Glossary of Terms - Indexes H and I

Handle (verb) - The act of administration of an agent by a Case Officer.

Handle (noun)- A means of influence or control over an agent. Case Officers are often told by their supervisors to get a better “handle” on an agent which means they need to find a better means to control him. The handle has a direct relationship to the proper identification and use of the agent’s motivations and vulnerabilities. The Case Officer is often referred to as the Handler.

Hard Target – A target that is difficult to access and/or develop and recruit. These targets usually come from countries that are considered to be hard target countries such as Iran, Cuba, Russia, North Korea that are considered to be hostile toward the US.

Hip Pocket Operation – This refers to a target of interest that a Case Officers keeps temporarily to himself and does not report to the Station. Because of the high degree of reporting requirements and bureaucracy expected from the developmental process of a target, many Case Officers do not immediately disclose to the Station their interest in a target until he is confident that something can become of the contact. Both Station level and CIA Headquarters level bureaucratic requirements drive the momentum of Hip Pocket Operations because of paperwork and timetables often imposed on the overworked Case Officer. See Rogue Operation.

Home Office – A term frequently used between Non-Official Cover (NOC) officers for CIA Headquarters or the division within the CIA that administers the NOC program. The element that administers the NOC program is the Office of External Development (OED), sometimes fondly referred to as the Organization’s External Division since it is physically located outside of the CIA’s office complex and is itself under cover as a commercial consulting company. Known CIA officers are not allowed to enter any OED office.

Hostile – This refers to the enemy, the bad guys, that oppose or operate against the CIA. Usually refers to the intelligence service or internal security service of a foreign government. Also referred to as the Opposition.

Hostile Control – When an agent working for the CIA is reporting to the intelligence or security service of a foreign government about his contacts with the CIA he is said to be under the control of a foreign or hostile security service. He is then called a double agent.

Hostile Intelligence Service – An intelligence service of a foreign government that actively targets US government agencies, institutions or organizations for penetration is said to be a hostile intelligence service. For example, the CIA is an intelligence service of the US and may be considered by the Chinese to be a hostile intelligence service trying to penetrate their institutions.

Hostile Security Service – This is any security service of a foreign government that seeks to identify and neutralize CIA penetrations of their own government, institutions and organizations. For example, the FBI is one of the security services of the US and may be considered a hostile security service by the Chinese trying to uncover Chinese intelligence penetrations of US institutions.

HUMINT – This is the acronym for Human Intelligence and refers to the collection of intelligence information through the use of human assets.

IMINT – This is the acronym for Image Intelligence collected by photography from spy planes and satellites.

Inside contact – This is a Case Officer working inside the Station who is responsible for communication and administration of a Non-Official Cover (NOC) (outside) Case Officer.

Inside Officer – This is a CIA officer under Official Cover who works inside the Station.

Institutional Agent – An agent, usually witting of his CIA contacts, who can be easily handed down from Case Officer to Case Officer over many years of service. Institutional Agents may work for the CIA over a period of 10, 20 or more years and may be passed down through ten to twenty different Case Officers over his years of service to the CIA. It is hard not to “fall in love” with such agents. See Chapter 9.

Intelligence (report) – See Field Intelligence Report. A standard report prepared by a Case Officer following debriefing of an agent or elicitation from an unwitting contact. The intelligence report contains information responsive to intelligence collection requirements levied by CIA Headquarters. These reports are raw information and often uncorroborated. After the Station prepares the intelligence as FIR’s and disseminates them to CIA Headquarters they are evaluated by analysts and compared with other similar reporting and are graded on a scale one, five, ten or twenty depending on the value of the report to policy makers and analysts.

Intrusion point - See Surveillance Detection Route (SDR) and Choke Point - This is a point in the SDR where members of a hostile surveillance team can be drawn into a bottleneck where surveillance of a Case Officer can be determined. Each SDR should have at least three Intrusion points to give sufficient opportunity to uncover any hostile surveillance.

Glossary of Terms - Index D, E and F

Dangle Operation – This is a type of double agent. The agent is made known to an intelligence or security service of another country as a promising target in the hope that the agent will be recruited by the other service. Actually, the loyalty of the agent is to the original service that “dangled” him in front of the second service.

Dead Drop – This is a temporary hiding place where an agent or Case Officer may quickly, securely and temporarily hide something that may shortly afterwards be retrieved by another agent of Case Officer. The Dead Drop is used to pass items between partners in espionage without them coming into direct contact with each other. Load and unload signals are often used as secret signs to let the other partner know that the dead drop has been loaded and unloaded. These innocuous signals may be marks somewhere near the dead drop, for example, and have no meaning to casuals but have a definite meaning to the agent and Case Officer servicing the dead drop. Dead drops are usually used to pass small items such as film, reports, money, etc.

Defector – A government official of a country to repudiates his home country and seeks political asylum in another country, usually bringing with him some information of interest to the country he seeks to come to. Intelligence services seek to convince the defector to become a defector-in-place or agent for a period of time before being allowed to obtain asylum status.

Desk Officer – This refers to the CIA Operations Officer who works on the country desk at CIA Headquarters. These are the headquarters level bureaucrats who coordinate the various activities at the Station with the many CIA Headquarters elements in support of the Stations’s operating objectives. Most Desk Officers also serve in the field and rotate back and forth between the Station and CIA Headquarters.

Denied Area – A country where the US government has no diplomatic or military relationship and thus no US Embassy and no CIA Station.

Development – One of the five stages of the Recruitment Cycle of an agent. Spotting, Assessment, Vetting, Development and finally Recruitment. During the development stage the target is primed to reinforce motivations and vulnerabilities that the Case Officer expects will be useful to affect a smooth recruitment.

Director, The – This is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency or DCI. He is referred to in street talk as The Director. DIRECTOR – all caps – is the addressee of all operational cables from the field to CIA Headquarters.

Dissemination (noun/verb)– See Field Intelligence Report. Dissemination also refers to the distribution of intelligence through CIA channels.

Dossier – This is interchangeable with 201-File. A CIA Officer may open a dossier or 201-file on any target in which the CIA may have an interest to collect information.

Double Agent – An agent engaged in clandestine activity for two or more intelligence services.

Elicitation – The act of acquisition of information of intelligence value from a person who is not witting of the true intentions or intelligence affiliation of the questioner.

Elicitation Source or Asset – This is an unwitting individual with access to information of intelligence interest with whom a Case Officer has recurring contact and is able to get the individual to unwittingly disclose the information through social interaction.

Employee – Term used in the US intelligence community for a person employed in intelligence.

Espionage – The act of collection of intelligence or information of interest to US policy makers from a foreign country or foreign target through secret, clandestine methods.

Exceptional Approval – See Operational Approval – A bureaucratic approval granted by CIA Headquarters to agents or assets who are or are suspected to be members of a communist party. This approval allows the Station to develop and recruit the agent. Members of suspected members of a communist party cannot be granted an Operational Approval.

Exfiltration – An operation designed to sneak an agent, defector or members of an agent’s or defector’s family secretly and securely out of a country to a safe haven country.

Exploit – The act of collection of information through clandestine means from an agent, asset or target.

Eye – This is the lead person in a surveillance team following a suspected agent or Case Officer. The point person who has direct eye contact on the rabbit.

Fabricator – This is an asset who has tried to and sometimes successfully is recruited as an agent but who does not actually have the claimed access to information he provides. A fabricator is often determined during the authentication process of an operation and weeded out so the information provided is not used by policymakers.
There is a difference between a fabricator and a provocation agent. The fabricator is usually after some personal gain – money, prestige, power, etc. The provocation agent is usually out to cause damage or disruption of the CIA’s capabilities and perhaps to learn something about the CIA’s modus operandi.

False flag recruitment - Usually refers to the recruitment of an agent to work secretly for a foreign government other than the US government; however, in actual fact he is unknowingly or unwittingly reporting to the CIA. For example, it may be determined during the process of assessment that the particular asset has motivation to cooperate with Israeli intelligence rather than the CIA, so the recruitment scenario is established to make the target believe he is being recruited by Israeli intelligence.

Farm, The – The Farm is the name CIA insiders call the CIA’s intelligence school located in the rural countryside near Williamsburg, Virginia. This is where inside CIA Case Officers are taught the tools of the espionage trade known as Tradecraft. Outside officers – known as Non-Official Cover officers - are not taught at this facility unless they are brought there in secret and in alias for some specialized training. Even then they are isolated from the regular students there. The CIA’s Special Operations Officers also receive some of their training here. It is, in a sense, Spy University and once you graduate from here you have been taught most of the things you need to know to conduct successful espionage and to report intelligence and operational information.

Field Intelligence Reports – FIRs - A written report produced by the Station from debriefing of an agent, translation of a document, or transcription of a recording, etc that contains raw information not yet processed or collaborated from other sources. After the FIR is prepared at the Station it is then disseminated to CIA Headquarters and to other relevant CIA Stations around the world that may have an interest in the information. It is then called a dissemination. Each FIR receives a grade at CIA Headquarters based on the value of the information to CIA analysts and to policymakers in government.

Field Operative – A term used for a CIA officer who spends most of his career away from CIA Headquarters working overseas. See Case Officer.

Firm, The – Used interchangeably with The Company, refers to CIA.

FISINT – Acronym for foreign instrumentation signals intelligence (FISINT) that is largely intelligence information derived from electromagnetic emissions associated with the testing and operational deployment of foreign aerospace, surface, and subsurface systems and the technical information and intelligence information derived from the interception of foreign instrumentation signals. This is a category of SIGINT. See below.

Flap – Embarrassment or perhaps worse, political reprimand, resulting from public exposure of a CIA operation.

Flaps and Seals – A section in the TSD that provides forged documentation to support the field operatives and agents in the course of espionage. This may include foreign passports, identification documents, foreign immigration seals, etc.

Floater – A low level asset used only occasionally for low-level intelligence tasks. A type of support asset.

Anonymous asked : How are operational aliases selected for Case Officers to use?

Operational aliases are selected by the Case Officer him/herself. We generally chose about five or six, sometimes more, aliases we would like to use and submit them to CIA Hqs to cross check just to make sure the same names have not already chosen by others or have been compromised in some way. Then this is narrowed down to some three or four for use when you arrive at a new Station. Hqs then provides some documentation backstopping for these aliases, sometimes credit cards, drivers licenses, passports, a bit of pocket litter and sometimes a backstopped devised facility cover company. At any time a Case Officer may have three or four aliases he/she can draw on. Whenever the alias is used, the Case Officer must document the use in an operations cable with the details. Some of the aliases you use may be used only to handle certain agents, some to develop targets of opportunity or cold contact meets, etc. Sometimes you may use the alias for a few occasions, then discard it. Other times you may use it for years. It is helpful for the NOC to chose names known to him. For example, I sometimes used as an alias the names of Vietnam War buddies I had known, some killed-in-action as a way of honoring their memory. Some aliases were people whom I greatly respected. I probably went through some 25 or so aliases during my years as a NOC. Pat Porter was my favorite not only because it was the most operationally productive but also because the real Pat Porter is still one of my favorite people in the world. Thanks for the question. It was nice to travel down memory lane.