Oh, Mighty LJ Brain, My Thesaurus-Fu Has Failed Me

[elfs]

A couple of years ago, back when we were insane with fear that there were Brown People Under Our Beds, there were numerous articles on catching spies and terrorists, and during that time a word became well, not "popular," but certainly frequent, in those articles.

The word was a verb counter-espionage people use to describe what they do to a spy's surroundings when they find him. They take everything around him, and I mean everything, and run in through analysis to see if it contains codes, messages, hints, or what have you. And there was a specific word agents used for this process.

What was that damned word?

Comments

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

The term I've always heard used is "tossing" as in, "We tossed his apartment and only found the usual."

[kengr]

Only thing that comes to mind is "brown-bagging" (and "brown bag job") but I think that has a somewhat different connotations than you intend.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861686245/black_bag_job.html
that, maybe?

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Black bag jobs are supposed to be covert. The target should never know that their premises have been searched.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

A couple of years ago, back when we were insane with fear that there were Brown People Under Our Beds,

Best. SnarkRemark. Evar.