The watches in the intelligence world – Instruments for survival

Text: Filip Ericsson

In our digitalised present, wristwatches have as we know in principle been made superfluous in people's everyday lives, but in the mysterious world of global espionage they are still highly central. Eqotime explains why. 

The sun was sharp in my eyes, it was as bright as in a welding flame. I was embraced by a tropical dream. A light breeze against my body, the nurturing, unmistakable roar from the sea, the soft sand against my feet. We sat in habitual plastic chairs next to a simple bar on the beach, a few colleagues and acquaintances, in a conflict area in Africa. Opposite me an "attaché" from the American embassy. Or more of a marine, judging by his build and his self-assured manner. CIA. We discussed the head of security at the war crimes tribunal in Freetown, who was suspected of smuggling diamonds. "You're going home in a body bag" said my Norwegian colleague in ringing Norwegian-English with reference to who I was hanging out with. But I survived.    

The story above is true. I came to think of it when I found an article in Hodinkee, the big American online watch magazine, about the significance of mechanical watches for the USA's intelligence service. It was written by a former "case officer" – handler – within the CIA, who remains anonymous.   

It is funny, but they are called that, "handlers", like any social worker auntie, the operative spies who gather intelligence for the USA in all the world's corners with their lives at stake.   

The article in Hodinkee is incidentally approved by the CIA's "Prepublication Classification Review Board" to prevent secret information from leaking out. Such things are of course also uplifting.   

Watches have existed for many hundreds of years, and when the 20th century was young these mechanical little timekeepers had been given straps and had begun to frequent the wrists of more and more ordinary citizens around our earth.   

Over the last decade or so, however, the wristwatch's significance as a timekeeper has been all but wiped out. And it is of course the mobile phone's lightning-fast spread in the world's societies that is the cause of that.   

But in the world of the intelligence services (the article's author in Hodinkee mentions foreign intelligence gathering, secret operations and counter-espionage) they are still highly relevant. Firstly, measuring time – and it can hang on seconds – is an absolute necessity for an operator in the field. It can be a matter of life and death.   

But why then can you not just do that on a mobile phone or a smartwatch, like ordinary people?  

The mechanical wristwatch's areas of use  

In the James Bond films the British super intelligence officer is frequently seen wearing expensive wristwatches. In the films up until 1989, with the whole row from Sean Connery to Timothy Dalton, it is mainly the Rolex Submariner that applies while the Omega Seamaster as we know took over the role as Bond's service watch with Pierce Brosnan's entrance in 1995. 

This type of exclusive diver's watch is however a common sight on real-life spy wrists too. Firstly, the mechanical wristwatch's area of use for intelligence operators is so much broader than just measuring time. They also constitute tools with several other central functions.   

Mechanical watches are used to build relationships, to recruit agents through a gift/bribe. They are used where traceable electronic devices cannot be utilised, as payment in emergencies, in analyses of foreign leaders' psychological profiles, and so on.  

Recruitment  

Mechanical wristwatches are central in the intelligence officer's own work, but are also used as payment, or a bribe, to recruit agents. As an "operational gift".   

And a watch of a better brand is an ideal gift since it is immediately recognisable to most people – from shaggy rebel leaders in Africa's darkest corners to polished diplomats in Geneva. It can be worn as a piece of jewellery and bestow status on the agent, who is thereby enticed into recruitment.    

An extreme example is the pocket watch in gold from Patek Philippe that a young Dalai Lama received as a gift from the USA's president Franklin D Roosevelt in 1943, reportedly to make little Dalai compliant about an American road construction through Tibet to assist the Chinese against the Japanese.   

Watches can also be used to start a conversation with a foreign intelligence officer (depending on what he has on his arm) in the hope of making contact and perhaps starting to build a relationship.   

Untraceable instruments  

In a world where electronic equipment can be traced, these thus constitute a security risk for operators in the field. This means that mechanical wristwatches are put to use for what they were originally meant for: to measure the time.   

A reliable watch can therefore be decisive for carrying out a mission without leaving behind digital traces, which of course can be exploited by a foreign security service and thereby risk the life of the spy, as well as ultimately threaten the security of the realm. 

Means of payment in a fix  

One reason to wear an exclusive watch during a mission is that it can function as a valuable object of exchange in a crisis situation. If you find yourself in distress the watch can act as currency that can be exchanged for a hiding place in a cellar, transport to the border or whatever it may be.   

Furthermore a Rolex is of course so much more convenient and safer to bring along (that is to say to wear on your arm) than gold or cash, which can more easily be lost.   

Watches were incidentally part of the "life barter kits" or "escape & evasion kits" (life-saving exchange kits) that American fighter pilots carried with them in the aircraft during the Second World War and the cold war, to be used as payment in an emergency after a crash over enemy ground.   

"War zone watch"  

When an American intelligence officer has finished their mission, a mission that has often involved great physical as well as mental strain and perhaps a milestone in life itself, it is common for them to reward themselves with a gift – which often means an exclusive watch. To remember and be reminded. A "war zone watch" quite simply.   

It can be a matter of an Omega Seamaster or Rolex GMT Master acquired during a stopover in Doha or Dubai. James Bond, however fictional the character may be, is incidentally said to have a surprisingly big influence on the choice of wristwatch in those contexts.   

Breitling and Panerai are also popular with CIA operators working in Africa and the Middle East. Both of course market reliable and hard-wearing watches that have a strong exchange value through their recognisability and status.  

The mechanical watch's continued significance 

The mobile phone, which has nestled its way into all the world's corners and annihilated the necessity of a wristwatch, possesses one weakness: it is considerably more awkward to read.  

It is the same drawback that once afflicted pocket watches, the thing that gave rise to the wristwatch in the first place. It was of course born in the trenches of the First World War and in the cockpits of the early aircraft, where it was discovered that it was enormously impractical – and thereby dangerous – to have to dig around in your pockets for your watch.  

So much faster then to just flick your wrist slightly and get a time reading within the space of a second. And thereby survive. Today there are of course the smart wristwatches which further destroy the need for a mechanical ditto.  

The mechanical wristwatch's lost significance as a timekeeper may thus be a fact for the common man, but for an intelligence operator on enemy ground his (or her) survival tool can also be used to do precisely that – to measure the time, quickly, efficiently and invisibly. And still superior to a mobile phone or a smartwatch. 

I wish I could transport myself back to that sunny Sunday afternoon on Lumley Beach in Freetown, to see which watch my table companion – the "attaché" from the American embassy – wore that day. I evidently never had the idea of watch-spotting when it actually happened. No, I would probably never have become much of an intelligence officer.