Denied areas is the CIA’s term for the countries where its officers cannot operate in the ordinary way — places, as John Kiriakou puts it, “denied to us.” His examples from the era in which he trained are the Soviet Union and Cuba; the modern list he gives runs Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea and Iran.[1][2]
The designation is operational rather than diplomatic: it describes the density of hostile surveillance an officer must assume. Kiriakou’s accounts of the tradecraft — the eight-hour surveillance detection route, the infrared cameras, the assumption that the whole route is watched — belong to that category of posting rather than to normal stations, where a cover stop and a couple of hours will do.
Syria, 1992 or 1993
Kiriakou’s own experience of travelling into one was Syria, which he visited in 1992 or 1993 and which required a series of briefings beforehand. There was no CIA presence in the country at all and barely an American presence — a small embassy and little else.[3]
The briefings amounted to two predictions. The first was that the Mukhabarat would follow him everywhere he went — which, he says, they did, “no problem.” The second was social: “You’re never going to meet a Syrian and you’re never going to see the inside of a Syrian home.”[3]
He flew from Amman to Damascus and stayed at the Marriott in the centre of the city. The only guide available to him was a Swedish woman married to a Syrian doctor who gave tours of Damascus to visiting diplomats; she showed him the sights, but when he asked to visit the souk she told him she could not take him and he would have to go alone.[4][5]
Iran, and the cost of the category
The clearest operational cost Kiriakou describes is Iran. Over decades, he says, the CIA has been demonstrably weak at developing human intelligence inside the country, and the reason is structural: “we can’t just walk out of the American Embassy in Tehran and target some Iranian government official for recruitment, because there is no American Embassy in Iran and there hasn’t been since 1979.”[6]
What fills the gap is other people’s services — “we rely on liaison services, which really means Mossad.” Kiriakou’s assessment of what that buys is specific: Mossad is very good at targeting intelligence, recruiting Afghan refugees inside Iran for ten dollars a month to report where the generals and the nuclear scientists live so cruise missiles can be aimed, but the day-to-day intelligence on the running of the Iranian government is another matter.[6][7]
The domestic side of the category
Denied areas are also the stated reason the CIA keeps offices inside the United States at all. The Agency is forbidden from spying domestically and its domestic offices may do nothing clandestine; what they exist for, in Kiriakou’s account, is to meet American business leaders and executives who travel to denied areas.[8][9]
The approach is entirely overt, and he renders it as a phone call: “You don’t know me, but I’m from the CIA, and I understand you just went to North Korea, and I was wondering if I could come over to your office for an hour and just ask you about your trip.” By his estimate 99.99 percent say yes, because they are patriots; he hands over a business card and they chat about impressions of the place.[10][2]
He is explicit that such a person is not an asset. The Agency would not formally recruit them because they are American, there is no money involved, and the whole arrangement rests on nothing more than the hope that people do the right thing.[11][9]
The same offices handle officers rather than civilians. Kiriakou describes an officer of the National Resources Division briefing or debriefing someone bound for a denied area, “say he went to Moscow for a meeting or Beijing for a meeting.”[12][13]
Kiriakou’s view is that the category is becoming harder rather than easier to work in. Asked how officers cross borders in alias in the age of facial recognition, he says he put the question to a serving CIA officer and was told: “we don’t know yet.”[14]