Cooptee

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In the lexicon of espionage, a cooptee is an individual, often an embassy employee, who willingly agrees to collaborate with their country's intelligence agency in an operation, usually for a specific task or mission of lesser importance. [1] Cooptees often have little to no formal intelligence training and sometimes only exchange tasking and information with their handler through a cutout. [2] In some authoritarian countries such as East Germany, cooptees can be ordinary civilians who inform on their neighbors and coworkers to their secret police or domestic intelligence agency. [3] A cooptee's usefulness may be disproportionate, potentially confusing hostile surveillance in assessing the strength of the organization, acting as a decoy to draw away unwelcome attention from the local security apparatus, or surveying sites suitable for dead drops. [4]

Contents

Prevalence globally

Czechoslovakia

Slovakia's National Memory Institute has identified cooptees of the StB, the secret police of the former Czechoslovakia, who have attempted to enter public office. [3]

France

In France, journalists, businesspeople, aid workers, and others who volunteer as cooptees to assist the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) are called honorable correspondents. [4]

Libya

In 1996, the United Kingdom's Mi5 recommended that an employee in the de facto embassy of Libya, Khalifa Ahmad Balzelya, be declared persona non grata for acting as a cooptee of the Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya. [5]

Russia

In 2020, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that George Papadopoulos "was not a witting cooptee of the Russian intelligence services.” [6]

Saudi Arabia

A 2017 FBI report states that from 1998 until the September 11 attacks, Omar al-Bayoumi, "was paid a monthly stipend as a cooptee of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) via then Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan Alsaud." [1]

Soviet Union

In a 1973 memo describing HTLINGUAL, a CIA operation which surveilled mail between the United States and the Soviet Union, the agency wrote "Based on KGB and GRU defector information, it is presumed that the visitor is a KGB agent or cooperating with the KGB, i.e., a cooptee." [7]

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Secret police</span> Intelligence agency which operates in secrecy

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The Portland spy ring was an espionage group active in the UK between 1953 and 1961. It comprised five people who obtained classified research documents from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment (AUWE) on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, and passed them to the Soviet Union.

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The Mitrokhin Archive refers to a collection of handwritten notes about secret KGB operations spanning the period between the 1930s and 1980s made by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin which he shared with the British intelligence in the early 1990s. Mitrokhin, who had worked at KGB headquarters in Moscow from 1956 to 1985, first offered his material to the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Latvia, but they rejected it as possible fakes. After that, he turned to the UK's MI6, which arranged his defection from Russia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KGB</span> Main Soviet security agency from 1954 to 1991

The Committee for State Security, abbreviated as KGB was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, OGPU, and NKVD. Attached to the Council of Ministers, it was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret police functions. Similar agencies operated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from the Russian SFSR, where the KGB was headquartered, with many associated ministries, state committees and state commissions.

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References

  1. 1 2 Golden, Tim (2023-04-27). "Focus of 9/11 Families' Lawsuit Against Saudi Arabia Turns to a Saudi Student Who May Have Been a Spy". ProPublica . Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  2. Brown, Amy Elizabeth (April 17, 2009). Directed or Diffuse? Chinese Human Intelligence Targeting of US Defense Technology (PDF) (M.A. thesis). Georgetown University.
  3. 1 2 Schiller-Dickhut, Reiner; Rosenthal, Bert (2014-02-01). The "European Network of Official Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files" (PDF) (Report) (2nd ed.). Berlin: Bundesarchiv/Stasi Records Agency. ISBN   978-3-942130-98-1.
  4. 1 2 West, Nigel (2006). Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN   978-0-8108-5578-6.
  5. "Libyan Intelligence Service Activity in the UK". Cryptome . Mi5 . Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  6. Carney, Todd; Fry, Samantha; Jurecic, Quinta; Schulz, Jacob; Sewell, Tia; Taylor, Margaret; Wittes, Benjamin (2020-08-21). "A Collusion Reading Diary: What Did the Senate Intelligence Committee Find?". Lawfare . Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  7. "CHAPTER VI Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations", The Reform of FBI Intelligence Operations, Princeton University Press, pp. 133–159, 2015-03-08, doi:10.1515/9781400868193-007, ISBN   978-1-4008-6819-3 , retrieved 2025-01-08