Soccer Dad: Dmitri Ivanov

February 21, 2006

Dmitri Ivanov

Today I took the children to the International Spy Museum. It had some interesting stuff. I still think it was a bit pricey for what was there, but it wasn't a bad museum and the children seemed to really like it.
Or at least 80% of them did.
If anyone ever tells you that a 4 year old will appreciate the Spy Museum, they're lying. There's a reason the operators don't charge for children under 5; they can't possibly appreciate it. (Well they start charging at 5, but I'd guess that 7 is probably the minimum age for most children.)
However the 4 year old did enjoy crawling throught the ductwork; which is really made for 4 year olds. The idea is to crawl though the piping as quietly as possible. Of course the quiet part doesn't really appeal to 4 year olds.
When you first walk into the exhibition area you're given 16 names and you're supposed to choose your (false) identity from among those 16. I chose Dmitri Ivanov. I remember several other details of his background but if I told you I'd have to kill you. (And I don't think that the Museum would much appreciate if I made it easier for people choosing that identity in the future.)
In addition to the exhibits you're given a cover and a mission and are supposed to recall them at the end of the visit. I guess the point is to demonstrate how difficult it is for a real spy to keep his fake identity straight. (And that, therefore, it's not easy to do.)
My 12 year old thought he saw a mistake, he saw this picture with the caption

Antietam, Md. Allan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, and Major General John A. McClernand

Though he's doing a research paper on Antietam right now, he hadn't heard the name McClernand and thought that it should have been McClellan. But then he did his own research after we got home and confirmed that the museum had it right.

(BTW, Antietam was considered an intelligence failure of the Union. Apparently Pinkerton assured Lincoln that his sources gave him a "slam dunk" picture of the Confederate positions.
And did you know that Civil War Battles were given different names by the Union than by the Confederacy. The Union usually used natural objects to name a conflict; the Confederates used man made objects. Thus we generally hear of Antietam - named after a nearby creek; while in the South the battle takes the name of the nearby town of Sharpsburg.
UPDATE: Discussing this with my son, I remembered an Encyclopedia Brown story about a Civil War Sword. Does anyone recall - as I think I do - that it was Stonewall Jackson's sword? Because if it was it should have been inscribed with "Battle of Manassas" not "Battle of Bull Run.")

Elsewhere they played interviews with those agents who had helped nab Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen.
Elie's Expositions wrote of his observations about the museum

The other cartoon, by Disney, had the usually irascible Donald Duck full of patriotic enthusiasm for paying his "taxes to fight Axis".

I did not see the first cartoon, but I did see the Donald Duck one and he's right. This Disney cartoon was between two sections of newsreel which would never be considered objective. But there was something else I noticed about the Donald Duck cartoon, there's a brief scene extolling American industry. What does it show? Multiple smokestacks belching forward smoke. I really doubt that we'd see such a scene nowadays. Certainly not one saying anything nice about the U.S.

In another section of the museum was a display about the Berlin tunnel. The allies used it to keep track of Communist East Germany; but the East Germans knew how the tunnel was being used - because of a double agent - so they were careful not to expose anything of importance. But at some point the Communists made a big deal of exposing the American spying.

One photograph from the time was captioned something like:

Though the Russian outrage over the American spying brought claims of America violating international law reporters seemed more interested in the advanced technology used in the tunnel.

Could you imagine the media nowadays ignoring our enemies' claim that we're violating international law?

Cost of admission for 4 adults and one child: More than I'd like to spend.
Total time in the car with 5 children: 2 1/2 hours.
The moment when I realized that everyone else was asleep: Priceless.

Technorati tags: International Spy Museum, Civil War.