May 2, 2001 By PHIL PATTON "IT'S the best little museum you can't visit," said Linda McCarthy, who created the Exhibit Center at the C.I.A. in Langley, Va. For years, the agency's small house museum played host to spies, ex-spies and the odd Hollywood celebrity given special clearance. On occasion, Ms. McCarthy let children from the Make-a-Wish Foundation become spies for a day. But because the museum is ensconced inside the secretive and secluded C.I.A. headquarters — now named for former President George Bush, the agency's onetime director — the general public cannot come in. Ms. McCarthy, who left the agency in 1997, is now a consultant to a new espionage museum that regular folks will be able to visit. The International Spy Museum is taking shape not far from the F.B.I. headquarters, a popular spot on the Washington tour circuit, at Eighth and F Streets downtown. The $29 million museum, being developed by the Malrite Company of Cleveland, is scheduled to open next February. Along with the Cold War Museum being planned for the Washington area by Gary Powers Jr., son of the U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, and the increasingly popular National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade, Md., a new crop of museums are bringing spies of the 50's and 60's in from the cold. The cold war was a virtual war of information, and it was fought by intelligence forces — in the air, on ground and certainly underground. Sunset laws allowing the opening of old files are one reason that museums can now feature cold war items, said Dennis Barrie, the president of Malrite and the director of the International Spy Museum, which will include a restaurant and spy theme cafe. "There is tremendous fascination with the whole subject of espionage," Mr. Barrie said, particularly the cold war, to which about a quarter of the museum's displays will be devoted. "On the other hand," he added, "for kids, the cold war is fast becoming ancient history." Ms. McCarthy said she started the C.I.A. museum largely because "we found that people were coming into the agency with no sense of the history of intelligence gathering. It became an important part of education in the culture." So popular was Ms. McCarthy's minimuseum at Langley that for years officials discussed ways to open at least part of it to the public. But they could not get around security concerns. Declassification policies have made it possible for some items from Ms. McCarthy's exhibitions, like the camera of a Corona spy satellite from 1960 now in the National Air and Space Museum, to be displayed in public museums. Along with Ms. McCarthy, Mr. Barrie has recruited consultants to provide artifacts and information for the International Spy Museum. Among them is H. Keith Melton, part of whose 6,000-item espionage collection has been displayed at the Exhibit Center at C.I.A. headquarters, and Antonio Joseph Mendez and his wife, Jonna Hiestand, former C.I.A. officers. Ms. Hiestand was a specialist in spy cameras, what the agency called clandestine imaging. Her husband was chief of disguise and later chief of the graphics and authentication division, the folks who fabricated spy passports. Also helping the museum are a cryptology expert, David Kahn, and a former K.G.B. officer, Oleg Kalugin. Mr. Barrie said that because so many of the museum's items are tiny — "things that fit into a shoe heel or pocket" — and thus difficult to see, the museum will offer film and videos to compensate. For its part, the C.I.A. has been supportive of the museum but not directly involved. Another feature will be a "spy school," where visitors can learn elements of tradecraft — disguise, for instance. The museum will also have a replica of the famous tunnel dug into East Berlin in the early 60's to tap into East German phone lines. A piece of the real tunnel — the pipe that lined it — is on display at the Allied Museum in Berlin, housed in the former cinema of the United States military headquarters in southwest Berlin. The Allied Museum also has the Checkpoint Charlie guardhouse, as well as an East German watchtower and a piece of the Berlin Wall. The wall, of course, is an important symbol of the cold war, so it also fits into the plans for Gary Powers's Cold War Museum, which still awaits a permanent building. The museum recently became an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. "We will have such items as a U-2 airplane, a KH-11 satellite, a fallout shelter and a piece of the wall," said Mr. Powers, who was born after his father returned from his imprisonment in the Soviet Union. Francis Gary Powers was swapped for the Soviet master spy Rudolph Abel on Feb. 2, 1962. The two men silently passed each other crossing a bridge in Berlin, creating a lasting image of the cold war. To raise funds for a permanent facility, some of the Cold War Museum's collection has been touring museums around the world. The traveling exhibition is centered on artifacts belonging to Gary Powers and the U-2, including his flight suit and videotapes of his trial in Moscow. The museum also sponsors a spy tour of Washington, which includes the suburban house of Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who for years fed secrets to the Soviets, the mailbox he marked with chalk to request a meeting with his Russian handler, and Pied au Cochons Restaurant in Georgetown, where the Soviet defector Vitaly Yurchenko "redefected" out the back door. Another stop is the National Cryptologic Museum, outside the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, between Washington and Baltimore, and a memorial park dedicated to the military aviators and intelligence agents who died collecting photo and electronic information on the edges of the Iron Curtain. Some 40 planes were shot down during the cold war, killing 152 cryptographers. The National Security Agency, nicknamed No Such Agency because it was more secretive than the C.I.A., scans telephone and digital data sources with sophisticated computers, and is charged with code-breaking. (There are about 13 United States intelligence agencies, by Ms. McCarthy's count.) The N.S.A.'s headquarters are a set of huge glass and concrete buildings resembling a high technology company. The cryptologic museum, housed in an old motel on the edge of the complex, has a German Enigma code machine from World War II, as well as scrambler phones and computers that were once the most powerful in the world. There is also the "purple monster," a large purple Cray supercomputer that was used for code-breaking as recently as the mid-90's. For adventurous cold war buffs, these museums are a fraction of what is out there. Near Green Valley, Ariz., not far from Tucson, a Titan missile silo complex has been preserved by the Pima Air Museum. The Strategic Air Command Museum outside Omaha shelters bombers and missiles. The bombs carried by the B-47's and B-58's can be seen at the National Atomic Museum — sometimes called the Museum of Doom — at Kirtland Air Force Base, about six miles from the Albuquerque airport. And spy planes are on view at Blackbird Park, not far from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert of California. (One of the black birds, a C.I.A. A-12, is on display at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York.) Even the former K.G.B. has gotten into the museum business, offering an exhibition of the devices captured from Western spies, in a room of its headquarters in Moscow, open one day each month. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company