Coffee giant Starbucks is the favorite hangout place for the U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a former spy revealed. According to a ne
Coffee giant Starbucks is the favorite hangout place for the U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a former spy revealed.
According to a new memoir by former CIA spy Amaryllis Fox, the CIA used Starbucks gift cards to communicate with its network of spies, detailing how the coffeehouse chain became an integral part of the world of espionage.
In “Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA,” Fox revealed that CIA agents give their assets Starbucks gift cards and tell them to “buy a cup of coffee if you need to get in touch.” An agent, who goes to internet cafes everyday, would then check all his cards balances and get the message upon seeing that a card had been used.
“Saves him having to drive past a whole slew of different physical signal sites each day [to check for chalk marks and lowered window blinds]. And the card numbers aren’t tied to identities, so the whole thing is pretty secure.”
Fox, who served from 2003 to 2010 in 16 different countries, also pointed that restaurants are the preferred meeting places for spies in order to inform governments about upcoming attacks or to meet with assets who have access to terror groups.
“Restaurants offer the opportunity to meet those with access to a government or terror group that might be able to help us predict or prevent the next attack. Sometimes those meetings are accidental. Mostly, they are planned to look accidental.”
Starbucks is an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain founded in Seattle in 1971.
As of early 2019, the company operates over 30,000 locations worldwide.