Photo by GEORGE DESIPRIS from Pexels
The tricks of the espionage trade are hardly only the domain of government intelligence agencies — the existence of the corporate espionage industry speaks to the lengths businesses will go to learn competitive secrets.
But a recent report now says the White House is playing host to an amateur ploy, using a tried-and-true espionage trick, to root out employees who may be leaking information to the press.
According to a report in Axios Sunday, the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has “fed specific nuggets of information to suspected leakers to see if they pass them on to reporters — a trap that would confirm his suspicions.”
This scenario is called, in espionage parlance, a canary trap — or, in another metaphor, a “barium meal” or “barium pill.”
In the medical world, barium pills are part of a barium swallow test, in which the patient swallows the pill and then is subjected to an X-ray that, because of the barium, can more easily detect the size and shape of the patient’s throat. In essence, the pill illuminates its own path through the body.
How does this apply to espionage? In his book “Three Minutes to Doomsday,” former FBI agent Joe Navarro explains:
A barium pill is something that can be traced because of particular micro-stain — indentations, scratches, maybe a micro-tear, maybe a particular word within each document or a word intentionally misspelled deep inside the document. Why? Because we can then trace the document’s origin, vector, and/or provenance. Example: If you and [someone else] are equally but separately suspected of espionage, I would give each of you the same letter or document to pass on, but on yours I might use a comma on the eighth line and on his I might use a semicolon. Most people wouldn’t notice, but if the document shows up where it shouldn’t be, we can ask an asset to see if there’s a comma or a semicolon on the eighth line — a low-risk proposition, but we can trace back from there and identify the culprit. We use barium pills all the time."
The barium pill tactic has come to light in some distinctly odd places in recent history, including in what looks like a particularly savvy gambit by Coleen Rooney, wife of English soccer star Wayne Rooney. Rooney reportedly planted false information on her Instagram account, set so that only one person could see it, and then waited until the information she revealed there came out in the tabloids.
As for whether Meadows’ attempt met with that kind of success, that appears unclear. Axios reported a former White House official with whom Meadows had confided about the plan said, “I don’t know if it ever worked.”
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