Day 70 - Spy Story, Part I

Image by ocularinvasion, via Flickr

This is a story about coincidences and other spooky things.

Before my first State Department assignment, I had lots of training:

• five weeks of orientation;
• five weeks of ConGen Rosslyn, the Foreign Service Institute's training for consular officers;
• two weeks of Western European area studies;
• fourteen weeks of German language training which included a half-day each week of advanced area studies of Germany;
• one day of security training.

The area studies course was taught by the same man who taught the advanced area studies course, Kendell Meyers. He offered those of us who promised to read it, a copy of a book on "the German problem," the term used in those days for the likelihood - or unlikelihood - of the two Germanies ever being reunited. I picked up a copy of the book from him, although I never did read it.

The one day of security training brought me to the attention of Diplomatic Security because I was the only one in the room to raise my hand when they asked if anyone had ever lived in the eastern block. They asked me to stick around for a special briefing which consisted primarily of them asking what kind of contact I still had with anyone living in or from Romania. Since most of those contacts were limited to exchanging Christmas cards with my former students from Iasi, they didn't seem overly worried. They warned me about the possibility that one of those contacts might suddenly reappear or get in touch without a good reason. They warned me to be very cautious of anyone from that region, especially if they asked questions about my work. And they told me I should be sure to contact them if anything suspicious happened. Afterwards, I had visions - nightmares - of my ex-husband's family making contact with me. I would have been happy to turn to Diplomatic Security for help if that happened.

I am a very good student, so I followed the instructions from the security experts very well. Before I got onto the plane in New York, I took everything out of my wallet that would identify me as an employee of the State Department, except my diplomatic passport, and I put them with a card into an envelope and mailed them to myself at my German address.  And I hid my diplomatic passport at the bottom of my carry on bag, keeping my tourist passport handy on top. That way if the plane was hijacked, the chances of my being identified as a federal employee would be smaller, or at least so I thought. Later I realized that my ticket had a dead giveaway on it - the GTR number that indicated it was purchased by the government. That's an irrelevant fact at this point in the story.

While I was on the plane, a woman sitting across the aisle from me and who spoke with an eastern European accent asked me if I had a spare contact lens case. She said she was having trouble with her contacts and she wanted to take them out. I had a spare case, so I gave it to her. When she gave it back to me on our arrival, I threw it away, just to be sure she wasn't trying to sneak something into my new home.

Once I got to Stuttgart, I established some habits for security. I really didn't think I had to worry about it, but I used it as a game. And because I had lived in Romania several years earlier, I knew the value of following security tips.  One example was that every morning when I left for work, I would put a small sliver of paper in the door jamb as I closed it. When I got home in the evening, I would check to see if the sliver was still there before I unlocked my door.

One day at work, the phone rang in the visa section where I worked. A local employee answered it and told me the call was for me. So I answered it. The man on the other end of the phone said something like, "Hi, Sandra, guess who this is," in an American accent. I didn't know many people yet, so I said the name of the only American man I had met at that point, David. He said yes, and then he started asking me questions about what I was doing, what I was wearing, and where I was within the Consulate. He was chatty and friendly, a little flirty. I avoided answering any questionable questions. But when he asked me a couple of questions that David should have known the answers to, I didn't answer and told him he already knew that. At that point, the caller hung up. I still hadn't caught on that the caller wasn't David or anyone else I knew. I called David right back to ask him why he hung up on me. As soon as David answered the phone I realized the guy who called wasn't anyone I knew.

The way the guy got through to me was pretty tricky. I don't know if it was a security issue or if the guy was just a lonely American. He called the Consulate and told the operator that he had been at the Consulate the day before and he was calling to talk with the woman he had talked with then. So the operator put him through to the consular officer on the American citizen services side of the consular section. She was a bit more savvy than I and concluded that the guy just wanted to talk to an American woman, so she hung up on him.

The guy called back and told the operator that she had put him through to the wrong consular officer, so the operator put him through to the visa side of the consular section. When the local employee answered the phone, he said he wanted to talk to the consular officer. She asked if he meant Ms. Wenner. He said yes, so she put the call through to me. I answered with my first name, so now he had my full name.

I talked with the security officer right away about the incident and he brought the Marine Security Guard detachment commander into the conversation. Together we concluded that it was probably nothing. But when I got home from work that day, the slip of paper was on the floor in the hall, not stuck in the door jamb. So I called the Det Commander; he came over and went through the house to be sure there was nothing out of place. I realized that the slip of paper might have fallen out during the day. Or maybe I was careless and turned the knob before putting the key into the lock, releasing the tension that kept the paper sliver in place. We concluded that unless something else happened, my day had just been a series of coincidences.

Or had it?

More later. . .