REAL HOUSEWIVES OF THE CIA 145certain the officer could detect hostile surveillance before deploying him
to a denied area to run sensitive agents—agents who, simply put, would
be arrested and executed if the case officer failed to detect surveillance.
The ability to detect surveillance was a learned technical skill, like refrig-
erator repair, and either you got it or you didn’t. Those officers who failed
the course did not suffer any career setbacks, but they would not serve in
denied areas.
Stacy and I had orders to report to the seven-week-long SE/IO course
within a few days of touching down in DC following our enjoyable but
exhausting three-year tour of duty in Latin America. When we departed
from DC three years earlier we were living the free and easy life of new-
lyweds, but by the time we returned, we had an adorable and precocious
one-year-old daughter, and no one to care for her during training. After
we left our Spanish-speaking little one for the first few days with day care,
our hearts couldn’t take it any longer and we flew my mother-in-law to
DC to babysit for the remainder of the course. (I won’t bore you with the
details, but trust me when I say that summoning my mother-in-law for
help was an indication of just how desperate the situation had become.)
The stressful course ran five long days per week, with lots of independent
casing and other work required on weekends. We had to assume we were
being monitored 24/7, in the car and even at home, for the duration of
the course. The objective of the course was to replicate as much as possible
what our lives would be like during our TDYs in Yugoslavia. If Stacy had
been unable or unwilling to take the course alongside me, the CIA would
have canceled my Belgrade assignment. The unpaid spouse was an inte-
gral part of the team for denied area operations, and we knew this when
we accepted the job.
During the SE/IO course, we were trained and tested relentlessly
by the best of the best—CIA officers who had gone through the training
themselves and who had completed successful tours operating in hostile
denied areas like Moscow. The instructors knew exactly what we would
face once we were operational, and they quite correctly cut us no slack.
They pushed us to the limit. By the end of the course, you either knew if
you were “black” (surveillance-free) or you didn’t. If there was any doubt
at all, you’d fail the course and would find an onward assignment in a less
hostile operating environment. The bottom line was the CIA owed it to