How attractive are you?
If you habitually spend time with models, dancers, singers, and thespians, you can skip this article and move on. If you don’t, keep reading.
One of the basic tools of illegal intelligence gathering is sex. Because of this, it is important that if you have information that could be of importance to an adversary, and meet someone you normally wouldn’t expect to be interested
in you socially or sexually, you should be aware of the possibility that the interest is professional, not personal.
Now, we concede that there are several possibilities here.
• For a start, it is not impossible that the person is actually interested in you, for you. We know of people who habitually, inexplicably, and annoyingly (jealousy on our part) are able to associate with people of great interest and attractiveness, but for whom we can see no compensating virtues or benefits. And we know of people who have had the most unlikely others fall in love with them, and have lived happily ever after.
• Another is that the person may be interested in you for what you have to offer financially or professionally, but are not trying to steal information.
o As an example, we know of a case in which a handicapped man married his caregiver, a former stripper. The man recognized that this might not be true love, but, with the appropriate financial protections, was absolutely a fair tradeoff.
o In another case, a man with no social skills was interested in marrying a Russian woman. He had chosen an age-appropriate woman, but then got a letter from an 18 year old girl in Vladivostok who was “interested” in him. Since he didn’t normally date girls in their teens, it was obvious that she was interested in him because she lived, literally, in Siberia.
o And we know of men and woman who simply won’t date anyone who doesn’t have a lot of money, on the theory that it is as easy to fall in love with a rich person as a poor person.
o We know of singers who have married conductors and actors who have married directors, and of others who have made similar career choices through marriage.
What if you aren’t wealthy or in a position of power, but do have information of value to someone? Well, you ought to be aware that in casual – and in some cases longer-term – relationships you may be being used merely as a source of information. If sharing what you know will compromise something you are doing, get you fired, or get you arrested, you should think very carefully before trading information for sex.
