Inside the world’s most top secret museum

It is the perhaps the most unusual – and exclusive – museum in the world, filled with artefacts that have shaped history. But its doors are firmly shut to the public.

It is the only place a visitor can see the gun found with Osama bin Laden when he was killed, next to Saddam Hussein’s leather jacket.

Located inside the US intelligence agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the collection has just been renovated to mark the agency’s 75th anniversary. A small group of journalists, including the BBC, were given exclusive access, although with a security escort constantly at our side.

Among the 600 artefacts on display are the kinds of cold war spy gadgets you might expect – a ‘dead drop rat’ in which messages could be hidden, a covert camera inside a cigarette packet, a pigeon with its own spy-camera and even an exploding martini glass.

But there are also details on some of the CIA’s more famous and even recent operations.

On display is a scale model of the compound in which Osama bin Laden was discovered in Pakistan. President Obama was shown a model before approving the raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader in 2011.

“Being able to see things in 3D actually helped the policymakers…as well as help our operators to plan the mission,” explains Robert Z Byer, the museum’s director who provided a tour.

On 30 July this year a US missile hit another compound, this time in the Afghan capital Kabul. The target was the new leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Source: BBC