Spycraft - Melton [245]
Dead drops are the most commonly used and most secure form of impersonal communication.15 Dead drops enable agent and handler to exchange messages, correspondence, documents, film cassettes, money, requirements, and instructions without a direct encounter. Dead drops were “timed operations” in which the dropped package remained in a location for only a short time until retrieved by either the agent or handler.
Dead drop sites are selected from locations to which both the agent and the handler have normal access. Public sites for dead drops ranged from parks and nature trails to stairwells, parking garages, and elevators. Site selection varied depending on the country in which the operation was taking place and the circumstances surrounding the agent. Examples might include a library that contained a shelf of little-used books or the door of a mosque where shoes of either the agent or handler would serve as the container for the material being exchanged. Private areas, such as social clubs and health clubs, were also used if they contained obscured areas where drops could be left without notice.
The ideal dead drop site was used only once, was in a location that could be precisely communicated to the agent, and provided speed of access for both the agent and handler. The site should also provide privacy so that it could be loaded and emptied without the agent and handler being observed.16 Finally, the location would be selected so that both the handler and the agent had plausible reason to be at the site and in a setting where the concealment would naturally pass unnoticed. A case officer from the 1970s who handled Polish officer Ryszard Kuklinski observed, “every CIA officer serving in a denied area should have a dog.” Even in areas with constant and unfriendly surveillance, the necessity of taking the dog for walks provided excellent cover for carrying out operational acts involving signal sites and dead drops .17
In most capital cities, such as Moscow, Vienna, Paris, Washington, and Berlin, the number of “pristine sites” that met operational requirements for dead drops was limited, since thousands of intelligence officers from different countries had worked the same areas for decades. As a result, there was continuous pressure to identify new sites for future operational use. Techs and case officers shared the responsibility to find, photograph, sketch, and maintain inventories of valid sites. The difficulty in doing so was compounded because all signal and drop sites possess the same general attributes. In response, alert counterintelligence officers could set up an observation post at likely locations and patiently wait for them to be used. Nevertheless, the value of dead drops, despite their complexity and limitations, makes them a primary tool of every professional intelligence service.
Signal sites were among several methods used to initiate a communications sequence between the agent and handler. Signals of some type usually preceded or concluded an operation and were normally linked to a specific meeting place or dead drop location. For example, a signal left at site “Alpha” may initiate a drop at site “Bravo” or a meeting at a designated park bench.
Signal sites were usually located in public places, away from the actual drop site, and positioned so that the agent or a designated observer passed them regularly. Signposts, telephone poles, bridge abutments, and mailboxes were among the sites typically used to place a signal. Visual signal marks were made using postage stamps, white adhesive tape, masking tape, colored thumbtacks, colored adhesive-backed stickers, colored chalk, lipstick, and even crushed cigarette packs. A precisely placed soft drink can is readily visible