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He needed to get out of the house and clear his head after several stressful weeks following his outspoken resignation as Ethiopia’s number two diplomat in the U.S.

So in mid-May, Berhane Kidanemariam took a stroll around his quiet neighborhood  in Bethesda, Md., a leafy but bustling suburb bordering on Washington, D.C. 

A car crept up alongside him on the sidewalk. A dark window slid down. One of the men inside, an Ethiopian he vaguely recognized, hailed him with an insulting epithet. Then, with a sinister smile, the man offered him “a ride.”  Kidanemariam, 60, kept walking, ignoring the car until it finally gunned away. He wondered how the men knew where he’d be walking.

Another incident happened on June 16, Kidanemariam recalled in an exclusive interview with SpyTalk. It was at a Starbucks on Rockville Pike in Bethesda. He was sitting on the patio enjoying a coffee. 

“Two men who I don’t know approached me in a peaceful way,” he…