Spy Tips on Cayman Islands, Sniper Attacks, Moving Cars, and more…

When a spy is killed in the field, it’s often hardest on the people they were spying on. Mourning the death of someone you thought you knew is complicated enough when the spy was a trusted colleague or friend. But it’s even more difficult when they were someone you loved.

The Cayman Islands are home to only 60,000 people, but thanks to lenient tax laws, it’s the fifth-largest financial center in the world, but it’s not banking like most people are used to. Bank locations tend to not offer services like online bill pay, drive-through teller windows, or even ATMs. What they lack in modern conveniences they make up for in guaranteeing their clients complete security and anonymity.

Whether you’re a Wall Street executive looking for a tax shelter or an international criminal hiding a small fortune, it’s nearly impossible for government agencies to access your information when your bank of choice is nothing more than a number in a phone book, a sign on a window, and a sleazy banker with very white teeth.

When you want to catch a well-placed and well-protected spy, you can’t just call local police. That kind of investigation takes high-level resources and an even higher level of operational secrecy, which means you have to start with someone connected to the very top.   Click here to read more…

Spy Tips on Vulnerabilities, Recycling, Electric Fences, and more…

For a spy, the first step after identifying your enemy and finding his base of operations is listening in on his communications. This can be as simple as planting a bug in his phone or as complex as breaking into a military-grade encrypted radio. Higher security makes the job harder, but it comes with a silver lining – the tougher the security, the more valuable the information it’s protecting. If you can break in, you can be pretty sure it’s going to be worth it.

In any secure facility, the biggest vulnerabilities tend to be at the lowest salary levels. A company that will spend tens of thousands of dollars checking out senior staff will often hire janitors and window washers for 9 bucks an hour after a 20-minute interview. Getting hired is usually not too difficult, and it’s even easier to pay someone a couple grand to hand over a uniform and leave town.

One of the few businesses that still make house calls is black-market technology vendors. When someone’s paying a lot of cash for illegal weapons-systems components, they expect full service. And when your customer will settle any issues with a bullet to the head, it’s a good idea to show up in person.   Click here to read more…

Spy Tips on GPS Tracking, Friendships, Bombs, and more…

For spies, top-secret clearance is just the beginning. S.C.I. The right to view sensitive compartmentalized information is reserved for the most trusted people in the intelligence community. That kind of access comes with fewer constraints, limited oversight, and a frightening ability to do real harm.

Stoplights are one of the worst places to approach a target trained in counter-surveillance. Without having to worry about driving, their full attention is on their surroundings. They can use their mirrors to pick up tails and check the area for surveillance teams. But if you need to plant a tracker on someone who’s on the move, you have to go the extra mile.

The advantage of having a GPS tracker on a vehicle is it allows you to stay close to your target without being seen. The disadvantage a following someone without visual contact is that when they get out of their car, you’ve got to catch up in a hurry or risk losing them.

Whether it’s espionage, international gunrunning, or managing a local street gang, the preferred method of communication used by people involved in illegal activity is the burner phone. Cheap and disposable, they can be used a few times and thrown away. Which means, if you’re using one to trace someone, you’ve got to move fast.   Click here to read more…

Spy Tips on Diversions, Micro RFID Tags, Passive Security Systems, and more…

For a spy, the worst thing that can happen is to become someone else’s asset. You do anything you can to avoid it, making sure there’s nothing people can grab onto and use as leverage. You move through life unattached, keeping the world at a distance. It’s a hard way to live, but there’s a cold logic to it. Love nothing and nothing you love can be used against you. Once you violate that rule and make that connection with someone, you’ve handed your enemies the key to destroying you.

When operating without official cover in remote locations, you don’t have resources or backup if things go wrong. So it’s usually best to move fast and stay exposed for as little time as possible. It’s just a matter of figuring out what you’re up against, crossing your fingers, and getting in and out as quickly as you can.

Creating a good diversion isn’t just about making noise and firing guns. It’s about giving the enemy the impression that he’s being attacked in a way that demands the immediate attention of all his forces. Ideally, something big and very, very loud.

Information stored in a dram chip was long considered impossible to steal. It’s automatically erased when the chip’s removed. The one way to preserve the information in a dram chip is by freezing it immediately after you take it out of the computer. A quick application of compressed air from your local drug store will keep the memory intact long enough to get what you need. It’s possible but far from easy. And if you don’t want to get caught, it takes practice.   Click here to read more…

Spy Tips on Downtime, Fax Machines, Explosives, and more…

Stopping an armed convoy is a tactical nightmare. The easily accessible cars the ones in the lead and at the tail are the ones that don’t matter. The trick is getting into position to target the key vehicle before anyone realizes what you’re doing. There’s no real safe way to do it. Send the lead car into a tailspin while inserting yourself into the convoy. And you can create your own little roadblock.

Covert operative is one of the most stressful jobs there is. Like soldiers, E.R. doctors, and astronauts, spies have to schedule extended downtime for decompression. Carry that stress too long, and it’s easy to start missing details, like a strange pair of shoes under the crack of your door.

Level-3 contagion facilities are designed with massive exhaust systems to quickly remove harmful gases in case of an emergency. They’re just about the only type of ventilation shaft a full-grown man can fit into, so they can double as a vertical passageway to the next floor up. But if you have to make your own exit.

Before cellphones were invented, it was much harder to call out to an office without everyone else in the building seeing that you were on the line. Diplomatic spies in the ’80s devised an easy solution to the problem, a corded handset wired to a fax machine gives you the freedom to make calls without showing a line in use. If you can find a way to hide from the security cameras, you can call out without anyone knowing what you’re doing.   Click here to read more…

Spy Tips on Travel Writers, Ease Dropping, Problem Solving, and more…

In the intelligence community, the enemy is less likely to hide behind Kevlar and camouflage than offshore accounts and blind trusts. Once you pick up a bad guy’s money trail, though, finding them is just a matter of doing your homework. If you can find where they spend their cash, you know where they are. If you can find where they got their cash, you can figure out where they came from.

Solving the murder of a covert operative is a little different than most homicide investigations. The pool of suspects is smaller, but so are the odds that the killer got sloppy. When leads are more precious and motives more plentiful, you have to look at the case from every angle because you never know where you’ll find the killer.

Working a cover at a foreign resort isn’t about keeping a low profile it’s about having as much access as possible. Arrive in a nice car and tip extravagantly, and the service staff will open all sorts of doors for you. If you want to rub elbows with the other guests, select a cover that gives you an excuse to be social and a reason for the hotel to upgrade you to a central room. “Travel writer” usually works fine.

It’s a good idea to make use of all the hotel’s amenities. A laptop and some hacking software can get you access to the hotel’s database and give you free pay-per-view in the process.   Click here to read more…

Spy Tips on Magnetic Sensors, Private Security, Hostage Taking, and more…

In any search-and-capture operation, you have to balance speed against planning. Once you locate your target, you have a hard choice to make take too much time planning, and your target gets away. Take too little time planning, and you get yourself killed.

Most commercial security systems use magnetic sensors. When a door opens, it breaks an electrical circuit and triggers the alarm, which means defeating the system is just a matter of keeping a magnet in contact with the sensor. Unfortunately, very security-conscious people often customize systems with less-visible sensors. Like a pressure plate in the floor that silently announces your presence and gives whoever’s inside a chance to do something about it.

Businesses often use independent contractors on jobs to contain costs and limit liability. Criminals do the same thing for similar reasons. Someone who just joined the team won’t expect an equal cut of whatever you’re stealing, and if they don’t know your plans, they can’t go to the cops.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach when you begin to suspect your intelligence on an operation may have been wrong. Once you’re in, though, there’s not much you can do but keep your eyes open and figure out just how bad the situation is.   Click here to read more…

Spy Tips on Resisting Interrogation, Expertise, Distress Calls, and more…

In any investigation, leads go cold fast. It’s true for cops and even truer for spies, who tend to be after a more sophisticated class of bad guy. So if you get intelligence that the person you’re chasing hired a bomb maker who lives a few hours up the highway, you can’t afford to sit on the information. You have to move immediately.

Only the smartest, nastiest war criminals make it to old age. If you have to capture one of them, you can assume they’ll have a trick up their sleeve, like a concealed weapon, a covert escape route, or a metal floor grate rigged to electrocute any unwanted visitors.

The real experts in resisting interrogation aren’t the ones who stonewall in silence. They’re the ones who have mastered the art of talking about nothing, pretending to cooperate, throwing out endless leads. They use your need for information against you. Giving you things you want to believe.

All they’re doing is running out the clock. You’re not going to break them with more conversation you need an edge.   Click here to read more…

Spy Tips on the Caribbean, Scouting, Flares, and more…

Low-tech explosives may be clumsy and unreliable, but their simplicity makes them almost impossible to trace. Sophisticated bombs, on the other hand, are more effective but require expertise and specialized components, which means the more lethal the bomb, the more you know about the man who wants you dead.

There’s a reason that everyone from 17th-century pirates to present-day drug smugglers have operated in the Caribbean. It’s filled with tiny islands that are close to major ports but outside the reach of national laws. That said, the privacy that makes the islands great hiding places also makes them vulnerable. Your enemies may be able to hide from you, but you can hide from them just as easily.

Properly scouting a facility’s security is a two-step process. Observing the outside will tell you about its physical defenses, but to get a complete picture of your target’s manpower and security protocols, you need to get inside their walls, too.

Spies have long known it’s a good idea to bring along a fast-acting drug when you’re targeting someone for extraction. In the earliest days of espionage, that meant a rag soaked in chloroform or ether, but now it’s usually a syringe of propofol. It works quicker and has fewer side effects but shares one downside with its predecessors, you still have to get close to your target to administer the dose.   Click here to read more…

Spy Tips on Disarming, Covert Offenses, Sieges, and more…

In any surveillance operation, you have to resist the impulse to grab your target and interrogate him immediately.

As a spy, a lot of missions depend on the world not knowing you’re there. When an op involves saving someone’s life and keeping your presence unknown, you have to make their escape look credible. So if the person you’re saving is an untrained civilian, you need to make it look liked like an untrained civilian.

Spies deal with foreign agencies, dirty corporations, dirty corporations, and criminal syndicates all the time, but none of them compares to dealing with families. Asking a man to take apart his business or turn on his country is easy compared to going into a man’s home and telling him how to deal with the people he loves. It’s usually a good idea. To tell the truth.

There are dozens of ways to disarm a man with a gun, but unfortunately, they all come with a risk that the gun will go off. No matter how good you are, it’s not something you want to try with a child present. Unless you want to tell a bereaved mom that you gambled with her kid’s life, because you felt lucky.   Click here to read more…