The CIA has revealed a model of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri’s safe house used to brief US President Joe Biden before the CIA killed the terrorist chief in a drone strike in Afghanistan.
After Zawahri’s death, White House officials released a photo showing Mr Biden talking to CIA Director William Burns with a closed wooden box on the table in front of them.
Now, the contents of the box, a model depicting a white-walled home with at least five stories and three partially obscured balconies, is on display at the CIA Museum inside the agency’s headquarters in Virginia.
The museum, which has been refurbished for the agency’s 75th anniversary, is closed to the public and access is generally limited to the agency’s employees and guests.
Zawahri was killed in July, nearly a year after the US withdrew from Afghanistan ending a two-decade war in which the CIA had a central role.
The Biden administration said the strike showed it retained an “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism capacity in Afghanistan.
However, opponents and some analysts have questioned whether Zawahri’s presence in a Kabul neighbourhood suggests extremist groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State were growing stronger under the Taliban.
The strike was particularly meaningful for the CIA, which lost seven employees in trying to find Zawahri, a key plotter of the September 11 attacks who was then Al Qaeda’s second-in-command.
On display near the model of Zawahri’s home are seven stars honouring the CIA employees, which were previously part of a memorial in Afghanistan.
Other newly revealed artefacts include concept drawings for the fake film created as part of a 1980 operation to rescue American diplomats from Iran, the subject of the 2012 movie Argo starring Ben Affleck.
There are also crew uniforms and other items from the Glomar Explorer, the Howard Hughes-built ship that served as cover for a 1970s mission to surface a sunken Soviet submarine carrying nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.
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The museum also includes some information on the agency’s darker moments, including its role in the ultimately false assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 US invasion.
Janelle Neises, the museum’s deputy director, said there was a running agency joke the collection was “the greatest museum you’ll never see.”
The number of annual visitors to the museum is classified.
Among the known guests are US politicians, officers from other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and foreign officials.
CIA employees post about some of the museum’s roughly 600 exhibits on social media and the agency also recently started a podcast.
Ms Neises said a primary goal of the museum was to reinforce lessons from the agency’s successes and failures for the current workforce.
“The idea here is as you’re going to lunch or as you’re going to a meeting, leave 10 minutes early, leave 20 minutes early, and just take the time to look at one section and really learn about your history,” Ms Neises said.
