Category Archives: North America

The Spy Museum in Washington, DC – Part 4

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continued… In 1945, WWII ended and then-President Truman dissolved the OSS. But with the Cold War brewing, people convinced Truman they needed to peacetime intelligence agency to prevent another Pearl Harbor from happening. To try to garner public support, they even used the propaganda card by making a Hollywood film called “OSS” about the heroic actions of the OSS during the war. In 1947, Truman authorized the creation of the CIA, which was staffed by many OSS alumni.

The next section was provocative. “In a democracy, there is always tension between openness and secrecy. When people fear their country is under threat, they accept more security. When fears fade, they often demand greater transparency.” The first display was about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They were convicted of espionage in 1951 and later executed, based on the US governments assertion that there was indisputable evidence that the Rosenbergs had passed atomic weapon information on to the Soviets. However, the evidence was top secret and couldn’t be shared — while there was supporting evidence revealed in court, the jury convicted without seeing the allegedly most damning evidence. The execution was highly controversial, with many protests. In 1995, the evidence was finally released — it was captured and decrypted correspondence that proved that Julius was a Soviet spy. Whether he passed on information about atomic weapons and whether Ethel was a spy were less clear.

In the 1970s, there was a movement to expose the government’s extralegal activities. In 1971, a group broke into the FBI office and stole information about COINTELPRO, a secret counterintelligence program to infiltrate, monitor and disrupt social and political movements. Tactics utilized included wiretapping, forgery, searching homes, sending anonymous notes ad leading false information. The files were given to the press and published. The burglars were never caught. From 1975 – 1976, there were congressional hearings on the FBI and CIA operations, which led to reforms, including instituting a congressional oversight committee and the creation of the FISA court to review secret surveillance requests.

In 2013, government contractor Edward Snowden stole and leaked to the press 1.5 million classified files about secret US surveillance programs, such as PRISM, that violated people’s privacy rights by harvesting data from cell phones, land line phone, emails, texts, social media and more.

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The Spy Museum in Washington, DC – Part 3

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continued... We can’t remember what the purpose of this machine was… since it was in the exfiltration section, we think it may have been a machine used to help train spies on escaping capture.

There was a small theater playing a film on a loop with real ex-spies telling their most thrilling stories about their spying days.

The next section was jaw dropping! The sign said “When governments task intel agencies to secretly undermine a rival’s political or economic system — perhaps by buying votes, bribing candidates, or disrupting trade — the results can change history… The stories here… all are bold attempts to transform the political or economic landscape.”

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The Spy Museum in Washington, DC – Part 2

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continued… There was a room on cryptography. Since Eric was a cryptographer, he was especially interested in this one. There was a display about various encryption tools that date back thousands of years — and were commonly used until relatively recently — such as the Cardano Grille. Even invisible ink dated back thousands of years — Pliny the Elder had a recipe for invisible ink that dated back to the 1st century!

Cardano grille. Write an innocuous letter with key words in the boxes that transmit a message.

As we’d leaned in Yorktown, during the Revolutionary War, George Washington had a vast spy network. Knowing the British were spying on the Americans, Washington encrypted his messages using a method called Pigpen. Then Thomas Jefferson invented a new encoding method, called the Jefferson Cipher, that was utilized up through World War II.

There was a display about a secret group of codebreakers that was assembled in 1939 in England when World War II erupted. It started as a team of 100 and eventually swelled to nearly 10,000, three-quarters of whom were women. They worked around the clock out of a mansion named Bletchley Park, which was a private home in England, trying to decrypt intercepted communications. The Germans had a machine called Enigma that was believed to be uncrackable. The team at Bletchley did crack it, but the Germans kept upgrading the technology, so the team at Bletchley had to re-crack the code with each upgrade. They managed to keep the operation a secret for 30 years.

We think this was the Enigma machine, though we aren’t 100% sure
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The Spy Museum in Washington, DC — Part 1

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Sunday, Sept 21 — We’d asked several friends which DC museums they liked best. Everyone who had been to the Spy Museum said it was their favorite. So that was the first museum on the DC itinerary. Conveniently for us, it was also the closest to our marina, located in a complex called L’enfant Plaza. The plaza was named after Pierre Charles L’enfant, the architect who designed DC.

From the Wharf, we crossed over Main Ave SW, followed a bridge over a freeway, and the museum was one of the first buildings along the raised road.

Looking back at The Wharf

For some reason, we expected the museum to be nondescript, but it was probably the most obvious of all the modern buildings.

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Welcome to Washington DC (District of Columbia)

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Saturday, Sept 20 — We didn’t have to do as many miles today as we did the previous two days, but still wanted to leave early since the current would worsen as the day progressed. It was an overcast morning and a cloud mostly blocked the sunrise, so we waited to leave until 0650 so that there was enough light to see those very small crab traps. The sun did peek out briefly before being swallowed up by the clouds again.

Like yesterday, the anchor chain was very muddy and needed copious amounts of washing. The little tributary that we were in had a lot of crab traps around. We had to do a lot of swerving to avoid crab traps until we got back to the main channel of the Potomac, which was clear of traps.

All in all the trip was fine. There was 15-knots of wind, so it was ever so slightly bumpy from wind chop, but not bad. The wind was cool, and with the temperatures in the low 70s, it was a little chilly outside in the wind. We had 1.5 knots of current against us, so we were only doing about 5.5 – 6 knots at 1750 RPM.  The scenery along the shore was mostly trees. Traffic was light until we got to the suburbs of DC. Then there was a a lot of boat traffic and the ride became more uncomfortable from all the wakes. But not bad, just not exactly good.

Here were some photos as we neared DC. The first one (we believe) was Mount Vernon, which was George Washington’s home and where he was buried. Mount Vernon had its own dock. We could have anchored nearby and taken the dinghy over there, but we decided it was too much of a hassle to do today. If we really wanted to go, we could take the ferry (pictured below) from DC, take a tour bus, or stop by with Kosmos on our way back south.

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