Compromised? Spy culture, (some) secrets on display in D.C.

By Darrell Laurant

Published: July 19, 2008

As the saying goes, I could tell you all about the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., but then I’d have to kill you.

So with that in mind, perhaps I can feed you just enough information to whet your appetite, without compromising anyone in deep cover. I don’t have time to kill all of you.

For openers, the Spy Museum is fun. It’s also pricey ($18 for adult general admission, $15 for children ages 5 to 11, and another $5 if you want to participate in any of the interactive experiences) — especially given that many museums don’t charge anything. But, in my mind, worth it.

I made the mistake recently of visiting on a Saturday, and there were long lines in the 90-degree heat to get in. Although the Spy Museum at Eighth and G streets celebrates its sixth anniversary this month, it remains something of a novelty.

Spying, to be sure, is serious business. Spies have been known to “neutralize” one another, often by elaborate means. The information they provide in times of war — hot or cold — can sometimes wipe out people in large numbers.

Yet, there is also the sense — reflected in many of the Spy Museum’s exhibits — that spying is also something of a sport, a kid’s game played by adults.

“The School for Spies is an extremely popular part of the museum’s permanent exhibit,” said Amanda Abrell, media relations manager.

“Here, the museum tests visitors’ spy skills through various interactive stations; they can even crawl through an air duct and spy on unsuspecting visitors below.”

Every 10-year-old’s dream.

When you walk in, you are ushered into a “briefing room” and asked to choose from a dozen or so “cover” identities. Only one of them seemed to apply to me, but while I wasn’t terribly comfortable assuming the persona of a 48-year-old Russian fisherman, it didn’t matter. I was never accosted, as some guests are, and asked to parrot back the information on the identity card.

If I had chosen the Operation Spy alternative, however, I would have experienced a visit to the fictional country of Khandar. Those who decide to accept this mission, as they used to say on “Mission Impossible,” are faced with a mock dilemma.

“Their officer leads them through a marketplace where they take in the sounds and smells of the city,” Abrell said. “They enter the command center where the chief of station patches in to tell them about a nuclear triggering device that has gone missing.

“Their mission is to locate the trigger and keep it from getting into the wrong hands.”

In the spy world, of course, it’s sometimes difficult to tell who the right hands belong to. The exhibits on display in the museum document several cases of spies who were playing both sides of the street.
There is, however, a sort of spy code of honor. In a nutshell, it’s OK to lie, cheat, steal and kill on behalf of your country, but not OK to do those things for your personal gain.

What fascinated me was how the landscape of espionage has been overlaid on top of normality. A crushed soda can next to a statue could be concealing a coded note. A piece of duct tape attached to a telephone pole might be a signal to take action; the absence of tape might mean to stay under cover. A cigarette case might really be a camera. A homeless person on a bench might be gathering information.

All of these make up a parallel universe that doesn’t exist for the average person.

Meanwhile, if things get rough, there are more gadgets to help out: the glove pistol, the lighter pistol, a cigarette gun. One display case contained a model of the poison-tipped umbrella once used to assassinate a Bulgarian dissident on the streets of London. Another exhibit demonstrated the different ways a car can be modified to hide people inside it.

By the end of the Cold War, the CIA had been infiltrated by Russian agents and the KGB had been infiltrated by American moles. Checkmate.

The Spy Museum has received some criticism for softpedaling the tactics of the CIA — a criticism with some validity, given that ex-CIA members provided the bulk of the material and information. Still, my take on the museum was that it really dealt with the folklore and culture of spying.

TV screens with talking heads are everywhere in the museum, dispensing stories about the daily lives of spies. The talking heads themselves all looked quite ordinary, people you’d never look at twice.
But these weren’t the best practitioners of their craft. The best spies aren’t in the museum at all.