Spy Blog from the International Spy Museum

The game we know today as “Clue” in America began in England in 1944 as “Cluedo” in England. Invented by Anthony Pratt, a solicitor’s clerk and part-time clown. The object was to solve the mystery of the death of one of ten house guests at an English manor house.  The victim found himself dispatched in those early days by the far more gruesome or sophisticated means of axe, walking stick, fireplace poker, poison, syringe, or bomb!  You also had the possibility of the murder occurring in eleven different rooms with the inclusion on a cellar and “gun room.”  However, a gun must have seemed too obvious to Mr. Pratt in those days with the far bloodier options available.  The list of house guests included old stand-byes’ Professor Plum and Miss Scarlett with some character adjustments to Mr. Green (formerly the Rev. Mr. Green), Mrs. White (Nurse White), Colonel Mustard (Colonel Yellow), and Dr. Black.  Four characters were eliminated entirely, Mr. Brown, Mr. Gold, Miss Grey, and Mrs. Silver, with Miss Peacock being the only newly introduced character. Aside from disgrace of complete dismissal of the four characters, the demotion of Mr. Green. Dr. Black suffered perhaps the greatest injustice- in America, he became the more aptly named Mr. Boddy.   Yet, despite all these cosmetic changes, the game play remained much the same when widely released in 1949.

Today, Clue remains widely reproduced in this original format with an unlimited variety of addition spinoffs.   You can play “the Office Clue,” “Clue Harry Potter,””Scooby Doo Clue,” the potential options are unlimited.  Clue has also grown far beyond the board game origins to include several electronic formats and even a spoof movie.  Now Clue tackles the Spy Game.  “Clue 24” arrived in stores last year allowing die-hard 24 fans to work with Jack Bauer and prevent an imminent attack on the U.S.  In this instance, you work to prevent the act form happening by “uncovering the ‘WHO’ the Traitor is, ‘WHAT’ kind of attack is planned and ‘WHERE’ inside CTU will it happen.

The newest offering is “CLUE: Secrets and Spies.”  This genre busting board game was launched at the Spy Museum.  In this incarnation of Clue, now ‘Agent Black’ has his revenge.   He is the master spy the former suspects, now agents themselves, must work to thwart.  Through completing missions and attending secret meetings, you gain the intelligence necessary to stop Agent Black.  The game employs little of the original Clue game play but the spirit of the game remains.  Invisible messages and anonymity of character add layers of mystery familiar to the spy game.  The game even has the capability of enabling text messaging.  This wild card aspect can infuse the game with a entirely new level of unpredictability.  This is not your grandfathers Clue, although the bombs are back.

SPY talks with former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, about his experience with the controversy over waterboarding, and the pressures from both inside and outside the agency.

Q: When a former CIA officer goes “public” does the information need to be cleared for its possible sensitivity to national security first?

A: Everything a former CIA officer writes has to be cleared by a panel called the Publications Review Board (PRB).  And I mean everything has to be cleared, from a letter to the editor of House Beautiful magazine to a memoir about a CIA career.  But clearance is not a science and the process can take years, or 18 months, in my case.  An author frequently finds himself in a fight with PRB over language, and there is an appeals process which most authors take advantage of.  In the end, the author and PRB usually can come to an agreement, but with both sides somewhat unhappy.

Q: You have been at times at the center of the debate regarding the effectiveness waterboarding.  Where do you stand on the issue now?

A: I believe now, as I believed in December 2007 when I went public, that waterboarding was morally wrong.  I said then and I maintain now that Abu Zubaydah provided actionable intelligence after being waterboarded.  I was wrong when I said he had been waterboarded once.  That was what I was told.  We know now that he had been waterboarded 83 times.  But there are two separate issues here.  Did waterboarding work (on Abu Zubaydah it did in a limited way, but it did not work on other prisoners, who simply told the interrogators what they wanted to hear), and was it morally right?

Q: It has been suggested your position on waterboarding was part of a deception campaign.  Are you lying to us now?

A: If I said no, would you believe me?  Seriously, I’ve seen a couple of conspiratorial, fringe blogs make that accusation.  It’s ridiculous.  I called it as I saw it.  It made a lot of people angry and started an important national debate.  I stand by my position.

Q: Stephen Colbert has suggested the need to waterboard you to get the “real” truth.  Would this work or have you been trained to resist torture?

A: I feel like I already have been waterboarded!  Repeatedly.  I was never trained to resist torture.  I wish I had had training in press relations, however.

Want to learn more? Read Kiriakou’s book The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror

SPY’s Book Specialist, Matt Arnold

SPY Artifact: Handkerchief with Secret Writing

Invisible ink.  Lemon juice, milk, and, for those most desperate, urine are the most commonly known recipes for invisible ink.   These techniques were literally child’s play for many of us.  Yet, when Mata Hari was arrested with a vial of a German issued invisible ink, it was used as evidence of her status as a German spy.   But what use can these potions and methods practiced for centuries still hold for our national security?

Well, quite a bit according to the CIA.  The oldest classified documents in US archives happen to be German invisible ink recipes from 1917 and 1918. As recent as 2002, the CIA successfully defended the classification in federal court fearing the “risk of compromise of…intelligence methods” and of allowing the “more sophisticated methods of secret writing” to fall in terrorists hands.  Perhaps we have Mata Hari to thank for those recipes?

Although the CIA is still protecting the German’s secret recipes, we have our own rich tradition.  George Washington himself was an avid practitioner and dabbler in invisible inks.  Washington instructed the use of “sympathetic stain” developed by Jon Jay’s brother for the transmission of secret information.

In Invisible Ink by John Nagy, we are introduced to the American Revolution as this war of deception waged by British and American forces employing invisible inks, codes, secret rendezvouses, spy rings, and complicated military deception operations.  After their defeat England’s chief of intelligence was reputed to have said, “Washington did not really outfight the British, he simply outspied us!”  I guess tea makes a poor invisible ink…

SPY’s Book Specialist, Matt Arnold, reviews a classic spy film.

In the lobby of the International Spy Museum is a large black and white image of a man bathed in shadow.   Enveloping him in this darkness is post-World War II Vienna, a city up to the task of casting a further level of intrigue into the frame.   Vienna had been spared the worst of what many European cities had suffered during the war.  Yet, the charm and pleasant music of pre-war Austria now came accompanied with ruins, a thriving black market, and refugees attempting to escape from Soviet occupation.  Divided into four zones by the conquering British, French, Americans, and Russians, an international patrol of all four was responsible for controlling and rehabilitating the city.   However, early cold war politics was turning it into a playground for international espionage.

The image is a still from the film The Third Man, written by spy novelist Graham Greene, directed by Carol Reed, and with strong contributions from Orson Welles.  With this legendary pedigree, it may be unsurprising that it is widely considered one of the greatest films; included in the AFI top 100 films and ranked the Greatest British film of the 20^th Century by the British Film Institute.  Reed and Greene’s Vienna is a city facing the realities of a world blown apart by one war while witnessing the birth of another.   The man in the shadows too is caught in between these worlds, being plunged once again back into darkness. What better environment to be first introduced to the world of the International Spy Museum?