The museum, which touts itself as “lifting the veil of secrecy on the hidden world of intelligence, exploring its successes and failures, challenges, and controversies,” has a number of ex-intelligence officials on its board who signed a letter saying the laptop “had all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.”

Jeremy Bash, who was once a chief of staff at the CIA and the Pentagon, is a board member at the museum. He was also picked by President Joe Biden to be part of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board last month. “This looks like Russian intelligence. This walks like Russian intelligence. This talks like Russian intelligence,” Bash said on MSNBC on Oct. 19, 2020.

Gen. Michael Hayden is a letter signer and a special adviser on the museum’s board. He was the director of the National Security Agency during the end of the Clinton administration and into 2005 during the George W. Bush administration, and he also led the CIA from 2006 to early 2009 during the start of the Obama administration.

Jonna Hiestand Mendez, another signatory, is on the museum advisory board and is listed as a founding board member. Mendez worked at the CIA from 1966 to 1993 and is the former chief of disguise in the CIA’s Office of Technical Service and is featured in the museum’s introduction video (accompanied by narration by actor Morgan Freeman), and she has her own mini-display in the museum touting her achievements.