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You probably have already figured this out, but we spent yesterday at the National Cryptography Museum.

You find it off Maryland Rte 32, just before you get to Ft. Meade. It is on the grounds of NSA, the National Security Agency, which has quite a large set up, with glass office buildings (people who work in glass office buildings shouldn't throw stones) and parking lots and everything. With all that is there, you would think that they could accomplish a lot more than they seem to.

You know that you are in dangerous territory when you see three unmarked cars splayed across the road with uniformed be-rifled men staring at your and waving you to stop. He looked at me, and I at him. I blinked first and said: "We are going to the museum". He asked if we knew how to get there, and when we didn't he told us. Then he said, "let me see your driver's license". I got it out, held it to him, but not closely enough so he could possibly see it, he didn't write anything down, he just said OK, go on.

Now, I ask you, what was that about?

The museum has several rooms, and enough stuff in it for many more. It is crammed, walls floor to ceiling, cubicles, everywhere. It has some very interesting stuff, like an entire collection of German Enigma machines, and stuff about satellite spying, and encryptions done by Pitney Bowes on its postage machines, and how Japanese spies worked, and how they found out Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White and David Greenglass (and his sister, Ethel R.). Pictures of cryptographers (all very smart), Cray computers that took up rooms, Kremlin-White House hotline telephones. Everything. And a lot of words to explain it.

We had a docent tour. Our docent was formerly with SpecOps. He must have been about 80. (As we left, a friend of his came in the building and seemed very surprised to see him there. "I thought you only work Mondays", he said. Our guide was nonplussed, thinking that he was getting old and made a terrible mistake. It took them both some time to realize that it was Monday. I was not fooled; I knew all along.)

It's hard to explain our docent. It was like his speech was encrypted. The words were English, but I couldn't understand what he was saying half the time. Sentences seem to abruptly stop, many phrases to early. He would go from topic to topic, but appeared to think that he was staying right on point.

In fact, he was very much like a comic book character. "And the Japanese encryption was easy to break, and what then? WHAM!!" or "And you know what happened when they figured out where we were? WHOOSH! BAM! BLONG!" That sort of thing.

But how much of what we learned was true? These guys are taught to lie, right? For the sake of our country? Give out false information. That sort of thing.

Maybe nothing in the museum was accurate. Maybe those machines weren't Enigmas. Maybe "WHOOSH! BAM! BLONG!" really only means: read Arthurthinks.blogspot.com.