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Comment by ahartmetz | Hacker News Reader

So... I like spy novels and such and I've always wondered how the hell one would keep it a secret which 50% of an embassy are secret service. So many possible patterns! Turns out, one doesn't, unless extremely careful.

I also seem to remember that "who is secret service at the embassy" was never an important line of defense against counterespionage, something the article doesn't mention.

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A friend of mine is a diplomat, and apparently in diplomatic circles it's common knowledge who on the other side is a spy. In Soviet times, the lowest-ranked, blandly-named "member of delegation", typically an older gentleman with a military crewcut, was invariably KGB, while in many embassies including the US the "cultural attache", a position that has minimal qualifications and has almost no real responsibilities, is so commonly a spy that the whole title has become a bit of an in-joke.

All of this is kind of beside the point though, since embassy staff are known, heavily surveilled and guarded by diplomatic immunity. The "real" spies are the local people they recruit, and recruiting and keeping tabs on them without blowing their cover is the actual hard part.

Yes, right. Dead drops, secret meetings and all that. (I ninja-added a second paragraph before I saw your comment.)

I remember a cultural attaché or two from John le Carré novels ;)

In Russian/Soviet embassy everyone is a spy, starting from the cleaner. Even most wives of random personnel are spies too.

Only the truly political functions (ambassador and his wife) are not spies per se, but in Soviet times they came from the party and in current times they come from the mafia-services clique.

>while in many embassies including the US the "cultural attache", a position that has minimal qualifications and has almost no real responsibilities, is so commonly a spy that the whole title has become a bit of an in-joke.

Isn't "passport control officer" the main go-to title for agents working under diplomatic cover?

Isn't the "cultural attaché" the guy who hangs out at receptions scouting for other-side folks who can't hold their liquor and/or want to reach out ?

Anyways always remember the difference between diplomatic immunity and consular immunity. The former covers the nuclear family, and includes criminal activity. The latter most decidedly does not.

There was a case where a Brazilian (IIRC) diplomat's kid killed a local in a traffic accident. Off scot-free.

If you ask someone who can't tell you what they do, what they do, they'll give you a quick and really dull answer. Anyone implying that they "can't really talk about that" is most likely a service-desk technician.

We had a family friend that everyone knew was a spook. If you asked him his job, he'd say he was "attached to the Foreign Office".

And in the same vein, Elizabeth Ray (1976) was a "staff director".

In the early and middle 1950s, my parents (and eventually I) lived in Washington, DC. My father later said that it was not hard to spot CIA employees at parties. When asked what they did, they'd get a slightly embarrassed look and say, I work for the government. (Now I wonder whether the looks were all slightly embarrassed: I'd have supposed that some of them were smug.)

The CIA did try to recruit him--it had geologists--it had more or less everybody. But it was known for cheaping out on technical staff, offering them a GS-x, then, when the scientist had left the old job and was in town, saying that the budget had been cut--which never, ever, happened in those days--and offering instead a GS-(x-2).

In a place I used to work at, I attended a workplace party where I was approached by a newly hired staff member. His many questions was all very leading, along the lines of: 'I like drugs, do you like drugs?' Apart from the clumsiness of his technique, what gave him away was his haircut (very military).

Lol, “I have a lot of debt, sexual exploitations, and access to sensitive information at work. How about you, brother?”.

"Why yes. I'm a big fan of slipping LSD into people's drinks and then interrogating them for hours. Say, have you tried the punch bowl yet?"

Queue 30min monologue about single malt whisky.

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