In the deadly game of international intrigue, disguises come in many forms. We poked around in the shadows to uncover a few spy style secrets.
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Disguise: The art of going gray

Eric O’Neill started his career as an FBI investigations specialist - a surveillance ‘ghost’ - so he knew about clandestine techniques and disguises. An SV officer needs to look average (the gray person) to blend into their surroundings. Before setting out they must be dressed correctly. “You don't dress in jeans and a ratty T-shirt if you're downtown in the middle of corporate D.C., but you might if you're walking across a college campus,” O’Neill explains in his True Spies podcast Gray Suit and the Ghost.

“If you are gray, you are unseen… That means that when they notice you, their eyes just sort of slide right by because you're nondescript. You're non-threatening. You're non-interesting. You're non-memorable.” In order to be ‘gray’ you need the right disguise, to wear the right clothing, and to act a particular way. “And that is a skill that is extremely hard to teach, “ O’Neill said. “So the best field operatives who move around, following a target on foot, have to know the art of being gray.”

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Behind the mask 

For 15 years, Robert Barron crafted state-of-the-art silicone masks for CIA operatives, disguises that needed to pass close scrutiny from six to 12 inches away.

“I tinted silicone to look like skin. That was my forte,” said Barron. “Agents depended on the realism of that disguise because if that disguise attracted attention in a negative way, then their lives were in jeopardy."

Although Barron won’t discuss specifics, he considers the CIA’s work to be much more sophisticated than a Mission: Impossible mask rip: “To put one of those masks on Tom Cruise it takes about three-and-a-half to four hours,” he said. “And for him to take it off it takes, like, three seconds, but with ours it had to be put on in three seconds and taken off in three seconds - and reuse it.”

Masks are just one element of disguise, however. Early on in his career, Barron also created passports and forged documents for CIA agents. After more than two decades at the Agency, Barron had six passports with six different names and some days needed to remind himself who he was.

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‘Red’ Riley’s disguise tips‍

Shot at, bombed, imprisoned, and arrested, British Captain P. J. ‘Red’ Riley is a former ex-SAS soldier who spent 18 years as a British MI6 agent. He’s also the author of MI6 Spy Skills for Civilians and he’s got a few disguise tips for wanna-be intelligence officers.

If the goal is to lose a surveillance team, then apply the disguise quickly - five minutes max. The surveillant is focusing on the color of your clothes, your size, your general shape, and your demeanor, so change as much of that as possible.

Posture is important. Your surveillance team will be looking at how you carry yourself and the way you walk, so alter your gait for a drastically different look. Keep your head up and eyes forward. Looking down makes you look like you’re plotting. Looking behind you indicates you’re worried about being followed.

"Each of my false identities was convincing and comprehensively documented,” Riley writes in Mi6 Spy Skills for Civilians. “They had passports, of course (well-thumbed with a few entry stamps), driver's licenses, bank and credit cards, false paperwork relating to where I purported to work and even notes from girlfriends or boyfriends to give realism to the individual I was pretending to be.”

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Mossad & the KGB‍

Disguise is often part of a more elaborate ruse. When Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was captured, Mossad smuggled him out of Argentina dressed as a flight crew member in town for a short layover. Mossad is also known for dressing its male spies and officials in female clothing.
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Disguise isn’t always effective, of course. When Russian KGB sleeper agent Jack Barsky landed in the US in the 1970s, he spent his first full day in Chicago determined to look ‘American’. To Barsky, that meant buying a flannel suit with reversible trousers and a vest in a light blue and gray checkerboard pattern.

“They were the ugliest pair of pants I had ever seen but to me they looked so… American,” he recalled in his memoir Deep Undercover. “That suit would get very little wear, along with a sky-blue corduroy suit with very wide lapels.”
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Hollywood’s secret agent‍

John Chambers was the Hollywood make-up artist who created Spock’s pointy ears for Star Trek and Planet of the Apes prosthetics. His work on the film The List of Adrian Messenger was so respected it was once required viewing for entry-level CIA disguise officers.

During the Cold War, Chambers was a CIA contractor and he's credited with creating disguise kits for Agency officers stationed abroad. Alongside four Max Factor Pan-Cake make-up containers of varying skin tones, his kit reportedly included false eyebrows, sideburns, make-up brushes, and various types of glue. Chambers included a battery-powered mirror in case the hotel didn’t have decent electricity - all packed into a lockable black Monarch hard plastic briefcase.

“There used to be some prosthetic pieces in the original so you could actually do chins and noses and everything else too, so it wasn’t just hair,” said New Zealand film director Sir Peter Robert Jackson, who has rummaged around one of Chambers’ spooky make-up kits.

The briefcase might be a giveaway, however. On missions where it had to be left behind, a circular sticker on top of the case reads: “The Sentinel Corporation / If this item is unclaimed please phone toll-free (800) 421-0671 (in Calif. (213) 277-6100 collect).” 

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The real Q

Jonna Mendez worked as an undercover CIA officer for 27 years, first in photography and later creating prosthetic noses, wigs, and masks that could be peeled off. She believes the ability to transform into someone else can mean the difference between life and death.

“It could make you one of 'them' and not one of us,” Mendez told the True Spies podcast. ”We could change your ethnicity. We could change your gender. We could make you whatever you needed to be around the group that you were targeting, and you could still be safe.”

The CIA tracked international fashion trends during her time at the Agency through a local disguise officer who’d brief the CIA twice a year. They kept HQ up to date on what officers could get away with wearing and what they probably wouldn't want to be seen in on the street, she said.

Mendez has a few tips for budding spies who want to master the art of disguise: buy local clothing and footwear when you’re abroad; try horn-rimmed glasses and a new hairstyle to change your face; and make sure your disguise doesn’t prevent you from eating, drinking or using your phone.

She also advises beginner spies to ‘own it’. Your demeanor is just as important as your disguise so stride into any room with confidence and own inhabit the character.

Master of disguise

Jonna’s late husband Tony Mendez is legendary for creating the CIA’s 45-second Disguise-On-The-Run. Mendez also elevated the art of disguise to a new level in the real-life rescue of six American hostages who escaped Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis, the basis for the Academy Award-winning film Argo. Mendez disguised the team as a film crew scouting locations in Tehran.

The six hostages were using newly issued Canadian passports to hide their American citizenship, so their disguises needed to include the right ‘pocket litter’ - receipts from Canadian restaurants, matches, and key rings with the names of Canadian beer brands. They kept their facial disguises simple, Cora Amburn-Lijek recalled in the True Spies podcast. Hostage Mark Lijek darkened his beard with mascara while the others adopted new hairstyles and changed their facial features to exaggerate the size of their noses.

The ruse worked. The hostages escaped unharmed, and Tony Mendez was awarded the CIA’s Intelligence Star in 1980 for leading the rescue mission.