Peter Earnest, who helped launch spy museum, dies

Peter Earnest, a veteran of the CIA’s Cold War clandestine operations who ran agents in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, then helped promote and preserve the history of espionage while serving as the founding executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, died Feb. 13 at a hospital in Arlington, Va. He was 88.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said his wife, Karen Rice.

Through his speeches, books, interviews with journalists and leadership of the Spy Museum, Earnest helped demystify one of the world’s oldest professions, introducing people to the techniques, influence, triumphs and shortcomings of intelligence gathering around the globe.

“Unlike what you would typically expect from someone in the intelligence/spy community, in many ways he was more of an extrovert than an introvert,” said Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who got to know Earnest while appearing at museum events.

“When he was doing the programming he came across as very warm, knowledgeable and inviting — all the things you wouldn’t want for a spy agency, but you would want for a museum about spying.”

Indeed, Earnest acknowledged that his personality sometimes made it difficult to spend years working undercover. “It’s hard when you’re an open person by nature,” he told Washingtonian magazine in 2013. “In some cases, people say, ‘You don’t seem like a spy.’”

“The best spies don’t seem like spies,” he said.

Edwin Peter Earnest was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on New Year’s Day, 1934. His father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer who died of a brain tumor when Earnest was 12. His mother, who was English, became a naturalized U.S. citizen and joined the State Department, rising to become a consular affairs officer.

Earnest grew up in Bethesda, Md., graduating from nearby Georgetown Preparatory School. He studied history and government at Georgetown University, received a bachelor’s degree in 1955 and served in the Marine Corps, doing a tour in Japan.