At TSA museum, grim artifacts inspire mission

• The museum, which is called "Mission Hall," is inside TSA headquarters
• The main goal of the project is to share the history of the agency with the TSA workforce
• The collection includes hundreds of documents, artifacts and digital remembrances

A small museum in Arlington, Va., houses some of the nation's most evocative artifacts: a big chunk of subway rail recovered from the New York City PATH station destroyed on 9/11 at the World Trade Center; the metal detector that screened hijackers Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari early that morning at Maine's Portland International Jetport. But unless you work for the Transportation Security Administration or have a special invitation to stop by, you won't be able to see these artifacts in person.

That's because the museum, which is called "Mission Hall," is inside TSA headquarters. The exhibition space includes an interactive kiosk and a large, recessed exhibit case outside a multipurpose room on the first floor of the building in Pentagon City, a close-in suburb of Washington, D.C. Only those who work in the TSA building or guests of the TSA can view the museum. "It is not designed for public tours," said TSA spokesperson David Castelveter.

TSA historian Michael Smith says that's partly because his department only has two staff people, but it's mostly because the main goal of the project is to share the history of the agency with the TSA workforce, which now includes more than 50,000 people at more than 400 airports across the country. "A lot of people, when you think about something like 9/11, they were just teenagers when it happened," said Smith. "So it's important to tell that story to all of our employees."

Smith was in a high school Latin class when the events of 9/11 began unfolding and remembers listening to news reports on a radio with his classmates and worrying about his parents, who both worked for the federal government in downtown Washington, D.C. (both were fine, and his mother later picked him up). In 2010, armed with a master's degree in history and experience working at several museums, Smith was hired for the newly created position of TSA historian. Since then he's been filming oral histories of current and past TSA employees, creating exhibits and organizing a growing cache of objects related to the agency's history.

"When TSA first started up in January 2002 there were 13 employees," said Smith. "A lot of these people are friends of our project and had been holding onto documents, e-mails, coins, pins, you name it. Once they started donating those items to the project, the archives really started to come to life."

In 2011, to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, the TSA gave the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History several artifacts relating to TSA history, including original TSA uniforms, some training items and assorted pieces of aviation security technology. But Smith says hundreds of documents, artifacts and digital remembrances remain in the TSA's collection.

Among those items are images, oral histories, internal planning documents, a uniform and other objects relating to the first airport to get TSA screeners: Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, which was "federalized" on April 30, 2002. "It was an exciting moment for the agency," said Smith. "This would become the largest mobilization of the government since World War II."

Limestone from the exterior of the Pentagon and mangled pieces of the World Trade Center are in the collection, as is an example of the first handheld metal detectors, or wands, used to screen passengers at airports, and the first American flag raised over Terminal B at Boston Logan Airport when the TSA starting screening there in 2002. Smith says the flag and that terminal are significant because American Airlines Flight 11 departed from Gate 32 of Logan's terminal B on Sept. 11, 2001.

And then there's the walk-through metal detector that screened the hijackers in Portland, Maine, on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Back then, private security firms contracted by the airlines conducted airport screening and all of the screening equipment was owned by the airlines. Smith said Delta Air Lines owned the Rapiscan machine the terrorists walked through in Portland, and after 9/11 the FAA pulled that machine off the line. "They investigated it and then the machine was put into storage by Delta Air Lines in Portland. It stayed there until 2005, when Delta contacted then TSA administrator Kip Hawley and offered to donate the machine to the TSA," said Smith.

That metal detector, complete with original identification tags used by Rapiscan, Delta, the FAA and the TSA, is currently one of the items displayed at TSA headquarters in the "Never Forget" exhibit featuring artifacts from TSA's 9/11 collection. Smith says these objects illustrate stories about what happened that day.

"For our agency, 9/11 is what moves us and drives our mission. Putting the artifacts on display helps employees understand that mission because they remember where they were that day. They think about these artifacts. They think about what September 11th meant to our country. And then they dedicate themselves to doing the best they can every day."

Harriet Baskas is the author of six books, including the airport guidebook Stuck at the Airport and a blog of the same name.