Wetwork(Russian:мокрое дело,romanized:mokroye delo)[1]is aeuphemismformurderorassassinationthat alludes to spilling blood.[2]The expression and the similarwet job,wet affair,orwet operationare allcalquesofRussianterms for such activities and can be traced tocriminal slangfrom at least the 19th century[3][4]and originally meantrobberythat involved murder or the spilling of blood.
The operations are reputed to have been handled by theCIAand by theKGB's SpecBureau 13 (Spets Byuro 13), known as the "Department of Wet Affairs" (Otdel mokrykh del).[5][6][7]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^Becket, Henry S. A. (1986).The Dictionary of Espionage: Spookspeak into English.Stein & Day.
- ^wet work.Definition on Merriam-Webster (accessed Feb 2024)
- ^Maksimov, S. V. (1869). "Музыка или словарь карманников, т. е. столичных воров (Music or a dictionary of pickpockets, i.e. metropolitan thieves)".Сибирь и каторга[Siberia and Hard Labor] (in Russian). СПб.: S. V. Maksimov.
- ^Dubyagin, Yu. (1991).Толковый словарь уголовных жаргонов[Dictionary of Criminal Slang] (in Russian). Moscow: Inter-Omni.ISBN5-85945-002-8.
- ^Barkdoll, Robert (November 22, 1965). "Russian Terror Agency Described by Defector".Los Angeles Times.p. 16.
- ^Price, Anthony (1972).Colonel Butler's Wolf.Mysterious Press.ISBN9780445402249.
- ^ CIA(1993) [1964],"Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping: A 1964 view of KGB methods",Studies in Intelligence,19(3), archived fromthe originalon March 27, 2010
External links
edit
The dictionary definition ofwet workat Wiktionary
