In 2013, NBC did a very popular story on the “Secret” CIA Museum inside the agency’s compound. Here is an excerpt from their article, followed by the online video piece:

The “coolest museum you’ll never see” has a new piece de resistance – the gun found next to the body of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan when Navy SEALs killed him in a midnight raid.

The AK-47 is a recent addition to a collection that’s among the toughest tickets in the country for museumgoers. Tucked into various hallways at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., the museum displays the gadgets, artifacts and trophies of 70 years of spycraft, from World War II through the War on Terror. The museum is closed to the public and is only visited by employees and invited guests. It is rare for cameras to be allowed in.

The Russian-made assault rifle, identified on a simple brass plaque as “Osama bin Laden’s AK-47,” shares a glass case with an al Qaeda training manual found in Afghanistan soon after 9/11.

Intrigued by the story, and what it would take to have NBC film their piece there, I filed a FOIA request to the CIA in 2013. I requested, specifically, the following:

1. All documents, electronic or otherwise, generated about this trip. This includes correspondence via email, postal mail, etc., about the visit by NBC News.
2. All documents, electronic or otherwise, that are given to visitors of the museum. This includes any tour guides, pamphlets, rules, etc.
3. All documents, electronic or otherwise, that instruct CIA employees on how to visit the museum, how to invite friends, etc.

It took until January of 2016 to get the documents released to me. They are available below.

Some key points about these documents:

• It showed there was concern that the original NBV story would increase/surge the number of incoming FOIA requests.
• A donor (redacted) objected to his stuff being in the story, so they kept the NBC crew out of the Cold War room. Wonder why?
• They compiled Tweets on Twitter and made a huge document with them that mentioned the CIA Museum. Looks like over 1300.  In other words — they are WATCHING!

Original NBC News Story

Declassified Documents

 NBC / CIA Correspondence and Documents Relating to the CIA Museum Story [218 Pages, 18.8MB]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/cia/CIAMuseum-NBCStory.pdf

The post NBC Story on the CIA Secret Museum first appeared on The Black Vault.

The transcript, produced in 19 volumes, is arranged in such a way that pages from which information was deleted in the published version are easy to locate with the deleted information readily identifiable. Volumes IIa, IIb, VIa, VIIa, IXa and IXb consist of pages from the original transcript that were segregated as “Classified Testimony.” Also included is a separate volume showing the location and text that was deleted from the 1954 published version. This volume gives the page number of both the 1954 GPO publication and the original transcript. In addition, the volume points out specifically what information was deleted.

Wikipedia also summarizes the security hearing:

The Oppenheimer security hearing was a 1954 proceeding by the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) that explored the background, actions and associations of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who had headed the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, where he played a key part in the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. The hearing resulted in Oppenheimer’s Q clearance being revoked. This marked the end of his formal relationship with the government of the United States, and generated considerable controversy regarding whether the treatment of Oppenheimer was fair, or whether it was an expression of anti-CommunistMcCarthyism.

Doubts about Oppenheimer’s loyalty, dated back to the 1930s, when Oppenheimer was a member of numerous Communist front organizations, and was associated withCommunist Party USA members, including his wife and his brother. These associations were known to Army Counter-intelligence at the time he was made director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1942, and chairman of the influential General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1947. In this capacity Oppenheimer became involved bureaucratic conflict between the Army and Air Force over the types of nuclear weapons the country required, technical conflict between the scientists over the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb, and personal conflict with AEC commissioner Lewis Strauss.

The proceedings were initiated after Oppenheimer refused to voluntarily give up his security clearance while working as an atomic weapons consultant for the government, under a contract due to expire at the end of June 1954. Several of his colleagues testified at the hearings. As a result of the 2-to-1 decision of the hearing’s three judges, he was stripped of his security clearance one day before his consultant contract was due to expire. The panel found that he was loyal and discreet with atomic secrets, but did not recommend that his security clearance be reinstated.

The loss of his security clearance ended Oppenheimer’s role in government and policy. He became an academic exile, cut off from his former career and the world he had helped to create. The reputations of those who had testified against Oppenheimer were tarnished. The brief period when scientists were hailed as heroes uniquely qualified to comment on public policy was ended, and all scientists working within the government were on notice that dissent was no longer tolerated.

Following is a listing of the volumes of the hearings transcripts with links to PDF copies [3,428 Pages].

Volume I	Volume IXa
Volume II	Volume IXb
Volume IIa	Volume X
Volume IIb	Volume XI
Volume III	Volume XII
Volume IV	Volume XIII
Volume V	Volume XIV
Volume VI	Volume XV
Volume VIa	Volume XVI
Volume VII	Volume XVII
Volume VIIa	Volume XVIII
Volume VIII	Volume XIX
Volume IX	Record of Deletions

See Also

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s FBI File

The post J. Robert Oppenheimer Personnel Hearings Transcripts first appeared on The Black Vault.

The Martin and Mitchell Defection occurred in September 1960 when two U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) cryptologists, William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell, defected to the Soviet Union. A secret 1963 NSA study said that “Beyond any doubt, no other event has had, or is likely to have in the future, a greater impact on the Agency’s security program.”

Martin and Mitchell met while serving in the U.S. Navy in Japan in the early 1950s and both joined the NSA on the same day in 1957. They defected together to the Soviet Union in 1960, and at a Moscow press conference they revealed and denounced various U.S. policies, especially provocative incursions into the air space of other nations and spying on America’s own allies. Underscoring their apprehension of nuclear war, they said “we would attempt to crawl to the moon if we thought it would lessen the threat of an atomic war.”

Within days, citing a trusted source, Congressman Francis E. Walter, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), said Martin and Mitchell were “sex deviates”, prompting sensational press coverage. U.S. officials at the National Security Council privately shared their assumption that the two were part of a traitorous homosexual network. Classified NSA investigations, on the other hand, determined the pair had “greatly inflated opinions concerning their intellectual attainments and talents” and had defected to satisfy social aspirations. The House Un-American Activities Committee publicly intimated its interpretation of the relationship between Martin and Mitchell as homosexual and that reading guided the Pentagon’s discussion of the defection for decades.

Below, you will find my research into this defection, and the declassified documents that have been released.

National Security Agency Documents

 NSA Declassified Documents, Released March 2015 [ 103 Pages, 49.5MB ] – The NSA is charging nearly $2,000 to complete their search for records relating to this incident. They used the 2 hours allotted to me for free, and sent me the first 100 pages that they found. This is that release. Any additional searching or releases, I will be required to pay the thousands of dollars.

The post Martin and Mitchell Defection to Soviet Union, September 1960 first appeared on The Black Vault.