CHAPTER 2
SURVEILLANCE DETECTION ROUTES TODAY ARE FAR easier to come up with than they were a decade ago. That’s because of the advent of Google Earth, Google Maps, and GPS. When I first went through surveillance and surveillance detection training at the CIA, there were no such things. We planned out our routes with paper maps that we then cut and taped together to create the entire route. Now the planning is much easier.
There are four basic phases in a surveillance detection route. The first is the kick-off phase. This is where you begin the SDR, and it is usually your home or office. Everybody leaves home or work, right? Usually every day. There’s nothing at all suspicious about it. You leave home and, taking a normal road, begin to go about your normal business. You begin by taking a “red road.” That’s a major road, one that appears on a map in the color red. It’s a road that everybody going about normal business would take to get from home or work to point A. It’s virtually impossible to tell at kick-off whether you’re under surveillance. Sometimes you get lucky, but that’s not really your goal here. Your goal is just to head out, going about your business.
For phase one, you will travel from your kick-off location to your first stop. That stop can be anything that makes sense. It would make sense to go to your local bank, the nearest grocery store, or the dry cleaners. It would not make sense for you to drive fifteen miles to a 7-11, when there are twenty other 7-11s between your kick-off location and your first stop. It would not make sense for you to go ten miles to a grocery store when there are a half dozen other grocery stores closer to you. It would, however, make sense for you to travel a distance to go to a specialty grocery store. Maybe there’s an Asian place that has a certain kind of fish you can’t get anywhere else. Maybe there’s a Brazilian place that specializes in unusual cuts of beef. But for the most part, it’s better to keep it simple.
Phase two is the pattern phase. If it makes sense, you can establish a pattern to your stops in this phase. Maybe you’re going to a series of antique shops today. Or coin dealers. Or auto parts stores, looking for an unusual part. It is in this phase that you will begin using “black roads,” that is, roads that appear in black ink on maps. They are less used. They cut through neighborhoods. Black roads make it far easier to detect surveillance. So when you come out of your first stop, the one on the red road, you then turn into a nearby neighborhood to cut through on your way to your next stop.
Pay attention when you turn off. Did anybody turn off with you? Was there anybody waiting for you to come out of the stop? Did anybody go into the stop with you to see what you were doing? I once used a specialty wine shop as my first stop. I was in there for about fifteen minutes, legitimately looking for a vintage port. Apparently, my surveillants thought I was up to something. So they sent a young woman in after me. She knew nothing about wine. The shop wasn’t very big, so everybody noticed that she had entered. Finally, the owner asked if he could help her. Because she knew nothing about wine, she looked at him blankly and asked where he kept the Manischewitz, a Jewish dessert wine drunk during the Passover seder, which had taken place six months earlier. She made a fool of herself. This was a high-end wine shop, not the Walmart seasonal aisle. Not only did the puzzled owner send her on her way, she raised her profile with me. I knew immediately—only twenty minutes into the SDR—that I was under surveillance, and I aborted my meeting. I paid for my wine and drove home. Pay attention to your surroundings, but also use your judgment to determine the appropriateness of your stops.
Phase three is the aggressive phase. This is the SDR phase where you become increasingly aggressive in your route. That’s not to say that you start speeding or otherwise drawing attention to yourself. It means that you begin making more obvious moves to determine your status, to see if you’re being followed. You will use only black roads in this phase.
One of the techniques you will employ in this phase is called “stairstepping.” That means that instead of driving or walking straight for ten blocks and then making a right, you drive straight for one block, make a right and go one block, then make a left and go one block, followed by a right and one block. Your pattern looks like a staircase. And every time you make a right, and you look both ways to see if you can safely turn, you are actually looking up and down the street for active surveillance.
It is also in this phase that you might use cut-throughs in residential neighborhoods. You might drive through a strip mall parking lot or use a cemetery as a cover stop. Buy flowers at an earlier stop and lay them at somebody’s grave. Go to an obscure, small museum and take a tour. If you have time, go to a movie. Better yet, go to a movie and leave forty-five minutes into it. Go to a party store and buy a bunch of balloons. You might do something that makes a surveillant scratch his head, but is explainable if you’re asked about it.
Phase four is the provocative phase. By the time you enter this phase, you should be 99 percent certain that you are not under surveillance. This phase doesn’t make any sense to a surveillant at all. You might drive or walk half-way down a street, turn around, and drive or walk back. You may pull into a driveway, turn around, and then do the same thing again 100 feet down the street. Your goal is not to convince someone who’s following you that you’re headed to a store. It is simply to make one final determination that you’re free of surveillance. Once you are 100 percent certain that you are free of surveillance, go on to your final stop, which should be in the same area.