![]() Eventually, the CIA officer’s driver rounded a corner and the surveillance team behind briefly lost sight of the Americans. Underneath his own clothes, he was dressed as an elderly Russian man. On route to one meeting, Plunkert carried a face mask, glasses, and an old Russian overcoat. ‘Jack’ was ready to spring out of the box and take Plunkert’s place in the car when the agent leaped out of the passenger seat. When Bill Plunkert worked in Moscow, he used the CIA tech team’s human-sized Jack-in-the-box which was designed to look like the CIA officer’s torso. “Then I would pick him up at a predetermined location and take him to the meeting location where I would debrief him and chat with him for eight or nine hours.” Losing a surveillance team can become an elaborate game of cat and mouse. And then I would do a limited SDR because it was not a safe place necessarily, to make sure I was not being followed,” Delaney told True Spies. And so he would do an SDR to the meeting to make sure he wasn't being followed. “I taught him how to do a surveillance detection route, made sure he could read maps and things like that. Delaney needed to be particularly cautious when meeting sources, including one valuable Mullah who seemed to know the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. When SPYEX consultant Shawnee Delaney worked as a Defense Intelligence Agency officer in Afghanistan, she stuck out like a sore thumb. Listen to Shawnee Delaney’s True Spies Podcast: Me and the Mullah They’re done both before and after meetings to protect the officer and their intelligence source. SDRs vary in length depending on the location but they’re usually at least one to two hours long, said ex-CIA officer Ryan Hillsberg. ![]() How do they cover foreign officers? How do they change positions as you park the car? Which vehicles avoid pulling up alongside you or hang back at a red light? Officers know the city streets intimately - including alleyways where surveillance teams may lie in wait - and they study the modus operandi of the opposition services. “If the status is that you are covered, you abort.” But how do you know if you’re being followed by a pack of a dozen or more hostile agents? The CIA uses SDRs - surveillance detection routes. If you have surveillance, you absolutely cannot go to a meeting with an agent,” said David Rolph who ran Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer leaking top-secret military intelligence to the US during the Cold War. “The absolutely, positively, most critical thing as a case officer you have to do is to understand and confirm your surveillance status. Listen to David Rolph’s True Spies podcast: The Spy Who Couldn’t SpellĬIA case officers regularly spot, assess, and develop spies they plan to recruit, which can put the target’s freedom - and sometimes their life - at risk, so mastering surveillance is crucial. Martha Duncan, a former US Defense Intelligence Agency officer and Panama analyst, underwent an intense, diverse course: “I attended a training course in England that focused on surveillance detection, setting up operating posts, conducting surveillance, escape, and evasion - all of the things that are required when you really are in a scenario where you're being followed or you're following somebody.” Training as part of a surveillance team and learning the tradecraft helps agents who must apply anti-surveillance measures in hostile environments. Operatives may even jump on a horse or walk a dog if the target is strolling through a park or the countryside. Riley, who worked with the British Intelligence Service MI6 for 18 years and wrote MI6 Spy Skills for Civilians. “An average-size covert surveillance team is likely to consist of somewhere around 14 operators, five cars fitted with concealed cameras and discreet communications, one disguised van fully equipped with high-resolution optics, a couple of motorbikes, and perhaps two bicycles,” said P.J. Intelligence operatives train in all aspects of surveillance from planning surveillance detection routes (SDRs) to working as part of a team of covert operators using vans, motorbikes, cars, Segways, and satellites. ![]()
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