The National Cryptologic Museum is Open Again - Revamped - With New Spy Stuff

Vince Houghton (the new director of the National Security Agency's National Cryptologic Museum) and his team unveiled what they'd been working on during the COVID 19 pandemic: a complete overhaul of the aging, 1990s-era museum in Fort Meade, Md...

"These are artifacts that have never been on display before to the public at all," Houghton noted...

Until recently, historians believed many of the artifacts on display at the Cryptologic Museum were lost to history. For Houghton, unearthing old and unique pieces of cryptologic history has been an exceptionally satisfying part of his mission.

That's because the NSA maintains a large warehouse where employees have kept highly classified objects in the hopes that one day those stories could be told. Houghton compared the warehouse, where he and his colleagues spent hours before opening the museum, as "the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark," the 1981 Indiana Jones movie ending in a giant room full of treasure.

"It's floor to ceiling crates that are deteriorating, because they were sent back there in 1945," Houghton said. "To me it was like every day was Christmas, because I'm such a nerd about this stuff." more

The CIA Renovated its Museum...

... The public still can’t go see it.

The CIA Museum covers the intelligence agency’s long history — from spying on the Soviets to the Argo mission in Iran — but the latest addition is practically ripped from the headlines: a model of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s compound in Kabul used weeks ago to plan the U.S. drone strike that killed the al-Qaeda leader.

The model is part of the newly renovated exhibition hall located deep inside CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Like the NSA’s Wall of Spies museum in Bethesda, Md., the CIA Museum isn’t open to the public. But it’s not exactly top secret either, welcoming CIA employees, official guests, foreign partners, potential recruits — and, early on a Saturday morning, a handful of carefully observed journalists, including reporters with old-school notepads and pens (electronics are banned).

There are plenty of fun gadgets to see, like a polygraph machine in a briefcase and a communication device disguised as a tobacco pipe, used in the 1960s. When a user bit down on the pipe, sound traveled through their teeth and jawbone to the ear canal, allowing them to hear messages that no one around them could. 

But many of the items displayed — the pigeon camera, the fake dead rat used for “dead drops” — can also be found across the river at the International Spy Museum. more

Allow me to sneak you in the back door.

Three Declassified Spy Gadgets Of The CIA

Informally known as the “Agency” or the “Company”, the Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the United States government. Its main task is to gather, process, and analyze national security information from all over the world, mostly through the use of human intelligence and performing actions behind the curtain. It was former-President Harry S. Truman’s initiative to create the Central Intelligence Group out of the Office of Strategic Services on January 22, 1946, which was transformed itself into the Central Intelligence Agency by the implementation of the National Security Act of 1947.

Here are three of the declassified spy gadgets that were designed by the CIA and could be found in their museum:

 

Snopes Fact Checks Spy Shoes Story

For the last few years at least, an image has been circulating on the internet containing a bright yellow pair of shoes with lifted heels where the toes should go. The image was often shared alongside commentary that the shoes were warn by spies, who used them to throw would-be spy hunters off their trail.

We were unable to locate the original photograph, but there is no evidence that the pictured shoes were worn by real spies, during World War II or any other time.

We reached out to the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., asking whether the shoes look like anything that could have plausibly been worn by real spies... more

RIP: Peter Earnest

Peter Earnest, a veteran of the CIA’s Cold War clandestine operations who ran agents in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, then helped promote and preserve the history of espionage while serving as the founding executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, died Feb. 13 at a hospital in Arlington, Va. He was 88...

Mr. Earnest acknowledged that his personality sometimes made it difficult to spend years working undercover. “It’s hard when you’re an open person by nature,” he told Washingtonian magazine in 2013. “In some cases, people say, ‘You don’t seem like a spy.’

“The best spies don’t seem like spies.” 

In a video interview for the Spy Museum, Mr. Earnest described what he called “my Bond moment” at the CIA, in which he slipped out of a black-tie reception at the home of an asset and bugged the person’s office. Lying on his back, with a handkerchief positioned on his chest to catch the shavings, he drilled small holes in the bottom of the target’s desk and installed a recording device. more

 

New Spy Podcast

Fresh from playing Peggy Carter in the Marvel Universe, and now preparing for Mission: Impossible 7, Hayley Atwell gets CIA, KGB & Mossad operatives to share their inside stories of real spy missions.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Grand Opening Party at the International Spy Museum

Join us for a night of celebration at our Opening Night Gala on Saturday, May 11. This is your exclusive opportunity to be among the first to tour our completely reimagined, state-of-the-art exhibits that provide a behind-the-scenes look at how intelligence has changed the world and continues to affect our lives today.

Enjoy live entertainment, dine on food and cocktails by Ridgewells Catering, and experience the Museum's new interactive and immersive installations at your leisure.  Tickets

On May 12, the International Spy Museum now at L'Enfant Plaza will officially opening its doors to the public! With interactive exhibitions and installations, the foremost collection of spy artifacts in the world, and first-person accounts from top intelligence officers and experts, the new Museum places visitors in the shoes of the spies.

In celebration of Mother’s day, all moms will receive free admission to SPY! To access a free ticket in advance, call the Call Center at 202.393.7798. Moms can also obtain tickets onsite that day only. NOTE: Same-day tickets are subject to availability. This special offer is not available online and no refunds are permitted for tickets purchased in advance of May 12. Tickets

International Spy Museum is Moving and Expanding

The name isn’t changing, but when International Spy Museum opens in its shiny new home in May, it’s going to be about a lot more than just spies. 

The museum, armed with a 140,000-square-foot new building at 700 L'Enfant Plaza SW, more than 5,000 new artifacts and a whole lot of tech, now aims to be about the full field of intelligence — not just human intelligence, or spying.

Spy will begin selling tickets for the opening, on May 12, in the coming weeks, and will also be rolling out an online trivia game that will give people a chance to win tickets to its opening gala, to be held May 11. more

Infographic - Check Your Phone for Spies

There is a lot which can be done to check your phone for spyware. 
Everything from following instructions in a book to a full forensic inspection.

In the meantime, you can start with this...

You can find a slightly larger version here.

Yet another Spy Museum Opens

The KGB Spy Museum (in New York City) features the largest collection of USSR KGB espionage artifacts.

The KGB, an initialism for КГБ Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti translated in English as Committee for State Security, was the main security agency for the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, KGB always wanted to compete with the CIA in all possible ways.

Interactive spy museum presents to visitors that era special technique: spy cameras, KGB concealment devices, secret recorders, crypto and cipher machines, spy radios, secure telephones...

The museum exhibition, much of which is only now being made public, presents a never-before-seen collection of items covering the activities of prominent KGB agents and revealing the strategies and methods that underlay many of history’s top secret espionage operations. more

Happy Birthday World's First Spy Musuem

The Spy Museum in Tampere, Finland opened to the public in the summer of 1998. It was the world's first spy museum dedicated exclusively to espionage. This year, the Spy Museum celebrated its 20th anniversary. 

Two years later, in 2000, a sister museum, the International Spy Museum, opened its doors in Washington, D.C.  more

Spyscape Opens in New York City Today

Calling all spies: Announcing the opening of SPYSCAPE, a truly unique permanent destination that combines three distinct elements:
• a contemporary museum,
• an immersive experience,
• and a journey of personal discovery. 

SPYSCAPE opens at 10am ET on Friday, February 16.  (928 8th Avenue, New York, NY)
 
Students (with valid student ID) can reserve free admission online for the opening weekend (February 16-19).

The Experience:
Upon entry, visitors will receive a unique Identity Band, which uses RFID technology to personalize their experience. They then enter the Briefing, a high-tech theater which rises up through the building as it introduces the world of secret intelligence via an immersive film developed with the studio that creates VFX for films such as Avengers, Ex-Machina and Blade Runner 2049.

Their Spy Profiles are then analyzed in Debrief, where they discover which of the 10 archetypal Spy Roles they are best suited to. This authentic profiling system was developed with a former Head of Training at British Intelligence and top industrial psychologists. The Spy Roles are: Agent Handler, Cryptologist, Hacker, Intelligence Analyst, Intelligence Operative, Special Ops Officer, Spycatcher, Spymaster, Surveillance Officer, Technical Ops Officer. more

SPYSCAPE in NYC is Set to Open in December

A museum dedicated to spycraft is landing soon in possibly the least inconspicuous place on Earth: midtown Manhattan.

The project, known as SPYSCAPE, is set to open in New York City this December — but details are, fittingly, under wraps. Archimedia, the creative and investment company behind the project, has acquired a number of spy artifacts and archival materials, and will use immersive storytelling to explore history’s greatest spy affairs, from the Enigma code crackers to the teenage hacker behind a recent breach of the CIA website.

The museum's website hints at interactive interrogation rooms, laser tunnels, and more. At the end of the tour, visitors will learn what kind of spy work they’re destined for — allegedly based on a proprietary “profiling system” created by the Head of Training for British Intelligence.

The museum space was designed by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye’s New York City-based firm, Adjaye Associates, whose many high-profile projects include Washington, D.C.’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. more

Can't wait? Cuba's Spy Museum in Havana is open. (Optional, but recommended.) ~Kevin

How the Dutch Bugged the Soviet Embassy -- Updated with Excellent Graphics

Our friend in The Netherlands, Dr. Cees Wiebes, has alerted us to some updates on the cryptomuseum.com website.

Click to enlarge.

Backgrounds: Dr. Wiebes is the author of Intelligence and the War in Bosnia: 1992-1995 (Studies in Intelligence History). In researching this book he was granted full access to the top-secret archives of the Dutch services and the still classified UN archives. Foreign intelligence services gave him confidential briefings, and he spoke with more than 100 intelligence officials from various countries.

The Crypto Museum, curated by Paul Reuvers and Marc Simons, is the absolute best virtual site I've seen for information on government eavesdropping and information security countermeasures. Both are self-employed engineers from Eindhoven, a lovely small (but very high-tech) city which I've been to multiple times. Their dedication to preserving this history is only rivaled by the photography and graphics they have been able to obtain for the website. Enjoy...

An update of the Dutch bugging of the Soviet embassy in The Hague: http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/cases/nl/ra1958.htm

The various types of Dutch bugs that were used.
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/ec/ec1/index.htm
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/ec/ec2/index.htm
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/ec/ec3/index.htm
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/ec/ec4/index.htm
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/ec/ec5/index.htm

New information as regards the Moscow bug:
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/ec/cavity/index.htm

An interesting overview of all Easy Chair- related affairs:
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/ec/index.htm

Chinese Spy Museum - Now Open to All

The Yuhuatai Memorial Park of Revolutionary Martyrs is hallowed ground for the Chinese Communist Party...

...the most recent addition to the site has garnered less interest than the memorial, or the souvenir stalls nearby — but serves as a tangible testament to China’s perennial preoccupation: espionage.

Billed as the country's only such institution, the Brutalist, barrel-shaped Jiangsu National Security Education Exhibition Hall — a.k.a. the Spy Museum — opened in 2009, closed for more than a year and reopened in mid-April after a face-lift. The reopening came on China’s inaugural national security education day.

The newly renovated exhibition hall has emerged as a showcase of curated propaganda about the myriad threats posed by foreign spies. Gone is a warning sign in four languages that once barred all foreign visitors. more

The Best Spy Museum You will Never See... except for the parts on-line

The CIA Museum's collection includes artifacts associated with the CIA's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services; foreign intelligence organizations; and the CIA itself.

The collection includes clothing, equipment, weapons, insignia and other memorabilia that serve as tangible testimony to the Agency's history. Many of the objects the Museum holds were designed, manufactured and used specifically for intelligence operations.

CIA used the “Belly Buster” drill during the late 1950s and early 1960s to drill holes into masonry for implanting audio devices. After assembly, the base of the drill was held firmly against the stomach while the handle was cranked manually. This kit came with several drill bits and accessories.
52.5 cm x 22.5 cm x 5 cm
(L x W x H)

All artifacts displayed in the museum's exhibits have been declassified by the appropriate Agency officials. Please note that because the Museum is located on the CIA compound, it is not open to the public for tours. Take the on-line tour.

Spy Bits

ISM Bugging Out
The revelation this week that the International Spy Museum would be once again hitting the pavement in search of a new home got us thinking: Where else in the District might work for the popular museum? (more)

ISIS Changing Name

During the premiere episode of the sixth season of Archer, FX’s outrageously funny animated spy series, spy matriarch Malory Archer is seen speaking on the phone with her juvenile, coddled son. In the background, you can see two movers rolling out a large, circular blue ISIS sign... for the past five seasons, ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service) has been the name for the underground, non-government approved, New York City-based spy organization at the heart of the show. In light of recent events, however, creator Adam Reed along with executive producers Matt Thompson and Casey Willis—made a decision to quietly eliminate the acronym from their show. (more)

HHSC Wants Blimpies
Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Friday that he wants to redeploy U.S. military spy blimps in Afghanistan to America’s southern border. (more) Poop on them if they don't know about this. (more)

Former NSA Head Said 
“Our data’s in there (NSA databases), my data’s in there. If I talk to an Al Qaeda operative, the chances of my data being looked at is really good, so I try not to do that. If you don’t want to you shouldn’t either,” he told MIRcon delegates. (more)

See Around Corners with Pocket Drone

Researchers at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center are developing a pocket-sized aerial surveillance device for Soldiers and small units operating in challenging ground environments.

The Cargo Pocket Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance program, or CP-ISR, seeks to develop a mobile Soldier sensor to increase the situational awareness of dismounted Soldiers by providing real-time video surveillance of threat areas within their immediate operational environment.

While larger systems have been used to provide over-the-hill ISR capabilities on the battlefield for almost a decade, none of those delivers it directly to the squad level, where Soldiers need the ability to see around the corner or into the next room during combat missions. (more)

International Spy Museum Looking for a New Safe House

The International Spy Museum, one of the most popular private attractions in (Washington, DC), would relocate to the former Carnegie Library in Mount Vernon Square under a plan by D.C. officials.

Carnegie Library

Events DC, which manages the District’s convention and sports business, announced Monday that it planned to renovate and expand the historic library building by moving the Spy Museum to the museum’s underground space and building a new “sculpted glass pavilion” on the north side of the building that would house a new visitors center, a café and the Spy Museum store...

In all, the project would add 58,000 square feet to the property, but the idea requires layers of approval from local and federal stakeholders because of the historic state of the grounds and library building, which was completed in 1903 and served as the city’s central library until 1970. (more)

2013 at the International Spy Museum

What's up at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC next month... 

New Special Exhibit
Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of Bond Villains

Meet Bond’s villains, uncover their evil schemes, and explore their exotic lairs and weapons in this special exhibit. Now open through 2014.

Exquisitely Evil Family Night
Friday, January 11
You are invited for a secret after-hours infiltration of the Museum’s newest exhibition, Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of Bond Villains. Families are welcome to this exclusive viewing of the special exhibit complete with Code Cracker competitions, Bond Spy Trivia contests, SPY snacks, hot cocoa, and a chance to explore all forms of spy tradecraft. Eye patches optional.

Spying in America
Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War - Tuesday, January 15 (FREE)
Join Michael Sulick, former director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, as he discusses his new book, Spying in America, which presents a history of more than 30 espionage cases inside the United States including Benedict Arnold and Julius Rosenberg.

On the Front Line
Protecting Presidents and Prime Ministers - Thursday, January 17
As Inauguration Day nears, consider what it’s like to guard the President. Meet two experts who know first-hand the work in keeping the head of the state safe: Mark J. Basil served with distinction in the United States Secret Service for ten years; and Daniel J. Mulvenna retired from the Security Service of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after 21 years.

Spy Hunters
The Women Who Caught Aldrich Ames - Wednesday, January 23
Meet Sandy Grimes, a former CIA Operative in the Agency’s Clandestine Service, and hear how she and her fellow operative Jeanne Vertefeuille used their determination, hard work, and cunning to enable the capture and conviction of their former colleague and infamous CIA officer-turned traitor: Aldrich Ames.

Power and policy in syria
Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations and Democracy in the Modern Middle East - Wednesday, January 30
Join Radwan Ziadeh, Director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies, as he presents a fresh and penetrating analysis of Syria's political structure and the Syrian intelligence service.

Spy Seminar Series
Exfiltrations, Captures, or Kills: Famous High Stakes Intelligence Operations
 - Wednesday, February 6 - February 27
Intelligence operations that hold human life in the balance are some of the most difficult missions any intelligence service will ever undertake. Exfiltrations are supremely delicate. This is the process of extracting a person or people from a targeted site with absolute urgency due to a sudden change which makes the site hostile. This could happen when a spy’s cover is blown or a change in leadership puts people in danger. Captures are just that - snaring an enemy. And lastly, kills. Wet jobs. Assassinations. When the enemy is bad enough that termination is the only answer. In this series, a distinguished group of experts and former intelligence personnel will introduce you to some of the greatest of these intense operations. — In collaboration with the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program.

While there, stop by the Spy Museum Store and pick up a copy of "Is My Cell Phone Bugged? Everything you need to know to keep your mobile communications private."