by Bart King
But I’ve discovered that these names are lame on purpose. The idea is that if an agency’s name is generic enough, people won’t notice that these places even exist. So spies are always on the look-out for the most boring ways to describe their offices and agencies.
My research shows that the most boring phrases in the English language are “country music,” “math homework,” and “basket expert.” So the CIA should change its name to something like the CMBE: “Country Music Basket Experts.”
Once it does this, the spy agency will become magically invisible!
So spies like boring names. Why else would they call themselves “assets”? They do, you know, as in “we have an asset in their government.” (So if you ever hit a spymaster’s agent with your foot, you’ve kicked his asset!) But if you want to keep things REALLY secret, give your spy group an INSULTING code name. For example, what if you called your agency “the Idiots”? Nobody would want to join—in fact, people would avoid you.
Suspicious Person:Hey, what are you guys talking about?
You:It’s just a meeting of the Idiots. Do you want to be an Idiot?
Suspicious Person(backing away): No thanks! I’ll see you Idiots later.
A good example of this is the Bigot List. In World War II, people in the Allied Command who had access to high-level secrets were on the Bigot List. And naturally, no one else wanted to be added to the Bigot List, so they kept their distance.
On the other hand, you might want MORE members in your secret group. If so, give it the coolest name possible! That’s what the founders of the Black Dragon Society did. This Japanese group was formed in 1901. And its leader was named the Darkside Emperor. Ooh, let me sign up! Wait, it was abolished in 1945? Rats.
And then there was the Chinese group from the late 1800s known as the Society of Harmonious Fists (a.k.a. the Boxers). Good one!
Here’s one of the longest names I’ve seen: Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle Against Counter-Revolution, Espionage, Speculation, and Sabotage. The Russians chose that name for their secret police agency in 1917.
They called it “Cheka” for short.
One of the most sinister group names in the first half of the 20th century was the Japanese agency known as the Thought Police. Also known as the Thought Section, it was charged with making sure that people didn’t think...bad...thoughts. (You don’t want to know how they went about figuring this out.)
And one of the best job titles ever came from an Allied unit during World War II. Called the London Controlling Station, the agency’s job was to trick German military leaders. So the head of the LCS was called “the Controller of Deception.”
Did you see that? The Controller of Deception! That title is so incredible, I just had to sit down. And after I did, I was inspired to research other interesting code names and spy names from spying history. Like these:
Any specialist in the U.S. military is called a “puke.” So intelligence agents are known as “intel pukes.”
Morris Cohen, an agent who worked in China, was known as “Two-Gun.” Can you guess why? Oh, I’ll just tell you. It was because he always carried TWO guns.
Sir William Reginald Hall (a British spymaster) was known as “Blinker” because of a tic that caused him to constantly wink.
A New York politician named Samuel Dickstein offered to sell secrets to the Russians. But after getting paid, Dickstein never delivered. His Russian code name: “Crook.”
The dreaded Tai Li of Chinese military intelligence was called “The Butcher.”
During the Cold War, spymaster Markus Wolf (1923–2006) managed 4,000 agents for the East German agency known as Stasi. Wolf was so good, he was considered the greatest spymaster in the world. For example, he was able to place an agent as a top aide to West Germany’s chancellor. (This is like someone planting an agent as vice president of the United States.) For over twenty years, nobody in the West was even sure what he looked like, so Wolf was known as “The Man Without a Face.”
During World War II, the Japanese had a spy in New York nicknamed “Doll Woman.” She was Velvalee Dickinson, the owner of a doll shop. (This was a great cover, BTW.)
The Nazis were big fans of opera singer Margery Booth. But what the Nazis didn’t know was that Booth helped British prisoners smuggle information by hiding it in her “knickers” (that is, her underpants). In fact, Booth once performed for Adolf Hitler with secret intelligence in her underwear. Her nickname: the Knicker Spy!
The Russians once had a spy in the United States code-named “Good Girl.” (She wasn’t.)
Legendary Israeli agent Rafael Eitan was once involved in an operation where he had to travel through sewers to blow up a radar station. This earned him the nickname “Rafi the Smelly.”
Russian security head Nikolai Ezhov was known as “The Bloodthirsty Dwarf.” (He was five feet tall.)
And NBA player Jameer Nelson was nicknamed “Crib Midget” by his teammate Dwight Howard. Admittedly, Nelson was never a spy, but “Crib Midget” is too cool a name not to use every chance I get!
One of the best operation code names EVER had to do with fake Allied offensives in World War II. “Operation Hambone” started in 1944. In it, an actor was hired to play a British commander. The actor went to locations in Africa and Europe, where he pretended to be planning an invasion in southern Europe. (D-Day would actually be launched on the beaches of Normandy on the northwest coast of France.)
It’s a Noir, Noir World
The French word noir (nwahr) means “black” or “dark.” It’s so cool, when the dreaded French spymaster Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) created his dastardly intelligence cabinet, he called it the Cabinet Noir, the “Black Cabinet.” Over time, noir has become an excellent word to use for all things dark and sinister!
The Black Cabinet
bête noire (bate nwahr): a person or thing that one particularly dislikes (for example, “Spies wearing spandex body suits are my bête noire”).
film noir: a movie with a strong, dark mood (for instance, High School Musical).
cartoon noir: a cartoon with a strong, dark mood (such as The Little Mermaid).
The awesomeness of noir has inspired spies through the years. For instance, after World War I, the United States created an intelligence agency called the American Black Chamber. Scary!
You should know that intelligence agents and military people love to use INITIALS instead of names. The string of initials is called an acronym. These acronyms are popular because the official names for things can be really long and clumsy.
Sometimes these initials are so catchy, the original name gets forgotten. So instead of saying, “Sir, I’ve got the agent’s Point of Origin,” a spy could just say, “I’ve got the agent’s POO!” (This is a real acronym, BTW.) Happily for us, the good people at the “Danger Zone” website have collected some acronyms for us.
BaTMAN Biochronicity and Temporal Mechanisms Arising in Nature
RoBIN Robustness of Biologically Inspired Networks
GODZILA Game-theoretic Optimal Deformable Zone including Inertia with Local Approach
LOCO Local Control of Chemistry
DISCO Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office
DUDE Dual-Mode Detector Ensemble
COW-PI (“cow-pie”) Compression Osmosis Water Purification Installation
NICECAP National Intelligence Community Enterprise Cyber Assurance Program
PAST-A Pedagogically Adaptive Scenarios for Training—Automated!
CHILI Compact High-Resolution Infrared Long-Wave Imager
Finally, here’s my favorite acronym:
AARG Affordable Accurate Robot Guidance
Oh, last thing! During World War II, nobody in Japan could even SAY the name of the Japanese Army’s spy agency (“Tokumu Bu”) without being arrested. That means this HAS to have happened:
“Where do you work?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Seriously, you can trust me.”
“Pretty please?”
“Well...” [looks around nervously], “I work for Tokumu Bu.”
“You’re under arrest.”
Spy-Catching and Lie-Detecting
Have you ever heard the old saying “It takes a thief to catch a thief”? That makes NO sense. Does it take a baker to catch a baker? No! A butcher could catch a baker. (But strangely, the butcher is not very good at finding the candlestick maker.)
But maybe it does take a spy to catch a spy, and this is why “counterintelligence” was developed. Counterintelligence agencies are in charge of hunting enemy spies and double agents.
And when counterintelligence agents spring into action, they have one thing going for them: enemy spies stink.
Of course, EVERYONE stinks. But the key is that we all stink in our own unique way. That’s why the East German spy agency Stasi kept a “smell jar” for its suspects. This was a big jar filled with the person’s personal items. The idea was that they would smell like the suspect. And if the suspect tried to flee the country, a Stasi hound dog could sniff the Smell Jar and track the person.
To get items for the smell jar, Stasi agents would break into a person’s apartment when he or she wasn’t home and steal them. According to Stasi agents, the best “smell item” to get was dirty laundry... especially dirty underwear. (That REALLY smells like the person.)
So East German counterintelligence agents stole dirty underwear. (Man, spy work is sure glamorous!)
Luckily, today’s spy agencies are trying to improve on this system. For example, DARPA has been trying to develop electronic noses (“e-noses”) that can identify specific smells coming from terrorist armpits. (Seriously.) But sometimes you may NOT want to sniff out an enemy spy. (Warning! If you’re squeamish, skip the next two paragraphs.)
In the 1980s, American workers were helping to build the new U.S. embassy in Moscow. But the Americans were convinced that when they left their hotel rooms, Russian agents were going through their belongings.
To test this, one man booby-trapped his luggage. If someone opened his suitcase, the intruder would get sprayed with shaving cream. Upon returning to the room after work, the American was pleased to see that there WAS shaving cream all over the place. Got him! But the American was then unhappy to see that a surprised and angry Russian agent had pooped on the worker’s clothes.
Blech! That is so nasty, I’m going to change the subject. So here’s a question: Do you think becoming a “doomed spy” would be a bad career choice?
Here’s why I ask. About 2,500 years ago, a Chinese king named Ho Lu hired Sun Tzu to be his general. Good move! Sun Tzu began one of the world’s first espionage agencies. Among the intelligence jobs Sun Tzu created, the worst one was the “doomed spy.” This was a regular spy who was given totally false intelligence. The catch was that the doomed spy didn’t know it was false!
The idea was that the doomed spy was sent to spy on the enemy. And once the doomed spy started his work, someone from his OWN side would expose him to the enemy.
The doomed spy was then captured and interrogated. At some point, he would probably spill all of his “secrets.” This accomplished two things:
The enemy got false information but thought it was true!
Since the enemy had already caught a spy, it might stop searching for more of them. That meant China’s REAL spies could go to work with fewer worries of getting caught!
So now you can see why the doomed spies were really doomed.
Today, the CIA is much nicer to its spies. These agents often work under a “government cover.” That means when spies are in other countries, they can pose as regular U.S. government employees. These official spies are also known as “legals” and even “gentleman spies.” And this government cover gives the spies a super-power called “diplomatic immunity.”
Diplomatic Immunity?
In 2010, a man named Mohammed al-Madadi snuck into the bathroom of an airplane to smoke. But that’s against the law, so the air marshal on the flight confronted al-Madadi about it. Al-Madadi denied smoking but then made a joke about starting a fire with his shoes.
Not funny! There have been terrorists who tried to hide bombs in their shoes. So al-Madadi was arrested. But witnesses noted that al-Madadi didn’t seem to care. Why was he so calm? Diplomatic immunity. Mohammed al-Madadi knew he probably couldn’t get in any real trouble because he was a diplomat!
Yes, ambassadors in any country can commit any crime—from smoking on an airplane to murder—without being charged with the crime! Of course, no diplomat has ever gone around murdering people. If he did, he’d probably be fired from his job. And without diplomatic immunity, the diplomat might have to go to court after all.
How can this work for you? The next time you are stopped for committing sabotage on a tuna casserole, just claim “diplomatic immunity.” (And if anyone asks to see your credentials, just say you left them at the embassy!)
That means if one of these official CIA spies gets caught spying (or doing any other naughty activity), he or she cannot be punished. The worst thing that can happen is the spy can be kicked out of the country, or “deported.” A spy who’s deported is known as a persona non grata: “An unwelcome person.”
The number of spies that get declared persona non grata varies from year to year. But in 1971 alone, Great Britain expelled 105 suspected spies!
But if a CIA agent is NOT working under a government cover, everything changes. These spies have what’s called a “commercial cover.” (They are also sometimes called “illegals.”) That means they are pretending to work for private companies. And if a spy gets caught while under commercial cover, he can be arrested, imprisoned, and even executed.[19]
Other cover varieties include:
Deep Cover: Agents under deep cover are put in place years before they are needed. Known as “sleeper agents,” these spies are always the last ones that anyone suspects. Years ago, East Germany planted 20,000 sleeper agents in other countries. I wonder if any are still out there.
Shallow Cover: When a trained agent submerges in the 3-foot end of the swimming pool, he’s surprisingly hard to spot.
Under Cover: The spy below is catching up on her sleep. Do not disturb.
Snap Cover: A convenient lid for Tupperware.
All these cover choices means that catching a spy is not easy. You have to be tricky! After Germany invaded France during World War II, German agents were constantly trying to catch members of the French Resistance. The French agents communicated about their secret meetings by letter. Once the Germans learned this, they simply sent letters to suspected French agents announcing when and where the next Résistance meeting was taking place.
And when Frenchmen showed up for the fake meeting, they were arrested!
Now here’s a different spy-catching strategy: when FBI agent Robert Hanssen was suspected of selling American secrets, the first thing his bosses did was promote him to a better job.
Were they insane? No, but that’s a good question. The idea was that promoting Hanssen would make the double agent less suspicious. I mean, why would the FBI promote someone it didn’t trust? And this also made it easier for other FBI agents to track his movements.
In Hanssen’s case, once the FBI had the needed proof, they arrested him. And it’s no picnic for any spy to be captured (unless the spy was actually caught AT a picnic). But while soggy potato salad is bad, SMERSH was worse. That was the name of the spy-catching branch of the old Russian spy agency known as the KGB. Its name came from Smyert Shpionam, which means “death to spies.” Yikes!
Although a caught spy might be executed, good manners still sometimes existed. After World War I broke out, the British MI5 caught a German spy named Carl Lody. But even though Lody was an enemy agent, the British still respected his brilliance and bravery. As Lody waited for his execution, he asked the British officer in charge of his firing squad, “I suppose you will not shake hands with a spy
?”
The officer replied, “No, but I will shake hands with a brave man.” And the two men shook hands.
Vocabulary!
Exfiltration is the opposite of infiltration. It’s what a spy does when he tries to sneak out of a country.
But most agencies would rather catch and interrogate a spy than assassinate one. As far as I know, the strangest thing a captured spy ever had to keep secret during an interrogation was a poem. That’s because British agents who needed to translate top secret codes were once given poems with the code “key” hidden within them.
