[FIND] Travels – Washington, DC Tours – Part Two

800 F Street NW, Washington, DC

Friday, October 1, 2010, Mid-afternoon

It’s afternoon in the nation’s capitol, fresh, almost painful blue skies. There’s a hint of something cool just around the corner, fall maybe. Steve and I casually glance both directions along the 800 block of F Street NW, scanning the crowd, alert, ready. Across the street, unsuspecting tourists stroll in and out of the National Portrait Gallery, used to be the old Patent Office. They’re unaware, ignorant.

Steve snuffs a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, tosses the butt into a nearby trash can. We steal quietly into the door just under the staircase that leads up to Zola, haunt for agents, raconteurs. The Le Droit building’s historic façade presents itself to the world, all neat and Italianate, the way McGill intended it back in 1875. But, once inside… the building immediately restyles itself into an ultra-modern interactive guide through the history of espionage.

The International Spy Museum is the only public museum that dedicates itself to the tradecraft of spies. Now…in a nod to full disclosure, it is only fair to point out that I have always been enamored of spies, I’m a geek, a fiend, I love spy lore, history, movies…so…I may not be entirely unbiased. But…this place is…, simply put, cool.

The best way to get the point across is to just list some of the things we witnessed here and then direct you to the website, which is an experience in itself.

A few things we saw:

Lipstick Pistol

Enigma (the cipher machine)

Tree stump listening device

1970’s vintage button hole camera (KGB)

Shoe heel transmitter

Aston Martin DB5 (Bond, James Bond)

and on

and on

The thing I like the most about this museum is the interactive nature of the place. Kids dig it, no doubt. But the museum directors do not in any way neglect the adults. There’s enough literature and information to keep the intellectually curious among us occupied for hours. There are enough cool spy gadgets to entertain those of us who have difficulty maintaining focus for any period of time. And then there are the experiences.

Spy in the city, spy at night, and operation spy, all mission based, all incredibly fun.

As with any self-respecting museum, this one employs the obligatory exit through the gift shop. But this gift shop may be the best I’ve ever seen. Seriously…they have actual spy gear for purchase. 4 gig button-hole cameras, 4 gig key-fob cameras, actual working spy gear, things we use on a daily basis. This is also my new source for spy literature. Last year for our holiday season newsletter, we bragged on a book called The Real Spy’s Guide, written by Peter Earnest, Executive Director of the Museum. We still highly recommend this book, but the more important thing is…this museum’s book store is a dream. They have stacks upon stacks of fantastic books.

We picked up a copy of The Handbook of Practical Spying, a tongue-in-cheek handbook that actually offers useful tips, and The Private Investigator’s Handbook, a kind of do-it-yourself PI guide. Had I enough money and space in my luggage, I could have done some real damage in this store. Check it out online, here.

If, by chance, you find yourself strolling around DC in the vicinity of Ford’s Theater, or just north of the National Archives, make the hike to 800 F Street NW. Look for the stairway that leads up to Zola. Just underneath that, you’ll find the entrance to the International Spy Museum. Just incase you’re afraid it’s going to be hard to find, the Le Droit building, in all of it’s Italianate glory, has a huge sign on the corner that reads, International Spy Museum. Drop by and check it out.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Soccer Mom

How do you dismantle a vast secret police network, seeded in tsarist days and, during the Soviet era, built into a monolith, its icy tendrils quietly encircling the globe? Apparently, you don't, even when the Cold War is over and nobody's bothering to keep secrets from the Russians anymore.

Insert "scorpion and frog" fable reference here. Once a spy, always a spy, it seems. It's his nature. But really, who wants to change the game and infiltrate those pesky Chechens? New York and London are much nicer than Grozny this time of year, and so the knee-jerk spy fallback--old enemies, old tricks--proves far more sensible and rewarding than trying to figure out the whole labyrinthine Islamic fundamentalism thing. Or so says H.D.S. Greenway in today's NYTimes op ed piece.

There's been a lot of press this week about the recent discovery of Russian spies living seemingly ordinary lives in our midst: the couple next door in Montclair, NJ, quietly cutting the lawn and walking the dog has excited the New York press elite; and the sexy, red-haried London partygirl hanging out at clubs frequented by young British princes seems to have particularly captured the tabloid imagination (such as it is).

What it all amounts to, however, may wind up being a whole lot of cool and sophisticated tradecraft (exchanging identical briefcases in airports, encoded radio transmissions, etc.) to little or no effect. As this New York Times article asks, what secrets? All the surveillance gadgetry in the world is for naught if the information you seek is being taught in a class at the Kennedy School or is available online in some polisci grad student's PhD thesis.

I particularly enjoyed veteran reporter Ellen Barry's piece on the lore of Russian "illegals": legendary operatives without official diplomatic covers who went underground for years, even decades at a time and possessed astonishing knowledge and skills, often spoke multiple languages fluently, and received rock star adulation on returning home. In a nation built on secrets, secret-keepers are heroes.

Heroic sacrifice, to be sure, but to what end? Especially when, it seems, these newer operatives may turn out to bear a stronger resemblance to Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana" protagonist--a man in over his head, sending home vacuum-cleaner diagrams to keep the checks coming--than to Soviet überspy lore.

Are these recently outed Russian agents mere echoes of those professional cold-warriors, who helped make the Soviet Union a nuclear power and made the world extremely unsafe for Trotsky and other political heretics? Are they merely playing at the game of espionage, because that's what Russians have done for generations, dutifully leaving invisible-ink messages in sewer-pipe drop-boxes the world over?

Or are these suburban spies only the tip of a jagged iceberg, a series of comedic decoys that play into our often naive national pride, as in "Look, we made idiots out of those silly Russians again!" Somewhere deep down, it strikes me as just a little bit too comedic and facile. Kinda makes me wonder if Mr. Putin, the old former KGB puppetmaster himself, isn't lurking somewhere behind this curtain, smiling faintly as we tsk tsk the clumsy Russian soccer moms "infiltrating" the Jersey suburbs.

Remember who's best at this game, folks! Beware the rope-a-dope. And you outspoken Russian emigré oligarchs, be sure and check your sushi for polonium.

-KDG