Talk:The Moscow rules

Goldfinger Quote
Amazing to see the Goldfinger quote is incorrect and you nitwits have been farting around in here since August 2004 and never once corrected it. QED on Wikipedia.
 * Go ahead and sign your comments please. That quote has nothing to do with Moscow Rules. Kortoso (talk) 17:15, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

MoSCoW Rules
I've found exactly three sites on these "Moscow Rules", which obviously have all copied from each other. Are there any trustworthy sources on these rules? or is this just a piece of fiction? Lupo 07:54, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

They seem to be used as some kind of procurement rules, I'm not sure if the is just a new meaning to a cold war acronym or if this is the original meaning.



--John Bracegirdle 21:48, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree - where is the full list?
I have searched all over the internet - have yet to find the full list of 40 rules ... does it exist in any for anywhere? if so, it needs to be here in this articel.

The "rules" exist but it is hard to say if the ones listed are real, but they do speak to the spirit of the rules and what they were trying to teach trainee spies. Also remember that the others may be still classified. Editcml 14:22, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

A google search: 'the "moscow rules" site:gov' (inner quotes are part of search) turned up only a handful of results, and the only useful ones are one in cia.gov and one in loc.gov (library of congress). Changing the site search to "gov.uk" gives a couple of pdfs (i don't have a pdf reader handy) but not much else. In all of the documents, the rules are mentioned only in passing. In the US documents they are quoted, in the uk documents they are typeset as "MoSCoW rules", making me think that it is an acronym. It doesn't look like there is much reliable information surrounding these rules.


 * I've searched LexisNexis, the CQ historial databases, Academic search premier, and the complete Oxford university press reference collection and found absolutely nothing. Metafilter sez:
 * In Mendez's own book he says "Although no one had written them down, they were the precepts we all understood ... By the time they got to Moscow, everyone knew these rules. They were dead simple and full of common sense..."


 * Thus, it appears there may have been no agreed-on canonical list, and it probably changed over time. The Moscow Rules were promulgated ca. 1985 by agent Jack Platt in his six-week training course for agents being newly sent to Moscow (as part of a tactic to keep the KGB on its toes), but it's not clear whether they existed before that point.


 * Without more sources, we're going to have to call them legendary. Deborah-jl Talk 23:39, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Not CIA but British?
I've got this espionage encyclopedia (the Spy Book 2nd edition) that I picked up from a museum in Washington, D.C., and though it doesn't list the rules, it does credit them to the British instead of the Americans. --SleightOfHand 04:54, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds Fishy
The line "Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee" sounds fictional. That was Muhammad Ali's stragegy in the ring.
 * The whole idea of "Moscow Rules" I'm pretty sure is fictional.Editfromwithout (talk) 00:53, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * They are real, but it's hard to motivate a knowledgeable person into sharing them. Kortoso (talk) 17:17, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Other rules
71.80.203.159 (talk) 13:43, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Murphy is right. (i.e., "What can go wrong, will go wrong, and at the worst possible moment.")
 * Any operation can be aborted. If it feels wrong, it is wrong.
 * Maintain a natural pace.
 * Build in opportunity, but use it sparingly.
 * Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. (Borrowed from Muhammad Ali.)
 * There is no limit to a human being's ability to rationalize the truth.
 * Technology will always let you down.
 * Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action. (By Auric Goldfinger, taken from Ian Fleming's novel Goldfinger, Ch. 14 : Things That Go Thump In The Night)
 * Do not attract attention, even by being overly careful.

Spy List
Kenixkil (talk) 16:08, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * https://www.intelligence101.com/the-moscow-rules-unpacking-the-10-rules-every-spy-should-live-by/