The walk-in who was a probe
===========================

The walk-in who was a probe is John Kiriakou's account of his first encounter with a hostile intelligence service's testing operation, early in his Athens tour.

A man presented himself at the embassy with a story. Kiriakou wanted him out of the building quickly, both to check anything he claimed and to stop him identifying weaknesses in embassy security, and told him they would talk the next day in front of the Marriott, on neutral ground. Then he wrote a cable to headquarters setting out what had happened and what was planned.

The rolling meeting

The next day's party was heavier than the meeting suggested: a security officer driving, Kiriakou's boss in the passenger seat, Kiriakou in the back, all armed and in body armour, with two more officers in a car behind and a colleague on a motorcycle behind that. The training assumption is that the whole approach may be a device to draw an officer out and put a bullet in his head, so the man is frisked on contact. Kiriakou patted him down in front of the hotel and found nothing.

The man claimed no English and the entire conversation was conducted in Arabic, with Kiriakou translating for his boss. The story came back the same each time and "very light on detail, which told me immediately that the whole thing's made up." Kiriakou kept asking for it again, hoping he would trip.

Meanwhile three layers of vehicles moved through the city: surveillance, counter-surveillance and counter-counter-surveillance. Kiriakou's own chase car, a block back rather than "an episode of Kojak", saw that the hostile embassy had put its own men directly behind them; the motorcycle was watching for a second hostile car, which never appeared.

The slip

The man had introduced himself the day before as Mohammed Abdullah, a name, Kiriakou notes, shared by perhaps half a billion people. In the car he slipped and called himself Abdullah Mohammed. That settled it.

It was also dangerous, and Kiriakou's boss lost patience: he turned in the front seat, put a pistol against the man's cheek, and told him in English to get out. The walk-in answered in English, "so this is how it ends, huh?", and got out. The chase car and motorcycle followed him; a car collected him and drove straight back to its embassy without so much as a glance in the mirror.

Kiriakou files it as three firsts at once: his first walk-in, his first probe, "and it was my first experience with an enemy who meant to kill me."

See also

- Walk-in
- Intelligence Peddlers
- Surveillance detection route
- The Athens carjacking
