Clandestiny is a Constant

7 min readNov 30, 2015

The rules of security for underground operations are strict and universal. They apply equally to criminals, spies, terrorists and drug dealers. Regardless of the secret activity, the security rules for protecting the operators remain constant.

University of Hard Knocks Cheat Sheet

Recently a couple of great posts illustrating the universal nature of operational security principles have appeared on Reddit. They both present lessons learned from life experience gained in America’s drug war. This war is a fertile ground for underground organizations to gain deep skill sets in the rules clandestine operations. How to operate secretly and securely against a formidable, determined and well resourced adversary.

Drug Dealing, the missing manual

A police officer has provided a list of operational security rules for drug dealers. These rules deal with avoid interacting with security forces, as well as recommendations on how to handle those interactions. There are also rules for avoiding the most serious consequences of interdiction by the security forces. Interaction with the opposition is a fact of life and a constant danger when operating clandestinely.

Here is his guide:

If you sell Marijuana, you’re risk far outweighs your reward. It’s a very bulky drug making it hard to transport large amounts. If police bring a dog, you’re screwed because we will rip that car to pieces finding your stash. If you don’t seal it correctly, it will smell, instant probable cause. If one of your customers gets caught, he will rat, someone only smoking weed is not a thug or in the “snitches get stitches” category. They probably have a life and future.

If you’re a low level dealer, your chances of getting caught go down a lot. Unless we catch you in the act of selling or with product, it takes way too much money to throw an investigation together to catch you.
If you’re getting your product off the [Dark Net Market] and get a [Controlled Delivery], deny everything and get a lawyer. Your charges will be dropped.
Do not carry a gun. Your charges triple if you are caught with a firearm while selling any illegal substance and you will be in prison.
Hiding your drugs in some crazy place in your car is dumb. If we are pulling you over for drugs, we are finding those drugs, otherwise it’s probably just a normal traffic stop.
If the police come knocking, do not answer. Again, if we have a warrant, we are entering, no questions asked. Otherwise, you have no obligation to answer the door and doing so can open a can of worms that you want closed.
Have a life outside of dealing. If caught, your chances of going to jail go down a lot. If you deal for a living and have nothing else in your life like college, a job, or kids, you’re more than likely going to spend some time in jail.
Don’t advertise on social media. Seriously, you’d be surprised at the number of times this happens. “Anyone need any tree?”, you’re getting arrested in a week, tops.
Use a burner phone that isn’t attached to your name. If found as evidence, say you found it on the side of the road and then plead the 5th.
Lawyer the fuck up. Having a lawyer is like having lube during anal sex, sure it will still hurt, but it will go a lot easier than not having it.
Know your rights. My God people. If you are in handcuffs, shut the fuck up. Don’t cry. Don’t beg. Just sit in the seat, and calm the fuck down. Any word you say past “I plead the 5th and I am requesting a lawyer” will pretty much erase any deniability you have.
If you’re ordering from the [Dark Net], do not brag about it.
Keep your stash off your property. Seriously. If we have a warrant and come up empty, you’re pushed to the bottom of the investigation list and will not be in jail at the end of that raid.
Don’t tell anyone you’re close to that you deal. Your girlfriend is going to get you in prison. Your friends will be interrogated, as will your family. If they don’t know anything, you make a much better case for yourself.
Don’t live with your girlfriend. Dealing is a life/career choice and it has requirements to keep yourself out of prison. This is one.
Break one law at a time.
Don’t corner deal. Somehow this is still a thing in our city. You will only last 3 weeks, tops.
If you sell the best stuff in town, you’re name is going to get thrown around a lot.

The biggest thing to remember is that, if we want you, you’re getting caught. It’s impossible to hide yourself completely. Everybody talks, you may only sell to friends but those friends have friends that you don’t know, and those friends have friends that you also don’t know. You could literally sell to one person, and your chances of getting caught are still very high.

Source: /r/Drugs (via: Twitter)

Biggie Smalls and Moscow Rules

The next story to review is from the opposite end of the war on drugs. A cocaine dealer who was busted via an informant. In his post on Reddit he relates how he was arrested and the mistakes he made that got to his there. In particular, look out for the opsec violations of both the Moscow Rules and Biggie Smalls’ 10 Crack Commandments.

First I want to say I sold powder for ten years…I was always pretty careful and went with my instincts when something didn’t seem right. Until a piece of shit called me and wanted to meet up so we could talk about something.
I meet him at a familiar bar and he tells me he needed an eight ball and if its good he needed an ounce tomorrow. He also said he would start needing more a couple times a week. I told him my connect is out of town so I had to get this from someone else just to hold people over. So if he was buying the eight ball to test the quality he should wait until I get something else because the shit I had at the time was garbage. He said it didn’t matter. That made me think it was strange, but not enough to think it was a set up. So I sell him the ball game and figured there is no way he is going to get the ounce after this shit.
He called me two days later and is telling me how good it was. I knew he couldn’t have liked that shit, but at the time I was selling my ounces for $800 or $900 and he was talking about paying $1500. That is another thing that should have thrown up red flags, but my greed only saw green.
He tells me he has to call me back and I was laying in bed with my girlfriend at the time. I tell her, something just doesn’t feel right about this. She said, well just don’t do it. For once in her life that she was right. I did something you should never do. Don’t let your greed out way[sic] your safe judgement.
I figured I will meet him with nothing on me and see how I feel then. He tells me to jump in the car because he needs to get the rest of the money from ATM. I figure it’s ok I don’t have shit on me anyway. We turned into the parking lot rite next to a van. The door slid open, they jumped out, grabbed my door yanked me out faster than I had time to think of what was going on. It was all DEA and a couple of state cops ended up there as well. So they patted me down and I say, I’m not the guy you must be looking for, I haven’t done anything wrong. They said, its ok, we have a warrant for your house.
My third mistake was getting too comfortable and keeping shit in my house. Luckily I had most of my money stashed somewhere else. That piece of shit set me up. I ended up doing 3 years in prison for that shit. The set up was a little over five years ago been home for two.When I first started selling shit I would never keep shit in my house and I knew people who did were making big mistakes. So, the most important thing I learned from that experience was, always go with your gut. Next would be, never get too comfortable.

(Emphasis added) Via: Twitter

OPSEC Fails

The opsec fails are two fold, firstly he violated the Moscow rules. The second of the Moscow rules is: Never go against your gut. This is violated several times. Clearly, he could tell that the operation was unusual and not normal, it has several red flags. Rather than pay attention to these, he let greed cloud his judgement and he brushed them aside. For the security forces, this was a sound application of MICE.

The second opsec fail was to keep contraband at his home. Incriminating evidence is always dangerous, but when stored at the home there are strong links between the contraband and the home resident. This is mentioned above, by the police officer and also by Biggie Smalls:

6. Never sell out of your home.
There is no better way to incriminate yourself.
“Number 5: never sell no crack where you rest at
I don’t care if they want a ounce, tell ’em “bounce!”

Comparative Analysis of Drug Dealer Security

There is no time or space to fully explore the various articulations of the same core operational security rules that drug dealers have discovered. I would like to mention another great resource for analysis:

The Barry Cooper videos are full of amazing tradecraft applied to drug operations, and it is comparable to the tradecraft employed by spies. Dead drops in particular are very popular in some places, such as Russia. The correlation of drug dealer tradecraft and espionage tradecraft is a phenomena I’ve been following for years, for example here and here.

Operational Security is Blind

The principles of operational security are the same regardless of operational activity. Observing how the same core security principles are discovered and applied over and over again in different clandestine activities is fascinating and rewarding.

The rules of clandestine operation are constant, regardless of the operational activity.