Excerpt of An Ordinary Spy by Joseph Weisberg
(Page 4 of 10)
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FOR DURATION OF HOT WATCH, ALL PERSONNEL ENTERING AND EXITING
EMBASSY WERE PROCESSED THROUGH   . ALL SUBJECTS
WERE EMBASSY PERSONNEL OR FOREIGN NATIONALS WITH ESTABLISHED
TIES TO EMBASSY.
PICKED UP NO UNUSUAL ACTIVITY ON EMBASSY  &NBSNBSP; .
HOT WATCH PRODUCED NO INFORMATION ON TDTRACER.
WHILE CONSIDERING FURTHER POSSIBLE COURSES OF ACTION, C/O
MCCELVOY AND STATION BELIEVE A PROBABLE LIST OF EXPLANATIONS
FOR TDTRACER’S STATUS INCLUDE: ACTION BY AS DIRECTED BY
&P;, INDEPENDENT ACTION TAKEN BY &NB; , OR
POSSIBLY ACTION BY THE &NBNBSP; (THE CAUSE OF THIS WOULD BE AS OF YET
UNKNOWN). ALSO POSSIBLE IS ACTION TAKEN BY TDTRACER HIMSELF.
IF ANY OF THESE EXPLANATIONS ARE CORRECT, SUBJECT COULD CURRENTLY
BE LOCATED IN  & EMBASSY IN  &; OR NEIGHBORING
COUNTRY WHILE UNDERGOING INTERROGATION,  , OR
ANYWHERE IN &NBSSP;  OR THE BSP; .
STATION REQUESTS THAT HEADQUARTERS RERUN &NBS;&N; ON ALL INVOLVED
PARTIES, INCLUDING TDTRACER’S FAMILY MEMBERS (ALL
  NAMES WHICH APPEAR IN TDTRACER’S &; FILE), COLLEAGUES
IN THE  &NB EMBASSY, AND LOCAL &NBSPSP; OFFICERS. (APPRECIATE
HQS RECENT TRANSMISSION OF ).
REGARDING C/O ANDREW L. SEEGRAM, C/O MCCELVOY AND STATION
BELIEVE C/O SEEGRAM HAS KEPT HIS COMPOSURE AND BEHAVED PROFESSIONALLY.
BUT STATION HAS SOME CONCERNS ABOUT HIS ABILITY
TO BEAR UP UNDER THIS KIND OF PRESSURE IF IT CONTINUES. WILL
KEEP HQS ADVISED IN  SP;&SP; CHANNELS.
This was the first case I’d read where there seemed to be any kind of
real danger involved. Agents always took a serious risk by working for
the Agency, but nothing bad ever seemed to actually happen. I went to
the end of the file and started reading back to front, in the order in
which the cables came in (new cables were added to the top of a file, so
they ended up bound in their folders in reverse chronological order).
TDTRACER was a national, working as a at
the embassy in . A C/O with the pseudonym Andrew L. Seegram
had met him at a conference the government had set up on foreign
investment. He’d written TDTRACER up as a target with primary
access to information on economic policy. But he’d also written
that TRACER might develop into a source on terrorism (which was
a hot-button issue at the time, even before September 11). was
fighting a separatist movement in , and their intel service,
the , collected extensively on worldwide terrorism. The hope was
that TRACER might have, or might develop, intelligence service contacts within the embassy, or come across some information simply by
virtue of being in the embassy. It might have been a bit of a stretch, but
adding terrorism to the targets a potential agent might work against
helped ensure Headquarters’ approval for pursuing a recruitment.
Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury USA.
