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October 15, 2003
Foreign Spies Photographing Washington Women Fight with Prostitutes at Basketball Game Tipped CIA In a move to both cut costs and goad the Bush Administration, a coalition of foreign intelligence agencies headed by France is taking photographs of thousands of Washington area women as they go about their daily lives. Some of the women are photographed openly as they pass on downtown Washington streets, enter suburban shopping malls or compete in weekend leisure activities, like a horse show or a garage sale. Others are photographed surreptitiously as was the case at a recent Washington Capitals pro basketball game, which led to a melee when some of the photographers' subjects discovered what was going on. American intelligence sources, who have confirmed the existence of the coalition and France's leadership role, say the photo initiative is a direct result of the exposure of Valerie Wilson as a CIA operative. Wilson, a Washington mother, businesswoman and the wife of a former ambassador, was exposed in a syndicated newspaper column last summer as a long-time covert CIA agent. Her "outing" after two decades as a secret intelligence operative created a political furor for the Bush Administration. Intelligence sources say it also created a furor among the world's spy agencies, who apparently have been busy running Wilson's name, photograph and records of 20 years of travels abroad through their computers looking to see who had dealings with Wilson over the years and might be a spy, too. "What everyone wants to know is how many other Valerie Wilsons are there in the Washington area that no one knows about," said one intelligence analyst. "So every country with any kind of a spy operation is running all these pictures of Washington women through their computers looking for a facial match with someone they've photographed in their own country they thought might be a spy." While the creation of a coalition of foreign spy agencies to work jointly -- and largely openly -- in Washington seems unusual, if not unprecedented, intelligence sources say it makes sense. "It's very expensive to mount any kind of surveillance operation in a major world capital," said one analyst. "This banding together is just a sign of the times. They acquire the data jointly, even openly. Then what they do with it is up to them. I think this is just the beginning of joint spying. It won't be long until you'll go to a temp agency and say, 'I need a spy for a week.'" A State Department official said France's role in creating the spy coalition is a further sign of the Chirac government's effort to thwart what it sees as growing American dominance of world affairs. "There's no question the French see this as a major intelligence coup on their part," the State Department official said. "Think of it: you pull together a group of intelligence agencies; they work openly in Washington with the goal of 'outing' additional covert CIA agents. Now those are cojones."" The CIA discovered the photographic project at a Capitals game last month when a Washington area beer distributor loaned its SkyBox to a customer for an evening. The customer's executives brought as guests a half-dozen provocatively clad prostitutes, who noticed four men seated together on the other side of the arena frequently photographing them with telephoto lenses. The women confronted the photographers in the stands and a fight broke out. Three of the men were arrested, which ultimately led the CIA to peg them as foreign intelligence operatives. No one in the intelligence community seems to know whether the photos are helping the coalition countries identify covert CIA agents. "If I were a woman who had a covert Agency connection and I saw someone taking pictures at the mall, for sure I'd turn away," a retired CIA agent said. Separately, Hermes, the French clothing manufacturer famed for its silk scarves, and Bolle, the French sunglasses designer, declared October and November, "Scarf and Shades Month." In a press release, it said the combination of a classic scarf and classic sunglasses is the perfect way for a "Woman of Mystery to Declare Herself to the World." Copyright William Stockton & Smithtown Creek Productions |
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