Toni Hiley, curator and director of the CIA Museum, said the museum, which is not open to the public, is meant to support the CIA's mission and intelligence operations. Here, Hiley talks about an exhibit currently on display that chronicles the agency's work in Afghanistan.

Enlarge By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY Top: On display at the CIA Museum is a 1960s radio receiver hidden in a pipe; Bottom: Also on display is a camera designed to be strapped to a pigeon, a 1970's era spy gadget that failed. LANGLEY, Va.  When the CIA's gadget gurus need a new piece of technology these days to meet the demands of agents in Iraq, Afghanistan or some other outpost in the war on terror, they often walk into the past. It's all down the hall in the CIA Museum, where long-abandoned technological fantasies of the Cold War are taking on new relevance in the modern-day fight against terrorists and a whole new crop of hostile states. A smaller option for remote surveillance? Maybe there's a way to adapt that old "Insectothopter" — a true-to-life robotic dragonfly that was developed in the 1970s to fly tiny listening devices through open windows in heavily guarded buildings. Or perhaps there's something to that tiny pigeon cam, built decades ago to be carried over hostile areas by trained birds. "We're revisiting technologies all the time … (and) we look back to the lessons learned historically on using these technologies and build on those foundations," says Toni Hiley, the museum's curator and director since 1999. Several times a week, Hiley says, she gets inquiries from operations officers or agency scientists about artifacts or files in the museum. So what sort of material are they looking at and how will it be used? That, of course, is secret. Just like the museum itself. With five galleries spread over 11,000 square feet, the CIA Museum holds artifacts that curators can only dream about at the nearby International Spy Museum in Washington, where about 700,000 people a year pony up for $20 tickets. But the only way for the public to see the CIA's exhibits is an online tour via the CIA's website. And nobody knows what the average taxpayer is paying for that virtual visit: The museum falls within the CIA's classified budget. The CIA's permanent exhibits include all the classic, James Bond-style gadgets — stealthy pistols and fighting knives, cameras disguised as cigarette packs, even a pipe designed to receive radio messages and relay them silently to the user's ear by sending vibrations up his jawbone. There's also the desk of Gen. "Wild Bill" Donovan, who led the CIA's World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services. And down the hall sits a two-man, semi-submersible boat developed to secretly drop CIA agents along hostile coasts. Yet unlike, say, the National Cryptologic Museum, set up near the National Security Agency to promote public understanding of NSA's code-breaking and surveillance missions, the CIA Museum is inside the agency's headquarters on the secure Langley compound. Though everything on display is declassified, only agency employees and cleared guests can get to it. "The museum is here to support the agency's mission, to support intelligence operations, to support the agency's training (and) … recruitment," says Hiley, who gave a USA TODAY reporter and photographer a tour of the museum. "The museum not only preserves the tangible pieces of the agency's history, but we also preserve its culture." Afghanistan exhibit The museum's collection is loaded with unique and historically important items, and it would behoove the agency to find ways to make it more accessible to the public, says Peter Earnest, a 35-year CIA veteran and executive director of the International Spy Museum. "It's a way to give the public a better understanding of what their mission is (at CIA) … and to build support for that mission," Earnest says. Indeed, the newest exhibit offers an unprecedented look at the CIA's secret role in the Afghanistan war. There are photos of the seven-member team that launched the first U.S. operations in the country just days after the Sept. 11 attacks. There are displays of the native garb they wore, the weapons they carried, even a saddle used on clandestine horseback hunts for al-Qaeda leaders. But the purpose of the exhibit — like the museum itself —is not to serve the public, Hiley says. Ever since then-CIA director William Colby suggested "a modest little museum" in the early '70s to educate and inform employees, she adds, the museum has been geared toward insiders. All new CIA officers get a tour on their first day, and seasoned veterans also stroll in often. In 2007, about 4,000 people took officials tours, and Hiley estimates that the museum also gets tens of thousands of visits from employees and invited guests who stop by on their own. "I've had officers tell me that they walk potential recruits through the museum," Hiley says, "and they often find that that person will sign on the dotted line after seeing the stories and the artifacts." Open government advocates say all taxpayers should get the same chance to see the exhibits — and know what they cost. The NSA has proved "it's possible for an intelligence agency to have a public museum if there's a will to do so," says Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "All that's missing is a desire to serve the public." The museum does loan pieces of its collection to public institutions — presidential libraries, the Smithsonian, etc. — but not to for-profit entities, such as the Spy Museum. There was some discussion in decades past of building a publicly accessible museum on the fringe of the CIA's Langley compound, Earnest says, but it never got traction. And for security reasons, Hiley says, there's been no discussion in recent years of opening the museum to the outside world. The museum could help people understand intelligence's role, Hiley says, but "that really isn't our mission." Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more