Kit Bennett

A lot of it was tradecraft training, but with a slightly different edge, because I was now going on the attack.

I was basically here.

I was a counterintelligence officer, you know, I was trying to catch spies.

Now I was going to go undercover, or in cover, which is

the more correct term, rather than undercover.

So I was working in cover, undeclared, targeting Soviet intelligence officers and East European intelligence officers, if they were around, but primarily Soviet intelligence officers.

And that involved what we called, you know, belly-to-belly contact.

You know, I would arrange to meet these people under whatever guise, at functions, that sort of thing.

And I was in my element.

You know, a glass of wine in my hand...

Talking bull, yeah.

So what sort of training skills do you mean?

They did a couple of things.

I mean, I did more tradecraft stuff, but some of the tradecraft was a reverse of what I did.

So, you know, I was reasonably good at surveillance and understanding the way the Soviets would encounter surveillance.

What I had to now become good at was...

And I had to try and identify the team, but the most important thing was that I could not give the team any indication that I was looking for them.

So my counter surveillance had to be clandestine counter surveillance.

I had to try and identify who was following me without them thinking I was, you know, I had to behave perfectly normally.

And that was kind of hard to do.