Artifact Details
November is a significant month in the history of CIA’s headquarters. President Dwight D. Eisenhower participated in the ceremonial laying of the Original Headquarters Building’s cornerstone in November 1959. The ceremony included the symbolic placement of a time capsule behind the cornerstone that included such unclassified materials as General William “Wild Bill” Donovan’s memo to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 on establishing a post-war centralized intelligence organization, architectural drawings of a finished Original Headquarters Building, microfilm copies of newspapers from 3 November 1959, and several honorary CIA medals. When the builders were ready, the time capsule was permanently placed in November 1960. The cornerstone of CIA’s adjacent New Headquarters Building was laid in November 1985.