Tradecraft Directive of Trust

In operative strategic interpersonal interactions, the art of deception isn’t necessarily the most vital, it’s the ability to trust.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

-Ernest Hemingway

There’s an old Russian proverb “trust, but verify”, made famous by Ronald Reagan, then becoming an approach (at least also as just a saying) in the intelligence community. It sounds clever but hardly practical for everyday on the fly application.

The operative’s directi…