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Agent HandlingAgent handling includes the spotting, assessment, recruitment, and direction of the foreign field agent. Often the method of inducing agents into the espionage trade involves the use of money, ideology, compromise, and ego (MICE concept). Agents are almost always a foreign national who is under the direction of an agent handler or controller. In the case of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, this handler is known as a Case Officer, while in the former KGB a controller was known as a Resident. The spotting of potential agents was often conducted through the skimming of trade journals and professional proceedings for subject experts names and affiliations, vulnerable political and technical delegation members, trade conferences attendees, and foreign travellers whose activities made them potential subjects for blackmail or inducement. The assessment of potential agents include the verification of their credentials and bona fides or true identities. A risk analysis may also be conducted to determine the dangers of approaching the targeted individual with a 'pitch' for recruitment. This was either done 'cold,' where recruiters have had no prior contact with the target, or 'warm,' inwhich the handler and the target were prior acquaintances. Recruitment of an agent can take many months or even years to accomplish. After recruitment agents are given the training required for them to conduct espionage activities safely and effectively while operating in a hostile or denied country. They are trained in various tradecraft that can include clandestine communications, elicitation, surveillance and counter surveillance, skydiving, photographic and audio recording, concealment device construction, demolitions, and the use of small arms. Agent handlers also provide agents with false identities, known as covers or legends that aid them in their access and operability within a denied country. To maintain their false identities, agents use disguises, false or reproduced documentation, pocket litter, dead letter boxes, and other identity support techniques. However, real history shows that after a source (agent) has been exploited, he is often no longer handled well by many services e.g. BND, MI6 and others. In reality agents are given incentives and promises are made which then turn out to become broken. Since probably every major service can be assumed to be penetrated by moles, every agent runs the risk of being tipped off, which happens frequently after major defectors change sides. As an agent you need a good spymaster to keep this from happening. Norbert Juretzko of BND got sacked after they found he did not file the real names of his Russian spies, keeping them from being shot after KGB received their filed names. Valuable spies are sometimes not hanged but exchanged for spies from the opposite country. Many agencies tell their spies that they will not be forgotten in a foreign prison, but this is not always the case. During the Cold War many exchanges with eastern-bloc agents were made on the "Glienicke bridge" in Berlin (West).
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