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redintheledger) wrote2012-08-08 05:01 pm
redintheledger) wrote2012-08-08 05:01 pm
Entry tags:
ESPIGONAGE: Selected
Bennet, Richard M., Espionage: An Encyclopedia of Spies and Secrets, Virgin Books Ltd, London, 2002
A
ACCESS: The ability through the possession of appropriate security clearance to obtain classified information.
ACCOMMODATION ADDRESS: A ‘safe’ address – not overtly associated with intelligence activities – used by an agent to communicate with the intelligence service.
ACOUSTIC INTELLIGENCE: ACINT intelligence derived from the collection and processing of acoustic data, especially the noise ‘signatures’ of warships and underwater weapons detected by sonar.
ACTION OFFICER: The case officer designated to perform an operational act during a clandestine operation especially in hostile area.
AERIAL ESPIONAGE*: US surveillance aircraft aren’t the only ones spying over the borders of other nations. With varying levels of sophistication, dozens of countries operate aircraft to monitor their neighbours. Due to advances in technology, outfitting a standard plane with antennae and other surveillance equipment offers a relatively affordable alternative to launching expensive spy satellites. While the USA collects electronic and communications signals from virtually every corner of the globe, most countries tend to focus on their near neighbours.
AGENT: A person acting under control of an intelligence or security service to obtain or help obtain information for intelligence purposes. A person, usually a foreign national who has been recruited by a staff officer from an intelligence service to perform clandestine activities.
AGENT IN PLACE: Someone who remains in the current position while acting under the direction of a hostile intelligence service in order to obtain information.
AGENT PROVCOCATEUR: An agent who instigates incriminating overt acts by individuals or groups whom the security services already have under surveillance in order to discredit them further.
ANGEL: Slang used by intelligence officers for a member of an opposing service.
ARTIST: An artist trained in forgery working for the CIA’s technical service.
ASSESSMENT: Analysis of the reliability or validity of information, intelligence or a statement resulting from this process.
ASSET: Any resource human, technical or otherwise available to an intelligence or security for operational use.
ATOMAL: Classification used by NATO to identify Restricted Data provided by the USA to NATO.
ATTACHÉ: Military and naval attachés are officers assigned to foreign capitals as liaison with those nations’ armed forces. Their duties include the overt collection of information and, if appropriate, intelligence gathering. These officers may be intelligence specialists or general service officers; however, typically all Soviet-Russian attaches are GRU or military intelligence officers.
AUDIO SURVEILLANCE: Clandestine eavesdropping procedure usually with electronic devices.
B
BABYSITTER: Intelligence slang for a bodyguard.
BACKSTOPPPING: Verification and support of COVER arrangement for an AGENT in anticipation of enquiries or other actions to test the credibility of that cover.
BANG AND BURN: Demolition and sabotage operations.
BASIC INTELLIGENCE: Fundamental, factual and largely permanently accepted information obtained from OSINT sources about a nation’s main characteristics such as its physical, social, economic, political and cultural properties.
BIOGRAPHIC LEVERAGE – BLACKMAIL: Use of secret background information to induce or blackmail a person to work for an intelligence service or a particular covert operation.
BLACK: In espionage terms, ‘black’ usually means ‘black-bag job’, slang for the surreptitious entry into an office or home to obtain files or materials illegally. Such activities have commonly been used by the major intelligence services, often to install electronic and over surveillance devices.
BLACKLIST: Counter-intelligence listing of hostile collaborators, suspects, sympathisers or politicians viewed as threatening the security of a nation of its allies.
BLACK OPS: Clandestine or covert operations not attributable to the organization carrying them out.
BLACK PROPAGANDA: Propaganda that purports to emanate from a source other than the true one and designed to undermine morale or to create tensions that can seriously destabilise an enemy nation.
BLIND DATE: A meeting by an intelligence officer with an agent at the time and place of the agent’s choosing. These are potentially dangerous, as the officer could be set up for capture or an attempt be made to ‘turn’ him.
BLOWBACK*: A disinformation or deception programme carried out by an intelligence service in a foreign country deliberately to mislead with the intention of the deception being picked up in the country of origin. Here it would further mislead; usually aimed at newspapers and broadcasters, but sometimes even at the Government itself.
BLOWN: Exposure of personnel, facility or other elements of a covert activity. The phrase is also used to describe a network of agents which has been infiltrated.
BONA FIDES: Establishing an operative’s true identity, affiliation or intentions.
BRIDGE AGNET: An agent who acts as courier or go-between a case officer to an agent in a denied area.
BRIEF ENCOUNTER: Any brief physical contact between a case officer and an agent under threat of surveillance.
BRUSH ENCOUNTER: A brief public but discreet encounter between an agent and their case officer or handler where information, documents or funds are exchanged.
BUGGING: A popular term referring to all manner of eavesdropping from telephone tapping to electronic surveillance devices.
BURN: Slang for the deliberate sacrifice of an agent in order to protect a more important intelligence asset. Quite often an agent will be burned (burnt) when there are indications that he has been compromised and often in such a manner as to reinforce the credibility of a MOLE.
C
CALL OUT SIGNAL: A method for triggering contact between the intelligence officer and the agent.
CANNON: Name given to a professional thief employed by an intelligence agency whose sole purpose is to steal back an ‘inducement’ given to an enemy agent or target in exchange for information.
CASE: An intelligence operation in its entirety or the record kept of a past operation.
CASE OFFICER: An intelligence officer who acts as a controller or handler.
CC&D: Camouflage, concealment and deception.
CELL: The lowest and most expendable group in an espionage network.
CHICKEN FEED: Information knowingly provided to an enemy intelligence service through an agent or double agent. It must be of sufficient quality to convince the recipients of its authenticity and the value of its source.
CLANSIG: Clandestine Signals Intelligence
CLASSIFIED: Classified information is defined as materials owned by, and produced by or for or under the control of, the US government that fall within one or more of the following categories: intelligence sources or methods, cryptology, military plans and vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, projects or plans relating to national security.
The classification is made by a special authority that determines that its unauthorised disclosure could reasonably be expected to result in damage to national security. Normal levels of classification include: Top Secret: information whose unauthorised disclosure could reasonably result in ‘exceptionally grave’ damage (there are a number of higher levels of Top Secret. such as ‘Cosmic’, ‘Ultra’ and so on); Secret: information whose unauthorised disclosure could reasonably result in ‘serious’ damage; Confidential; information whose unauthorised disclosure could cause damage to national security/ access to classified information at any level may also be restricted by caveats like material that is no releasable to foreign nationals or not releasable to contractors or contractors/consultants.
CLEAN: An agent or intelligence material or facility that has never actually been used for an operation and therefore probably remains unknown to an opposing intelligence agency.
CODES AND CIPHERS: A system used to obscure a message by use of a cipher or by using a mark, symbol, sound or any innocuous verse or piece of music. As important today as in the Middle Ages, they are an integral part of any secret communication, whether military or commercial. Antoine Rossignol, Louis XIV’s personal adviser on security matters, declared, ‘an unbreakable code was probably an impossibility, but a reliable code should take so long to crack that the hidden message would be useless to an enemy by the time this was achieved.’ Today’s computer generated codes, of course, can have so many possibly combinations as to make them effectively unbreakable. Indeed, the NSA devotes considerable effort to ensuring that as many as possible of the commercial codes have a ‘back door’ for government cryptographers to be able to read a wide range of commercial and private electronic communications quickly and easily.
Other commercial coding companies around the world have been brought up by compliant US computer software giants like Microsoft, or persuaded to see the light or just ‘closed down’. The USA and other members of the UKUSA network, have too much invested in the future and too many threats from terrorists and organized crime to let advances in commercial coding companies ‘blind’ the intelligence services with unbreakable codes.
COLD APPROACH: An often-risky attempt to recruit a foreign national as an agent or informer without any prior indication that the person might be receptive to such an offer. Usually made after evidence that the target is in desperate need of money, or is simply greedy or perhaps unhappy in his work or lifestyle.
COMPROMISE(D): When an operation, asset or agent is uncovered and cannot remain secret.
CONCEALMENT DEVICE: Any one of a variety of devices secretly used to store and transport materials relating to an operation.
CONFUSION AGENT: An individual dispatched to confuse the intelligence or counter-intelligence services of another country rather than to collect information.
CONTROLLER: Often used interchangeably with HANDLER. Refers to an agent’s controller, a reasonably senior officer working under diplomatic cover at the local embassy or as an illegal, operative under deep cover as, perhaps, a businessman, who controls the activities of agents or double agents in the target country.
COOKING THE BOOKS: Politicising or slanting intelligence analysis to support a particular political view or objective.
CO-OPTED AGENT: National of a country who assists willingly a foreign intelligence service.
COUNTER ESPIONAGE: Activities taken to protect secrets from foreign intelligence operations, usually in the form of surveillance and other measures taken within your own country against an external threat.
COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE: Activates conducted to disrupt foreign intelligence operations, usually in the form of active measures taken against the service or the country posing the threat.
COURIER: A reliable officer or agent detailed to transport and deliver secret documents, money or other sensitive material. They are also the links between the agents and their intelligence service controllers or handlers. They sometimes serve as ‘cut-outs’ or intermediaries who enable a network or system to work without the necessity of direct contact between the spy and those for whom they are spying. A courier’s task is often dangerous and their fate is of less importance than that of the spy or the controller; it is therefore not unknown for them to be eliminated to avoid the compromise of the controller’s cover or the exposure of the spy network.
COVER: Protective guise assumed by an individual or activity to conceal its true identity and affiliation.
COVERT ACTION OPERATION*: Activities carried out in a concealed or clandestine manner in order to make it difficult, if not impossible, to trace those activities back to the sponsoring intelligence service or nation.
COVERT AGENT: An officer or agent who carries out covert action duties.
CRACKING: Illegally gaining entry to a computer or computer network in order to do harm.
CRYPTANALYSIS: The process of converting encrypted or encoded messages into plain text without initial knowledge of the appropriate KEY.
CRYPTOGRAPHY: The science of secret writing employed in intelligence and espionage activities to send messages in such a way as to conceal the real meaning from everyone but the sender and the intended recipient.
CUT-OUTS: The mechanism or person used to create a compartment between the members of an operation but to allow them to pass material or messages securely.
D
DEAD DROP/DEAD LETTER DROP: A prearranged hidden location used for secret exchanges of packages, messages and payments. A dead drop prevents the intelligence officer and the agent from being present at the same time or a physical location where communications, documents or equipment is covertly placed for another person to collect without direct contact between the parties. Also known as a dead-letter box. These were often in such places as a hole in the wall, a piece of hollow railing or even a niche in a fallen tree trunk.
DEAD TELEPHONE: A signal or code passed via the telephone without speaking.
DEEP COVER AGENT: Permanent well prepared and well constructed cover.
DIRTY TRICKS: A whole range of intelligence operations carried out covertly, to confuse, disrupt or damage an opposing intelligence service. However, the use of dirty tricks does spill over to include the media, political parties and individuals among them. It can range from spreading false rumours about a person’s sex life or financial situation to the ‘elimination’ of a supposedly dangerous foreign leader.
DISCARD: An agent betrayed by his own intelligence service to protect a more valuable source of information.
DISINFORMATION: The creation and disinformation of misleading or false information to damage the image of the targeted nation. Developed by the KGB, such operations frequently involved forged documents designed to undermine the credibility of the USA and its allies.
DOUBLE AGENT: These are officers who turn against the intelligence service that originally recruited them and work for a foreign agency, while at the same time making the original service believe that their loyalty has not altered. There are obvious reasons (see MICE) for this behaviour, but it may indeed by simply to save the officer’s life after falling into an enemy agency’s hands, particularly if their own service remains unaware for the incident. These operations can prove to be a two-edged sword, however. For if the original service is informed by the officer of the offer to spy for a foreign agency or if the original service discover this without the officer’s knowledge then they may be used to supply false or misleading information to the foreign agency. There is a reasonable expectation that any information supplied under these circumstances will be fully accepted by the foreign agency as true.
DROP: The action of placing material in a clandestine location to be picked up by a specific individual.
DRY CLEAN: Actions taken to determine if one is under surveillance by a hostile security service.
E
EARS ONLY: Material that is so highly classified that it cannot be committed to print but only discussed orally in special facilities.
ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE*: Economic intelligence, commercial intelligence or industrial intelligence, corporate espionage or the good old private ‘spook’ are all slices from the same intelligence pie. Economic espionage is as old as greed itself. But with huge sums to be made stealing designs for computer chips and patents for hormones, the threat is growing. Rapid changes in technology are tempting many countries to try and acquire intellectual properties in underhand ways, thus bypassing the enormous costs of research and development. New global phones, faxes, voice transmissions and data on the Internet make this type of spying easier than ever. Industry analysts estimate slightly more than 85 per cent of the world’s companies with a market capitalisation of more than US $1 billion have a formal intelligence programme either to gather information on competitors or protect their own information.
ELECTRONIC WARFARE: Overall term for efforts to detect, locate, exploit, reduce or prevent an enemy’s use of the electromagnetic spectrum. It applies in differing forms to:
• Electro-Optical Intelligence (Electo-OPINT) – intelligence gathered from the optical monitoring of the electromagnetic spectrum from the ultraviolet (0.01 micrometres) through to the far infared (1000 micrometres);
• Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) – electronic intelligence (emissions other than communications, such as radar, but not including atomic detonation or radioactive sources); and
• Electronic Counter Measures (ECCM) – covers any actions taken to retain the effectiveness of one’s own use of the electromagnetic spectrum against hostile Electronic Warfare activities.
ELICITATION: The acquisition of intelligence from a person or group when the collector does not disclose the intent of the interview or conversation.
ESCAPE AND EVASION*: Techniques taught to both intelligence officers and special operations personnel on how best to escape capture in a hostile country.
ESPIONAGE*: Clandestine intelligence collection. Espionage is spying. To historians, it’s the world’s second oldest profession. To criminologists, it’s a crime against national government. To practitioners, it’s the exercise of simple tradecraft.
ESTABLISHED SOURCE: A standard or accepted source of intelligence requiring little further checking.
EXECUTIVE ACTION: Intelligence term for assassination sanction directly by an intelligence agency.
EXFILTRATE (OPERATION): A clandestine rescue operation designed to bring a defector, refugee or an operative and his or her family out of a hostile environment to a place of safety.
EXPLOITATION: Determined attempt to obtain the most information possible from any source.
EYES ONLY: Security restriction applied to documents indicating that they may only be read and should not be discussed orally except in certain restricted facilities.
F
FALSE FLAG: Approach by hostile intelligence officers who misrepresent themselves as members of a friendly intelligence service.
FERRET: Electronic intelligence collection platform, usually an aircraft or a satellite.
FIELD: British term for foreign territory, hence ‘in the field’ for an overseas operation.
FLAPS AND SEALS: The tradecraft involved when making surreptitious openings and closings of envelopes and seals on packaging.
FLOATER: A freelance agent used for a one-off or occasional intelligence operation. Usually a low-level operative such as a taxi-driver, waiter or similar.
FOOTS: Members of a surveillance team who are working on foot and riding as passengers in a car.
FORGERS BRIDGE: Technique for brace the forger’s writing hand with the fingers of his other hand as an aid to making fluid handwritten entries.
FRENCH OPENING: Technique for the surreptitious opening of an envelope by slitting one end and then restoring this cut.
FRONT: A legitimate-appearing business created by an intelligence agency or security service to provide cover for spies and their operations.
FUMIGATING: Checking premises for listening and other surveillance devices and ensuring either their removal or to neutralise them.
FUSION: The process of examining all sources of intelligence and information to derive a complete assessment of potential foreign activities, intentions and most importantly, capabilities.
G
GREY MAIL: Threat by a defendant in a trial to expose intelligence activities or other sensitive information if prosecuted.
H
HANDLER: Usually a case officer who is directly responsible for the operational activities of agents. See also CONTROLLER
HF DF: (‘Huff-Duff’) High Frequency-Direction Finding: a means of determining the direction and through the use of multiple receivers, the location of the source of radio transmissions.
HONEY TRAP: Intelligence term for a sexual entrapment operation.
HOSTILE: Service or surveillance posing an immediate threat; term used to describe the organizations and activities of the ‘opposition’ services.
HUGGER-MUGGER: Originally a British public school expression meaning close, secretive or stealthy. Often used to mean a confused or disorderly intelligence operation.
HUMINT: Human source intelligence collected by means of agents or informers.
I
ILLEGAL: An intelligence officer or agent who operates in a foreign country in the guise of a private person, often under a false identity. A KGB or SVR operative infiltrated into a target country and operating without the protection of diplomatic immunity.
IMINT: Imagery intelligence; electronically generated images. Has replaced PHOTINT or Photographic Intelligence in common usage.
IMPERSONAL COMMYNICATIONS: Secret communication techniques used between a case officer and an agent when no physical contact is possible or desired.
INDICATION AND WARNING: Intelligence activities directed to detect and report time-sensitive intelligence information relating to potential threats from hostile nations or terrorist groups against a country or its allies.
INFILTRATION: Secretly or covertly moving an operative into a target area with the idea that their presence will go undetected for the appropriate amount of time.
INTELLIGENCE: The product of collection, processing, evaluation and analysis of information concerning foreign countries or areas.
INTELLIGENCE CYCLE: Planning and direction, collection, processing, production and analysis, and dissemination or distribution make up the several parts of the process by which an agency matches production with requirements.
INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE (UK: INTELLIGENCE APPRECIATION): The appraisal of all available intelligence relating to specific requirement relating to potential hostile actions or developments.
INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: A professional member of an intelligence service.
INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT: Political ‘management’ of intelligence activities.
INTELLIGENCE PRODUCER: Intelligence service or staff that participates in the production stage of the INTELLIGENCE CYCLE and INTELLIGENCE REQUIRMENT.
INTELLIGENCE REQUIRMENT: A general or specific subject upon which intelligence is required.
INTERCEPTION OF ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: Euphemism for bugging.
INTERDEPARTMENTAL INTELLIGENCE: Synthesis of intelligence gathered by numerous agencies and departments that transcends their individual needs.
J
JACK IN THE BOX: A dummy placed in a car to deceive surveillance teams about the actual numbers of persons in the vehicle.
JIC: Joint Intelligence Centre. Draws together information from many sources within an intelligence community and acts as a distribution centre for vital intelligence.
JOINT INTELLIGENCE CENTRE (JIC): Organisation that brings the intelligence capabilities of several individual agencies under the overall direction of a single body either permanently or for a specific operation.
L
LEGAL: Intelligence agent who operates in a country using an official position such as a commercial attaché at the embassy as his cover. British SIS officers for many years were rather too easily identified as the Embassy Passport Control Officers. Legals may now be ‘declared’ to the house country.
LEGEND (cover): The complete cover story developed for an operation.
LINK ENCRYPTION: The application of online crypto-security to a communications link ensuring that all information using the system is totally encrypted.
LISTENING POST: Can be used to describe anything from a covert surveillance site in an embassy to a major monitoring site like Menwith Hill.
L PILL: A ‘lethal’ cynanide capsule issued to intelligence operatives who would prefer to take their own life rather than be caught and tortured.
M
MAIL COVER: Intelligence agency request for the mail authorities to examine the exterior only of mail addressed to a particular target in search of helpful information such as return addresses, postmarks and the like.
MAJOR DOCS: The principal identity documents used to authenticate an alias identity.
MASINT: Measurement and Signature Intelligence (techint; metric, angle, spatial wave length, time dependence modulation and hydromagnetic data; also, air and water samples.
MATINT: Materials Intelligence
MEASLES: ‘A case of the measles’. A murder or assassination carried out so efficiently by an intelligence service that death appears to have been from accidental or natural causes.
MEDICAL INTELLIGENCE*: Intelligence as the health of leaders of potential or actual hostile nations.
MICE*: The four motivations for people to become spies are usually; Money Financial problems such as being deeply in debt, having an extravagant life style or a mistress or two, are fertile grounds for agent recruitment. This has proved successful in both the Communist and Western worlds. Ideology The belief in the ultimate superiority of a political, religious or social cause has produced a large number of agents whose spying activities often end with an unforced defection. Compromise The first step in the recruitment of many agents has been to identify an element in a person’s lifestyle or a flaw in their personality that offers the chance of blackmail. Sexual, particularly homosexual, or criminal behaviour has traditionally offered the best levers. Ego Case officers are often trained specifically to appear to a target’s vulnerability to intellectual flattery in order to recruit them. The request to write articles for publication on the grounds of the candidate’s ‘expertise’ and the importance of their views. By the time the target is requested for more sensitive material they are already trapped by the lifestyle provided by the earlier payments.
MICRODOT: A photographic reduction of a secret message so small it can be hidden in plain sigh or buried under the period at the end of this sentence.
MISSION: The task, together with the purpose, that clearly indicates the action to be taken and reason therefore. In common usage, especially when applied to lower military units, a duty assigned to an individual or unit to task.
MOSCOW RULES: The ultimate tradecraft methods developed for use in the most hostile of the operational environments. During the Cold War, Moscow was considered to be the most difficult of the operating environments.
N
NAKED: Operating entirely alone and without the availability of immediate assistance.
NEED TO KNOW: A determination made by an intelligence agency to restrict the numbers of individuals entitled to hold or consult a particular classified document.
NEGATIVE INTELLIGENCE: Intelligence known to be compromised or to have been acquired by a hostile intelligence service.
NEWWORK: A group of undercover agents or illegals working in a foreign country or countries and who have a common HANDLER. Often broken down into individual and independent cells for added security.
NEWS: Usually taken to be ‘Bad News’.
NIGHTCRAWLER: A talent spotter prowls bars and night-clubs looking for government employees, military personnel etc. who can be compromised using booze, drugs or sex.
NOC: Non-offical cover.
NOTIONAL AGENT: Fictitious agent or mole, usually part of a disinformation campaign.
NUGGET: British intelligence term for money, political asylum or sexual services used as a ‘bait’ for a potential defector.
O
ONE TIME PAD (OTP): Sheets of paper or silk printed with random five-number group ciphers to be used to encode and decode enciphered messages.
OPEN SOURCE – OSINT: Open Source Intelligence (unclassified sources; sometimes OSCINT).
OPERATIONAL INTELLIGENCE (OPINTEL): Intelligence used in the planning of operations in a given region or theatre of war.
OPERATIVE: An intelligence officer or agent operating in the field.
OPSEC: Operations Security – maintaining secrecy and avoiding surveillance.
ORDER OF BATTLE – ORBAT: Intelligence describing the unit identity, strength, command structure and disposition of an opponent’s military forces.
OVERT INTELLIGENCE: Information collected openly from public or open sources such as the news media. Also known as OSINT.
OWVL: One-way-voice-link; shortwave radio link used to transmit pre-recorded enciphered messages to an operative.
P
PADDING: Additional words added to the beginning and ending of a coded message to confused enemy decryption efforts.
PATTERN: The behaviour and daily routine of an operative that makes his identity unique.
PAVEMENT ARTIST: Intelligence term for a tail or skilled street surveillance.
PERSONAL MEETING: A clandestine meeting between two operatives, always the most desirable but more risky form of communication.
PHOTOGRAPHIC INTELLIGENCE, PHOTINT: Photographic intelligence; renamed IMINT or image intelligence. Usually involving high altitude reconnaissance using spy satellites or aircraft.
PIPELINER: An intelligence or case officer who has been designated for an assignment to a station such as Moscow and is underdoing specialised tradecraft training.
PIANIST: Western intelligence term for a clandestine radio operator.
PIANO: Western intelligence term for a clandestine radio set.
PLAY BACK: False information provided to an enemy while attempting to obtain accurate information by impersonating a captured spy or by using a turned spy in clandestine radio communications. The British used this in their XX Cross System in WW2 and the Germans called it the ‘Radio Game’.
PLUMBING (PLUMBERS): The work undertaken to prepare a facility or office for a major operation, such as the planting of ‘bugs’, such work is undertaken by ‘Plumbers’.
POACHER: British intelligence term for an enemy spy who is in the area of an ongoing operation.
POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE: Information related to a foreign nation of a movement’s internal operations that could prove of assistance to one’s own government in deciding future policy.
POSTIVE VETTING: British term for a comprehensive Security Check.
PROBER: An operative assigned to test border controls before an exfiltration is mounted.
PRODUCT: The final result of an intelligence operation or espionage effort.
PROFILE: All the aspects of an operative’s or a target’s physical or individual persona.
PROVOCATION: A harassing act or procedure designed to flush out surveillance.
PROVOCATEUR: An operative sent to incite target group to action for purposes of entrapping or embarrassing them.
Q
Q CLEARANCE: US Security clearance necessary for access to restricted nuclear data or weapons material.
R
RADER INTELLIGENCE (RADINT): Intelligence gained from Radar, increasingly seen as a sub-part of Imagery Intelligence (IMINT)
RAVEN: A male agent employed to seduce either males or females in a sexual entrapment operation or sexpionage.
RECONNAISSANCE: Observation mission undertaken to acquire, by various means, information about a target of intelligence interest.
RE-DOUBLED AGENT: A double agent whose activities are discovered and is turned again by his original service.
REPRO: Making a false document.
ROLL-OUT: A surreptitious technique of rolling out the contents of a letter without opening it. It can be done with two knitting needles or a split chopstick.
ROLLED UP: When the operation goes bad and the agent is compromised.
RPV: Remotely Piloted Vehicle such as drone or UAV which is being increasingly used by the CIA, MOSSAD and a host of other countries’ intelligence and military services for relatively low cost unmanned IMINT surveillance of battlefields and sensitive areas. The most advanced RPV can give a virtually real-time image of the target.
S
SAFE HOUSE: A dwelling place or hideout unknown to the adversary. A building considered safe for use by operatives as a base of operations of a building used for interrogations or hiding a defector.
SANCTIFICATION: Blackmail for the purposes of extracting political favours from a targeted victim, often using information on a sexual, perversion or criminal activities for leverage.
SANCTION: Intelligence agency approval for a killing or assassination either for revenge or active countermeasures
SANITISE: To delete specific material or revise a report of document to prevent the identification of intelligence sources and collection methods and to falsify information sources to cover up a mishandled operation.
SCALP HUNTERS: British term for intelligence officers who specialise in defections and in differentiating genuine defectors from fakes and plants.
SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE: To obtain information providing an early warning of important modifications or new developments in weapons and methods employed by a potential or actual hostile nation.
SDR: Surveillance detection run; a route designed to disrupt or flush out counter-surveillance without alerting them to the operative’s purpose.
SECRET WRITING: Any trade craft technique employing invisible messages hidden in or on innocuous materials usually sent through the mails to accommodation addresses. This includes invisible inks and microdots among many other variations.
SECURITY: Measures taken by a military unit, an activity or installation to protect itself against all acts designed to, or that may, impair its effectiveness. With respect to classified matter, it is the condition that prevents unauthorised persons from having access to official information that is safeguarded in the interests of national security.
SETTING UP: Framing or trapping an individual by covert means. Includes sexual entrapment by male (Ravens) or female (Swallows) of diplomatic, intelligence or commercial targets.
SHEEP DIPPING: US intelligence term for camouflaging or disguising the true identity of equipment or individuals especially of miliary assets used in clandestine activities.
SHOE: Russian Intelligence service term for a passport.
SHOE MAKER: Russian Intelligence term for a forger, particularly of fake passports.
SHOPPED: British Intelligence term for an agent or individual who has been deliberately exposed to a hostile security service, occasionally for assassination rather than arrest.
SHOPWORN GOODS: Information offered by a defector or potential defector that is old, outdated or unrelated to the needs of the intelligence service to which it is being offered.
SIGINT (Signals Intelligence)*: Derived from the interception, processing and analysis of communications, electronic emissions or telemetry. Complementary to the worldwide ECHELON system and because of the nature of the sites, the SIGINT networks have remained largely unknown.
…Most of this network of stations target long-range high frequency (HF) radio. A powerful HF radio transmitter can transmit right around the world, which is why HF radio has been a major means of international communications and is still widely used by military forces and by ships and aircraft. Other stations target short-range communications – very high frequency and ultra high frequency radio (VHF and UHF) – which, among other things, are used extensively for tactical military communications within a country.
SIGNAL SITE: A prearranged fixed location – usually a public place – where an agent or intelligence officer can place a predetermined mark in order to alert the other to operational activities. The mark made at the signal site – such as a chalk marking or a piece of tape – may let one of the parties know, for example, that the dead drop has been loaded.
SILVER BULLTER: The special disguise and deception tradecraft techniques developed under Moscow rules to help the CIA penetrate the KGB’s security perimeter in Moscow.
SITREP: Situation report sent in to HQ during an operation or crisis.
SLEEPER: A deep penetration gent placed in the target country, but who does not engage in espionage activities until activated many years later and only when promotion to a sensitive position or change of work provides the right opportunity. Term used by KGB and indeed Western Intelligence Services until replaced by the use of the less specific ‘Mole’.
SOAP: Nickname for the so-called truth drug Sodium Pentothal usually known for short as ‘so-pe’.
SOURCE: Any person who furnishes intelligence information either with or without the knowledge that the information is being used for intelligence purposes. In this context, a controlled source is the employment or under the control of the intelligence activity and knows the information is to be used for intelligence purposes.
SPECIAL TASKS: Russian term for assassination, kidnapping, murder and sabotage operations.
SPONSOR: Term for an intelligence service, which provides the finance and controls an operation carried out by a friendly intelligence service or freelance agents.
SPOOK: Generic and popular term for a spy.
SPY/SPIES: Any member(s) of an intelligence agency, security or other organization engaged in covert intelligence-gathering activities on behalf of another country.
SPY SWAP: The arranged exchange of agents and intelligence officers who have been caught and then imprisoned by a hostile nation.
STAGE MANAGEMENT: A vital component to a deception operation, managing the operational stage so that all conditions and contingencies are considered; the point of view of the hostile forces, the casual observers, the physical and cultural environment etc.
STATION: A CIA base of field operations usually in a foreign location.
STEPPED-ON: Deliberate interference with radio traffic.
STERILISE: To remove material used in a clandestine operation which may compromise the sponsoring service.
STRINGER: A low-level agent who passes on useful information only when the opportunity arises.
STROLLER: An agent operating with a walkie-talkie or wired-up for a covert street surveillance operation.
SUCKING DRY: Russian term for the prolonged debriefing of an agent following an operation.
SURREPTITIOUS ENTRY UNIT: A unit in the CIA’s Technical Services whose speciality was opening locks and gaining access to secure facilities in support of audio operations.
SWEEPER: Term for an electronic-technician who examines or ‘sweeps’ an office or facility to determine whether the building as been ‘bugged’.
SWALLOW: Russian intelligence term for a female agent used for sexual entrapment in a ‘Honey Trap’ operation.
T
TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE: Intelligence for planning and conducting tactical operations at the small unit level.
TALENT SPOTTER: Performs personal reconnaissance for recruiters.
TARGET: Person, service or facility against which intelligence operations are directed.
TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY: Person, service or facility against which intelligence operations unexpectedly.
TAXI: British intelligence term for a ‘jacksie’ or a homosexual member of a sexual entrapment operation. Now most are called ‘Ladies’, ‘Sisters’ or even ‘Swallows’, using these terms in a bi-sexual way.
TECHINT: Technical intelligence (umbrella term for the technical INTs: IMINT, SIGINT and MASINT).
TELINT: Telemetry intelligence (part of MASINT intercepted telemetry from foreign missile tests).
TEMPEST: ‘Transient ElectroMagnetic Pulse Emanation Standard’. Codename for activities related to van Eck monitoring, and technology to defend against such monitoring. TEMPEST is a short name referring to investigations and studies of compromising emanations (CE). Compromising emanations are defined as unintentional intelligence-bearing signals which, if intercepted and analysed, disclose the national security information transmitted, received, handled or otherwise processed by an information-processing equipment.
Compromising emanations consist of electrical or acoustical energy unintentionally emitted by any of a great number of sources within equipment/systems which process national security information. This energy may relate to the original message or information being processed in such a way that it can lead to recovery of the plain text. Laboratory and field tests have established that such CE can be propagated through space and along nearby conductors. The interception/propagation ranges and analysis of such emanations are affected by a variety of factors, e.g. the functional design of the information processing equipment; system/equipment installation; and environmental conditions related to physical security and ambient noise. The term ‘compromising emanations’ rather than ‘radiation’ is used because the compromising signals can, and do, exist in several forms such as magnetic and/or electric field radiation, line conduction or acoustic emissions.
Which means that with the right equipment ‘they’ can read what you type, read, send or receive, from the radiation your computer gives off. ‘They’ can be outside your office or home, in a van across the road or a passive monitor could be installed covertly. So install van Eck and acoustic screens and encrypt everything you do and hope everyone else does the same. Alternatively use pen and paper.
TIMED DROP: A dead drop that will be retrieved if not picked up by the recipient after a set time period.
TINKERBELL: See TELEPHONE TAPPING
TOSSES (hand, vehicular): A tradecraft technique foe emplacing drops by tossing them while on the move. Usually only carried out in an emergency or when known to be under a degree of surveillance.
TRADECRAFT*: The methods used by the intelligence community to carry out clandestine operations. Tradecraft is any technique or trick that substantiates a view of the work as a skilled occupation or craft.
TRIPLE AGENT: An agent who serves three separate intelligence services simultaneously.
TURNED AGENT: An agent or intelligence officer ‘turned’ into a double agent.
U
UAV: Unmanned aerial vehicle (drone, usually used for reconnaissance and surveillance operations).
UNWITTING AGENT: An agent or source who provides information without knowing that the ultimate recipient is an intelligence service or without knowing that the recipient is not the service he believes it to be.
W
WALK IN: A defector who declares his intentions by walking into an official installation and asking for political asylum or volunteering to work in place.
WALKING THE CAT: US intelligence term for retracting the activities of a ‘Blown’ agent back to the beginning of an operation to see if it is possible to discover how it was compromised.
WATCH LIST: A list of persons considered of potential interest to an intelligence agency.
WEAPONS*: An intelligence officer does not normally carry a weapon, partly because its discovery by a foreign counter-intelligence or police force would be highly incriminating. Intelligence agencies do however stock and even develop weapons for the use of personnel carrying out specialised duties such as covert action officers, bodyguards and, of course, assassins.
Silenced weapons: although not used as regularly as the writers of the more lurid spy fiction would suggest, these weapons do have a definite role in the work of the modern intelligence agency. Firearms are never totally silent, although they can be made quiet enough not to attract attention. A silencer eliminates most of the sound of the muzzle blast but not, of course, the weapon’s working parts. Latest developments have seen a combination of much improved silencer techniques, partly plastic handguns like the Austrian Glock to cut down the sound of its action and the use of specially developed reduced charge cartridges to greatly reduce any unwanted noise. Such weapons have been regularly used in the past by the Soviet Intelligence Services and in particular the Israeli Mossad, who have their own specialist assassination teams, known as the Kidon. The weapons they use include a specially modified and silenced Beretta model 70, with reduced charge 7.65mm cartridges.
Other weaponry that may be found in the intelligence service armoury includes high-performance and silenced snipers rifle, concealed weapons, dart-firing pistols, crossbows, steel wired, garrottes, ‘knuckle-duster’ knives, single-shot pistols disguised as a cigarette, gas assassination pens and much more.
WET AFFAIR: Soviet/Russian term for an operation that includes a ‘killing’.
WET SQUAD: Soviet/Russian term for an assassination team.
WET WORK: Intelligence term for an intelligence operation involving a murder or assassination.
WHITE: Term for an unclassified or acknowledged classified project or for an agent who has not been identified as being involved in intelligence operations.
WINDOW DRESSING: Ancillary materials that are included in a cover story or deception operation to help convince the opposition or other casual observers that what they are observing is genuine.
Y
X
Z
ZOO: Western intelligence term for a police station.
A
ACCESS: The ability through the possession of appropriate security clearance to obtain classified information.
ACCOMMODATION ADDRESS: A ‘safe’ address – not overtly associated with intelligence activities – used by an agent to communicate with the intelligence service.
ACOUSTIC INTELLIGENCE: ACINT intelligence derived from the collection and processing of acoustic data, especially the noise ‘signatures’ of warships and underwater weapons detected by sonar.
ACTION OFFICER: The case officer designated to perform an operational act during a clandestine operation especially in hostile area.
AERIAL ESPIONAGE*: US surveillance aircraft aren’t the only ones spying over the borders of other nations. With varying levels of sophistication, dozens of countries operate aircraft to monitor their neighbours. Due to advances in technology, outfitting a standard plane with antennae and other surveillance equipment offers a relatively affordable alternative to launching expensive spy satellites. While the USA collects electronic and communications signals from virtually every corner of the globe, most countries tend to focus on their near neighbours.
AGENT: A person acting under control of an intelligence or security service to obtain or help obtain information for intelligence purposes. A person, usually a foreign national who has been recruited by a staff officer from an intelligence service to perform clandestine activities.
AGENT IN PLACE: Someone who remains in the current position while acting under the direction of a hostile intelligence service in order to obtain information.
AGENT PROVCOCATEUR: An agent who instigates incriminating overt acts by individuals or groups whom the security services already have under surveillance in order to discredit them further.
ANGEL: Slang used by intelligence officers for a member of an opposing service.
ARTIST: An artist trained in forgery working for the CIA’s technical service.
ASSESSMENT: Analysis of the reliability or validity of information, intelligence or a statement resulting from this process.
ASSET: Any resource human, technical or otherwise available to an intelligence or security for operational use.
ATOMAL: Classification used by NATO to identify Restricted Data provided by the USA to NATO.
ATTACHÉ: Military and naval attachés are officers assigned to foreign capitals as liaison with those nations’ armed forces. Their duties include the overt collection of information and, if appropriate, intelligence gathering. These officers may be intelligence specialists or general service officers; however, typically all Soviet-Russian attaches are GRU or military intelligence officers.
AUDIO SURVEILLANCE: Clandestine eavesdropping procedure usually with electronic devices.
B
BABYSITTER: Intelligence slang for a bodyguard.
BACKSTOPPPING: Verification and support of COVER arrangement for an AGENT in anticipation of enquiries or other actions to test the credibility of that cover.
BANG AND BURN: Demolition and sabotage operations.
BASIC INTELLIGENCE: Fundamental, factual and largely permanently accepted information obtained from OSINT sources about a nation’s main characteristics such as its physical, social, economic, political and cultural properties.
BIOGRAPHIC LEVERAGE – BLACKMAIL: Use of secret background information to induce or blackmail a person to work for an intelligence service or a particular covert operation.
BLACK: In espionage terms, ‘black’ usually means ‘black-bag job’, slang for the surreptitious entry into an office or home to obtain files or materials illegally. Such activities have commonly been used by the major intelligence services, often to install electronic and over surveillance devices.
BLACKLIST: Counter-intelligence listing of hostile collaborators, suspects, sympathisers or politicians viewed as threatening the security of a nation of its allies.
BLACK OPS: Clandestine or covert operations not attributable to the organization carrying them out.
BLACK PROPAGANDA: Propaganda that purports to emanate from a source other than the true one and designed to undermine morale or to create tensions that can seriously destabilise an enemy nation.
BLIND DATE: A meeting by an intelligence officer with an agent at the time and place of the agent’s choosing. These are potentially dangerous, as the officer could be set up for capture or an attempt be made to ‘turn’ him.
BLOWBACK*: A disinformation or deception programme carried out by an intelligence service in a foreign country deliberately to mislead with the intention of the deception being picked up in the country of origin. Here it would further mislead; usually aimed at newspapers and broadcasters, but sometimes even at the Government itself.
BLOWN: Exposure of personnel, facility or other elements of a covert activity. The phrase is also used to describe a network of agents which has been infiltrated.
BONA FIDES: Establishing an operative’s true identity, affiliation or intentions.
BRIDGE AGNET: An agent who acts as courier or go-between a case officer to an agent in a denied area.
BRIEF ENCOUNTER: Any brief physical contact between a case officer and an agent under threat of surveillance.
BRUSH ENCOUNTER: A brief public but discreet encounter between an agent and their case officer or handler where information, documents or funds are exchanged.
BUGGING: A popular term referring to all manner of eavesdropping from telephone tapping to electronic surveillance devices.
BURN: Slang for the deliberate sacrifice of an agent in order to protect a more important intelligence asset. Quite often an agent will be burned (burnt) when there are indications that he has been compromised and often in such a manner as to reinforce the credibility of a MOLE.
C
CALL OUT SIGNAL: A method for triggering contact between the intelligence officer and the agent.
CANNON: Name given to a professional thief employed by an intelligence agency whose sole purpose is to steal back an ‘inducement’ given to an enemy agent or target in exchange for information.
CASE: An intelligence operation in its entirety or the record kept of a past operation.
CASE OFFICER: An intelligence officer who acts as a controller or handler.
CC&D: Camouflage, concealment and deception.
CELL: The lowest and most expendable group in an espionage network.
CHICKEN FEED: Information knowingly provided to an enemy intelligence service through an agent or double agent. It must be of sufficient quality to convince the recipients of its authenticity and the value of its source.
CLANSIG: Clandestine Signals Intelligence
CLASSIFIED: Classified information is defined as materials owned by, and produced by or for or under the control of, the US government that fall within one or more of the following categories: intelligence sources or methods, cryptology, military plans and vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, projects or plans relating to national security.
The classification is made by a special authority that determines that its unauthorised disclosure could reasonably be expected to result in damage to national security. Normal levels of classification include: Top Secret: information whose unauthorised disclosure could reasonably result in ‘exceptionally grave’ damage (there are a number of higher levels of Top Secret. such as ‘Cosmic’, ‘Ultra’ and so on); Secret: information whose unauthorised disclosure could reasonably result in ‘serious’ damage; Confidential; information whose unauthorised disclosure could cause damage to national security/ access to classified information at any level may also be restricted by caveats like material that is no releasable to foreign nationals or not releasable to contractors or contractors/consultants.
CLEAN: An agent or intelligence material or facility that has never actually been used for an operation and therefore probably remains unknown to an opposing intelligence agency.
CODES AND CIPHERS: A system used to obscure a message by use of a cipher or by using a mark, symbol, sound or any innocuous verse or piece of music. As important today as in the Middle Ages, they are an integral part of any secret communication, whether military or commercial. Antoine Rossignol, Louis XIV’s personal adviser on security matters, declared, ‘an unbreakable code was probably an impossibility, but a reliable code should take so long to crack that the hidden message would be useless to an enemy by the time this was achieved.’ Today’s computer generated codes, of course, can have so many possibly combinations as to make them effectively unbreakable. Indeed, the NSA devotes considerable effort to ensuring that as many as possible of the commercial codes have a ‘back door’ for government cryptographers to be able to read a wide range of commercial and private electronic communications quickly and easily.
Other commercial coding companies around the world have been brought up by compliant US computer software giants like Microsoft, or persuaded to see the light or just ‘closed down’. The USA and other members of the UKUSA network, have too much invested in the future and too many threats from terrorists and organized crime to let advances in commercial coding companies ‘blind’ the intelligence services with unbreakable codes.
COLD APPROACH: An often-risky attempt to recruit a foreign national as an agent or informer without any prior indication that the person might be receptive to such an offer. Usually made after evidence that the target is in desperate need of money, or is simply greedy or perhaps unhappy in his work or lifestyle.
COMPROMISE(D): When an operation, asset or agent is uncovered and cannot remain secret.
CONCEALMENT DEVICE: Any one of a variety of devices secretly used to store and transport materials relating to an operation.
CONFUSION AGENT: An individual dispatched to confuse the intelligence or counter-intelligence services of another country rather than to collect information.
CONTROLLER: Often used interchangeably with HANDLER. Refers to an agent’s controller, a reasonably senior officer working under diplomatic cover at the local embassy or as an illegal, operative under deep cover as, perhaps, a businessman, who controls the activities of agents or double agents in the target country.
COOKING THE BOOKS: Politicising or slanting intelligence analysis to support a particular political view or objective.
CO-OPTED AGENT: National of a country who assists willingly a foreign intelligence service.
COUNTER ESPIONAGE: Activities taken to protect secrets from foreign intelligence operations, usually in the form of surveillance and other measures taken within your own country against an external threat.
COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE: Activates conducted to disrupt foreign intelligence operations, usually in the form of active measures taken against the service or the country posing the threat.
COURIER: A reliable officer or agent detailed to transport and deliver secret documents, money or other sensitive material. They are also the links between the agents and their intelligence service controllers or handlers. They sometimes serve as ‘cut-outs’ or intermediaries who enable a network or system to work without the necessity of direct contact between the spy and those for whom they are spying. A courier’s task is often dangerous and their fate is of less importance than that of the spy or the controller; it is therefore not unknown for them to be eliminated to avoid the compromise of the controller’s cover or the exposure of the spy network.
COVER: Protective guise assumed by an individual or activity to conceal its true identity and affiliation.
COVERT ACTION OPERATION*: Activities carried out in a concealed or clandestine manner in order to make it difficult, if not impossible, to trace those activities back to the sponsoring intelligence service or nation.
COVERT AGENT: An officer or agent who carries out covert action duties.
CRACKING: Illegally gaining entry to a computer or computer network in order to do harm.
CRYPTANALYSIS: The process of converting encrypted or encoded messages into plain text without initial knowledge of the appropriate KEY.
CRYPTOGRAPHY: The science of secret writing employed in intelligence and espionage activities to send messages in such a way as to conceal the real meaning from everyone but the sender and the intended recipient.
CUT-OUTS: The mechanism or person used to create a compartment between the members of an operation but to allow them to pass material or messages securely.
D
DEAD DROP/DEAD LETTER DROP: A prearranged hidden location used for secret exchanges of packages, messages and payments. A dead drop prevents the intelligence officer and the agent from being present at the same time or a physical location where communications, documents or equipment is covertly placed for another person to collect without direct contact between the parties. Also known as a dead-letter box. These were often in such places as a hole in the wall, a piece of hollow railing or even a niche in a fallen tree trunk.
DEAD TELEPHONE: A signal or code passed via the telephone without speaking.
DEEP COVER AGENT: Permanent well prepared and well constructed cover.
DIRTY TRICKS: A whole range of intelligence operations carried out covertly, to confuse, disrupt or damage an opposing intelligence service. However, the use of dirty tricks does spill over to include the media, political parties and individuals among them. It can range from spreading false rumours about a person’s sex life or financial situation to the ‘elimination’ of a supposedly dangerous foreign leader.
DISCARD: An agent betrayed by his own intelligence service to protect a more valuable source of information.
DISINFORMATION: The creation and disinformation of misleading or false information to damage the image of the targeted nation. Developed by the KGB, such operations frequently involved forged documents designed to undermine the credibility of the USA and its allies.
DOUBLE AGENT: These are officers who turn against the intelligence service that originally recruited them and work for a foreign agency, while at the same time making the original service believe that their loyalty has not altered. There are obvious reasons (see MICE) for this behaviour, but it may indeed by simply to save the officer’s life after falling into an enemy agency’s hands, particularly if their own service remains unaware for the incident. These operations can prove to be a two-edged sword, however. For if the original service is informed by the officer of the offer to spy for a foreign agency or if the original service discover this without the officer’s knowledge then they may be used to supply false or misleading information to the foreign agency. There is a reasonable expectation that any information supplied under these circumstances will be fully accepted by the foreign agency as true.
DROP: The action of placing material in a clandestine location to be picked up by a specific individual.
DRY CLEAN: Actions taken to determine if one is under surveillance by a hostile security service.
E
EARS ONLY: Material that is so highly classified that it cannot be committed to print but only discussed orally in special facilities.
ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE*: Economic intelligence, commercial intelligence or industrial intelligence, corporate espionage or the good old private ‘spook’ are all slices from the same intelligence pie. Economic espionage is as old as greed itself. But with huge sums to be made stealing designs for computer chips and patents for hormones, the threat is growing. Rapid changes in technology are tempting many countries to try and acquire intellectual properties in underhand ways, thus bypassing the enormous costs of research and development. New global phones, faxes, voice transmissions and data on the Internet make this type of spying easier than ever. Industry analysts estimate slightly more than 85 per cent of the world’s companies with a market capitalisation of more than US $1 billion have a formal intelligence programme either to gather information on competitors or protect their own information.
ELECTRONIC WARFARE: Overall term for efforts to detect, locate, exploit, reduce or prevent an enemy’s use of the electromagnetic spectrum. It applies in differing forms to:
• Electro-Optical Intelligence (Electo-OPINT) – intelligence gathered from the optical monitoring of the electromagnetic spectrum from the ultraviolet (0.01 micrometres) through to the far infared (1000 micrometres);
• Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) – electronic intelligence (emissions other than communications, such as radar, but not including atomic detonation or radioactive sources); and
• Electronic Counter Measures (ECCM) – covers any actions taken to retain the effectiveness of one’s own use of the electromagnetic spectrum against hostile Electronic Warfare activities.
ELICITATION: The acquisition of intelligence from a person or group when the collector does not disclose the intent of the interview or conversation.
ESCAPE AND EVASION*: Techniques taught to both intelligence officers and special operations personnel on how best to escape capture in a hostile country.
ESPIONAGE*: Clandestine intelligence collection. Espionage is spying. To historians, it’s the world’s second oldest profession. To criminologists, it’s a crime against national government. To practitioners, it’s the exercise of simple tradecraft.
ESTABLISHED SOURCE: A standard or accepted source of intelligence requiring little further checking.
EXECUTIVE ACTION: Intelligence term for assassination sanction directly by an intelligence agency.
EXFILTRATE (OPERATION): A clandestine rescue operation designed to bring a defector, refugee or an operative and his or her family out of a hostile environment to a place of safety.
EXPLOITATION: Determined attempt to obtain the most information possible from any source.
EYES ONLY: Security restriction applied to documents indicating that they may only be read and should not be discussed orally except in certain restricted facilities.
F
FALSE FLAG: Approach by hostile intelligence officers who misrepresent themselves as members of a friendly intelligence service.
FERRET: Electronic intelligence collection platform, usually an aircraft or a satellite.
FIELD: British term for foreign territory, hence ‘in the field’ for an overseas operation.
FLAPS AND SEALS: The tradecraft involved when making surreptitious openings and closings of envelopes and seals on packaging.
FLOATER: A freelance agent used for a one-off or occasional intelligence operation. Usually a low-level operative such as a taxi-driver, waiter or similar.
FOOTS: Members of a surveillance team who are working on foot and riding as passengers in a car.
FORGERS BRIDGE: Technique for brace the forger’s writing hand with the fingers of his other hand as an aid to making fluid handwritten entries.
FRENCH OPENING: Technique for the surreptitious opening of an envelope by slitting one end and then restoring this cut.
FRONT: A legitimate-appearing business created by an intelligence agency or security service to provide cover for spies and their operations.
FUMIGATING: Checking premises for listening and other surveillance devices and ensuring either their removal or to neutralise them.
FUSION: The process of examining all sources of intelligence and information to derive a complete assessment of potential foreign activities, intentions and most importantly, capabilities.
G
GREY MAIL: Threat by a defendant in a trial to expose intelligence activities or other sensitive information if prosecuted.
H
HANDLER: Usually a case officer who is directly responsible for the operational activities of agents. See also CONTROLLER
HF DF: (‘Huff-Duff’) High Frequency-Direction Finding: a means of determining the direction and through the use of multiple receivers, the location of the source of radio transmissions.
HONEY TRAP: Intelligence term for a sexual entrapment operation.
HOSTILE: Service or surveillance posing an immediate threat; term used to describe the organizations and activities of the ‘opposition’ services.
HUGGER-MUGGER: Originally a British public school expression meaning close, secretive or stealthy. Often used to mean a confused or disorderly intelligence operation.
HUMINT: Human source intelligence collected by means of agents or informers.
I
ILLEGAL: An intelligence officer or agent who operates in a foreign country in the guise of a private person, often under a false identity. A KGB or SVR operative infiltrated into a target country and operating without the protection of diplomatic immunity.
IMINT: Imagery intelligence; electronically generated images. Has replaced PHOTINT or Photographic Intelligence in common usage.
IMPERSONAL COMMYNICATIONS: Secret communication techniques used between a case officer and an agent when no physical contact is possible or desired.
INDICATION AND WARNING: Intelligence activities directed to detect and report time-sensitive intelligence information relating to potential threats from hostile nations or terrorist groups against a country or its allies.
INFILTRATION: Secretly or covertly moving an operative into a target area with the idea that their presence will go undetected for the appropriate amount of time.
INTELLIGENCE: The product of collection, processing, evaluation and analysis of information concerning foreign countries or areas.
INTELLIGENCE CYCLE: Planning and direction, collection, processing, production and analysis, and dissemination or distribution make up the several parts of the process by which an agency matches production with requirements.
INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE (UK: INTELLIGENCE APPRECIATION): The appraisal of all available intelligence relating to specific requirement relating to potential hostile actions or developments.
INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: A professional member of an intelligence service.
INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT: Political ‘management’ of intelligence activities.
INTELLIGENCE PRODUCER: Intelligence service or staff that participates in the production stage of the INTELLIGENCE CYCLE and INTELLIGENCE REQUIRMENT.
INTELLIGENCE REQUIRMENT: A general or specific subject upon which intelligence is required.
INTERCEPTION OF ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: Euphemism for bugging.
INTERDEPARTMENTAL INTELLIGENCE: Synthesis of intelligence gathered by numerous agencies and departments that transcends their individual needs.
J
JACK IN THE BOX: A dummy placed in a car to deceive surveillance teams about the actual numbers of persons in the vehicle.
JIC: Joint Intelligence Centre. Draws together information from many sources within an intelligence community and acts as a distribution centre for vital intelligence.
JOINT INTELLIGENCE CENTRE (JIC): Organisation that brings the intelligence capabilities of several individual agencies under the overall direction of a single body either permanently or for a specific operation.
L
LEGAL: Intelligence agent who operates in a country using an official position such as a commercial attaché at the embassy as his cover. British SIS officers for many years were rather too easily identified as the Embassy Passport Control Officers. Legals may now be ‘declared’ to the house country.
LEGEND (cover): The complete cover story developed for an operation.
LINK ENCRYPTION: The application of online crypto-security to a communications link ensuring that all information using the system is totally encrypted.
LISTENING POST: Can be used to describe anything from a covert surveillance site in an embassy to a major monitoring site like Menwith Hill.
L PILL: A ‘lethal’ cynanide capsule issued to intelligence operatives who would prefer to take their own life rather than be caught and tortured.
M
MAIL COVER: Intelligence agency request for the mail authorities to examine the exterior only of mail addressed to a particular target in search of helpful information such as return addresses, postmarks and the like.
MAJOR DOCS: The principal identity documents used to authenticate an alias identity.
MASINT: Measurement and Signature Intelligence (techint; metric, angle, spatial wave length, time dependence modulation and hydromagnetic data; also, air and water samples.
MATINT: Materials Intelligence
MEASLES: ‘A case of the measles’. A murder or assassination carried out so efficiently by an intelligence service that death appears to have been from accidental or natural causes.
MEDICAL INTELLIGENCE*: Intelligence as the health of leaders of potential or actual hostile nations.
MICE*: The four motivations for people to become spies are usually; Money Financial problems such as being deeply in debt, having an extravagant life style or a mistress or two, are fertile grounds for agent recruitment. This has proved successful in both the Communist and Western worlds. Ideology The belief in the ultimate superiority of a political, religious or social cause has produced a large number of agents whose spying activities often end with an unforced defection. Compromise The first step in the recruitment of many agents has been to identify an element in a person’s lifestyle or a flaw in their personality that offers the chance of blackmail. Sexual, particularly homosexual, or criminal behaviour has traditionally offered the best levers. Ego Case officers are often trained specifically to appear to a target’s vulnerability to intellectual flattery in order to recruit them. The request to write articles for publication on the grounds of the candidate’s ‘expertise’ and the importance of their views. By the time the target is requested for more sensitive material they are already trapped by the lifestyle provided by the earlier payments.
MICRODOT: A photographic reduction of a secret message so small it can be hidden in plain sigh or buried under the period at the end of this sentence.
MISSION: The task, together with the purpose, that clearly indicates the action to be taken and reason therefore. In common usage, especially when applied to lower military units, a duty assigned to an individual or unit to task.
MOSCOW RULES: The ultimate tradecraft methods developed for use in the most hostile of the operational environments. During the Cold War, Moscow was considered to be the most difficult of the operating environments.
N
NAKED: Operating entirely alone and without the availability of immediate assistance.
NEED TO KNOW: A determination made by an intelligence agency to restrict the numbers of individuals entitled to hold or consult a particular classified document.
NEGATIVE INTELLIGENCE: Intelligence known to be compromised or to have been acquired by a hostile intelligence service.
NEWWORK: A group of undercover agents or illegals working in a foreign country or countries and who have a common HANDLER. Often broken down into individual and independent cells for added security.
NEWS: Usually taken to be ‘Bad News’.
NIGHTCRAWLER: A talent spotter prowls bars and night-clubs looking for government employees, military personnel etc. who can be compromised using booze, drugs or sex.
NOC: Non-offical cover.
NOTIONAL AGENT: Fictitious agent or mole, usually part of a disinformation campaign.
NUGGET: British intelligence term for money, political asylum or sexual services used as a ‘bait’ for a potential defector.
O
ONE TIME PAD (OTP): Sheets of paper or silk printed with random five-number group ciphers to be used to encode and decode enciphered messages.
OPEN SOURCE – OSINT: Open Source Intelligence (unclassified sources; sometimes OSCINT).
OPERATIONAL INTELLIGENCE (OPINTEL): Intelligence used in the planning of operations in a given region or theatre of war.
OPERATIVE: An intelligence officer or agent operating in the field.
OPSEC: Operations Security – maintaining secrecy and avoiding surveillance.
ORDER OF BATTLE – ORBAT: Intelligence describing the unit identity, strength, command structure and disposition of an opponent’s military forces.
OVERT INTELLIGENCE: Information collected openly from public or open sources such as the news media. Also known as OSINT.
OWVL: One-way-voice-link; shortwave radio link used to transmit pre-recorded enciphered messages to an operative.
P
PADDING: Additional words added to the beginning and ending of a coded message to confused enemy decryption efforts.
PATTERN: The behaviour and daily routine of an operative that makes his identity unique.
PAVEMENT ARTIST: Intelligence term for a tail or skilled street surveillance.
PERSONAL MEETING: A clandestine meeting between two operatives, always the most desirable but more risky form of communication.
PHOTOGRAPHIC INTELLIGENCE, PHOTINT: Photographic intelligence; renamed IMINT or image intelligence. Usually involving high altitude reconnaissance using spy satellites or aircraft.
PIPELINER: An intelligence or case officer who has been designated for an assignment to a station such as Moscow and is underdoing specialised tradecraft training.
PIANIST: Western intelligence term for a clandestine radio operator.
PIANO: Western intelligence term for a clandestine radio set.
PLAY BACK: False information provided to an enemy while attempting to obtain accurate information by impersonating a captured spy or by using a turned spy in clandestine radio communications. The British used this in their XX Cross System in WW2 and the Germans called it the ‘Radio Game’.
PLUMBING (PLUMBERS): The work undertaken to prepare a facility or office for a major operation, such as the planting of ‘bugs’, such work is undertaken by ‘Plumbers’.
POACHER: British intelligence term for an enemy spy who is in the area of an ongoing operation.
POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE: Information related to a foreign nation of a movement’s internal operations that could prove of assistance to one’s own government in deciding future policy.
POSTIVE VETTING: British term for a comprehensive Security Check.
PROBER: An operative assigned to test border controls before an exfiltration is mounted.
PRODUCT: The final result of an intelligence operation or espionage effort.
PROFILE: All the aspects of an operative’s or a target’s physical or individual persona.
PROVOCATION: A harassing act or procedure designed to flush out surveillance.
PROVOCATEUR: An operative sent to incite target group to action for purposes of entrapping or embarrassing them.
Q
Q CLEARANCE: US Security clearance necessary for access to restricted nuclear data or weapons material.
R
RADER INTELLIGENCE (RADINT): Intelligence gained from Radar, increasingly seen as a sub-part of Imagery Intelligence (IMINT)
RAVEN: A male agent employed to seduce either males or females in a sexual entrapment operation or sexpionage.
RECONNAISSANCE: Observation mission undertaken to acquire, by various means, information about a target of intelligence interest.
RE-DOUBLED AGENT: A double agent whose activities are discovered and is turned again by his original service.
REPRO: Making a false document.
ROLL-OUT: A surreptitious technique of rolling out the contents of a letter without opening it. It can be done with two knitting needles or a split chopstick.
ROLLED UP: When the operation goes bad and the agent is compromised.
RPV: Remotely Piloted Vehicle such as drone or UAV which is being increasingly used by the CIA, MOSSAD and a host of other countries’ intelligence and military services for relatively low cost unmanned IMINT surveillance of battlefields and sensitive areas. The most advanced RPV can give a virtually real-time image of the target.
S
SAFE HOUSE: A dwelling place or hideout unknown to the adversary. A building considered safe for use by operatives as a base of operations of a building used for interrogations or hiding a defector.
SANCTIFICATION: Blackmail for the purposes of extracting political favours from a targeted victim, often using information on a sexual, perversion or criminal activities for leverage.
SANCTION: Intelligence agency approval for a killing or assassination either for revenge or active countermeasures
SANITISE: To delete specific material or revise a report of document to prevent the identification of intelligence sources and collection methods and to falsify information sources to cover up a mishandled operation.
SCALP HUNTERS: British term for intelligence officers who specialise in defections and in differentiating genuine defectors from fakes and plants.
SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE: To obtain information providing an early warning of important modifications or new developments in weapons and methods employed by a potential or actual hostile nation.
SDR: Surveillance detection run; a route designed to disrupt or flush out counter-surveillance without alerting them to the operative’s purpose.
SECRET WRITING: Any trade craft technique employing invisible messages hidden in or on innocuous materials usually sent through the mails to accommodation addresses. This includes invisible inks and microdots among many other variations.
SECURITY: Measures taken by a military unit, an activity or installation to protect itself against all acts designed to, or that may, impair its effectiveness. With respect to classified matter, it is the condition that prevents unauthorised persons from having access to official information that is safeguarded in the interests of national security.
SETTING UP: Framing or trapping an individual by covert means. Includes sexual entrapment by male (Ravens) or female (Swallows) of diplomatic, intelligence or commercial targets.
SHEEP DIPPING: US intelligence term for camouflaging or disguising the true identity of equipment or individuals especially of miliary assets used in clandestine activities.
SHOE: Russian Intelligence service term for a passport.
SHOE MAKER: Russian Intelligence term for a forger, particularly of fake passports.
SHOPPED: British Intelligence term for an agent or individual who has been deliberately exposed to a hostile security service, occasionally for assassination rather than arrest.
SHOPWORN GOODS: Information offered by a defector or potential defector that is old, outdated or unrelated to the needs of the intelligence service to which it is being offered.
SIGINT (Signals Intelligence)*: Derived from the interception, processing and analysis of communications, electronic emissions or telemetry. Complementary to the worldwide ECHELON system and because of the nature of the sites, the SIGINT networks have remained largely unknown.
…Most of this network of stations target long-range high frequency (HF) radio. A powerful HF radio transmitter can transmit right around the world, which is why HF radio has been a major means of international communications and is still widely used by military forces and by ships and aircraft. Other stations target short-range communications – very high frequency and ultra high frequency radio (VHF and UHF) – which, among other things, are used extensively for tactical military communications within a country.
SIGNAL SITE: A prearranged fixed location – usually a public place – where an agent or intelligence officer can place a predetermined mark in order to alert the other to operational activities. The mark made at the signal site – such as a chalk marking or a piece of tape – may let one of the parties know, for example, that the dead drop has been loaded.
SILVER BULLTER: The special disguise and deception tradecraft techniques developed under Moscow rules to help the CIA penetrate the KGB’s security perimeter in Moscow.
SITREP: Situation report sent in to HQ during an operation or crisis.
SLEEPER: A deep penetration gent placed in the target country, but who does not engage in espionage activities until activated many years later and only when promotion to a sensitive position or change of work provides the right opportunity. Term used by KGB and indeed Western Intelligence Services until replaced by the use of the less specific ‘Mole’.
SOAP: Nickname for the so-called truth drug Sodium Pentothal usually known for short as ‘so-pe’.
SOURCE: Any person who furnishes intelligence information either with or without the knowledge that the information is being used for intelligence purposes. In this context, a controlled source is the employment or under the control of the intelligence activity and knows the information is to be used for intelligence purposes.
SPECIAL TASKS: Russian term for assassination, kidnapping, murder and sabotage operations.
SPONSOR: Term for an intelligence service, which provides the finance and controls an operation carried out by a friendly intelligence service or freelance agents.
SPOOK: Generic and popular term for a spy.
SPY/SPIES: Any member(s) of an intelligence agency, security or other organization engaged in covert intelligence-gathering activities on behalf of another country.
SPY SWAP: The arranged exchange of agents and intelligence officers who have been caught and then imprisoned by a hostile nation.
STAGE MANAGEMENT: A vital component to a deception operation, managing the operational stage so that all conditions and contingencies are considered; the point of view of the hostile forces, the casual observers, the physical and cultural environment etc.
STATION: A CIA base of field operations usually in a foreign location.
STEPPED-ON: Deliberate interference with radio traffic.
STERILISE: To remove material used in a clandestine operation which may compromise the sponsoring service.
STRINGER: A low-level agent who passes on useful information only when the opportunity arises.
STROLLER: An agent operating with a walkie-talkie or wired-up for a covert street surveillance operation.
SUCKING DRY: Russian term for the prolonged debriefing of an agent following an operation.
SURREPTITIOUS ENTRY UNIT: A unit in the CIA’s Technical Services whose speciality was opening locks and gaining access to secure facilities in support of audio operations.
SWEEPER: Term for an electronic-technician who examines or ‘sweeps’ an office or facility to determine whether the building as been ‘bugged’.
SWALLOW: Russian intelligence term for a female agent used for sexual entrapment in a ‘Honey Trap’ operation.
T
TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE: Intelligence for planning and conducting tactical operations at the small unit level.
TALENT SPOTTER: Performs personal reconnaissance for recruiters.
TARGET: Person, service or facility against which intelligence operations are directed.
TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY: Person, service or facility against which intelligence operations unexpectedly.
TAXI: British intelligence term for a ‘jacksie’ or a homosexual member of a sexual entrapment operation. Now most are called ‘Ladies’, ‘Sisters’ or even ‘Swallows’, using these terms in a bi-sexual way.
TECHINT: Technical intelligence (umbrella term for the technical INTs: IMINT, SIGINT and MASINT).
TELINT: Telemetry intelligence (part of MASINT intercepted telemetry from foreign missile tests).
TEMPEST: ‘Transient ElectroMagnetic Pulse Emanation Standard’. Codename for activities related to van Eck monitoring, and technology to defend against such monitoring. TEMPEST is a short name referring to investigations and studies of compromising emanations (CE). Compromising emanations are defined as unintentional intelligence-bearing signals which, if intercepted and analysed, disclose the national security information transmitted, received, handled or otherwise processed by an information-processing equipment.
Compromising emanations consist of electrical or acoustical energy unintentionally emitted by any of a great number of sources within equipment/systems which process national security information. This energy may relate to the original message or information being processed in such a way that it can lead to recovery of the plain text. Laboratory and field tests have established that such CE can be propagated through space and along nearby conductors. The interception/propagation ranges and analysis of such emanations are affected by a variety of factors, e.g. the functional design of the information processing equipment; system/equipment installation; and environmental conditions related to physical security and ambient noise. The term ‘compromising emanations’ rather than ‘radiation’ is used because the compromising signals can, and do, exist in several forms such as magnetic and/or electric field radiation, line conduction or acoustic emissions.
Which means that with the right equipment ‘they’ can read what you type, read, send or receive, from the radiation your computer gives off. ‘They’ can be outside your office or home, in a van across the road or a passive monitor could be installed covertly. So install van Eck and acoustic screens and encrypt everything you do and hope everyone else does the same. Alternatively use pen and paper.
TIMED DROP: A dead drop that will be retrieved if not picked up by the recipient after a set time period.
TINKERBELL: See TELEPHONE TAPPING
TOSSES (hand, vehicular): A tradecraft technique foe emplacing drops by tossing them while on the move. Usually only carried out in an emergency or when known to be under a degree of surveillance.
TRADECRAFT*: The methods used by the intelligence community to carry out clandestine operations. Tradecraft is any technique or trick that substantiates a view of the work as a skilled occupation or craft.
TRIPLE AGENT: An agent who serves three separate intelligence services simultaneously.
TURNED AGENT: An agent or intelligence officer ‘turned’ into a double agent.
U
UAV: Unmanned aerial vehicle (drone, usually used for reconnaissance and surveillance operations).
UNWITTING AGENT: An agent or source who provides information without knowing that the ultimate recipient is an intelligence service or without knowing that the recipient is not the service he believes it to be.
W
WALK IN: A defector who declares his intentions by walking into an official installation and asking for political asylum or volunteering to work in place.
WALKING THE CAT: US intelligence term for retracting the activities of a ‘Blown’ agent back to the beginning of an operation to see if it is possible to discover how it was compromised.
WATCH LIST: A list of persons considered of potential interest to an intelligence agency.
WEAPONS*: An intelligence officer does not normally carry a weapon, partly because its discovery by a foreign counter-intelligence or police force would be highly incriminating. Intelligence agencies do however stock and even develop weapons for the use of personnel carrying out specialised duties such as covert action officers, bodyguards and, of course, assassins.
Silenced weapons: although not used as regularly as the writers of the more lurid spy fiction would suggest, these weapons do have a definite role in the work of the modern intelligence agency. Firearms are never totally silent, although they can be made quiet enough not to attract attention. A silencer eliminates most of the sound of the muzzle blast but not, of course, the weapon’s working parts. Latest developments have seen a combination of much improved silencer techniques, partly plastic handguns like the Austrian Glock to cut down the sound of its action and the use of specially developed reduced charge cartridges to greatly reduce any unwanted noise. Such weapons have been regularly used in the past by the Soviet Intelligence Services and in particular the Israeli Mossad, who have their own specialist assassination teams, known as the Kidon. The weapons they use include a specially modified and silenced Beretta model 70, with reduced charge 7.65mm cartridges.
Other weaponry that may be found in the intelligence service armoury includes high-performance and silenced snipers rifle, concealed weapons, dart-firing pistols, crossbows, steel wired, garrottes, ‘knuckle-duster’ knives, single-shot pistols disguised as a cigarette, gas assassination pens and much more.
WET AFFAIR: Soviet/Russian term for an operation that includes a ‘killing’.
WET SQUAD: Soviet/Russian term for an assassination team.
WET WORK: Intelligence term for an intelligence operation involving a murder or assassination.
WHITE: Term for an unclassified or acknowledged classified project or for an agent who has not been identified as being involved in intelligence operations.
WINDOW DRESSING: Ancillary materials that are included in a cover story or deception operation to help convince the opposition or other casual observers that what they are observing is genuine.
Y
X
Z
ZOO: Western intelligence term for a police station.