Public records suggest name and luxury residence of CIA's Manila chief of station
A September U.S. Embassy Manila contract houses "RA Officer" Peter Enzminger in Raffles Makati hotel; CIA's Amman station chief in 2006 was Peter Enzminger, under cover as "Regional Affairs Officer."
Any researcher worth their salt will try to answer the question “where are they now?” with interesting characters named in investigative books. Beyond the current and former high-level CIA officials named in Tim Weiner’s new book, “The Mission,” the most natural subjects for such an inquiry are the chiefs of station who convened in Kuwait for two days in early March 2006 to devise a counterterrorism strategy against Iraqi insurgents, as their cover positions were revealed by the leaked U.S. Embassy Kuwait cable 06KUWAIT913.
In the case of Amman chief of station Peter Enzminger, his diplomatic cover was as a “Regional Affairs Officer” with U.S. Embassy Amman, then under the leadership of Ambassador David Hale.
Searching through public disclosures on the U.S. Government’s financial transparency website USASpending.gov reveals precisely one contract naming Peter Enzminger: a $106,631 obligation from U.S. Embassy Manila to the parent company of the Raffles Makati luxury hotel in Metropolitan Manila on September 9, 2024. According to the public contracting summary, the contract provided “RA OFFICER PETER ENZMINGER” with “RAFFLES RESIDENCE HOUSING” at 1 Raffles Drive in the City of Makati, which is just over a 20-minute drive from the embassy.
A spokesperson for the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs called to request further time to prepare comment shortly before publication. Upon following up, the agency declined to comment, despite a long phone call.
Advertised as “excellent for extended stays in the heart of the city,” the Raffles residence housing further boasts that its “legendary” butlers are “thoughtful and discreet.” A “cocktails & city stroll” package with the hotel further includes a tour of a bevy of speakeasy bars, including The Blind Pig and Cheshire.
The U.S. State Department has for decades regularly published the true names of CIA officers, albeit alongside their cover positions. The U.S. Congress in 1982 enacted the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, largely to end former CIA officer Philip Agee’s mass unmasking — via the CovertAction Information Bulletin — of CIA station chiefs through the combination of careful analysis of public U.S. State Department listings of key foreign service officers with tips from local sources. “Everything argues for having the intelligence agent in the embassy — everything, that is except the need to keep his existence secret,” wrote former State Department analyst John Marks in “How to Spot a Spook” in 1974.
The CIA periodically leverages the identities protection act in order to scare U.S. journalists away from publishing the names of CIA officers, raising first amendment concerns.
In the likely event that the U.S. Embassy Manila “RA Officer” Peter Enzminger is the same person as the Peter R. Enzminger who led the CIA’s Amman station under cover as a Regional Affairs Officer, it would reflect the U.S. national security community’s focus transitioning from the post-9/11 Global War on Terror into so-called Great Power Competition with China.
The foreign service officer listing for July 1995 names a “Peter R. Enzminger” as chief of the political section of U.S. Embassy Djibouti and — presumably the same — “Peter Enzminger” as political / military chief for the nearby U.S. Embassy Sana’a, which closed in 2015 and assigned its visa processing services for Yemenis to U.S. Embassy Djibouti. A June 2010 report published by the U.S. State Department’s Office of Inspector General further names “Peter R. Enzminger” as arriving as chief of the political / military section of U.S. Embassy Abu Dhabi in August 2007.
(A 1991 publication from the United Nations further names “Mr. Peter R. Enzminger” as a member of the American delegation, under Ambassador J. Kenneth Blackwell, to the UN Commission on Human Rights that year.)
According to a partially redacted CIA publication of visitors to the agency from Georgetown University’s International Relations Club on October 12, 1979, one of the students was “Peter Enzminger,” born in Redwood City, California on September 11, 1961. This Mr. Enzminger would be 63 today, and his 40th birthday would have coincided with al Qaeda’s signature attacks on the United States.
Dave Pitts, whom “The Mission” named as Kabul chief of station in 2021, was similarly at least 64 while leading his station, assuming that his LinkedIn claim of joining the U.S. military in 1973 is correct.
(Pitts was suggested in The Mission to have made use of the “Raven Sentry” insurgent attack prediction tool produced by the former physicist Anshuman Roy’s company Rhombus Power. Mr. Roy promoted his company’s Ambient product as central to U.S. support for Philippines information operations against China — following ‘missteps’ with a secret anti-vax program against Sinovac — in a June talk with Philippines defense secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Jr. at the annual expo of Eric Schmidt’s Special Competitive Studies Project, for which Rhombus was the primary sponsor. Despite Rhombus having a mere $1.7 million in contracts disclosed through USASpending.gov, which excludes so-called Other Transaction Agreements, more than $150 million in military contracts with Rhombus can be found on FPDS.gov.)
An anonymous post to the disclosure website Cryptocomb on July 8, 2014 named a “Peter Robin Enzminger” of the same age as being the CIA’s chief of station in Djibouti from 1995 to 1998, comporting with the above-mentioned July 1995 foreign officer listing, and as chief of station in Amman from 2006 to 2009, agreeing with cable 06KUWAIT913 as of March 2006 but seemingly contradicting the inspector general report’s claim of a Peter R. Enzminger arriving in Abu Dhabi in August 2007.
As of July 22, 2025, the Raffles Makati hotel quoted the author ₱672,154.50 — roughly $11,763 — to book a one-bedroom executive residence for the entire month of August. Given the $106,631 contract with the hotel, and the contract’s published potential end date of July 14, 2025, it would appear that a similar room to the 1 bedroom executive was booked for “RA Officer” Peter Enzminger for roughly the ten-month period beginning in September 2024.
The Raffles Makati is a also hot spot for other Western foreign service officers. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) publicly disclosed an overlapping booking with Mr. Enzminger’s stay at the Raffles Makati, from November 2 through December 14, 2024, while the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) booked a room from September 5 to October 14. Global Affairs Canada similarly disclosed spending $18,221 CAD for housing at the luxury hotel from March 20 to April 28, 2019.