The Islamabad surveillance incident
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The Islamabad surveillance incident took place shortly after the 9/11 attacks, when John Kiriakou went to Pakistan as the CIA's chief of counterterrorism operations. He had refused to be housed at the Marriott, "Are you insane? What's the first place that they're going to blow up?", and was moved into a small guest house, leaving for work at a different time by a different route each day so as never to establish a pattern.

Detection

One day he noticed a man on a motorcycle in a red helmet working hard to stay in his blind spot: speeding up when he sped up, slowing when he slowed, changing lanes with him. He wrote down the licence number in the notebook he kept in his pocket. The only reason the man had come to his attention at all was the helmet, Kiriakou had never seen anyone in Pakistan wearing one and did not know they could be bought there.

The motorcyclist broke off at the entrance to the diplomatic quarter, and was waiting again when Kiriakou left after a fourteen- to sixteen-hour day. "So, now I know I'm in trouble." He could not sleep, got up at five, checked the street and looked under his car with a mirror for bombs and tracking devices, and found the man on him again two blocks out.

The decision

He reported it to the embassy security officer and then to the chief of station. Neither disputed it; the chief said only, "Well, you know what you have to do," and promised a team of three or four cars in support. Kiriakou, who had never killed anyone, was a nervous wreck all day.

The question

That afternoon he had a meeting at a safe house shared with the Pakistani intelligence service. On his way out he stopped, turned, and asked: "General Muhammad, are you following me?" Told no, he explained that he was certain he was under surveillance, "and when I see the guy this afternoon, I'm gonna kill him."

He never saw the motorcyclist again, because the surveillance was Pakistani. The service had chosen, in his estimate, its worst surveillance officer, rather than staying two blocks back where he might have gone unnoticed, the man rode alongside him. "If it wasn't for that momentary questioning, that guy would be in the ground today."

The explanation Kiriakou later heard fits what he had been taught in training, that friendly services occasionally take a look at you to keep honest people honest: the Pakistanis had been sitting around a table agreeing that the new man at the American embassy was really nice, until someone said, "You know what? Nobody's that nice. He's probably pretending to be nice just so that we'll drop our guard. Let's see what he's doing when he's not here."

See also

- Surveillance detection route
- The CIA Insider's Guide to Surveillance and Surveillance Detection
- Situational awareness
