How the CIA Turned a Sex Doll Into a Spy Trick

Newsweek
By: Jeff Stein

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Of all the missions Walter McIntosh undertook in his long CIA career, buying life-size rubber sex dolls in a Washington, D.C., porno shop was maybe the most memorable.

It was all for a good cause, of course. And deadly serious, not just for McIntosh, who headed the CIA’s disguise unit from 1977 to 1979. The agency’s Moscow operatives were in desperate need of something—anything—to trick Russian counterspies into leaving them alone, if only for a few minutes, so they could meet their secret agents without fear of being arrested. A key operation was in peril…

Alas, such magic tricks aren’t much use anymore, except in the movies. The contemporary world of ubiquitous electronic surveillance—not just traffic and shopping mall cameras, but email tracking, real-time GPS locating and digital retina scans and fingerprinting at airports—have pretty much relegated the Jack-in-the-box, wigs and latex facial implants to the CIA’s attic. “It’s got to be incredibly difficult to use aliases and disguises,” says former CIA operative Patrick Skinner, now director of special projects for The Soufan Group, a private intelligence organization headed by FBI, CIA and MI6 veterans. “The cameras are so ubiquitous you don’t even know when you’re not under surveillance, so when would you put on your disguise in an operation?”

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