The National Security Agency, America’s code-breaking and surveillance spies, is one of the most super-secretive organizations in the world. For several decades its very existence was denied, and it became a standing joke that “NSA” stood for “No Such Agency” or “Never Say Anything”. One museum volunteer that I chatted with (the docents here are all former NSA employees) recalled that “back in the old days” they were not even allowed to tell people where they worked: if they wanted to apply for a car loan or a mortgage, they had to provide a particular phone number for the bank to call, where it was explained that their job involved “national security”.
So it may be a bit surprising to learn that the NSA actually has a public museum, where it displays some of its old code machines and showcases its wartime successes in cryptology and code-breaking. Originally, the museum was only intended for NSA employees, but it was opened to the public in 1993 (after all the classified stuff was removed). NSA agents do still visit, and a big sign at the front entrance reminds them to remove their security badges and not to talk about classified matters. On the day I visited last year, there were several school groups there on field trips.
That does not mean that security is lax. As you approach the NSA building, which bristles with dozens of satellite dishes and antennae, you see very quickly that they take “security” seriously here. The entire complex is surrounded by high barbed-wire fences with gates and gun-toting guards and signs everywhere that scream “Restricted Area—Do Not Enter!” and “Use Of Deadly Force Is Authorized!” To get to the museum, you pass the main gate and then turn off onto a small two-lane road that skirts around the edge of the complex, ending at a parking lot next to a nondescript little white building. You do not want to make any wrong turns on the way.
Inside, the museum is divided into several sections, each focused on a different time period.
As you enter, there is a Memorial Hall dedicated to those 150-plus NSA officers who were killed on duty, most often in missions that are still secret and unacknowledged. The exhibits here include some artifacts from the USS Pueblo, a spy ship that was captured by North Korea in 1968, and the USS Liberty, another spy ship that was accidentally attacked by Israel during the 1967 War.
The largest part of the museum is dedicated to “Early Cryptology”, covering the period up to the end of World War II. There are some early French books spelling out cipher systems such as the Vigenere, a display of a codebook and telegraph machine from the American Civil War, and a cylinder code used by US troops during World War I.
The greatest success of the American codebreakers, however, came in World War II. The US, working with the British and the Polish, managed to break both the German and Japanese codes, giving the Allies a huge advantage in the war. Here one can see several different models of the German Enigma code machine, and an example of the Japanese Red and Purple ciphering systems. These machines used a system of rotors to scramble outgoing messages: solving it by hand was impossible, so the Allies developed some of the earliest computers to help with the decryptions. On exhibit in this hall are a Bomba mechanical computer and a piece from the Colossus electronic computer, both built specifically to help solve Enigma encryptions.
One of the ways the US safeguarded its own code systems during the war was to utilize Native American nations such as the Navajo. An entire battlefield code was built based on the Navajo language, and Natives were recruited as radiomen to communicate tactical information to each other. They were known as “code talkers”, and are commemorated with an exhibit in the museum.
The next exhibit hall is the Cold War/Information Age. With the success of the Bomba and Colossus in cracking the German and Japanese codes during the war, cryptology became increasingly computerized, and the only thing capable of cracking a computer code was another computer. When the NSA was established in 1952, it was already a leader in producing advanced computer technology. On display is a Cray Supercomputer, an IBM Harvest, and a purple Cray Ziegler known as “Barney”. In their times, they were the most sophisticated electronics in existence: in our rapidly-advancing world, however, today’s cellphones have more computing power than they did.
There are also some Cold War artifacts. One of the NSA’s successes of the time was its interception and decryption of a series of Soviet messages called VERONA, which were communications between Moscow and its spy networks in America. The successful decryption of VERONA messages led to the capture of many Russian agents, including the atomic bomb spy ring surrounding Julius Rosenberg. In 1960, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. After the fall of the USSR, a piece of the wreckage was given to the US by the Russian government and is now on display in the museum. There is also a model of a clever Soviet spy microphone that was hidden inside a wooden Great Seal at the American embassy in Moscow, and an engineering model of GRAB, the agency’s first electronic spy satellite, which intercepted Russian radio signals and relayed them back to Earth. The US continued to use rotor code machines for a time, and some of these old systems, including the KL-7, KL-51 and SIGABA, are on display here.
The final portion of the museum, titled “Information Security”, centers around modern codes and communications. There are displays of secure government phone systems like STU (“Secure Telephone Unit”), SECTERA, and SME PED. There are also displays about RSA and DES code systems used for commercial applications such as bank transfers.
Also located inside the museum is the unclassified portion of the NSA’s library, containing historical papers and books dating back to the 1500’s. Ironically, much of this collection was donated to the NSA by historian David Kahn, who wrote a book in 1967 titled The Codebreakers. Although Kahn had no access to any classified information, his book revealed so much about the NSA and its operations that the agency tried to suppress its publication by pressuring the publishing company, and when that failed the NSA tried to purchase the copyright to prevent anyone from buying it. In the end, Kahn and the NSA made their peace, and when the historian died he willed his collection of rare cryptology books to the museum. The museum also has a copy of Kahn’s original manuscript of The Codebreakers on display.
The museum is a fascinating look into the history of what was once one of the most super-secret parts of the US government. Visitors are allowed to take photographs inside the museum, but are very much not allowed to photograph any of the NSA facilities on the complex.
Wreckage from Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane German WW2 Enigma code machine The Bomba, a mechanical computer used to break German WW2 codes Radio set used by WW2 Navajo code-talkers A piece of the Japanese PURPLE code machine Japanese RED code machine American SIGABA code machine 1983 Cray Supercomputer STU-III encrypted phone