Viagra: The New Bling

Among the world's intelligence agencies, there's a long tradition of using sex as a motivator. A quote from my crush du jour Robert Baer, a retired CIA officer and author of several books on intelligence, noted that the Soviet spy service was notorious for using attractive women as bait when seeking to turn foreign diplomats into informants. So why should we be surprised that the natural extension of such efforts fall to Taliban and Afghanistan hot spots? Want more details? Sorry, that's classified.

It's safe to say methods used in clandestine operations are certainly creative. One senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the Central Intelligence Agency's work in Afghanistan said the clandestine teams were trained to be "resourceful and agile."

"If you give an asset $1,000, he'll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone," said Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company. "Even if he doesn't get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it." We consider viagra the new bling.

The key, Smith said, is to find a way to meet the informant's personal needs in a way that keeps him firmly on your side but leaves little or no visible trace.

So the question looms " Is that a rocket in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"