received it from that country’s government. (If the assignment is for the CIA, it’s a different ball game.) When
crossing borders on routine Department of Justice cases, I always use a very genuine U.S. passport, almost always my standard
dark-blue tourist passport. I have to carry my official U.S. government passport while overseas on official U.S. government
business. But its distinctive dark-red cover is nothing to show when standing in a long line of strangers waiting to pass
a foreign immigration agent. For other identification purposes, particularly when nongovernmental entities are involved, I
resort to second best, passports “issued” by a service carrying names of countries that have changed, or even better, never
existed. What’s the chance that an average hotel receptionist or banker will know that British Honduras is now Belize, that
Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, or that Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika to become Tanzania? With the declining popularity of Americans
abroad, better to be a businessman from Dutch Guiana than a U.S. government agent.
During my Mossad days, the standards and practices were different regarding the use of passports. Admittedly, though, times
were also different. Things that were acceptable in the early seventies may be no-no’s now, and vice versa. I still remembered
Alex, my Mossad academy instructor, lecturing on the various uses of passports:
We grade passports according to the security they afford the user—best, second, action, and disposable. The best passports,
which are at the top of the list, are genuine passports with real people’s names that could survive a police check in the
country of origin. The second-quality passport is also a genuine passport. However, there’s no real person to match the bio
page. The third type is an action passport that could be used while performing a quick job—concluded in a matter of days—
in a foreign country, but that’s it. We can’t use it to cross national borders, definitely not through airports. The least
valuable is the disposable passport. This one’s usually hot, meaning that it was either lost or stolen and therefore probably
appears on most police watch lists. The best part of that passport is its cover, because it can serve its purpose when you
need only to flash it. Obviously you can’t use it as an ID, unless you opt to be stupid, depriving a village somewhere of
an idiot.
Apparently, the hotel employee at the desk wasn’t a geography maven, because he didn’t even blink at my passport. I had already
made up a “legend,” a cover for why I don’t speak Dutch, or why I was so much lighter than my supposed countrymen, not looking
like the citizens of Dutch Guiana—now Suriname—who have much darker skin than mine. If asked, I could simply say that my
father was a doctor, an eye specialist in tropical ailments, and I was born in Dutch Guiana when he was sent by the UN to
help fight eye disease. Nationality? I don’t really have one. At the age of four we moved to Switzerland. I studied in South
Africa and Canada. My father was born in Germany to a Swedish father and a Czech mother; my mother was born in Hungary. Her
father was Romanian and her mother Greek. My parents escaped their countries just when World War II started. That legend usually
does it and has always satisfied people’s curiosity.
I also knew that being born in Dutch Guiana didn’t by it-selfconfer citizenship. You needed one parent or grandparent with citizenship through whom you could claim it. If pressed, I’d
have come up with a Dutch grandparent for the purpose. But I’d never needed to. In my wallet I also carried a Dutch Guiana
driver’s license and a genuine Visa credit card issued to Peter Helmut van Laufer by one of those offshore banks that don’t
ask too many questions about your true identity or the source of the money you’re caching away, as long as you don’t ask
crossing borders on routine Department of Justice cases, I always use a very genuine U.S. passport, almost always my standard
dark-blue tourist passport. I have to carry my official U.S. government passport while overseas on official U.S. government
business. But its distinctive dark-red cover is nothing to show when standing in a long line of strangers waiting to pass
a foreign immigration agent. For other identification purposes, particularly when nongovernmental entities are involved, I
resort to second best, passports “issued” by a service carrying names of countries that have changed, or even better, never
existed. What’s the chance that an average hotel receptionist or banker will know that British Honduras is now Belize, that
Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, or that Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika to become Tanzania? With the declining popularity of Americans
abroad, better to be a businessman from Dutch Guiana than a U.S. government agent.
During my Mossad days, the standards and practices were different regarding the use of passports. Admittedly, though, times
were also different. Things that were acceptable in the early seventies may be no-no’s now, and vice versa. I still remembered
Alex, my Mossad academy instructor, lecturing on the various uses of passports:
We grade passports according to the security they afford the user—best, second, action, and disposable. The best passports,
which are at the top of the list, are genuine passports with real people’s names that could survive a police check in the
country of origin. The second-quality passport is also a genuine passport. However, there’s no real person to match the bio
page. The third type is an action passport that could be used while performing a quick job—concluded in a matter of days—
in a foreign country, but that’s it. We can’t use it to cross national borders, definitely not through airports. The least
valuable is the disposable passport. This one’s usually hot, meaning that it was either lost or stolen and therefore probably
appears on most police watch lists. The best part of that passport is its cover, because it can serve its purpose when you
need only to flash it. Obviously you can’t use it as an ID, unless you opt to be stupid, depriving a village somewhere of
an idiot.
Apparently, the hotel employee at the desk wasn’t a geography maven, because he didn’t even blink at my passport. I had already
made up a “legend,” a cover for why I don’t speak Dutch, or why I was so much lighter than my supposed countrymen, not looking
like the citizens of Dutch Guiana—now Suriname—who have much darker skin than mine. If asked, I could simply say that my
father was a doctor, an eye specialist in tropical ailments, and I was born in Dutch Guiana when he was sent by the UN to
help fight eye disease. Nationality? I don’t really have one. At the age of four we moved to Switzerland. I studied in South
Africa and Canada. My father was born in Germany to a Swedish father and a Czech mother; my mother was born in Hungary. Her
father was Romanian and her mother Greek. My parents escaped their countries just when World War II started. That legend usually
does it and has always satisfied people’s curiosity.
I also knew that being born in Dutch Guiana didn’t by it-selfconfer citizenship. You needed one parent or grandparent with citizenship through whom you could claim it. If pressed, I’d
have come up with a Dutch grandparent for the purpose. But I’d never needed to. In my wallet I also carried a Dutch Guiana
driver’s license and a genuine Visa credit card issued to Peter Helmut van Laufer by one of those offshore banks that don’t
ask too many questions about your true identity or the source of the money you’re caching away, as long as you don’t ask
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