The Human Factor. Ishmael Jones
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without blowing Blake’s cover.
Our instructors’ experiences varied by the locations of their assignments. An old hand with a lifetime of service in Third World countries had made countless recruitments, or “scalps”—a sign of achievement and prowess, or so we thought. He didn’t agree that they were good measure of anything. “Shake a tree and the President’s cabinet would fall out,” he told us. “Get all the scalps you want. Or go find the President of the country and pay him and he’ll tell you everything he knows.”
WE LEARNED TO CREATE disguises suitable to our various features. Max’s appearance changed dramatically when his flattop haircut was hidden with a wig and his clean-shaven appearance masked with mustache and glasses. Jonah was harder to disguise because he already had bushy red hair, large glasses, and a mustache: He employed hair colorings and gels.
We practiced impersonal communications, such as dead drops, brush passes, and secret writing. I constructed concealment devices from small branches found in the park, which, when hollowed out with a knife, could hold tiny rolled-up messages. Max and Jonah scoffed at my little branches and built huge, sloppy devices, complete with glued-on pine needles and leaves. They mocked the “laziness and ineptitude” of my humble devices; I rejoined that their elaborate messes revealed simple minds.
Our secret writing materials didn’t work. The instructor figured they must have been “on the shelf” too long. In any case, I never ended up conducting much “impersonal communication.” Those techniques always seemed to be geared to agents operating in Soviet states, rather than in the conditions that prevailed around the world today. It was always more important to me to meet informants, or “agents,” in person and to receive their information in a businesslike situation, such as in an office or a hotel room. This was especially important because the agents and I usually spoke different native languages; there wasn’t a lot that could have been communicated well using impersonal methods.
We didn’t practice breaking-and-entering. The Agency’s breaking-and-entering operations were done by technicians who had undergone extensive specialized training. Max had met one of these specialists. During a period of financial strain combined with feelings of idleness and boredom, the specialist had started breaking into banks during his spare time. Max said he’d actually robbed a few before he was caught and sent to prison.
In the entryways of our safe houses, in an attempt to look like an ordinary business office, Moe had placed IN/OUT boards with fictitious names. Max rearranged the letters in the names to form new names that he found amusing. The instructors were enraged. Jonah didn’t think it was too funny, but kept Max’s identity secret. The instructors sought to deal with the name-changing by mocking the immaturity and childishness of the anonymous perpetrator. This had little effect; the names continued to change. Then the instructors threatened mass punishments; finally, they surrendered and endured it, until Max just lost interest.
JONAH OFTEN BROUGHT HIS COMPUTER in to the training safe house on weekends to work. The safe house had a burglar alarm. One Sunday, Jonah arrived, set his computer down, opened the door, set off the alarm, then realized he’d left the alarm system’s disarm code in his car. He ran to his car to get it, but when he returned the police had already responded to the alarm.
The police saw the computer outside the door, which made the situation look like a theft in progress. They tried to arrest Jonah.
“It’s okay, officers,” Jonah said. “I’m authorized to use this office. This computer belongs to me. I just forgot the alarm code and had to run back to my car to get it.”
“Can you show us some ID, sir?”
Jonah showed the policemen his identification.
“Can you show us anything that proves you have legal access to this office? Can you show us your desk?”
The policemen looked inside. Each desk was bare and the office was empty of any personal objects. There was nothing in the office that could be connected to Jonah.
“Which one are you?” The policemen pointed to the IN/OUT board that listed the names Ben Dover, I. P. Lowe, etc.
The police put Jonah in their squad car and drove him to the precinct. Fortunately, he had a phone number for Moe, who rushed down to the station and convinced the police that Jonah did have legal access to the office.
A rumor spread through HQs that Jonah had been caught trying to steal a computer. Max and I pointedly squashed the rumor whenever we heard it repeated.
SINCE WE WERE ALWAYS TO DENY that we were diplomats working for the US Department of State, my classmates and I were given details of a light cover company for use during our time in the US, prior to overseas deployments. The cover company consisted of a mailing address in a high-rise office building, plus telephone and fax numbers. When a couple of friends asked for my business contact information, I gave them these numbers. Later, a friend called one of the numbers and reached something called “Acme Office Solutions.” He asked for me.
Long pause. “Please hold.” Another pause. “No Ishmael here.”
“Well, Ishmael gave me this number. Are you sure he’s not available?”
“Sorry, no Ishmael working here.”
When I heard about this, I resolved that in the future I would test and evaluate cover company numbers before handing them out.
We prepared and practiced cover stories. If we were meeting an agent, we always had to have an excuse ready to explain why. The instructors said we had better beware, though. We might have a great cover story, but a KGB officer observing us might not even bother to ask for it. He might just see us with the agent together and figure it out.
This point was based on the apocryphal story of an American case officer working for the State Department as a diplomat who was having lunch with a Soviet weapons scientist. Their children went to the same school; his cover story was that they were discussing the school’s sports program. A KGB officer happened to walk by the restaurant, saw the American diplomat and the Soviet scientist having lunch together, and didn’t bother to look at the sports and school brochures the case officer had arrayed on the table. He saw an American diplomat meeting a Soviet scientist. It was all the information he needed to reach the correct conclusion. The KGB bundled the Soviet scientist off to Siberia.
The instructors taught us the Agency’s history with Cuban agents, a case study in bad tradecraft. The Agency had run dozens of Cuban agents over the years and in the end nearly all turned out to be double agents. Those who were real agents had been captured and imprisoned or executed by the Cuban government.7
Our case officers handled Cuban agents by connecting them in networks. This meant that bad agents had access to the identities of legitimate agents. Some legitimate Cuban agents were infiltrated on missions into Cuba straight into the arms of double agents, where they were immediately arrested. The Cuban double agents then used the communications gear of the legitimate agents to communicate false intelligence back to the Agency. The legitimate agents had been instructed to include signals within their communications to indicate they were not under duress. The signals, appearing in the communications, would mean that all was well. When communications from these agents did not contain the duress signals, thus indicating something had gone wrong, the Agency figured the Cuban agents had just forgotten them. Refusing to believe that there might be a problem, the Agency continued to send agents to their imprisonments or deaths in Cuba. When the double agents realized the Agency had figured out at last that they all worked for Cuba, their last messages to their case officers were words to the effect of “Die, capitalist pigs.”
In the aftermath of the Cuban debacle, the Cuban government produced a TV documentary. We watched it during our training class. It showed our case officers, as members of the State Department, driving around Cuba servicing dead drops, doing surveillance detection routes, and leaving signals. The Cubans had rigged cameras in trees and bushes at the places where these clandestine acts were to occur. Our people looked around furtively as they picked up or dropped off items. The documentary was narrated in a light-hearted style: “Here is John Smith from the US