Thursday, June 02, 2005
"Waterfall surveillance"
I'm in the middle of the best spy novel that I have read in years, Charles McCarry's Old Boys. The novel involves Nazis, an ancient Roman document that sheds light on the "Jesus movement" of 2000 years ago, and a jihadi who may or may not have control over some "suitcase nukes." The book is filled with descriptions of tradecraft, such as:
Recognizing Old Boys is a book, read the whole thing.
"What am I looking for?"
"Try ethnic characteristics."
Across the street I saw three Middle Eastern types, one of them talking into a cell phone. A bit farther down the avenue, another one was talking into his cell phone. I assumed they were talking to each other and perhaps to others elsewhere in the crowd. Then I saw them everywhere I looked. It was like quitting time at the mosque. It was hard to believe, but it looked like I was being swarmed. This was an unexpected compliment. An exercise of this kind, called waterfall surveillance in the jargon, is very, very expensive and can also be seen as an admissionn of defeat on the part of the people who are watching you. Waterfall surveillance involves walking right at the target face to face and making eye contact instead of sneaking along behind in the usual way. It requires a small army of agents, all targeted on a single person who would, of course, have to be blind and stupid not to understand what was happening.
Recognizing Old Boys is a book, read the whole thing.
1 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Jun 03, 06:34:00 PM:
And it's not even McCarry's best book! Read "Tears of Autumn" and the other early Paul Christopher novels -- they're all newly back in print -- M.
