The Big Book of Spy Stuff

by Bart King

  To avoid the difficulty of telling the difference between garrote wires, remember that if someone walks up behind you, there is a good chance they will cast a shadow. This will give you a chance to disarm the attacker before the attack. (Using this method, I just disarmed a waiter of a diet soda while waiting for my lunch.)

  If it seems like I’m making this sound too easy, I’m not! It turns out that lots of ninjas have been sort of dorky. For example, a whole group of ninjas once tried to kill General Oda Nobunaga by shooting a cannon at him. The general was RIGHT in front of the cannon. They couldn’t miss!

  The ninjas missed.

  This was because the ninja’s usual job was spying and sneaking around in disguise, not killing people. And the disguises the ninjas wore were NOT black pajamas. That would be sort of a giveaway! Instead, ninjas wore farmer outfits or the uniforms of the enemy army. (One of the only successful ninja assassinations occurred when the ninja dressed as a young girl!)

  The legend of the black pajamas began in the 1600s. Real ninjas were disappearing as the need for spies in Japan diminished. At the same time, stories about ninjas became popular. The Japanese had a popular live theater called Kabuki. In it, puppets acted out dramas while puppet-masters dressed in black outfits stood behind them. Since there was already a Japanese tradition of pretending that people in black were invisible, black became the color of choice in the new plays about fictional ninja assassins.

  So what I’m saying is that the only ninjas to wear black pajamas have been actors!

  Fake Ninja Pajamas versus real Ninja Pajamas

  But if you’re looking for a ninja making a real fashion statement, you should learn about the kunoichi. These were female ninja agents, and in addition to the usual ninja skills, they were also trained to be charming servants or entertainers. In these roles, the kunoichi could get into an enemy camp and then gather intelligence, poison the soup, and throw shuriken (“sword hidden in the hand”) at anybody who annoyed them!

  Plus, imagine this situation. A Japanese warlord comes upon a young woman holding a fan up to her face and weeping on the side of the road. Since men are usually more suspicious of MEN, the warlord pauses to see what’s wrong.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks while leaning off his horse.

  With a lightning-like flip, the woman flips the fan, cuts off the warlord’s head, and disappears in the confusion that follows. She was a kunoichi with a razor-sharp fan! And her plan was totally simple, which shows what a pro she was.Because as you know, the cleverer an assassin tries to be, the more likely something will go wrong.

  For example, let’s say you come up with a spray gun that shoots a poisonous cyanide gas. Brilliant! There won’t be any shell casings for the police to use as clues. (That’s why notorious Russian agent Bogdan Stashinsky used this method.) However, this could lead to a problem:

  Assassin(muttering): I’ll aim the poison spray gun at my victim, and voilà!

  Unsuspecting Victim:Hmm, the wind has shifted directions!

  Assassin:Can’t...breathe—Urk!

  Clearly, assassins are sometimes just too clever for their own good. For example, in 1960, the CIA prepared a tube of poison toothpaste. It was to be slipped into the bathroom of the prime minister of the Congo. The CIA chief in the Congo vetoed the plan, but still—death by toothpaste? What next, razor-sharp dental floss?

  “It’s for you.”

  Some villains are so mean, their assassination seems only fair. This may be true in the case of Yahya Ayyash. As the main bomb-builder for a Mideast terrorist group, Ayyash was responsible for the deaths of over a hundred innocent Israeli civilians. (His skill with explosives earned him the nickname “The Engineer.”)

  To rid themselves of The Engineer, Israeli agents came up with a plan. In 1996, they made a bugged cell phone that was also loaded with explosives. The agents then tricked a friend of Ayyash’s into giving him the phone. And since the phone’s bug revealed when the terrorist was speaking into it, the Israeli agents knew when to activate. And they did.

  The White Death

  In 2010, the CIA fired a drone missile the size of a violin at a terrorist in Pakistan. The missile was directed by agents outside of the country as it successfully hit its target. This changed the world of assassination forever. After all, now an assassin could be located in a different continent from his quarry!

  I wonder what Simo Häyhä would make of that. He was a farmer living in Finland when Russia invaded his country in 1939. To defend his homeland, Häyhä became a sniper. Dressed in white to blend in with the Finnish winter, Häyhä went off into the woods and started picking off enemy soldiers. And despite the fact that he was only about five feet tall, Häyhä soon became the greatest sniper of all time! Not only was he an amazing shot, but he had a number of tricks for staying hidden from the enemy. For instance, Häyhä held snow in his mouth while in the field, so that when he was breathing, the steam of his breath would not give away his location.

  And in just over three months, Häyhä shot and killed between 700 and 800 Russian soldiers. The Russians were terrified! They nicknamed Häyhä “The White Death” and sent special squads out to kill him. Those IDIOTS. You can’t kill the White Death! So, the anti-Häyhä squads never returned. Can you guess why?[12]

  Finally, Häyhä caught a Russian bullet in the head. The timing of this was odd because he was found the same day that peace was declared between Finland and Russia. Anyway, Häyhä shouldn’t have survived his wound. After all, when he was found, he was missing the entire left side of his face. But that’s nothing to the White Death! Häyhä was not only nursed back to health but went on to live until he was 97 years old.

  The Assassin with a Heart

  Let’s end with a feel-good story. Nikolai Khokhlov was a trained Russian assassin who was assigned to kill a man named Georgi Okolovich, an anti-Communist living in Germany. Khokhlov was armed for the job with an unusual gun: it was electrically operated, made no more noise than the snap of your fingers, fit inside a cigarette case, and fired poison-tipped bullets that might lead a coroner to think the victim had died of heart failure.

  In 1954, the Russian assassin knocked on Okolovich’s apartment door. There, Khokhlov confessed that he had been sent to murder him...but his wife had talked him out of it! I’d imagine that this was a strange conversation for Okolovich.

  Khokhlov:I was sent here to assassinate you, but my wife thinks it’s a bad idea.

  Okolovich:Can you come back later? Wait—don’t come back later!

  Khokhlov:Don’t worry. I have a conscience, and I’m not going to do it.

  Okolovich:Well, THAT’S nice to hear. Would you like a crumpet?

  Okolovich ended up inviting Khokhlov inside, and the two men tried to figure out what to do about the strange situation in which they found themselves. As a result of their meeting, Nikolai Khokhlov defected to the West. He gave press conferences and wrote a book (In the Name of Conscience) about his training as an assassin.

  But three years later, Khokhlov himself fell mysteriously ill. It turned out that the former assassin was himself the victim of an assassination attempt! The Russian had been poisoned by a radioactive substance. (Specifically, someone had put a nuclear isotope of thallium into his cup of coffee.)

  But after getting massive blood transfusions, Khokhlov survived. He moved to California and taught at a university. The Assassin with a Heart ended up living well into the 21st century.

  * * *

  [12] Häyhä shot them.

  Secret Messages & Code-Breaking

  Spying is a game of punch and counterpunch. So if I write a secret message, you would counterpunch by trying to read it. And if I use a secret code, you’d respond by trying to decode my code. And if I lightly punched your arm because this annoys me, you’d counterpunch and give me a charley horse.

  And that isn’t fair, because a charley horse hurts WAY worse than a little punch in the arm!

  But as we’ve learned, the life of a spy
can be tough. After all, we can’t rely on ANYONE to be honest. Even ourselves! Imagine you’re sitting at home and a postcard pops through the mail slot. Picking it up (“Ooh, Hawaii!”), you see that the postcard is addressed to your sister.

  So you read it!

  You would, wouldn’t you? After all, it would be VERY tempting. Reading someone else’s messages is so irresistible that the French government created something called the Post aux Lettres in 1590. The mission of this department wasn’t to deliver the mail. It was to read everyone’s mail. (What a great job!)

  But where the French excel, American intelligence has sometimes lagged. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson even shut down the United States code-breaking operation in 1929. Stimson’s explanation for why he did this was that “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”

  Clearly, Mr. Stimson was NOT French.

  If you want to learn secrets, reading someone’s snail mail, email, or texts will do it. That’s why 2,300 years ago, Alexander the Great encouraged his soldiers to write home a LOT. Alexander then had his intelligence agents read the letters to check on troop morale.

  The spies reading this mail knew they needed to worry about their own messages home. And this led to the invention of codes. A code gives a secret meaning to the symbols in a message. And the use of codes is called cryptography.[13]

  Creepies? In the spy world, code experts are known as cryptologists, or “crippies.”

  Psst! Want to Make a Code?

  The key to this code is to start in the top left corner. Counting that letter “S” as one, count off till you hit 13. That letter is the first one of your message. Now count another 13, and that letter is the next one, and so on.

  This message is C o n v o y l e a v e s t h u r s d a y.

  Now figure out this one! [14]

  In the 5th Century BCE, the Greek tyrant Histiaeus devised a clever new way to send hidden messages. He shaved the head of one of his servants, tattooed a message on his head, and waited for the man’s hair to grow back. Then the messenger was sent on his way.

  When the courier arrived at his destination, his head was shaved again and the message was read, giving information about upcoming Persian attacks. (It was “Not Very” Instant Messaging!)

  Anyway, Histiaeus may have been the first person to use steganography, the practice of hiding one message within something else entirely. In other words, no one knows the message is there except for the person the message is FOR. In this way, steganography is better than cryptography, because an encrypted message can look suspicious. “Look at all those weird letters and symbols . . . we’d better figure them out!”

  Here’s how innocent steganography can be: An agent once secretly knitted a message into a wool sweater by using Morse code in its patterns. Now, who’s so paranoid that they’d be suspicious of a sweater? No one!

  The word “steganography” was coined by a German monk back in the 1400s. The monk wrote a book series called Steganographia. But although his books LOOKED like they were about magic, there was a whole other book about secret codes hidden within them. That means that Steganographia was itself an example of steganography!

  In 1968, a U.S. ship called the Pueblo was captured by North Korea. Its crew members were held for nearly a year. To prove they were still alive and healthy, the North Koreans took photos of the Americans. And since the North Koreans didn’t know any North American “sign” language, the U.S. crew members added a little bit of steganography to their poses. (Let’s just say the sailors were gesturing with their middle fingers!)

  More recently, a group of ten Russian spies were arrested in the United States in 2010. These spies had lived in the States for over ten years, and nobody aside from FBI agents suspected them of wrongdoing. One way the spies communicated was by embedding secret code into ordinary photos. These images were then posted on public websites like Facebook, where other spies could download and decipher them.

  This Russian spy story spawned the greatest quote in the history of the world. One of the suspects went by the name Cynthia Murphy, and she was known as a master gardener. So after the FBI arrested the spies, one of Mrs. Murphy’s neighbors said, “They couldn’t have been spies. [I mean] look what she did with the hydrangeas.” [15]

  I think that if there’s a place for hydrangeas and other flowers in spying, then there must also be a place for fashion accessories. You know, like handbags, earrings, and paperclips.

  Let me explain!

  The paperclip was invented by a man from Norway named Johann Valer. Although it might be hard for you to understand, Valer’s paperclip then became a symbol of national pride for Norwegians, sort of like an American flag button or a Union Jack T-shirt.

  During World War II, the Nazis took over Norway. That meant the Norwegians who were still secretly fighting the Nazis needed an easy way to display their loyalty. But what a challenge! Secret handshakes were out, and T-shirts saying “The Nazis conquered my country and all I got was this lousy T-shirt” seemed a little too obvious.

  But some Norwegian genius—perhaps an office supplies manager—came up with the idea of just putting a paperclip on his collar. And THAT became the secret sign that the freedom fighters used!

  There are lots of ways to put your message into code. Roman emperor Julius Caesar came up with one of the first and simplest systems. All you do is write the alphabet out. Then below it, write the alphabet out again, but start it in a different spot. In other words, for the second alphabet, you might put A below L. When writing your code, you simply substitute the letters for each other. Using this version of the Caesar cipher, M would be substituted for a B, and W would be used instead of an L.

  A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

  P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O

  Sure, it’s easy to break the Caesar cipher nowadays. But in ancient times, this code worked especially well because most people couldn’t read. (Those ninnies!) Speaking of reading, my favorite cipher method is the Book Code. First, you need a book—and, coincidentally, you’re reading one right now.

  Then, you make sure the person you’re going to send the code to has the SAME book in his or her possession. (So buy another copy of this book!)

  Open to any page and note the page number. Now look at the words on it. (I know this sounds stupid, but trust me.) The words on the page are what you’re going to use to create your message. Of course, for your message to be decoded, you will need to tell your agent where to look. So the message might read:

  264 [this is the page number]

  7/6, 9/5, 16/1, 1/4, 5/2, 4/6, 10/8 [these are the line numbers and the order of the words within the lines]

  No, Seriously. Do You Want to Make a Code or Not?

  For this easy code, all you have to do is find 26 words from a poem or song you like. Then assign each word from the lyrics a letter! To get started, I chose a 26 word poem by W. B. Yeats: “And though I would have hushed the crowd/There was no mother’s son but said/‘What is the figure in the shroud/upon a gaudy bed?’”

  This poem only has one repeated word: “the.” Since that word is repeated three times, that means I need to add two new words to the poem. (I’ve added “big” and “soft” below.) That way, each letter of the alphabet has its own corresponding letter.

  My poem’s code would look like this:

  And although I would have hushed the crowd

  A B C D E F G H

  There was no mother’s son but said,

  I J K L M N O

  “What is the figure in the shroud

  P Q R S T

  upon a big, soft, gaudy bed?”

  U V W X Y Z

  Now you have to share this code with a friend. Once you both have it, you can text or write short notes to each other. These notes will look like gibberish to anyone without the code! For example, decode this (or just look at the footnote): “Hushed-there-the but-have-big-shroud-said-but-in and-figure-have the-said-said-would.” [16]
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  Of course, invisible ink is a classic way to hide messages. When using paper for these, almost any acid, like lemon juice or vinegar, will work. (Urine has also been used for centuries, but I don’t recommend it!) The acids will weaken the fibers in the paper. And when the paper is held up to a candle or strong light, the heat will highlight these weakened portions, revealing the message. But be careful! Many secret messages have disappeared into ash because someone held the paper too close to the candle. So use a blow dryer to get your invisible writing to appear instead.

  You don’t have to have a handwritten document to use invisible ink! Try this: open a document or email on a computer. Now write a “secret message.” When you’re done, highlight your whole message and go to the word-processing tool that selects font color. Choose the white color, and watch your whole message disappear! Then send the message to your contact.