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Monday, August 14, 2000
CIA showcasing old Hollywood spy gadgetry
Writer's collection a 'spy-fi' archive of glamour, reality
By Robert Burns
Associated Press
LANGLEY, Va. - The CIA is offering its employees a fanciful look back at the "good old days."
In brightly lit corridors of its suburban Washington headquarters, the Central Intelligence Agency is displaying "spy-fi archives" - a one-of-a-kind collection of Hollywood spy gadgetry and memorabilia from 1960s television series and movies that romanticized and glamorized the spy business.
There's Maxwell Smart's shoe phone from the hit TV show "Get Smart."
There's the pen Robert Vaughn used as a secret communicator in the series "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."
There's a mock tarantula used as a prop in a famous scene from the 1962 James Bond film "Dr. No."
And there's much more - all from the private collection of Hollywood screenwriter and author Danny Biederman.
Keeping secrets, of course, is more important in the real world, and thus it happens that only people cleared for entry to CIA headquarters - not the general public - can see the Biederman collection. It was first shown to employees on Thursday and will be kept through the end of the year.
As a child, Biederman adored everything about the spy business. Still, he never dreamed his carefully preserved movie props, costumes, scripts, photographs and posters would end up at CIA headquarters.
"It's like freaky, bringing these two universes together. It's like beyond fiction," Biederman said as he strolled through the agency where some real-life - but still secret - tools of the spy trade may be not entirely unlike those that U.N.C.L.E. agents (the good guys) used to foil T.H.R.U.S.H. agents (the bad guys).
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