information intelligence with the war growing overseas. the single star behind us commemorates the loss of 116 ossers who -- the cia seal is something everyone sees as they come into the office, some people don't want to cross it, some want to walk around it. but you have seen movies filmed here in the lobby. it was designed by the crew that designed the tomb of the unknown soldiers. it's our nation's symbol of vij lengs, the eagle. everybody here at the cia works for the president of the united states, we're an executive agency and we all carry on our badges the great seal of the united states, if you look at the great seal, you'll see a different kind of eagle, an eagle with its wings spread, and the eagle in its right taleons old the olive branch of peace. during world war 2, our country us played what was called a war eagle. after the war it was president truman who decided we would no longer project a bellicose image and had the eagle flipped. our eagle looks to the right, in the advancing position to the olive branch of peace. there is a defense shield on the seal, intelligence is our country's first line of defense. and right in the center, u you'll see a 16-point compass rose that symbolizes information coming in from all sections of of the globe. our mission statement states that we are the nation's first line of defense, we accomplish what others cannot accomplish and go where others cannot go. we collect intelligence that matters, we provitd strategic intelligence analysis, we conduct covert action at the behest of the u.s. president and we provide world class support services to enable all of those functions, our job is to collect intelligence, and to transmit that intelligence via various products like the presidents daily briefing, to the policymakers so that they can make informed decisions about our national security. in 1972, cia celebrates it's 25th and i think that's that. >> beginning of that look back over history. and the executive -- walter had been asked by william dulles to -- that collection now numbers over 25,000 volumes on intelligence, maybe a quarter of those are in english, the oldest are a cold war that goes back to 1606. so it's now walter's job to identify items of historical significance to build a tang jibl collection of historical items. not a lot of documentation done in the early days, so other museums will appreciate the fact that one of our largest donors is found in collection, today we have best practices in place and the objects that we take into the collection today are well documented. it's our job to preserve and document that heritage which is now over 18,000 onlies. to help give our visitors and by extension, american people through our traveling exhibit, through our loans to other institutions, through our websit website. we're in our legacy gallery, this gallery is dedicated to the 14,000 men and women who conserved with cia's predecessor the office of strategic services. we know from our history books t coordination wasn't good enough. so in frustration, president roosevelt dispatches a world war 1 hero, jay donovan over to meet with british intelligence. donovan had been meeting here in the united states with sir william stevenson, canadian assigned to british intelligence. stevenson was actually running the covert operations cam pain. we don't hold that again him, we consider him to be one of the architects of central intelligence. so when stevenston finds out that donovan is going to meet with british intelligence, he cables head and asks british intelligence to open their doors to donovan. so donovan travels for roosev t roosevelt, both in 1940 and '41. each time writing detailed intelligence reports and giving him recommendations after he travels. so roosevelt decides he's going to create a new bureaucracy in 1941. he's going to call it the coordinator of information. this organization is established on the 11th of july 1941. then pearl harbor hits that december. coi is reorganized, the overt options are put under war information and the covert operations are put under military command and that entity is named the office of strategic it wases. as he's building his organization, donovan is reaching out to people like you, he wants the best and the brightest in our country. he reaches into the military, he reaches into academia and into private industry, and if he has an operation that requires a document followinger or a locksmith, he'll even reach into prison if he needs that kind of talent. >> this picture you're about to see is the first cinematic study of the preparation, arrival and establishment of undercover for secret agents. >> 13,000 men and women served. one of the gentlemen, donovan brought on board to help train his ossers, was danger dan, who was a british executive officer major who had been training the militia out in shanghai. now he taught hand to hand combat. and one of the people he taught was richard helms. so richard helms before the war was a war correspondent. he had just returned from three weeks temporary sea duty and he receives a message that says here's an organization, you might be interested in applying. and richard helms sends back a telegram, am intrigued, will -- he signs up, trains, one of the things he taught was hand to hand combat and using a knife. but the first thing he's going to tell you to do, is bring a gun to a knife fight. if anybody pulls a gun on you, then run like the dickens. so we will meet richard helms again. at this point in his career, he doesn't know that he's going to become director of the central intelligence from 1976 and serve until 1973. one of the more remarkable women who served with oss was virginia hall. she was a baltimore native who joined the state department and served as a clerk in the 1930s with various postings in warsaw, venice and turkey. while she was in turkey, she had a hunting accident, and while she was scrambling over a -- gangrene eventually set in and the doctor was forced to take her leg below the knees, so she had a wooden leg. she had been with the state for five years, but was eager to join the -- could not post officers abroad that were missing major limbs, so in frustration she resigned and decided to travel in europe anyway and got caught in -- she stayed, she drove an answer for a while, and then british special operations executive, the same organization that major fairbarn worked for, recruited her to be -- allied pilots who had been shot down passed through her hands to safety, eventually she was betrayed by one of her own agents and she had to escape. the gestapo put a warrant out for her arrest describing her as one of the most dangerous allied agents at the time. they called her the limping lady. she had nicknamed the leg cutbert, so very very cutbert -- chased by none other than klaus barbie, the buescher of leon. she was skap thursdayed -- when she got out, she radioed back to london that she was safe and mentioned in her message that kutbert was giving her problems but never informed london if cutbert is giving you problems, you must have him eliminated. she was eager to get back to france to continue fighting the war. and in march of 1944 the office of strategic services inserted virginia hall back inside france two months in advance of d-day. while there, she would take cheese she would make in the local village as her cover. early in the morning, other times late at night, from a different barn each time, as the painting we have of her in our collection shows, she sent 37 intelligence messages back to longed. at the end of the war, president truman himself invites her to the white house to receive the only distinguished service cross presented to a female during the war. this is one of our highest awith regards or valor. she's still in france, she doesn't want the publicity and she so she declines to travel to the white house. general donovan presented the award to her just three days before oss was dissolved, she remained in the field of intelligence and became one of cia's first female case officers, retiring in 1966 and passed away in 1982. if you had been a spy during the civil war, achnd needed a piecef espionage equipment maybe you would have gone down to the local cobbler and he would have made a special pair of boots for you so you could carry vmessage. and crafted for the individual, we need thousands of pieces and this necessitates a contract with private industry, the world war ii liberate for pistol is a got example of that. there was a contract with a guideline division of general motors to make an inexpensive weapon that could be air dropped into the resistance. for $1.72 each, a million of them were made in a five-month period. about 3,000 went to china, 15,000 to the philippines. so it's a single shot 45, you used it to liberate a better web from your enemy. it's call eded a liberator or a wool wooth gun because of the its inexpensive price. in the mid '60s, cia looked back to what it's world war ii predecessor had done and we created what we called a denied area weapon. alts called a dear pistol. the standard agency ammunition of the day was a large anna bell lunchtime. this program comes along in the mid '60s that would specifically make a 9 millimeter -- you can see the styrofoam case, cartoon instruction, no english required, the two bullets i have turned upside down actually -- no expense from the deployment of this following the pike and church committee hearings in 1975, the agency was investigated in congress for alleged assassinations and rogue activities and these stocks were ordered destroyed. it's very rare to even see one. i know of maybe four agency wide, this is the only one we have that's complete. the final gallery in our oss exhibit is dedicated to donovan's office. in the photo above the desk, donovan is actually seated at this desk. oss headquarters was down at 2330 e street, in a series of buildings, donovan himself was in the east building of that complex. donovan was the most highly decorated american officer of world war i. and the only american to receive our nation's highest four medals, which are the medal of hn for. distinguished service cross, distinguished service medal. donovan was in france since 1918. he's there with the fiblgting 69 hth. instead donovan stands in front of his men, his lieutenant colonel at the time, he says men look at me, if they can't hit me, they can't hit you. they're attacked on three sides, but he refuses to be evacuated from the battlefield until his men in the position are secure 89 in about five days of action, his battalion about 6 hung strong -- when he became director of the oss, he insisted that his telephone extension be 600. on his desk you'll see a sort of sears and robucks style catalog. a piece that stanley loval's group generated in 1942 that went out to different ovrks ss bases achkd stations around the world. so depending on your operational pace, you could pick so many beano grenades or so many liberate for pistols,or so many 22 caliber handguns, so many high stand dards, what are you needed for your operational pace, you could find it in this catalog. as the war was drawing to an end in 1945, general donovan was very passionate about there being some sort of a post war centralized intelligence agency, and he wrote memo after memo to both president roosevelt and truman. but he lost the battle when it seems at least one of those memos was leaked to the press. so on the 20th of september, 1945, donovan receives a letter from the white house that said, basically, dear bill, we loved what you did for us during the war, but we don't need you any longer, love and kisses, harry. and donovan was given just five days to dismantle the organization. it's not until 1947 with the national security act that we have the position of secretary of defense, the national security council, the u.s. air force and cia. donovan served on t duremberg duremberg --duremberg on the 9th of february 1959, he's laid to rest with some of the major military leaders in our country's history. you would go there expecting to see a monumental headstone to general donovan, the great, the father of central intelligence, the military hero, the most highly decorated american officer of world war i, but instead, you'll see the ordinary soldiers' headstone, but it will say medal of honor on it. do you remember young lieutenant commander richard helms we met earlier in the gallery? at the end of the war, it seems he may have been one of the first intelligence officers to what veria where he could very well have picked up this piece of hitler's letter head. the historical record doesn't indicate where he may have picked it up. but on victory in europe day, he write this is note to his 3-year-old son. dear dennis, the man who might have written on this card once controlled europe three short years ago when you were born, today he's dead, his memo -- he was a force for evil in the world, his passing, his defeat a boon for mankind, but thousands died that might be so, the price of ridding society of bad is always high. helms was a newspaper man before the war, he knew how to write. but i marvelled that this young father had the consistency -- 6 later, dennis, now 69 direct this is piece to our collection, we received it the very day that we, as well as you heard that bin laden was dead. the price for ridding society of bad is always high. so when the agency was created in 1947, it occupied the headquarters of its world war ii predecessor. those offices were down at 2430 e street, there on navy hill, today just between the kennedy center and the state department. this is the original headquarters sign. and it has kind of an interesting story behind it. it seems that president eisenhower and his brother milton were on their way home from church one fine sunday, and ike turns to his brother achkd says, this week i need you to go and see al lachb dulles over at cia headquarters. and our understanding was the white house driver that day couldn't find the come pound, so i imagine that the phone call from the white house to the director's office the next day went something like this, look, you're cia down there in those buildings, the white house drivers can't find you, put a sign up. this would be the sign. my job as cia museum director as you can imagine is the best job in the world. and you're asking me to define the best job in the world, well, it's a job that puts me next to the men and women of this agency, who on a day-to-day basis make history through what they do, through the operations that they run in remote parts of the world, the intelligence they gather from agents they have recruited who share our belief in freedom, and risk their own lives to help keep our country safe. to our analysts, some of the most brilliant people in our country work for this agency, people who could make a lot more money working in private industry, who are here because they believe in service to nation, in excellence, they recognize the kurcourage of manf their completions and the sacrifices they make to collect that intelligence. all of us are stewards of that history, whether it's classified or unclassified, its up to us to protect us. every day we touch on agency equities and sources and methods in the museum, it's part of our job to protect those as well. and not do anything by telling a story that might give away too much of the secrecy behind that operation, so this is a very delegate balance that we play in the museum, is how to tell a complete story, a good story, how to make it inspirational and educational and still keep it unclassified. see this is definitely one of our challenges. our officers, every day i have asked them what keeps them coming to work every day, and i think any one of them would tell you that it's knowing every day that what you do makes a difference. that by doing what you do in your job, you can move the ball forward, you can help keep our country safe, it's an incredible mission and it's truly an honor to be a part of it. >> in part two of our -- pa pakistan compound where osama bin laden was killed. for more information about the cia museum, cia.gov, you can watch american history tv's artifacts projects online. this is american history tv, all weekend, every weekend. on cspan 3. sunday we'll bring you a debate from michigan's governor's race, incumbent republican rick snyder faces democrat mark shauer, that's live at 6:00 p.m. eastern on cspan. cspan's 2015 student cam competition is under way. this competition for middle and high school students will win prizes totaling $100,000. create a five minute documentary on the three branching ashld you, show varying points of view and must be submitted by january 20, 2015. go to student cam.org and gab are camera and get started today. next author corrie recco discusses the life and death of timothy webster, a police officer who became a union spy during the civil war. he was the union's top spy until he was betrayed in 1862. he became the first spy executed during the war. the museum of the confederacy hosted this event. it's about 45 minutes. we would like to welcome everybody this afternoon to our book talk and i am kelley hancock, i'm the manager of education programs here at the museum of the confederacy. we do through the year, host a number of book talks, we also have a brown bag lunch series that takes place on the third friday of the month, so deep those options in mind. but i'm here to introduce you to corrie recco, murder on the white sands, the disappearance of albert and henry fountain and was published in 2007, when the wild west history association's award for the best book on wild west history for 2007. and while working on that book, corrie began to research pi pinkerton's national history -- discovery of largely forgotten agent timothy webster, and webster is the subject of his new book, a spy for the union, the life and execution of timothy webster. so without further adieu, i'll welcome mr. recco to tell you all about this. >> thank you, everyone. an i wouldlike to thank kelly hancock and everybody here at the mew museum of the confederacy. i am the author of a spy on the union, the life of timothy webster. i would like to give you a nice overview of webster's life. as a new york city police map in 1853. timothy west was assigned to work the crystal palace exhibition i which became known as the first world's fair. a scottish

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