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.

Anonymous asked for further insight on use of elicitation as a tool.

Unfortunately, I have never read any books on elicitation nor have I heard of any. I have had some training in both the military and with the Company on interrogations and, of course, on agent debriefings, but no training was ever given on elicitations. By far, the tool I used most as a NOC was elicitation. So I am sure I would have benefited from some training in this area.

It is always helpful in elicitations to have some prior knowledge of the target before going for the contact, but usually this is not the case So you must make some basic assumptions based on the age, sex, occupation, ethnicity, social customs, etc. and start from ground zero. By far, the cold contact offers to the NOC the most challenge in terms of elicitation. For example as a NOC in a technical fiend of expertise, I used to frequent technical conferences, symposia, educational forums, etc to “troll” for targets of interest. It is good initially just to listen to groups in conversation to pick out your initial target, then develop an occasion to isolate him/her one-on-one at which time you may have only two or three minutes to impress on the target that you are someone of interest to them as well. Here use some basis tried and true “assumptions” based on the above or some other criteria combined with the views you may have heard the target express while listening to the group conversation. I found it useful to introduce a bit of humor to help keep the interaction relaxed. After some interaction at the technical level, which is the reason we are at the technical conference, I then would turn to eliciting personal information about the target to develop a personal basis for future contact.

Double-teaming is also a useful approach to targeting a cold target. In such cases two NOCs not known to be associated by the target isolate the target on two-on-one conversation. One NOC takes the lead while the other acts as reinforcement on the goals of the first NOC. Remember, elicitation only has value so long as the target does not realize what the true goals of the NOC are. The NOC must take care not to raise any suspicion in the target. So questioning must proceed in an order perceived by the target as a natural progression of the conversation.

Assets who have been under development for a period of time are easier elicitation targets than cold contacts. You already have good rapport with the developmental contact and he/she has become accustomed to your interest in them though they are not aware of the real goals of your contact. You can be more aggressive in your elicitation questions in such cases. I once had a target with whom I maintained an elicitation rapport for five years who never had any idea of my intelligence affiliation. He was a prolific producer of intelligence information in his field. He and I had a genuine fondness and respect for each other throughout our association. The Company never felt a need to “recruit” him since he was providing information freely and his motivations and vulnerabilities did not appear to be sufficiently deep to make him want to accept recruitment as an agent. So rather than trying to recruit him and possibly having him turn down the attempt and refuse further contact, we just continued the elicitation contact.

On another occasion another CIA “inside” Case Officer who worked at the US mission in the host country and I, a NOC not associated with the US government, double-teamed a target we both had met separately at the same symposium. We both developed a decent rapport with the target that resulted in several follow on “social” meetings. Comparing our “take” from the elicitations it was clear that the target was holding back information from the inside officer, known as a US government official, while he was more forthcoming with me. A decision was made at the Station for me to take the lead in the development of the target while allowing the inside officer to maintain the contact on a less frequent basis as a back-up to possibly make a recruitment pitch if our development of the case warranted recruitment.

I could go on with hundreds of such elicitation cases and probably find something new and unique to each case. But you are probably interested in commonalities that are transferable to your unique situation. First, keep the target in the dark on your real intentions. Be careful your questioning does not raise suspicion. Find a basis for rapport based on your knowledge of the target, of lacking such knowledge based on assumptions you can safely make about him/her. If possible, watch the target in a group setting first, then isolate in one-on-one contact. Establish the basis for a follow-on meeting based on shared objectives and interests.