What's in a Name? - Case Two

“What's in a name, right? I once ran into a situation where the right name almost busted my cover! On this occasion one of my safehouse keepers was away on an extended leave and I had to pay the rent on his behalf. Not wanting to connect myself in true name, I went to the leasing company in alias, paid the rent in cash on two consecutive months and got receipts in alias from the receptionist. This took all of five minutes each time. Situation over, Right? Well, around two months later I was invited to a cocktail party by an Asian business group where the guests there all had nametags on their lapels. I was attending the party in my true name as representative of my cover company.

“Shortly this young Asian lady came up and addressed me in my operational alias. I had used this alias on many occasions but could not connect her at all. My mind was a blank, so I just did not respond thinking she would become embarrassed and back away. Wrong! She again called me by my alias, this time standing right in front of me. Panic was building as my mind ran through its memory banks trying to recall her. Nothing!

“I then held out my hand for a handshake to get her closer so I could see her name and company on her lapel and introduced myself in true name. She was obviously puzzled! Finally seeing the name of her company I realized her predicament! She was the receptionist I had paid. I then explained that I had paid the rent for a friend of the apartment’s occupant who could not do so himself and had the receipts made out in his name since it was his responsibility to pay in the absence of the apartment’s occupant. I am sure she was confused trying to follow this but she accepted the explanation. Embarrassing situation over”!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Agent Meeting – Case One

We’ve all heard the old saying about “the best laid plans of mice and men......”! Well, it is certainly true of the espionage trade. Regardless of how well you plan an operation or event, something can and often does go wrong. If you keep your cool, remain flexible, use common sense and use your acting ability you can get yourself out of a potentially damaging situation. Here are a few things that have actually happened to me over the years. These stories are only the few approved by the CIA for release in this blog. Just imagine the stories nos so approved. In most cases I have had to hide the country of origin of the stories as well as anything that may potentially expose the identities of the agents involved or the target organizations.

Case One:

“One night in June 1979 I was inside a third floor walkup apartment used as a safehouse. I was in the midst of debriefing an agent in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when all of a sudden there were several loud knocks at the door. I asked in the local native language who was there and a lady responded that she was the landlady and had come to collect the rent. I was perplexed. This was unusual. The safehouse keeper, a young American student, was supposed to keep the rent paid in advance. A landlord would not come knocking at the door in the middle of the night demanding rent unless there was a problem, a serious problem. I had to keep the landlady from coming inside!

“My mind began to race with panic and my heart was pounding even faster. What to do?!! I quickly placed the agent under the bed and stripped off my pants and shirt down to my underwear and messed up my hair like I had just awakened from a deep sleep. I then opened the door just far enough so the landlady could see my attire, or rather lack thereof! She responded as I had hoped, stepping back away from the door and turning her head to the side not looking directly at me. As expected she was deeply embarrassed.

I explained that I was the occupant’s (safehouse keeper’s) friend from out of town and that I used his place on infrequent visits. She explained that the occupant was two months behind on the rent, that she had not seen him during the past two months and came over from her apartment across the street when she saw the lights in the apartment on for the first time in nearly two months. She thought the occupant had returned.

“I apologized saying that the occupant had gone to the US on extended vacation but would surely return soon (actually, I did not know what had happened to him). I asked if she wanted me to go ahead and pay the back rent on his behalf. She declined and went back downstairs.

The agent and I immediately aborted the meeting and made arrangements to meet at a local hotel the next week. I was surely not going to use this safehouse again given this type of problem. Quick thinking and a bit of first class acting got me out of a potentially damaging situation. I later learned that the safehouse keeper had become seriously ill with hepatitis and had been hospitalize in the US but failed to notify the landlady”.

Anonymous asked about use of foreign NOC case officers in CIA recruitment

Q. In the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where the local citizenry who may be recruited to be agent of the Company, there seemed to be an expectation of the Company's representative to be "American (caucasian)". In your professional experience, if a NOC case officer is of Asian heritage with command of their native language operating in Asia, would the local citizenry potential agents expect the Company representative to be "American (caucasian)" in order to buy-in to the recruitment? Your thoughts are deeply appreciated.

A. Your observation is correct! Most people regardless of their country would probably expect a CIA case officer who might try to recruit them as an agent to be an “American” and this usually implies a Caucasian. This has been the historical view! Of course, the CIA understands this view and allocates its case officer resources accordingly. When I first entered the ranks of the Company, most case officers, both NOCs as well as “inside” case officers, were Caucasians. But over the years as the demographics of the US population changed, the Company deliberately attempted to adjust its personnel base to be more reflective of the national demographics as a whole. Thus the demographics of the Clandestine Service became more reflective of the national demographics.

At the same time, the Company began to recognize that the linguistic and cultural understanding of case officers of foreign ethnic origins played an important role in its pool of assets. For example, back in the 1950-1960’s the Company ran a program using native Chinese contract employees as debriefers/interrogators. They were so successful that the Company converted many of them to permanent status as case officers that opened the door for more officers of foreign origin to come into the ranks of the Clandestine Service as case officers. I had the honor to work with many of these officers. I had one as my supervisor as a young NOC and later supervised several of these officers when I gained seniority. I learned a great deal about how to recruit, train and handle Chinese agents because of the experienced I gained from them. For a period of several years while assigned to an Asian country, I was supervisor of a “cluster” of NOC case officers that included two ethnic Chinese, one ethnic Japanese, one Cuban, one Korean and two Caucasian American case officers. All were multilingual.

Getting back to your question of using an Asian, let’s just say Chinese, NOC case officer with language ability in a Middle Eastern or Eastern European country. It might be more appropriate to use the ethnic Chinese NOC case officer in a false flag recruitment. That would mean that the target would believe that the NOC officer was an agent for Chinese (either mainland China or Taiwanese) intelligence. For another view, it is far more possible that a NOC case officer would recruit targets as commercially recruited agents who are not witting of any CIA affiliation. So an Asian NOC case officer or an American Caucasian officer, for that matter, would face less security implications should the operation become exposed than an overtly CIA recruitment attempt in the event that the target refuse recruitment and inform his security service of the attempt. If the commercial recruitment is accepted by the target, it is always possible in the future to gradually move the operation into an official CIA relationship with fewer security implications.

Anonymous asked about NOCs working with foreign intelligence liaison services

Q. In your professional experience as a former NOC case officer in the field, have you ever worked with other alliance govt agencies (i.e. MI-6, Mossad, Interpol) on joint effort cases (understanding these cases may be classified and cannot be disclosed)? Your thoughts and insights are greatly appreciated.

A. No, during my NOC career I never worked with a liaison service of another country. I was a true deep cover NOC – an undeclared NOC - working against the country to which I was assigned. True NOCs do not work with liaison services. The Company does, however, use what is called “NOCs of convenience” or declared NOCs to work with the liaison services of certain countries, which I will not name! These declared NOCs are NOCs in name only. Actually, they are inside Case Officers who have special operational experience working with liaison services. The purpose of their NOC status, for example, may be just to hide their true status as CIA officers from the local citizenry or from other hostile intelligence services, not the friendly liaison service itself.

As a NOC officer, however, I did have occasion to work with the FBI on a couple of cases, but even then the FBI officers that I worked with did not know my true name. When we did our “business” I used an operational alias. I am not even sure that I knew their true names.

Don’t Fall in Love

Throughout your career with the CIA you will be told over and over again “Do not fall in love with your agent”. This, of course, is not meant in the literal sense. What this means is for you to keep a safe emotional and psychological buffer between you and the agent. You will be told not to completely trust your agent, not to take all the agent has to say at face value, to develop a respectful sense of doubt about your agent and to always question his motives and intentions.

Now if you are a perfect Case Officer with complete self-control you may be able to do all this with every one of your agents. But few Case Officers are perfect. We are, after all, the product of our own upbringing and environment and CIA training alone cannot change the very nature of a person. Few of us are able to maintain such profound judgment in all cases.

During your career with the CIA there will certainly be some agents with whom you will “fall in love”. Just as some agents may earn your distrust, there will be others who will earn your complete devotion and trust by virtue of the fact that they are risking their lives or at least their freedom by entrusting it to you.

After years of secret meetings with your agents, a bond of mutual dependency will and should develop. How can this sense of trust and mutual dependency not develop? You are dependent on each other for your mutual personal security! You and your agent’s very lives are intimately interwoven. One mistake on your part by a poorly executed brush pass or a sloppy dead drop run or a poorly run Surveillance Detection Route could lead a hostile security service to the very door of the safehouse where you and your agent are huddled in the act of espionage.

As an Official Cover Case Officer you will have diplomatic immunity and all that will happen to you will be expulsion from your host country. As a NOC Case Officer without diplomatic immunity you could be incarcerated for espionage for many years. Your agent, on the other hand, could face life in prison or even the death penalty depending on the country. So to say you should not develop a sense of trust in your agent is absurd! Trust him but also test him, as he will surely be trusting of you. He will have more at risk than you do.

The CIA bureaucracy reinforces in its Case Officers the belief that agents somehow are expendable and this implies that their value as human beings is less than ours as Case Officers of the CIA. But it is precisely this type of arrogance unconsciously and unknowingly practiced by the Case Officer in the handling of their agents that can lead to the downfall of an operation. The CIA’s Inside Officers, in particular, are prone to this problem because they are the closest to the bureaucracy and less able to isolate themselves from the impersonal influences of it.

On the other hand, the NOC Case Officer is more isolated from the bureaucracy, has himself often been the victim of the bureaucracy and is more distrustful of it. Therefore, NOC officers are more likely to find themselves in sympathy with their agents in a common attempt to remain safe in a hostile operating environment where neither have the luxury of protection of the US government. So regardless of your position as inside officer or outside officer, try to treat your agents with the same respect as a human being that you expect for yourself.