Spycraft - Melton [226]
An active CD possessed an obvious function that remained operable in addition to the internal cavity and the spy gear it housed. An example of an active CD was a fountain pen that wrote normally but contained a subminiature camera that could be operated without affecting the writing function. The writing instrument masked the presence of the concealment. Another example would be a video camera concealed inside a lamp with both devices performing their designed functions separately or simultaneously. A calculator modified with a concealment cavity for a beacon was considered active if it continued to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
The 1960s Burma Shave-can active concealment produced shaving foam and masked an internal cavity. Years later such items were copied by criminals for use in smuggling.
A passive CD provides a cavity for concealing materials but does not perform another function to mask its clandestine use. For example, a wooden statue with a cavity in the base would have no function other than for display. An attaché case with a false bottom at its base or a book with a hollowed-out cover were other examples of passive CDs that became a standard part of every case officer’s and agent’s operational equipment.
Concealments served five operational purposes: storing (bookcase at home), transporting (travel purse), exchanging (a loaded dirty mitten at a dead drop site), infiltrating (an audio transmitter inside a gift to a target), and masking (a wine rack placed in front of the entrance to a secret passageway).
Spies with compromising equipment must secretly store and protect the clandestine gear in their possession. One-time pads for enciphering messages or subminiature cameras must be stored indefinitely for use at the appropriate time. Sensitive intelligence information or documents must be hidden until passed to the handler. CDs need to provide quick access to the equipment and information while protecting against accidental discovery by a family member or exposure during a more threatening security search. The size of the items to be stored in the concealment and the available method for getting the CD to the agent dictated what could be used.
Virtually any object that offers sufficient volume can be converted into a concealment device, but the object has to fit into the user’s lifestyle. The local economy in the agent’s country often restricts the variety of CDs issued. In areas where consumer goods are in short supply, it may be difficult to find items that could be given to the agent for storage purposes without causing neighbors to be envious and suspicious. Constructing a CD inside a false-bottomed five-liter petrol can be an effective storage device for an agent with a car or garage, but if the country was experiencing severe petrol shortages such a luxury might be seen as out of place or be a target for theft.
In the decades before data could be stored on discs and thumb drives, wooden desks and bookcases that could conceal a four-inch briefcase, a large document, disguise items, radios, and cameras were among the most popular concealment “hosts.”11 Concealment furniture was constructed to blend in with the home decor of the user. Bookcases, in particular, were universally accepted as common furniture. They were durable and could be built with cavities throughout—at the top behind the molding, inside the shelves, in a false back, in the thickness of the sides, or with the largest cavity beneath the bottom shelf behind the skirt.
Material being exchanged by dead drop was hidden inside specially constructed CDs designed to blend in with the site’s surroundings and remain unrecognized until retrieved. If the drop site was in a park, a small piece of tree limb hollowed out to hold film cassettes or a false passport would have been a typical concealment.12 Waterproof containers, weighted with lead shot to compensate for