A common mistake. If you're like most people, you might be thinking to yourself, "There's no way they'd use a sweet little sixty-year-old grandmother." Yeah, right. Grow up, and stop being such a patsy. The FBI loves rubes like you. Or maybe your thinking, "No way they'd use a punk rapper with cranked-up music blaring from his car stereo." Uh huh. Start packing your toothbrush, doofus. Because the ggons don't give you much time when they come a-knockin' as hour before dawn. The most important lesson you'll learn. Any competent surveillance team- no matter which agency it's from- will use you preconceptions, prejudices, and personal biases against you. So stop leaping to conclusions based on people's appearance. Go back and read that last sentence again. If you want to catch surveillance teams, you need to start evaluating people based on what they do, not what they look like. To catch spooks, you need to size people up by their behavior, not their appearance. Fundamental tactics... As you learned in the previous articles in this series, the FBI utilizes a floating box to track you during a vehicle surveillance operation. The essential components of the box are the command vehicle, the backup vehicle, the left and right outrider vehicles and the advance vehicle. Under typical circumstances, the floating box is a powerful and versatile system of vehicle surveillance. The only occasions the cause conern to the FBI are when the target makes a turn. As you learned in the previous tutorial, a surveillance vehicle that follows a target around the corner is easy to spot. The illustration below shows how the FBI has overcome this weakness. The cheating intersection. When the target is approaching a decision-point- and her direction of travel cannot be predicted by the FBI- the surveillance team leader makes certain that two FBI vehicles are in front of the target's vehicle. This is a deadly tactic. It has meant the ruin of many suspects who thought they could beat FBI surveillance. NOTE- Disclosures about FBI tradecraft like this have never before been made public. This Spy & CounterSpy exclusive is possible only because our offices are just across the border in Canada, nine miles outside the reach of the FBI's goon squads. As shownn in the illustration above, each cheating FBI vehicle takes a different route. The FBI has every possible scenario covered. No matter which route you choosee, a cheating FBI surveillance vehicle (positioned in front of you) has you covered. Many targets of surveillance have been repeatedly fooled by this tactic. The illustration below shows a more common implementation of this intersection maneuver. At a typical intersection, the target vehicle can proceed in three different directions- left, right, or straight ahead. In a high-priority investigation where the FBI does not want to be detected, the team leader will place three surveillance vehicles ahead of the target. As shown above, each vehicle takes a possible route that the target might take. It dosn't matter which direction the target chooses, she is covered by a cheating command vehicle. This technique is very difficult to detect in the short-term. (See the fourth tutorial in this five part-part series for tips on how to provoke a surveillance team into revealing itself.) The technique is also expensive in terms of personnel and vehicles, so the FBI uses it mainly at major intersections. Side-street situations are handled by the method depicted below. (next page-ed) next page |
 |
 |