Located in Ft. Meade, a few blocks from the curtain-walled NSA headquarters, the National Cryptologic Museum is housed in a former Colony 7 Motor Inn that dates back to the 1960s. The motel was a bit too close for comfort for the NSA, so the agency bought it in 1987 and turned it into a museum in 1993. Now, instead of dinner theatre, the old motel hosts a kitschy array of exhibits on cryptology that serve as the national intelligence community’s only public museum.