The International Spy Museum

 The International Spy Museum

Izzy

8/15/2021

    Today we went to the International Spy Museum. We got there a little before our assigned entry time at 9:15. We’ve been to the Spy Museum before but it was a while ago and they moved buildings. This new building looked really cool and fit the Spy theme. 

    We went inside and were sent up to the 5th floor where we picked a random badge. We had to go to a screen station where we got our cover name. We were given a bunch of random photos and had to pick the one we liked best. We did this three times and it was to get a sense of our interests to determine the mission we would get. I was a veterinarian named Gal Tate and my hometown was Tokyo. For my mission, I had to go to Amsterdam to get intel from an inside source about artificial intelligence that a tech firm created. 

    In the first museum exhibit, we saw different things about real life spies and their missions. There were videos playing of them talking about their mission (if they are still alive) and videos about the spies from the past. Seeing it was really cool because all of their missions were really crazy. One of the spies highlighted, Mata Hari, was a spy during World War 1 and her video was talking about how factual the movies made about her are.

    Throughout the exhibits, we got to do more things for our mission. One task was to contact the source and get the clue from them. I also had to remember my cover because twice I was asked questions about “myself” I had to answer. Another task was to find surveillance threats in an area to see if it would be safe or not. I had to also do a dead drop which is where one person discreetly leaves an object in the place agreed upon so that the other person can get it easily without suspicion. The information I found was left inside a dead rat. 

    There were lots of cool exhibits like one on codes and cyphers, one on finding Osama Bin Laden, and one on disguise. There was a cool thing on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden where they would analyze the parts of the compound he was in and compared it to a normal house, and then thought about what person would require the increased security of the compound. This was the decision process that ultimately led them to finding him and killing him. For the one on disguise, we got to take a picture and add things to disguise ourselves like different hair or a hat. My disguise was pretty funny:

    It was a really fun museum and I’m glad we went. I completed my mission and my top skills were “Analytical Thinker” and I got a “Keen Observation Award. They had a really cool gift shop and I even got a safe that’s disguised as a book. I woul definitely go back to the International Spy Museum!