BiAS 7 – The Bible and Politics in Africa
- Cover and creation of a legend
On foreign missions spies usually resort to the use of a cover and the
creation of a legend. By cover is meant the creation of a secret identity,
and a legend is the background story and documents that support the
cover. To make the cover seem more realistic, the legend, as noted by
Grabianowski, must be very thorough. The spy will have to come up
with a fake life history which he/she must memorize. He/she, for exam-
ple, will have to memorize where he/she went to school, produce a di-
ploma to prove it, know where he purportedly was born, who his ex-wife
was and also the hobbies he/she enjoys most. If the legend states that
the spy enjoys fishing, he would see to it that he has some fishing gear
in his house.^10 To make the legend look more authentic also, the spy is
bound to know and speak fluently the language of the country he/she
would be spying and should be thoroughly informed as much as he/she
can of the intricacies of the area he/she would be claiming expertise in
and in accordance with the laws of that country. A Zimbabwean spy, for
example, whose cover identity is a Mozambican immigration officer
would need to speak Portuguese and know a great deal about Mozambi-
can immigration laws. Since the target would be to get access to vital
information spies on foreign missions usually do not rush to carry out
their missions but may work for quite a lengthy period of time and it is
only when they would have established trust and in close contact with
key persons that the real mission begins. To avoid being caught, the use
of highly sophisticated technology becomes the best means to maintain
contact with controllers in their home countries. Tracking such spies is
actually a surmountable task which in most cases results even in more
questions than answers.
- Assassination
In the process of trying to gather information it may occur to spies that
they have to use their skills to kill potential threats. If a spy, in other
words, is convinced that leaving his/her target go free would jeopardize
the mission he/she was tasked to carry out then it could be a sufficient
ground to eliminate that person. The fear, for example, that the person
could reveal vital information and hence endanger the spy’s cover as well
as the security of the state pushes for assassination to be called for as the
(^10) Cf. Grabianowski, How Spies Work.