Tuesday, January 16, 2001
InfoBeat - Spy museum shows off espionage tools
By AMY BETH GRAVES
Associated Press Writer

	CLEVELAND (AP) - The secret is out: Some of James Bond's biggest
fans were KGB agents.
	But the Soviets weren't interested in how the fictional British
spy liked his martinis or seduced femme fatales. The KGB thought
Bond's goofy weapons were real and tried to keep pace by working on
new gadgets like a lipstick gun.
	That's just one secret of the cloak-and-dagger trade that a
Cleveland company is revealing as it enters the hush-hush world of
espionage by opening the International Spy Museum in Washington in
February 2002.
	The museum will cost $29 million and showcase thousands of years
espionage and international trickery, dating back to the Trojan
horse.
	``The real stories are more interesting than fiction,'' said
Dennis Barrie, president of Malrite Co., which focuses on starting
new museums.
	Barrie, a former Smithsonian curator, was at the center of a
controversy in 1990 when the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati
opened an exhibit by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe that included
homoerotic shots. Prosecutors brought obscenity charges against the
center and Barrie, but a jury acquitted them.
	Malrite founder Milton Maltz, who was on a board of directors
that helped bring the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to
Cleveland, came up with the idea for the for-profit spy museum.
	Maltz worked for the National Security Agency while in the Navy.
While he described his intelligence work as ``pretty mundane,''
Maltz said he has always been fascinated by the espionage world.
The popularity of history-based TV shows and greater willingness by
spy agencies to reveal secrets of the trade helped convince him
that a museum would sell.
	Barrie anticipates the museum will draw 500,000 visitors the
first year.
	``The world is mesmerized by spying. We've had even more
interest in the subject than we anticipated,'' Maltz said.
	Even the Central Intelligence Agency has nice things to say
about the museum, though it cannot endorse commercial projects.
	``We think that it's a good idea to better inform the public on
the true mission of the CIA and intelligence gathering. Most of
what's out there is Hollywood's perception and what you read in
novels. The vast majority is not true,'' agency spokesman Tom
Crispell said. ``I think it will give individuals a more realistic
understanding of what the intelligence business is all about.''
	Many ideas for the museum came from an advisory board of
historians and former spies with the FBI, CIA and KGB. A couple of
years ago, the ex-spies gathered to swap stories, Maltz said.
	``Sometimes they would say, `Is it still classified?' One side
would tell their story and the other side's story would be
different,'' Maltz said. ``It was fabulous because it was spy
versus spy.''
	Malrite has been collecting artifacts for the museum by buying
items on the Internet and asking former agents for souvenirs from
their careers.
	Some of the material will come from H. Keith Melton, a historian
who has a 6,000-piece collection of spy material. About 500 of
Melton's items are at the CIA's headquarters, which has a small
museum for employees and invited guests.
	The new museum's prized possession is an Enigma machine used by
the Nazis to encrypt top-secret messages.
	Among the other attractions will be a ``spy school,'' where
visitors can learn how to bug a room, try on disguises and use spy
cameras. Another exhibit will recreate the Berlin tunnel where
agents eavesdropped on the Russians during the Cold War, while yet
another will be a World War II codebreaking room where visitors
will see the role espionage played in helping the D-Day invasion.
	While the museum will address the careers of real-life spies
such as Mata Hari and Julia Child (she did intelligence work in
Asia during World War II), there will also be a nod to Bond and his
colleagues from the world of movies and TV. That's because the real
world influenced the entertainment industry and vice versa.
	Barrie said the director of the CIA in the 1960s often watched
TV's ``Mission Impossible.'' He said that the day after the week's
episode, the director would call those in charge of coming up with
spying gadgets and tactics and ask, ``Can we do that?''

And...

Another report on the same thing, from the ArcaMax newsletter:
 
SPY MUSEUM TAKING SHAPE IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL
   The nation's capital is about to get yet another museum. This one
will be devoted to the fine art of espionage -- spying!
   The monument to the clandestine will be built by a Cleveland-based
company which says it knows many of the behind-the-scenes tricks of
spies, not just the Hollywood magic of the James Bond films.
   Dennis Barrie, the driving force behind the concept says the
International Spy Museum will look at the true role of the CIA in
American politics. He has also enlisted the help of former employees of
the CIA, the KGB and the FBI.
   According to CNN, one of the prized exhibits in the museum -- set to
open a year from this fall -- will be a German Enigma machine, the
miracle encoding device of the World War II era.