The Moscow Rules............

Webster

The Red Tarheel
During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency(the CIA) developed an informal set of rules for its' agents and operatives working in Moscow, known as The Moscow Rules........

So...........just what were the Moscow Rules?
~~Assume nothing.
~~Murphy is always right.
~~Never go against your gut.....it is your operational antenna.
~~Don't look back......you are never completely alone.
~~Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
~~Go with the flow; blend in.
~~Vary your patterns and stay within your cover.
~~Any operation can be aborted......if it feels wrong, it is wrong.
~~Maintain a natural pace at all times.
~~Lull them into a sense of complacency.
~~Build in opportunity, but use it sparingly.
~~Float like a butterfly........sting like a bee.
~~Don't harass the opposition.
~~There is no limit to a person's ability to rationalize the truth.
~~Technology will always let you down.
~~Pick the time and place for your action.
~~Always keep your options open.
~~Once is an accident....twice is coincidence.......three times is an enemy action.

The reason these rules are known as "the Moscow Rules" is that, during the Cold War, Moscow was considered a very challenging location for intelligence agents from the West, whether they were CIA, MI6 or any other Western intelligence agency. Ironically, there never has been an official acknowledgement on whether the rules existed; according to former CIA technical operative Tony Mendez,
Although no one had written them down, they were the precepts we all understood.......by the time an agent arrived in Moscow, they understood these rules. They were dead simple and full of common sense.
 
We lived in Berlin in the mid seventies. Used to travel through Checkpoint Charlie every week into the Russian sector. It didn't seem scary to me at the time but I've been shown pictures of British Army armoured cars that were used by military personnel going behind the iron curtain on 'missions' and told many tales of scary incidents, exchanges of fire and the risks involved in meets and travelling in that respect.
 
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