John Kiriakou says that on his first day running counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after September 11, the station chief told him to devise a standard operating procedure for taking down a terrorist safe house — and CIA headquarters had none of the specialized law-enforcement gear the job required.[1]
The order
An “old-timer” colleague pointed him to the law-enforcement equipment retailer galls.com. From the basement of the American embassy in Islamabad, Kiriakou ordered roughly $50,000 worth of tactical equipment, charging it to his CIA credit card. The State Department shipped the order to Islamabad via diplomatic pouch, and it arrived in under a week — gear Kiriakou says changed the course of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9/11.[2]