Mwandayi, Towards a new reading of the Bible in Africa – spy exegesismissions. Great caution is needed also when it comes to the passing of
this information to the controllers. Until the early 20th century, as ob-
served by Grabianowski, some spies relied on invisible inks to hide
messages between the lines of newspapers or on the back of non-
suspicious correspondence. In use also was sugar solution or lemon
juice which is invisible until heated. Equally effective were some chemi-
cals which don't appear until the paper is painted with a specific re-
agent.^16
Grabianowski goes on to give testimony to another once used method
termed ‘dead drop’ in conveying information to the controllers. Accord-
ing to him, a dead drop is practically a secret hiding place somewhere in
public where a spy during his/her daily errands casually deposits the
message without arousing any suspicion. Such a point could be behind a
loose brick in a wall at the city park, or in a plant at a certain street cor-
ner. Having deposited the message, the spy then gives signal to his/her
controllers so that they know that there is a message to be retrieved and
such a signal could be a chalk mark on a lamppost, a certain color of
sheet on a clothes lines or even a cryptic message in the classified sec-
tion of a newspaper.^17 The afore-mentioned methods cannot be com-
pletely ruled out as no longer in use in this modern world. According to
Jean Stein, court papers, for example, which were filed in 2010 in sup-
port of the FBI's arrest of 10 alleged “deep cover” Russian spies bring to
light that while Moscow Center has added internet technology to its bag
of tricks; “Russian intelligence evidently still relies on espionage meth-
ods – “tradecraft,” in spy lingo – as old as the Rome hills.”^18 In addition
to that, an FBI affidavit to this case confirmed that while the suspected
Russian agents it rounded up sometimes communicated with Moscow
via secret messages hidden in web pages, they still, for the most part,
contact each other the old-fashioned way, through furtive exchanges in
city parks, or with bags of cash hidden along country roads, and even by
radio with Morse code.^19 Commenting on the difficulties the FBI has in
trying to identify some of these suspected Russian spies, Stein says:
(^16) Cf. Grabianowski, How Spies Work.
(^17) Cf. Grabianowski, How Spies Work.
(^18) J. Stein, ‘Russian Spy Case reveals old espionage tricks,’ in The Washington Post,
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/06/russian_spy_case_shows_things.
html?hpid=topnews (accessed 30/07/11).
(^19) Cf. Stein, ‘Russian Spy Case reveals old espionage tricks.’