Vintage US security posters range from bizarre to terrifying

Formed by a secret presidential memo in 1952
amid growing Cold War tensions, the fledgling National Security
Agency commissioned posters to remind its employees to keep mum
about their top-secret work.

Government
Attic, a website that requests historical government documents
under the Freedom of Information Act and then shares them online,
first made the request for the vintage posters in 2016.

Two years on, the US government has released
more than 100 security flyers produced between the 1950s and the
1970s.

The images paint a world of Cold War paranoia,
American values under threat and ill-judged pop culture
parody.

The informational flyers “were created in-house”, NSA
spokesperson Chris Augustine told Quartz. Updated versions “are still used at
water coolers, cafeterias, restrooms at NSA’s buildings today”.

Here are some of the most imaginative – and
bizarre – retro posters from the newly released archive: