I, spy

Yesterday Cardgrrl and I chose, among all the touristy things to do in D.C., to visit the International Spy Museum. The thing that most surprised me was how busy it was. Even though I knew it was a weekend in the peak of tourist season, I had expected this to be a little-known, little-seen place--probably because I had never heard of it until I looked at a list of area museums yesterday while deciding how to spend our day. Boy, was I wrong. It was completely packed, shoulder-to-shoulder all the way through.

It was also a lot bigger than I expected. It doesn't look big on the outside, but it took nearly three hours to go through all the exhibits. It does not just cover the predictable cold-war era, but the whole history of spying--starting with the Bible and Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." There is, for example, a room devoted to spying during the Civil War, and you'll learn about Cardinal Richelieu, the Dreyfus Affair, and George Washington's spying efforts.

I chose the title for this post because at the first stage of the museum tour, one is asked to adopt a cover identity--memorizing details about an alter ego. At the end of the tour, one is quizzed about it. I failed, sadly, not having taken the memorization part of the program very seriously. The computer was rather vague about what exactly would happen as a result of my cover being blown, but based on what the museum said about the fate of other spies who failed to stay under the radar, I was probably captured, interrogated, and executed.

A few photos from the day:

The Metro station, waiting for the train:

Roy Lichtenstein's "Modern Head," which has been moved from near the World Trade Center in New York to one of the Smithsonian buildings, just across the street from the Spy Museum:

The International Spy Museum:

Statue of Felix Dzershinsky, father of the KGB, flying overhead in the entrance:

A bunch of random stuff in the display cases:

This is cool: an actual Enigma machine (not a replica) from WWII:

This is said to be the set of rules that American agents working in the Soviet Union came up with for survival and success. Sound applicable to poker to you?

Lots of museums around here are free. This one is not. It's $20 apiece. But I think it was worth it. The video presentations are especially well done. I enjoyed learning about how double agents helped the invasion of Normandy be pulled off successfully, and how Aldrich Ames's treachery was discovered by his peers inside the CIA. It's worth a visit if you have the time and inclination.

Tomorrow we're off to Charlottesville to look around at Monticello.