What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Spies

First and foremost, Hollywood does its job well. Very well. It creates spy movies and action adventures like Mission Impossible that keep us on the edge of our seats from opening shot to closing credits. But are they realistic? Not quite. And while we viewers instinctively know that, what we may not appreciate is how poorly real-life spy work would translate to the big screen.

I found (this is Katherine writing) during my research of Cold War era agents, spies, officers, and operations, that “spy work” is—as a character noted within one novel—“a lot of nothing wrapped around that little dangerous something.” There is an incredible amount of behind-the-scenes time, research, and detailed attention that go into each covert operation, even if that “operation” lasts mere moments. The work is mostly waiting and watching, assessing and analyzing; days, months—sometimes years—of diligent, secretive, and quiet planning, all to create that one moment of thrill. I write thrill rather than danger because, believe it or not, all those quiet moments of planning and plotting are full of inherent danger.

Two famous spies and their experiences illustrate this perfectly. Soviet diplomat-turned-CIA-informant Aleksandr Dimitrievich Ogorodnik passed information to his CIA handler, Martha Peterson, via dead drops from 1975 to 1977. In a dead drop, a spy leaves vital bits of intelligence at a predetermined place at a set time so that, as soon as it is possible, the CIA handler can retrieve it. Ideally, there’s nothing for anyone to see. And, for two years, no one noted anything amiss. TRIGON (Ogorodnik’s code name) and Peterson passed information seamlessly. But after two years of “quiet,” both were betrayed in 1977 and that dramatic and final moment came. Peterson was swarmed by KGB officers upon a Moscow bridge, arrested, and sent to the Lubyanka (the infamous KGB prison) for interrogation, before being exiled from the Soviet Union. Ogorodnik was arrested as well and took his life by releasing and swallowing the CIA issued L- pill hidden inside his favorite writing pen.

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