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The Allies and Germans also tried to outwit each other in where they wrote their messages. Knowing that letters themselves were scrutinized, they wrote on the under-side of an envelope's flap, brushed certain words and phrases in a newspaper with ink, and wrote messages on handkerchiefs. When the German spy George Dasch, who landed with his co- conspirators in a submarine on Long Is- land, surrendered to the FBI, in his pocket was found a handkerchief on which the names and addresses of his contacts had been written in invisible ink. The Cold War During this Golden Age of Espionage, countries threw serious time and resourc- es into developing spy tools and technol- ogy that would keep them steps ahead of the enemy. This included research into ever more effective and sophisticated invisible inks. One major advancement took the form of a new method of writing. The time- honored technique had been wet-writing; the person wrote directly with the ink on the paper. But this process had significant drawbacks. The agent had to steam the paper to prepare it, let it dry, write his message, re-steam the paper to remove the indentations made with the writing utensil, let it dry again, and then write a visible message to cover up the invisible one. And even after all this, traces of the writing could still be found by trained technicians on the other side. The Soviet KGB and East German Stasi developed an alternative during the 1950s: the dry transfer method. Instead of directly putting the ink on the paper, a chemically impregnated sheet of paper was placed between two sheets of ordinary writing paper. The secret mes- sage was written on the top sheet and transferred through the chemicals on the middle sheet to the bottom sheet. The top sheet was destroyed altogether (it was of- ten made of a water soluble material that could be flushed away or dissolved in a cup of water), and the bottom sheet was left with an undetectable message. The chemical sheets could be re-used many times before they had to be discarded. This dry method was even utilized by American POWs during the Vietnam War to sneak secret information into their letters home. The development of numerous plastic products during the 60s gave agents a new way to write their messages as well. The CIA would embed chemicals in com- mon products like credit cards, pen caps, eyeglass frames, key fobs, and even the plastic toothpick in a Swiss Army knife. The agent then simply had to rub the plastic object on paper to transfer the invisible "ink." These and other advancements were coming from the well-staffed laboratories of the intelligence agencies of the 50s and 60s. The Stasi's Technical Operations Sector had 50 employees working on se- cret writing alone. The CIA had 36 secret writing specialists employed domestically and abroad. As the Cold War drew to a close, the number of chemists and physicists devoted to working on invisible ink was reduced, and the demise of snail mail and advancements in technology slowly rendered the use of invisible ink, if not ob- solete, then a much less vital tool in a spy's bag of tricks. But who knows? Perhaps when that "insurance salesman" you met at the airport offered you his handkerchief, you were really blowing your nose into the names of suspected terrorists.> The Art of Manliness Continued JOBS for TEAMS | 20 www.jobsfor teams.com JobsForTeams0614_manliness.indd 4 5/6/14 4:29 PM