Inside the Imperial War Museums’ Spies, Lies and Deception Exhibition | Amanda Mason

[00:00:00] Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies. Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics, and intrigue. This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr.

[00:00:29] On today's podcast, I'm joined by Amanda Mason, who is the lead curator at the Imperial War Museum for Spies, Lies and Deception, which is a fantastic exhibition that ends on the 31st of August. This episode goes into a little overview of what's at the exhibition. For those who are listening to this interview, you may want to just check out the YouTube version because there is some exclusive footage that I shot at the exhibition last year that accompanies this episode. So I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Take care.

[00:00:59] The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast. Amanda, welcome to Secrets and Spies. Before we kind of get into the exhibition itself, I was wondering if you could just tell listeners a little bit about yourself and your role at the Imperial War Museum.

[00:01:24] So I'm a senior curator of contemporary conflict here at Imperial War Museum. So contemporary conflict for us is post 2001 conflicts and I specialize in the war in Afghanistan. So the way it works here is sometimes curators get onto different projects, different exhibitions. So I ended up working on spies because in previous roles, I'd done a lot of work on the subject and I previously worked on a gallery which your listeners might have heard of called Secret War, which was sort of a semi-permanent exhibition from the 90s.

[00:01:53] So I did quite a lot of work on that. So I obviously had some knowledge of the museum's collections. So I was a fit to work on spies, lies and deception. And what attracted sort of you or the museum to the subject of espionage and deception as the basis for a major exhibition? We had this gallery Secret War in the past. It was really popular. And we know that there is a perennial interest in the subject. Obviously, in recent years, there's been films and documentaries and spy novels and evictions.

[00:02:19] So I think there was an awareness that it was a really popular subject and it would be the basis of a great exhibition. And I think we felt that the time was right to sort of come back to it and take a fresh look at it and maybe bring the subject a little bit more up to date than we were able to do in the past and sort of reinterpret it for more recent audiences. Yeah, I agree. And I may be biased on this, but I'd love to see more spy exhibitions. I hope there'll be plenty. But this one in particular was really enjoyable.

[00:02:46] I had a look around at spies, lies and deception, both the London version and the Manchester version, which is the more recent one, which is the one we'll talk about now. So I suppose for listeners who don't know anything about spies, lies and deceptions, which is in Manchester, could you give us an overview of the exhibition and what visitors can expect when they kind of walk through the door? Well, I think when visitors come through the door, the first thing you see is quite a dramatic opening. So you come into sort of a quite dark space and you're sort of greeted with some spy gadgets. And I think we wanted to give people sort of maybe what they're expecting.

[00:03:15] So you see in this dark sort of moody space and then you see some of these amazing things that hidden batteries with hidden compartments, secret radios, a pen nib infiltrated with invisible ink. So it's sort of what people are expecting. But then what we want to do here is introduce that the exhibition and the subject is not just about the gadgets. The story has so many more layers to it. And it's really about a lot of this is looking at the personal cost of deception and the different aspects of it.

[00:03:42] So it's going to be a lot more nuanced than just here's lots of gadgets. So when you go through there, then sort of the exhibition opens out into a really big, wide open space where we've got the three sections, sort of open plan. So visitors can explore the different theme sections in any order. And for the exhibition at Tideblown North, what we wanted to do is make it a bit more sort of family focused, family friendly and a few more interactive elements.

[00:04:06] So also at the start, we've got something called the mission room where you can go in and get a sort of a trail so families can follow that trail round. I think that will really help with to help with wayfinding because it is a big open plan space, but also to have some activities. Sort of it's got a map, it's got sort of puzzles to do. So that will sort of help you as a family group sort of find your way through.

[00:04:27] And then towards the end of the exhibition, there's also a briefing room where you can check your answers and find out what sort of a spy you would make and have a look at your, assess your observational skills. So there's a few more elements in there sort of to make it engaging for sort of younger visitors. But I mean, the space itself, Tideblown North, if you've been there, it's very dramatic. It's a huge wide open space. It's like very, very colourful now. It's very sort of dynamic. But there's also a few elements in there that sort of will sort of make, add a sort of an element of intrigue and mystery.

[00:04:57] So there's something like CCTV and sort of spy silhouettes. So it's sort of, it's exciting and, you know, it's like active, but it's also, there's an undercurrent of something else going on, which I think is what we wanted to get across with the subject. So Amanda, talk us through the different sections of the exhibition. So there's three main sections, and this was a way of helping us bring the content together, because obviously we cover a really big time period. So it was quite interesting. We had to try and find a way to bring all those different sort of disparate stories together.

[00:05:26] So we did that by sort of looking at different perspectives. So the first section is about using deception. So that's creating deception. So things like the development of camouflage, the D-Day deceptions, Operation Mincemeat would fit in here. The next section is looking at effectively how you would counter that. So if somebody has deceived you in some way, so looking for spies, so uncovering the spy ring. So we've got the story about the Portland spy ring will be here. And we've got the strobe postal censorship.

[00:05:54] So really looking at how you counter it, what tools are at your disposal and how tricky that can be. And also things like using double agents. So using and covering a spy and then using them as a tool against your enemy. So that's that section. And the final section is about being deceived. So that's looking at the flip side, really. So what's the impact on those people who are at the sort of the sharp end of a deception? If something goes wrong, what's the impact? And looking at some particularly focusing on some personal stories in that section.

[00:06:24] So those are the three main sections. Obviously, you can do them in any order, but it's really helped to bring things together and see sort of some similarities over time periods. Yeah, yeah. It reminded me of I've been to the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. I don't know if you've been there yourself. But what's wonderful about that place is there's a lot of sort of authentic artifacts from espionage history. And that's what I really enjoyed about this exhibition. There are quite a few authentic artifacts.

[00:06:50] And I think the layout probably might give the Spy Museum a run for its money, actually, I thought. That's nice to hear. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a fantastic exhibition. So as you were saying, it's not just about sort of spies and gadgets. It's about deception more broadly. So why was that important to frame the story that way? Well, I think there's two reasons, really. I think one thing is that if you're talking about intelligence, intelligence gathering, there's always going to be an element of deception in it because an intelligent agent

[00:07:19] might have to lie about what they're doing. They have to lie about their motives. So that's an element of deception. And then deception also involves intelligence gathering. Because if you conduct an intelligence operation in a military setting, you need your agents to find out if it's been successful or not. So the two things are sort of hand in hand. Secondly, I think for us, when we're doing an exhibition, we always want to think about what makes this an idea-blow exhibition, something that no one else could do, play on our strengths.

[00:07:46] And really, as a museum that looks at war and conflict, then we had to include military deception, because then you can talk about D-Day and the D-Day deception. You can talk about Operation Mincemeat. You can talk about it's well-intensive camouflage. So it gives all these different aspects that really our collections and our museum is very strong in, and really enabled us to sort of put that all together. And there's something like the D-Day deceptions. And you couldn't just look at the spies and the double agents without looking at their role in the wider deception operations.

[00:08:12] So I think that's why it felt like it was really important to cover the whole subject, however huge and massive and intimidating that did feel at first. The exhibition features more than 60 objects, documents and artefacts. How did you approach curating such a wide-ranging and secretive subject? Well, when I first started working on it, it was when we were developing it for London, and there was two of the curators working on it. So actually, we divvied it up, really. We took certain aspects of it, and we researched stories,

[00:08:40] and then we'd come together and talk about what we'd found and what we thought was strong and what wasn't, and then looking at what collections we had, what loans we could have. And really, it was just a matter of whittling it down then. I mean, there was so much we could have included, so many different stories. But I think we had to think about the big hitters, really, I guess. Certainly, we had a limited number of stories to fit in. So it came down to what were the stories that people knew about and had to be there,

[00:09:08] like Operation Mincemeat, but also thinking about the quieter stories that maybe were less well-known or would really play to something we had in our collection. So it was getting a nice mix between the big stories and those lesser-known ones. And were there any objects that particularly surprised or moved you during the research process? Well, I loved going to the National Archives and doing some research in their archives. I mean, I have an archives background. I trained as an archivist. So any time I get to look at original documents, then I love that.

[00:09:35] So looking at the original Operation Mincemeat papers in IJM's own collection, looking at the documents in the National Archives, particularly relating to the Portland Spire Ring, I love that. That was a treat. So I think that was one of the highlights for me. I really loved reading the book, the Dead Doubles book about the Portland Spire Ring. I think that was something for me, I really was fascinated by that. And because we had some archived material relating to the Kroger's already in the collection,

[00:10:00] we've got this business card that Peter Kroger used to use for his Antichrist book business. So I'd seen that and there was a couple of letters that, again, they had written. So I think reading the book and finding out of the biggest story, I think for me, was really, really fascinating. So I really enjoyed finding out about that story and then being able to meet Gay Surge, I think, and hearing her firsthand testimony of being sort of other, you know, really with a part of that story. So I think that was one, that was probably the main one for me.

[00:10:28] In terms of things that are moving, I mean, again, thinking in archives, I think the letter that Nooy and Iot Khan wrote to Vera Atkins, where she talks about, oh, my contacts haven't been regular, but I'm happy. And she's trying to sound upbeat, but the context of knowing what an incredibly difficult situation she was in, I think it's impossible to read that and not be sort of moved and shocked, you know, by the sentiments behind it and her positivity in what was an impossible situation, really.

[00:10:57] That letter was at the exhibition and it's kind of, it's something fascinating about seeing the handwriting of a historical figure. I don't know what it is. I mean, I was just, yeah, because she has such a sort of tragic story in a way and it was just sort of quite nice to sort of see her handwriting in the flesh, so to speak. Yeah, it's just the personal connection to the individual, isn't it? You know they've held that paper, you say they've made their words and that's a sort of a tangible touch, you know, a tangible connection to that person. It's really powerful. That's why I love working with archives and putting archives in exhibitions,

[00:11:27] because although, you know, in some ways it's just paper, but it's so much more than that. And I think it really gives you that emotional connection. Yeah, yeah, indeed. Now, espionage history often becomes sort of glamorized through fiction. How did you balance sort of the intrigue and excitement with the kind of real human cast behind these stories? Yeah, that was something that was very important for us to do. And I think it was one of the things we were also keen to do was look at the different perspectives of spying and deception.

[00:11:54] So, you know, that's sort of how we broke the exhibition up by looking at the process of creating a deception, uncovering it, but also what happens if you're on the receiving end of that. So that was very important for us to sort of cover that and not be all about his loads of amazing successes, but actually show some circumstances and situations where things went badly wrong because of human error or the others of judgment or other things or just bad luck, really. So it was important for us to show that sort of the downside and the dark side

[00:12:21] and also really to focus in on the people who did this type of work because they were so varied. You know, the type of stories we featured, the range of people and the range of skills and backgrounds they brought to it. I think that's what the subject is. One of the things that's so fascinating about the subject is there's a range of people that are involved in it. So that was very much one of the things we wanted to foreground. So, yeah, getting away from it just being about gadgets and glamour and excitement

[00:12:45] and really it comes down to being about people and what it costs and what they put into it. And one of the things that really stood out for me was sort of the creativity behind deception. The exhibition highlights artists, designers, even filmmakers who contributed to wartime deception efforts. Why do you think that creativity plays such an important role in intelligence and warfare? I mean, I think with intelligence, it probably needs people who think in slightly different ways.

[00:13:12] It's people who are, of course, I think there was a phrase about a corkscrew mind. I think one of the heads of intelligence used. So I think that's, you know, it's people who can think outside the box, be very imaginative. And I suppose with imagination and creativity, there's then a step onwards to creating an imaginary world to lying and deception and deceit. Because, as we said, deception and lying is such an important part.

[00:13:37] So it's maybe a small step from somebody who can create a new world or create a new identity to be able to then lie about something. So there's a whole range of different types of creativity. And I think that's one of the things that's so fascinating about it, to see the role that the artists played in it, for instance, in the development of camouflage, the filmmakers and all of these people who had a role to play in so many different aspects of deception. Yeah, and there's some extraordinary examples of practical deception in the exhibition from like fake trees,

[00:14:06] dummy heads from the First World War to sort of dazzle camouflage and ships and Operation Mincemeat during the Second World War. So which deception operation do you think was the most ingenious? I'm not sure it was the most ingenious, but one of the ones I was most interested in finding out about was the Secret Listeners operation, because it wasn't something I knew a great deal about. And I think it's probably one of the ones that is less well known still. And from listening to Helen Fry, who's an expert, has done lots of research on this, I was really interested in her talk about the psychology.

[00:14:35] You know, it's understanding that this was the eavesdropping operation where lots of these German generals were housed in Trent Park, and it was like a big stately home. And they thought, oh, this is entirely fitting. We should be kept in these surroundings. We should be treated to these lovely, lovely house and nice food. And so it played into their arrogance, really. And they took advantage of that by then listening into their conversations.

[00:14:59] And they even gave them a sort of a welfare officer who, again, they believed was put there to make their lives easier. But all along, he was an intelligence officer. I think that was a really interesting operation in that it had this sort of psychological element, I guess, understanding the weaknesses and taking advantage of that. Yeah, that is a fascinating one. And Trent Park is now open to the public.

[00:15:24] So you can go and sort of see some of the locations behind this deception operation. That's something I definitely want to look into in the future. It is a fascinating operation. And yeah, I was very lucky to chat with Dr. Helen Fry a few years ago about it. And it is quite amazing how that kind of worked and how Loose Lips really did mess things up for the Nazis, which is a good thing. But Operation Mincemeat has become legendary, partly because it sounds almost unbelievable.

[00:15:53] What do you think made it so effective? There's so many different aspects to it, isn't there? I mean, I was thinking again about maybe it's teamwork seems to me a really big part of Operation Mincemeat. There's the two, Montague and Chumley, working together, but also the wider team that brought that together. And then all the different experts they were able to sort of call upon. So I think there's that having that network of expertise, the team working together and really the attention to detail.

[00:16:17] I mean, we loved looking at the photos of the pocket litter, creating that persona of Major Martin, all the effort they went into thinking about, you know, his love life, his finances, and like making that sort of like person come together. So he almost felt real to them. And obviously he needed to feel real to everybody else who was going to, certainly to the people who were going to find him. So I love that attention to detail. But also I think with Operation Mincemeat sort of reading about it, you know, so many things could have gone wrong.

[00:16:44] So maybe something like an element of luck is involved because there were so many sort of little things that sort of happened that could maybe wouldn't have happened. So I think with that, it's a combination of everything just happening to work together and having the elements of luck. Let's take a break and be right back with more.

[00:17:16] The exhibition also explores the emotional and psychological side of spying, especially people living double lives. How important was it for you to foreground the sort of personal cost of deception? I think that was a theme that we really wanted to cover. And the SOE story, looking at Noor and Aya Khan, was the way we sort of really focused in on that with the SOE and the radio game,

[00:17:39] where the radios are being captured by the Nazis and they use back to sort of trick SOE in London into sending more spies. And Noor being at sort of the sharp end of being trapped there in occupied France and eventually being captured, along with obviously other agents as well. So I think we just wanted to make sure that that story was a good part of the exhibition, because looking at that human cost is so important. And I think it's also the involvement of people in spying is one of the constants over time.

[00:18:09] I mean, see, I don't work in the intelligence services, but I'm fairly sure there are still people who are working on the sharp end as intelligence agents. So people will continue to have to do this incredibly dangerous work. I mean, you know, it's still a mystery to me how people put themselves in that position. I mean, we see that with Noor. She didn't have to go and do that. She was obviously from a very pacifist background. She was a musician, creative.

[00:18:34] She seems a very unlikely person to go and do this sort of incredibly dangerous, risky job in an occupied country. But, you know, she obviously felt it was really important to her. And having the courage of your convictions, really, I think is what comes across very strongly from her story and the courage that she showed in terrible circumstances. Yeah. What do you think her story sort of tells us about courage and sacrifice in intelligence work? I suppose that maybe we sort of think about, we don't often think about those sorts of heroic stories,

[00:19:03] but the people who are doing this work are just as heroic as people on frontline battlefield action. So maybe there are people who are less obvious heroes, I guess, in any type of conflict, in any type of situation. And people voluntarily put themselves in those situations. You know, they chose to do that work. So, I mean, you know, being incredibly brave and also, you know, being willing to take that risk for something that you really believe in, I think it's very admirable.

[00:19:32] Yeah. The exhibition also examines Cold War spy rings hidden in ordinary suburban Britain. Why do those stories still fascinate people today? I mean, I live in suburbia myself and it is quite interesting. You know, you don't really get to know what your neighbours are doing. And maybe that's it. There's a sort of a fascination or a nosiness, really, in what goes on behind closed doors. And I think that story of the Portland spy ring, which is very much an ordinary suburban street, very quiet, very boring, very mundane. But then this sort of really normal looking house is concealing, aspiring.

[00:20:02] I mean, that's an incredible story. So I think that's how could you not be fascinated by that? And I think that really is for me, that's one of the highlights of the exhibition. It was something that I really enjoyed reading about because it had all the elements. You know, it had people meeting mysteriously outside, exchanging documents outside Waterloo Station. It had people's conversations being bugged. It had people stealing military secrets. It had the sort of the person who was coordinating everything with the secret identity.

[00:20:31] It has all of the elements, I think, of what we want in a classic spy story. They're awesome to come together. So I think for me, that's one of the sort of my favourite stories, really. Yeah. Yeah. The Portland spy ring is brilliant. And actually, a friend of mine who visited the exhibition in London with me realised he lived very near the actual house, which is quite interesting. He didn't know that until he went to the exhibition. One of the highlights for us, I think, was being able to talk to Gay Search and interview her.

[00:20:58] So Gay's family lived next door or over the road, I think, from this house. And so all these things were sort of unfolding. And MI5 actually used their family home to sort of watch the Kroger's, who were the sort of the couple who lived in this house, which was really sort of the hub, the communications hub, and to sort of forget to sort of, you know, know those people. And she talked really moving about the impact it had on her family, particularly her mother, who was friendly with Helen Kroger.

[00:21:27] And then finding out afterwards, this woman was completely somebody else. So I think although I can say all those things about how it was a really exciting story, but, you know, again, that brings you back to what did it cost? What was the human impact for those people? And for Gay Search, it was that her mother didn't really trust friends again, and was really sort of, you know, that sort of experience had really scarred her. So I think for any story, there's always a sort of, it's always got a dark side to it, maybe, you know, often these stories don't end happily, do they?

[00:21:56] No, and especially if you find out your close neighbour's a Russian spy or something, it definitely changes your perspective on things, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, one aspect I found especially timely was the inclusion of Bellingcat and open source intelligence investigations into the Salisbury poisoning. Why was it important to connect historical espionage with today's digital information battles? The museum does cover right up to the present day. I mean, my own specialism is in contemporary conflict.

[00:22:25] So it was really important to us for there to be a contemporary story, some contemporary angles in the exhibition to cover. But obviously, you know, there's very little out there about intelligence operations these days, as you would understand. But one of the things there is a lot of information about is open source intelligence, because it's all done in the public sphere. And obviously, the Bellingcat investigation, Salisbury poisoning, was very high profile. It's something that people had heard about. So we thought it was a good story to bring into the exhibition.

[00:22:52] And it fitted in really well in the section about uncovering espionage, because that's what Bellingcat were doing. They managed to identify who those people were. And they did it through, you know, their open source intelligence gathering, which is incredible. And in some ways, I think there are sort of parallels with what they were doing in terms of sort of scouring databases. And, you know, we've got this story in the exhibition about someone who worked in the postal censorship department. They're reading loads of telegrams.

[00:23:20] You know, probably a lot of sort of grunt work of spying and espionage is looking through a lot of data. And whether that data is in the digital sphere, and previously it was, you know, lots of paper. But I think that's one of the things you can see a continuity over time in the process of intelligence work. Yeah. And obviously now we're living in this sort of AI generated world with deepfakes and massive misinformation. So after working on this exhibition, do you think deception is becoming harder for people to detect?

[00:23:48] It was quite scary finding out about some of these elements of modern deception. I mean, deepfakes was not something I knew a great deal about, but we were very lucky to work with an academic who has been working on it. And we developed this interactive for the exhibition, which enables you to look at these deepfake faces and work out which ones are real and which ones are not. So that was really fascinating. But I think it was also interesting to find out about, as well as they're creating these things, they're also battling to find out ways to counter them.

[00:24:16] So I think that was this, with this type of aspect, this type of story, and with all sorts of intelligence work, it is definitely a balance between, you know, people are developing something, but people are working ways to counter it. So I think you have to feel relatively hopeful that however many terrifying new forms of deception are being developed, there are equally, there are just as many people working on trying to find ways to counter them. So I think we have to try and remain not too despairing. Yes, yes, indeed, indeed.

[00:24:44] Do you think visitors will lead the exhibition looking at information, media, and even everyday reality a little bit differently? And do you hope they do? Yeah, I hope these will start to sort of think about stories like, well, looking at the deep fakes will certainly be eye-opening, I think, for some people. And I think when we did an interview with Elliot Higgins from Bellingcat, what was really interesting is him talking about how he thinks that people should learn more critical thinking skills. You know, we shouldn't just absorb everything we read online. We definitely shouldn't share everything people read online.

[00:25:14] And just hoping that people are a little bit more savvy about thinking, well, I've just read this, but is it true? Is it not? Should I believe it? People looking more generally for the evidence in things. So I think maybe the more discussion there is about deep fakes, misinformation, disinformation, hopefully people become more aware of the challenges of that and a bit, you know, less willing to just believe everything they read or take everything at face value. So if people come away with that sort of feeling, then I think that will be a positive.

[00:25:43] Let's take a break and be right back with more. What do you hope visitors ultimately will take away from spies, lies, and deception? Well, I think in this new version of Idleblum North, we've tried to make it quite family friendly. So I hope that people come in a family group, they will enjoy it and like kids will enjoy

[00:26:12] the sort of the dressing up elements, doing the trail, and they'll have a fun day out and, you know, find out stuff they didn't know about. I hope that people who are already interested in the subject will find, you know, find things out that they're interested in. You know, the chance to see the original documents for French or French and mincemeat or, you know, to see some of these amazing artefacts on display if you've already got some level of knowledge. So I hope that we've managed to get the balance there for people between people who are finding

[00:26:38] out something for the first time and people who are already really interested and love the subject anyway. So hopefully they'll both types of people get something out of it. Yeah, excellent. Now the exhibition will end in August. Can you remind us when it ends? Yeah, so the exhibition is running until the 31st of August. So it's just a couple of, well, almost just over a month to come and have a look at it. So I really hope people take advantage of seeing it while it's still on IWM North. It's been great working on it over the years.

[00:27:06] So I hope people enjoy it. Fantastic. Well, I highly recommend it. Where can listeners find out more about the exhibition and plan a visit? There's information available on the museum's website. So that's iwm.org.uk. Yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you for joining me today. It's been really great chatting with you. Thank you very much for having me. Well, that is us done for today. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider buying us a coffee at buymeacoffee.com.

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[00:28:13] Thanks for listening. This is Secrets and Spies.