dead drop

A hidden place where items or messages are left for someone else to collect, without a face-to-face meeting.

The CIA glossary uses the term dead drop and adds that items are often placed in an innocent-looking concealment device.¹

An example from the FBI files: FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who spied for the KGB and the SVR, used dead drops; one of them, code-named “Ellis”, was under a footbridge over Wolftrap Creek in Foxstone Park, Virginia. It was there, on 18 February 2001, that the FBI arrested him as he was leaving classified material. According to the FBI, at another site (“Lewis”) the Russians left $50,000 for him.²

In Moscow the CIA passed packages to its Soviet source Adolf Tolkachev by means including dead drops – he collected the first package in August 1978 (according to B. G. Royden’s article in Studies in Intelligence).³

The Crypto Museum describes it as a place where an agent and a case officer exchange items without meeting; in German it is called a dead letter box (Toter Briefkasten, TBK).⁴