The Moscow Rules with Jonna Mendez

[Music] good evening everyone and thank you for coming out to the new International Spy Museum isn't the space amazing not just here but the whole building all right thank you very much my name is Chris Kosta I'm the executive director of the museum I hope you all had a chance to take a look at the items from Toni and Gianna personal collection in the back and Dina will be there for some time and you'll be able to go back and look at those papers correct Dina so we are very excited to have Jonah Mendez here with us tonight to talk about the book the Moscow rules written by Jonah in her late husband Tony Mendez the book explores the tactics and tradecraft created by the CIA to combat the KGB during the Cold War in Moscow at the time these new creations included general techniques as well as novel technologies and disguised methods revolutionising the practice of clandestine operations for many years thereafter recently on Michael Morell CBS podcast intelligence matters Michael asked me about working with John at the Museum since Jonah also serves on our advisory board this question alone is a testament to her and Tony's far-reaching influence and commitment to the intelligence profession both John and Tony have rich rich legacies at CIA Jonah serving 27 years Tony serving 25 years with CIA working as quiet professionals in a number of positions throughout the CIA their contributions to the community in this country are nothing short of tremendous so please join me in welcoming Jonah Mendez [Applause] Wow I wasn't sure you all could find this new location I have to revise my revised my estimation of how easy it is I'm from Wichita Kansas I keep looking around and wondering where my ruby red slippers are I am so far from home but I've landed in an absolutely fascinating place Tony Mendez has written a number of books and I have helped him with a number of those books this last book it's probably the hardest but we got it done we got it done we came in just under the water finishing it and I'm so glad to be able to talk to you about it the book is called the Moscow rules it's the last of four books that Tony and I have written I don't want the title to be a misleading we didn't write the rules we didn't invent the rules all we did was put them down on paper the Moscow rules were understood by most of our case officers who were headed out to Moscow to be the rules of the road the rules of comportment how you managed yourself on the street they wore themselves a form of tradecraft if you followed the rules you would probably emerge from your assignment in the belly of the beast unscathed if you broke the rules all kinds of interesting things could happen to you the book opens the first three pages of the book with a scene outside of the American Embassy in Moscow June 6th 2016 in the middle of our last president election when things were supposed to be fairly settled the world was not at war yet one of our American diplomats is on a YouTube video and you can see him getting out of a taxi in front of our embassy and heading for the main entrance and the shadow comes out of him a guard shack just to the right of the screen and attacks this diplomat and just takes him down and starts beating him to a bloody pulp this is June 6th 2016 he he got on top of our officer and was just playing away at him our officer clearly had taken some form of physical security lessons because he's sliding on his back while this guy has beaten him up he's sliding toward the electronic doors and you see his hand he triggers the thing it opens and they slide through those doors the KGB guy continues to beat him and beat him and broke his clavicles our officer was evacuated medically evacuated out of Moscow the next day never went back this is when the Cold War is supposed to be over when relations with Moscow are supposed to be normal it was an interesting nexus of current events that we thought belonged at the front of this book just to give you just to remind you what reality really is when you're on the streets out there it's never never a kind place to work Moscow has always been hostile it's always been aggressive if you're an American diplomat you won't be hassled beyond belief I'm in the middle of ambassador McFaul most current book about 2012 to 2014 when he served out there and what he underwent as the Ambassador the American ambassador in that country was amazing and his wife and his kids so this has been going on forever and it continues to go on and it was a wonderful way to start our story our mission was very simple whether we were in Moscow or anywhere else in a foreign country we were collecting foreign intelligence for our policymakers we were interested in information about the plans and intentions of our enemies we needed to get that information by whatever means we could typically often breaking the laws of the country that we were in but never breaking American law we were we were out there collecting taking risks finding people who had the access to the information trying to recruit those people to work for us a foreign government and provide this stuff to us on top of that the office that I worked in and Tony worked in was called OTS office of technical service it was the equivalent of Q or you could think mission impossible if you need something to peg it to in your in your in your memory we were providing technical support to the CIA operations officers who were feet on the ground sometimes boots on the ground overseas trying to gather up this intelligence and and bring the America bring it back to American policymakers we were like you and we were unlike you we were like you in that we were constantly inventing and devising new forms of of equipment things that didn't exist commercially things that you could not buy but you needed things that our case officers would come up with in their in their nightmares and they call us the next morning and say can you make one of these or they watch Get Smart on a Thursday night they'd call us the next day and say he has a transmitter in his shoe could could we have one of those we almost always said no but sometimes we said yes if it made sense if it was something that that we needed so we not only provided equipment but we would invent equipment we would invent what they needed to do the jobs coming out of that we're of interesting technologies that came spinning into the American commercial market batteries for instance we had people that spent their careers working on batteries which to me sounded like the most boring thought next to being a urologist being a battery specialist would be on my list jobs I didn't want but we had a unique need for small powerful batteries we use batteries to power a lot of our clandestine equipment maybe it was a wood block a wood block would be a listening listening device have a microphone in it it would it would have a transmitter in it and it would have rows of tiny batteries and you'd get into the conference room of the politburo uppity UPS and you'd put it up underneath their conference room table and it would run for I don't know maybe nine months maybe a year but it had it had a life and when it stopped running because your batteries were depleted the chances of getting back in there to change the batteries were it was never going to happen so we were always working on batteries and they got smaller and they got smaller they got smaller and commercially now they're in everything they're in watches they're in hearing aids that technology came spinning out of CIA R&D but times have changed I would point out and things that we could not buy things that we that didn't even exist yet and we spent enormous amounts of money inventing things you carry them around in your iPhone today encrypted communications clandestine photography audio devices video devices your phone will not do a disguise not yet but hold on it's probably coming so we were providing support to our colleagues and Moscow station was a special place was special in every way it was the hardest place for us to work in the world the surveillance in Moscow against American in general embassy personnel in particular and the CIA case officers if they were suspect was like a smothering embrace you couldn't do anything without surveillance if you were at home in your apartment there were bugs in the walls and they were live bugs they weren't recording this stuff they were listening to you as you had an argument with your husband or chess tile District children if you were in your car they were tailing you they had teams they would rotate the cars in and out but they were with you wherever you went if you were on foot in the city they were stalking right behind you and then we're looking to see how you reacted to what they were doing because if you reacted you would confirm yes I'm an intelligence officer I see you so you could never you could never do that some of the rules had to do with that surveillance and how you should behave I would point out early on here that one of the rules was don't harass the opposition and when Tony saw that video of the guy getting beaten to a bloody pulp at the door of the American Embassy Tony said he must have really pissed him off he broke the rule okay in the book basically what we're trying to do is talk about how our office this this is office of technical service how we uniquely provided support to our officers overseas OTS was composed of engineers mechanical and electrical engineers we had chemists mint physicists we had the battery experts we had people that specialized in concealment devices we had one man who specialized in hot-air balloons we had a woman who spent her life working on Inc just Inc how does it fluoresce how does it look under UV you know when you're talking about documents and going through international controls with documents it all has to work the Holograms have to pop up security threads have to be there that was a big part of Tony's job when he first got to the CIA he went in to the documents area they hired him as an artist and he was thinking what the hell did they want an artist for at the CIA well he found out he had exquisite hand-eye coordination he could copy and he did copy anything and everything you put in front of him I used to criticize his paintings because if there was a a light a light plug on the wall of his painting he would paint in the light plug and I would say no no come on it's like a it's like a wedding photo get that out of there no it's there he's gonna he's gonna do it he actually Tony gave a lesson one night here at the Museum he gave a lesson in counterfeiting and again I was saying to him is that a good idea you're gonna teach these people how to do what what what you did for a while so he gave his lesson I went and watched it was like a Julia Child cooking show they had the mirror up behind him there was no stove he's sitting at a desk everybody in the room had their paper and pencil and he's showing them he taught a whole roomful of people how to forge Vladimir Putin's signature and then he said go make mischief have some fun with it because I've left out two important pieces of work that we did for these case officers one was what we call identity transformation and that's kind of an a euphemism for maybe providing someone with alternate identities with alternate documents and the sister group was disguise and Tony and I you have to know ten years apart we were both chief of disguise at the CIA he was first I followed ten years later then we talked a little bit about Moscow and some of the operations that we supported out there there was a case in 1963 that was a landmark case as Oleg Penkovsky he came up to the embassy and wanted to volunteer he said I I have incredible access to intelligence I want to provide it to the West and we sent him away we would not receive his information I think he had to approach us four times before someone would take his package once we figured out who he was this was the first significant case that we ever ran in Moscow minkovski was we were a young organization in 63 we were not prepared to handle the case of the caliber that he was in the worst city in the world to be a spy so we went to our British cousins and we did a joint case with them they provided they provided the people that would be meeting with Penkovsky we provided some of the tasking questions he only worked for us for 18 months before he was apprehended he provided us with most incredible intelligence that this country has ever gotten from one individual source it took them years to finish translating what he gave us but during the Cuban Missile Crisis when President Kennedy was trying figure out what to do how to react to those ships pulling into Cuba with the missiles on the decks and and and cruise ship took the step Kennedy took the step of calling for a blockade which was a very gutsy thing to do he had on his desk the information from Oleg Penkovsky all about those missiles how many missiles what was their throw weight what was the distance what was the readiness when would they be operational how many more were coming Kennedy was working with a menu of information that allowed him to make a very reasoned decision that if you stepped back from it you saw it play he's got guts but he made the right decision Penkovsky was was compromised we think there's still a conversation about this we think by men named George Blake who was a penetration of British intelligence and he saw the Penkovsky case he let the Soviets know that there was one in their midst they arrested Penkovsky and of course they executed him because that's what they do every time they catch one of our spies they kill him it's never it's never in doubt because of the pink offski case the CIA decided that it was too dangerous in Moscow to do face-to-face meetings and for about a decade we did not meet face to face with any foreign assets there it was it was it was not going to work the surveillance was too heavy we didn't have any tools to use to help these cases but we were working like crazy behind the scenes it's like one of those ducks on the pond and his feet are going 200 miles an hour we were doing huge R&D research and development to start building out the tools that we needed to conduct cases in Moscow so it was in the early 70s that another really big case came about and this man's name was Alexander ogorodnik his code name was try go which is so much easier to say he was recruited abroad because we never tried to recruit someone while they were in Moscow it was too dangerous he was recruited abroad he was sent back to Moscow he had to lie low for about six months and then he started becoming operational the CIA had a new trick up our sleeve this time we send in an officer to Moscow to do nothing but work this case it was a woman we broke all precedent we sent in a female case officer because we knew that the Soviets they didn't use women in their work and we thought correctly as it turned out they wouldn't think that we would use a woman to do this kind of work either so Marty Peterson went in worked in the embassy made a bunch of girlfriends they wouldn't shopping and they took trips she never ever ever went into the station she never went to the TGIF's at the marine house that were famous they were all so dangerous she just completely we said in our lingo she was black she was a black officer she had no connection to us her only job was to put down dead drops for Trigon and to pick up dead drops from Trigon because still we would not meet with him face to face it was still too dangerous she would put up signals the drop is down he would pick up the drop he would put up a signal I've got it by that time though some of that research and development we had been doing in OTS started coming out of production and one of the things that came out of production was a tiny tiny camera called it repelled some of you who have worked and there are some of you in this room would know about it repelled but I brought two props so I could show you how small it was you could take at repel camera and you could put it in my lipstick and you could still use the lipstick so you could sit at your desk with your camera if you were a woman and you could just use your elbows as the tripod we would have trained you and you would be able to Ginga Jing your boss comes out you take off the top you freshen your lipstick you drop it in your purse and you go to lunch with him that's one the other place we like to put those cameras was in your PIN and your PIN would write and bottom half of it would hold a Tripel camera take the pictures this was a lethal instrument this was one of the most important inventions that OTS came up up with in my tenure at that organization in 27 years was developed by a man named Paul Howell and I've been talking to his daughter online and she thought she might be here tonight I don't know she made it no well we'll keep the conversation going then he was a genius he really was he built this camera is so small think about it we had satellite systems at the time that were going over over Moscow over Russia a couple of times a day we had all kinds of satellite coverage we knew where that missiles were we knew where the submarines were we could see all of that but that's not what we wanted we wanted plans and intentions what are they going to do next what are they thinking what are they going to do during the the strategic arms limitation talks are going on in the salt talks at this time what's their negotiating position on the salt talks at this time well we got them from Trigon with a little camera we knew their bottom line he was he was amazing Marty Peterson was amazing that little camera was amazing they worried about Paul Tripel camera because we only had one source making it one man made them we maybe had 50 or 60 of them in play and we thought what if something happens to the man who's fabricating them we need a second source and we tried to find a second source who could make the camera and we couldn't find we went all over the world we went to all the top optical houses and we said can you reproduce this camera for us we gave them the camera they could not do it they couldn't build it just the one guy it was a great thing he was called out as as a trailblazer of one of CIA's top 50 officers in its first 50 years Paul Howe who admitted that camera he was a wonderful man in addition that would make him blush if he was here Trigon was willing to work with us and provide us with great intelligence but he was no fool he said if they catch me they're gonna kill me and I don't want to die the way they're going to do it it's gonna be really painful so I would like actually I insist that you give me what was called an L pill a lethal pill a cyanide pill without that pill I won't work for you with that pill I'll put my heart and soul into this and there was this huge tug of war because because headquarters didn't want to give me that pill we didn't we had them but we didn't really issue them he said it's it's it's do or die do or die I want one of those pills and we did give him one what what did we do with the pill well we put it in a pen you had to be careful picking up pens in Moscow back then it was either gonna kill you or you were gonna get a great a great tub photo we gave him an LP no we did that we did all the we did all the brush passes we did the car tosses all of it and personal Marty Peterson who was the only person that dealt with him never actually saw him but then what happened he was arrested and he was executed took some time to figure out why when that happens at CIA everybody involved in the case worries is it something did we make a mistake is it is it our you know is it on us should we learn from this but that wasn't it he was betrayed by a translator named Karl Koecher who was a Czech emigres who was doing some work for the CIA gotten his clearances but he was providing the information to the Russians once of course once they figured out who Trigon was they arrested him and it was it was all over that was in the 70s the third case I mentioned was in the 1980s and many of you will have heard of tolkachev there's a fabulous book out about tolkachev it was called the billion dollar spy tolkachev was the recipient of all of these new things that we had invented not just the tripel he had at repeal but he had much much more from us he also had to make numerous attempts to get the CIA's attention because the head of CIA at the time Stansfield Turner said we are having to stand down on these operations after they arrested and executed Trigon after Marty Peterson was persona non grata from the station Stansfield Turner said no more embarrassments we're not doing any more operations that held for about 18 months all that time tolkachev was trying to get our attention and waving at us in cars and throwing spitballs in the windows and he wanted to work for us he's volunteering and we wouldn't give him the time of day eventually he wore the station down and what they found they had when they met with tolkachev was the keys to the kingdom he was the best spy in my career that I knew about he was providing us with schematics information diagrams plans for the Soviet defense systems of the future he was looking out ten years at what the radar was going to look like this is what it's going to look like if it's on the ground this is what it's going to look like if it's airborne these are the defense systems that they're setting up we knew ten years before they even started producing this stuff what it was going to be and we were able to build our counter measures in advance this is just this doesn't happen he was he was an amazing source when we ran toget show though things things had changed because my office had come up with with a whole lot of new ideas for how to run operations in Moscow and this is kind of the heart of our book and it's where Tony Mendez kind of steps back into the picture tony was very interested he was in and out of Moscow he worked closely with them he had been chief of disguise he worked with them on things disguised technologies on going out on the streets and looking at the surveillance teams figuring out what we could do to to beat those surveillance teams he was providing duplicates of documents to our to our agents things like security passes library sign out cards for their classified information he was having X filtration containers built and in place so if something went wrong we could get a man or a man and his family out of there quickly I mean there was always a plan on a shelf if it goes badly this is how we get them out we promised every agent that worked for us in Moscow that we would do that for them if you know if you if if you can if it's coming at you just put everything down and we will we will take you we had given tolkachev an L pill as well in my career those are the only two that I know of that were issued I don't want you to leave here thinking that we give people cyanide capsules whenever you know they ask for them it's very hard it's a tug of war to get one when tolkachev was arrested his he was arrested driving down the street in his car and his Bell pill was in his office in his pen and the desk and so he did not get to use it and we never we never here after the fact all we know is that they announced that he had been executed using a lot of the techniques that Tony Mendez came up with and his staff and I was on his staff so I've got a little bit of credit we met tolkachev 20 times in five years face to face in the most difficult city in the world and this group of group of techniques that came out at that time came out of Hollywood now you've seen Argo is anyone in here seen Argo hands oh yeah Ben Affleck would love you guys in Argo Tony proposes let's get a Hollywood location scouting crew and Bryan Cranston laughs or it says the best the best bad idea this is our best bad idea it wasn't a bad idea was a kind of a good idea Tony knew a lot of people out in LA he knew a lot of people in Hollywood he knew a lot of people in the magic community because Tony had always been interested in magic as a as a kid and he he paid attention to it so we went back behind the scenes in LA to the people that design and engineer the illusions and that is a profession a profession of building illusions for the magician's to perform they don't design them the magicians are the performers the people we were interested in were the engineers we said okay you can walk an elephant out on the stage in a theater and make it disappear we've seen it big box on the stage elephant comes out they walk him in they close the door they talk to you for a minute they opened the door the elephant's gone we wanted to know how do you do that I mean of course it's a trick but we have some people in Moscow that we would like to disappear right on the street - and it doesn't have to be that big a box but we want we want to know how to execute deception and illusion on the streets of this tough city that we were working in and I don't think anybody in LA ever said no to whether we were talking about masks whether we were talking about special effects or makeup certainly not when we were talking about deception and illusion what they told us is is there some formulas that are just so basic they said when you start out you call it an operation we call it a performance if you're going to have a successful performance you have to first understand your stage where is your stage what is your stage is your stage the sidewalk outside the American Embassy or is it a parking garage somewhere what is your stage that you're performing on is it in the lobby of the embassy so find your stage then who's your audience who are you playing to who are you trying to fool and you have to understand their point of view actually their field of vision because some deceptions you can walk in a circle around them and they still hold up some deceptions like the elephant you have to be sitting straight in front of it and if you're off over here you might start seeing that's a little hinky what's you have to be in front of it so they said the point of view is very important so figure out your stage figure out your audience and then you just kind of overwhelm them with your performance we said okay and these are the things that came out of that we developed something called a jib a jack-in-the-box it was proprietary to Moscow we didn't use it anywhere else it started out in a cafe in India where Tony was having a Kingfisher beer and a samosa with a with a traveling mate and and they said we need we need some kind of a pop-up some kind of a deception and they sketched it on a napkin they went back to their home base they they sent what they called a missile accident headquarters that you know we want to start this new program and it turned into a most elegant piece of equipment it started out they went to a magic shop and they bought what were nicely called party dolls I've never heard of party dolls but they are out there and they you need some kind of a pump it to blow him up because they're full of air so we sit our young engineers and they bought a handful of these things they bought maybe 10 and we had some gas tubing and we taped them around the waist because we didn't need all of them we just needed them in a car we just needed half of them and we started fiddling with them as prototypes and at one point we thought we had something going so we sent it to a Soviet look office and one of the wives of the case officers was was out exercising it to see how it worked and the thing blew up in her car the guest when the gas would come out it would be very cold and the doll was plastic and evidently it froat first it froze the plastic and then it is shattered so we said ok we'll take the gas away we ended up with something it's like a scissor mechanism and it kept getting smaller and lighter and more elegant but the end of the day you could have a passenger in the passenger seat in a briefcase on the floor you needed to write turns to do this and you would already know where you were going and you would know where there two right turns were first right turn that car behind you can't quite see you so the first right turn passenger steps out keep going down the street you're coming to the second right turn and the the surveillance comes around the corner but you're going around the next corner at a very slow speed and the pop-up dummy is up it's wearing the same clothes as the case officer it's got the same wig it's got his face because it's a mask looks exactly like him that was a new way for our officers to work and when we met with tolkachev the billion-dollar spy one night one meeting with tolkachev using that jib the first time we used it resulted in that one billion dollar savings the Pentagon said in R&D that they didn't have to do so the jib was quite a breakthrough we did another thing called disguise on the run it sounds a little silly a lot of this sounds silly until you hear the results disguise on the run was just what it said it was walking through crowds you can do this in downtown New York at lunch you can do it wherever there are people moving on the street and you can change everything about your appearance while you're moving through this crowd I did a thing for wired.com I don't know if anyone saw it hello that was my son he did a good job so what what I'm gonna do I'm gonna read two pages to you with my scratchy voice when Tony first invented this he had to convince our office director that this was going to work and this is how we were in downtown Washington DC in a building called south building where the CIA actually began years ago here we go the top floor of South building was a long dark Hall we used this fourth floor space as a photo testbed and a pretty clean field for path loss measurements on our newest radio communications equipment but today it was going to be used as a gap a 45 second interlude in a surveillance scenario in Moscow when I would be out of sight of my KGB surveillance team I had 45 seconds and forty five steps to completely change my appearance this was my chance to demonstrate to my office director what disguise on the run was all about dressed in a dark raincoat dark pants and black shoes I was carrying an attache case and nothing else I looked into the dim light just barely make out the office director at the other end of the hall he was seated or more precisely slumped in a chair about a hundred and twenty feet from me next to him was his assistant John a gazer that was my other name who was taking notes of this exercise her secondary job was to ensure that brand wine did not drift off during the demonstration overwhelmed by his narcolepsy I had arranged with Jonna that it would not overwhelm him this morning I looked at my watch the second hand just sweeping past 12 and began to move one step a second 45 seconds to accomplish a complete transformation well I had rehearsed this disguised numerous times on the streets of DC with our surveillance team it didn't mean my adrenaline wasn't going crazy that my breath wasn't coming too fast that my heart wasn't about to jump out of my chest I stopped and positioned my attache case on the floor slow down I told myself go slow natural pace I touched a button on the case popped open transforming into a grocery cart on wheels the attache handle became the top of the handle for the cart at the same time a brown paper bag inflated and the contents a loaf of bread and some vegetables expanded to fill the newly available space I moved forward a few steps and steadied the cart I began to remove my raincoat I had to hold the tip of the sleeves tight in order to reverse the coat in effect I was peeling it off turning it inside out as my arms came out the transformation was dramatic as a man's black raincoat became a dark pink woman's coat with a shawl attached around the shoulders I slipped my arms back into the sleeves and pulled it together in front pulling the cart I moved toward bran wine that was the office director get ready now leaning forward I pulled my pant legs up first first the left and then the right a Velcro like material caught the pant legs and held them up revealing black stockings a few more steps I reached down and removed the slip-on rubber men's shoes one at a time stashing each inside of my dress each shoe becoming a female breast you can't make this stuff up black size-11 Mary Jane's were now revealed checking my watch I saw it was 20 seconds into the change good right on schedule gram wine far from disappearing further into his sleeping disorder was now sitting upright and appeared to be leaning forward drawn into this performance as I continue down the dimly lit tunnel toward him I reached into the pocket of the pink coat and extracted a mask that I had spent weekends creating slipping it over my face and ever-present moustache with one hand I reached back to the shawl attached to the coat with my free hand pulled it up over my own hair a grey haired female wig attached to the shawl spilled forward protruding from the saw falling over my face now as I approached ram line walking slowly pushing my grocery cart almost like a walker I saw a flash of appreciation on his face as he turned to Jonna and nodded he knew I'd been working with unique contractors a very special tailor in Pennsylvania who also worked for the magic industry had assembled the reversible coat one of our magic consultants will out in LA and develop the pop-up grocery cart 45 seconds and we were done Dave brand wines introduction to our disguise on the run program had been a success the business man in a raincoat with the attache case had disappeared transformed into a little old lady in a dirty pink coat wearing a shawl and pulling a fully loaded grocery cart would you be suspicious of such a little old lady well that sounds kind of silly but then if you keep reading in the same chapter we go to Moscow and we have a man named Jim Olsen who was about to pull off one of the great operational feats of the Cold War he was walking through a park dressed as an American diplomat in a three-piece suit he's walking through a park he's headed to the ring road he's headed to a manhole along the ring roll that no American has business be near if you can get down in that manhole we had discovered you could find the cables that had just been installed from the nuclear plant outside of town to their defense center in the city if you could get a man in that manhole looking at those cables that had collars around them filled with gas so any tinkering with them it's gonna it's gonna be noticed but you have to get the guy in the manhole and Jim Olsen is coming through a forest in his elegant suit and he emerges from the forest he's an old Russian man wearing old Russian clothes he reeks of vodka he's carrying some kind of book made out of foam rubber inside of the book or all the tools he needs to do what he's doing he walks along the street he walks up to that manhole pops the lid and goes down in and he was the first one in this operation was called si que tal si que hace que means Soviet Union and if you google it if you look it up online you get a better sense that I can give you right now of what what that operation was worth I just got a note today from the people I'm talking to a book tour in Dallas and one of them said my friend Jim Olsen is in Texas and I wonder if I couldn't call him and he could be on stage with you and you guys can talk about this operation I'm so excited to talk about this operation with him so that's another disguised scenario we did say we did things called identity transformation where we would turn you into you we would switch people we would we would take the person that had no surveillance and the person our person who had too much and we would switch them I was a way to get away from surveillance we used masks you probably saw a picture in the back of the room of a mask that was one of the first ones we made Hollywood uses twins well we didn't have twins but we could make twins we can make triplets we can make eight of you but we usually only needed one more if you have two of you then you can develop these scenarios where surveillance is very confident that they are following you but it's not you it's you number two you number two is taken off and is inside this bar and doing something else that mask technology took me into the Oval Office there's a display in this museum that shows I'm demonstrating the mask technology to the president I'm briefing him eventually I took the mask off and showed it to him and he was impressed there's a lot more in this book there's a lot of scenarios talking about what what OTS what our colleagues sometimes what we did to help make a difference to help give some meaning to what we were doing to to leave a lasting mark that we had been there we had been in that cold war we were participated and in many many instances we we won speaking of the cold war though you could have a long interesting conversation today about is it really over is a cold war was it ever over the more I read the more I listen I think maybe it's still going on just that a kind of a low roar maybe coming back who knows there are a couple of books if any of this is sounded interesting to you in addition to the book that were here talking about there's a book called the spy who saved the world it's about Penkovsky and it's just an amazing account of his working with the intelligence community and what he brought to us there is a book called the widow spy it's by Marty Peterson she's the one who handled Trigon out in Moscow she was the the female case officer I mean the first of her kind in the field and if you are a woman who worked at the CIA she is your hero always will be it's a book called the billion dollar spy it's about tolkachev in enormous detail one of the best spy books I've read ever and more on OTS not so much disguise some of the other elements in our office that helped in Moscow was the spy craft by Bob Wallace and Keith Melton both of them board members here at this by museum and I think I'm gonna leave it there I don't even know what time it is perfect perfect timing thank you questions Ariel for our agent be accosted so violently by whomever it was what triggered that well you know I am retired from the CIA and when you leave the sound of the door clanging behind you as you exit is deafening I don't really know much more than you do I would tell you that I tried to find out and I couldn't I don't know if that was a CIA officer or not my gut tells me probably it was but I don't know it it's just a feeling it's coming home at 3 o'clock in the morning he was not alerting he wasn't you know moving quickly he the Soviets said that he failed to show his identification I don't think that that's that that's why they attacked him I don't actually think that he was even they had a chance to show his identification he got out of the car and was just hit like a with a wrecking ball mm-hmm was a KGB wrecking ball so I can't give you a good answer how is he doing now I don't know okay was that a trick question good try hello my name is Leslie and first of all let me say I'm so sorry for your loss thank you I wanted to know how did you and Tony meet John Chambers and the second thing is do you consult on any other movies because one that I thought that you might have been involved in was atomic blonde perhaps we should hire you how did he meet John Chambers he was in LA that the earliest I know of is that Chambers was working on a movie called the island of dr. Moreau I understand is a horrible movie as well but John Chambers was doing doing the makeup and turning people into these horrid monsters really monster faces and Tony was out there working with him I mean he was working on the movie he was on set and Tony Mendez CIA officer is on set and Chambers is teaching Tony how to make masks why he's making monsters and evidently it was it was quite quite the but as far as taking it back to the very beginning who introduced there was another makeup artist that we worked with that probably made the introduction but John Chambers stuck Tony Tony Mendez said John Chambers was one of the few real geniuses that he ever met he thought he was thank you so much and I just want to say maybe we should hire you will stick in my memory for the rest of my life Thanks thank you so much for the excellent talk thank you um I was curious in the future how do you expect facial recognition technology to affect tradecraft and will it make disguises more important or less important you know we were we were kind of there at the beginning I remember Tony telling me that he had been summoned until Casey's office and Casey had just seen a James Bond movie where they were doing facial recognition this is like those case officers that would call us after Mission Impossible and Casey said can we do that and Tony he said are we doing that and Tony said no sir and Casey said what you know I think what I think we should let's get a man on it and what Tony did because my husband was a very smart man is he handed it off to DARPA the Defense Agency kind of the blue sky R&D people and never really saw it again I mean we always knew that it was the algorithms we used to do comparisons we'd have an officer we'd see someone who was a prisoner was that our officer we were doing facial comparisons and we were measuring and using calipers and we kind of knew where those points were we just knew them the ones that we knew we could change it's everything from the set of your ears to the outer you know all these distances from the outside of your eyes to the corner of your mouth to things that cannot be changed it can't be changed but they can be obscured especially if you can make prosthesis and you can start adding noses and moving things around and we can move things around I think to answer your question that it probably has had a big impact I think it's probably made it much more difficult it might not be worth the effort I don't I don't know but but just looking at London what I see there's a camera on every street corner I think it would be hard to pull things off it's not just it's not just facial recognition it's some of the materials that we use when seen on a camera say 'under if there's any UV or infrared or it it's it starts falling apart a little bit you have to be careful where you wear things so it's probably harder on the street with these guys thank you so much sure thank you this wonderful talk I'm Cynthia winGuard Lyn my parents or undercover case officers for years 53 those 62 74 or something but they had I'm just working what years did your husband go in what year did he start with the agency he was in I think it was around 66 when he yo deed and he came in to OTS he came into the there was a what they called a bullpen it was a group of artists they sounded like a nutty place to work but they were very good at what they did well I remember my mother mentioning his name and I don't know why but and who was his predecessor did you already mentioned the name of who did the work he did before he showed up he was I guess the master of disguise back before your husband I'm not sure there was a master of disguise before Tony I interviewed some of some of his old colleagues when when I was doing this book and they said you know back in the day disguise was not thought of so well until Tony kind of came along and breathe some life into it yeah as you can imagine you know if we've worked or even if you haven't worked there's a whole bunch of men who do not want to wear a wig and don't go pasting the mustache you know on them a lot of guys just just viscerally don't want to do that and so there's a psychological thing you have to go through with people to convince them that it might make them safe it might buy them it might buy their family some some deniability and it can do a lot of things it can become body armor depending on where you are but before Tony really got his hands on it I'm not sure that it was quite the same thing that it that it became she talked about but I didn't she I don't know how they knew him because they think by that point where were stateside yeah you know yeah and he was just probably just beginning his career I think yeah he he was overseas 18 months after he owed Eden cetera he must have been a ball of fire maybe I didn't know anything thank you thank you I thank you so much for all you've done you know our country is grateful I wanted to ask you if you could comment on the future of human intelligence collection in light of social media things like Facebook and Instagram create identities in themselves online and it seems to me that one of the best counterintelligence tools there is is called Google that is absolutely true I wonder about that myself I'm not the most adept person in social media but I did I did include a quote in the end of this book well toward the end and it's Gena Haspel who's currently the head of CIA and this was back in this was about a year ago she said within the intelligence community CIA is the keeper of the human intelligence mission technical forms of collection are vital but a good human source is unique and can deliver decisive intelligence on our adversaries secrets and even their intent and there's that word again intentions if you put yourself now I don't want to ask you to do that if you were the President of the United States today wouldn't you love to see the minutes of the last meeting that the North Korean that they had or wouldn't you like to see the agenda for the next meeting that Putin is calling wouldn't you love to have a guy in the room with a pen one of these photographing telling you what it is they're going to do that's human intelligence that's a form of intelligence that that can never be done away with Stansfield Turner when he was head of CIA didn't trust human sources he wanted everything technical that was one of the reasons he was trying to shut down Moscow station he did one of these unreliable agents he wanted some machines that would report to him but you always have to have people and even with all the technology we have you still have to meet with people who are risking their lives working for us you gotta look them in the eye you got to tell them how good they are there has to be a human thing or it doesn't you can't do it all so on a screen is creating an identity a cover story online very hard to do that's a really good question yeah and and of course the counterintelligence is just googling the person's name and seeing they have no Facebook account you can't show up with a new name and a new face and proclaim yourself as a a new person yeah you have to have a digital life a digital background we're gonna be in the agency on Friday there's a ceremony for Tony and we're gonna be meeting with the head of the DD S&T who was a woman by the way just by the way ladies CIA is run by a woman we have four directorates three of those directorates are run by women there's one man in that group of five was just one guy but that I hope I hope to have a moment with the director of science and technology to ask her exactly that question because I I can see a whole new organization forming at CIA whose only job is to do that yeah that's probably true it's a good question thank you thank you it's great yet pardon me it's great to get the insights and the secrets and the inside look and there's a little bit of an embarrassment that the bad guys might be listening to this I'm sure there's a whole classification analysis and release what can you explain a little bit about what you can reveal and what you can't reveal Boyka and I I mentioned there are four books all four of those books have gone through a what's the adjective a tragic a tedious if I just say with T's I could I'm a really thorough another T word review publication Review Board all written material all written interviews anything you do it's on paper they look at it first they oh they can't take out things they don't like they can take out things that they consider classified and you can you can object and you can have a meaningful conversation if you've got the time but most of us have contracts with due dates and we don't have a time they barely touch this book they left in things that I thought that they would take out but I thought why not see if they'll allow this now I I don't know things change and I don't know for instance masks we never talked about masses before and they allowed us to talk about masks now and there's a picture of a mask in the back of the room and it's that's okay a lot of people have trouble with the PRB the heads of CIA after they leave and then they write their books they have more trouble with PRB than almost anybody and we all think that's okay yeah it's it's it's a process so when I'm talking to this room I'm comfortable because the things I'm talking about they have literally approved in these books I would tell you it took them a long time to get to this to get it approved and my husband was failing he really was failing and I called him normally you can't talk to those people that are doing the review there's just this you want to talk about a wall there's a wall that you can't punch through or go over but I got through to one woman named Nancy and I said you know he's we've written three books this is the last one he's really doing not well can you speed can you put it on the top of the pile literally and they have proved it on the 18th of January and my husband passed on the 19th I don't think they were related but it's nice to know that he knew that this last book was you know through the gate yeah thanks no one's gonna arrest me you mentioned that you think there's kind of an ongoing underlying Cold War going on right now but this administration seems to be really to have a kind of a cozy relationship with Russia so how do you think one affects the other if there is any of it if there is any cause and effect there you know that's such a good question and if you had a drink in your hand and I had one in mine we can have fun with that question but from up here I always kind of keep a distance I have fairly strong political views I don't think they particularly belong in front of this crowd yeah there are lots of voices in this ongoing situation that we are in and Bob Moore added his voice today and on in an interview that I haven't even heard I just heard about it coming over here I will go home I will find that interview it's the first thing I will listen to it's confusing and you know this is Washington DC where everybody's focused I mean this is our local news right national news international news is our local news I'm from Kansas where my ruby red slippers are still into the bed and they're not listening very carefully out there they just aren't it's not there every day there they're going to page two of the Wichita Eagle and beacon and there's a skinny column on page two international news the front page is House John Deere doing you know what about the crops used to be that Boeing but then Boeing left any anyway yeah it's it's tough this is a tough time thank you for asking the question [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: IntlSpyMuseum

Views: 66,970

Rating: 4.8485804 out of 5

Keywords: International Spy Museum, Spy Museum, Spy Museum DC, DC, Jonna Mendez, Moscow Rules, Tony Mendez, Argo, Cold War, KGB, Russia, CIA, Chief of Disguise, agent, operative, spy, spies, Moscow

Id: glfruj7WjS8

Length: 64min 47sec (3887 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2019