"Spying has a resonance, a mystique about it," Dennis Barrie, a former Smithsonian curator who's heading the effort, told the Washington Post.
"We want to peel away that surface …. We intend to give a historical perspective, but we also want to immerse people in a sense of time and space," he said.
The firm, Malrite Co., plans to house the International Spy Museum in 58,000 square feet of renovated space near the National Portrait Gallery. Unlike most museums in Washington, the privately owned project will be a for-profit venture, the newspaper said. Visitors will be charged admission, about $8.
Some of the items on display will be on loan from H. Keith Melton, an espionage artifacts collector, historian and technical adviser on the Malrite project.
"The general public really has no idea about real spying," said Melton. "Unfortunately, they've seen too many Oliver Stone movies and think the CIA's a big shooting gallery where they train assassins …. We want to show how the world we live in has been crafted through the work of spies."
The CIA has been kept abreast of the Malrite project but has not endorsed it, spokesman Mark Mansfield said. But the project did involve a CIA employee who acted as a private consultant.
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