Concept
The National Cryptologic Museum (NCM) is an American museum of cryptologic history that is affiliated with the National Security Agency (NSA). The first public museum in the U.S. Intelligence Community, NCM is located in the former Colony Seven Motel, just two blocks from the NSA headquarters at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. The motel was purchased, creating a buffer zone between the high security main buildings of the NSA and an adjacent highway. The museum opened to the public on December 16, 1993, and now hosts about 50,000 visitors annually from all over the world. The NCM is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am–4pm (hours are extended Wednesdays to 7pm). It is closed on Sundays, Mondays, and all federal holidays, and operates on NSA's emergency/weather closure schedule (i.e. if NSA is closed, the museum is closed as well). The NCM includes a gift store whose operational hours coordinate with the museum's operational schedule (i.e., if the museum is closed altogether, opens late, or closes early, the gift shop does likewise) and an unclassified library with weekday-only operating hours that also represent the museum's weekday operational schedule. The library includes over a dozen boxes of the files of Herbert Yardley, declassified Enigma messages, technical reports, and books including how to crack the Data Encryption Standard using Deep Crack. The National Vigilance Park (NVP) was next to the museum, where three reconnaissance aircraft were displayed. A U.S. Army Beechcraft RU-8D Seminole reconnaissance plane represents the Army Airborne Signals Intelligence contribution in the Vietnam War. A Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport, modified to look like a reconnaissance-configured C-130A, memorialized a U.S. Air Force aircraft shot down over Soviet Armenia during the Cold War. Finally, the park also contained a U.S. Navy Douglas EA-3B Skywarrior, commemorating a mission in the Mediterranean on January 25, 1987, in which all seven crew members died. The NCM is open to the public, and admission is free.