They’re known in the business as tradecraft: the ingenious techniques and devious tactics used by spies to carry out their missions without being detected.
Some of these methods have barely evolved for a century. Take signal sites, where an agent might chalk a cross on a particular wall, to indicate they’re ready to share a vital message or important documents.
They’ll do this by leaving them at pre-agreed locations, often in parks or remote areas, where one spy can deposit an item for a comrade to pick up without them ever having to meet. KGB spy John Walker, who shared US secrets for decades until he was caught in 1985, would place film in empty drinks cans and received money from Moscow the same way.
Sean Wiswesser, who only left the CIA two years ago, has spent his 30-year US intelligence career studying how spies operate in the field. No doubt he used some of these skills himself while serving as a CIA station chief in parts of the former Soviet Union (he still can’t reveal precisely where he was based). Later, he taught colleagues how to use tradecraft and ways of spotting an enemy’s work.
One Russian tactic that has existed for decades is the use of proxies: hiring outsiders to do their dirty work for them, sometimes without these people realising what they’re doing or who they’re helping. It’s make their operations harder to detect and avoids risking the lives of experienced agents.
