Top Ten Amateurish Russian Spy Tricks

It was recently discovered that ten Russian spies, arrested for attempting to form an underground spy network, we're using a number of "old school" spying techniques including invisible ink. However, due to the amateurish nature of their attempts to get United States secrets, some wonder whether the spies were really a decoy sent to distract attention away from the real Russian spies. At least this is the conclusion of a government panel which recently finished watching the 1980's comedy, Spies like Us, in order to investigate the matter. Many of the methods the ten Russians used were not only outdated, but were ineffective and appeared to be invented by tenth graders. Here are the top ten amateurish tricks used by the Russian spies:

1. The use silly putty in order to copy secret documents by rolling the silly putty into a giant pancake and the pressing it against papers taken out of trash bins at the White House.

2. One way that they exchanged secret information was by passing notes in the public library like kids at school.

3. They acquired a large number of disguises by saving Halloween costumes. This is how they were first notice by the police, one of the spies dressed up as Elvis was talking to another spy dressed up as Michael Jackson in the middle of July.

4. They rented Leslie Nelson's Naked Gun spy movies to figure out how to become better spies.

5. The left messages for each other on park benches inside plastic bags duct taped on the bench. Unfortunately, the benches were in front of the department of justice and the messages were taped prominently on the sides of the benches.

6. They ordered a large amount of spy gear from Spies R' Us and frequently called the company to get advice about the best ways to avoid detection by the FBI. However, as they've learned this week, Spies R' Us is really a CIA front and they were stupid enough to be their only customers.

7. They used "code" to make their message harder to read by investigators should they be found. However, this code was nothing more than using pig's latin, and investigators on the case laughed for hours after realizing what the would-be spies had done.

8. They mounted a large telescope on their home in Washington, DC and pointed it directly at CIA headquarters. This was instantly noticed by government officials and their home was placed under surveillance 24 hours a day.

9. One of the spies used the resources of the Russian government to buy one of the cars used in the James Bond movies. However, they were disappointed that it couldn't drive under water and fire missiles, so they returned the car because they couldn't "use it for real spying." The story about the auction was widely covered in the press.

10. The leader used invisible ink to send out warnings to the other spies that they had been compromised and would be arrested soon, but none of them could read them.

For the top ten airline mishaps, click here.

Sources:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0701/Russian-spies-Top-5-old-school-espionage-technologies-that-still-work

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/07/01/russian.spies.hearing.delayed/?hpt=T2