By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer
On the
FBI’s Kids’ Page Web site, young G-Men-in-training are urged to “go on an undercover assignment” to keep “Special Agent Bobby Bureau” from blowing his cover.
But on the mean streets of Washington, D.C., the FBI doesn’t always seem to practice what it preaches.
Take the house, pictured below, which is located directly across the street from the embassy of one of our former Cold War adversaries. Most of the time, the large skylights in the attic of the house appear opaque, as seen here:
Candid cameras
But in the late afternoon, when the sun sinks low, it shines through those skylights like a movie-theater searchlight. Even a 10-year-old gumshoe can see what’s hiding in the attic:
Behind the three skylights, tucked behind black fabric, are three video cameras. Their lenses are trained on the embassy across the street. Passersby on the sidewalk below can see the lenses sparkling in the sunlight, and so, presumably, can the former Cold Warriors just across the street.
It’s no surprise that there’s close surveillance of foreign embassies inside the U.S. The FBI employs hundreds of counter-intelligence agents and employees, to keep an eye on friends and foes alike. Journalists have reported on the surveillance programs for decades. Back in 1988, for example, author Ronald Kessler described in “Spy vs. Spy” how the FBI “takes photographs of everyone walking down the street in both directions in front of” selected foreign embassies to catch spies and potential traitors on camera. “Anyone walking near the embassy is on film,” Kessler wrote.
Nonetheless, you’d think the Bureau would be a little more careful about safeguarding its own safehouse, and not blowing the cover of its real-life Bobby Bureaus.
Bungled tradecraft?
How do I know it’s an FBI facility? A simple web search confirmed it.
From my desk, I plugged the house’s street address into a commercial database that NBC and many media organizations use - legally, of course - to conduct public-records searches. In about 30 seconds, and for just about $2 in fees, I learned the names of three probable residents of the house.
One of the residents had helpfully provided his employer’s name. There it was in black and white: “Company: FBI.”
But that’s not all. Under the job-title section, this same FBI employee is described as “Clerk Really a Spy.” [I edited out his name, below.]
Holy Efrem Zimbalist, Jr!
My curiosity piqued, I called the FBI employee, a.k.a. “really a spy,” to ask about this apparent breach of basic tradecraft. He’s working now out of the FBI’s Memphis Field Office as a surveillance specialist, and didn’t seem thrilled with the call. He didn’t deny having lived at the D.C. house, but quickly passed me to his local FBI media representative. The FBI spokesman in Memphis told me he couldn’t comment, other than to inform me that the employee worked for the Bureau but not as a Special Agent.
In fairness to “really a spy,” he probably never intentionally listed his employer or his job title in the commercial database. Like most public-records databases, it likely just sucked up some application or paperwork the FBI employee had filled out years ago and now has saved it forever. Why he ever apparently joked that his job was “really a spy” is a separate issue.
The ease in identifying an FBI spyhouse and one of the Bureau’s counter-espionage employees is reminiscent of some investigative reporting done by the Chicago Tribune two years ago. Tribune reporter John Crewdson and a researcher revealed in their March 12, 2006, article that they had identified the locations of two dozen CIA safehouses and covert workplaces in the United States, plus the names of 2,600 CIA employees. Their trick? They had done a series of inexpensive, overlapping Internet searches, scooping up supposedly secret addresses from public-record databases.
The FBI would not comment on this story. But out of an abundance of caution, and on the advice of several senior U.S. officials, NBC News has decided not to reveal the address of the FBI house or to name the FBI employee. The officials caution that identifying the hapless employee and his former stakeout location could compromise future investigations. Even though many of the sources said it’s a certainty that officials at the nearby embassy “made” the FBI safehouse years ago, NBC News reasoned that we could tell this story without identifying the address, the employee or even the embassy in question.
I first made the FBI aware of this apparent tradecraft bungle more than a month ago. At last check, the G-Men hadn’t hidden the attic video cameras. And the commercial database still lists the FBI employee as “really a spy.”
All images in this post are courtesy of NBC News.
