The CIA Insider’s Guide to Surveillance and Surveillance Detection is a book by John Kiriakou drawing on his experience as a surveillance-detection instructor at the CIA and as a private surveillance-training consultant.[1]
The book covers the techniques used by intelligence professionals to identify whether they are being followed, including the four-phase surveillance detection route, concealment-device placement and retrieval, and counter-surveillance strategy for private individuals including corporate executives and journalists. Kiriakou described the audience as anyone who wants to know whether they are being followed — whether by carjackers, terrorists, or federal law enforcement.[2]
Kiriakou also operates a private surveillance-training business drawing on the same curriculum.[1]
Surveillance-detection instructor — private training
John Kiriakou disclosed that in addition to the book, he worked as a surveillance and surveillance-detection instructor at the CIA and has taught the subject at Liberty University, George Washington University, and privately through a company called IV Cyber. He described giving a private class through IV Cyber the night before the interview.[3][4]
Publication and companion titles
Kiriakou describes The CIA Insider’s Guide to Disappearing and Living Off the Grid — a companion volume in the same series — as having come out in 2022, with the central message that genuine safety requires zero technology: no cell phone, no internet, cash only, even driving an older car without onboard electronics.[5][6] He announced Surveillance and Surveillance Detection alongside two other CIA Insider’s Guide titles — Lying and Lie Detection and Disappearing and Living Off the Grid — as releasing together on May 25, 2022.[7] The series later expanded with a fourth volume, The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis.[8]
Beyond the CIA Insider’s Guide series, Kiriakou has listed his broader bibliography as including The Reluctant Spy; Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison; The Convenient Terrorist, about Guantánamo detainee Abu Zubaydah; and Remains of the Day, about Washington D.C.’s historic cemeteries.[8] His first book was inducted into the permanent collection of Cuba’s National Library, prompting an authors’ ceremony trip to Havana; his first two books were also translated into Spanish and distributed to Cuban bookstores.[9]
The ambassador’s wife in aluminum foil
John Kiriakou recounts being hired by the wife of a foreign ambassador who was certain she was under electronic surveillance. After confirming she was not being followed, he found her apartment — floor, walls and ceiling — entirely covered in aluminum foil “to reflect the waves.” Realizing she was mentally ill, he refused to take her money and referred her elsewhere; she left the country, furious.[10][11][12]
In the same interview, Kiriakou was asked about a more exotic Cold-War approach — the CIA’s animal surveillance experiments, which mounted microphones on cats and pigeons — and contrasted them with his own “very conventional” bugging methods.[13][14]