Skyfalls, Spectres & Mata Hari at Washington DC’s International Spy Museum

[José Balido]

Last month I traveled back to my old stomping grounds in Washington DC to attend an event and decided to check out one of the very few tourist attractions I hadn’t already been to (hey, I went to college here, and have been back quite a few times since).  And I have to say, the decade-old International Spy Museum, in a downtown red-brick building right across from the National Portrait Gallery, turned out to be probably the best infotainment attraction I can recall ever experiencing.

And I do mean “infotainment” in the best possible way. Because this three-story espionage-o-rama sure doesn’t feel like what you’d think of as a traditional “museum”; it’s slick, very multimedia, interactive, high-tech – and yes, sometimes a little “Hollywoody” (I say, Moneypenny, do check out that still sleek-looking Aston Martin DB5 once used to promote Goldfinger (below) and the Jaguar XKR from Die Another Day!). Yet even so, all of this doesn’t really feel  dumbed down as you might expect.  Most of the famous people, places, and things are here – Nathan Hale, Mata Hari, Enigma, and most especially the whole familiar Cold War roster (the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss, Aldrich Ames, the CIA/KGB/Stasi, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess – heck, they've even got a replica of the poison-tipped umbrella used to murder Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978; at right). But there are also plenty of eye-openers about what they call “the secret history of history” dating all the way back to Moses (“let my people spy!”). There's some sobering stuff on the future, too, especially about our vulnerability to cyber war.


And about that interactive part? Exhibits offer plenty of buttons to push, knobs to twist, and headphones to don, but they also take it to a whole other level here. You choose a “cover” among a bunch supplied in the “briefing room”  (mine was Dimitri Ivanov, a fisherman visiting Boston from Kirov, Russia to visit family but secretly to smuggle out military intelligence on a microdot hidden in a Red Sox fantasy baseball brochure from Fenway Park  – боже мой, what could possibly go wrong?), then are tested about that cover at various points. Other attractions within the attraction include Operation Spy, where you decrypt taped conversations, conduct surveillance from inside huge air ducts, interrogate other “operatives,”  and so forth (for a taste, see video below). The museum even brings it outside, with GPS-assisted “missions” in the surrounding streets and “Spy City” tours of DC (next stop, Rock Creek Park dead drop!).

There are, however, a few gaps - surprising ones, even. I was disappointed, for example, that there's so little about my own homeland, Cuba. What, no Bay of Pigs, no exploding cigars or attempted Mob hits on Fidel Castro? And what about the the Red Avispa (“Wasp Network”) of the 1990s?  But even more disappointing was that I won’t any time soon get to see the new two-year exhibit opening Friday, November 16: “Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of Bond Villains.” Yep, perfectly timed to ride the coattails of Skyfall. The museum’s press release promises “immersive environments, exciting interactive opportunities, psychological profiles of the villains, and classic film and audio clips. For the first time ever, the villains will be placed in historical context, enabling guests to explore how the evildoers and their plots have changed to reflect the times and inviting guests to explore the connection between fact and fiction.”

I’m quite sure that lucky visitors will be both shaken and stirred.


800 F Street NW, at 8th Street; 202-393-7798; daily 10am-6pm; admission $19.95 adults, $16.95 seniors, $14.95 age 7-17, free under 7.




photos/video: courtesy of the International Spy Museum; men's room photo: José Balido