From ESPIONAGE
Watch out for overly-chummy strangers. The young man who pats you on the arm, friendly-like, and asks, “Hey, what city you from? My cousin lives in Chicago.” He’s probably a pickpocket. Maybe he wants your wallet. Or your hotel key, which you probably still have in the paper sleeve on which the desk clerk wrote the room number. Perhaps that sultry brunette really does just want directions to the nearest Metro stop. But it’s quite likely she wants to strike up a conversation . . . and who knows where that might lead?
Speaking of compromising situations—you will find temptations galore, many having nothing to do with sex, especially if you are posted overseas. A friendly local businessman, who knows you don’t have a big salary, will offer to pay for a trip so your wife can visit your daughter in college. Another great good friend will offer to bring you in on a hush-hush investment opportunity. Or, how about a great job offer, someone with exactly your expertise and background is needed (exactly that: they hope to tease out whatever you know about your company and products.) These offers may be well-meant and totally legitimate. But perhaps not. All happened to members of my team.
At a dinner function in Moscow, I was given a “token of friendship,” a wristwatch. I had it checked out by an intelligence specialist, and, what do you know, there was a tracking chip inside. Just like the old spy movies, where someone with a “reader” could follow me anywhere, find out who I was seeing. About a year later I was in Tel Aviv, having lunch with the president of one of the leading Israeli aerospace companies, and I noticed he was wearing one of the same watches. When I told him my little story, he almost fainted. He had been given the watch as a gift, and had been wearing it for more than a year.
Such primitive devices have long since been overtaken by technology. Your cell phone probably sends off GPS tracking data—and the cellphone calls can be monitored. If you don’t want anyone to know where you are going or what you are doing, leave you cell phone home. Or at least, at the hotel. But don’t use the room phone, either.
I always considered the rooms we used were bugged, and had our field offices swept every month. Probably not all that effective, but it made us feel as if we were trying. Whenever I checked into a hotel, I would ask to see the room I was assigned, then mumble some excuse and have it changed to another room. On one occasion, preparing for a private meeting with Serge Dassault, in Paris, and thinking I was defusing a listening device, I blew the major circuit-breaker for the wing of the hotel in which I was staying. This triggered the loudest darn alarm I’ve ever heard. I quietly packed my bag, checked out of the hotel, told the desk clerk I had a sudden change of plans. Didn’t mention the noise. And scheduled the meeting for another venue.
We were alerted by an intelligence agent that every room in the newest and finest hotel in one capital city had been wired during construction. One of our salesmen took advantage of that knowledge. He would go up to the executive lounge, get on the phone and essentially negotiate with the customer via the hidden microphone while talking with someone in St. Louis: “I can meet their delivery schedule, but we’re stuck on price, I’ve told them the best I can do and you know we can’t go any lower, that’s just a hard fact, and I can’t hang around here much longer. I told them, have to have an answer by day after tomorrow, or I’m headed home and will have to release production to the next guy in line and if they change their mind too late, the best I could do was offer delivery two years farther out.” He made the sale.
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