Spy Gadgets: A Visit With the Real-Life Q

AlistairCharlton writes in a neat article about night vision watches, video recording glasses, and other real-life spy gadgets. "Q (real name Jeremy Marks) has run SpyMaster for 20 years and has three branches in central London. The company sells a wide range of covert equipment, from recorders disguised as chewing gum wrappers and watches with night vision cameras, to body armour and home security. Far from meeting our Quartermaster deep in the bowels of MI5 or at an abandoned Underground station, we were invited into SpyMaster's flagship store just off Oxford street; it's a glass-fronted shop just like any other - no M, no whiskey cabinet (so far as we could see) and no ejector seats in sight. "

A Book From the Real CIA Qs

[darkmeridian]

I read a very interesting book called Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda. The book chronicles the history of the Office of Technical Services, which provides bugs, cameras, radios, forged documents, and other tools of the trade for spies in denied areas. I was surprised to learn that America had been operating so blatantly and effectively in the former Soviet Union.

A great story concerned a US operative on a sting operation trying to buy weapons from an arms dealer. At the closing table, the arms dealer asks for the operative's (fake) passport, and looks it over. He hands it back and says, "You told me you were in Yemen so I wanted to check your passport." Of course, the operative was never in Yemen, but the CIA techs had even forged an Yemeni entry stamp onto the fake passport. The OTS also forged the documents in Operation Argo, now playing in a theater near you.

On top of all the tech are many stories of humans. A touching story concerned three OTS agents who were betrayed, arrested for spying in Cuba in 1960, then imprisoned for three years. The US government disavowed them, but despite harsh conditions and torture, they never admitted they were CIA agents. Instead, to a man, they steadfastly maintained their cover stories that they were just tourists who happened to be carrying high-tech spy equipment. From the book:

Sometimes the questions would vary, with the interrogators accusing them of working for the FBI. Bad Teeth would often claim that the other two prisoners already confessed, so not telling the truth was pointless. During one session, a young guard incessantly played with his gun, flipping the cylinder open and then pulling the trigger. "Tell him that men don't play with guns," Wally ordered Bad Teeth. "Only kids do." Bad Teeth obliged and the guard looked suitably chastened.

Our attitude was that we didn't know what our fate would be. I was convinced I was going to be shot. I figured I'm expendable, but I'd never do anything to disgrace my children or the Marine Corps," explained Andy, who had served in the Marines from 1944 to 1946 and again between 1950 and 1952. "I made my peace with God, but it never happened, thank God.

And while in prison, they used their technical skills to defuse a bomb that guards had planted as a self-destruct contingency if the US invaded, and also built a radio from discarded scrap. Their arrest was a secret even within OTS. An agent working as part of a team preparing care packages for operatives in the field saw an old tech preparing a care package by himself. He asked why the old timer was working by himself, and the guy said, "This is for our boys in Cuba. The others don't know that." Eventually, the CIA swapped them for four Cubans arrested in NY for espionage.

It's a great book, and I highly recommend it for nerds like us.