Intrigue at the Push of a Button

Law Enforcement Museum to Post FBI Recollections on Web

In surprisingly candid detail, former FBI agents talk about scandals and threats they have investigated: Watergate, Cold War counterespionage, fleeing Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan. And the transcripts will soon be at your fingertips.

The National Law Enforcement Museum, scheduled to open in 2011, is creating a Web site, http://www.lawenforcementmuseum.org, that will post the recollections for the public by the end of next year. It will have more than 130 interviews and four written memoirs about some of the nation's major events of intrigue, going back to the 1930s.

"You don't have to have a building to allow people to have access to your collection," said Laurie Baty, senior director of museum programs.

The transcripts are coming from the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, which last week named the museum as the official repository for its collection.

Six transcripts are already up on the Society of Former Agents' Web site, http://www.socxfbi.org. In one, former agent Joseph F. Campisi talks about working in Buenos Aires for 18 months starting in summer 1941, when he intercepted Nazi spies coming out of Germany. In another, former agent Dallas A. Johnson talks of the bureau's failed attempt at using secret ink for codes in the New York bureau in 1940. In a third, former agent Allan Gillies describes finding 99 cut diamonds in the watch pocket of a German spy when Gillies arrested him in 1945.

The former agents' site will link to the National Law Enforcement Museum site by the end of 2008.

Baty said the museum will post the rest of the transcripts as they become available. Part of the deal is that top-secret information will remain that way.

"Some of the material is still classified," Baty said. "They've redacted what they need to."

The museum, which is slated to open near Judiciary Square, is designed to showcase police work and the history of U.S. law enforcement. It will be a collection of artifacts and interactive exhibits.

A sample of museum artifacts include historic handcuffs and badges, and an original "Wanted" poster from the 1932 kidnapping of the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Among other things, the museum will enable visitors to practice being a 911 operator, enter cells the museum hopes to acquire from New York's Sing Sing prison, and see a hall of remembrance honoring the country's 17,500 fallen police officers.

Baty said the museum is looking for photos, old uniforms, manuscripts, blotters and other artifacts. She said she has reserved Al Capone's handgun to be on loan to the museum, and is trying to get his sterling silver fountain pen, as well as other items such as the typewriter used by "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski.