Excerpt from An Ordinary Spy by Joseph Weisberg, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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.