Spy Game: The One Where the CIA Lost
Inside the intelligence failure that exposed more than it protected.
But first, a personal story.
The forced COVID jab has become such a cautionary tale of lives and livelihoods lost.
Where I — like so many Americans — watched perfectly healthy friends, including my close friend at the time, collapse without warning, seizing with heart attack–like symptoms that left me and everyone around him in constant fear.
I remember piecing it altogether after one of his episodes, combing through his medical history and him revealing that, while serving as a Military Aide in the Biden White House Military Office at the height of the plandemic, he had been forced to take the jab.
He told me he actually received it inside the White House — right next to none other than Anthony Fauci himself, confiding in me at the time that he couldn’t help but wonder if Fauci’s needle was just a placebo for himself while the rest of them had to abide by the mandate in order to keep their jobs.
What followed was an untreated vax injury and a parade of local doctors who refused to even consider that his sudden heart problem might have been triggered by the COVID shot — preferring instead to dismiss it as nothing more than “stress.”
It wasn’t.
Now a Word from our Whistleblower
A recount of the day the CIA was affected by COVID as described by an officer within the Directorate of Operations in March 2020.
I remember residing in Virginia, just moments from Washington, D.C. when NBC4 reported a high alert lock down for COVID.
We all remember it: “15 days to slow the spread!”
At that moment, I looked at the TV and laughed. I didn’t really take anything seriously, after all, the agency wouldn’t be affected — we operate on our own.
And then my phone rang.
I was notified by my deployment office that my upcoming CONUS trip scheduled three weeks from then would be cancelled.
A training certification for classified exfils requiring Maritime Branch.
I was told the trip would be postposed indefinitely and that it was safe to assume any future deployments, CONUS or OCONUS, would be put on hold for at least 3 months - told to expect no comms, to not receive any more phone calls from my agency contacts until the summer time.
So yes, you’re hearing me straight — the CIA; the agency that can do virtually anything, in both casual and austere environments, with global assets, in many cases under a black budget from Congress, is shutting down operations because… of… a flu?
For months I sat by my phone, hoping leadership would realize their overreaction and get a grip, get back to operations — as it always has — rules for thee, not we.
But that’s not what happened.
The Department of Defense
I think this is a perfect time to remind everyone that the DoD tends to get the most attention when we talk about the government’s malpractice with the jab.
Here’s a refresher below:
August 24, 2021
Lloyd Austin issues the order: every service member, across all branches, must be vaccinated against COVID-19. 
September 14, 2021
The Pentagon doubles down. Terry Adirim (remember that name) — then a senior Biden appointee “performing the duties” of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs — issues a memo directing DoD medical providers to treat Pfizer’s emergency use vaccine as interchangeable with Comirnaty, the only version that had received full FDA approval.Remember, at that time the Pfizer-BioNTech shots actually being distributed to service members remained under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). Adirim’s memo blurred that distinction and quickly became the legal linchpin for enforcing the mandate — later a flashpoint in litigation as the memo appeared to sidestep the law.
[Under 10 U.S.C. § 1107(a), no service member can be forced to take an EUA product without a presidential waiver.]
But it Gets Worse…Far Worse
Somehow along the way while the focus was completely on the DoD, over in Langley, the CIA’s Office of Medical Services made a far more reckless decision of all:
Those in alias, those in true name (real identities), those who are overt, covert, stateside, and overseas...vax them all.Now Back to our CIA Whistleblower:
Enforcing a one-size-fits-all policy, rarely ever makes sense at the CIA.
Making fake covid cards for an alias while requiring and forcing the person behind that fake identity to actually take the jab takes ‘not making sense’ to a whole other level.
I’m sure that’s obvious to all you - goes without saying.
By the fall of 2020 we were being called back into work. However we did not resume normal operations for quite some time then since.
6 months later, the Biden Administration was in charge.
I remember coming into work one day and all but two of my teammates were lined up outside one of our offices, where a nurse from the medical office was at the ready to receive us with her syringe.
I refused to get in line.
My Deployments Chief (our #2 from leadership) warned me that if I refused the vax, things would only get harder for me over time.
And they weren’t wrong.
Thereafter, we were told, of those that refuse the vaccine and in some cases, the boosters to go with it, we were deemed un-deployable and no longer of service on the team.
Now let me just mention my whole job is full of lies… I know you guys are tracking that.
So a fake vax card is certainly in the realm of possibility from the agency.
We forge things all the time; wars, governments, credentials, passports, all without blinking an eye.
So what was the hangup?
Come fall of 2021, I was still successful in bypassing what then became a government required jab. And soon, throughout that time, my immediate higher-up helped me remain on the team by keeping me CONUS to support our overseas deployments from within a SCIF back in Virginia.
The catch was that I had to get tested everyday at a local CVS, and I had to do this in the confines of a 4x4 storage room within said SCIF — or should I say closet — in order to not be physically present in front of my Group Chief (our #1 in leadership) as he was a dedicated Democrat who whole heartedly believed in the jab.
My Deployments Chief warned that just the sight of me in the office, even with that stupid mask on, would remind him that I didn’t get the shot and shouldn’t be working.
So there I was as a CIA covert officer, timing my movements to and from the parking lot, the stairwells, never utilizing the elevators, exercising my own tradecraft tactics, just to avoid my own boss.
In order to…not get caught working…
Bizarre.
By late fall, my luck ran out and leadership across all forms of government sought to garner “bragging rights” on who’s team was fully vaxxed.
I was the reason we weren’t at 100%.
And now I had to face the Group Chief.
As a female — if you can’t already tell that I am in fact female —and before anyone screams PERSEC, relax — we only have 2 choices here, male or female so you had a 50 percent chance of guessing at least my gender anyways.
He began the meeting alluding that because I was conservative, that I must be resisting the jab due to the fact that I didn’t like Biden. (Probably should mention my teammates would frequently interchange my call sign to QAnon).
In an attempt to not make it political, I swiftly leaned into how I was concerned how the vaccine would affect my fertility — which I was concerned, and surely as a Democrat he would be tracking “women’s rights”, right?
Wrong.
My chief replied with the following:
“I don’t know if you’re aware, but we serve the Biden Administration. And in my eyes, if you don’t get it, you can’t serve. You are un-deployable and I cannot have you here.
If you are concerned about having children, just freeze your eggs.”
I never wanted to punch someone square in the face as much as I did to that guy.
What an idiot.
You Know When I Said it Gets Worse?
Alright now that you have some context, a situation not so different from so many others within the government, let’s finally get to the whole point of the article.
Final Words from our Operative:
So there I was with an ultimatum. Get the vaccine by the end of the week, or I am no longer a CIA officer.
I processed for nearly 4 years before making it onto this team.
All I ever wanted to do was serve.
And all I thought about were how many ‘good guys’ we lost because of this.
So I made the choice to hold on and get the damn thing.
But I had one request — that I would get it on my own.
Little did I know that was the greatest decision I could ever make in protecting my own identity, and the operations I was involved in at the CIA.
How the CIA Lost Its Cover
Do you remember how each CDC card contained a batch of numbers for the lot of vaccine supply?
And remember how those numbers were the key to everything?
The reasons why people lost jobs, faced charges, even criminal records for forging vax cards of their own?
The entire system of compliance hinged on scribbled digits.
A very telling series of numbers.
So you would think… in knowing this…as it was public knowledge… that the CIA *would* ensure to utilize mis-attributable batch numbers. Right?
Again… wrong.
We shouldn't be too surprised.
This is the same government entity that - under this same exact group - actually had their Counterintelligence Officer - the person who handles the passports, aliases, cash, and more - openly brag about giving a group of officers money with sequential serial numbers in denominations of 10s, 20s, and 100s before heading out on a deployment.
Not realizing the operational error in that.
And so the officers then all ended up having to mix and divide the cash with one another in order to deposit the cash separately at several banks in an attempt to diversify the money prior to going operational.
Enough said.
(Also, how was the CIA able to just spit out crisp, sequential dollar bills? A question for another day - back to business below.)Every CIA officer and staffer — covert and overt, in true name and in alias — received cards with batch numbers uniquely tied to CIA-issued vaccine supplies.
That single decision created a paper trail.
An intel jackpot for adversaries — and for “allies” alike.
When Langley finally woke up to the danger, leadership scrambled.
Orders went out demanding officers turn in their original cards to be swapped for new ones with new batch numbers designed to blend into civilian records.
But the damage was already done.
By the time the recall hit — months after initial rollouts — plenty of officers were already deployed. And by then, virtually every country on earth required proof of vaccination to enter.
Even worse — many countries required those cards to be uploaded both on foreign and domestic government sites.
And you might be wondering, “Well couldn’t operatives just slip in under cover, use covert transport, bypass normal channels?”
No. Not always.
Not every mission uses a covert “bridge” — the pre-cleared land, air, or sea routes built for mis-attributable travel.
And due to biometrics, not every officer can even rely on alias anymore.
Many operate in plain sight.
INTERPOL’s global databases, for example, capture fingerprints, facial recognition, and travel records, meaning that even the smallest misstep — a reused alias, a recycled document, or a flagged passport — can surface in real time across nearly 200 member countries.
What once slipped under the radar can now be instantly cross-referenced, forcing the intelligence community to confront a hard truth — that ‘cover’ isn’t what it used to be.
Now keep that in mind.
Because while CIA officers were uploading these compromised COVID cards into online portals and showcasing them to border agents around the world, every entry became an even more detailed data point.
In other words, what began as a simple vaccination record quickly plugged officers into sprawling international surveillance webs.
Take in the fact that the Schengen Area pools data for nearly 30 European countries. The Five Eyes alliance shares passenger records across continents. The Gulf Cooperation Council uses biometric-linked entry systems. Even Caribbean, South American, and Asia-Pacific blocs build shared e-visa databases.
For ordinary travelers, it was a nuisance.
For agency officers, it was an OPSEC nightmare.
A Happy Ending? Not What You’re Thinking.
I had this information, and knew it wouldn’t go anywhere without the right personnel in place at the agency.
Once Trump was elected back into office, I knew this was my chance.
I immediately fired off some details on X and sent it directly to an individual at the CIA.
Two months later Terry Adirim, then director of CIA’s Centers for Global Health Services was fired.
Again, her names familiar, right? Well good that means you were paying attention earlier in the article.
When the news broke this past April that Adirim was fired, the media solely focused on her DoD vax memo.
However a source familiar with the matter contacted me and confirmed her firing was also tied to the CIA’s botched COVID card rollout — suggesting that her actions at the Pentagon, combined with the agency’s medical missteps, pushed Director Ratcliffe to scrutinize the CIA’s Centers for Global Health Services, the source adding that, “Director Ratcliffe took swift and decisive action.”
However it’s worth noting that Adirim was not the director of that medical office at the CIA until 2024 and it is unclear if any individuals solely responsible at the time of the roll-out, have been removed.
Unlikely at best.
From there, I promptly reported that information live.
Ahhh OAN, what a throwback.
The intelligence world likes to play the long game.
The bigger question still remains — what happened, or better yet, what will happen to the officers affected?
People always assume everything is kinetic and, a lot of times thanks to Hollywood, automatic.
But in reality, tradecraft tells us to collect, collect, collect.
Those officers, in many cases, are probably still in, still serving, still operating.
All while the enemy watches, tracks, gathers, and in many cases… in many a year’s time… will react — or not and let it all lead them to the next target.
As always, we end every article with a photo.
Here's Robert Redford and Brad Pitt in Spy Game (2001) - classic.
Excellent read!
I listened to the Spy Game soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams as I read this. Very fitting.
Great Read! Pretty wild story!