Dr. Vince Houghton is Director of the National Security Agency’s National Cryptologic Museum. He is the former Historian and Curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. Vince has a PhD in Diplomatic and Military History from the University of Maryland, where his research centered on US scientific and technological intelligence (nuclear intelligence) in the Second World War and early Cold War. His Master’s degree, also from the University of Maryland, focused on the foreign policies of the United States and the Soviet Union. He has taught extensively at the middle school, high school, and university levels, most recently at the University of Maryland, where he lectured on the History of US Intelligence, US Diplomatic History, the Cold War, and the History of Science. He is also a veteran of the United States Army, and served in the Balkans, where he worked closely with both civilian and military intelligence agencies in several capacities. Dr. Houghton is the author of three books: Nuking the Moon: And Other Intelligence Plots and Military Schemes Left on the Drawing Board (Penguin, 2019); The Nuclear Spies: America’s Atomic Intelligence Program Against Hitler and Stalin (Cornell University Press, 2019); and Covert City: The Cold War and the Making of Miami (Public Affairs, 2024).
