Rachel's Systema Writings >> Assorted Essays >> A Visit to the International Spy Museum, and poznai sebia A Visit to the International Spy Museum, and poznai sebia Last weekend I visited the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. It was a marvelous experience. I warned my four companions that it would take me a long time to go through the whole museum. Recommended visiting time is two hours, I took nearly four, and could have easily spent six (I didn't have time for all the interactive exhibits nor the historical movies and short films scattered throughout the museum.) For those in the know, this isn't *the* spy museum. *The* spy musuem houses the private collection of international espionage expert H. Keith Melton, who knows more about the field of intelligence than any other living person. His particular specialities are the devices of spy tradecraft and especially the historical gadgets and bugging paraphenalia. You might know him from the History Channel series like Spy Tek and CIA Secrets (he produced the latter). He is also the author of the comprehensive The Ultimate Spy Book and an advisor to U.S. intelligence agencies. I am a huge fan of his work and regard him the way most people regard Hollywood celebrities. *The* spy museum is not accessible to the public, only to intelligence professionals of solid ethical reputation. Its location is a closely-guarded secret, and I have only seen its collections on television. But H. Keith Melton's fingerprints are all over the public Spy Museum. I have no doubt that he donated a significant portion of the collections, and he appears in many of the short films that are screened throughout the museum (the lockpicking short was my favorite of these films ) Upon coming to the end of the exhibits, I was suprised to realize that most of the information wasn't new to me. Of course, I am not familiar with all the finer details, and I learned a lot by reading all the plaques and displays. But I am fairly well-versed in the overall history of spying from Biblical times to the Cold War. Sometimes you don't realize how much you know until you see all the information laid out at once. I have long been interested in espionage, but I did not expect that most of the experts interviewed in the short films would be familiar faces, nor that I would have read so many of the books in the well-stocked bookshop. That was one surprise. My favorite section was called "Dagger" and it was all about the dangerous field operations, and what some would call "wet work." There was a beautiful collection of antique knives and sabotage tools. Once again I was struck with this odd feeling of being different than the person I'd like to be. I believe I am a gentle person and not prone to violence. I want to think that I'd be more interested in the clever, brainy spy operations: the strategy, disguises, dead drops, all the intellectual aspects of spying. So why was I so fascinated at watching the training of WWII saboteurs, or carefully examing various sleeve knives and other covert tools of assassination? I'd like to think I could be as smooth and glamourous and clever as Josephine Baker or Mata Hari, but that's not the way I truly am. I'm fascinated with lockpicking, storming buildings, and blowing things up. I guess I'd be better suited to the military than to the field of intelligence. And that's hard for me to accept, having been told my whole life that I'm above-average intelligence, offered a full scholarship to a private school when I was just 5, being in so-called gifted kids' programs and winning all kinds of academic awards and accolades. Now that my academic life is over, it turns out that I'm no strategist, probably not half as clever as I thought, and my skills are far more physical than I would have expected, or wanted. But that's one of the things we have to accept as we grow older: we are the way we are, not the way we'd like ourselves to be. The natural talents of any individual might not be the ones they would have chosen for themselves. Yet I believe that there is a reason why we have these innate gifts, maybe part of it is to shake up our preconceptions a bit, make us work hard at the things we cannot do, and see our own gifts in an unadulterated light, the way we are, not the way we imagine ourselves to be. It took me a long time to accept that my Systema talents are not the ones I would have chosen for myself. I never thought I'd be good at striking, groundwork, confined spaces, or multiple attackers. If asked, I would have said that I aspire to be good at what I had considered to be "feminine" martial skills (based mainly on spy movies and popular fiction): falling and rolling, throwing knives, woodland survival, tracking and covert approach. The knife in particular is a favorite weapon of women, not just in the movies, but in reality. Knives, scissors, letter-openers, are weapons of opportunity for women. You don't see adventure heroines throwing a lot of punches or fighting on the ground. I guess the popular notion is that women are not physically strong enough to strike well or hold their own on the ground. Systema disproves that; I've heard Mikhail's teenaged daughter can knock a man over with one strike. It's like Vlad says in the back of Let Every Breath: you should love all of God's creations, and you yourself are one of His creations, so it is good to love yourself, too, so long as you remain humble. But to return to the Spy Museum, another realization I had when I came to the end of the exhibits was how brave and selfless many of these people were. The International Spy Museum is private museum, not funded by any government. It is truly international, although a great deal of focus is on Europe and the U.S. but that's probably because the information is most accessible. There is much we do not know about other countries' intelligence ops. In particular, I was struck by the bravery of the French resistance and by some of the celebrities who volunteered their services during World War II. Josephine Baker, who so loved her adopted country of France, where she became a superstar rather than the maid or washerwoman she was destined to be in her native America. She was determined to serve France during WWII and did so with distinction, earning the Legion d'Honneur for her brave and selfless actions. What a truly great woman, the adoptive mother of twelve children from all over the world, a woman of divine beauty who might have retired comfortably and done nothing for the world, but because the world gave her prosperity, she felt compelled to put something back. Or Virginia Hall, the "Limping Lady of the OSS" who was turned down for Foreign Service because of her wooden leg and her gender, but so determined was she to serve that she travelled to Europe to join the French Resistance and became so invaluable, the Germans called her the most dangerous spy in France. She earned the Distinguished Service Cross and became one of the first female CIA operatives. I was humbled by reading about these and so many others who were determined to serve in wartime, risking capture, death, torture, and rape. A spy who is captured has no such fate as a POW; their home governments will sometimes not even acknowledge their existence, and they might languish in prison for years until the political climate changes. One female spy who survived imprisonment at Auschwitz said that after her release, she could no longer use the terms "worry" or "problem" because dust on the furniture seemed hardly fit for the term "problem" after the terrible, nearly insurmountable problems of the war. As I thought about those brave and selfless people, it suddenly occurred to me that I do know people who serve or have served their countries in positions of extreme danger, no doubt some of whom would not be out of place among the heroes and heroines of the International Spy Museum. That was even more sobering than reading about the famous spies of history, because those people are among the most humble, kind-hearted, and generous people I've ever known. You would expect such people to have steel in their hearts but truly, they are nothing but warmth and kindness. I'm proud to know such people and to count them among my friends and teachers!