SPY KIDS 157To this day, my eldest daughter relishes the fact that she was the first
baby ever to set tiny little feet inside the hallowed halls of CIA headquar-
ters. She also still treasures her first baby-faced official passport.
Things of course have changed since the days of baby prohibition, and
now there are even on-site day care facilities at CIA headquarters. (Sorry,
Burton, but you opened the floodgates when you agreed to let my little one in.)
My second daughter was born in Fairfax, Virginia, about six months
before we began to TDY to Belgrade. She too made it inside CIA head-
quarters, but only in my mind. Required to pass another polygraph exam
before running ops in Yugoslavia, I visualized my baby girl’s serene, angelic
face to keep myself calm as I sat through the always unpleasant exam.
Needless to say, I passed. I could have coolly confessed to killing Abraham
Lincoln with a suicide vest that day and there would have been no decep-
tion indicated.
Traveling overseas with small children is a universal hell experienced by
many young parents, CIA and regular folks alike. You may be standing
next to the Taj Mahal, but if you’ve got little ones, you’re stuck inside what
I call the “baby bubble.” When inside the bubble—which is anytime baby
is with you—you will be focused almost exclusively on the baby’s needs:
care and feeding, adjusting the stroller, changing the diaper, finding a place
to dispose of the diaper, and dealing with occasional tantrums. Sure, every
now and then you may poke your head outside the bubble and take a quick
peek at the Grand Canyon, but otherwise you’re trapped inside. It’s next to
impossible to take that selfie with the Eiffel Tower when you’re comforting
a shrieking toddler covered in vomit and rainbow sprinkles.
Some case officers cleverly use the baby bubble phenomenon to their
advantage, for example, by stopping to change a diaper on top of a dead
drop site, on the assumption the act will not arouse suspicion. Our good
friends Scott and Amy used this ploy in Leningrad but were ambushed by
the KGB. It wasn’t their baby’s fault, or their fault for that matter. The plan
to clear the dead drop was a good one, as was their execution of the plan,
but unfortunately and unbeknownst to them, their agent was under KGB
control.