The International Spy Museum in Washington DC brings the world of James Bond to life.
Taking on Operation Spy
It’s a race against time to find the evidence and the nuclear detonator. Fail, and disaster could befall the fictional republic of Khandar. We’ve been warned to leave everything just as we found it, so the office break-in isn’t noticed.
This makes ransacking the shelves and rifling through bins to find secret plans a more delicate operation than expected. But a good spy doesn’t leave obvious clues.
These are the lessons being taught to the espionage novices on Operation Spy. It’s a crash-course simulated mission run by the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. And if the bumbling efforts to find a secret door at the start is anything to go by, the group is hardly packed with budding James Bonds.
A fake mission based on real life
But teamwork is required to get through a series of tasks. These include following someone’s movements using security cameras, getting the sound quality right to be able to hear a bugged conversation and interrogating a suspect. There are also a couple of dramatic last minute escapes to charge through. Playing at being 007 for an hour certainly isn’t a relaxing business.
The mission is fake, but it is based on a real life case. As with most things in the International Spy Museum, there has been plenty of input from those with real life experience.
Disguises and adapted cars
The former CIA chief of disguise has given tips on how agents can change their looks in a hurry. The CIA-issued kit on display contains mixing dishes, a dye brush, a fake moustache, tweezers and scissors. But quick fixes include changing your facial expression and putting a pebble in your shoe. That may sound silly, but it changes the way you walk – and that can sometimes be enough to hide in plain sight.
Hiding someone often takes more effort than that, however. On display is a car from East Germany that was used to take escapees to the West. Dummies are folded up in excruciatingly uncomfortable positions beneath a false floor at the front and in a secret compartment under the back seats. It’s a bleak reminder of what people were prepared to endure in order to get away.
Cold War stories
The museum is full of great stories from the Cold War. There’s the tale of residents complaining about chalk marks being left on a postbox being used by a double agent for dead drops. And then there’s the absurd story of the Soviet Union and the US allowing each other to build new embassies. When the ambassadors moved in, both buildings were quickly discovered to be riddled with bugs and listening devices.
Spy gadgets
But for people who are more Q than M, the museum is at its most interesting when showing off the special spy gadgets used over the years. There are cameras concealed in hairbrushes and pistols hidden in wartime smoking pipes or KGB-issued lipsticks. Handheld document scanners, knives secreted in lapels and electronic stethoscopes used for safe-cracking are also on display. Some of the Bond technology isn’t as far-fetched as you might think.
The world of James Bond
The Bond villains, however, may be a little more outlandish. And a special exhibition downstairs delves into the baddies encountered in the 007 movies over the years. This includes lots of costumes and props – such as the orange henchmen suits from The Spy Who Loved Me, Goldfinger’s shoes and Scaramanga’s golden gun.
But it’s most fascinating when the world of Bond is compared to real life. Bond, it seems, had access to facial recognition technology before the CIA. The films also saw international drug barons as a threat in 1989’s Licence To Kill – just before the CIA freed up resources to tackle the drug trade as a priority.
The plausibility of some evil schemes is tackled too. The SPECTRE organisation, headed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld, is deemed highly unlikely to have a real life equivalent. It’s also highly unlikely that a man-made earthquake could be used as a weapon, as in A View To A Kill.
But now Daniel Craig has finally given up the Bond role, this a fine place for would-be replacements to learn the ropes.
More Washington DC travel
While in Washington DC, you can also learn about where the power really lies on a Pennsylvania Avenue walking tour.
