful because very few people want to poke around inside a dead rat.

Some of the CIA’s more recent activities are documented here too. The team that raided Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abottabad, Pakistan, came home with souvenirs that included a brick from the compound (it’s imprinted with an M – perhaps part of some hidden-in-brick code) and the rifle that lay beside Bin Laden’s body. From behind the scenes comes a Grand Designs-style mock-up of his dwelling. Interestingly, the note made by the CIA’s then-director, Leon Panetta, after taking instruction from Barack Obama’s to launch the raid on Abottabad, includes a spelling error. Admiral William McRaven is wrongly spelt as McCraven. Put it down to stress.

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Designing America's Spy Headquarters

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Can you imagine the world’s most powerful clandestine intelligence agency spread out across a series of ramshackle offices in and around Washington, DC? Well, that’s what constituted the Central Intelligence Agency in 1953, the year Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles announced a plan to build one large, secure campus that would be home to the rapidly growing spy agency.

The CIA, created by order of the National Security Act of 1947, [1]  was one of America’s most active and effective tools in fighting the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Since it specialized in handling sensitive intelligence data, Dulles believed the agency needed a headquarters in an isolated location that was secure and private. Langley, Virginia turned out to be the perfect location.

Langley proved to be an attractive location because, according to the CIA’s website, “It was surrounded by parkland and government-owned property on three sides, and only a few privately owned houses on the fourth side. [Dulles] also knew that if CIA needed to expand in the future, there was plenty of room to do so.” [2]

It took three years to finalize the exact location, secure federal funding for the purchase of the land, and confirm the architectural firm that would design the building.

The contract went to New York firm Harrison & Abramovitz. Known for designing large public projects and some well-known New York skyscrapers, the firm had recently completed work on the United Nations complex and Lincoln Center in New York. [3]

Although the contract to begin the work was signed on July 5, 1956, the final blueprints for the headquarters building were not approved until March 1958. The $54 million building — about $480 million today — was designed to accommodate varying levels of security. A two-story base structure was laid out with five interconnected six-story towers rising out of it. This allowed for strict traffic control of employees throughout the building, with built-in gateways that prevented people from freely traveling from one tower to the next unless cleared by security.

The cornerstone for the CIA headquarters was laid by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on November 3, 1959. Construction was formally completed in 1963, but staffing the 1.4 million square-foot complex was fully completed by May 15, 1962.

There were serious security issues to consider during construction, and the government took great pains to make sure that plans for the building were kept secret.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 1978, Max Abramovitz, partner at Harrison & Abramovitz, admitted his firm no longer had any files on the CIA project they labored over for five years. “We turned everything over to the CIA under the terms of our original agreement. The renderings, the working drawings – every scrap of paper.” [4]

According to Abramowitz, only four or five of the firm’s architects had top security clearance. The rest of the team worked on specific parts of the building without any knowledge of the purpose they would serve. They designed offices, briefing rooms, and other parts of the structure, but it was left to the architects with top security clearance to piece everything together like a puzzle.

“That wasn’t as clumsy for us as you might think,” Abramovitz said in 1978. “But [CIA] still didn’t want anybody to know about the organization of spaces or about the substructure inside.” [5]

The CIA treats the details about the construction of the building as a closely guarded secret. It was able to do this not only by seizing all the documents of the project from the firm, but by bringing in its own team to oversee the final parts of the construction.

“The CIA had its own people,” Abramovitz said, “its own draftsmen and personnel with other skills, to finish the job.” [6]

After running out of space, a second 1.1 million square-foot building was added in 1991, designed by the Detroit architectural firm Smith, Hinchman & Grylls. [7]

The CIA headquarters did not have a formal name until April 26, 1999 when it was officially renamed the George H.W. Bush Center for Intelligence, named after the 41st president, who also served as Director of Central Intelligence in 1976.

• ^ The National Security Act of 1947 was a major reorganization of the U.S. military and intelligence establishment. http://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195385168/resources/cha…
• ^ CIA.gov, “The CIA Campus: The Story of Original Headquarters Building.” https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2008-featur… .
• ^ A list of the some of the projects designed by Max Abramovitz, partner at Harrison & Abramovitz is contained here: Randy Kennedy, “Max Abramovitz, 96, Architect of Avery Fisher Hall, Dies,” New York Times, Sept. 15, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/arts/max-abramovitz-96-architect-of-a…
• ^ Paul Gapp, “Hello CIA? I’d like to critique your headquarters, please.” Chicago Tribune, Feb 12, 1978. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1978/02/12/page/212/article/hello-ci…
• ^ Gapp, ibid.
• ^ Factbook on Government Intelligence, DIANE Publishing Company, 1995, p. 24.

About the Author

Richard Brownell is the author of numerous books for young audiences on historical and cultural topics. He also writes political commentary and has had his stage plays produced in several cities around the country. He currently resides in New York City, but his home is wherever history has been made. Richard has been an avid reader, researcher, and writer of American history much of his life, and he is always sure to soak up historical sites and stories wherever his travels take him.

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Marking 75 years, the CIA opens a new museum and launches a podcast

The entrance to the newly renovated CIA museum at the agency headquarters in Langley, Va. The ceiling features a variety of spy codes. This one is in Morse Code. The CIA plans to put them all online to see if they can be broken.

Courtesy of CIA

The CIA is marking its 75th anniversary by doing something extremely rare: actively seeking public attention.

The spy agency has just launched a podcast, and over the weekend it gave a small number of journalists a peek inside its newly renovated and greatly expanded museum at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

Perhaps the most unusual touch is the ceiling, covered with a variety of white and black spy codes. There's a section in Morse code, another displays dominoes in code, as well as ciphers, and what looks like a crossword puzzle filled with letters in various foreign languages, jumbled together.

The CIA has never opened its museum to the public and isn't about to start. The target audience is the CIA staff and official visitors. But the agency is planning to put the exhibits — and these spy codes — online.

"Every code can be broken. There are actual words and meaning behind everything," said the museum's deputy director, Janelle Neises, who gave the tour. "We're very curious to see how fast and who breaks it."

The exhibit features some of the CIA's best-known operations since its founding in 1947, right up to a high-profile operations carried out less than two months ago.

There's a table-top model of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, where the al-Qaida leader was killed by Navy SEALS in 2011. The CIA also built a life-size model as well where the SEAL team trained for the raid.

President Biden meets with his national security team on July 1 to discuss the drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on July 31. CIA Director William Burns is on the left. The wooden box in front of the president contains a replica of the house where al-Zawahiri was living in Kabul, Afghanistan. The model is now on display at the CIA museum.

White House

Also on display is the bread-box sized replica of the house in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the CIA tracked bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri , and killed him in missile strike in July.

"This model was actually used to brief President Biden on the pattern of life that had been established, why we thought Zawahiri was here with his family, and what our plan was to go and get him," said Neises.

The museum tells stories well-known inside the intelligence community, though much less so outside the CIA's walls.

Like the work of Oleg Penkovsky, a colonel in Soviet military intelligence. He provided the U.S. with critical information that allowed President John F. Kennedy to confront the Soviets over their secret plans to place ballistic missiles in Cuba in 1962.

"Col. Oleg Penkovsky was one of our most important assets during the Cold War," said Neises. "He's known as the 'spy who saved the world' for a reason."

The Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba. They also uncovered Penkovsky's spying and executed him the following year.

A separate exhibit features the CIA's own Aldrich Ames, who passed secrets to Moscow for millions in cash until he was arrested in suburban Washington in 1994. He's serving a life sentence.

These tales, and several others, are pointed reminders that spy stories often end badly.

Operations gone wrong

The museum also includes some CIA failures, like the Bay of Pigs, the disastrous 1961 attempt to oust Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

This was just one of many CIA attempts against Castro, who eventually stepped down due to failing health and died six years ago at age 90. But he's memorialized at the CIA museum with a small statue carved with coconuts and known as "Coconut Castro."

The caption offers not hint it had anything to do with the many plots directed at him. It says only that the unnamed owner — presumably a former CIA official — would turn it to face away from the television during Castro's marathon speeches in hopes it would bring them to an end more quickly.

"I honestly don't know who made it and why," said Neises.

Still, it seems to capture the agency's long-running obsession with the Cuban dictator.

The CIA's model of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. It was presented to President Barak Obama before he authorized the raid that killed the al-Qaida leader in 2011.

"Looking at the 75-year track record of CIA, it has enhanced American security by giving us much better information about the world through science and technology and the serious information-gathering side of the agency," said Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, a private group in Washington that keeps watch on the intelligence community.

But Blanton says the CIA's covert paramilitary operations, like the many attempts aimed at Castro, "have driven up the possibilities of war and confrontation."

While the CIA museum is off-limits to the public, the agency is reaching out in another way, with its first podcast, called The Langley Files, a nod to the agency's location in suburban Washington.

Hosted by Dee and Walter — first names only for these CIA employees — the first guest last week was CIA Director William Burns, who explains the thinking behind the media venture.

"We do usually operate in the shadows, out of sight, out of mind, but I think it's important to explain ourselves the best we can and to demystify a little bit of what we do." In recent years, former top intelligence officials have been much more willing to speak publicly, from cable television appearances to social media accounts. And a former deputy director at the CIA, Michael Morell, already has his own podcast, Intelligence Matters.

A statue of Harriet Tubman was recently placed near the entrance of CIA headquarters to commemorate her intelligence work on behalf of the Union Army in the Civil War.

A Harriet Tubman statue outside CIA headquarters

CIA headquarters features a number of statues as well as paintings of former agency directors and others who had distinguished intelligence careers. Almost all were white men.

But just weeks ago, the agency put up a statue, near the headquarters entrance, of Harriet Tubman. While famous for leading enslaved blacks to freedom during the Civil War period, she was at the same time serving as a valuable spy for the Union Army. "As she's doing her work, she's learning different things about the Confederate Army, and she's able to pass that information on to the Union soldiers," Neises said. "She was running intelligence before (the CIA) existed. We really felt that Harriet Tubman was someone who deserved to be on our compound."

By CIA standards, all these recent events surrounding the agency's 75th anniversary seem like a full-scale publicity blitz.

Yet the CIA had already taken unusually public steps earlier this year in advance of Russia's war in Ukraine. The Biden administration and the U.S. intelligence community declassified some of the information that they said pointed to a Russian invasion.

Despite initial skepticism in both the U.S. and abroad, the U.S. intelligence has proven accurate and has been seen as crucial in building domestic and international support for Ukraine.

Greg Myre is an NPR national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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The World’s Most Secure Buildings: CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia

February 9, 2022

According to a report by the Associated Press , the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia reportedly reads up to 5 million tweets per day. The CIA’s Open Source Center appraises and evaluates information extensively available to the general public, including Twitter and Facebook, and keeps eyes on everything from blogs to tweets to more traditional media. The CIA agents seemingly like to stay up-to-date on the public’s reactions to world events. Other surveillance methods include TVs, iPhones, Androids, and computers running Windows, macOS, and Linux.

What makes the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia one of the world’s most secure buildings? Read on to find out.

What You Will Find at the CIA Headquarters

1. “kryptos” sculpture.

James Sanborn’s sculpture “Kryptos” begins at the entrance to the New Headquarters Building and continues in the northwest corner of the New Headquarters Building courtyard.

The theme of this sculpture is “intelligence gathering”. “Kryptos”, dedicated on November 3, 1990, includes materials native to the U.S. A piece of petrified wood supports a large S-shaped copper screen resembling a piece of paper coming out of a computer printer. The screen is inscribed with several mysterious messages, each written in a different code. “Kryptos” continues to be a source of pleasure and mystery for CIA employees, with a few taking the challenge to break the code.

2. A-12 Oxcart

The CIA developed the highly secret A-12 OXCART as the U-2’s successor, intended to meet the nation’s need for a very fast, high-flying reconnaissance aircraft to avoid Soviet air defenses. Lockheed (manufacturer of the U-2) won the OXCART contract in 1959. In meeting the A-12’s extreme speed and altitude requirements, Lockheed overcame several technical challenges with front-line innovations in titanium fabrication, lubricants, jet engines, fuel, navigation, flight control, electronic countermeasures, radar stealthiness, and pilot life-support systems. In 1965, after hundreds of hours flown at high personal risk by the elite team of CIA and Lockheed pilots, the A-12 was declared fully operational, attaining the design specifications of a sustained speed of Mach 3.2 at 90,000 feet altitude.

3. Atrium Sculpture Hall

The Atrium Sculpture Hall hosts a collection of statues donated to the CIA. The statues in the collection include, “The Day the Wall Came Down”, “Windwalker”, and “Intrepid”. The Day the Wall Came Down “The Day the Wall Came Down” by sculptor Veryl Goodnight captures the joy of freedom as the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. It joined the collection on October 5, 2000. The wall in the sculpture represents obstacles to personal freedom in the past and present. The stallion, representing man, is placed on the east side of the wall urging the mares, representative of families, to a better life of freedom in the West.

Windwalker The U.S. national symbol, the eagle, represents vigilance, alertness, strength, courage, and freedom. Located in the lobby, the dramatic 48-inch bronze “Windwalker” by sculptor Kitty Cantrell exemplifies the same qualities. It was added to the collection on April 1, 2002.

Intrepid Gifted by the Intrepid Society of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, this 22-inch statue of Sir William Stephenson, code-named “Intrepid”, was dedicated on May 2, 2000. Sculpted by world-renowned artist Dr. Leo Mol, the statue depicts the WWII hero in his aviator’s uniform.

4. CIA Library

The library is a valuable resource to CIA employees and is exclusively available to agency personnel. It contains approximately 125,000 books and subscribes to about 1,700 periodicals. The library maintains three collections: Reference, Circulating, and Historical Intelligence.

• Reference: core research tools such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, commercial directories, atlases, diplomatic lists, and foreign and domestic phone books
• Circulating: monographs, newspapers, and journals; the library also participates in interlibrary loans of circulating items with other government and public libraries
• Historical Intelligence: primarily an open-source library dedicated to the collection, retention, and exploitation of material dealing with the intelligence profession, featuring 25,000+ books and extensive press clippings

5. CIA Memorial Wall

The Memorial Wall is located north of the Original CIA Headquarters Building lobby. This wall of 137 stars stands as a silent, simple memorial to those CIA officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice. Among the stars, a simple inscription reads: In honor of those members of the CIA who gave their lives in the service of their country.

6. CIA Seal

• The eagle is the national bird of the U.S. and stands for strength and alertness
• The 16-point compass star represents the convergence of intelligence data from around the world at a central point
• The shield is the standard symbol of defense

This seal is one of the most identifiable symbols of the CIA and features throughout popular culture in entertainment and documentary motion pictures.

7. CIA Museum

Located at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the 11,000 square-foot museum houses fascinating projects like dragonfly drones, robotic fish, and pigeon-mounted cameras. However, only agency members and cleared guests are allowed inside.

The CIA Museum was established in 1988 to give employees a sense of the unique history of their profession. This collection focuses on the CIA’s World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, and the current CIA. Popular galleries include:

• Office of Strategic Service (OSS) Gallery: The OSS Gallery features the personal effects reflecting the career of Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan, the head of OSS, as well as numerous examples of OSS tradecraft (much of which was used by CIA after it was established by President Truman in 1947) and items from the Persian Gulf War and the end of the Cold War.
• Cold War Gallery: The Cold War Gallery is located near the Original CIA Headquarters Building main lobby. “The Cold War: Fifty Years of Silent Conflict” showcases some of Melton’s 6,000 clandestine espionage artifacts from the U.S., the former Soviet Union, and East Germany. These artifacts are currently on loan by Melton.
• Directorate of Intelligence Gallery:  For over 50 years, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) has informed U.S. presidents and other policymakers about the world in which they live. Some of the exclusive items displayed include Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 model and an al-Qa’ida training manual.
• Directorate of Science and Technology Gallery: The Directorate of Science and Technology Gallery displays items designed by some of America’s most advanced thinkers, adapting existing technologies or inventing new ones, and generously putting themselves in the service of freedom.

• Afghan Gallery:  This gallery presents artifacts and images relating to the global fight against international terrorism. The uniquely visual exhibit addresses the importance of joint operations, cross-community relationships, and sacrifice, while providing a current mission focus in support of operational, training, and recruiting outreach.

What Makes the CIA Headquarters One of the World’s Most Secure Buildings?

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Documents From ‘Argo’ Production Reveal What It’s Like To Film At CIA Headquarters

Since the early 1970s the Central Intelligence Agency has granted access to their Langley headquarters to a small handful of film and TV producers to add credibility and authenticity to spy dramas—often in exchange for positive portrayals of the agency.   Newly released CIA documents shed light on this process, as well as the close relationship between the Agency and the makers of the Oscar-winning spy drama “Argo,” especially with the film’s director and star Ben Affleck.  

In early 2011, Affleck was gearing up to shoot “Argo,” about the real-life CIA operation to smuggle six embassy staff out of Iran by masquerading as a Hollywood film crew. The operation was the brainchild of Tony Mendez, a fake document and disguise specialist in the CIA’s Office of Technical Services.  

Affleck worked closely with Mendez as he developed the script, and in March 2011, the CIA arranged a tour for them of the Old Naval Observatory, the former headquarters of the CIA, and the location of the Agency’s Office of Technical Services at the time of the Argo operation.  

Following this tour, the pair attended a roundtable discussion session in the Director’s Conference Room at Langley, where the filmmakers received input from CIA officials.  One officer who attended the meeting emailed a colleague, and commented, “FYl – In the category of weird things the Agency has asked me to do.”  

‘We Love the Agency’

During his March visit to Langley, Affleck visited the CIA museum, and in an email, he thanked the agency for their hospitality, signing off, “I look forward to returning to headquarters again soon, and I hope very much to see you then.”  

In one email exchange between the CIA and Affleck, the Agency apologized for the time it took to clear some archive photos he requested. Affleck responded “Definitely will take what I can get. As far as government goes…you guys have been amazing.”

A few weeks later, the film’s production designer Sharon Seymour also went on a tour of CIA headquarters. She took a walkaround and gathered details on Langley’s décor. Seymour asked for copies of more photographs, showing what their offices looked like in the early 1980s.  After a months-long clearance process, the CIA provided the photos, which were used to help recreate various sets for the production. In May, Affleck first broached the question of getting permission to film at Langley, and in June, Affleck, Seymour, executive producer Chris Brigham, and location manager Peggy Pridemore took another tour of the building.  

Following this trip, Affleck sought permission to film on the Langley campus, and in one email he exhorted, “We love the agency and this heroic action and we really want the process of bringing it to the big screen to be as real as possible.” One public affairs officer wrote back to assure Affleck “We’re trying,” and told Brigham, “I’m optimistic, and hope we’ll be working together.”

A Brief History of Filming at CIA Headquarters

The CIA-Hollywood relationship hasn’t always involved such mutual flattery. The first movie to be allowed access to the Langley campus was 1973’s “Scorpio” —a violent, moody thriller that did very little for the CIA’s desire for more positive public relations. It featured the agency trying to kill one of their own simply for wanting to retire from his life as a CIA spy and assassin.  

When word of the filming leaked, director Michael Winner protested, telling a London newspaper , “We only show the CIA killing nasty agents. Young people in America think the CIA should not exist, but that is naive.” Then Winner described CIA officers as “terribly charming and cheerful and gentlemanly at all times.”  

Nonetheless, the film did nothing for the CIA’s increasingly dinged-up reputation and came at a time in the 1970s when investigations exposed the agency’s role in numerous assassination plots.  As historian Simon Willmetts observed in his book In Secrecy’s Shadow: The OSS and CIA in Hollywood Cinema 1941-1979 , “Whatever the reasons behind their decision to allow the Scorpio crew to film Langley, they surely regretted it three years later when the film’s scenes of amoral CIA assassins aired on primetime American television amidst the fallout from the ‘Family Jewels’ revelations.”  

In “Scorpio,” John Colicos is shown driving through the security barriers, up to the CIA headquarters building, walking through the lobby doors and over the CIA seal on the floor of the lobby. This money shot sequence was replicated in future agency-supported productions, including Harrison Ford in “Patriot Games” and Ben Affleck in “Argo.” An internal CIA memo shows that the decision to allow “Patriot Games” to film at Langley was made because they anticipated that the movie would offer a “positive view of the agency and its activities.”  

When the FBI’s counterintelligence division hired Rocket Media to produce the educational drama “Game of Pawns” about the case of Glenn Duffie Shriver, an American student recruited by Chinese intelligence who tried to join the CIA, the company was granted access to Langley. Joshua Murray, who played Shriver, walked the same steps taken by Affleck and Ford, as well as by the real Shriver.  

Other productions, including the first “Mission: Impossible” film, the Nicholas Cage torture thriller “Dying of the Light,” and the CBS spy drama “Allegiance,” were also granted permission to film at the headquarters of America’s top spy agency. But in 2015 the CIA suspended access.  

Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie’s request to film at Langley for “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” was turned down, because, as Cruise revealed on the DVD commentary , “You’re not allowed to film the CIA any more.”  Likewise, CIA documents show how Michael Bay’s request to shoot the memorial wall in the headquarters’ lobby for his Benghazi film “13 Hours” was rejected, as the CIA were only engaging with Bay “for the sole purpose of keeping sensitive and unapproved material from the book out of the film.” 

This apparent ban on filming at Langley was lifted in 2018 when Amazon’s “Jack Ryan” came calling, and John Krasinski took the same journey as Ford, Affleck, and others (only this time he rode a bike up to the building before crossing the threshold).  

‘I Trust You Not to Poison/Bomb Me’

On “Argo,” Affleck, Seymour, and Brigham continued to send “ticklers” to the CIA, who responded that they were “enthusiastic about this project” but had to wait for higher officials to give the go-ahead for filming.  When approval was eventually granted the deputy director for public affairs let the filmmakers know, and Affleck shot back, “This is great!!! Thank you so much!! I am thrilled. Please let me know whatever I can do. This is a thrill. We will do the agency proud I promise you.”  

During the months leading up to the shoot in November, the relationship between the agency and the filmmakers grew closer. In August, a skeleton crew did a technical scout of the areas where they wanted to film, which meant they all had to undergo security checks and ask permission to bring basic equipment, including a tape measure and a light meter, onto the CIA campus.  The response from CIA security was, “Assuming your light meter does not have any recording/transmission capabilities it’s no problem to bring it in. Ditto for the tape measure.”  

While scouting a corridor in the Old Headquarters Building, the crew hit upon a problem—a large graphic of the Statue of Liberty that had only been installed three years earlier and had a very modern look. It would be out of place in a film set in 1979 and 1980.  Various solutions were proposed, including using temporary wallpaper, leading to one public affairs officer giving Seymour their home address so she could send her a sample. The officer joked in an email, “I trust you not to poison/bomb me.”  

Pridemore was given permission in September to tour the CIA director’s office while actor Bryan Cranston was provided a walk around Langley in October.

Ahead of a weekend shoot in November, all of the film crew and their equipment was vetted by the CIA, and the Office of Public Affairs sent an email for volunteers to act as minders. CIA staff were enticed to monitor the production, saying, “You’ll get to watch the filming happen, see the movie stars (including Ben Affleck), and eat free food from their catering operation. What better way to spend a Saturday?”  

Meanwhile, one entertainment liaison officer working on the project gave their cell number to Pridemore, admitting, “I’ve held off giving out my cell to someone on Argo for 8 months! All good things must end, though, I suppose.”  Pridemore replied, “I WON!” before promising not to share the phone number.  

Script Reviews and Electronic Surveillance

The producers showed multiple drafts of the script to the CIA, who reviewed it before filming took place.  An email by an entertainment liaison officer responding to the script said it “looks good,” elaborating, “The agency comes off looking very well, in my opinion, and the action of the movie is, for the most part, squarely rooted in the facts of the mission.” 

The officer referred to the ending of the film, “There is some fiction thrown in toward the end for dramatic effect, but nothing too ridiculous. For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed reading it.” This sequence, where armed Iranian guards chase the airplane carrying Mendez and the others as it takes off from Tehran, never actually happened . The Iranian National Guard were depicted as an insane and reckless mafia, but the CIA were perfectly happy with this gross and xenophobic deviation from the facts.  

Filming itself took place under the strictest security conditions. In production notes put out by Warner Bros, the film’s producer Grant Heslov recalled, “When we entered the building, everybody was told to leave their phones in a basket, and to be honest, I didn’t do that. “It’s not that I wanted to make calls. I just didn’t want to give up my phone. And minutes later, a CIA officer walked in and said, ‘Okay, who’s got the iPhone?'” Heslov added. “I admitted it was me, but then I had to ask how he knew. He took me to the back where he showed me this whole computer setup where they can monitor where a cell phone is, what the number is.” “They can tell everything. It was pretty eye-opening.”

The result of this intensely intimate and affectionate relationship between the CIA and “Argo” producers was the most positive image of the CIA that Hollywood has ever produced. “Argo” was also perhaps the most celebrated. It won the Best Picture award at the 2012 Oscars in a ceremony presented by First Lady Michelle Obama that was widely watched . Long gone are Langley’s regrets over allowing directors to film inside their headquarters, and so may be the days of Hollywood portraying the CIA and its agents in a realistic and critical light.

Tom Secker is a private researcher who runs spyculture.com, an online archive about government involvement in the entertainment industry. He has used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain unique government documents since 2010 and hosts the popular ClandesTime podcast.

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House committee finds CIA at fault in investigation on sexual assaults

The House intelligence committee has found that the CIA failed to properly deal with sexual assault among employees in its ranks, according to a copy of the investigation’s final report obtained by POLITICO.

In its hardest-hitting finding, the bipartisan report said there was “little to no accountability or punishment for confirmed perpetrators” and that there was “confusion and disorder” in the process of reporting such assaults.

The committee started its inquiry in January 2023 after a female CIA employee alleged that she had been physically attacked and sexually assaulted by a fellow officer at CIA headquarters. POLITICO, which revealed the investigation last April, reported that the agency had not punished a male colleague who had tried to forcibly kiss her repeatedly and that the agency did nothing when she reported the incident.

Numerous other whistleblowers also went to the committee and shared their own stories of sexual assault and harassment while at the agency. During its investigation, the committee interviewed more than 20 CIA whistleblowers, reviewed more than 4,000 pages of documents the agency gave it and held two oversight hearings.

“Over the course of the investigation, the committee discovered that CIA failed to handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment within its workforce in the professional and uniform manner that such sensitive allegations warrant,” the committee wrote in the executive summary.

The CIA said that it established an office in 2021 that advocates for officers who are dealing with sexual assault and harassment concerns and last June hired an experienced outside expert on sexual assault to lead that office. It said it also has made changes to strengthen its disciplinary processes and streamlined the way employees can report allegations and find resources to address their individual circumstances.

“We take the issue of sexual assault and harassment extremely seriously,” the agency said in a statement. “We are absolutely committed to fostering a safe, respectful workplace environment for our employees and have taken significant steps to ensure that, both by bolstering our focus on prevention and strengthening the agency’s handling of these issues when they arise.”

In February, the CIA fired the initial whistleblower in what the victim’s lawyer said was a blatant act of retaliation for reporting the assault, which resulted in her attacker, Ashkan Bayatpour, getting convicted of assaulting her by tightening a scarf around her neck. (He no longer works at Langley.)

The attorney, Kevin Carroll, told the Associated Press that the agency had “unlawfully ended a young woman’s career only because she had the moral courage, lacking in her managers, to stand up and be a witness about her sexual assault.” The CIA denied that it had done anything wrong and had not deviated from its processes to ensure “equal and fair treatment of every office going through training.”

The unclassified report also said that victims were not encouraged to come forward with such allegations since the agency didn’t give them anonymity and that the CIA did not do enough to coordinate with law enforcement when employees reported assaults.

It added that the agency’s sexual assault prevention office did not have enough resources and power to do its job and that the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity had unspecified “internal issues that rendered it unable to effectively engage in response efforts.”

That EEO office has come under severe criticism from some lawyers of victims saying that it has discouraged people from filing complaints by claiming it’s not in the best interests of the women or would trigger disclosure of classified information. The agency said that it recently named a CIA veteran to lead the office with a focus on equity and transparency and has also added staff to the office.

The committee “heard directly from whistleblowers who courageously shared their stories in order to push for change and accountability,” intel committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and ranking member Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said in a joint statement. “Our committee has put in place significant legislative reforms to address failures, and we will continue to monitor progress to ensure there is no slippage in the agency’s commitment to addressing sexual assault and harassment.”

The committee said the agency had cooperated with the investigation and “demonstrated an eagerness to effectively prevent and respond to sexual assault and harassment instances.” It also praised CIA Director Bill Burns and other senior leadership for working with the committee during its investigation.

During the course of its probe, the committee and later Congress passed legislative language in the Intelligence Authorization Act that is supposed to improve how victims report assaults and give more options to them to confidentially report such attacks and also require more sunlight into how such reports are handled.

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TikTok Shop expands its secondhand luxury fashion offering to the UK

TikTok Shop, TikTok’s social commerce marketplace, is launching a secondhand luxury category in the U.K., putting it in closer competition with The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective, Depop, Poshmark, and Mercari, among others. The offering has already existed in TikTok Shop U.S. for over six months. The new category allows customers in the U.K. to purchase pre-owned high-end clothing, designer handbags, and other accessories, all without leaving the TikTok app.

Manchester United collapses, but Coventry's stunning FA Cup comeback spoiled by inch-tight call, penalties

Coventry City, a second-division English club, nearly came back from 3-0 down to beat Manchester United in the FA Cup semifinals.

Tesla layoffs, Cybertruck recalls and Serve Robotics goes public

Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Tesla is back in the news cycle and our crystal ball says it's one of those long-term affairs. The week kicked off with layoffs — about 10% of its more than 140,000-person workforce — and CEO Elon Musk declaring he was going "balls to the wall" on autonomy.

MotoGP races to capture a new U.S. audience the way F1 did

MotoGP, global motorcycle racing’s version of Formula 1, looks primed for a bid to copy F1’s explosive growth and bring a new group of fans — notably from the U.S.