Field Notes: When You’re the One Being Watched

Most of the time when you run a source, the biggest risk is not the bad guys, it is the source themselves. One wrong word, a careless text, showing up in the wrong place. You can have all the tradecraft in the world, coded messages, careful routes, secure meeting spots, but people are still people. And people make mistakes.

A Source with Placement

When I was with the FBI I ran a source who had rare access inside a Russian paramilitary organization. They were living here in the U.S., but their contacts were overseas, moving money and weapons, brokering deals that led straight back to Russian military intelligence.

At one point a senior figure in the group asked them to help move a large sum of money for an arms purchase. My source played it cool, but those conversations were tense. In one exchange the source told our guy to trust them, to which he shot back, I don’t trust you. And if this doesn’t work, it’s not going to be good for you. That was par for the course with these people. Threats were just part of the language. Still a bit unsettling though.

When Things Felt Off

Not long after that my source missed a meeting. When I finally got them on the phone they said they thought they were being followed.

You take that seriously. If a source feels something is off, most of the time they are right.

I set up a string of false meets. Same tempo, same routes, same drop locations. To anyone watching it looked identical to our real exchanges, except nothing actually happened.

Watching the Watcher

While that was happening my team set up a counter-surveillance operation. We watched the watcher. We tracked vehicles, logged suspicious people, ran checks, even followed a few tails of our own.

It felt a little backwards at first, sitting there watching someone else watch my source, but that is surveillance for you. Layers on layers.

And sure enough, the source’s instincts were good. Someone really was on them.

The Twist

The surprise was who it turned out to be.

It was not the mercenaries. It was not Russian intelligence. It was not even a criminal group. It was the state attorney’s office. Their special operations unit had opened an unrelated preliminary investigation and was tailing the same source we were running.

Once we figured it out we reached out, gave them a hard time for being so obvious, and told them to ease up.

The Lesson

That experience stayed with me. Surveillance and counter-surveillance are not always about who you expect. Sometimes it is another player entirely.

It also reinforced something simple. Trust your instincts. If you think you are being followed, you probably are. The real trick is figuring out who is on your tail and why.

And that carries over to the work I do now. Sometimes it is a family who thinks they are being watched, sometimes it is a business worried about leaks or fraud. The specifics change, but the principle is the same: trust your gut, and then prove or disprove it with careful work.