Recent Exhibit at the International Spy Museum

Here is an interesting espionage topic featured at the International Spy Museum. 

It's an exhibit that deals with the issues and tensions in fear that we face by terrorism and the freedoms we risk losing, either giving in to terrorism or over-stepping our governmental programs. 

Title:  Spies Traitors and Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America

July 15, 2012–January 6, 2013

How should the United States balance civil liberties and individual rights during times of conflict, crisis and fear? Spies, Traitors and Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America, a creation of the International Spy Museum, explores this vital question through video, film, interactive displays and artifacts, offering an unprecedented perspective into the stories of espionage, treason, and deception that Americans have contended with since the founding days of the republic—a subject once again at the nation’s forefront since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

This provocative exhibition explores and raises questions about key events of America’s past—dramatic moments of action, often frightening, and destabilizing—when Americans have felt threatened within their own borders. Visitors will discover the governmental and public reaction, and sometimes over-reaction, that these events have prompted—the development of counterintelligence, the passing of restrictive legislation, and other internal security measures—in order to identify the enemy and keep the nation safe. At interactive stations following the themes of the exhibition—revolution, sabotage, hate, radicalism, world war, subversion, protest, extremism, and terrorism—visitors are able to record their opinions on issues of national security and civil liberties and compare their reactions to those of past Gallup polling results. Spies, Traitors, and Saboteurs both sheds light on these crucial questions and prompts visitors to challenge and discover their own beliefs and assumptions.

Photo credit: Fragment of one of the planes used to attack the World Trade Center in 2001, courtesy of the International Spy Museum.

 The Golder Family Foundation is the lead sponsor for all Special Exhibitions at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. Additional support is provided by Rotarians for Peace.