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The CIA’s museum in Langley, Virginia, recently acquired a new artifact: the AK-47 of Osama bin Laden, a weapon that was found beside the former al-Qaeda leader’s dead body after he was killed by US Navy SEALs.
The museum contains gadgets, trophies, spyware and artifacts from the past 70 years, including pieces from World War II and the War on Terror. The museum is closed to the public, but NBC News became the first media organization permitted to bring video cameras into the facility.
The Russian AK-47 with counterfeit Chinese markings was recovered from the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden was killed in a midnight raid, and recently put on display at the museum, according to the exclusive NBC report.
Museum Curator Toni Hiley said the Chinese markings remain a mystery, but a Central Intelligence Agency analyst has concluded that the weapon definitively belonged to bin Laden.
Originally posted by kloejen
So, what do ATS think about this?
Among the Iraqi dictator’s most prized gifts were chrome plated AK-47s. Reporter C.J. Chivers tells the story of how this humble rifle became fashionable among revolutionaries—and dispels many of the myths about them.
Among the Iraqi dictator’s most prized gifts were chrome plated AK-47s. Reporter C.J. Chivers tells the story of how this humble rifle became fashionable among revolutionaries—and dispels many of the myths about them. His new book, The Gun, tells their strange history and why they’re a threat to world stability.
Last month, in one of the odder news conferences that a government might ever hold, Iraq welcomed home one of its lost, looted treasures. The returned object was not a Mesopotamian artifact, at least not in a traditional sense. It was a compact automatic rifle with a folding stock, plated in chrome and with a decorative pearl handgrip—one of Saddam Hussein’s AK-47s. The rifle had been confiscated by the U.S. Army, removed to Texas and then, after the Army reconsidered, sent home.