The liaison class
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The liaison class was a course John Kiriakou ran at the CIA for officers of friendly foreign intelligence services, the sort of partner-training that underpins the agency's liaison relationships, and which he describes with a certain modesty as "John's little liaison class."

Its place in his account is fixed by a single visit. Weeks before 11 September 2001, Cofer Black, the head of the Counterterrorism Center, then meeting the president every day or every other day, made time to come and speak to the class. What he told them was that al-Qaeda members were saying goodbye to their families and that the agency was hearing code words for a massive attack: a honey salesman coming with vast quantities of honey, a great football match, an enormous wedding. He then asked them directly for any sources they had inside al-Qaeda.

The class, in Kiriakou's account, "just sat there and looked at him." Black shook their hands and left.

Kiriakou sent the visiting officers back to their hotel with an arrangement to collect them at seven for a steakhouse dinner, and used the gap to go to Black's office, ostensibly to thank him for coming and in fact to ask whether he had meant it. The answer he got was "I was deadly serious. Something terrible is going to happen."

The episode is why the warning is first-hand rather than institutional in Kiriakou's telling: he did not work on al-Qaeda, and heard it because he happened to be the officer running the room.

See also

- Cofer Black's warning to the liaison class
- Cofer Black
- Counterterrorism Center
- The Jordanian intelligence service
