They do without expensive cars. 5 popular myths about spies

1. Spies live smartly

Expensive sports cars, luxurious restaurants, designer clothes and model friends - this is how adventure films paint the life of an agent. But in reality, it is not at all like this idyllic picture.

Most often, scouts are in contact with the military, scientists and embassy staff. You can't stand out against this background. On the contrary, you need to be able to blend in with the crowd. Therefore, a spy is more likely to travel by metro, bus or regular car than by an expensive boat.

The pursuit of a luxurious life that is inconsistent with the person's status can expose the spy. Thus, the British officer Harry Houghton, who passed on secret information to the Polish and Soviet intelligence services, at first did not fall into the hands of the British special services only because they did not believe his wife.

She noticed that Houghton had huge sums of money of unknown origin, and reported this to the MI-5 counterintelligence service. But there they thought that the woman was simply jealous of her husband for his mistress. Only later from the testimony of another caught spy did it become clear that Houghton was indeed a "mole." And then he was arrested.

2. Any scout always has a few clever gadgets with him

Bugs, multifunctional clocks and firing pens - this seems to be almost the simplest arsenal of an agent. Alas, for the most part, these are just the fantasies of the authors of books and films.

The spies themselves are unlikely to be hung with sophisticated and expensive equipment that, if arrested, could compromise them. In those extraordinary situations, when such devices are still needed, the agent will be given the equipment by the coordinator.

In fact, the most advanced spy technologies are not used by intelligence officers in the field, but by those who work in analytical and coordinating centers. For example, face recognition software appeared in the arsenal of specialists long before this technology was shown in the cinema. But on the whole, the intelligence services have no fabulous devices.

3. Spies are always masters of shooting and hand-to-hand combat, and fights and chases are commonplace

In the movies, an agent is a versatile soldier who can neutralize the enemy with everything that comes to hand, and easily go for the kill if necessary. But the reality is much more prosaic.

The main task of a scout is to gather information. In fact, this is a person who keeps the bosses informed about what is happening abroad, whenever possible, obtains classified information and warns of dangers. Therefore, the foreground is the ability to think, adapt, not succumb to panic and stress, look for reliable and informed people, and be able to manipulate them. And certainly not to shoot or knock out with one blow.

Therefore, Yu. Drozdov is not included in the training of future illegal immigrants. Fiction is out of the question. Notes of the chief of illegal intelligence courses on sabotage, terror and murder. Where the shooting begins, the reconnaissance ends.

Real spies are usually not tasked with infiltrating secret facilities, shutting down guards and killing bad guys. Such action would jeopardize the entire mission, which could take months or even years to prepare. This would mean the collapse of a labor of many years, the end of a carefully crafted legend.

In addition, such actions would lead to unmasking other agents and a major diplomatic scandal. Therefore, even in the face of the threat of disclosure, the spy is unlikely to go Y. Drozdov. Fiction is ruled out. Notes from the head of illegal intelligence on murder or resistance to arrest.

4. Defectors always betray their country for money

Defectors to the cinema are most often vile and cowardly, incapable people who are hungry for money. Sometimes L. Wright adheres to this opinion. The Spymaster / The New Yorker and the scouts themselves. While the financial issue usually remains the main reason for cooperating with the opposing party, there are other motives as well.

Many people help foreign intelligence services for ideological reasons. For example, American scientists did this 1. The Atomic Spy Hunt / TIME

3. A. Cowell. Theodore Hall, Prodigy and Atomic Spy, Dies at 74 / The New York Times

Clarence Hiskey, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Theodore Hall and others. They passed on the secrets of creating American atomic weapons to the USSR, because they believed that they were very dangerous and upset the balance of power in the world.

For similar reasons, the American sailor Glenn Souter became an agent of Soviet intelligence. He considered US policy unfair and applied to the Soviet embassy for citizenship, where he was recruited.

You can also persuade a person to give out state secrets by blackmail. For example, this was the case with the guard of the US Embassy in Moscow, Clayton Lonetri.

After the end of the Cold War, as follows from the analysis of the Center for the Study of Defense and Security Personnel under the US Department of Defense, people with access to classified information have become about one and a half times less likely to cross over to the opposite side for money. In only 28% of cases, the reason was financial. Therefore, it is impossible to say that all deserters are only greedy traitors.

5. Only an agent can get valuable information

Intelligence does not depend solely on information obtained by agents. One of the most important, if not the most important, area of modern espionage is analytics, which has flourished thanks to the proliferation of social networks and the Internet.

As practice shows, today an experienced specialist, sitting at a computer, can obtain much more information from open sources than an agent “in the field”. To do this, the analyst studies the media, content on social networks, conference materials, research, photos and maps from publicly available databases, satellite images.

In addition, as seen from the revelations of Edward Snowden, intelligence services can search for the data they need even in closed sources. For example, to access e-mail, cameras of mobile devices, the location of their owners, recordings of conversations, personal correspondence, data from social networks, and so on. And they don't even need to do something to do this, because, according to Snowden, large companies transmit this information themselves. Finally, hacker attacks and cyberattacks also remain an important way to extract valuable data.