Tradecraft, as an old case officer instructor once confided, is really about personal security, hence it serves as the case officer's staff of life. If recent news reports are accurate (as at http://apnews.myway.com/article/2011http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif1121/D9R53CD80.html), this lesson is being forgotten, to the peril of Western intelligence assets, viz. spies. It needs to be relearned.
As the article suggests, the rush to gather useful operational intelligence shows signs of conflicting with the traditional mandates of tradecraft. The latter include placing a premium on avoiding patterns, eluding detection by hostile surveillance, and maintaining one's cover by leaving no detectable trace of clandestine activity. If your life depends on it, then you don't twice use the same phone or call your handler from the same location. Such actions may be convenient and expeditious, but they leave a trail -- the kind that conscientious counterintelligence staff can and will pursue at length. This appears to be precisely the kind of patient, meticulous counterintelligence work that took Hezbollah two years to uncover and shut down American and Israeli espionage networks in Lebanon.
Why was this allowed to happen? There are no easy answers. Even seasoned professionals will take shortcuts when grown complacent or pressed for time. And tradecraft takes time, as the half-day or more it may require to wind through a surveillance detection route before meeting an agent or servicing a dead drop. Under the lash of urgency, though, people who know better may skip such preliminaries, particularly if their bosses are screaming for results. Alternatively, in the absence of any recent signs of danger, a case officer may also conclude that the inconvenience imposed by tradecraft is an anachronism no longer necessary in the present milieu. Until his recruited agent disappears one day, that is.
Notwithstanding Hollywood depictions of those who practice the art of espionage as thrill seekers and life takers, one of the case officer's essential skills is the matter-of-fact instructing of his or her agent -- spy, in popular terms -- in proper tradecraft. It is not a glamorous undertaking. The case officer must teach the agent how to move, act, and talk in ways that elude scrutiny and enhance personal security. To manage this instruction credibly, however, the case officer must first begin by modeling the desired behaviors, by practicing sound tradecraft. When dealing with the likes of Hezbollah, doing anything less is a forced march to abbreviated life expectancy and, by extension, to a sharp decline in future agent recruitment. This is why there are no substitutes for good tradecraft in espionage.
-- Nick Catrantzos
Subscribe Now
AddThis
Nick Catrantzos + Tom Goff
- All Secure
- NICK CATRANTZOS is the lead author of the All Secure website and is the emeritus security director for a large public organization. He has also managed security aspects of corporate takeovers, response to international hostage situations, and finding and keeping secrets. He has been board certified in security management, licensed as a private investigator, and certified as an incident commander. He worked as a case officer for a discreet branch of public service. He protected stealth technology at Lockheed and, later, as a consulting security director for both Kroll and Control Risks, he assisted executives with workplace violence cases and with protecting VIPs and critical assets globally in volatile areas. Nick's partner, TOM GOFF, was a captain in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve and has a law degree from the University of California at Davis. He is a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, was senior editor at New York Magazine and Esquire, and has provided crisis and communications counsel to senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed, ARCO, Microsoft, Nissan, and Sony Pictures.