CIA exhibits Hollywood spy gadgetry, memorabilia

LANGLEY, Va. (AP) - 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).

Take the pen communicator used by Napoleon Solo, the fictional hero played by Vaughn on ''The Man From U.N.C.L.E.''

It looks like an ordinary, if slightly oversized, pen. From the bottom you pull out a hidden transmitter, and from the top you open a short antenna. Just like that, instant communications. Good for use anywhere in the world. Might the CIA's agents have something similar?

''It's not out of the realm of possibility that very similar items existed - or continue to exist,'' said CIA spokesman Tom Crispell, dutifully careful to safeguard the spy agency's valuable ''sources and methods.''

It's that fuzzy connection between fact and fiction that makes Biederman's collection a natural fit for CIA headquarters.

''Illusion in the real world is as important as it is in Hollywood,'' Crispell said.

Among the display items:

-The ''stereophonic gun'' with two barrels and a single trigger used by a KAOS agent in a ''Get Smart'' episode.

-From the 1966 movie, ''Our Man Flint,'' a jacket worn by a member of the Galaxy, the cadre of villainy that plots to take over the world. The movie starred James Coburn as ultra sophisticated spy Derek Flint.

-A Walther PPK pistol used in the James Bond films.

-Original storyboards for the title sequence of the ''I Spy'' TV show starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby.

-Actor Martin Landau's copy of the script for the first episode of the TV show ''Mission: Impossible'' in September 1966.

Those were the ''good old days,'' when the line between good and evil was cut clearly, when the ''bad guys'' were easily defined and demonized - in short, the heyday of the CIA.

When the Cold War ended and communism collapsed as a threat, the spy business lost some of its luster. Morale at the CIA sagged and the agency shifted its focus to less glamorous threats like drug runners and computer hackers.

Rachel Apple, a member of the CIA's Fine Arts Commission, said the agency heard about Biederman's collection and approached him last year. The idea was to give CIA employees a look at 1960s-era Hollywood shows that, for some, were the source of their interest in spying.

''This is the fictional counterpart to what we really do,'' Apple said. During the Cold War, when the CIA was even more secretive than today, it was left to Hollywood to imagine what spying was really about.

''They did us a favor because they portrayed us very favorably - as heroes,'' she said.