 | This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "The Moscow rules" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The Moscow rules are rules-of-thumb said to have been developed during the Cold War to be used by spies and others working in Moscow.
The rules are associated with Moscow because the city developed a reputation as being a particularly harsh locale for clandestine operatives who were exposed. The list may never have existed as written.
The rules
Agent Tony Mendez wrote:
Although no one had written them down, they were the precepts we all understood for conducting operations in the most difficult of operating environments: the Soviet capital. By the time they got to Moscow, everyone knew these rules. They were dead simple and full of common sense.
In the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., the Moscow Rules are given as:
- Assume nothing.
- Never go against your gut.
- Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
- Do not look back; you are never completely alone.
- Go with the flow, blend in.
- Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
- Lull them into a sense of complacency.
- Do not harass the opposition.
- Pick the time and place for action.
- Keep your options open.
References
- Mendez, Antonio; Mendez, Jonna; Henderson, Bruce (2003). Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations that Helped Win the Cold War. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 36. ISBN 9780743434584.
- "Moscow Rules". The Spy Museum. Archived from the original on 23 March 2015. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
Further reading
- Whidden. Glenn H. A Guidebook For Beginning Sweepers. Technical Services Agency