D.C. - Day 4

I eventually surfaced at 9:00 this morning and then after showering & getting ready spent the next two hours talking to Stephen about driver and vehicle licensing in the US, UK and New Zealand. We eventually realised the time and that fact we should be doing something as the morning was virtually gone.

I decided brunch was a good idea to fuel me for the afternoon.
Having eaten I headed for the International Spy Museum. I figured with the FBI in town and the CIA just up the road it should be quite good.

I was not disappointed. On first arriving one is given the choice of a cover identity and then after a short introductory & set the scenes film one is invited to test the memory of the cover you adopted.
There were all manner of tips and tricks detailed and explained and some of the equipment which had been manufactured for use in espionage was quite astounding. Not only were these on display – often as they appeared and deployed – some of the stuff was “recovered” in operations. The displays and background stories behind these things was very well balanced as I expected it to be a very biased “we are the best and never suffered any losses” affair on the part of the US. It was not, and detailed several catastrophic failures on the part of the CIA and NIS. It also had a very good section on “the famous five”; Blunt, Burgess, McClean, Philby and Cairncross. I deliberately put John Cairncross out of alphabetical order as it was never proved (or admitted by the KGB) that he was “the fifth man” but suspicion was enough to tar him with the same brush as he was one of the “Cambridge Apostles” with the rest of them.

There was an intriguing (for a saddo anorak like me) section on cryptography and a detailed example of the workings of the Enigma machine (bloody clever and very fascinating) and a huge mention and whole sub-section on Bletchley Park – one of the best kept secrets ever!
There was a whole section on the use of espionage during wars, especially communication and the importance of double agents feeding disinformation back to the enemy. This ran from Sun Su right through to Gulf War 1 where the extensive use of camera drones was instrumental in locating mobile scud missile launchers.

There is a whole article on the building of new Russian and American embassies in their relative countries. Because these buildings were bugged to hell in the building process (both of them) they both took five years longer than planned or scheduled to build. The yanks actually tore down their embassy from the second floor up and rebuilt it with materials shipped to Russia under diplomatic immunity from scrutiny. This consisted of concrete, steel and glass used in its construction.

There was a lovely paperweight the head of the CIA had on his desk for many years (don’t ask me which one) which was made from a section of the embassy wall when it was torn down and clearly showed two electronic bugs embedded in the concrete.

I just managed to get round the whole place before they threw everyone out at closing time.
I headed back to the hostel and stopped in a curry house on the way for food – very nice.
When I got back I headed for the lounge area as I had some planning and booking to do for my stay in Las Vegas.

Having trawled through multiple options I booked a few nights in a motel just off the strip. This actually worked out cheaper than the hostel because the hostel had no dorm rooms, they were all private, and I would have been stung with a single supplement (rip off in other words) which made the room $108 per night! [Their wonderful advertisement quoting $21 per night was for four people sharing a “quad room”!] As the motel worked out only $50 per night I decided I would have my own space for a while. Having booked that I then checked my flight was all according to schedule (it was) and then headed for bed as I would have a very early start in the morning.