A double-agent capture is a clandestine operation in which an intelligence service, having identified a recruited agent as working simultaneously for a hostile service, arranges a controlled final meeting to apprehend the agent before the agent can carry out orders — which may include killing the handler.
John Kiriakou described a double-agent capture operation he ran in the Middle East in the early 2000s. The agent, whom Kiriakou had been handling, did not know that Kiriakou was aware of his double status.[1]
NSA warning
While Kiriakou was at CIA headquarters, he received a call from an NSA analyst asking whether he was handling a particular double-agent case. When he confirmed, the analyst told him: “He was just ordered to shoot you in the next meeting.” Kiriakou’s boss then ran out of his office moments later, having received the same call.[2]
Kiriakou’s assessment was that the agent posed less danger than the warning implied — the man was roughly twenty years older than Kiriakou, fifty pounds overweight, and “afraid of his own shadow.” Nonetheless, CIA leadership convened a meeting of senior officers: the chief of counterterrorism, the deputy chief, the deputy chief for operations, and his division chief.[3][4]
The Marriott plan
Kiriakou proposed holding the next meeting at a Marriott hotel in the foreign country — the same setup he elsewhere calls the Marriott trap. He noted that every Marriott on earth is laid out identically — the bathrooms are immediately adjacent to the entrance — and this predictability was operationally useful. The plan: obtain adjoining rooms, place CIA security personnel and liaison partners in the room next door, and never disclose the room number until the agent called from the lobby.[4][5]
When the agent called from the lobby, Kiriakou gave him the room number. Kiriakou would meet him at the elevator lobby — in a populated area — give him a bear hug, and pat him down for weapons. Once the agent knocked on the propped-open door and entered, Kiriakou would seize him and the team would enter from the adjoining room. Leadership approved, on the condition that Kiriakou wear a bulletproof vest.[5][6]
The hostile security detail
On the day of the operation, CIA had security personnel in the hotel lobby — approximately half a dozen armed officers. The hostile foreign service the agent was working for had also dispatched their own half-dozen security guards, whose presence had not been anticipated. The two teams were in the lobby simultaneously, observing each other.[7]
The takedown
When the agent knocked, Kiriakou said “Come in.” As the agent entered, Kiriakou came out of the bathroom, grabbed him around his arms and chest, and threw him to the ground. The team came through the connecting door. Kiriakou pinned the agent to the floor; the agent attempted to reach the gun in his belt. Kiriakou said to him: “Did you really think I was so stupid that I didn’t know that you were a double agent this whole time? I’m offended that you think so little of my abilities.” The agent repeatedly said “Allahu Akbar.” Kiriakou added: “Did you think I was such an amateur that I didn’t know you would be armed?” A liaison colleague then jabbed a needle into the agent’s leg and he lost consciousness.[8][9][10]
Extraction and interrogation
The team used the hotel’s loading dock — where an ambulance could arrive without attracting attention, as people die in hotels regularly — placed the unconscious agent on a gurney under a sheet, and transported him to the intelligence service’s headquarters. When he regained consciousness approximately two hours later, he was zip-tied to a chair. Liaison officers conducted the interrogation physically.[10][11]
The interrogation continued for hours. Kiriakou left at one point to attend a wedding — the wedding of the crown prince’s fourth son, at which the crown prince’s eldest son was seated next to him. When asked what kind of day he had had, Kiriakou said it had been an ordinary day. He returned to the interrogation after the reception. By approximately 2:00 a.m., the team had obtained the agent’s complete weapons cache.[11][12][13]
Kiriakou encountered one of the liaison officers approximately six years later at a mall in Tysons Corner, Virginia, and asked about the agent’s fate. He was told the agent was still in prison and would never be released. Kiriakou’s response: “Good. He needs to be in prison.”[14]
In a separate account, Kiriakou identifies the agent by the pseudonym “Abdel Azim” and says word of the operation spread quickly among the host country’s government, resulting in Kiriakou — who had never met the crown prince — being invited to the crown prince’s wedding as a guest of honor. Some 20 to 25 years after the operation, Kiriakou says Abdel Azim remains in prison and is expected to die there, while Kiriakou himself remains in occasional contact with the royal family.[15]