{"id":17131,"date":"2025-10-31T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/?p=17131"},"modified":"2025-11-09T14:23:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T14:23:14","slug":"the-spy-museum-in-washington-dc-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/2025\/10\/31\/the-spy-museum-in-washington-dc-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spy Museum in Washington, DC – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

continued<\/a>… 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cardano grille. Write an innocuous letter with key words in the boxes that transmit a message. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As we’d leaned in Yorktown, during the Revolutionary War, George Washington had a vast spy network<\/a>. 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We think this was the Enigma machine, though we aren’t 100% sure<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, during WWII, the Americans tried many codes, but the Axis kept breaking them. Eventually, they simply had Native Americans to transmit messages to one another in their indigenous languages, which the Germans seemed unable to crack. It helped that they used simple metaphorical words to describe things, such as “whale” for battleship and “potatoes” for grenades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One sign that that was particularly interesting was movie actress Hedy Lamar and musician George Antheil patented a secret communication system that sent messages between a radio transmitter and receiver over multiple frequencies in random patterns. Called frequency hopping, it prevented interception of the radio waves. It was the basis for today’s WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS communications. In 2014, they were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next room was about the art of being an Analyst, who are people who look at all of the information gathered by normal channels and spies, then make predictions about what is likely to happen next. A large display was about the assessments made to help choose the strategies for how to handle the Cuban Missile crises of 1962. There was the Russian assessment of President Kennedy and the American assessment of Soviet Premier Khrushchev. Both sides were trying to guess how the other would behave, and each tried to pick the best method of negotiation to evade starting World War III. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next room was the Decision Room. We sat down at a terminal. We told it was 2011 and were in the room with President Obama as he was briefed by analysts about the house in Abbottabad where they thought Osama bin Laden may be residing. Did we think Obama should raid the house?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The next room was about special covert operations. The first display was a submersible submarine from 1943. It was silent, so a soldier would put on an oxygen mask, submerge, slip into an area undetected, attach a bomb to the hull, then silently slip away before the bomb exploded. Apparently the Navy SEALs still use a later generation of this type of craft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There was a big display on propaganda. It was an important tool to both sides in WWII, the Cold War, The Korean War and the Vietnam Wars. Countries used psychological manipulation techniques (PSYOPS) in ads, articles, radio shows (and later TV shows), and many other mediums to try to engineer support for their side and hatred towards the other side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

They also tried to sneak said ads, articles, radio, TV, etc into circulation on the other side to create demoralization and doubt about supporting their own country. There were many specific campaigns and tactics detailed, and each one felt disturbingly similar to what we’re currently bombarded with. For example, memes used to be printed on fliers and distributed; now they were digital images shared on social media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There were several displays about covert operations the US has been involved with. One was about the disastrous attempt to fake a revolt in the Bay of Pigs, Cuba, in 1961. As we briefly touched on above, this failure triggered a string of events that almost launched World War III. Per the signs, the “CIA’s most effective covert operation” was in the 1980s, when the US supplied weapons to the mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan, who were fighting the Soviet occupation of their country. The fighting lasted for 10 years, the rebels won, and it was believed the long, expensive war in Afghanistan contributed to the USSR’s collapse. We think that in retrospect, it would be hard to argue that it was successful in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The pile of leaves costume on the right was worn by snipers and spies in Afghanistan who were trying to blend into the environment. They were “hidden in plain sight.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There was an exhibit about exfiltration, or safely escaping. One of the biggest displays was about the real story behind the film Argo. Basically, six spies had been caught in Iran, escaped arrest, and were hiding in the Canadian Embassy. The CIA needed to create a cover story to get them out of Iran. They invented a movie production company and assigned each of the spies new fake identities as film crew. Remember, the Iranian government knew about them and were looking for them, so going to an airport was risky. When the spies went through immigration as they exited the country, they claimed they were in Iran to scout locations to film their movie, called Argo. The ruse worked and the hostages escaped. When the story was declassified, the film was made about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be continued…<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[425,1,44,398,397],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-washington-dc","category-general","category-history","category-tourist-activities","category-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17131"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17416,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17131\/revisions\/17416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}