National security

Intelligence agency unveils new weapon to deter spies — a museum

Against the backdrop of a growing wave of espionage cases involving American traitors, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) has taken the wraps off its latest weapon to combat the threat — public shaming.

At its secure offices at the Intelligence Community Campus in Bethesda, Maryland, the NCSC unveiled the “Wall of Spies Experience” museum on Tuesday.

The faces of over 135 spies who betrayed America from the Revolutionary War to the 21st Century are depicted, including Benedict Arnold, the nation’s first traitor in Colonial times, and the most damaging turncoats of modern times — Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen and Edward Snowden.

The exhibit — supplemented by items on loan from the CIA, FBI, NSA and private collections — also features some of the ingenious tools used by American traitors and other nations.

Among them are a typewriter that was bugged at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in the 1970s, the laptop used by an American engineer to spy for China in the early 2000s, and even a World War II-era German Enigma cipher machine.