And why not? Spend some time here and you can feel as if you’d been admitted to the backstage preparations for a magic show. The difference is that in espionage, life or death and the fate of nations are at stake, rather than whether a woman can be successfully sawed in half or an ace of spades pulled from a shuffled deck. These magicians weren’t performing; they were dueling.
Here, drawn from the immense private collection of the intelligence historian H. Keith Melton, and the collections of the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Reconnaissance Office, are objects ranging from a poisoned needle, hidden inside a coin, to a fragment of the United States Embassy in Moscow that the Soviets riddled with bugs during its construction in the 1980s; two floors were razed and rebuilt.
There is a K.G.B. model of the umbrella that injected a poison ricin pellet into the Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in 1978; a handmade pair of shoes made for a United States ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s that Czech intelligence officers bugged with a listening device in the heel; a Stasi-created molar that was hollowed out to allow microdots to be safely stored in a spy’s mouth; and a well-preserved rat with a Velcroed body cavity that was used by Americans in Moscow for exchanges of information without agents’ actually meeting. The rodent, treated with hot pepper sauce to discourage scavenging cats, was easily tossed from a passing car for these “dead drops.”
The gadgets here are full of concealments and misdirection; nothing is what it seems. And much of it is almost quaintly old-fashioned. There are some hints of technological experimentation: a Stasi attaché case fitted with an infrared flash camera that could take pictures in the dark, or the C.I.A. bug that was built inside a cinder block in the visitors’ area of a Soviet embassy and could drill its own listening hole.
But most of these objects, tools of the trade over a half-century, are not the stuff of the “Mission Impossible” franchise; they are almost all deliberately mundane. They are not meant to startle; they are meant to fade into the background. They work like tricks sold in a magic shop. And they must be used with similar skill.
Something else is similar: once explained, the magic is gone. The objects used in espionage can almost seem silly. Really! Grown people sprinkling dust (nitrophenylpentadienal) on objects to track the movements of whoever touched them? Using a hat, glasses and a fake mustache as a disguise? Employing a hollowed-out nickel to hide top-secret microfilm? All of espionage can easily seem like a kid’s game, except for the trails of blood and insight that are invariably left in its wake.
And this show, produced by Base Entertainment, contains more than enough to make it resemble a child’s game: interactive screens on which you can disguise a photo of yourself; kiosks where your voice can be distorted and filtered; a mist-filled dark room with shifting laser beams that challenge you to make your way across, without breaking the circuit. (A password-oriented interactive game is too lame for its climactic position in the exhibition.)
There are also larger objects here that reveal, more dramatically, that technological sophistication is not a requirement, nor is it something that necessarily increases over time. Next to a collapsible motor scooter with which Allied spies parachuted behind enemy lines during World War II is a saddle, draped with an Afghan blanket, that was used by a C.I.A. officer riding across the forbidding terrain during the first months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But the objects selected by Mr. Melton — whose collection of over 9,000 spy devices, books and papers has also helped stock the International Spy Museum in Washington — are not presented simply for sensation’s sake. There are very few weapons here, aside from the ice-climbing ax that was brutally smashed into Trotsky’s skull in Mexico — and we see it mounted near his assassin’s bloodied eyeglasses.
Mr. Melton also has stories behind his acquisition of such objects, though his reluctance to share his methods in too much detail suggests a firsthand experience with the world he is documenting. (How did an original K.G.B. model of the bugged American Embassy get into his hands?)
What happens along the way is that we gain an appreciation for the magic as well as the method; we end up glimpsing what these ordinary objects actually accomplished and what was at stake when they were used. The show could have been stronger if that context had been made clearer, but even with its gadget-centered focus, we learn that this great bag of tricks was no mere game.
“Spy: The Secret World of Espionage” is on view through March 31, 2013, at Discovery Times Square, 226 West 44th Street; discoverytsx.com.
Research Electronics International (REI), a leading manufacturer of security equipment to protect against corporate espionage, asserts that corporate espionage and theft of information is thriving. According to Frank Figliuzzi, FBI Counterintelligence Assistant Director, the current FBI caseload shows that commercial secrets worth more than US$13 billion have been stolen from American companies. This number does not include the unreported or undetected losses, nor does it include the losses in the brand value of the victims. The sheer scale of economic espionage against the nation’s top companies threatens America’s economic and technical position in the global economy.
It is a common misconception that espionage only occurs at government agencies and does not affect the business world. However, REI has been promoting that companies should be aware that any information that might benefit a competitor is at risk of espionage or theft, including price lists, customer lists, marketing strategies, insider product information, and financial information. Recently, the FBI launched a campaign promoting corporate espionage awareness including billboards, signs in bus shelters, and website information educating the public about the real and present threat of corporate information theft, and encouraging companies to protect their information from theft.
Companies should be on guard and take the following steps to protect business related information, as stated on the FBI’s website:
1. Recognize there is an insider and outsider threat to your company.
2. Identify and valuate trade secrets.
3. Implement a proactive plan for safeguarding trade secrets.
4. Secure physical and electronic versions of your trade secrets.
5. Confine intellectual knowledge on a “need-to-know” basis.
6. Provide training to employees about your company’s intellectual property plan and security.
For more information on technical equipment to protect against corporate espionage, visit http://www.reiusa.net.
About Research Electronics International
For over 28 years, Research Electronics International (REI) has focused on protecting corporate information, designing and manufacturing technical security equipment to protect against illicit information theft. REI is recognized as an industry leader by corporations, law enforcement agencies, and government agencies for technical security equipment. REI’s corporate offices, RD, manufacturing facilities, and Center for Technical Security are located in Tennessee USA, with an extensive global network of resellers and distribution partners. For more information call +1 (931) 537-6032 or visit REI on the web at http://www.reiusa.net.
Contact Person: Lee Jones
Research Electronics International
Tel: +1 931 537-6032
email: sales(at)reiusa(dot)net
LEE JONES
RESEARCH ELECTRONICS INTERNATIONAL
(931) 537-6032
Email Information
The Government on Friday denied reports of bugging devices being discovered in some offices in South Block including that of the Defence Minister, Mr A.K. Antony. The offices of Prime Minister, Defence Minister and External Affairs Minister are all located in the South Block.
“Routine checks are conducted in the offices of Defence Minister and other officers in South Block. Nothing has been found in these checks,” the statement said.
This follows reports that the Defence Ministry had detected alleged bugging in the office of Mr Antony and sought a probe. The reports claimed that the Intelligence Bureau was being asked to conduct the probe.
The latest incident was said to have been brought to the notice of authorities by two Army personnel manning the phone lines in South Block after which IB was asked to conduct a probe.
This is not the first time that reports have surfaced about bugging devices being allegedly discovered in the corridors of power in Delhi. Last year, there were reports of alleged bugging devices being found in the office of the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A former government space scientist was sentenced Wednesday to 13 years in prison after admitting he tried to sell space and defense secrets to Israel in what turned out to be an FBI sting operation.
Appearing in federal court in a prison jumpsuit, Stewart Nozette said he is “paying for a fatal lack of judgment.”
“I accept full responsibility,” Nozette told U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman.
Prosecutors and Nozette’s lawyers agreed to the 13-year sentence, with credit for the two years that Nozette has spent behind bars since his arrest.
Nozette had high-level security clearances during decades of government work on science and space projects at NASA, the Energy Department and the National Space Council in President George H.W. Bush’s administration.
Nozette pleaded guilty to one count of attempted espionage, admitting he tried to provide Israel with top secret information about satellites, early warning systems, methods for retaliating against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information and major elements of defense strategy.
In court, prosecutors played a videotape of Nozette telling an FBI undercover agent posing as an Israeli spy that “I’ve sort of crossed the Rubicon,” or passed a point of no return. On the video, Nozette said he would charge Israel “at most 1 percent” for passing information about an unspecified program that Nozette said cost the U.S. government $200 million.
Nozette, 54, was a “traitor” who engaged in attempted espionage with “unbridled enthusiasm,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Asuncion told the judge.
At the time of Nozette’s arrest for attempted espionage in 2009, he was awaiting sentencing on fraud and tax evasion charges.
On Wednesday, the judge sentenced him to 37 months on those charges, to be served concurrently with the sentence in the espionage case.
Nozette was known primarily as a defense technologist who had worked on the Reagan-era missile defense shield effort, nicknamed “Star Wars” and formally called the Strategic Defense Initiative.
As a leading scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the 1990s, Nozette came up with the concept behind the Clementine space mission, which ultimately discovered ice on the moon, according to the sentencing memo in the espionage case by Nozette’s legal team.
One of Nozette’s lawyers, Bradford Berenson, called the espionage case “vindictive” and an illustration of “overreaching government conduct” at a time when Nozette was already enmeshed in the tax and fraud case.
The government suspected Nozette might be interested in spying after a search of his Chevy Chase, Md., home in February 2007 in the tax and fraud probe.
Nozette ran a nonprofit corporation called the Alliance for Competitive Technology that had several agreements to develop advanced technology for the U.S. government. But he was overstating his costs for reimbursement and failing to report the income on his tax returns. Berenson called that case “relatively minor” and a violation that “a lot of small businesses engage in.”
The search of his home turned up classified documents, though Nozette’s lawyers said in his defense Wednesday that they were not marked as such. Nozette was not allowed to have unsecured classified documents in his home.
Agents also discovered Nozette sent an email in 2002 threatening to sell information about a classified program he was working on to Israel or another country. The FBI decided to conduct an undercover operation to see how serious he was.
The attempted selling of secrets “never would have happened but for the tax and fraud case,” said Berenson.
“This was functional entrapment,” said Berenson. Entrapment is a defense to criminal charges when it is established that the agent originated the idea of the crime and induced the accused to engage in it.
Nozette also was ordered to pay $217,800 in restitution for fraudulent claims he made to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
America’s favorite spy movies often employ futuristic gadgets and high-tech devices to wow viewers, but according to a former officer in the CIA, technology may have some burdening effects on espionage.
Robert Grenier served 27 years in the CIA, formerly working as a station chief in Islamabad, a CIA representative to the White House, and most recently the head of the Counterterrorism Center. He spoke Wednesday night in Mitchell Hall as part of the Global Agenda speaker series “Spies, Lies and Sneaky Guys: Espionage and Intelligence in the Digital Age.”
Grenier said the title of the Global Agenda series struck him, having worked in the CIA Clandestine Service, donning numerous aliases to hide his true identity as he gathered intelligence from around the world.
He said the roles officers of the Clandestine Service have to undertake involve lying and cheating as well as misrepresenting oneself, essentially “everything your parents told you not to do.”
While he acknowledged these qualities could place the officers in the role of “sneaky guys,” he said most officers take morality very seriously and said the job requirements often help the officers be more moral since they are ultimately utilized to protect American citizens.
Grenier said questions have arisen with the recent boom in technology about whether human espionage should still be employed for intelligence gathering. He said the human element could not be lost, even with advancing electronic intelligence.
“At the end of the day, it is people who make decisions,” Grenier said.
But there may be legitimate concerns about challenges technology poses for the practice of espionage. When he began his career in Clandestine Service, Grenier said an identity could be created with very little concern ones cover would be blown by a suspicious individual. Nowadays, Grenier said just about anyone can do a background check and possibly discover holes in one’s alias.
Grenier said he came to realize the practice of espionage would have to change when he received a standard form letter at a hotel overseas, while undercover, thanking him for visiting again. When he realized electronic records now tracked where he had been for certain date ranges, he said he knew the practice of espionage was going to have to change.
“It was like the future in a flash that opened up before my eyes,” Grenier said.
A challenge has also arisen in the form of “information overload,” and Grenier said analysts are now faced with having to prioritize which individuals they monitor and which ones they do not.
Grenier said this problem materialized with the “underwear bomber” incident of late 2009, in which a man tried to blow up a plane approaching Detroit. Though the agency received information the man posed a threat, they did not act upon it due to the abundance of other intelligence. In hindsight in this case, Grenier said one could argue the intelligence was not prioritized appropriately, but the event, regardless, was a consequence of having more electronic intelligence than human analysts.
Even with the challenges, Grenier said the technology still presents many advantages, including greater ease in identifying targets for intelligence information. He recounted an experience in North Africa where he needed to gain information about radical leftist student leaders, and he said he did so by picking up hitchhikers and asking if they knew anything about the group.
“This was really primitive, and this was difficult, and it was not at all efficient,” Grenier said.
In modern espionage, Grenier said the people of interest could have been located first by technology, and then the officers on the ground could have formed the intelligence relationships necessary.
And the amplification of communications technology may also be a blessing for the agency, including its ability to use “open source” intelligence information from the same social networks and websites average citizens use every day.
Grenier said he experienced some bad events during his time in the CIA, but never had a bad day at work. He said if he could do it all over again, he would still join the CIA, finding the profession somewhat irresistible.
