Letters from a Private Investigator I
The Honey Trap: A Brief History
Mata Hari
Honey traps are hundreds of years old. One of the best known recent traps in spy history is by “Mata Hari” (also called “the most dangerous spy of all time”), a Dutch woman who had spent some years as an erotic dancer in Java. She died by firing squad on Oct. 15, 1917 after being convicted of spying.
The French arrested her on charges of spying for the Germans during World War I. They claimed that the German was her control officer and she was passing French secrets to him, secrets she had obtained by seducing prominent French politicians and officers.
Chinese Espioange
Even today the English MI5 recently expressed its concerns about sex and honey traps to gain business knowledge.
In a 14-page document distributed to hundreds of financial institutions and titled “The Threat from Chinese Espionage,” the MI5 described a Chinese effort to blackmail Western businesspeople over sexual relationships through honey traps.
The document warns that Chinese intelligence services are trying to cultivate “long-term relationships” and have been known to “exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships … to pressurise individuals to co-operate with them.”
This latest report on Chinese corporate espionage tactics is only the most recent installment in a long and sordid history of spies and sex. For millennia, spymasters of all sorts have trained their spies to use art of love and sex to obtain secret information.
Homesexual Honey Traps
A Honey Trap though is not always heterosexual.
Jeremy Wolfenden gay and worked as a British journalist in Moscow in the early 1960s at a time when homosexuality was illegal.
Seizing its opportunity, the KGB ordered the Ministry of Foreign Trade’s male hair-dresser to seduce him and put a man with a camera in Wolfenden’s closet to take photos. The KGB then blackmailed Wolfenden, threatening to pass on the photographs to his employer if he did not spy on the Western community in Moscow.
Wolfenden reported the incident to the British Embassy, but he was called to see an officer from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) who asked him to work as a double agent, leading the KGB along but continuing to report back to SIS.
The stress led Wolfenden into alcoholism and his life fell into a haze of heavy drinking before he died aged 31.
The Private Investigator and the Honey Trap
BEPIA and Indonesia Private Investigation Agency and have been involved with setting Honey Traps for clients. Its not just women who approach IPIA/BEPIA about honey-trapping – our client ratio is around 60% women to 40% men.
For the Private Investigator a ‘honey trap’ is basically an investigation that involves someone being paid to flirt with a target to detect signs of infidelity. Usually a Honey Trap is a simple case of approaching the target in a bar to see how far they want to take things sexually.
Honey-trap cases may seem simple from the outside but they often require the most planning. Clients want an answer and IPIA/BEPIA’s aim is to get that answer for them. However before we start a case, we always make sure that clients realise just what they’re getting into and are able to prepare themselves for the worst possible outcome.
For every honey trap IPIA/BEPIA use at least two agents. One with the target and the other acting as a security back-up.
IPIA/BEPIA set up a wire on the agent with the target to hear the conversation. We also have special coded body language signals to communicate with the security agent.
If things get a little too close, for example if a man attempts to kiss an agent, the agent will make some excuse to rush off. Security for the IPIA/BEPIA agents is always a top priority.
Bali Eye Private Investigation Agency (BEPIA) along with our sister agency Indonesia Private Investigation Agency (IPIA) are fully registered Private Investigation Agencies offering private detective and private investigator services to the Private and Business sectors throughout Indonesia and South East Asia.
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