For all those who like getting their hands dirty Op TAMARISK must have represented the ultimate challenge.
“Operation Tamarisk was a Cold War-era operation run by the military intelligence services of the US, UK and France through their military liaison missions in East Germany, that gathered discarded paper, letters, and rubbish from Soviet trash bins and military maneuvers, including used toilet paper.
As described in The Hidden Hand by Richard Aldrich on page 414, it involved starving the Soviets of loo paper. This led them to use official documents as a ‘substitute’.
The US, UK and the French then used their spies to retrieve the documents as the paper was not soluble and was put into bins.
The spies actually complained to their handlers that they had to go through the bins that contained fecal matter and even amputated limbs in the case of hospital rubbish bins. When the spies told their handlers this, the handlers immediately asked them to bring back the limbs as well so they could study what type of shrapnel the Soviets were using.
According to Tony Geraghty, ‘to tamarisk’ was BRIXMIS jargon for “sifting through the detritus of military exercises”. This included extracting shrapnel from tissue disposal sites at hospitals and salvaging documents used as toilet paper where no actual toilet paper had been issued, but also less disgusting finds such as a discarded personal notebook containing technical drawings.
Apparently Tamarisk has been described as ‘one of the most successful espionage operations in the entire cold war.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tamarisk