This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production.

Hi, I'm John Kariaki.

Welcome to Dead Drop, What Makes a Spy Tick.

As always, we thank you for listening.

And if you haven't already, it would help us grow if you liked, reviewed,

commented on, or shared the podcast on whatever platform you're listening to us. We really do

appreciate it. Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to it. Athens, it turned out,

was even more operationally rich than I could have imagined. For one thing, there were a lot more players on the field.

It wasn't just 17 November, or even 17 November and all the revolutionary struggle suddenly

in the air.

No, there were Libyans and Iraqis, Palestinians and Syrians, all in play, some with each

other, some against each other, but invariably

against us. I was a counterterrorism kid in a terrorism candy store. I wish I could tell you stories

about some of those operations or some of those approaches, but alas, they remain classified. But as operationally rich and intensely

satisfying as Athens was to work in, at the same time, it presented the kind of trap that I

referred to in the last episode. The good news about regularity and routine is they make living

one's day-to-day life a lot easier. The bad news,

though, is that they create blind spots, both literal and figurative. At some point,

whatever is living and breathing and maybe growing in your blind spot, that's the thing that

should scare the crap out of you. The shit you don't know, oh my God,

we'll get there. I told a story in an earlier episode about a waiter who inadvertently outed

me as a spy when he remembered seeing me in a room with President Bill Clinton. Well,

...