Burn Notice - Season 01 - Episode 03 Spy Tips and Tactics

Burn Notice Season 01 Episode 03 "Fight or Flight" was first aired last July 12, 2007 and below are the Spy Tips and Tactics:

* International conferences attract spies for the same reason hotel bars attract hookers: you can do business and drink for free.

* Any high-security function is going to have a lot of oversight, a lot of meetings and a lot of bureaucrats checking up on each other. The important thing is to disappear before people can ask questions. If they do decide to ask questions, you have to hope you're in a building with a lot of hallways, a good service basement and plenty of exits. But in the end, sometimes making an escape is just about being willing to do what the guy chasing you won't, like jump off a building.

* Convincing a bully to back down is usually just a matter of showing you're not afraid of him. Of course, some bullies have guys with .357 Magnums. Then you change tactics.

* When faced with a superior force, you can do two things, you can retreat quietly or you can attack with as much fanfare as possible.

* Outfitting a safe house is about two things: you need to know if someone's coming, and you need to know how the folks you're protecting are going to get out of there if they do. And if you can't be on babysitting duty all the time, you need to make sure that you know the minute something's wrong. A $35 outdoor floodlight has a decent motion detector on it. Wire that to a cell phone and you've got a remote alarm system that will call you if there's trouble.

* I love commuters. Anybody who drives the same route to work every day, it's like they're doing all the work for you. And a punctual commuter, a guy who's in the same place every morning at 8:36 a.m. It's almost too easy.

* Threaten any serious criminal organization and they're going to do
one of two things -they'll send someone to make a deal or they'll send someone to make a corpse. Either way, you've got something to work with.

* When you go on the run, the first thing you do is lay down
tracks in the opposite direction. But that only works if the bad guys find the trail and believe it's for real -which means selling it. You need to put on a little show, make them feel clever and when you make somebody work to get a piece of information, they'll believe it that much more because it's hard to get.

* Approaching a spy in the middle of a job gives you a lot of leverage. They're playing a delicate game, and the last thing they want is someone coming in and smashing their delicate game with a brick.

* Basic rule of bodyguarding: Never fight with the protectee around. Mostly because if they happen to catch a stray bullet, you just lost your job.

* Modern technology has made it possible to do sophisticated electronic surveillance with stuff from your local electronics store.

* Faking surveillance video has come a long way. It used to be you'd spend days slaving over a VHS tape with a razor blade. Now it's a few hours on a computer.

* A drug cartel is a business. If killing a witness to protect a valued employee from jail time is the best way to keep making money, they'll do that. If it looks like that employee is testifying to the FBI though, they're just as happy to leave the witness alone and take care of the problem another way.

An alphanumeric tracking code, and a special access program code name. It's not much, but it's a start.