I Spy!
SAUNDERS, DEBRA J.
I Spy! Washington's newest museum is worth investigating. BY DEBRA J. SAUNDERS Wear your trench coat, your coolest shades, dab your gorgeous self with a scent that suggests of mystery and...
...Next, a computerized border guard asks you questions—and you're in trouble if you can't remember the details of your cover identity: Where you were born, why you're visiting, how long, and whether you plan to rent a car...
...Mansfield notes that the CIA has kept itself at "arm's length" from the museum...
...Others focus on the victories of anonymous "spies— code-breakers and disinformation dis-pensers—whose less glamorous work saved the lives of compatriots under fire...
...Then again, since it's a private venture, the museum does not take it upon itself to lecture visitors on who's been naughty and who's been nice...
...The museum, spokeswoman Jennifer Saxon explains, focuses on "human intelligence...
...The exhibits about non-human spying included fascinating "pigeon cam" photographs, taken by a camera attached to a carrier pigeon during World War II...
...Yeah, sure...
...Since it's a museum, it has to espouse some higher purpose, instead of confessing to the pure entertainment value of a series of great stories, intriguing history, portraits of patriots and traitors and an early James Bond Jaguar, replete with automatic fire power, rotating license plates, and tire slashers...
...Pint-sized spies may choose to crawl through metal overhead air ducts to see how much noise they make—which is a lot...
...I have to brag here...
...After watching five or so people blow their interrogation, I aced the test and made it into Austria undetected, with no Austrian agents following me...
...Two videotapes show how intelligence agents caught and apprehended FBI agent turned traitor Robert Hanssen and CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames...
...Then you're on to your first assignment...
...I take my martinis shaken, not stirred...
...The videos, Saxon explains, also give visitors a welcome opportunity to rest their feet...
...The video about the House Committee on un-American Activities features Walt Disney testifying against Communists in Hollywood, without high-minded denunciations...
...Like me...
...You're going to a museum that's more fun than museums are supposed to be: Washington's new International Spy Museum...
...They were spying for the Soviets, and Soviet documents establish their guilt...
...You'll get better with experience," CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield later assures me...
...In a democracy, it is especially important for the public to have a more realistic understanding of the intelligence business so we can appreciate its role in our society and impact upon major world events," the International Spy Museum founder Milton Maltz intones in a press release...
...CIA employees are spy buffs, too...
...The section about the Rosenbergs is refreshingly straightforward: They're guilty...
...Then comes a videotaped briefing on the "realities spies face every day...
...It starts with your picking among a small menu for the identity you want to assume for Debra J. Saunders writes a nationally syndicated column for the San Francisco Chronicle...
...Spy buffs...
...The museum credits author Daniel Defoe as the father of the British Secret Service...
...Ames was so arrogant and sexist, he didn't think the women looking for a CIA mole would target him...
...But, he adds, he knows many CIA employees who have enjoyed visiting...
...The spy museum, as a privately run, for-profit institution, feels no need for the typical hand-wringing disclaimers about how many Americans believe the Rosenbergs are not guilty...
...Alger Hiss, too, is openly declared guilty...
...You enter on "a need to know basis," and for that you plunk down $11 ($8 for children...
...There are displays highlighting spies for France's Cardinal Richelieu and Queen Marie Antoinette...
...Saxon refers to George Washington as "America's first spy master, the father of American intelligence...
...Okay, so I didn't ace these games, but the crowds were distracting...
...your visit...
...I choose "Sandra Miller," an American-born Australian who is visiting Austria on a buying trip for my clothing business...
...Saunders...
...Their contacts used the boxes of lemon-flavored Jell-O to make themselves known...
...The museum store is a good place to buy gag gifts and stocking stuffers...
...BY DEBRA J. SAUNDERS Wear your trench coat, your coolest shades, dab your gorgeous self with a scent that suggests of mystery and intrigue...
...An exhibit on female spies focuses on the dazzling incompetence of Mata Hari, and another exhibit shows the deadly competence of Cheka chief Felix Dzerzhinsky...
...Debra J. Saunders...
...Other interactive computer video games allow you to find a spy in disguise, pick out suspicious-looking figures in a park near some apartment buildings, or find where secret documents in a park can be "dropped...
...The "Wilderness of Mirrors" room focuses on notorious spies and double agents who got caught...
...If you have followed the stories of John Walker, the Navy officer who sold military secrets to the Soviets, Robert Hanssen, and the British agents Sidney Reilly and Kim Philby, then this is the place for you...
...The car rental was the trick question that flustered many afternoon spies the day I visited...
Vol. 8 • March 2003 • No. 25
