by Denis Bukin
Contents
INTRODUCTION
1-CHIS (Covert Human Intelligence Source)
2-CASE OFFICER
3-FREELANCE INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE
4-SHUTTLE AGENT
5-OPERATIVE
6-ANALYST
7-DOUBLE AGENT
ANSWERS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Congratulations. If you are reading this document, you have been accepted for a place at Spy School.
When most people think of the word spy, they imagine gadgets – laser pens and exploding cigarette lighters – but the most important piece of equipment an agent has is their brain. Memory is vital to the work of an agent. The need for total secrecy often prevents them from recording anything, so operatives have to rely on their brains to retain and reproduce an incredible amount of information with absolute accuracy.
Over the coming pages, we will teach you how to enhance your memory and sharpen your mind with a range of exercises developed over many years and used to train top Russian intelligence agents.1
Real intelligence, not the kind we see in films, is about working with information. Reconstructing the whole picture from tiny fragments of information – that is the task of an intelligence agent and this is what you test yourself against here at Spy School. You will develop skills tested in the most extreme of environments and unlock the full capability of your brain.
Structure of the book
The book is divided into chapters corresponding to the progress of an agent through their career. You will pass all stages of the intelligence school, from a junior operative to a double agent, from the simplest work to the most dangerous and complex.
You will follow the story of a counter-intelligence operation, told through a series of documents and the diary entries of its main character placed throughout the book. You will be asked questions about this story, so while reading, try to remember as much as you can.
Each stage contains instructions on memory formation procedures and practice exercises. The exercises from the first stages may seem easy, but they get harder later on. Try to learn the techniques and methods connected to the first simple tasks. Even if you can do the tasks without using the prescribed techniques, the problems will get harder later on, so try to use them from the beginning. Shortcuts taken early on will slow your progress later in the programme.
There are two types of exercise in this book. The first are interactive and it’s best to perform them immediately while reading the book, repeating them several times to ensure you learn them. Track your progress in the notes sections throughout.
If you can’t do all of an exercise, return to the techniques for which the exercise is designed. Re-read them and do the less complex version of the exercise several times. For the second type of exercise it’s not necessary to have the book in front of you. You can do them in a variety of situations: while on holiday, queuing at a supermarket or while travelling to work . . .
Don’t worry if you can’t complete a task on the first try. You will learn most when you stretch yourself to your limits. The brain is like a muscle and most of us have become accustomed to using only a very small part of its capacity. You need to build up the strength of your brain through exercising it. Stick at it and you, and others around you, are sure to notice your progress.
In addition to techniques, instructions, exercises and tasks, the book also includes facts about human attention, imagination and memory, as well as how to work with them.
12 December 1954
The year is ending. I’m trying to take a good look back at it and see what it was like. Except for the Spanish, I can only describe it as boring. I really only started learning Spanish because I was bored – something to keep myself busy. I’m tired of academic psychology. Working in the dean’s office is boring. My personal life hasn’t changed.
I should have got into graduate school. Maybe I should try again next year?
[Extract from the journal of Andrei Simanov]
Memory capacity
People don’t take full advantage of their memories’ capabilities. Moreover, very few people even know the extent of these capabilities.
A few examples. After only one visit, Russian painter Nikolai Ge reproduced in detail the baroque interior of a room in ‘Mon Plaisir’ palace.
Mozart could write down a complex score after listening to a piece of music only once. Having once heard Gregorio Allegri’s ‘Miserere’, which had been kept secret by the Vatican up until that point, he was able to bring it into the public domain. Mozart was fourteen years old at the time.
Winston Churchill knew almost all of Shakespeare’s works by heart. He used them to practise his oratory.
In 1960, Hungarian chess player Janos Flash played fifty-two games simultaneously without looking at any of the boards. At the end of the game, which lasted more than thirteen hours, Flash remembered all the moves on all fifty-two boards.
But it’s not just celebrated geniuses who have outstanding memories. In one experiment, ordinary people were shown 10,000 slides, and then tested on how many they could remember. It was found that their image recognition was about 80% accurate. When the images chosen for the experiment were unusual, bright or colourful, accuracy increased to almost 100%.
From this we can see that:
1. The main problem of human memory is not remembering information, but recalling and reproducing it when it’s needed. Every person has the makings of a great memory. To develop it, you need to master a number of techniques;
2. The human brain is very good at remembering images. Therefore, most techniques for memorizing information – mnemonics – are based on using our imagination to transfer abstract verbal and numerical information into images.
Test Yourself
In what year was Andrei Nikolaevich Simonov born?
A) 1929
B) 1930
C) 1932
D) 1928
Types of memory
Modern psychology identifies three types of memory: sensory, short-term and long-term.
Sensory memory stores information perceived directly by the senses: what we see, hear, feel, smell and taste after the original stimulus has ceased. Sensory memory is short and allows individuals to retain impressions of sensory information for no more than half a second. But sensory memory is very important, because everything that connects us to our environment passes through it. It is thanks to sensory memory that we perceive a sequence of short, single pictures in the cinema as a continuous movement.
Information that deserves attention goes from sensory memory into short-term memory, where it can be stored for several minutes or hours. Short-term memory is used, for example, when we silently repeat to ourselves a phone number while searching for a pen and paper to write it down.
Important information goes from short-term memory into long-term memory, where it can be stored for years. Typically, the process of long-term storage of information occurs unconsciously. That is why we often forget the important things and remember minor details that should have been forgotten long ago. However, there are methods that can be used to develop the conscious storage of long-term information.
This book will help you to develop both your short- and long-term memory, and learn how to consciously transfer information from short-term memory into long-term.
A successful spy must have the ability to notice important details in what they see and hear, and also to reinterpret that information, linking it with what they already know. In other words, the kind of memory we are looking to develop requires the attention to notice things and the imagination to connect them to what we already know. This is where our programme begins.
Attention and memory
Attention is
the ability to perceive information selectively, to see and to hear what is needed, ignoring distractions. Noise does not prevent a person who is concentrating from being able to read. They perceive the text, ignoring extraneous sounds. Concentration allows you to focus on the nuances and details of what you need to remember without overloading your brain by paying attention to everything equally.
Trained attention differs from weak attention, because training allows attention to be directed. You are able to focus quickly, hold your attention on one thing for a long time when necessary, and easily redirect it when you change activities.
Exercise
Focusing your attention on one thing for a long time is not as easy as you might think. Try examining something you have in front of you. For example, a wristwatch. Examine every detail. Inspect each division on the dial, every scratch on its face. Have you examined everything? Keep on looking, try to find something new.
After a few minutes, it will be hard for you to focus on the watch. Suddenly you will notice that you are not thinking about the watch and that associations have led your thoughts elsewhere. For example, you were looking at the watch, trying to concentrate. Then, you saw the number 11 and remembered an important meeting at 11:00 a.m. Then your thoughts went to your colleague who was also attending the meeting, then to a book the colleague told you about, then . . . You forgot about the watch. Can you reverse this journey? Remember how you got from the watch to what you were thinking about. Go back through the chain of associations to the watch and keep on examining it. Remember what you thought about the book that belongs to the colleague, and then about the colleague, then about the meeting that you have to attend, then about the meeting time – 11:00 a.m. Remember that it is the time associated with the number 11 on the dial and that the dial is connected to the watch.
By walking back along the road of associations, this exercise allows you to develop the ability to direct your attention.
Test yourself
Voters broke into the headquarters of which political movement?
A) Anarchists
B) Communists
C) Socialists
D) Peronists
Attention span, the ‘7 ± 2’ rule
One of the main features of attention is that the number of objects (words, numbers, items or ideas) an average person can hold in working memory is somewhere between five and nine.
It is almost impossible to exceed this number, but there are some ways to get round the restriction. All it takes is grouping the data into blocks. For example, the telephone number +74957894179 contains twelve items of information, and after grouping it into +7 (495) 789 41 79, there are only five. And these five can be compressed to four, if you know that +7 (495) means Moscow, Russia.
These 5–9 units need to be used to 100% of their capacity. This memory training programme will help you to improve your attention. Follow the instructions, practise regularly, and the result will not be long in coming. Remember the quote from the Disciplinary Code of the Soviet Military: ‘The soldier must endure steadfastly and courageously all the hardships and privations of military service.’
Exercise
Performing two tasks at once improves your ability to switch attention. Read two books, alternating a paragraph from each. Switching the radio station every few seconds, listen to two news programmes simultaneously (as you do this, try to reconstruct any missing pieces of information through context). Watch two TV programmes.
Don’t get carried away! The simultaneous execution of multiple tasks is good as an exercise for training the attention, but it is not an effective way to successfully complete a large number of tasks at once.
★ Train your brain – Schulte Tables, 5×5
Schulte Tables can help speed the development of mental perception, including peripheral vision and attention, self-control and the ability to focus.
On this page is a table containing 5 columns and 5 rows. Numbers from 1 to 25 are randomly arranged in the cells. Your task is to find the numbers in order.
Do not move your eyes from cell to cell and do not say the numbers out loud or to yourself. Fix your sight on the centre of the table and use only your peripheral vision to search for the numbers. This will be hard at first – don’t give up. Later on, this skill will help you with a variety of tasks, ranging from observation to speed reading.
Come back to this exercise often. Over time, you will learn to visualize the table in your mind. With training, the time can be reduced to 12–15 seconds or even less.
19 December 1954
Long day. Finals are around the corner: the dean’s office is manic, so are the students and instructors. And there’s a huge pile of papers.
In the evening, when I was coming home, the KGB tried to recruit me. Before I knew it, I was having a conversation with a passenger, a normal-looking academic type, short, chubby, in a grey trench coat.
Suddenly, he addresses me by name and says, ‘Would you like to help us?’ When I realized exactly who the grey trench was suggesting I help, I refused right away. But somehow, he managed to turn me back to the question. He wasn’t cajoling, threatening or manipulating me. The work, he says, will help me practise what I learned in university. ‘We need good psychologists,’ he said. On top of that, I’m being recruited into counterintelligence: catching foreign spies seems like meaningful work to me. More meaningful than the same experiments and surveys day after day, and way more meaningful than paperwork at the dean’s office. In the end, I promised to think about it, and the grey trench promised to be in touch.
In parting, he asked me not to tell anyone of our conversation. And not to leave any records of him. But I didn’t follow his instructions there. I guess there’s something of the spy in me after all, as no one has seen this journal in the ten years I’ve been writing it.
Tricks with attention
Any productive person must be able to control his or her attention. But there are also ways to control others’ attention. After all, if you control a person’s attention, you can control them.
Attention can be compared to a spotlight in the darkness: we only see the illuminated portion. Redirecting our interlocutor’s attention, we can show him what we want and hide what we do not want him to see. All magic tricks and stunts are based on the skill of shifting a viewer’s attention. For this purpose, a magician uses distracting motions, bright ribbons, scarves, flares and explosions.
Intelligence officers, who often have to work under the surveillance of external counter-intelligence, act almost the same way. While being searched, an intelligence agent casually asked a police officer to hold a package of napkins. The officers searched her bag thoroughly and found nothing suspicious. The secret documents she was carrying were tucked between the napkins.
Another good trick is to stretch the hidden action in time, expanding it into several stages, each of which will seem completely innocuous. For example, to pick up an object unnoticed, you can stop in front of it, open your bag, take out your gloves, drop one of them, lean over the glove, drop a handkerchief, pick up the object and the glove and go away, leaving the handkerchief lying on the ground. Surveillance will notice that you dropped and picked up some objects. The attention of observers will be drawn to your handkerchief, and your clumsiness will not cause suspicion. No one will notice the number of objects you dropped, or which ones you picked up.
Another example of ‘stretching’ an action is transferring a notebook to someone in a cafe without being noticed. You come over and take out a notebook from your briefcase. Then you talk, open the notebook, write something down, put it down nearby and keep talking. Then you get up, put gloves on the table, put on your coat, pick up your gloves and leave. Your notebook is left on the table, and your companion will take it when they finish their coffee and leave.
Working memory
In addition to sensory, short-term and long-term memory, there is also a separate category called working memory. It stores data for immediate process
ing. The main distinction of working memory is that everything contained in it will be erased immediately after switching to another task.
Recent studies have established a close connection between working memory capacity and intelligence level. It is obvious that the more data a person can store in working memory, the higher that person’s ability to notice relationships and create new knowledge, which are the abilities measured by an IQ test. Moreover, the capacity of working memory is related to attention. The higher it is, the more objects the person can hold in their attention simultaneously.
It is notable that the average person’s working memory capacity is that same size of somewhere between five and nine. Those whose number is smaller have more trouble controlling their attention and organizing their behaviour.
To find out the capacity of your working memory, memorize the numbers from the list below one by one and write them down on a piece of paper. Do not group the numbers in pairs, triples, etc. For example, represent 1234 as ‘one-two-three-four’, and not as ‘twelve thirty-four’. When you reach the end of the list, count how many digits there are in the last number you recorded correctly. This will be the capacity of your working memory.
850
708243
8203947529
834
0972435
3982775235
4399
8931432
06016554392
9543
43249034
61085082684
82140
24349328
010178844818
38587
905298713
768582301939
932435
378072043
★ Train your Brain – Pairs 4×3
Take a pack of cards. Count a sequence of six cards from any two suits – for example A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 hearts and A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 clubs. Muddle them up and put them on a table face down in four rows of three.
