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history. According to an Afghan security official interviewed in 2010, today there are more spies working the streets and the diplomatic cocktail circuit in Kabul than anywhere else in the world.
    The embassy of virtually every major foreign power in Kabul has a contingent of intelligence officers on staff who openly trawl the city looking for any tidbits of information that they can report to their capitals, as well as SIGINT listening posts hidden inside the chanceries, which intercept the cell phone calls of Afghan government officials, foreign diplomats, United Nations officials, private security contractors, aid workers, and just about anyone else of importance in Kabul.
    The two top luxury hotels, the Hotel InterContinental in the northern part of the city, and the Serena Hotel in downtown Kabul, are veritable dens of spies. The Serena’s four restaurants, especially the chic Café Zarnegar, are favorite meeting places for Afghan government officials, diplomats, spies, and a smattering of underpaid journalists, foreign aid workers, and UN officials. You figuratively cannot turn around without accidentally hitting someone trying to eavesdrop on your conversation. And for a modest gratuity, the business-savvy hotel porters will tell you which of the suites they believe have electronic surveillance devices installed inside, although they claim they have no idea who is listening in on the conversations or what other nefarious activities may be taking place in these rooms.
    The Taverna du Liban, a popular Lebanese restaurant in downtown Kabul, is another favorite watering hole for the legion of spies and diplomats who now call Kabul home. So is Kabul’s only golf club, where, weather permitting, one can almost always find some American, French, or Russian intelligence officer trying to extract secrets from a gaggle of Afghan government officials who, from the look of things, are just trying to learn how to putt.
    The largest contingent of spies in the Afghan capital belongs to the CIA’s Kabul station, which occupies the entire top floor of the new $736 million U.S. embassy on Great Massoud Road in the heart of the Green Zone in downtown Kabul. The CIA station chief, whose cover position is Counselor for Regional Affairs works here, as do his top deputies, a sizable group of case officers from the National Clandestine Service, and most of the station’s intelligence analysts. Also on the top floor of the U.S. embassy is an ultrasophisticated NSA-CIA listening post, which monitors cell phone calls and radio traffic throughout Kabul. Access to the various sections of the station is protected by armed U.S. Marine guards, surveillance cameras, and the latest security devices.
    The CIA’s massive presence is an open secret. It seems that virtually every foreign diplomat and Afghan government official in Kabul knows the names of the CIA station chief and his top deputies. One Afghan security official gave me the private office telephone number at the U.S. embassy for the agency’s station chief in the hope that I might say a good word about him if the occasion ever arose. It never did.
    The Kabul station has grown dramatically since President Obama was inaugurated. In early 2009, DNI Denny Blair ordered the immediate transfer from Iraq to Afghanistan of many of the CIA’s best case officers and intelligence analysts. By the end of the year, the size of the CIA station in Afghanistan doubled from three hundred people to almost seven hundred agency officers and contract employees, instantly becoming the agency’s largest station in the world. The station has become so large that one agency analyst who served in Kabul referred to it as “the Archipelago.”
    Up at Bagram Air Base is a large contingent of paramilitary operatives assigned to the CIA base on the west side of the airfield. These operatives, in conjunction with the thousand-plus Green Berets and Navy SEALs stationed just a few