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By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 11, 2000; Page C01

We're the new CIA!

We're fun!

We've got Maxwell Smart's shoe phone! (Sorry, chief!)

We've got Emma Peel's black leather pants! (Grrrowwll . . . )

We've got Austin Powers's glasses! (Shagariffic, baby!)

You can't see any of them, though. (Not everything about the new CIA is new.)

Yesterday, the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley opened an exhibit of "spy-fi" material--props, pictures, scripts and costumes from spy movies and TV shows, principally from the 1960s.

The exhibit, which will be up through the end of the year, features about 400 items from the 4,000-piece collection of Danny Biederman, an L.A. screenwriter and author who first saw "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." on television when he was 10 years old. When star Robert Vaughn flipped open a radio disguised as a cigarette case and intoned, "Open Channel D," Biederman, 46, was hooked on the spy genre.

He has been a consultant to MGM Studios on the past three James Bond films, showing them how to get the details right. His passion, however, is collecting spy stuff. Recently the CIA--which has spy exhibits elsewhere on its mammoth campus--heard about Biederman's collection and asked him to display some of it at Langley.

Inasmuch as every visitor to the CIA requires security clearance, the display will not be open to the public. (Who knows what those fanny packs might double as?)

Solidly a member of the Nostalgia Generation, Biederman explains his collecting this way: "People want a piece of what they love. For me, it's my childhood."

The soul of this exhibit (aside from Emma Peel's black leather pants--did we mention those?--which female CIA employees guesstimate are a size 4) is Maxwell Smart's shoe phone, which is reverently displayed in a glass case on a pedestal, on a field of crushed purple velvet. Fitting for its icon status.

Biederman says he is scrupulous about verifying the authenticity of each item through interviews and document-checking and comparisons with the real items that appeared on film. And he has the footage: In pre-VCR days, he used 8mm and 16mm cameras to film spy shows on television.

Other exhibit highlights include Martin Landau's script from the first episode of "Mission: Impossible"; a poster from "Get Smart!" autographed by stars Don Adams and Barbara Feldon; Leonard Nimoy's contract for one episode of "U.N.C.L.E." (he played a villain from U.N.C.L.E.'s arch-enemy, T.H.R.U.S.H., and earned $750); and a gold sofa from the railroad car in "Wild Wild West" that carried Jim West and Artemus Gordon. And folded neatly on a bottom shelf of a glass display case are Biederman's boyhood PJs, festooned with "Man From U.N.C.L.E." logos. Yes, his pajamas.

The exhibit is part of the CIA's softening to the outside world and its efforts to build community among its formerly silent employees. The spy-fi display is considered a fun, "morale-building" exercise for its staff, officials say.

Quite different from the Cold War days, when the CIA raised its morale by overthrowing foreign governments--then going to lunch.

But that's yesterday's CIA, we're told. With no more Evil Empire to combat, much of the CIA's time these days is spent declassifying its own material, which would have been blasphemy to Eisenhower-era CIA chief Allen Dulles and his crew.

Today's CIA stays busy keeping an eye on China and North Korea and Saddam Hussein and hundreds of tin-pot dictators and computer hackers. But that's hardly swashbuckling stuff, and it's understandable for there to be some internal nostalgia for the good old days, glamorized by Hollywood.

Exhibits such as Biederman's reflect the "art imitating life/ life imitating art" elements of the spy biz, says Carlos Davis, chairman of the CIA's Fine Arts Commission (who knew?).

For instance: "Mission: Impossible" aired weekend nights on CBS from 1966 to 1973, and stars Peter Graves, Greg Morris and the rest wielded a dizzying array of gee-whiz spy toys. Everyone at the CIA, it seems, watched the show. And when one former CIA boss would come in to work on Monday mornings, Davis says, he'd ask his underlings, "How come we can't do that?" or "Did we do that, and how do they know?"

Davis's father worked for the CIA, and when the son applied to the agency, he had to list his top three influences. He wrote down: My father, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bill Cosby.

"For a young African American man, [Cosby] was the quintessential cool," says Davis about the co-star, with Robert Culp, of the '60s hit TV series "I Spy." "He had a broad intellect and a spirit of bold adventure."

Biederman certainly understands all that. He has even named his three children after fictional spies: Illya, 13, his older daughter, is named for Illya Kuryakin, one of the men from U.N.C.L.E.; Moriah Flint, 9, got her middle name from James Coburn's "Our Man Flint"; and Bond, 7--well, you get it. ("The name is Biederman. Bond Biederman.") And yes, Biederman is still married, to Bea, a dental hygienist.

He has accrued his collection largely from the prop masters who built the fake guns, pen-radios and even the resin tarantula that sat on Sean Connery's very hairy chest in "Dr. No." He also acquires items from other collectors, at studio sales and at auctions. He has been given some things; others have cost "thousands" of dollars, he says. One of the grails of spy collectors--Oddjob's steel-rimmed bowler from "Goldfinger"--recently sold in London for $110,000, way out of Biederman's price range.

The tour of his collection at the CIA inevitably leads to one item: (no, not Emma Peel's black leather pants). The brown leather cigarette-case radio he saw on TV when he was 10 years old.

For years, Biederman says, he pursued the item, even dreaming about it. One might suggest that he employed the determination and intelligence-gathering skills of a CIA operative. Finally, he tracked down a collector who thought he might have it. For weeks, he put off Biederman, who worked himself into a fine froth. Finally, he invited Biederman over to look at some of his stuff.

"Fine, fine," Biederman said, "but what about the cigarette case?"

"Oh, I threw that out three months ago."

Biederman was crushed. But ever the collector, he browsed the man's wares. As he passed a table filled with junk, a glint of gold caught his eye.

"Could it be . . . ?" he wondered.

He jammed his hand into the pile and pulled out . . . the cigarette-case radio!

"Huh," said the owner, offhandedly. "I thought I threw that away."

"It was like a miracle to me," Biederman says, as CIA employees enthusiastically pore over the displays. "There was a magic to it."