The new International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. is, not surprisingly, an institution in disguise, an undercover operation executed in plain sight
JEFFERSON MORLEY | MAY 4, 2020
Not the complete article
The new International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. is, not surprisingly, an institution in disguise, an undercover operation executed in plain sight.
The museum’s beveled glassy front is more stylish than its neighbors–the bland façade of the Post Office to the west, the neo-expressionist face of the General Services Administration to the north. Yet the Spy Museum is not out of place. In the soulless bureaucratic landscape of L’Enfant Plaza, a temple of public service propaganda fits right in.
Inside the revolving doors, the first thing you see is James Bond’s tricked out Aston-Martin approaching from the left, while the original U.S. drone, buzzes overhead. This entertaining emporium of fact and fiction tells a cover story, albeit one endowed with “plausible deniability.” It covers the disturbing realities of secret intelligence agencies with the reassuring message: we protect you. Maybe it’s true, you think.
Anons lets check out all the Board names, some journalists and celebrities, article published on May 4, 2020
The museum’s Board of Directors, displayed next to the elevators, skews toward former intelligence barons with a sprinkling of Hollywood and Capitol Hill. The names of James Clapper and Michael Hayden, George Tenet, and Robert Gates appear, along with Robert DeNiro, director of the excellent CIA movie, The Good Shepherd, Matthew Rhys the intense star of The Americans, and Joe Weisberg, the former CIA officer who created The Americans. There’s a conservative Republican congressman, Will Hurd, a liberal former Democratic governor, James Blanchard, and an insider columnist, David Ignatius. Message: you’re in for a good time with good company
The blending of fact and fiction can amount to a falsification of history. The real-life Allen Dulles, CIA director who destroyed democratic governments in Iran and Guatemala–crimes we still pay for–gets the same treatment, and number of words, as the fictional Emma Peel, the svelte, kickass agent, of the 1960s TV show “The Avengers.”
Another exhibit examines the tradeoffs between security and liberty, between secrecy and oversight. NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake talks about how he tried and failed to go through official channels to expose massive contracting abuses. Edward Snowden gets short shrift but the ideal of accountability does not. Message Deciphered: the intelligence community knows it has a credibility problem
The exhibit ends with an opportunity to vote on the question, “Would you be willing to have the U.S. government torture suspected terrorist if they knew about future attacks?” Torture wins, 63-37 percent. Unclassified Message: Torture is a policy option.
The Spy Museum is, in sum, a monument to the normalization of secret intelligence in a democratic republic. Like the CIA’s Twitter and Instagram accounts and emergence of former spy chiefs as cable news talking heads, the Spy Museum seeks to persuade you that the CIA and NSA are friendly neighbors and public servants, who might occasionally have to do bad stuff so you can sleep safely at night. It’s a comforting thought, except on those occasions when it’s not true.
In its ingenious way, the Spy Museum whitewashes the sinister record of the CIA not just for the history books but for public memory. Generously but astutely, the museum downplays similar crimes committed the KGB and other rival services. Educationally speaking, the Spy Museum offers a child’s view of history, an upbeat narrative of benevolent adults who vanquish villains as a better future beckons.
In the vernacular of intelligence, the museum “sanitizes” the reality of secret intelligence agencies, the better to perpetuate their reign right here in Washington
https://deepstateblog.org/2020/05/04/the-undercover-mission-of-the-new-international-spy-museum/