Pre-internet espionage seemed like a lot more fun. Spies used pens that fired bullets, jack-in-the-box dummies that popped out of suitcases and stood in for you while you rolled out of a car during surveillance, and combustible letters that ignited after you read them.

The television series The Americans dramatized two KGB sleeper spies posing as a married couple living in the suburbs near Washington, DC, during the Reagan administration.1 The show started in 2013 and is entering its sixth and final season at the time of this writing. The Americans details the couple's efforts to gather intelligence. It explores the psychological splitting that occurs when living a double life, as the couple navigates between loyalty to the KGB and attraction/revulsion toward their handpicked ordinary lives.

The series was created by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg, who also published the novel An Ordinary Spy. Weisberg mined his memory of tradecraft to insert features into the program such as dead drops—one person dropping an item off in a secret location for another person to come pick up. His conversations with colleagues may have inspired other tricked-out Cold War spy gear like a secret panel leading to a clandestine intelligence storage room in the couple's house, honey traps, a bugged copy machine, breathy code words whispered in pay phone booths, and a trove of disguises.²

OPERATION GHOST STORIES

The Americans is also partially based on the real-life tradecraft of ten Russian deep cover spies targeted by the FBI's Operation Ghost Stories. They were deported to Russia and traded for four American intelligence agents in a remote corner of a Vienna airport in 2010 in one of the largest spy swaps in history.3

The FBI complied with the Freedom of Information Act in 2011 and released nearly one hundred photos, videos, and documents of the Russian operatives who had embedded themselves in locations throughout the country and passed themselves off as ordinary Americans. Their mission was to connect with pundits in business, education, energy, and the government to gather intelligence. Ultimately, they sought to gain influence over US policy.

Although the FBI maintains that the group was apprehended without gaining any major intelligence, the Associated Press reported that the group was “getting very close to penetrating U.S. policymaking circles.” One of the members developed a close relationship with a cabinet member during the Obama administration.⁴

This operative was Lydia Guryeva, who posed as Cynthia Murphy, a vice president of an exclusive accounting company in Manhattan. She homed in on Alan Patricof, a venture capitalist who was finance chairman for Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. Guryeva was probably targeting Clinton and at least five other people who were closely related to her. The FBI's unclassified reports note only that Guryeva was targeting a member of the Obama administration who took care of foreign policy work, following the person running for a high-level public office. The Daily Mail concluded this person was Clinton, since she was “the only person fitting that description.”⁵

INTERGENERATIONAL SPYING

Although the investigation concluded in 2010, many of the older spies used classic Cold War–era spy techniques. Five used a technique called “Dead Doubles” or “Legends,” in which they snatched their identities from people who died. The project code name, Operation Ghost Stories, came from this practice. Other classic techniques reportedly utilized included James Bond–like moves, such as using invisible ink, hiding bugs in hollowed-out nickels, and hiding cameras in pipes.6

The FBI's website contains fascinating video of some of these classic cloak-and-dagger moves. In one video, a spy, Chris Metsos, participates in a brush pass with a Russian mission official. This essentially means he walked by the man and brushed against him, and in the process Metsos passed him something without anyone in the vicinity knowing they had made contact.⁷ Metsos was believed to be the man who handled the cash. He was also the intermediary between the operatives and Russia's foreign intelligence service, the SVR.

Another video shows Richard Murphy, who posed as Cynthia Murphy's husband in suburban New Jersey, receiving a money-filled paper shopping bag from another Russian official at a train station.⁸ A spy from the group was videotaped in the woods digging up a package delivered during a dead drop.⁹

The younger generation of spies in the ring brought modern techniques to the group. Anna Chapman, the daughter of a Russian diplomat, assumed the identity of a New York real estate agent using her real name. She was fluent in several languages and spent years perfecting her American accent before arriving in the States for her assignment.¹⁰

Chapman was depicted in several videos working on her laptop at Barnes and Noble, and meeting at a downtown coffee shop with an FBI agent posing as a Russian consulate official. In one video she pretended to be shopping at a department store while transmitting wireless information to her handler on a high-end burst transmitter, sending encrypted information via radio waves in a split second. Another twenty-first-century technique some of the younger spies used included cryptographic programs that embed messages within online photos.¹¹

Chapman became the tabloid superstar of the lot after her capture. Fame followed her back to Russia. Rather than maintain a low profile, as is the MO for most former spies after they are caught, she capitalized on her notoriety. Chapman worked as a model, was a spokesperson for a famous Russian bank, and became a popular television host.12

Deep cover spies still exist all over the world, but the practice is becoming less common. This ring showed us techniques that were easily adapted to the cyber realm, which included garden-variety compromising of intelligence targets in the United States. The practice of “spotting and assessing” was integral to their work. This is an operative's method of determining whether neighbors or friends would be good spy targets, and identifying future leaders or influencers.

AKTIVNIYE MEROPRIYATIYA

Weisberg set The Americans in the 1980s because in 2013, prior to Donald Trump running for president, the American public was no longer focused on Russia. In the years following the Cold War, we were on seemingly friendly terms with the country's leadership.¹³ The Russian government had attempted to undermine elections with misinformation campaigns in the 1980s, again using techniques that have now been upgraded for today's digital world. According to the New Yorker, in 1982, then director of the KGB Yuri Andropov ordered foreign-intelligence operatives to carry out “active measures” (in Russian it was aktivniye meropriyatiya) against the reelection campaign of President Ronald Reagan. The Russian spies tried to use forgeries and other Cold War methods to spread false information to influence events. This included perpetuating the idea that Reagan was a figurehead for the military-industrial complex, and associating the slogan “Reagan Means War!” with him. The efforts didn't seem to work. Reagan won the election.¹⁴