Burn Notice Season 02 Episode 11 "Hot Spot" was first aired last January 29, 2009 and below are the spy tips and tactics:
* When you work for an intelligence agency, you operate within an official structure. There's a chain of command to report to, protocols to be observed. No one questions their mission. But when you freelance, you don't have those luxuries. Getting your team on board may require some convincing.
* Spies love technology upgrades. When someone replaces old equipment: a computer, a cell phone, a PDA, getting information becomes as easy as looking through the trash. When you need to steal information in a hurry just arrange the technology upgrade yourself.
* If you need to buy a few seconds in an office environment, programming a computer to dial every phone in an office simultaneously is simple and cheap. -Just set up your cell phone to trigger the calls remotely.
* To get away clean from an office, it's okay to run. People run out of offices all the time. If the look on your face says "I'm in a hurry" you can go as fast as you want. It's all about covering ground before the yelling starts.
* There's a reason armies wear uniforms even though they make them easier to spot. Sometimes, that's what you want. Uniforms suggest organization, power and numbers. These, in turn, inspire fear. And as any good operative knows, there's no more effective weapon than fear.
* Pepper grenades are used by antiterrorist units to disable and stun. Not lethal, but a faceful of pepper gas will keep you pretty busy.
* When you need to get into a building in a hurry you can always count on a fire exit. Every building has them. It's just about knowing how to use them. The right shape charge will put a big enough dent in a steel door to disengage the lock which can turn a fire exit into a convenient and unexpected entrance. A coil of det cord attached to a rubber mat will give you the explosion you need and allow you to point it wherever you need it to go. SWAT teams call it a "hockey puck."
* Blitzkrieg, or lightning war was a strategy pioneered by the Germans in World War II. It refers to a fast attack designed to inspire fear and confusion penetrating quickly behind enemy lines.
* Target selection is one of the least glamorous but most important elements in any strategy. You want to take out the people your opponent depends on: the ones his organization can't function without.
* There's an element of theater in any offensive campaign. It's not just about bullets and bodies. Killing people usually creates more problems than it solves. It's about undermining your enemy's will to fight, destroying the morale ofhis troops, sending the message that fighting back is useless because the battle is already lost.
* There's an old saying in war that no plan survives the battlefield. Often, as a situation evolves, you create new enemies. Sometimes, you create new alliances, new friends. Soldiers are fine for dealing with the enemies but you need a spy to handle the new friends.
* The actual theft of a car isn't difficult. The hard part is selling it once you have it. Between the license, registration, tax records and VIN numbers, it's surprisingly hard to turn a car into cash. The best approach is to start with clean paperwork on another car from out of state then match the stolen car to the clean paperwork. That means new VIN tags and a new registration. And in case someone decides to check closely, some hydrochloric acid and a file will make the etched VIN number on the car chassis impossible to read.
* There are a couple of ways to make a vehicle bullet resistant. Sixty thousand dollars worth of titanium siding will do the job. Or you can pick up a couple extra copies of the yellow pages from your local phone company. Most non-armor-piercing bullets will only penetrate a phone book to a depth of an inch or two. Behind a layer of steel, it's more like a quarter of an inch. Commercially available foam sealants will keep your tires rolling long enough to get you out of danger. For the windows, dual-layer, high-density Plexiglas is your best bet. It's expensive, but bulletproof glass is not the sort of thing you skimp on.
* Countless wars have been fought over misunderstandings, tragic mistakes, misperceptions, that turn people against each other forever. Of course, it's not so tragic when you're the one creating the misunderstanding.
* When you booby-trap someone else's place, you put the trigger in the door or just inside so the odds of tripping it are much higher. If you rig your own place, the trigger has to be farther inside so you can safely enter. A trip wire is a quick and dirty version but a contact plate under the rug is completely undetectable. Put a little accelerant on the walls, and there's a reason they call it a firetrap.
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