146 AMERICAN SPYour agents, who risked their lives for us and the United States, to run them
securely and with minimal risk of compromise. The CIA’s raison d’être,
and mine, became Stacy’s.
During the course, we went up against the best surveillance on earth,
including a secretive US government unit I’ll call Special Surveillance
Squads (SSS). Indicative of how good SSSs are at monitoring a target
without being detected, they are known within government security circles
as Ghosts. SSSs are not law enforcement or intelligence officers, but they
are separately trained undercover operatives who conduct counterter-
rorism and counterintelligence surveillance operations. They seamlessly
blend in with their surroundings, making it next to impossible to detect
them. Who suspects they may be under surveillance by a guy operating a
backhoe, a harried woman making deliveries out of a florist’s van, or iden-
tical twins with dwarfism in line at the airport?
While an SSS Ghost is a stealthy surveillant, in CIA parlance, a “ghost”
is someone who you have mistakenly concluded has you under surveil-
lance. As critical as it is to be able to detect surveillance, it is almost equally
important to know when someone you suspect of surveillance is actually a
ghost, in order to avoid aborting a rarely scheduled, critical agent meeting.
Imagine failing to learn about an imminent terrorist attack against the
United States because a CIA officer aborted a key meeting after mistak-
enly believing he was under surveillance. We had to know the difference
between a ghost and actual surveillance. We had to trust our training.
The SE/IO course benefitted CIA officers in the “pipeline” for the
Soviet bloc because we were able to face off against the kind of profes-
sional, almost invisible surveillance we could expect overseas. Monitoring
CIA officers and their spouses in training exercises also helped the SSS
operatives to better understand how a foreign spy or terrorist might operate
inside the United States. The training was mutually beneficial and is an
example of how the various agencies of the US government should and
often do cooperate, for the good of our nation.
Stacy and I worked hard and passed the course. We always correctly
determined if and when we were black, and we were also able to conduct
operational acts undetected while under intense SSS surveillance.
Being able to detect surveillance does not preclude a CIA officer from
being set up by a controlled or compromised agent, the way my friends