# The Siemens control room > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "The Siemens control room," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-siemens-control-room/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The underground surveillance facility in Dubai that John Kiriakou says he was given a tour of — built by Siemens, five storeys of monitors covering every inch of the city — and the taxi crash he watched unfold on the wall in real time.* - **City:** Dubai - **Built by:** Siemens - **Form:** Underground; five storeys of monitors - **Coverage he claims:** Every inch of Dubai - **Cameras:** German, in his account Asked whether the CCTV cameras that recorded the [Mossad](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mossad) team in Dubai in 2010 might have been Israeli-made, [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) answered from first-hand knowledge of the system. ## The tour He would not be surprised, he said — but when he was in Dubai and got a tour of the whole facility, *"the cameras were German."*[1] Pressed on which facility he meant, he described an underground installation belonging to the government of Dubai, *"completely created by Siemens, the big German company."*[2] ## The room His description is architectural. *"It's like walking into an IMAX theater, but instead of one five-story screen, it's five stories of TV monitors. So, you have hundreds of TV monitors that cover every inch of Dubai. Every inch."*[2] ## The crash What makes the account concrete is what happened while he was standing there. Watching the screens, the visitors saw a taxi driver looking at his phone while driving. He crashed into a telephone pole.[3] The operators identified the intersection immediately. The driver got out, rattled, trying to gather himself; someone ran up to him and dialled the local emergency number. *"Well, the ambulance is already on the way, because we watched it happen in real time. So the operator is like, yes, yes, the ambulance is on the way."*[3] ## The point he draws Kiriakou's conclusion is not about traffic response. *"The whole country is covered,"* he said. *"Now, you can't do that in a country like the United States, but you can do it in other places — and then you can intercept what's happening in those other places."*[3] The remark is offered in the middle of a discussion of how a foreign service moved twenty-six operatives through the most heavily monitored city in the world without any of them being identified — a puzzle Kiriakou says his service studied for a long time. ## See also ## See also - [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) - [MOSSAD](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mossad) - [Mahmoud al-Mabhouh](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mahmoud-al-mabhouh) ## Sources 1. Dalton Fischer Podcast (2025-09-04), at 05:13. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5c5REOlyM&t=313s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-04-dalton-fischer-podcast-dalton-fischer-podcast/ 2. Dalton Fischer Podcast (2025-09-04), at 05:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5c5REOlyM&t=345s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-04-dalton-fischer-podcast-dalton-fischer-podcast/ 3. Dalton Fischer Podcast (2025-09-04), at 06:16. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5c5REOlyM&t=376s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-04-dalton-fischer-podcast-dalton-fischer-podcast/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-siemens-control-room/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt