The Big Book of Spy Stuff

by Bart King

  It’s also common for paranoid people (like me!) to place a small piece of clear tape on the door and frame. That way, if an agent returns to a room and the door tape is broken, she knows someone has been in there!

  Solution: If you use the door handle, either avoid touching the powder or sprinkle new powder on it as you exit. As for the tape, note exactly where it is. Open the door. Then when you leave the room, do your best to replace the tape with a new piece. [11]

  Now you can enter the room safely, especially if the door is unlocked. But when you push the handle down or turn the knob, KEEP it pushed down or turned until you’re through the door. Then gently close it and slowly let the handle of the knob latch. Nice and quiet!

  If the door is locked, just use a key. No key? Pick the lock, already! (You’ll find lock-picking instructions on p. 783 of this book.) Right, so now you’re walking in, and you feel the small rug in front of the door give way slightly beneath your feet. Aha!

  Rolling up strips of modeling clay and putting them under a rug is yet another way of seeing if an intruder has come into a room. If you return and find that the strips of clay have been squished, it’s a giveaway!

  Solution: When you leave, carefully lift the rug, reroll any clay strips you might have squished, and step around the rug on your way out.

  Finally you approach the desk. You can see that what you’re looking for is underneath a tray of marbles. Why marbles? Because whoever set up the tray took a digital photo of exactly where the marbles are!

  Solution: Take a picture of the marbles yourself. After getting what you came for, rearrange the marbles according to the picture.

  Now you’re almost there. After moving the tray to the side, you’re ready to accomplish your act of espionage. It looks like that box of Cap’n Crunch is waiting for you! Uh-oh...you need a bowl and some milk!

  Solution: Get a bowl and some milk.

  In the event that you found something less tasty, like perhaps a secret file, you need to get it and get out. But the problem with going out the door you came in is that you can’t see through it! What if a big security guard is approaching from the other side? To detect the presence of approaching meanies, lean down and gently place your front teeth on the door handle. The best way to detect vibrations is to touch metal, and few things are as sensitive to vibrations as your teeth! Is it silly for a spy to seemingly be eating a door handle? Yes. Does this work? Yes!

  Sneaking Quietly

  So let’s say that you’re trying to move around without making a sound. Yes, that rhymes, but that’s not important now. What is important is that you’re not carrying any pocket change or keys. They jingle! And turn off your cell phone, too.

  And for goodness sakes, BE QUIET. So don’t wear wooden clogs. And avoid corduroy clothing because the fabric rubs against itself and makes noise. Some spies think wool is the quietest fabric. Other spies think NO fabric is the quietest fabric of all. (For those agents, the best disguise is no disguise...and no clothing, either!)

  Before doing any professional sneaking, you may want to practice sneaking up on animals. That’s because an animal has senses that are far more sensitive than a human. So, if you can sneak up on a cat, you can definitely sneak up on an enemy agent.

  I’m practicing this right now with our tomcat, Captain Sugarmittens. Ha! This furball is sleeping so deeply, he doesn’t realize that I’m reaching out right now to grab his tail—

  AAAH, GET HIM OFF MY FACE!!!!

  Oh, you are bad, Captain Sugarmittens. You just gave your daddy a third nostril! But at least I learned a valuable lesson. When indoors, you can avoid making floorboards and old stairs creak by stepping as close to the wall as possible. That’s how Captain Sugarmittens caught me just now.

  So THAT’S the reason why spies and cats both skulk! I mean, have you ever seen a cat go through a doorway? It stays close to the edge of the door and peers around the corner with one eye. If the coast is clear, the cat goes through but still sticks by the wall.

  Cats also like to stay close to things they can hide behind, like sofas, chairs, and larger, fatter cats. Since these cats need the exercise, let’s go OUTSIDE for the rest of this training. Now, if you ever find yourself sneaking around in woods like these, try to avoid stepping on the dry twigs—

  *crunch*

  Who was that? Mom? Timmy?

  *crunch*

  Captain Sugarmittens?

  Wait, it’s me! And if I’m trying to creep up on someone, I still haven’t given myself away yet. With dry forest floors, don’t just plod along with a crunch, crunch, crunch. Instead, try to take irregular steps. That means you might crunch, crunch, pause, slide your foot, stop for 20 seconds, crunch, etc. There are all sorts of animals out in the forest, and you might be able to fool someone listening into thinking that you’re one of them!

  Being Tailed

  Do you think you’re being followed? Maybe you are! If you’ve noticed someone near you twice in one day, it could just be a coincidence. But if you’re out and about, and you see your suspect 17 times, that’s too coincidental to be a coincidence! My guess? You’re under surveillance! Now what? Try these tactics:

  If you constantly look behind you, your tail will know that he’s been spotted. So if you’re on foot in a city, glance at shop windows to look behind you without looking behind you. Pop into a store, glance at a rack of bibs, and then pop back out. This gives you a chance to survey the whole street in both directions before setting off again.

  Try turning a corner and quickly putting on or taking off a hat or jacket. Or turn a corner and run fast for a few steps. Or turn a corner and duck into a shop or doorway.

  I guess what I’m saying here is that you need to turn a corner.

  If you spot the person who you think is following you, turn around sharply and start walking in the opposite direction. As soon as your tail’s back is to you, start running! Then turn around and see what your suspect is doing. (Note: be careful, as you’re now sprinting in one direction and looking in another.)

  The BEST way to spot a tail is to have a team (or at least one other person) working with you. The idea is that your team tails you while looking for anyone else who looks like they’re tailing you too. You can station members of your team at certain “choke-points” where flow is restricted. These choke points might be narrow sidewalks or hallways, entrances or exits, or spots where people are actually choking on food that they should have chewed more before trying to swallow.

  Vocabulary

  Dry cleaning: The process of using a team to spot a tail.

  Here’s something you already know: People who get on escalators face in the direction they’re traveling...and almost never turn around! So if you get on an escalator, go about halfway up and then quickly turn around. Did someone behind you quickly look away? They’re busted! And if a team of people is trailing you, there is probably someone in FRONT of you as well. Watch the people getting off; does anyone turn to check if you’re there or loiter at the top of the escalator? If so, they’re busted, too!

  Before you have to make any fast getaways in a car, I strongly recommend that you carry with you a dummy that CIA agents call a Jack-in-the-Box (JIB). Some JIBs are inflatable. Others are like simple robots that just show the top half of a human body and have heads that automatically turn back and forth as if looking around. Either way, from behind the car, the JIB looks like a real person. So if you’re being followed, you stop, set up the dummy and leave it in the car seat as you secretly exit from the other side.

  Exit Routes

  As you’ve been learning, making a getaway requires advance planning. This is true if you’re at home lounging in your pajamas and enjoying educational cartoons. Then suddenly, you see enemy agents closing in!

  This is the time when your organization pays off. You sprint toward the TV, open the bottom cabinet doors, and access the escape tunnel you put in months ago!

  Or perhaps you’re spending quality time at the playground. From
atop the slide, you spot a group of enemy mothers pushing strollers and closing in! You quickly slide down the slide and run to the swings.

  Getting a nearby kid to push you, you soar through the air, and leap into the sandbox. From there, you access the escape tunnel you put in months ago. Crawling through it, you finally emerge through its trapdoor, which happens to be right back at the...slide.

  Uh-oh.

  Travel Tips!

  When staying at a hotel, stay away from the ground floor. That makes it too easy for enemy agents to sneak into your room. It will also make it harder for them to throw things like stun grenades or fattening snacks through your window.

  Speaking of which, have you ever been in a hotel room that had a shared balcony with the room next door? For obvious reasons, you don’t want that kind of room. Also, avoid any room that is across from another room with higher windows. (This makes it too easy to spy on you!)

  Okay, so now you’re headed to your room. A bellhop stops you in the hallway and asks what room number you’re in. What do you do? If you’ve been paying attention, you give him a FAKE room number. That punk could be a spy! After all, bellhops are naturally suspicious...what possible job could possibly involve bells and jumping?

  Continuing, you take the elevator to the floor ABOVE your actual floor. Then you take the stairs down. Why? A spy never goes right to his destination.

  As you get settled in, you check your luggage for the doorstop you packed. These little wedges are handy to insert beneath the door when you’re in a room. That way, even if someone has a key to your room, he can’t get in!

  Okay, you’re safe and sound—wait, you left your fattening snacks in the lobby! Rats.

  There’s no sense in complaining about it, though. After all, you’re lucky to be alive...unlike the agent in the next chapter.

  * * *

  [11] Instead of using tape, people have been known to wet a long hair and stick it to the door frame. I’ve always found this disgusting! So if you see a hairy door, I recommend you leave.

  Operation Mincemeat: Based on a False Story

  Operation Mincemeat is famous for making a hero out of a dead man. That is, the man was dead BEFORE the operation began...and then he became a hero. Operation Mincemeat is also famous as the most successful intelligence operation of World War II. And it started like this: In 1943, a Spanish fisherman spotted a decomposed corpse floating in the water. Yuck! The body was handcuffed to a briefcase. Interesting!

  After the dead man was fished out of the water, he was identified as a British officer named Major William Martin. Spanish authorities opened his briefcase and found that it contained a military envelope. Really interesting! Meanwhile, British officials began sending a blizzard of messages asking for the return of the dead major’s briefcase, and ESPECIALLY any envelope inside it.

  A German spy caught word of the hubbub. He got his hands on the envelope and snuck its contents out without breaking the seal. What the spy found was a secret Allied plan to invade Europe from Greece!

  This amazing spy discovery made it all the way to Adolf Hitler’s desk. But the Germans had to be careful! They had to make sure that the Brits wouldn’t think that anyone knew their secret plan!

  So the spy returned the secret plan to the envelope and put it in the briefcase. The Spanish returned the briefcase and Major Martin’s dead body to the British. And the Germans started sending major troop reinforcements to Greece and Sardinia to fight the coming invasion.

  That’s when the British must have been tempted to yell, “SUCK-ERRRS!” You see, British spies had dumped that dead man off the coast of Spain on purpose. Why? Let me back up a little and explain.

  In 1937, intelligence agent (and future James Bond inventor) Ian Fleming read a detective story. It was about a dead man who was found carrying secret papers that turned out to be fake. When World War II began, Fleming remembered the detective story and it gave him the idea for Operation Mincemeat. The goal was to save thousands of soldiers’ lives by faking an Allied invasion at one spot but then REALLY invading at another!

  How Much? One of Ian Fleming’s spying co-workers once said, “Fleming is charming to be with, but would sell his own grandmother.”

  Following this daring plan, British agents threw the dead man overboard off of Spain. He was actually a Welshman named Glyndwr Michael and had nothing to do with spying or the war. His uniform, fake ID, and briefcase had all been carefully prepared and planted on him by British agents. And after the body was found, the frantic British attempts to get the briefcase back were all staged. The Germans had to be fooled into thinking that the British had been fooled!

  But it was the Germans that were duped in one of the biggest deceptions in all history. Because when the REAL Allied invasion happened in Italy, the German troops in Greece weren’t any help. More than 3,000 ships carrying an invasion force of 160,000 Allied soldiers landed successfully, and they had a dead man to thank for it.

  Now that you know about the trickery of Operation Mincemeat, you’re ready to learn more about something called misinformation!

  Misinformation

  Edward Lansdale was a U.S. agent who came up with an interesting way to confuse opponents: Lansdale would publicly THANK enemy leaders for their help! This would lead to conversations like this:

  Enemy Soldier: How did you help that American spy?

  Enemy Leader:I didn’t!

  Soldier:Then why did the Americans send a singing telegram just now, thanking you for your assistance?

  Leader:He is just doing that to make you suspicious of me!

  Soldier:So you DIDN’T help him?

  Leader:No! Of course not!

  Soldier:Yet I have never known a singing telegram to be wrong...

  That Edward Lansdale was a tricky one! In fact, ALL spies are tricky. A man named Peter Ustinov wrote a story about how tricky a spy’s life is. In it, a small country named Concordia is caught in a power struggle between the United States and Russia. To survive, Concordia needs to be crafty! So, to play the two countries against each other, Concordia’s spymaster tells the American ambassador that the Russians have broken the secret U.S. code.

  “We know they know our code,” the American says. “We only give them things we want them to know.”

  Concordia’s spymaster is stunned! He walks to the Russian Embassy and tells their ambassador, “The Americans know you know their code.”

  The Russian answers, “We have known for some time that the Americans knew we knew their code. We have acted accordingly—by pretending to be fooled.”

  Amazing! The spymaster then returns to the American Embassy and tells them, “The Russians know you know they know you know.”

  “What?” the American ambassador says in surprise. “Are you sure?”

  But in the crazy world of spymasters, there is no way to tell if the American ambassador is only PRETENDING to be surprised!

  This kind of tricky deception can be called misinformation. This is a lie intended to trick a person into thinking that fiction is fact. And once the mistake has been made, the result can be disastrous.

  Misinformation: The Samurai Way!

  For example, the Taira and Minamoto clans were two warring factions in medieval Japan. During a battle, the Taira sent a small group of their best samurai fighters to the front line. These fighters challenged the Minamoto to do likewise. The proposal was that only the elite samurai would battle to the death. In this way, fewer people would be fighting and lives could be saved!

  The Minamoto agreed to this idea, and they watched with great interest as their handpicked samurai fought for the clan’s honor. What the Minamoto DIDN’T see was the army of Taira warriors creeping up behind them. Or maybe the Minamoto samurai DID see them at the last second as their heads were cut off their bodies by those misinforming, sneaky Taira warriors!

  Here’s another case where a little misinformation had colossal consequences. About 200 years ago, Napoléon Bonaparte ruled France. But he
wanted more power! To help make himself look good and his opponents look bad, Napoléon had his spies forge a document supposedly written by the ruler of Russia, Peter the Great.

  In it, the fake “Peter” said that he wanted to conquer the world. Naturally, the world was very concerned about this!

  So to protect everyone from the big, bad Russian, Napoléon kindly stepped in to save the day. (Then Napoléon tried to conquer the world himself.)

  Adolf Hitler used misinformation when he created an excuse to invade Poland. In 1939, German spies faked a Polish attack on a German radio station near the Poland/Germany border. “Operation Canned Goods” involved German intelligence agents dressed in Polish uniforms entering the radio station. The fake Poles took over the radio microphone, gave a short speech encouraging Poland to attack Germany, fired a few shots, and left.