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CIA & KGB Gadgets On Display
ricst writes "Been postponing that visit to the Reagan Presidential library? Well, delay no more, because they are hosting an exhibit of some formerly secret CIA and KGB gadgets. reports, "For the first time, the public is getting a large scale view of the CIA's and KGB's real-life James Bond gadgets, from a replica of the Russians' deadly poison-dart umbrella to some of the Amercians' most ingeniously concealed cameras." The last 200 years of history of technology is reflected in these spy devices that go back to the Revolutionary War."
Like the one-of-a-kind Lucas alternator that works?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Believe it or not, the CIA has thier own museum complete with cool old spy gizmos. It's even online at:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/artifacts/
The world's first microdot, a document shrunken down to a tiny point, is also on display. It dates back to 1852.
Wow, and here I was thinking that Hoffman didn't invent LSD until 1943.
You might not believe it but the NSA has their own museum National Cryptologic Museum It has a real ENIGMA machine as well as the machine used to break the codes. The displays pretty much end in the 70's or 80's with a massive CRAY machine as the most modern thing they show
Free cell phone tracking
My Russian freind told me this joke one day.
Place and time: somewhere in the Soviet Union in 1930s.
The phone rings at KGB headquarters.
"Hello?"
"Hello, is this KGB?"
"Yes. What do you want?"
"I'm calling to report my neighbor Yankel Rabinovitz as an enemy of the
State. He is hiding undeclared diamonds in his firewood."
"This will be noted."
Next day, the KGB goons come over to Rabinovitz's house. They search the shed where the firewood is kept, break every piece of wood, find no diamonds, swear at Yankel Rabinovitz and leave.
The phone rings at Rabinovitz's house.
"Hello, Yankel! Did the KGB come?"
"Yes."
"Did they chop your firewood?"
"Yes, they did."
"Okay, now its your turn to call. I need my vegetable patch plowed."
I am into the copy and paste.
From the early days of the CIA's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, there are tire spikes, bombs and "liberator pistols." The latter were mass produced for $1.72 each and dropped to resistance fighters during World War II.
Somehow, I don't think I'd want to brag about poorly designed, cheap guns that were dropped in large quantities to anyone claiming to be a "resistance fighter," which many times turned out to be a German intelligence operative. Or maybe they were hoping that the Germans would try to use them...
But one device CIA officials say they never had was a version of the KGB's deadly umbrella that was used by an unknown assailant to kill Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978. A model of the umbrella is part of the display.
Death lasers, early death from too much sleep, Unix configurations, deadly umbrellas... I realize that Valentines day was just a few days ago, and a certain someone is entering into a particularly serious contract, but there's really only so much death you need on the front page...
And These are people who were suspicious of the Russians to begin with? jeeze.....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I know this is stating the obvious, but:
A large wooden gift from your rivals?
And you accept it at face value and bring it into your fortress?
And it just happens to have a secret compartment with an electronic spy hidden in it?
Hello?
Weren't diplomats supposed to have gone to Ivy Schools where they teach all that literature in dead languages?
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
The article said the earliest microdot was made (i think) in 1854. Anyone know how this was done? Kinda light on details there.
On a side note, where's the sharks with frickin' laser beams? They had Dr. Evil's ring, but not the sea bass? What gives?
Sent from your iPad.
Organizations like the CIA are so compartmentalized that I wouldn't expect anyone to make a definitive comment like 'CIA officials say there is no poision umbrella', probably translates to 'in my knowledge there is no poison umbrella'. For anyone, apart from the director, to say that there is no X or Y is wrong.
Each employee probably knows his job section, the admin staff in his job section and nothing more. The canteens are seperated, the sections are seperated, even within sections the compartmentalization is such that one man can not have more knowledge than they need to complete their task.
So my point is that their may well be no poison umbrella, but anonymous officials tend to spout the current political masters party line and know as little (or as much) about various departments as is dictated by overall security protocol. Which is good because it protects both the individual (can't cough up in interrogation or sell what he doesn't know) and therefore organization as a whole.
e4 e5
Apropos recent events, in case you're wondering what will become of all the unemployed KGB men in the event of a change of regime in the USSR, I was talking to a German friend recently and asked him what had become of all the former Stasi secret policement of East Germany.
"Oh they're all taxi drivers now," he said, "it was the obvious solution."
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Simple," he said, "you just give them your name--and they know where you live."
I am into the copy and paste.
Yeah, "haha" Reagan has alzheimers and can't even remember his wife or close friends. "Haha" they have to care for him everyday hoping for only the slightest bit of recognition while enduring the pain that he will never again know who they are.
Yep, this is something we should really poke fun at, since it's such a hilarious situation for everyone.