The night was dark and still; no movement, not even the sound of a dog barking. The atmosphere seemed unnatural, tense and quiet. I could feel the Asian air, moist and heavy brushing against my face as we moved in tandem up the dark, deserted street. Dressed in black, we moved slowly, paralleling each other, concealing our advance behind parked cars. My right hand gripped the handle of a black Colt AR 15 automatic rifle; my left hand cradled the stock. I held it in the ready position, shooting finger off the trigger, thumb on the firing selector switch ready to make the decision; single-shot or fully automatic. There were two of us. Darkness had become our companion, our most valuable protection. We were part of it. A dangerous meeting was about to go down. The leader of a major terrorist group was to meet us in a deserted office building. There was a possibility we could turn him and gather precious information regarding the organization’s plan for its next attack. Four Americans had been killed, as many as eight local police a day were being gunned down and employees at the American embassy were being followed. Another attack was imminent.
Trained to use adrenalin to our advantage, we maintained a heightened state of alertness; a controlled cocktail of fear and courage motivated by mission. This operation could be a valiant success, or this street would be the site where we give our lives for our country. Was it a set up? They had the advantage. Knowing the time and place, they had the element of surprise. If they were going to turn on us, we had no control over the timing, the weapons or explosives they would use - and their numbers. We had trained for this and trained hard. Crouched low, the butt of my rifle pulled hard in the gap between my shoulder muscle and collar bone, we were ready for the worst. The AR 15 was almost invisible in the dark, its black smooth coating non-reflective. Feeling the unique surface of the weapon had become a familiar sensation, and brought a peculiar sense of comfort. We could trust this weapon. Our minds focused on one set of actions; judge properly, shoot to kill - disappear. Being wounded or, even worse, captured and facing torture, beating or being skinned alive, was not an option. It was all or nothing. Staying alive was not part of the equation, unless we won.
Before we deployed from the vehicle to move, my mind flashed back to the months of training necessary for this operation; day and night. Officers were eliminated based on their inability to ignore death. Graduating from the training program was an accomplishment we all held dear. It was not easy. As an elite team, we had gone through five different performance cuts, leaving only a handful of us to deploy. Images jumped in my mind of driving in total darkness, lights off, 120 miles an hour, a vehicle ramming me from behind as we approached a 90 degree turn, while the instructor screamed obscenities at me from the passenger seat, “upping the adrenalin.” Night after night we went through dark training scenarios, advancing towards our targets amidst live automatic fire, flash grenades and night flares.
Just weeks before during training I had come in last during speed plate shooting. It was embarrassing. Granted, I was shooting against the best, but we had to be the best to make the mission. I was despondent and upset at myself. I got very little sleep that night. The next night we were thrown into a real life, dark, live fire exercise in which we had to engage multiple terrorist targets in rapid succession. Something kicked in. I finished in first place, hitting all the targets center mass in a matter of eight seconds. After the jubilant cursing was over, the instructor rewarded me with a compliment, slap on the back and a cold beer.
“Good shooting son, damn good shooting.”
I kept the beer can for months to remind myself to stay focused.
The Tail
I was assigned to several of these assignments during my early years with the Agency. They included intense moments, embarrassing moments and some humorous ones. I wish I could relate them all, but the majority can never be told. On one such assignment, I was deployed to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. There were more KGB agents per capita in xxxxxxx than any city in the world. During our movements throughout the city, going out to dinner, to the gym or to the shopping mall, we regularly had our “shadow” following behind us. A young, blond KGB agent, always wearing his walkman “headphones,” was our constant companion. After a couple of weeks, we nicknamed him “Boris.” Wherever we went, Boris was always a part of the scenery. Although it was a little frustrating, as CIA officers we knew that you never, NEVER, confront or harasses your “tail.” Doing so, especially with the Soviets, meant swift retribution, such as broken antennas on your car, key scrapes on the paint, or human feces in places you didn’t appreciate. So, we just tolerated Boris and took him with us wherever we went. When it was work time, we employed our usual counter surveillance tactics and lost him; letting him find us again when we came “out.”
Late one evening Brett, my co-worker, and I went out for a cold beer at the Irish pub, just a few doors down from the hotel. The establishment was packed. It was a small place, about the size of a shoe store, walled with walnut paneling and a short, polished cherry bar with a brass rail. The place was in an “L” shape with a room with tables in front of the bar area and one around the corner to the right. The tables themselves were tall, round, made of dark wood, no more than three feet across and were pushed so close together they almost touched each other. The bar was alive with the mixed sound of talking, laughter and emotional arguments about soccer. Brett and I took a table shoved next to the table of four young women. I guess someone had to take that table. It turned out the women were Irish school teachers visiting Xxxxxx for a teacher’s convention. We engaged them in small talk as we sipped on a Guinness beer. They were very curious about Brett and me, because we were obviously Americans. This evening we were “out” and our clothing and accent clearly showed everyone what country we were from. xxxxx people are wonderful people and for the most part are very friendly to Americans. A xxxxx local could immediately tell an American by his or her shoes. xxxxxxxx people wear Levis and khakis like Americans, but never with tennis shoes. They wear leather loafers, or nice casual leather shoes. The xxxxxxxx would laugh at Americans who thought they were blending in, but were wearing their habitual tennis shoes. They stuck out like a sore thumb.
As we sat having a pleasant conversation with the ladies, Brett and I both married and wearing our wedding rings, one of the teachers turned to me, and with sincere curiosity said,
“Why do Americans hate the Soviet Union so much?”
“Americans don’t hate the Soviet Union,” I responded.
“Then why does your President Regan call them the “Evil Empire” and fight against them in Afghanistan? Why doesn’t he just leave them alone? That is why people don’t like Americans.”
“It is really because our President is against what is happening in Afghanistan. They are leaving toy bombs on the ground, intentionally, so Afghan children will pick them up. The children do, and get their heads blown off. That is why our President says those things.”
Just then, our friend “Boris,” who was sitting around the corner where we could not see him, burst out of this chair and began yelling at the top of his lungs. Apparently, Boris had too much Vodka on the job. He was blowing his cover.
“Americans! Baby killers in Vietnam!” He shrieked.
“Americans! Baby killers in Vietnam!” He yelled again as he came around the corner where we were sitting.
We were surprised; we didn’t know he was there. The Irish teachers were terrified. Knowing who “Boris” was and what our profile was supposed to be, Brett and I were trying to figure out how to stop an international incident.
Boris came over to our table, still yelling and obviously “schnokered.” I stood up.
The entire bar went stone dead. Every face was looking at me and Boris, eyes wide open, mouths dropped. The bar tender, a large dark haired man with a handle bar mustache, was frozen in shock. This was not a good thing for someone who was supposed to be taking a low profile.
Boris got in my face, wreaking of Smirnoff and yelled at the top of his lungs,
“Americans! Baby killers in Vietnam!”
It was pretty clear Boris, who by some technical means had been picking up our conversation from around the corner in a noisy crowd, did not like my comment about his motherland dropping toy bombs for Afghan children to pick up.
My little table was now a stage, and the entire bar was the audience. I responded calmly to Boris as Brett began to stand up,
“Just calm down, why don’t we both go outside, and we can talk about this together?”
“Americans! Baby killers in Vietnam!” He had his face right in mine.
At this point Boris’ brain was powered only by its limbic system, the rest swimming in alcohol.
It appeared Boris was about to take things to a physical level. So, I, with Brett at my side and fully prepared to knock this fellow into the boutique next door, responded a little stronger,
“Let’s go outside and we can talk about this as friends.”
Boris must have gotten the message our body language was conveying. He turned around and ran out of the bar, full of petrified patrons, still yelling,
“Americans, baby killers!”
Brett and I, knowing this is the last thing you want to happen on assignment, kindly apologized to the, now red-faced, bar manager and gracefully made our exit. After making sure we were not being followed, we made haste back to our hotel for the night.
The next day as Brett and I went to the shopping mall for supplies, there was Boris, back again; our friendly Soviet caboose. We went back to the Irish pub two nights later. As soon as we walked in the bartender ordered,
“No more Vietnam, OK? No more Vietnam!”
“You don’t have to worry about us sir. We promise, no more Vietnam.”
Room Service
During another assignment, I was sent to the Middle East as a protective agent to advance the visit of a high level agency official. It was obvious the local government knew who I was. The foreign intelligence service harassed me the entire time I was there. First, I found a microphone concealed behind the curtains in my room. When I returned from my assignment during the day, my luggage had been gone through and my room searched. When I ordered room service (a big mistake), the hotel would bring food I had not ordered. One evening, I ordered steak and potatoes. I waited for forty minutes; and no dinner. Finally, I called room service to ask them where my dinner was.
“Do you speak English?”
“Little bit.”
“I ordered dinner forty minutes ago.”
“Heh?’
“Can you understand what I am saying?”
“Little bit.”
“Is my dinner coming?”
“Yes, dinner coming.”
Ten minutes later, there was knock on the door. It was room service. I opened the door and standing there was a tall Middle Eastern man in his thirties dressed in black pants and a blue dress shirt. He handed me a large tin of pipe tobacco.
“This is not what I ordered,” I said.
“You take it,” the man said in a thick Arabic accent.
“I am not going to take it; this is not what I ordered.”
“You take it.”
“No, I am not taking it.”
Now, I was getting flustered. I knew I had to control myself, because if I made the intelligence service mad, they would just escalate the situation. I also knew I had to make sure I maintained diplomacy - at all costs.
“Thank you very much. But I ordered dinner. Please take that back.”
“OK, OK,” the man said.
Twenty minutes later, there was another knock at the door. It was room service. I opened the door to find a different Middle Eastern man dressed in business casual attire with a covered dinner plate in his hand.
“Dinner for you,” he said.
“Thank you very much.”
I tipped the man. He looked at me as if he was offended, then left. I wasn’t sure if I tipped him properly or should not have tipped him at all. Brushing it off, I removed the cover from the dinner plate. On the plate lay two strips of meat; green meat. It was quite disgusting. I threw the dinner in the trash. This was the last time I ordered room service.
Finally, I was ready to go to bed. I had to get as much sleep as possible to prepare myself for the long days I would work when the Agency official arrived. I turned out the light at eleven p.m. As I began to doze off, I was jolted out of sleep by music so loud it shook the walls of my hotel room. I had been placed in the room directly above a Middle Eastern discothèque. The blasting Arabic music lasted into the early hours of the morning. It sounded like some kind of Middle Eastern Karaoke. Whoever put me in that room must have gotten a real kick out of it. I got very little sleep that night.
During my assignments overseas (and in the US in some cases) I learned there were several peculiar perks involved in being a CIA officer. These perks included receiving pre-opened mail, constantly having someone following behind you; so if you got lost you had someone to tell you where you were going, free clothing rearrangement in your luggage while you were out of the hotel, and being a video star in your room with or without you knowing it. One pesky “perk” was the fact that the local intelligence service constantly ran women at us. On the friendly side, some of this was an attempt to provide a service foreigners think every American man wants and, unfortunately some do. Others were attempts by the foreign intelligence service to exploit US government employees with female agents. Some officers were trapped, embarrassed and exploited by this; and paid a heavy price. Others partook of the service’s offers quite regularly. This was a constant source of frustration for those of us who had families and did not want to partake of these particular “perks.”
Evening Out
I began my time with the CIA as an internal Staff Security Officer. In the CIA, a Security Officer is one of the most heavily screened, vetted and trained career officers in the Agency. The CIA Office of Security is responsible for protecting the Director of the CIA, the Deputy Director of the CIA, performing internal counterintelligence and security investigations, conducting polygraph investigations, doing employee and applicant background investigations and protecting defectors from assassination. We went through months of grueling training on conducting investigations, surveillance and counter surveillance, high risk personal protection and covert operational security procedures. A good bit of our training took place at “The Farm,” the affectionate name for the Agency’s covert training facility.
During a long training stint at the Farm, all of us were relaxing in the student center enjoying a few beers and talking about the day’s training. Unfortunately, this was also the last day of training for a colorful group of operational “soldiers.” The group of twenty- five or so battle trained students burst into the student lounge and, essentially, took the place over. Before we knew it, the group had surrounded us, taken one of the female security officers, placed her on top of one of the bar tables and demanded she dance for them. With the exception of me, my closest friend Dan and a former Marine by the name of Kurt, all the security officers scattered like confetti in the wind. My fellow female student, terrified and embarrassed, looked down from the bar table and yelled “Help me!” This was a pretty tall order considering Dan, Kurt and I were surrounded by a group of heavily intoxicated men twice our size.
In an inebriated, stupid, night-in-shinning-armor moment, I walked up to the large fellow that had placed my associate on the table (the man’s neck was so large it was hard to tell where his head ended and his shoulders began) and said,
“Why don’t you just leave the lady alone, Face Lift?”
The words walked themselves right out of my mouth before I even knew they were free.
“What did you just say to me?” the burly fellow responded.
Dark haired and with a fu-man-chu mustache, the expression on his face looked like someone had just told him his mother was really a man. I had never seen a fellow with back muscles as wide as his. He looked like a turtle.
“Why don’t you just leave the lady alone, Face Lift,” I again responded with no real thought of surviving the evening.
The entire lounge went quiet. Slowly, the group of “soldiers” gathered around me, leaving Dan and Kurt outside of the circle, thankfully (for them). At least two of us would not wind up being mashed potatoes that evening. They could have all my personal effects.
“I daaaaare youuuuu to saaaaaay that again,” my unwanted adversary said slowly, playing to the jeers of “kill him” and “crush the punk” coming from his teammates.
I was kind of like the lamb at a Gyro feast, I was committed and there was no going back. I could see my fellow security officers peeking at us from the doorway of the adjoining pool room. My female co-worker had secretly climbed down off the table and escaped into the pool room with the others.
“Who do you think you are? You guys outnumber us all, and you think that makes you tough? You need to leave the lady alone,” I responded again in suicidal fashion.
The group closed in, and my large friend moved in for the kill. I thought to myself,
“We’ll I am pretty hammered, maybe I won’t feel anything.”
Just as my ominous ring mate was about to pound my head into my feet like a cartoon figure, the door to the lounge flung open, and in walked an older, distinguished looking gentleman. The entire group of rowdy “soldiers” immediately froze. No one in the place moved, including me. I thought he may have been the chief of the base and I was now in even more hot water, albeit with a sense of relief that, at least, becoming mashed potatoes may have become less of a possibility. The gentleman walked through the ring, up to my new “friend” and me and, in an authoritative tone, asked,
“What is going on here?”
“Sir,” I responded, “I am attempting to prevent these fellows from embarrassing my lady associate over there.”
The gentleman motioned to the lady. She sheepishly began walking over. He met her halfway across the open lounge floor. Quietly, he asked her what had happened and she related the preceding events. He returned to me and my larger companion and said to me,
“I would like to apologize on behalf of this entire group for this. Mark my words; I will take care of it.”
“Thank you sir,” I replied, feeling like I was observing some kind of life saving miracle.
“You, come over here with me,” he sternly said to the still angry, but now somewhat afraid gladiator.
“The rest of you, back off, NOW and leave these people alone. Got it?”
“Yes sir!” The group responded in unison.
The gentleman then took the angry fellow and what appeared to be the group leader over to the bar. I could see he was having a stern talk with them. Perhaps, he was telling them someday a few of us may be doing their polygraph test and security reinvestigation.
As far as Dan, Kurt and I were concerned, the event was over. We were still breathing. The rest of the security officers were still huddled in the pool room.
Then, a line of the “soldiers” formed from the back of the lounge, leading up to me, Dan and Kurt. Every member of the large limbed group had joined the line, with my previous ring mate first. We had no idea what was coming next. He came close to me and said,
“I….don’t….want to do this. I….reaaalllly….don’t want to do this. But….I have to. So….I’ll do it. I apologize for what I did….and for embarrassing the lady. I….am….sorry.”
He looked like he was undergoing surgery with no anesthetic. I stuck out my hand and said,
“Hey guy no problem, no problem at all.” I felt like Alfalfa on the Little Rascals.
I was thinking, “I can’t believe this is happening. I just went from certain broken bones to an apology. I am going to live tonight.”
Each member of the group came up in the line, one by one, and apologized for their behavior and for embarrassing the lady. Most of them, only spectators with no ego in the affair, were quite friendly and jovial. My friend glared at me the rest of the time we were there, which was not very long. I never saw him again, a fact I cherish to this day.
The Author with the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Training Team.
(Photo courtesy of the Author)
The Author during tactical firearms instruction.
(Photo courtesy of the Author)