9 ms·

How to Spot a Spook (1974)

130 points by mercer 10y ago

45h34jh53k4j 10y ago
"The CIA has a different health insurance plan from the State Department. The premium records, which are unclassified and usually available to local employees, are a dead giveaway." I wonder if this is still the case? Seems like a very externally observable difference, especially today.
- appleflaxen 10y ago
  it would be fascinating to have an update about these ideas, and a look at which signals have changed, what signals are the same, and what new signals might exist.
  - oren_thrall 10y ago
    I generally get the feeling that people were way more wreckless before the 80's. The level of technology at the time is surprisingly low. Card catalogs and the dewey decimal system represented a nominal level of information technology, rendering many audit trails nearly opaque. Of course, physical, structural security was bad too. Break a window and climb on in, just repair the window when you leave and maybe that'd be enough to capture some records. If it wasn't a bank or a prison, a building probably wasn't a fortress unless it was extra special. People cared a lot less about how life turned out 40 or 50 years ago. Alcohol, tobacco, diseases everywhere, and medicine was kind of terrible. You get a feel that risk taking was normal. Now, people clench up at the thought of breaking any rules. Call it the new technological superstition. We don't believe in god, but we believe in logs.
    - kakarot 10y ago
      > Now, people clench up at the thought of breaking any rules. What people?
      - oren_thrall 9y ago
        Everyone looking at their phones. Who else?
    - theoh 9y ago
      If you can line up some 80 or 90 year olds to back up this opinion, it might be more interesting. As it stands it seems like ahistorical speculation. I guess maybe Ulrich Beck's work on risk is relevant?
      - pleboidal 9y ago
        Just look at the way crime sorts itself out, and it's pretty obvious. People robbed banks, got away with murder, disappeared and took up new lives in the circus. Now? The really pent up people just snap, shoot a bunch of people, and kill themselves, because they know they can't get away with anything anymore.
        Gibbon1 9y ago
        Reminded The gold rush era song. "Oh what was your name in the states?" What was your name in the States? Was it Thompson or Johnson or Bates? Did you happen to draw on your mother-in-law? Or sink the old lady with weights, my friend, Eh, What was you name in the States?...Oh!
        wavefunction 9y ago
        I couldn't find a great source of data on bank robberies but just looking at this indicates bank robbers who successfully get away are pretty rare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_robbers_and_robberies#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_robbers_and_robbe...
        tobltobs 9y ago
        How would I have to interpret this list to come to any conclusion?
        wavefunction 9y ago
        Like I mentioned, I couldn't find a definitive set of data concerning unsolved/total bank heists versus unsuccessful heists or arrests. So I invite you to do what I did, which is look at the list and note how many were either shot, arrested, or otherwise eventually 'failed.' The post I'm replying to makes it sound like folks got away all the time and that doesn't appear to be the case. And if nothing else, you can find some interesting details in there. NYC burglaries in the 1850s and 1860s were patronized by a female German-immigrant while she simultaneously hob-knobbed with the society set. My main point is that I don't think folks 'got away with it' as much as we might like to romanticize.
    - jdavis703 9y ago
      Having worked with some departments where the average age was 50+ I've definitely seen flagrant rule bending for risky behavior (e.g. not carrying radiation detectors, working on roofs without proper "safety" equipment, etc). The thing is these people got the job done. The younger generation (which I belong to) would likely throw up their hands and claim they couldn't complete the task because some prerequisite for a rule wasn't in place.
      - Spooky23 9y ago
        I've observed the same thing. My pet theory in big organizations is that the next cohort of workers (40-50 year olds) have been mostly languishing waiting for old people to die, because big organizations are mostly not growing. The younger people get stuck in a mid career cul de sac because the dinosaurs rule the important things, so career success is on peripheral things like the PMO. Those jobs are great for getting promoted, but not great for actually knowing anything.
        sverige 9y ago
        I'm in my mid-50s, and I definitely agree that I'm a lot less risk-averse than younger people. (Hell, I still ride a bicycle and roller skate without a helmet haha!) I don't really give a shit if what I say on the internet becomes associated with me, even though I use the standard 90s protocol of using fake names. I know it can be traced by someone, somewhere, in some government agency, and certainly by some asshole like Mark Zuckerberg. So what? I have very little to lose. The people who know me already know what an jerk I can be and yet they still let me come around, and the job I have wouldn't bat an eye since my private opinions have zero effect on their corporate image. Every generation feels like they're waiting for the next generation to retire. I feel that way about Baby Boomers. (No, I'm not a Baby Boomer. I'm more like Gen X, but that's not quite right either. I'm in between those two, which is why I have feelings of contempt for the people who invent sociological models....but I digress.) I am at an age where my experience counts for something with some organizations, and is considered a complete liability for other organizations. I have changed fields entirely several times in my life. Some of the skills I have that make me uniquely qualified to do valuable things for big organizations are completely unmarketable to those same organizations because I do not have an appropriate credential they can accept to certify my knowledge and expertise. I have given up on them, too. My point is that there is always room for younger people to really shake up the dinosaurs, but if you are trying to influence my generation, you'd better be willing to take some risks and really just say it straight. I know that's difficult for people younger than me, and I know that people in my daughter's generation (she's 29) aren't very good at being blunt and usually screw it up when they try, but truth-telling without worrying about political nuance or whatever the hell it is that everyone worries about that keeps them from just saying what they're thinking is very attractive and useful, at least to people my age. Oh, and don't whine when you're telling the truth. Not many people who are my age like whiners.
    - appleflaxen 9y ago
      Great perspective! thanks for that. It's a fact, though, that operational security is /really/ difficult to do well all of the time. And your overall security is driven by your weakest link (like Ross Ulbricht found out). The original article points out some ways informaiton leaked in the 70s; my guess is that there are similar leaks in the present day.
    - rdiddly 9y ago
      The funny part is, today people take reckless risks with technology like telling Facebook & Google all about themselves, or carrying a tracking device in their pocket with them at all times. They also take risks by becoming dependent on technology. Who knows the answer to a question without Googling it? Who is capable of running a British hospital when all the computers are WannaCrypted? Even so, risk-taking is underrated. A risk is a chance of something happening; it's not guaranteed to happen every time. Whereas a measure you take to mitigate a risk, you end up having to do that every time, or else rationally there's no point to it. You have to lock the front door 100% of the time, to feel like you've successfully guarded against an intrusion that realistically might have only a 0.1% or 0.01% probability. If the cost of the mitigation measure is small, you don't notice. You're just being rational. But over time you accumulate a cowardly attitude. Put on your bike helmet and knee & elbow pads, grab your first-aid kit, pepper spray, some cash, tracking devi-- errrr phone, backup battery for phone, towel, jacket, air pump & flat tire repair kit, evidence-gathering videocameras, backup batteries for evidence-gathering videocameras, and then lock the front door, hide the key in your shoe along with the cash, and go for a bike ride, sticking to the bike lanes at all times, or off-street trails better yet (unless you're allergic in which case also bring an epi-pen and/or allergy pills, and since it might be rural better also bring a knife, a way to make fire, and a signaling device). Enjoy your freedom!
taejo 10y ago
Are the Foreign Service List and the Biographic Register still published? A quick search only yielded editions many decades old.
- baldeagle 9y ago
  The CIA is probably save, after all it describes using metadata (which everyone knows is safe to collect and store and share)
- briandear 9y ago
  The FSL still exists; don't know about the Biographic Register -- haven't seen that. Essentially the FSL is provided to host countries with a listing of all personnel on diplo passports. NOCs are obviously not listed.
linkmotif 10y ago
This piece reminds me of http://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_amazing_success_identifying_cia_agents_in_the_field/ http://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_amaz... "What Totrov came up with were 26 unchanging indicators as a model for identifying U.S. intelligence officers overseas."
- whatnotests 9y ago
  I was looking for a list of those 26 indicators and found this article: https://lunghu.wordpress.com/tag/yuri-trotov/ https://lunghu.wordpress.com/tag/yuri-trotov/
  - secfirstmd 9y ago
    If your looking for indicators of surveillance teams, we've got quite a bit on it in Umbrella. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...
- nonbel 9y ago
  >"The invariable indicators...agency officers usually had more than one working foreign language, their cover was usually as a “political” or “consular” official (often vice-consul); internal embassy reorganizations usually left agency personnel untouched" Reading stuff like this is really irritating. Do the author and editors not know the meaning of "unchanging and invariable"? It just makes the entire article seem idiotic.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - xkcd-sucks 9y ago
    Outside of formally defined abstract systems, "invariant" almost always means "usual"
    - vorg 9y ago
joe_the_user 9y ago
As I understand the situation, the agents that are placed this way have only the shallowest cover and their job is to interface with the agents and sources that are actually secret. The overt description of covert operations, made by the CIA, in their career description, is that agents handle sources and sources do whatever dirty deeds the agency really wants done. Of course, the CIA has entirely different sections with military or hacking capability but basic "game" of embassy based agents interfacing with covert agents interfacing with actual sources remains.
- ape4 9y ago
  I guess these shallow cover people could be followed or bugged to find the deeper agents.
lb1lf 9y ago
A (probably apocryphal) story which I heard when spending a few weeks at a facility deemed of the greatest interest to spooks a couple of decades ago was that the security services tended to identify infiltrators by questioning the bar maid at the local pub. Apparently, regulations required the agents to only have small beers, presumably to avoid indiscretions while inebriated. Only problem was, none of the locals ever ordered small beers, as the general practice was to get wasted enough to forget what a godforsaken place you'd wound up in, if only for an evening.
sverige 9y ago
There were a couple of things I found interesting. One was the article's assertion that David Bruce was clearly regular Foreign Service, yet his bio shows he worked for the OSS, the direct predecessor of the CIA. >Bruce, David KE--b Md 2/21/98, m (Evangeline Bell). >Princeton U AB 19. Mem Md bar. US Army 17-19, >42-45 col overseas. PRIV EXPER ... >GOVT EXPER with Off Strategic Sers 41-45 The other is the date of publication, just before the Church committee crippled the CIA for a number of years. It makes me wonder how this fits in with all the other events of that time.
- gitpusher 9y ago
  Good eye. It does say "GOVT EXPER with OSS" (emphasis on 'with') rather than "XYZ of OSS", implying some sort of external role – such as helping establish chain of command in the early days, or some other bureaucratic help. A glance at the register itself shows that most OSS involvement is cited with the "of" convention: https://archive.org/stream/biographicregist1950unit/biographicregist1950unit_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/biographicregist1950unit/biograph... (BR, 1950 edition)
  - sverige 9y ago
    The distinction of "with" and "of" is interesting in itself. I guess he may have coordinated external logistics or something else during the war for them. '41-'45 is a long involvement, either way; surely he knew plenty of people there. Makes me wonder about the motives for bringing up his name then dismissing him as anything but career foreign service in the original article. And that's exactly what makes spy work so interesting to observe in the first place: trying to figure out the motives, reality vs. cover, intent, etc. of complete strangers. It's all fun and games until you become their target, I suppose.
- gozur88 9y ago
  I always assumed if the CIA recruited someone from another government agency for covert activities, the recruitment would be "dotted line" on paper, i.e. that person would officially still work for the military, FBI, State Dept or whatever.
gitpusher 9y ago
Nowadays it's easier to tell – if they work for gov and aren't active on Twitter, they're hiding something
- Asparagirl 9y ago
  I sussed out a friend's gov job because I noticed she never ever bitched about her job on Facebook, which is highly unusual for people our age.
- DGAP 9y ago
  I believe it's the same for LinkedIn.
- CM30 9y ago
  Probably a silly question, but how do you know they're not active on Twitter? I mean, outside of well known elected officials here (like the US president, UK prime minister, mayors, etc) I'm not sure there's much of a reason for people to state they work for the government on social media sites. Might be a fair few government employees who just don't tie their social media presence to their real identity for one reason or another. If I get a role in the UK civil service I'm certainly not putting a job description in my Twitter profile, but that doesn't mean I work for MI5.
eth0up 9y ago
Reminds me a bit of this: https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm (The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Animats 9y ago
The Mossad had a big embarrassment some years ago. Wearing ties is not common in Israel, but, for forged credentials, people were usually photographed wearing a tie. The photography shop provided people with a tie. The Mossad used the same three ties for everybody.
- justinjlynn 9y ago
  Contamination kills; I'm amazed they reused forging facilities like that.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    I doubt CIA Technical Services was burned down and reconstructed for every mission. Seems like intelligence agencies are always going to want some shared, reusable resources.
    - justinjlynn 9y ago
      Of course not, but they don't use the same signature techniques on all forged documents either -- that would just be silly.
carvalho 9y ago
I was surprised to find the Central Intelligence Agency in my weblogs. This means they both leave JavaScript on and use the company IP for casual browsing. I'd expect that they make attack vectors as small as possible and have access to IP ranges that can not be so easily traced back to them, but maybe the rules are more relaxed for casual browsing/research. Don't these agencies, militaries, and companies (BAH, Lockheed, Boeing, Dell) get micro-targetted exactly like this? I'd imagine foreign intelligence agencies use websites and ad networks to drop zero-days on persons of interest.
- jonnybgood 9y ago
  The US military uses NIPRNet which blocks a range of websites on the internet. HN is not one of them thankfully.
logicallee 9y ago
I started reading this but had trouble maintaining my interest. Near the beginning (called the "hook" in journalism) it said that the station chief had had his own office bugged. - Could someone who read through to the end mention what the eventual answer the journalist gave, as to why? (I see I got almost instantly downvoted[1], but could you answer the question?) Thanks. [1] http://i.imgur.com/wH95OMt.png http://i.imgur.com/wH95OMt.png
- logicallee 9y ago
  really, guys? downvotes galore, but not half a second to reply briefly? I didn't ask a lot.
  - devopsproject 9y ago
    if you are too lazy to read the article, don't expect others to do the work for you and give you a synopsis. Do your own work or quietly move on
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - logicallee 9y ago
      I didn't ask for a synopsis, but whatever. reading articles isn't "work" and not everyone has to be interested in every aspect of everything, all the time.
      - devopsproject 9y ago
        if you are interested in the answer to your questions, read the article.
        9y ago
myrandomcomment 9y ago
So this story at then end suggest that the human intel is out dated and we should rely on technical means. This is what we did and it ended up being a major cockup that led to failures to understand and predict issues, Iran and Iraq being some of them. We are still rebuilding our human intel assets. The Russian who lacked the technical expertise have always relied on human intel and it shows (trump, et.al)

130 points by mercer 10y ago

"The CIA has a different health insurance plan from the State Department. The premium records, which are unclassified and usually available to local employees, are a dead giveaway." I wonder if this is still the case? Seems like a very externally observable difference, especially today.

appleflaxen 10y ago
it would be fascinating to have an update about these ideas, and a look at which signals have changed, what signals are the same, and what new signals might exist.
- oren_thrall 10y ago
  I generally get the feeling that people were way more wreckless before the 80's. The level of technology at the time is surprisingly low. Card catalogs and the dewey decimal system represented a nominal level of information technology, rendering many audit trails nearly opaque. Of course, physical, structural security was bad too. Break a window and climb on in, just repair the window when you leave and maybe that'd be enough to capture some records. If it wasn't a bank or a prison, a building probably wasn't a fortress unless it was extra special. People cared a lot less about how life turned out 40 or 50 years ago. Alcohol, tobacco, diseases everywhere, and medicine was kind of terrible. You get a feel that risk taking was normal. Now, people clench up at the thought of breaking any rules. Call it the new technological superstition. We don't believe in god, but we believe in logs.
  - kakarot 10y ago
    > Now, people clench up at the thought of breaking any rules. What people?
    - oren_thrall 9y ago
      Everyone looking at their phones. Who else?
  - theoh 9y ago
    If you can line up some 80 or 90 year olds to back up this opinion, it might be more interesting. As it stands it seems like ahistorical speculation. I guess maybe Ulrich Beck's work on risk is relevant?
    - pleboidal 9y ago
      Just look at the way crime sorts itself out, and it's pretty obvious. People robbed banks, got away with murder, disappeared and took up new lives in the circus. Now? The really pent up people just snap, shoot a bunch of people, and kill themselves, because they know they can't get away with anything anymore.
      - Gibbon1 9y ago
        Reminded The gold rush era song. "Oh what was your name in the states?" What was your name in the States? Was it Thompson or Johnson or Bates? Did you happen to draw on your mother-in-law? Or sink the old lady with weights, my friend, Eh, What was you name in the States?...Oh!
      - wavefunction 9y ago
        I couldn't find a great source of data on bank robberies but just looking at this indicates bank robbers who successfully get away are pretty rare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_robbers_and_robberies#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_robbers_and_robbe...
        tobltobs 9y ago
        How would I have to interpret this list to come to any conclusion?
        wavefunction 9y ago
        Like I mentioned, I couldn't find a definitive set of data concerning unsolved/total bank heists versus unsuccessful heists or arrests. So I invite you to do what I did, which is look at the list and note how many were either shot, arrested, or otherwise eventually 'failed.' The post I'm replying to makes it sound like folks got away all the time and that doesn't appear to be the case. And if nothing else, you can find some interesting details in there. NYC burglaries in the 1850s and 1860s were patronized by a female German-immigrant while she simultaneously hob-knobbed with the society set. My main point is that I don't think folks 'got away with it' as much as we might like to romanticize.
  - jdavis703 9y ago
    Having worked with some departments where the average age was 50+ I've definitely seen flagrant rule bending for risky behavior (e.g. not carrying radiation detectors, working on roofs without proper "safety" equipment, etc). The thing is these people got the job done. The younger generation (which I belong to) would likely throw up their hands and claim they couldn't complete the task because some prerequisite for a rule wasn't in place.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      I've observed the same thing. My pet theory in big organizations is that the next cohort of workers (40-50 year olds) have been mostly languishing waiting for old people to die, because big organizations are mostly not growing. The younger people get stuck in a mid career cul de sac because the dinosaurs rule the important things, so career success is on peripheral things like the PMO. Those jobs are great for getting promoted, but not great for actually knowing anything.
      - sverige 9y ago
        I'm in my mid-50s, and I definitely agree that I'm a lot less risk-averse than younger people. (Hell, I still ride a bicycle and roller skate without a helmet haha!) I don't really give a shit if what I say on the internet becomes associated with me, even though I use the standard 90s protocol of using fake names. I know it can be traced by someone, somewhere, in some government agency, and certainly by some asshole like Mark Zuckerberg. So what? I have very little to lose. The people who know me already know what an jerk I can be and yet they still let me come around, and the job I have wouldn't bat an eye since my private opinions have zero effect on their corporate image. Every generation feels like they're waiting for the next generation to retire. I feel that way about Baby Boomers. (No, I'm not a Baby Boomer. I'm more like Gen X, but that's not quite right either. I'm in between those two, which is why I have feelings of contempt for the people who invent sociological models....but I digress.) I am at an age where my experience counts for something with some organizations, and is considered a complete liability for other organizations. I have changed fields entirely several times in my life. Some of the skills I have that make me uniquely qualified to do valuable things for big organizations are completely unmarketable to those same organizations because I do not have an appropriate credential they can accept to certify my knowledge and expertise. I have given up on them, too. My point is that there is always room for younger people to really shake up the dinosaurs, but if you are trying to influence my generation, you'd better be willing to take some risks and really just say it straight. I know that's difficult for people younger than me, and I know that people in my daughter's generation (she's 29) aren't very good at being blunt and usually screw it up when they try, but truth-telling without worrying about political nuance or whatever the hell it is that everyone worries about that keeps them from just saying what they're thinking is very attractive and useful, at least to people my age. Oh, and don't whine when you're telling the truth. Not many people who are my age like whiners.
  - appleflaxen 9y ago
    Great perspective! thanks for that. It's a fact, though, that operational security is /really/ difficult to do well all of the time. And your overall security is driven by your weakest link (like Ross Ulbricht found out). The original article points out some ways informaiton leaked in the 70s; my guess is that there are similar leaks in the present day.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    The funny part is, today people take reckless risks with technology like telling Facebook & Google all about themselves, or carrying a tracking device in their pocket with them at all times. They also take risks by becoming dependent on technology. Who knows the answer to a question without Googling it? Who is capable of running a British hospital when all the computers are WannaCrypted? Even so, risk-taking is underrated. A risk is a chance of something happening; it's not guaranteed to happen every time. Whereas a measure you take to mitigate a risk, you end up having to do that every time, or else rationally there's no point to it. You have to lock the front door 100% of the time, to feel like you've successfully guarded against an intrusion that realistically might have only a 0.1% or 0.01% probability. If the cost of the mitigation measure is small, you don't notice. You're just being rational. But over time you accumulate a cowardly attitude. Put on your bike helmet and knee & elbow pads, grab your first-aid kit, pepper spray, some cash, tracking devi-- errrr phone, backup battery for phone, towel, jacket, air pump & flat tire repair kit, evidence-gathering videocameras, backup batteries for evidence-gathering videocameras, and then lock the front door, hide the key in your shoe along with the cash, and go for a bike ride, sticking to the bike lanes at all times, or off-street trails better yet (unless you're allergic in which case also bring an epi-pen and/or allergy pills, and since it might be rural better also bring a knife, a way to make fire, and a signaling device). Enjoy your freedom!

taejo 10y ago

Are the Foreign Service List and the Biographic Register still published? A quick search only yielded editions many decades old.

baldeagle 9y ago
The CIA is probably save, after all it describes using metadata (which everyone knows is safe to collect and store and share)
briandear 9y ago
The FSL still exists; don't know about the Biographic Register -- haven't seen that. Essentially the FSL is provided to host countries with a listing of all personnel on diplo passports. NOCs are obviously not listed.

linkmotif 10y ago

This piece reminds me of http://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_amazing_success_identifying_cia_agents_in_the_field/ http://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_amaz... "What Totrov came up with were 26 unchanging indicators as a model for identifying U.S. intelligence officers overseas."

whatnotests 9y ago
I was looking for a list of those 26 indicators and found this article: https://lunghu.wordpress.com/tag/yuri-trotov/ https://lunghu.wordpress.com/tag/yuri-trotov/
- secfirstmd 9y ago
  If your looking for indicators of surveillance teams, we've got quite a bit on it in Umbrella. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...
nonbel 9y ago
>"The invariable indicators...agency officers usually had more than one working foreign language, their cover was usually as a “political” or “consular” official (often vice-consul); internal embassy reorganizations usually left agency personnel untouched" Reading stuff like this is really irritating. Do the author and editors not know the meaning of "unchanging and invariable"? It just makes the entire article seem idiotic.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- xkcd-sucks 9y ago
  Outside of formally defined abstract systems, "invariant" almost always means "usual"
  - vorg 9y ago

joe_the_user 9y ago

As I understand the situation, the agents that are placed this way have only the shallowest cover and their job is to interface with the agents and sources that are actually secret. The overt description of covert operations, made by the CIA, in their career description, is that agents handle sources and sources do whatever dirty deeds the agency really wants done. Of course, the CIA has entirely different sections with military or hacking capability but basic "game" of embassy based agents interfacing with covert agents interfacing with actual sources remains.

ape4 9y ago
I guess these shallow cover people could be followed or bugged to find the deeper agents.

lb1lf 9y ago

A (probably apocryphal) story which I heard when spending a few weeks at a facility deemed of the greatest interest to spooks a couple of decades ago was that the security services tended to identify infiltrators by questioning the bar maid at the local pub. Apparently, regulations required the agents to only have small beers, presumably to avoid indiscretions while inebriated. Only problem was, none of the locals ever ordered small beers, as the general practice was to get wasted enough to forget what a godforsaken place you'd wound up in, if only for an evening.

sverige 9y ago

There were a couple of things I found interesting. One was the article's assertion that David Bruce was clearly regular Foreign Service, yet his bio shows he worked for the OSS, the direct predecessor of the CIA. >Bruce, David KE--b Md 2/21/98, m (Evangeline Bell). >Princeton U AB 19. Mem Md bar. US Army 17-19, >42-45 col overseas. PRIV EXPER ... >GOVT EXPER with Off Strategic Sers 41-45 The other is the date of publication, just before the Church committee crippled the CIA for a number of years. It makes me wonder how this fits in with all the other events of that time.

gitpusher 9y ago
Good eye. It does say "GOVT EXPER with OSS" (emphasis on 'with') rather than "XYZ of OSS", implying some sort of external role – such as helping establish chain of command in the early days, or some other bureaucratic help. A glance at the register itself shows that most OSS involvement is cited with the "of" convention: https://archive.org/stream/biographicregist1950unit/biographicregist1950unit_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/biographicregist1950unit/biograph... (BR, 1950 edition)
- sverige 9y ago
  The distinction of "with" and "of" is interesting in itself. I guess he may have coordinated external logistics or something else during the war for them. '41-'45 is a long involvement, either way; surely he knew plenty of people there. Makes me wonder about the motives for bringing up his name then dismissing him as anything but career foreign service in the original article. And that's exactly what makes spy work so interesting to observe in the first place: trying to figure out the motives, reality vs. cover, intent, etc. of complete strangers. It's all fun and games until you become their target, I suppose.
gozur88 9y ago
I always assumed if the CIA recruited someone from another government agency for covert activities, the recruitment would be "dotted line" on paper, i.e. that person would officially still work for the military, FBI, State Dept or whatever.

gitpusher 9y ago

Nowadays it's easier to tell – if they work for gov and aren't active on Twitter, they're hiding something

Asparagirl 9y ago
I sussed out a friend's gov job because I noticed she never ever bitched about her job on Facebook, which is highly unusual for people our age.
DGAP 9y ago
I believe it's the same for LinkedIn.
CM30 9y ago
Probably a silly question, but how do you know they're not active on Twitter? I mean, outside of well known elected officials here (like the US president, UK prime minister, mayors, etc) I'm not sure there's much of a reason for people to state they work for the government on social media sites. Might be a fair few government employees who just don't tie their social media presence to their real identity for one reason or another. If I get a role in the UK civil service I'm certainly not putting a job description in my Twitter profile, but that doesn't mean I work for MI5.

eth0up 9y ago

Reminds me a bit of this: https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm (The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies)

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Animats 9y ago

The Mossad had a big embarrassment some years ago. Wearing ties is not common in Israel, but, for forged credentials, people were usually photographed wearing a tie. The photography shop provided people with a tie. The Mossad used the same three ties for everybody.

justinjlynn 9y ago
Contamination kills; I'm amazed they reused forging facilities like that.
- closeparen 9y ago
  I doubt CIA Technical Services was burned down and reconstructed for every mission. Seems like intelligence agencies are always going to want some shared, reusable resources.
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    Of course not, but they don't use the same signature techniques on all forged documents either -- that would just be silly.

carvalho 9y ago

I was surprised to find the Central Intelligence Agency in my weblogs. This means they both leave JavaScript on and use the company IP for casual browsing. I'd expect that they make attack vectors as small as possible and have access to IP ranges that can not be so easily traced back to them, but maybe the rules are more relaxed for casual browsing/research. Don't these agencies, militaries, and companies (BAH, Lockheed, Boeing, Dell) get micro-targetted exactly like this? I'd imagine foreign intelligence agencies use websites and ad networks to drop zero-days on persons of interest.

jonnybgood 9y ago
The US military uses NIPRNet which blocks a range of websites on the internet. HN is not one of them thankfully.

logicallee 9y ago

I started reading this but had trouble maintaining my interest. Near the beginning (called the "hook" in journalism) it said that the station chief had had his own office bugged. - Could someone who read through to the end mention what the eventual answer the journalist gave, as to why? (I see I got almost instantly downvoted[1], but could you answer the question?) Thanks. [1] http://i.imgur.com/wH95OMt.png http://i.imgur.com/wH95OMt.png

logicallee 9y ago
really, guys? downvotes galore, but not half a second to reply briefly? I didn't ask a lot.
- devopsproject 9y ago
  if you are too lazy to read the article, don't expect others to do the work for you and give you a synopsis. Do your own work or quietly move on
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  - logicallee 9y ago
    I didn't ask for a synopsis, but whatever. reading articles isn't "work" and not everyone has to be interested in every aspect of everything, all the time.
    - devopsproject 9y ago
      if you are interested in the answer to your questions, read the article.
      - 9y ago

myrandomcomment 9y ago

So this story at then end suggest that the human intel is out dated and we should rely on technical means. This is what we did and it ended up being a major cockup that led to failures to understand and predict issues, Iran and Iraq being some of them. We are still rebuilding our human intel assets. The Russian who lacked the technical expertise have always relied on human intel and it shows (trump, et.al)