February 2009 Version
By James M. Atkinson, the "Sun Tzu of Bug Sweeps"
A brave man dies but once, but a coward dies a thousand deaths.
It is always better to die on your feet, then to live on your knees
Always dance like nobody is watching.
Do not go gently into that dark night
Do not bring a knife to a gun fight
Forgive your enemies, forget not their names.
A closed mouth attracts no foot.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
Some friends will help you move, but real friends will help you move bodies.
A brave and honest man will still stand up to do
the right thing, and will lift his voice and
speak the truth when it is appropriate to do so.
A coward will sit in the back of the room and keep his mouth shut.
The racking of a shotgun speaks loudly in any languages, and any culture.
"Sie vie pacem, para bellum" (if you want peace, first prepare for war)
When you are traveling always check into your
hotel at least one hour before sunset, and always
call ahead for reservations. Otherwise, you will
end up paying too much for your room, you will
get a bad room, or you may get no room at all.
Assume that hotels will always screw up your
reservations, so always have a backup plan for an
alternate hotel, and then an alternate for your alternate.
When everything is coming your way, you are in the wrong lane.
If you actually think, you can drive your car
after a few drinks you should consider driving a
powerful motorcycle instead, should not wear a
helmet, and should sign an organ donor card as soon as possible.
The most importance thing in your house is the
mattress, linens, and blankets on your bed. Not
the sofa, not the big screen TV, not the stereo.
Keep your priorities straight, and invest in a
good nights sleep and buy a good bed.
When you travel bring your own sheets, and get
the kind that are "bug proof" and hypo-bacterial.
This also applies to your pillow case covers,
your own blankets, and your own quilt.
In a hotel room the nastiest, most disease-laden
items are the TV remote control, the telephone,
and the bed spread. Lysol is available in small
cans for just this sort of thing, but consider bringing your own.
Never eat out of, nor drink out of the mini-bar
in a hotel room. Use room service instead, or
better yet go visit a local grocery store after
you check in and buy $20 worth of groceries.
The difference between the word Cop and Con is
one letter. Trust is hard to gain, and easy to loose, never forget this fact.
Never stay at a hotel that does not have room
service available 24 hours a day, but only use it
on rare occasions. Breakfast is always the best room service meal, not dinner.
A good restaurant will always require a gentleman
to wear a jacket for the evening seating, but a
truly good restaurant will loan him a properly
sized jacket should he not be wearing one.
At a proper establishment, no member of your
group sees you pay the ticket, or if the check is
presented at the table, nobody notices that you have covertly paid it.
Always have a few good friends with whom you can
share your thoughts, fears, wants, goals,
desires, and disappointments, and whom will
always give you honest criticism and advice.
A good friend will always tell you when you are
being a too much of a geek or acting like a horses ass.
You have to learn the rules of the game. And then
you have to play better than anyone else. - Albert Einstein
Good service is always well tipped, but bad
service is also tipped along with a very discrete complaint to the management.
A gentleman tips for the service which he expects
to receive next time at the establishment, not
for the service he just experienced. Learn what
this means, and why tip money should always flow
freely to the appropriate people, but withheld
from others (ie: one does not tip the owner of a hotel, or the desk clerk).
Nobody should ever see you tip, and the recipient
of the gratuity should not know that a gratuity
is being covertly passed to them until they feel it in their hand.
The most powerful words in business are those of
"Please" and "Thank You", and you should use them often.
Take time to think in the middle of doing. A few
minutes of thinking can save hours of doing.
Doing without thinking is dangerous; thinking
without doing is misguided. Sometimes we must do and think at the same time.
"It is not death that a man should fear, but he
should fear never beginning to live."
- Marcus Aelius Aurelius
Make sure that you control your sweep equipment,
and that it does not control you. Meditate on
this for a while, for it is one of the great secrets of the TSCM business.
Keep your sweep equipment in good repair, and
operational at all times. A few minutes of
checking out your equipment the night before you
start a sweep can prevent six hours of utter on-site chaos, or a missed bug.
No piece of sweep equipment can replace a
flashlight, a proper ladder, and the eyes of a
TSCM specialist. This is also one of the great
secrets of how to perform a proper bug sweep.
When in doubt always wear long sleeved button
down oxford shirts, a crew neck T-shirt, and a
tie. But, always pack a couple of polo shirts so
that you can match your client's dress code.
When in doubt wear a dark suit, a white, long
sleeved, button down oxford shirt, and a muted
tie. Shoes and socks should always be black leather, as should the belt.
Know when to wear a suit, and when to wear jeans
and a flannel shirt on a sweep.
Always carry a pocket sized notebook, small
ruler, and a ball point pen or pencil on a sweep.
Learn to take copious notes, and always write
down the date and time of each note.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
Learn how to use a ball point pen or key ring as
an edged weapon, and learn when to use it to save your life.
Do not cheat at golf, ever; it is the game of the
honor of a true gentleman. Be truthful on your
handicap, tip your caddy well, and never carry
your own bags. Other players will always remember
your cheats and mulligans, and will expect the
same from you in business and thus never trust
you. Golf is all about business and honor, learn
to play it, you will learn much. Meditate on this
until you understand why this is so important.
Learn to play chess well, and to moderate your
play to match your opponents skill level. It is
more about having a pleasant two way play, and
less about winning in seven moves or less. Be
able to both play chess and to teach chess. The
best way to learn chess is to teach it to a
child, and to never win more then 50% of your
matches. Sometimes it is about controlling
yourself, and reigning in your capabilities, and
less about winning. Learn why this is important in business.
Learn to play blackjack and poker well, to the
point that you are not welcome in certain
casinos. Learn why this is important to TSCM and
Intelligence activities in general.
If you work for someone for a living do not try
to delude yourself into thinking your little
moonlighting TSCM job means that you are self
employed. Instead you have nothing more then a
hobby with benefits. You are only self-employed
when you earn 100% of your income from the work
of your own hands, and you answer to nobody but your clients.
Never conceal from your customers that you are
moonlighting, because someday your customer will
tell your employer about the projects you have
been doing for them so that he can make a
referral for your services. While your customer
has good intentions in doing this your boss is
never going to trust you again, and you may or
may find yourself unemployed and not understand
why. If you are moonlighting, be sure your
customer knows where you work, and who your boss is to avoid such ugliness.
To learn a subject, try to teach it to someone else.
Become highly proficient with small arms, but
pray that you never need to use them expect as a
last resort. Always be discrete about small arms,
and make every effort to ensure that nobody knows that you are packing.
New ways are not always better, neither are the
old ways. Learn why this is not always true, and
learn when to stay on course, and when to change your path.
There is no better discipline for a TSCM
specialist than to build a structure, a house,
office building, or a barn. The same hold true
for designing and installing computer networks,
phone systems, and data systems. This is one of
the great secrets of learning about TSCM and bug
sweeps, for if you know nothing about
construction you have no reason to be in the business.
Learn to write computer programs from scratch in
C or C++ and develop your own TSCM software that
you use on your own sweeps and which you never
sell outside of your own operation.
At least once in your life delivery a baby into
the world, and then afterwards examine your life thus far.
The ability to wash your own windshield, fill
your own gas tank, and change the engine oil in
your car does not mean that you are an auto
mechanic. A true mechanic can rebuild an engine
by himself, and can strip the vehicle down to the
raw chassis rails and rebuilt it better that the
factory. Ditto with sweep equipment and a real
TSCM specialists, you are a faker unless you can
Frankenstein your own equipment.
Facing a problem and fixing it is easier than complaining about it.
Real men drink beer out of bottle or chilled
glass, not out of a can. They also know when to
stop drinking, and know not to drive after any
drinking. Root beer, ginger soda, orange soda,
and crème soda are all to be consumed from a
chilled bottle or glass, and in the same fashion as any other bottled beverage.
Only a fool makes light of someone who prefers to
be a moderate drinker, or someone who prefers to
avoid alcohol outright. A good host will always
ensure that non-alcoholic beverages are always
discretely available to all guests, along with
coffee, teas, and other non-intoxicating drinks.
Take time each day to do nothing. Just to sit
quietly by yourself, to think, and to clear your
mind. Let your mind go blank, and just let
yourself breath. God invented bathtubs, commodes,
tree stumps, and comfortable chairs for mediations like this.
Consider everybody to be honest, honorable, and
hardworking, until they show you otherwise on at least three occasions.
Always try to generously and anonymously help
others, and never expect or ask for anything in return.
The fewer people that you involve in your
charitable activities the better. When you are
ready to perform charitable acts everybody will
want to help you but they will want a little of
your charity to stick to them in the form of
political favors, publicity, or raw percentages.
Do not let the agendas of others contaminate your own.
Try to always do more for others than they do for
youÂ… but be quiet about it and keep it private.
When you give to someone to help them out, give
until it hurts, and then give some more... this
is true sacrifice, and it is something you should do often.
Help feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, help
to bury the dead, and comfort the grieving. Help
your local community, neighbors, friends, and
family first before you waste time and money
trying to help someone who you do not know on the other side of the globe.
Remember, half the people you know are below average.
Visit people in nursing homes and hospitals,
because someday you may live in one and will be
lonely when nobody comes to visit you.
Learn how to suture a wound or injuries of
another person, both literally and figuratively.
Know how to give a hug and provide a strong
shoulder, but also how to throw some 2-0 silk or
apply a splint, swath, and sling.
Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.
Learn CPR and First Aid well, and recertify every
six months. Pray you never need to use it, and
when you do use it pray that you remember your
training. Carry an AED, oxygen, and a first aid
kit on all sweep vehicles, and know how and when to use them.
Stay current on all your immunizations, and get a
flu shot every Fall, and a pneumonia shot every five to ten years.
Have an annual physical when in good health, and
more often if ill. These check-ups should be at
least 90 minutes long and should check you out head to toe.
Always tell the truth to your physician, even if
it is an ugly truth, for they always have your
best interests at heart. However, there are some
truths that should be find their way into your
medical records, and which should remembered by
the physician and not written down.
Obtain a Commercial Drivers License, and Medical
Examiners card, and stay current on all your
endorsements. Most sweep vehicles are mandated by
federal law as commercial vehicles, so having a
CDL, CPR, and Medical Examiners card in your
wallet is a real quick way a customer or others
to determine if you are for real or not and not just another poser.
Whores pose in front of their equipment
collection in a feeble attempt to prove to the
world that they actually own more then a $99 bug
detector. However, the poor, inexperience sweeper
who does this look like a whore on display in a
brothel window. Ditto for the TSCM'er who feels
that they need to prove that they have
such-and-such equipment for sweeps. Both are
whores, just of different types, learn why.
Learn what the word poser means.
As the wind blows, so all politicians bend.
The size of the dust cloud tells us little about the traveler.
The drive home or to your hotel from a sweep at 2
AM is always longer than the drive at 6 AM you
took to get to the sweep location that morning.
Owning a lot of expensive cameras does not make
you a photographer, deal with it. It only becomes
art when someone can see a soul in the picture.
Ditto for sweep gear, fancy equipment, and camera
equipment means nothing and are only children's
toys unless you own the methods and techniques first.
For every 10,000 amateur photographers there are
5 true professionals, do not expect this ratio to
be different in the sweep profession.
Clients will look at your shoes and tie before your resume.
Bring two full sets of clothes to every sweep
project to include extra boxed shirts, and
pressed silk ties. Do not be afraid to change
your tie and shirt every 3-4 hours while working.
An academic degree or title only belongs on your
business card if you are a Practicing Medical
Physician, or a Professor at a University, or
engaged in an activity involved in academic
pursuits. If you went to college for eight years,
please feel free *** NOT *** to put it on your business card.
A D.O., Chiropractor, Naturalist is not a real
doctor, and they are more likely to cause you
pain and misery when you really need to see a
real doctor. Know when it is appropriate to see a
real doctor, and when it is all right to seek out alternate medicine.
You cannot work inside a 12-foot ceiling, by
standing on a 6 foot ladder. If you do not
understand why, then you are in the wrong business.
Know the phone number of the nearest emergency
room and 24 hour drug store that is nearest to
the hotel where you are staying, or the job site where you will be working.
Obtain the direct dial numbers for the Attending
Physicians on staff and the Triage nurse and know
when to call without going through the switch
board at 3 AM. Always ask for a fast track so
that you can get in and out within 90 minutes for minor illnesses or injuries.
Learn that a hospital that gets paid by an
insurance company will try to keep you in the
emergency room for five or more hours. If you are
paying cash (on the spot), most emergency rooms
can get you in and out in under one or two hours
for non-serious visits. Along these lines always
make sure you always carry $500 in cash to pay
your medical bills on the spot to help get you
out of the emergency room faster.
Carry an abbreviated medical history on your
person at all times, to include all allergies to
anything, any medications, drugs, supplements, or
herbs you are taking, what current medication
conditions you have, or have had. Include all
your emergency contact data, and include your
insurance data or your credit card numbers. This could save your life.
Always have a will, and have a close friend,
spouse, or family member designated as the
executor of your estate and who also has power of
attorney over your affairs. Also, along these
same lines have someone who is reliable and
trustworthy designated to act in your behalf
should you ever suddenly become disabled or
unable to function. Make sure that this person
has studied your will, knows its contents, and
knows how you want things handled.
If you ever travel overseas purchase a special
insurance policy for emergency medical
evacuation, and designate in the policy which hospital(s) they can take you to.
In the hospital, the best bed is usually the one next to the window.
ICE your phone, your wallet, your passport, and
your luggage. Learn what this means.
A degree from a diploma mill or "Distance
College" will always make you look like a
complete fool, it is just that you may be too
obtuse and uneducated to realize it.
Learn what the word "obtuse" means.
If you did not have to stop at DOT scales when
you crossed the state lines, then you have the wrong kind of sweep vehicle.
It's OK to be a nerd, but never be dorkÂ… learn the difference between the two.
The best way to learn is in the Socratatic and
Didactic methods, learn why, and learn to master
both methods as both a teacher and a student.
When in any classroom; learn to talk to the
teacher, ask questions, and actually make an
effort to learn something from each other.
Teaching is always a two way group effort, and it
required that the teacher do more then stand in
front of the room and spew forth dry materials.
As a student you should never just passively sit
and say nothing as the teacher will not know if
you are absorbing the materials being presented.
Most students never engage the instructors, and
most instructors never engage the students. Learn
to be both a good student, and an engaging
teacher, as you will be in both positions many times in your life.
A good teacher was first a good student.
Teach Sunday school to children, and be amazed to
learn of love, grace, and faith from them in its purest form.
A teacher must master the materials before they
can teach it, and they must be able to see inside
the minds of the students in real-time as they
teach to see if what they are teaching is being
absorbed by the student or they are not actually
teaching but rather just lecturing and wasting everybody's time.
A good TSCM person has mastered his craft to the
point that he can explain technical matter in
simple, non-technical understandable terms to
anybody from a six year old child to a multi-billionaire CEO.
White hair and a beard does not indicates
experience, just an illusion of such. Learn when this is not always true.
The more honest a man is, the less he has to tell
you about it. Along these same lines, the more
references or endorsements a person provides to
you or the more names they drop the more of a
true charlatan you can expect them to be.
All real bug sweeps and TSCM require the use of a
ladder. If you do sweeps professionally you need
lots of ladders, and vehicles that allow you to
transport the ladders inside the vehicle. As you
will usually need a six and eight foot folding
ladder on all sweeps, and periodically need a
twelve foot folding ladder or 20 foot extension
ladders. Thus the inside cargo area of your
vehicle will need to be at least 12 feet long.
Inspect your ladders before and after any use, as
it is quite unpleasant for you to come crashing
the ground when the laws of gravity decide to
teach you a painful equipment lesson.
Keep a little money in the bank, a little in your
mattress, but the majority of it in your
educations, the tools of your trade, and your business operation.
Keep at least six months of personal expense
money for food, rent, utilities, etc. in the form
of cash in the bank at all times, and another six
months stored in a fire-proof safe in your house.
Keep this money separate from any business funds,
and only use it to personally support yourself in
an emergency. As time goes on you should built
this up to at least three years of monies, do not
consider this is be retirement money, but rather
only emergency money. This is not for medical
bills, down payments on houses or vehicles, legal
bills, bail money, or even money that you can use
for your kids college fund. Rather this is for
actual life safety and personal emergencies where
you may have to either evacuate, hunker down, put
out the fire, buy a generator, clean the guns, stock up the larder, and so on.
Purchase insurance on everything that is
important in your life, this should include not
only your equipment, vehicles, property, and
assets, but also your health, possible
disability, and even the lives of yourself, all
close family members, and all sweep people or
critical employees who work for you.
Open a retirement fund when you are very young
and still in your teens, and add part of your
paycheck to it on a regular basis. This must be
an ultra-low risk investment, and Savings Bonds
in a safety deposit box are always a real long term winner.
You must have some type of investments that are
volatile in nature and risky in order to make
significant profits on your investments. But do
not stray into this mine-field until after you
have both your emergency funds and retirement
funds established and well developed.
Do not invest any money in stocks unless you read
the Wall Street Journal from cover to cover every
single day for at least one year, and understand what forces drive the market.
Treat your employees like family, pay them a good
wage, be liberal with all perks and benefits, and
give them part of the proceeds of any project they are involved in as a bonus.
Employees should respect you, not fear you. Learn when this is not true.
Anybody who will steal for you will steal from
you. Never trust them, and discharge them as soon as possible.
Make sure that all of your employees are
comfortable financially, emotionally, socially,
and physically. Learn why a genuine pat on the
back will always get you more in the long run then a kick to the behind.
Know your employees problems or weaknesses, and help them overcome them.
Leadership is all about being able to do the job
yourself, but inspiring other to follow you and
to assist you in getting the job done. At its
core, leadership is always about doing it yourself, never forget this fact.
Leadership is all about making clones of
yourself, and letting them do your job.
Always praise your employees publically, and only
criticize in private. Even then, only criticize
very rarely, and do it with compassion.
Learn to sweep your own floors, make your own
coffee, and answer your own phone.
There is much wisdom in this, learn why.
Never run up a total amount of credit card debt
that you can not pay in full every month.
Ideally, you should be able to pay off all
plastic debt with your profits for two weeks or less.
If you use a credit card, learn how to make
anticipatory payments when you travel or make
large purchase. This will annoy your credit card
company, learn why. This will also ensure that
you are never late on a bill, and why your credit
limits will be way higher then anybody else you know.
If your banker is not in your office just to say
hello every 90 days or so then you are not dealing with a real banker.
If you ever have any problems with your bank
accounts you should expect your banker to visit
YOUR office or home at the time that is
convenient to you to help resolve the problem,
and to apologize for the error and not the other way around.
Learn what "Private Banking" means.
Work within the time the client allowed you to
access the premises. Let your client's wants,
needs, and access always direct your efforts.
The client should never have to conform to your
needs, but rather the other way around.
If the person who you are dealing with cannot get
a retainer check cut, and sent to you within 48
hours then you may not want to be dealing with
them as they likely lack the authority to engage
you in the first place, and you may never see the
money that you are due for the sweep.
Sweep payment terms are always half up front
(plus anticipated expenses), and the balance when
the report is provided. For some project you may
want to get the entire balance up front, well in
advance. In other cases, for established client
you may let them pay at the end of the service.
While it is permissible to provide terms of "10/0
Net 10" you do not provide terms of Net 15, or
Net 30 unless you are an utter fool.
The more paperwork that you provide to your
clients accounting department the more likely
that it is the secrecy of the sweep will be
compromised. With this in mind the executive who
engages you should arrange for a check to be
manually cut to him and sent to you to keep you
out of their regular accounting systems for a few
weeks after the sweep is completed.
Learn why most rumors and leaks originate from
the accounting department, sales and marketing
departments, and then the computer/MIS
department. Accept this fact, deal with it, plan
appropriately, and make sure none of these
departments know anything of your project.
Sometimes you can only get into an office for
one, single frantic 16 hour session as the office
is only available for a very narrow, single shot
sweep, and other times you can spend 3-4 days
inside a single room. Have the capability to
operate under either condition or everything in between.
With some customers you can come rolling in with
twelve TSCM people and twenty thousand of pounds
of equipment and then run three or more people in
the office 24 hours a day for an entire week, but
in other cases the client can only get a single
person in with a couple of briefcases.
Learn to smoothly operate with a minimum number
of people on-site, and to be as invisible to the eavesdropper as possible.
If you are going to be performing sweeps you must
keep the following tenets in your mind at all
times, and repeat them in your mind until they
become deeply integrated into your activities:
Know your client
Know his threat
Know your own equipment
Know your own weaknesses and strengths
Know bugging equipment
Know the eavesdropper
Know the laws of physics
Work within the time you are given
Work with what equipment you have
Cover all the bases
Overlap all equipment coverage
Pay careful attention to details, for it is the
details that we use to catch the eavesdropper.
Keep a written notebook that contains a record of
everything you did on the sweep.
Miss nothing; take your time to do a good job.
Keep your clients secrets
Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened?
At least two smoke detectors on every floor, plus
one at the top of all stairways.
One carbon monoxide alarm close to the floor, and
anything that burns, heats, or cooks something,
plus one carbon monoxide alarm in each and every bedroom.
Always refuel your fuel tank before it reaches
half-empty. Stopping for gas is easier then walking for gas.
Diesel is better then gas for large vehicles, learn why.
All TSCM people know what NIMS, ICS, COG, COOP,
EOP, EOC all mean, and perform their sweep
activities to be fully compliant. If you do not know why, then learn.
Never forget to fart, and learn to take pride in it.
Buying a violin at a pawnshop does not make you a
concert violinist. Much the same way that buying
a pile of bug sweep equipment on E-Bay does not
make you a competent bug sweeper.
He who laughs last thinks slowest.
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World Class, Professional, Ethical, and Competent Bug Sweeps, and
Wiretap Detection using Sophisticated Laboratory Grade Test Equipment.
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James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803
Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467
127 Eastern Avenue #291 Web:
http://www.tscm.com/
Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 E-mail: mailto:jm..._at_tscm.com
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We perform bug sweeps like it's a full contact sport, we take no prisoners,
and we give no quarter. Our goal is to simply, and completely stop the spy.
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Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:24 CST