CIA operative Amaryllis Fox on fighting terrorism

 

Amaryllis Fox was a CIA operative. The Agency targeted her for employment while she was studying international security at Georgetown University. It was impressed by her intellect and the fact that she gathered years of data on every known domestic and international terrorist attack and developed an algorithm that pulled out heretofore unnoticed patterns to identify terrorist safe havens.

She first became a CIA analyst at age 21, but soon became a field agent assigned to work in foreign countries. Due to her earlier algorithm development, she instinctively was able to locate potential terrorist hiding places, making her a skilled counter-terrorism operative. She traveled the world while posing as an art dealer, while hunting terrorists down. Her book, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA, describes these CIA experiences.

Amaryllis had a few experiences like those depicted in James Bond movies. She spent years living under a false identity to cover up her CIA employment and mission: to prevent nuclear terrorism and other terrorist catastrophes from reaching America’s shores.

Interestingly, many of the habits she used to maintain her cover and, quite frankly, to keep her from being harmed, persist, and remain embedded in her subconscious. Here’s a few of them:

·      She immersed herself so well into her cover that she could pass a polygraph test if foreign intelligence gave her one.

·    She always chose out-of-the-way spots to meet her contacts so she could avoid the prying eyes and ears of the enemy and spot a tail if she or her contact had one.

·     She constantly observed her surroundings, searching for locations that would make good signal or brush-past sites, or places that she or her contacts could make marks on, indicating that a message is waiting at the dead drop.

·     In restaurants, she still feels more comfortable with her back to the wall so she can take note of entrances and exits.

·    To the annoyance of her husband, she still stops at all yellow lights. After all, she was trained not to piss off your surveillant and make them think you are trying to lose them. If the light turns yellow, she stops so the car full of Russian GRU agents behind them don’t get the sense that she shot through it in an attempt to lose them. I don’t think her husband could ever understand that one.

I must share this video, for it reshaped my thinking about how to deal with terrorists and terrorism in general. It features Amaryllis Fox explaining what she feels are the 3 roots of terrorism: Wages, Liberty, Language. 

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Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), enjoys writing about the U.S. Intelligence Community, and relishes traveling to the Florida Keys and Key West, the Bahamas and Caribbean. He combines both passions in his CoreyPearson- CIA Spymaster series. Check out his latest spy thriller: MISSION OF VENGEANCE.