Day 269 - The CAG Who Thought He Was A Spy

Image by vpickering, via Flickr.com

Duke* wasn't the only memorable Cleared American Guard. Kent* rivaled Duke for behavior beyond the normal. We honestly thought he might be on drugs, either prescribed ones or less legitimate varieties. Kent had been a Marine Security Guard in the past which impressed the site security manager, Fred. We foresaw a repeat of Duke in our future. And we weren't wrong,

Kent didn't write his embellished thoughts in the incident log, but he shared stories of his encounters with his colleagues. There was the one about the guy in a Moldovan bar who threatened him with a gun - or at least showed him his gun while they were having drinks at the bar.

Kent also intimated that he was really working for another agency, one dealing in intelligence gathering. We ignored those claims since it made no sense for him to tell us if they were true.

We suspected that Kent was stealing from the embassy and staff as things went missing from desk drawers on the evenings that he was on duty. The missing items were small, items we gave as tokens to vendors and others who did business with the embassy. The official name for them was gratuities. What constituted gratuities varied from country to country. In Moldova they were lighters and measuring tapes with the Department seal and the name of the embassy embossed on the front, as well as the usual bottles of scotch and cartons of cigarettes. They were kept in GSO David's desk drawer and anyone who needed to give one out could take one which made it a little difficult to be sure if they were really stolen. Once we noticed things were disappearing more quickly than normal, the items were locked up and a log started to keep track of what went to whom. But then we discovered that the cables with gold connectors between the TV and VCR recorder that we kept in the Management and Consular building had been swapped with a cheaper set. We had the TV and recorder in the building to show training tapes.

Kent denied all accusations. So we set out to gather evidence that he wasn't standing guard in the guard booth when he was on duty at night by setting up the TV and VCR in a position that prevented anyone from watching a video without having to move them. We used photos to prove where the TV and VCR were at the end of the business day and then the next day we took photos again of how they had been moved during the night. We were satisfied we knew he was spending his evenings watching movies in the Management building instead of in the guard booth, but there wasn't enough evidence to have him replaced.

Even his most outrageous activity didn't get him replaced.

That activity occured the weekend after Alex and the ambassador's driver had driven two of the embassy vehicles to Kyiv for servicing early in the week. They stayed there until the work was done, returning to Chişinău Friday evening. Saturday morning at 2 a.m., the phone rang. It was the CAG on duty for Alex. He asked Alex to drive to Romania with a flat bed truck to pick up Kent, his Moldovan girlfriend, and the rental car Kent had just crashed and to return them to Moldova.

Image of crash barrier through passenger side of
car by DrJohnBullas, via Flickr.com

Kent had rented a car and driven with his girlfriend to Bucharest, an 8-hour drive, Friday so that he could take her to the Marine House for a party that evening. They made it to Bucharest and to the Marine House, but Kent had duty in Chişinău starting at 8 a.m. the next morning. He thought he could leave the Marine House at midnight and make it back to Chişinău in time for his shift. Along the way, he drove too fast and the car swerved too far to the right as he made his way through a curve in the road. The crash barrier on the side of the road sliced through the passenger side of the car, pinning it in place. Had Kent's girlfriend been wearing a seat belt, she would have been slice through as well.

It took Alex four hours to line up a truck that the damaged vehicle could be loaded onto for the return trip. The line of vehicles at the border crossing point between Moldova and Romania normally stretched for several miles, but with all the times Alex had crossed that border, the guards on duty knew him and always allowed him to drive directly to the head of the line. By the time Alex reached the border, a full 24 hours hadn't elapsed since he had returned to Moldova.

They reached the accident site before noon. Alex described Kent's reactions to the situation as completely abnormal. Kent hadn't wanted to stay with the car. He had wanted to find a way for him and his girlfriend to get back to Bucharest. And he talked about the car as an inconvenience, not his responsibility.

One of the other CAGs had had to fill in for Kent's shift, another reason for his colleagues to resent him. Once back in Chişinău, we realized that Kent hadn't told anyone about this trip, not his supervisor, not the site security manager, and not anyone with the embassy. The one action we could and did take after this trip was to issue a policy that no one would leave the country without informing their supervisor and no one could rent a car and leave the country without first getting approval from the management officer, me.

Two weeks later, Kent came to ask my permission to rent a car to drive back to Bucharest.

*a name, not necessarily the right one