Real spying vs. Movie spying
In reading real-life accounts of spy agencies, I have to marvel at how transactional much of agency work appears to be. The “Bond” account of spying has to do with lurking in the shadows, eavesdropping on sensitive conversations, beating information out of a target if need be. The spy is actively engaged in insinuating himself into the circles of the opposition; he is amidst the target or in his periphery. The American account has its emphasis on SigInt or trapping electronic communications. Dramatic stories are told of buying rural plots of land in China in order to dig to the fiber optic and put a listener on it. Dramatic and impressive tales are told of intercepting cellular and other communication through programs like the NSA’s Echelon. However, the world’s most successful spy agency, belonging to Israel, relies on a much simpler, but effective strategy: paying people off. This is far less dramatic than playing the role of the active spy; here the agent is primarily a recruiter- probing target organization for ‘weak links’ - the disaffected nuclear scientist or the intelligence officer who was denied a promotion. These people, through a combination of pressure, money, sex, and appeals to psychological factors can be recruited to provide far more complete information at a fraction of the cost. Now of course recruitment is itself highly dangerous and complex. But once accomplished, there is no lurking around corners or trapping communication. The well-positioned recruit receives information as part of his job, and passes it on. There is of course the challenge of having him transfer the information without being caught and then relaying it to the home base. But when compared to the alternatives, and the quality of the information retrieved, bribing people to act unpatriotically is beautifully simple. Moles don’t have to “fake” it; day-to-day they do their job as if they would otherwise. Besides the handoff, their is no reason for others inside the target organization to be suspicious of them. They already have the trust that would require years to obtain otherwise. And insofar as the mole is led to believe that they are only sharing information with a business, which stands to profit from such information, they can be led to believe they can make enough money to pursue their passions, without believing they are being unpatriotic and assisting a rival nation or intelligence agency.
