Gray Work: Confessions of an American Paramilitary Spy by Smith Jamie

Author:Smith, Jamie [Smith, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-04-06T21:00:00+00:00

TRADECRAFT

In the clandestine service at the CIA, there are two broad worlds—that of the case officer and that of the paramilitary (PM) officer. The former gets heavy training in the tradecraft of recruiting and running agents, with light focus on shooting and martial skills in a course called the Special Operations Training Course, or SOTC (pronounced SOT-see). In SOTC, case officers become familiar with foreign weapons and receive enough direct training to qualify them to carry station weapons when needed, along with evasion and counterinterrogation training and survival skills, like building emergency shelters to hide from the enemy, how to signal search and rescue teams, or how to skin and cook a rabbit, all while on the run from an enemy coming for you with dogs, troops, armor, helicopters, and search planes.

Paramilitary officers, however, typically received heavy training in weapons, explosives, vehicles operations, and other kinetic, martial subjects with lighter focus on tradecraft, recruiting and running agents. That did change somewhat after 9/11, when the full-blown Field Tradecraft Course (FTC) was opened up to PM officers and even Defense Department folks.

At its heart, the FTC is about recruiting and handling agents. A CIA “agent” is the spy who is recruited by the officer and delivers the goods to that officer. FTC is about planning and executing a capital crime in a foreign country without being detected or caught. The set of skills that enable an IO to carry this off undetected falls under a broad heading of tradecraft and it’s the heart of what makes the clandestine side of CIA the CIA. It is the core of the dark arts of espionage and there truly are none better at it.

That gray work—that tradecraft—is picking up messages from dead drops, running surveillance operations, and conducting clandestine meetings with agents in cars, apartments, hotels, or wadis. It is planning and executing SDRs; using clandestine photography; implementing disguises; spotting, assessing, and recruiting agents; and using a host of other skills and technology.

A close friend and mentor who retired as one of the most highly decorated CIA officers alive today, a living legend, once defined it for me this way: “Tradecraft is knowing your operation and situation in detail, integrating into the operation the political and cultural considerations, and practicing how to conduct oneself and your agent in those circumstances and using technology appropriately while thinking through the preparation for potential consequences.”

His definition covers practically every aspect of espionage tradecraft. In broad strokes, you first need to understand the mission—What are your orders? What is your boss’s goal? What are your red lines legally, ethically, and morally? Then you need to develop your operational course(s) of action, get it approved, and rehearse it over and over again. You game it out with realistic what-if scenarios where you plan for the most likely outcome, the best possible outcome, and the worst-case scenario, all in an effort to get the mission accomplished and, most important, keep your agent safe.

That too is an area that Hollywood and novelists misunderstand—the CIA officer and agent relationship.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.