Anonymous Asked: Please comment on details and problems associated with official cover positions. Do CIA officers receive training in the covers?

Thanks for your patience and your questions. You have hit upon an area of concern among CIA officers under official cover as well as those government agencies that provide the cover position to us. Official Cover if you have read back to earlier posts in the blog implies that the CIA officer is under the cover of another agency of the US government. This may be any number of agencies such as the Department of State (DOS), Department of Defense (DOD), Departments of Army, Air Force, Navy or some other agency. Perhaps the most sensitive and problematic of these is diplomatic cover provided by the DOS.

Basically there are two levels of cover provided by the DOS, these are integrated cover and non-integrated cover. A CIA officer under integrated DOS cover is, as the name implies, integrated as an employee into the DOS as an Foreign Service Officer (FSO) and is trained as most other real FOSs are trained by the DOS. This level of cover is deep diplomatic cover and is long-term cover. The CIA officer so covered may go his/her entire CIA career under FSO cover and he/she will have real DOS duties to perform as well as CIA work.

Non-integrated cover is a much lighter level of cover and the CIA officer so covered has the grade status of Foreign Service Reserve (FSR). He receives only light cover training and light to no cover duties. Most CIA officers under DOS cover are FSRs since the DOS closely and jealously guards FSO positions. All CIA officers under FSO and FSR covers work out of US diplomatic missions such as embassies and consulates All such officers have diplomatic immunity. It is somewhat of an inside joke that if you are an FSR working in an embassy abroad, then you are CIA; especially if you are in the restricted area of the embassy!

Working in a US embassy is like working and living in a fish bowl! It is a small closed community where everyone knows everyone else’s business. It is fairly easy to guess who is probably CIA. This makes it vitally important for CIA officers to employ discrete security measures and tradecraft to perform their CIA duties under the very noses of other US officials not to mention the host country security services responsible for exposing them.

Other CIA official covers employing DOD and military covers are light level covers providing cover for status. CIA officers so covered are not truly integrated into the cover organization. The CIA basically “creates” a unit and provides the officer with appropriate identification documentation. The unit may be physically located on a US military base with the CIA officers so covered physically working from that facility. Some CIA officers under these covers may also work out of diplomatic missions.

Now some CIA officers under official cover are “declared”. This means that the CIA has told the host country security services that they are CIA officers. Usually these CIA officers are working in liaison with the host country security services against hostile foreign countries, organizations or terrorists. In rare cases a Non-Official Cover CIA officer may be “declared” to a host country security service as well.

You asked for an example of a typical day in the life of an official cover CIA officer. I plan to post on the blog in later months such examples for officers under official cover, non-official cover and also for paramilitary officers.