Burn Notice - Season 01 - Episode 09 Spy Tips and Tactics

Burn Notice Season 01 Episode 09 "Hard Bargain" was first aired last August 23, 2007 and below are the spy tips and tactics:

* Work around spies for awhile and you learn to be careful when it looks like you're getting what you want. That's when you tend to let your guard down, get careless.

* Calling the cops on someone can teach you a lot. A foreign agent would run, so might an armed assassin. A bureaucrat's going to act like a bureaucrat.

* Bureaucrats live for respect. East of the Balkans, that means a bribe. In the West, it's more about showing you know they're in charge.

* About 40% of kidnapping victims are released safely. These statistics are affected by a number of factors including the nationality of the kidnappers, the age of the victim, and whether a hostage negotiator is employed. The odds go down sharply if no one has any money to pay the ransom.

* A kidnapping is a business deal. The bad guys have negotiating power since they're selling the life of a loved one. But, then again, they have a market of one, so they have to work with you.

* Working with untrained amateurs introduces an element of risk. It's a risk you have to live with in a lot of operations although you often find yourself wishing everyone went through Green Beret training in high school.

* Once a kidnapper knows you're onto him he'll try to contact his partners to have the hostage killed. At that point, you have a choice. You can start choosing wreathes for the hostage's funeral, or take a hostage of your own.

* The art of turning someone into a double agent is delicate. The target has to be put into a fragile psychological state.

* From Karachi to Bogotá every kidnapper's favorite resource is a corrupt employee. An employee can handle alarms, police. You can get financial information, bank accounts. You've even got a fall guy if anything goes wrong. To a professional kidnapper, a good man on the inside is worth a lot. And a bad man on the inside is worth even more.

* The thing about doubling anyone is that the more they do for you, the deeper they get. The deeper they get, the more you can make them do. Great if you're running them, but hard on the source. The suicide rate is above average.

* G.P.S. devices are becoming more and more common these days. Mostly they're for nervous parents tracking children but they're perfectly good for other uses.

* Running a double agent is a relationship. There's a give-and-take. Mostly take, but sometimes you have to give.

* Rescuing a hostage isn't about battering rams and guns. Charge through a door with a gun and chances are the person you're trying to save will be the first person lying on the floor dying of acute lead poisoning. So you come up with alternatives.

* Ingredients from the local pharmacy, mixed with aluminum foil powdered in a coffee grinder, will make a serviceable flash grenade that'll stun anyone for a good 20 feet. Thermite is another handy tool. With a surface temperature of a thousand degrees it's used to weld together railroad ties. It will make pretty short work of most locks too.

* If you can't get through a door without attracting attention the next best thing is to attract a lot of attention. Once everyone's looking at the door wondering what's going on, you can pop in a flash grenade and they won't see anything for awhile.

* The longer you've been in the game the more you have to be careful
about underestimating an opponent. Say you don't think much of bureaucrats, don't feel they're worth your time or attention -then a bureaucrat is the perfect person to send to kill you.

* There's no way to anticipate every danger. You need a backup plan
for when things go wrong.