On November 2, 2011, the day before a G-20 conference of world leaders was slated to open in Cannes, an FBI agent unwittingly left a folder on the counter of a Lebanese restaurant. It was an ordinary-looking binder, and the restaurant’s proprietor quickly realized that one of his guests must have left it behind. So he opened the folder to determine its owner and was astonished by what he was seeing.
It contained meticulous plans of the fifth floor at the prestigious Carlton Hotel, the floor where President Obama was scheduled to stay during the conference. Beyond that, it included details about each of the president’s travel routes starting from his arrival at Nice Côte d'Azur Airport through to his departure. It was precisely the sort of information that an aspiring assassin would have killed for.