Latest news with #AlyssaSchukar
NZ Herald
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Cigarette-lighter cameras, paralysing pens - a look inside the spy museum's den of secrets
Many of the artifacts in the vault came from one man: H. Keith Melton, a founding board member of the museum, who became one of the world's renowned spy collectors. He is not a former intelligence agent himself; rather, he made his money as one of the country's largest McDonald's franchise owners. Disguises in the vault of the International Spy Museum in Washington. Photo / Alyssa Schukar, The New York Times A condition of his donation, which he first pledged in 2016, was that the collection would eventually be moved to the museum itself, Melton said. 'To properly care for, maintain, catalogue, access the artifacts, they needed to be on the premises,' Melton said in an interview. 'You can't deal with it remotely. Artifacts need care and feeding and vigilance, and they need to make sure they're not deteriorating.' The collections team at the International Spy Museum recently opened the doors to its den of secrets, offering a reporter and photographer a look at tools of the trade that, like much of spy craft itself, are kept out of public view. There are roughly 4000 books in the vault, most of them donated by Melton. The most treasured of these is a World War II-era briefing book created by MI9, a wartime branch of British intelligence, to get Americans up to speed on its top-secret espionage innovations. It includes designs for cameras disguised as cigarette lighters, coat buttons and gold teeth concealing compasses, and maps printed on clothing. Laura Hicken, the museum's collections manager, estimated that there were fewer than 20 copies of this book in the world. Among the museum's newest acquisitions are original courtroom sketches by William Sharp, an illustrator who died in 1961. One is of Rudolf Abel, the Soviet spy who operated undercover in the US for almost a decade and who was portrayed by Mark Rylance in the 2015 Steven Spielberg thriller Bridge of Spies. In the drawings, Sharp portrayed Abel as looking stressed. A mini-motorcycle that British spies could unfold in seconds after parachuting behind German lines during World War II, in the vault of the International Spy Museum in Washington. Photo / Alyssa Schukar, The New York Times 'For us, where so much of our history is told through gadgets and weapons and concealment devices, this is so incredibly personal and such an intimate look into the consequences of the things we cover,' Hicken said, referring to the sketch. The museum, which is recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's largest espionage museum, has come under criticism in the past for sanitising the unethical behaviour of spy agencies. Another set of Sharp-penned sketches is from the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were arrested in 1950 for espionage and executed in 1953. The drawings feature Judge Irving R. Kaufman, who sentenced them to death, and an unguarded Ethel Rosenberg, whose culpability has come under doubt in the last decade. The Spy Museum has also received gifts and loans from international governments. The South Korean Government, for example, lent items said to have been seized from a North Korean spy who crossed into the south. Among these is a pen that, when clicked a certain way, would have been capable of injecting a paralysing agent into an unsuspecting victim, as well as a code sheet that spies could use to communicate with someone equipped with a counter code sheet. The German Government lent an army propaganda rocket from the early 1940s. These were launched over Russian soldiers on the battlefield, where they would eject pamphlets encouraging them to abandon Josef Stalin. According to a translation, the pamphlets inside the rocket say: 'Red Army men! You will not experience peace, you will not return to your home. Stalin will not allow this because he knows that any Red Army soldier who has been in Europe will pose a threat to the Stalinist system.' Sitting on top of a large shelf is a couch that belonged to Robert P. Hanssen, a former FBI agent who spied for Moscow off and on for decades. Suitcases and radios in the vault of the International Spy Museum in Washington. Photo / Alyssa Schukar, The New York Times Hanssen died in 2023 in his Colorado prison cell. Melton also persuaded Hanssen's family to donate other items, including a suit and watches. The museum has no shortage of knives, some of which are hidden in spatulas and boots. But there are less subtle blades, including one developed by the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, to be a combat weapon. 'There are a lot of challenging elements to our collection because so much of it was meant to kill or destroy or distract,' Hicken said. 'We have powders that were meant to be tipped into gas tanks that would essentially erode the gas tank very quickly so you could disable somebody's vehicle.' Also in the vault are several items that once belonged to Tony Mendez, the celebrated CIA officer who was played by Ben Affleck in the 2012 Academy Award-winning movie Argo. Mendez was particularly known for disguises, exfiltration and forgery. One drawer in the vault includes wigs he designed and a pair of shoes with lifts inside to make the wearer appear significantly taller. In addition, there's a self-portrait of Mendez, a former board member of the museum, depicting several aspects of the Argo story, which involved Mendez's plan to rescue American diplomats trapped in Iran in 1980. 'Everything in our collection is two things,' Hicken said. 'The purse actually conceals a camera. The pen conceals a microdot viewer. The shoe has a knife in it.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Sopan Deb Photographs by: Alyssa Schukar ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
New York Times
25-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
When a Press Pass Fails to Protect
Rubber bullets may not be lethal. But they certainly aren't harmless. Look at what hit the reporter Anthony DePalma of The New York Times. Pictured above, it's a three-ounce, four-inch-long projectile hard enough to crack a bone. Mr. DePalma was in Quebec on April 20, 2001, covering protests outside a summit at which President George W. Bush was advocating free trade policies. In an email this month, Mr. DePalma said he positioned himself between the police and demonstrators, believing the large press pass on his chest would protect him. It didn't. The police fired nonlethal weapons. 'Though I was crouching, I was hit in the stomach, just below my press credentials, knocking the breath out of me,' Mr. DePalma wrote. 'I didn't immediately connect the sound of the guns with the pain in my groin. I staggered back a step or two and looked down on the asphalt and was surprised (and relieved) to see that what had hit me was a rubber bullet. 'I scooped it up as I retreated behind a line of parked automobiles and caught my breath,' Mr. DePalma wrote. Undeterred, he filed an account of the skirmish. This month, he gave the bullet to the Museum at The Times. Mr. DePalma is not the only journalist working for The Times who has been hit by a rubber bullet. On Aug. 25, 2020, Alyssa Schukar, a freelance photographer, was on assignment for The Times in Kenosha, Wis., covering a protest over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white police officer. 'Ms. Schukar was holding her camera in front of her with one hand near her mid-section,' David McCraw, the deputy general counsel of The Times, wrote in a letter of protest to the Kenosha County sheriff on Oct. 12, 2020. 'Without provocation, but with clear intent, one or more of the law enforcement officers fired at the journalists.' Ms. Schukar was struck in her left hand. She and another photojournalist sued law enforcement authorities in 2023, asserting that the shootings had violated their civil rights. Ms. Schukar wrote in an email last week that she is currently waiting for the court to rule on the defendants' motion for summary judgment. 'My left index finger, where I was struck, has never returned to full function,' she wrote. 'I notice its limitations and scars every day, but I continue to work as a photographer — and hope that law enforcement agencies will move away from using 'less lethal' weapons.'
