Page:CIAdeceptionMaximsFactFolklore 1980.pdf/53

C00036554 deduce your (deception) intentions. Moreover, you cannot just volunteer information. The agent's first duty is to answer questions passed by the Germans, and therefore you must by your answers guide subsequent questions in the direction you desire." (Emphasis in original.)}}

The danger to the foregoing advice is that it is possible to be too subtle with consequent risk of failure. Masterman (60), for example, recounts a frustrating deception failure:

On one occasion an agent was deliberately run in order to show the Germans that he was under control, the object being to give them a false idea of our methods of running such an agent and thus to convince them that the other agents were genuine. The theory was sound and the gaffes committed were crass and blatant, but the object was not achieved, for the simple reason that the Germans continued to think of the agent as being genuine and reliable.

There is, thus, a delicate balance to be struck between obviousness and subtlety with the attendant twin risks that the message will be either misunderstood or dismissed as a plant. To the aficionados, this is the essence of the craft.