CIA museum is for spies' eyes only

It is so secret only spooks can visit it, but on Saturday, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified some artifacts in its newly refurbished museum.

Among the exhibits is the model of the safe house of Ayman al-Zawahiri, used to brief President Joe Biden about the al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts before the agency killed him in a drone strike in Afghanistan in late July.

Some of the declassified items can be viewed online. But for the most part, the museum at the CIA's Langley headquarters is closed to the public, and access is limited to the agency's employees and guests.

A running agency joke about the collection is that for most people, it's "the greatest museum you'll never see,'' said Janelle Neises, the museum's deputy director.

CIA unveils model of al-Qaeda leader's hideout

Most of the exhibits took years or decades to declassify, with al-Zawahiri's model being a rare exception.

"It's very unusual for something to get declassified that quickly," said Neises.

Al-Zawahiri had led al-Qaeda since the militant group's founder, Osama bin Laden, was killed in a US operation in Pakistan in 2011.

Shortly after al-Zawahiri's death in July, White House officials released a photo showing Biden talking to CIA Director William Burns with a closed wooden box on the table in front of them.

The scale model of al-Zawahiri's compound in Kabul was in the box.

The strike was significant for the CIA, which lost seven employees trying to find al-Zawahiri.

Also cleared for display was an assault rifle found near bin Laden the night US Navy SEALs killed him in a raid on his compound in Pakistan, as well as a leather jacket found with former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein when he was captured in 2003.

Among the 600 artifacts are also concept drawings for the fake film created as part of a 1980 operation to rescue American diplomats from Iran, flight suits worn by pilots of Cold War-era U-2 and A-12 flights and even information on the agency's darker moments, including its role in the ultimately false assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"Our museum is operational," said Neises. "It's here for our workforce to learn from our successes and failures."

That might be a good thing, considering the agency is now hiring officers in their 20s who are too young to remember the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

lo/fb (AP, Reuters)