Words Of Wisdom From Michael Westen

Burn Notice Season 1

Pilot Covert Intelligence involves a lot of waiting around. You know what its like to be a spy. Like sitting in your dentist reception area 24 hours a day, you read magazines, sip coffee and every so often someone tries to kill you. What do you say “no” a lot of spies don’t work directly with the CIA, lot of good that will do. Sometimes the truth hurts, in these situations. I recommend lying. In a fight you have to be careful not to break the little bones in your hand on someones face, that’s why I like bathrooms, lots of hard surfaces. Southern Nigeria isn’t my favorite place in the world. It’s unstable its corrupt and the people their eat a lot of terribly smelling preserved fish. I will say this about Nigeria though, it’s the gun running capital of Africa, and that makes it a bad place to drive a passenger sedan into a crowded market. If you’re going to collapse on a plane I recommend business class, the seats are bigger if you start convulsing, although once you pass out, it really doesn’t matter. Most people would be thrilled to dumped in Miami, sadly I’m not most people spend a few years as a covert operative and a sunny beach just looks like a vulnerable tactical position with no cover. I’ve never found a way to hide a gun in a bathing suit. Getting a hotel room. I don’t want a view, something facing a wall with no windows if you have it. Far from the elevators close to the exits if you have it. When a spy gets fired. He doesn’t get a call from HR and a gold watch. They cut him off, they can’t take away skills or what is in someone’s head. So they take him away from his resources that allow him to function, they burn him. When you’re being watched what you need is contrast. A background that will make your surveillance stand out. An FBI field office is filled with guys in their forties. At most south beach business hotels it would be tough to tell which middle aged white guy was watching you. So you stay at a place where everyone is a jello shot away from alcohol poisioning. If you see someone who can walk a straight line, that’s the fed. (buy employee uniforms.) (pays kids to tell a cop that a guy in a sedan, who’s watching mike, tried to make you sit in his lap) Need to go to some place where you not wanted, any uniform store will sell you a messenger outfit. And any messenger can get passed a security desk. With this much money things get complicated. Change a lightbulb in a place like this and a week later you’re in a speedboat in the cayman islands with someone shooting at you. My mother would have been a great NSA communications operative. Drop me in the middle of the gobi desert. Bury me in a god damn cave on the moon somehow she would call me and ask for a favor.

I don’t like stealing cars but sometimes it’s necessary I have rules though I keep it clean and if it’s a work day Ill have it back by 5. Figuring out if a car is tailing you is mostly about driving like an idiot, you speed up, slow down signal one way turning the other, of course ideally you do this without your mother in the car. Actually losing a tail isn’t about driving fast. A high speed pursuit will just land you in the 6 oclock news, so you just keep driving like an idiot until the other guy makes a mistake. Again all of this is easier without a passenger reminding you of decades worth of thanksgivings. Sleep through an aerial bombing or two and noise isn’t an issue. You just need some privacy and a bed. In a pinch you can lose the bed, but the privacy is important for projects like this one. With everyone x-raying and chemical testing their mail these days a box of wire and pipe and batteries sprinkled with chemical fertilizer is a great attention getter. Whether you’re a coke dealer, a thief, an arms dealer or a spy. You need someone to clean your money. Which makes a good money launderer the closest thing you can get to a yellow pages for criminals. Even better a money launderer who will take your call burn notice or no burn notice. Doesn’t matter how much training you have, a broken rib is a broken rib. I never run around in the bushes with a ski mask when I’m breaking in someplace, if someone catches what are you going to say? You wan’t to look like a legitimate visitor until the last second. If you can’t look legit, confused works almost as well, you just grab a soda or a yogurt from the fridge. If you get caught you just act confused and apologize like crazy for the yogurt or soda nothing could be as innocent as that. Cracking an old safe is pretty tough, but modern technology has made it pretty easy. Thing is nobody wipes off a fingerprint scanner after using so 9 times out of 10 what’s left on the pad is a fingerprint. Fighting for the little guy is for suckers. We all do it once in a while the trick is to do get in and out quick without getting involved that’s a trick I never mastered. Powerfull people don’t like being pushed around. You can never quite predict what they’re going to do, or their washed out special forces security guy do. Blackmail is a lot like owning a pitbull, it might protect you or it might bite your hand off, That’s why it’s important to know what they’re thinking and the means eavesdropping. To build a listening device you need a crappy phone with a mic that picks up everything but you want the battery power and the circuits of a better phone. It’s a trick you learn when the purchasing office won’t spring for a bug. A spy is a criminal with a government paycheck Once somebody sends a guy with a gun after you it’s only going to get worse, but like it or not you have work to do. For a job like getting rid of the drug dealer that lives next door Ill take a hardware store over a gun anyday. Guns make you stupid, better to fight your wars with duct tape, duct tape makes you smart. Every decent punk has a bullet proof door, but people forget that walls are just plaster, hopefully you get them with the first shot or the second, now he’s down and waiting for you to come through the front door, so you don’t come through the front door. People with happy families don’t become spies. A bad childhood is a perfect background for covert ops, you don’t trust anyone you’re used to getting smacked around and you don’t get homesick. (Carjacks a big car with no airbags, then collides with a car to incapacitate another car and )

Airbags save a lot of lives but they also take you out long enough to get your hands cable tied to the steering wheel. You have to lose yourself some fights to win some The key to fighting a group is taking out is it’s leader The rest will leave you alone. When you work solo it’s about prepping the ground. Home court advantage counts for a lot. You never know whats going to happen it’s best to prepare for everything. Most bad guys expect you to sit there and wait for them like those are the rules or something. If you’re going to put prints on a gun, sticking it in someone’s hand wont do it. Any decent lawyer can explain prints on a gun, try explaining prints on the inside of a trigger assembly.

Identity A surveillance photo can tell you a lot about the photographer. Surveillance takes planning you have to scout the area. You need a place to sit and wait to wait for the target for an hour or ten. You need to take a leak now and then, lots of chances to get seen. You can’t choose your intelligence sources might be a heroin smuggler a dictator, or your mom. My mothers understanding of my career changes with what she wants from me, one day she can name everyone on the national security council the next day she thinks that I work for the post office. Not all bugs are the same, if it’s got a battery it’s disposable short term if it’s wired into the house power it’s a longer term thing if it has a transmitter you can figure out how close the listener is. Once your surveillance knows you’re on to them the clock starts ticking, they know you’re coming so the question is can they destroy their equipment and get out of there in time. The question for you is can you find them before every bit of useful information is turned into a burned pile of flak. Theres a reason why spies don’t have a lot of parties, everybodies got a history with everybody else. Often the best way to get intel is to provoke action, set people in motion, pros know better but they usually have to work with a few amateurs and they panic so you beat the bushes a little and see what flies out. Once your frightened amateur leads you to your pros the work begins. Con artists and spies are both professional liars, con artists do it for the money and spies do it for their flag, but its mostly the same gig they both run operations they follow security procedures they recruit security staff and issue orders. When you go after a spy you send another spy the same goes for con artists, to catch them you have to beat them at their own game, be a better liar than he is. No matter how good your cover identity is you got to sell it and that isn’t always easy. Sometimes you have to decide how commited you are to pretending you are who you say you are. I don’t like running from cops but it has it’s advantages, it builds your credibility with a criminal when you flee a crime scene.

Eavesdropping and field work go hand in hand. You want to know what your target is saying what he is typing in to his computer but technology can’t work miracles bugs don’t plant themselves fact is even the fanciest equipment needs help from a good old fashioned crowbar. It’s always useful to be able to disable a car remotely a cell phone and some wire and you can ground the circuit of the electrical system with a phone call. A good cover identity keeps the target feeling in control talk to much drink to much just to let them know he’s got the edge. Go after a group of people directly and they pull together, they get stronger. Taking on a tight knit group is about making them turn on each other. You plant the seeds of distrust and watch them grow. Of course sewing seeds of distrust is harder when nobody trusts you. Sometimes a great plan comes together just a little bit too early. You’ve been in the business way to long when you recognize the sound of a 45 caliber over a phone. (explosion) that’s what happens when you wire a cell phone to a blasting cap under the gas tank instead of the electrical system. Whether you’re in Moscow Tehran, or Miami club girls are a good source of information, men say things to a beautiful woman, they give out phone numbers hotel keys they let down their guard. Getting information from a club girl means buying drinks, it’s no problem with an operations slush fund, it’s a big problem if you’re spending cash scrounged up from you mothers purse. A hit man is like a plumber a dentist or a mechanic, everybody is always looking for a good one. I don’t like dealing with paranoids much, they get erratic and make bad decisions. Of course that can be of help when you need them to make a bad decision. Truth is identity theft isn’t hard, a number and an ID is all you need to drain a bank account and return a lot of money to very surprised retirees. But why stop there as long as your stealing someone’s identity why not use it to contact some known terrorist organizations on unsecured phone lines, why not use it to threaten some federal judges and insult the local drug cartel, most fun I’ve had in Miami.

Fight or Flight International conferences attract spies like for the same reason hotel bars attract hookers. You can do business and drink for free. Any high security function is going to have a lot of oversight, a lot of meetings. A lot of bureaucrats checking up on each other (mike walking past security desk saying “remember I forgot my badge.) In all of the confusion it’s easy for the bureaucrat to just show up. (bullshits once in security debriefing by saying he’s an interdepartmental liason) the important thing is to disappear before they start asking questions. If they do decide to start asking questions. You just have to hope you’re in a building with lots of hallways, a good service basement. And plenty

of exits. But in the end, sometimes getting away means being willing to do what the guy chasing you won’t, like jump off a building. Convincing a bully to backdown usually is just a matter of showing that you aren’t afraid of them. Of course some guys come armed with 357 magnums, then you change tactics. (Fiona asks clients to hide in bathtub to avoid potential shooting) (makes Molotov cocktails from liquor bottles). When faced with a superior force you retreat quietly or attack with as much force as possible. Outfitting a safehouse is about two things: you need to know if someone is coming, you need to know how the folks you’re protecting are going to get out if they do. And if you can’t be on babysitting duty the whole time you need to know the minute something’s wrong A 35$ flood light has a decent motion detector on it. Wire that to a cell phone and you’ve got a reliable motion sensor that’ll call you if there’s trouble. I love commuters, anybody who drives the same route to work, they do all the work for you. And a punctual commuter the guy who’s in the same place at 836 every morning, it’s almost too easy. Threaten any serious criminal organization and there going to do one of two things. They’ll send someone to make a deal, or they’ll send someone to make a corpse either way you have something to work with. When you go on the run the first thing you do is lay down tracks in the opposite direction. But that only works if the bad guy finds the track and believes it’s real. Which means selling it, you need to put on a show. Make them feel clever, when you make somebody work to get a piece of information they’ll believe that much more because it’s that much harder to get. Approaching a spy in the middle of a job gives you a lot of leverage. They’ll playing a delicate game and the last thing they want is someone coming and smashing their delicate game with a brick. (When being chased, mike heated a doorknob handle with a blowtorch which burned pursuers hand and then mike smashed his head with a wrench. Basic rule of bodygaurding never fight with protectee around. Mostly because if they happen to catch a stray bullet, you’ve just lost your job. Modern technology has made it possible to do sophisticated electronic surveillance from your electronic store, it sounds more fun that it is. (Sam and Fiona talked to bad guy on the phone trying to get him to say a number of pre chosen phrases in order to use the recording to make a fake tape.) Faking surveillance video has come a long way. It used to be slaving a few days away with a razor blade and a VHS tape. Now it’s a few hours and a computer. A drug cartel is a business, if killing a witness to protect a valuable employee from jailtime is the best way to keep making money they’ll do that. If it looks like that employee’s testifying to the FBI though there just as happy to take care of the problem another way. Mike and guy met in graveyard. “you want some place safe quiet with good cover two guys with business suits don’t raise any eyebrows.

Old Friends You want to blend in to a new city, you better be up on local sports. Covert ops has its perks you travel make your own hours and make your own expense, downside, lots of people want you dead. If it looks like you’re about to be in a fight that may get you killed, try starting another one. When booby trapping your home it’s important to keep it simple Make it easy to set up, easy to disable. One more thing to know about booby traps, make sure your friends know not to drop by unannounced. You can learn good self-defense fighting with students in a class, but great self-defense, that you pick up fighting with you family. Spies go to bars for the same reason people go to libraries, full of information, if you know how to ask. The key to good knife defense is to control the knife hand and strike with everything you’ve got. Fighting is often about tactical retreat, like running from two knives. It’s also about making the body count unacceptable. Pimps are all about show, high end or low end ,they stand out. Compulsive gamblers get a lot of practice seeing people bluff, so the good news is that they can pick up on people’s tell’s the bad news is when they’re wrong the consequences are very expensive. Any good operative is careful not to leave much behind, Everyone gets careless though, and even the littlest of things can turn out to be useful. A receipt, a paperback, Room service records, every little bit helps. (Pulled girl away from group by saying “ hey didn’t I meet you at the sky bar last night.” Then said to girl, “You just looked a little bored I thought I might help you out.”) A rescue attempt is hard enough when someone want’s to be rescued, it doesn’t matter if it’s a brother with a compulsive gambling problem, or a girl who thinks she’s about to launch her modeling car. So you eliminate escape options. Keep a low profile. But no matter what you do you will have somebody screaming bloody murder in the back of your car. Some situations come down to just probability, the chance that an assassin with a handgun at 50 yards, the number of shots that he can get off, he might have a one in five chance, maybe a one in ten of dying. Or a 100 percent chance of getting shot by a shotgun rigged to the door. A ricochet is usually not deadly but it sure feels that way. Any decent criminal will change his plans with the mention of the cops. Spend a lot of time in countries without hospitals, you pick up a few things. Running an operation, you can’t let personal feelings get in the way, its about planning and execution, not about being angry. Although occasionally you may get a little angry. There’s a reason why a family is always a good source of leverage, whether it’s a brother who always owes you money or a brother stuck in a trunk of a car, you can’t really turn your back on them.

The drive home is often a grueling experience for someone whom you just rescued, especially if they were unaware of their situation, they ask a lot of questions, you fill them in on the answers, and then it dawns on them, the truth, it can be a little overwhelming.

Family Business There’s a good reason people in covert ops keep it a secret in from their families. Once your family knows what you do, you’ve got problems. Best case their scared, worst case, they figure they can get into trouble and you’ll get them out of it. In gathering intel little things can tell you a lot. A top flight alarm system well placed cameras with out blind spots, paying attention to strangers in the area. More aggressive intelligence gathering is more delicate, but someone who knows what to look for can find out a lot. If you know what to look for a bunch of little things can tell you everything you need to know. One cheap and effective security measure is working in an area with little or no traffic, anyone in a car is too obvious so you force any would be followers to get out and walk. Fighting is something that you want to avoid, once you fight someone he knows your face, you kind of blow your cover when you hit somebody with a piece of rebar, but when you have no choice rebar it is. When you want to turn someone into an asset get him to betray the people that he loves, you have to get to know him. You need to know his frustrations, you need to know how he spends his time and money, you need to understand his hopes and dreams. C4 has a plastic sheen and a putty like consistency, if you need to counterfeit it the best thing I’ve found is cake icing or foundant as it’s known in the baking trade. If you need a moldable explosive with a bang someone with fiona’s skills can make a homemade explosive with some spackle some petroleum jelly and whole bunch of other things that I don’t even want to know about. You ever meet someone and it just clicks instantly, you like the same things share the same things, it seems like you’ve known them your entire life, it could be fate or it could be that you have a listening device planted under the dash of their car. You’d be surprised how often covert ops pose as international man of mystery fantasies about glamorous covert ops can be extremely useful to exploit though some secret agent fantasies are more useful than others. Anybody in the arms trade that the mark of a pro is the blow and burn, its’s a detonator on what you’re selling in case the deal goes bad. Dealing with a blown cover is about stalling for time, stay alive long enough to figure out what they know and tell a bigger lie to save yourself. Riding in a car with a blindfold takes getting used to, the good news is that the driver is busy making sure you can’t see anything, he’s not paying attention to see if anyone is following him. Any good operative is going to be a bit of a control freak. Above all they don’t want to hear that the people that they think they own really belong to someone that can destroy them.

They’res nothing worse for anyone who’s spent time in intelligence work than being up against a ghost. You can deal with an enemy you know, but an enemy you don’t know. He can be a competitor who knows all about your operation, could be law enforcement ready to bust you, could be a foreign agent, setting you up in some deep spy game. Your only option is to disappear.

Unpaid Debts For most people a night out at the Miami clubs is a chance to see and be seen, when you’re under government surveillance it’s a different story. You still want to know who’s watching you but the reason’s are a little different. Sprinkle a mixture of flower and dayglow on your flow and you’ll know if you have any visitors and what they were after. You don’t always have to be that clever, sometimes they wan’t you to know what they were after. There are two kinds of government surveillance, the kind that looks for something and the kind that makes your life difficult. You can tie up a lot of government resources by keeping a bugged phone line open, as long as it’s open they’re supposed to keep listening. Saying a few cryptic things now and then and they will be stuck in their little van trying to figure out what you are saying, they can’t go home, grab a bite to eat or take a leak. And the longer they’re stuck in a van with headphones, the more you can find out about them. As a rule spies don’t like dealing with cops. Covert ops are illegal by definition, if they were legal they wouldn’t need to be covert. Still the police can be useful if you need insurance against people shooting. When you’re going into a meeting cold with people you know nothing about you have to be extra careful, pay attention to every detail, map out an escape route or two just incase. And never ever show up as yourself. Another thing you look for is people who look overly upset that things have changed, details that shouldn’t matter so much. Some tip offs aren’t so subtle such as a detonator sitting on enough chloride to blow up a city block. You can turn an old TV into an oscilloscope with about 150 dollars of hardware. It will electrocute you if you’re not careful but it makes a decent bug detector. If you don’t want to tip off anybody who might be listening you have to be prepared to be talking for a couple of hours. Of course when you have to keep talking it gives someone an opportunity to hijack the conversation. The optical bug is a high tech bug that shoots a light beam at a window it picks up vibrations from the glass and translates them into speech, you cant see it with a naked eye but take the infrared filter off a digital camera and it shows up nicely. As high tech as laser bug might be they’re not hard to beat. ( they attach an electric toothbrush to a window.) When working a cover id the safest thing is to let the target take the lead, you have more information than he does, you want to keep that edge. Anyone with a security clearance is going to know not to leave anything in a hotel room. They’ll keep the important stuff with them in a laptop with a few layers of encryption which means you can’t break into it. But if you’re just looking to make some angry you don’t have to break it just put a powerfull magnet near it to turn it into an expensive paper weight. Doctors are well known to be the worst patients, similarly special ops people are the worst to protect, they think they can handle anything. When something serious is going down, it’s a good idea to show up nice and early so that you can see the ground and asses the situation.

When enough people hate you sometimes the only move is to stand in the middle and hope that they kill each other before they kill you. Anyone who’s ever handled large amounts of cash can tell you it’s one of the hardest things in the world to move, it’s heavy and dense and is dead weight, if it’s on fire that complicates things further. Getting information out of someone who doesn’t want to give it up is all about upsetting the targets emotional balance impairing their judgement, fear is good, anger is not bad either. Sometimes intelligence gathering involves lots of sophisticated techniques and a lot of high tech equipment, sometimes it’s as simple as picking someone’s pocket.

Broken Rules For anyone who works in covert ops, names have a special power, knowing somebodys real name, who they work for, you’ve got something on them, out of a spy in the field you can get them killed, out a bureaucrat in a restaurant and you’ll just piss them off. The longer you run from the police the more certain you are to get caught, there’s a small window of time once a chase begins that backup arrives, before helicopters are deployed, if you want any chance of getting away you best use this time to find some place secluded and bail out. In intelligence work, surveillance is called coverage it’s like basketball you can run zone defense or you can run man-to-man. Man-to-man is risky, follow someone too long, their going to suspicious. Zone is usually the way to go stay put and let targets come to you, less obvious, easier on the feet and you can catch up on your celebrity gossip. Explaining the rules of covert ops is always a challenge it’s a world where the good guys look like bad guys and two wrongs do indeed make a right. As cover Id’s go I prefer rich businessman, or international playboy to crazy thief but if the situation calls for it, you do what you have to do. The term shock and awe gets misused a lot these days. It’s a popular name for a military tactcic known as rapid dominance, whether you do it with a 1000 pound bomb or a can of turpentine and a power drill it’s all about being spectacular, kill an electronic brain of a late model car and it’s dead, won’t start, the windows won’t open then you can do whatever you want. (Trapped car in a narrow alley by chain linking a fence closed beforehand, then running a dumpster along the side of the car, then drilled a hole through the hood disabling the electronic brain of the car. Then drilled holes in the top of the car pouring turpentine through the holes and threatening to ignite the turpentine) Piss off a criminal organization and you could end up dead. But if they don’t kill you then they got plans for you. There’s no substitute for improvisation. Even the best plan can’t anticipate everything, you better be able to roll with the punches. They say you only get one chance to make a first impression with an employer doesn’t matter if you’re a store manager or a strongman, you have to put your best foot forward.

Any new employer is looking for the same things, are you willing to go the extra mile can you take the initiative, impress them. In any new job there’s always friction with your co-workers they’re going to wonder is the boss going to like the new guy better if he’s going to make them look bad, in some jobs that can get you a dark look in the break room in other jobs that can get you a bullet in the back of the head. Military Firebombs are typically white phosphorus or chlorine triflourine these are remarkably effective but they are unstable, lethally toxic and hard to find at a grocery store. The main ingredient in a home made firebomb is Styrofoam a military demolitions expert can put something together in a few hours, an IRA trained guriella can do it in twenty minutes give or take. Being a spy you have to be comfortable with people doing bad things for good reasons, doing good things for bad reasons, you do the best you can. In any kind of covert operations it’s important to be careful for what you wish for. The information that you fight so hard to get may be everything you wish for, or it just may make your life more complicated.

Wanted Man Covert operatives have a hard time dating, even if you find someone that doesn’t mind that you don’t talk about your past or that you carry a concealed weapon, they usually want more than your able to give. Selling stolen goods is all about discretion, you got to be the kind of person who can keep their mouth shut. The kind of person who never ever shares their numbers in their little black book. Even the most careful spy leaves a trail that could get them burned. A patriot making a list of deals for his government looks a lot like a traitor making black market sales for his wallet, somebody upstairs gets the wrong idea and suddenly you’re burned and out of a job. When you’re giving 5 inches and 100 pounds to a well trained opponent, it helps to know the terrain better than he does. A good cover identity is a team effort. If you want to meet someone it’s a good idea to play a little hard to get. Put people between yourself and the target, make them come to you. Just because some believes you are who you say you are doesn’t mean that he’ll do what you want him to do. Clandestine meetings are never fun to arrange, it’s a big part of a job for a covert operative but it’s never pleasant. It’s not so much the fear of death that bothers you it’s driving to meet someone with a bag over your head, sometimes they wash the bag, sometimes they don’t. The thing about security is that the very things that protect you can be turned against you by someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s tough to compromise a well thought out security system. But making someone think that you can compromise it, that’s much easier. Take surveillance cameras for example, you can disable one by shooting a laser at it and overload it’s light sensitive chip. Cheap easy and exactly the thing sort a sophisticated criminal organization with lots of resources would do. Leave around some tell tale signs of surveillance like cigarette buts or a camera lens cap and the more security there is the more likely they that they have a serious problem. Even the security team itself can be an opportunity, the more employees you have the more you have to worry about them. Deliver some vague threats and a few hundred bucks to a security guard, if he’s honest he’ll tell

his boss who then wonders who wasn’t so honest, for the cost of a nice dinner you can get a whole security team canned. One of the dangers of any kind of psychological warfare is that it can be too effective and send the target into a paranoid tailspin. That paranoia can be useful or deadly. The key to good security is good systems, consistency but those very same systems make you predictable, where will you take your valuables, a bank you trust. How are you going to get there, with armed men in a big SUV, when will you go, when the bank is less crowded. All are good procedure and 100% predictable. If you know that someone’s going to be at a bank at a particular time it’s not hard to make it look like they’re robbing the bank, shoot out a few video surveillance cameras block of a crowded street with a stolen car like they’re preparing an escape route fire up a spark gap transmitter to kill the security radios at the bank and it looks like they really know what they’re doing.

Hard Bargain Work around spies for a while and you learn to be careful when it looks like you’re getting what you want. That’s when you tend to let you’re guard down and get careless. Calling the cops on someone can teach you a lot, a foreign agent would run so might an armed assassin, a bureaucrat’s is going to act like a bureaucrat. Bureaucrats live for respect, east of the Balkans that means a bribe, west it’s more about showing that you know that they’re in charge. About 40% of kidnapping victims are released safely, these statistics are affected by a number of factors including the nationality of the kidnappers the age of the victim and whether a hostage negotiator is deployed. The odds go down sharply if nobody has the money to pay the ransom. A kidnapping is a business deal, the bad guys have negotiating power since they’re selling the life of a loved one but then again they have a market of one so they have to work with you. Working with untrained amateurs introduces an element of risk, it’s a risk you have to live with in a lot of operations, although you often wish that everybody went through green beret training in high school. Once a kidnpapper knows that you’re onto him, he’ll try to contact his partners to have the hostage killed at that point you have a choice, you can start to choose wreathes for the hostages’ funeral, or take a hostage of your own. The art of turning someone into a double agent is delicate, the target has to be put into a fragile psychological state, fortunately fragile psychological states are a specialty of fiona’s. It’s always easier to turn someone from a criminal gang into a double agent, the more secretitive and ruthless their side is the better, you work on their fear that any hint of disloyalty will get them killed by their own people. From Karachi to bogota every kidnappers favorite resources is a corrupt government employee, and employee can handle alarms, police and get financial information, bank accounts you even have a fall guy if everything goes wrong. To a professional kidnapper a good man on the inside is worth a lot. And a bad man on the inside is worth even more. The thing about doubling anyone is that the more they do for you the deeper they get. The deeper they get the more you can get them to do. Great if you’re running them but hard on the source, the suicide rate is above average.

GPS devices are becoming more common nowadays, mostly they’re for nervous parents tracking children, but they’re perfectly good for other purposes. Running a double agent is a relationship they’res a give and take mostly take but sometimes you have to give. Rescuing a hostage isn’t about battering rams and guns charge through with a gun and chances are the person you’re trying to save will be the first person dying of acute lead poisioning, so you come up with alternatives. Ingredients from the local pharmacy mixed with aluminum foil powdered in a coffee grinder will make a serviceable flash grenade. That will stun anyone from a good twenty feet. Thermite is another handy tool with a surface temperature of a thousand degrees it used to weld together railroad ties it will make pretty short work of most locks too. If you can’get through a door without attracting attention the next best thing is to attract a lot of attention, once’s everyone’s looking at the door wondering what’s going on you can pop off a flash grenede and they won’t be seeing anything for a while. The longer you’ve been in the game the more you have to worry about underestimating an opponent. Say you don’t think much of bureaucrats, don’t feel that they’re worth you’re time or attention, then the a bureaucrat is the perfect person to send to kill you. Theres no way to anticipate every danger you need a backup plan when things go wrong, that ‘s why home court advantage is so important.

False Flag A fake identity is known in the spy industry is known as a False Flag it used to be you could make your own documents with a printer and a laminator, these days though Id’s have a magnetic strips holograms and infrared watermarks, you need a pro. In some situations a tactical retreat is your best option, a guy with a gun is a guy with a gun, you can fight and risk someone getting shot or wait for backup. Corporations need spies just like governments do, of course they’re not called spies they’re called security consultants. They’re basically mercenaries with nice suits. One of the things that you learn in training is to avoid situations that cut too close, if you had a rough childhood, a situation with an abusive father and a vulnerable kid is going to make you angry, that can be motivating but it can also be dangerous. Facts are the good hallmark of a false idenity. It’s harder to create history than it is to alter it plus the more truth’s to your lie the easier it is to remember it. Just because they’re no windows or doors doesn’t mean they’re no exits. The thing to look for is an air-conditioner unit. That’s where the wall’s the weakest. Also people watch doors they don’t watch air conditioners. A basic rule of covert ops is let someone else do your dirty work. Let someone else find the guy you want to kill. It’s a great technique as long as you’re not the someone else.

Remove the trigger box spring from a six hauer p228 and you have a 9mm semi automatic doorstop. Shoot a propane tank and you’ll get a big cloud of cold gas. You need an open flame and real good aim. Assination is 1% shooting 99% preparation. Anticipating moves devising approaches recruiting sources finding the perfect opportunity so the bullet is almost an afterthought usually that’s when the target is on the move when they’re too many variables to control them all. They’re ways to lessen the risk. An armed escort, taking an unpredictable route to your destination having backup in a trail car, but ultimately as long as the assassin knows where you’re going they have the upper hand. It’s impossible to stop a good assassin from finding an opening and taking a shot. The best you can do is control where the best opening is and sometimes that’s enough.

Dead Drop & Loose Ends The first step in dealing with a covert op is to establishing a way to communicate privately a code could be a key encrypted cipher but really all you need is a base of knowledge that you share. The truly paranoid don’t go to meetings themselves, they use a cutout someone unrelated to them higher to show a prearranged sign and deliver a message, the sign is something innoccoious but hard to miss, my favorite is a tourist guide to Madison Wisconsin, no one will look at it twice, but unless I’m in the Midwest I know they’re waiting for Michael Westen. If you want to bug a cell phone wirelessly, you’ll need a lot specialized scanning equipment and a computer to deal with the encryption I prefer a hands on approach. You just a bug a duplicate phone and swap out the sim card so the phone has the same number. Your target will talk all day with the certainty that no one will be listening. Having a gun to your head is all about timing, finding the right moment to make your move. Best to snap the trigger finger first, after that it’s mostly down hill. Whether you’re protecting a client, monitoring electronic surveillance or meeting that man who burned you, you’ve got to be patient. In the real world covert ops doesn’t offer many car chases or gunfights, mostly it’s just hurry up and wait. Not too exciting but you wait and watch and you stay alert because at any minute the job can get way too exciting. It’s always tough to reschedule a covert meeting you can’t exactly leave a note so you have to leave behind just enough to get them to where you want to go. There are two basic ways to blow up a car, use the gasoline in the tank or provide your own explosive. There two techniques that use opposite ends of the car and are disarmed differently. Some people prefer the gas tank, tends to look more like an accident, but it’s less reliable. Others prefer plastic explosive on the battery wired to the ignition. When you’re communicating in code, sometimes you just have to hope that whoever you’re talking to is smart enough to figure out what you’re saying. Use a code that’s too simple and it will get broken, use a code that’s too complex and you’re just talking to yourself. In any operation communicating silently is often essential. Chalk marks an unusual arrangement of objects and anything that stands out from the background will do. A piece of cloth on a window. A warehouse door is going to be reinforced but the walls aren’t. And the areas under the windows don’t have load bearing beams.

A good trap doesn’t scare people, it makes them curious. A speeding truck makes people scatter a slow moving truck moving truck on the other hand makes people want to take a closer look. For any operative stashing weapons is second nature after a while. Spies hide guns like squirrels hide acorns, you never know when you’ll need some firepower or where you’ll be when you need it. Choosing a cover id on the fly is all always a challenge. When theres no time to think best to go with something simple that keeps your options open. Freon is available at most computer stores buy a can of screen duster and turn it upside down and you’ve got it in liquid form. It’s cold enough to crystallize the metal in many commercial locks. A hammer can take care of the rest. One advantage of working with the same team is that secure communication is simpler, you don’t have to work out a secret code if you have enough history the code is in every picture every memento, every autographed leg cast. Surveillance is a two way street if you know someone is looking for you, you’ve got an advantage they follow your lead, they go where they think you are. Who drives armored cars? People who expect gunfire, usually people with some firepower of their own. IN a hostage situation you have to be cruel to be kind the more you care the more they have leverage over you, like buying a car you have to make them think you can walk away. They’re some fights you just can’t win, a force can be so overwhelming that no tactical approach to a fight will lead to a victory worth having. When you can’t win in a fight sometimes you have to settle for making sure that if you lose, everyone loses it works for nuclear weapons it works for me. The sticky bomb was originally developed in world war 2 for mining tanks, for the home made variety tile adhesive works best sticky, waterproof and it comes in easily portable plastic bucket. A lot of people think the word commando means superhero or at least something close to it. In the popular mind they’re thought of as the ultimate elite soldier, the solution to every problem. The fact is a commando is just someone who is trained to fight under a specific set of circumstances. He’s the guy you send in when they’re more bad guys than good guys, when surprise is the only advantage you can get in an operation. When it works commandoes seem unstoppable, those are the operations that make the papers. when it doesn’t work commandoes get killed just as dead as anyone else. When you work in intelligence you get used to the idea that some information is worth risking everything for, you sign up for the lifestyle or the chance to serve your country or the millions of frequent flyer miles but finally it all comes down to putting your ass on the line to learn something.

Season 2 Breaking and entering As a spy you get to spend a lot of time alone, whether you’re in an Indonesian prison or a cave in the afghan mountains or the back of a cargo truck, it comes with the job, you’re trained to make the most of it, plan you’re next move go over your intel review your training but when you’ve cleaned your gun 30 times, reviewed the past tense of every verb in five languages you start itching to make a move.

Airbags are great for surviving crashes, but they make some evasive maneuvers tough, gone are the days when you could run through a stand of trees without a facefull of nylon, of course anything that you can still do anything head on, but it’s a little hard for anyone who’s stuffed in your trunk. (a passenger was put in Michaels trunk) Security measures can sometimes seem a little cruel, just how parents sometimes twist their kids yanking them out of a busy street. Sometimes the safest thing isn’t the most comfortable.