6.4.3
Recruitment through Compromise
Recruitment can be done through personal relationships, fromcasual sex and blackmailtofriendship or romance
6.4.4
Recruitment through Ego
Personnel in sensitive positions, who have difficulty get- ting along with peers, may become risks for being com- promised with an approach based on ego. William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA Watch Cen- ter, sold, for a small sum, the critical operations man- ual on theKH-11reconnaissance satellite. To an inter- viewer, Kampiles suggested that if someone had noted his “problem”—constant conflicts with supervisors and co-workers—and brought in outside counseling, he might not have stolen the KH-11 manual.[5]
6.5 Recruit Types
6.5.1
Mole
Other than the dangled moles described above, moles start out as loyal to their own country A. They may or may not be a trained intelligence officer.
Note that some intelligence professionals reserve the term mole to refer to enemy personnel that personally know important things about enemy intelligence operations, technology, or military plans. A person such as a clerk or courier (e.g., Jack Dunlap, who photographed many documents but was not really in a position to explore en- emy thinking), is more generically an asset. To be clear, all moles are assets, but not all assets are moles.
Another special case is a “deep cover” or “sleeper” mole, who may enter a service, possibly at a young age, but def- initely not reporting or doing anything that would attract suspicion, until reaching a senior position.Kim Philbyis an example of an agent actively recruited by the British Secret Intelligence Servicewhile he was already commit- ted to Communism. Philby, at first, concentrated on do- ing a good job for the British, so he could rise in trust and authority .[10]Philby was motivated by ideology before he joined SIS.
Defector
An individual may want to leave their service at once, perhaps from high-level disgust, or low-level risk of hav- ing been discovered in financial irregularities and is just ahead of arrest. Even so, the defector certainly brings knowledge with him, and may be able to bring documents or other materials of value.
Starts in A
Leaves and goes to B
Philip Ageeis an example of a US CIA officer who came to the belief that he was working on behalf of an ideology he had come to hate. Eventually, he resigned, and clan- destinely went toCuba, telling their intelligence service everything he knew, with the stated goal[11]of damaging the CIA. Agee claims the CIA was satisfied with his work and did not want him to leave, although the author, John Barrow, claims that he was close to being discharged for improper personal conduct .[12]
Soviet, and now Russian, doctrine has some interesting insights that might well be useful to the West. For exam- ple, rather than use the term “defector”, which has a neg- ative connotation, they use the Russian word dobrozhela-
tel, “well-wisher,” as used here virtually the equivalent of
“walk-in.” This term has a positive connotation, and may reflect how the service views such people, as described byIvan Serov,[13]former chief ofGRU(Soviet military intelligence)
While the term “well-wisher” may be positive, in Serov’s view, he does not assume a well-wisher has value to offer. The majority actually turn out to be offering material of no significant value. The first task is to determine if they are random sympathizers who fail to understand the sub- ject they propose to discuss, or are active provocations being run by foreign counterintelligence.
Provocateurs obtain some value if they can simply iden- tify the intelligence officers in an embassy, so the initial interviews are, unless there is a strong reason to the con- trary, conducted by low-level staff. Serov points out that even if some walk-ins have no material of value, “Some are ideologically close to us and genuinely and unselfishly anxious to help us; some are in sympathy with the Soviet Union but want at the same time to supplement their in- come; and some, though not in accord with our ideas and views, are still ready to collaborate honestly with us for financial reasons.” A genuine sympathizer without use- ful material still may become useful as an access agent, courier, or support agent.
Other walk-ins simply are trying to get money, either for nonsense information or for real information with which they have been entrusted. Physical walk-ins are not the only kind of volunteer “well-wisher,” who may commu- nicate through the mail, by telephone, or direct contact. If, for example, contact is made with someone who re- ally is an intelligence officer, there is immediate reason to believe the person does have intelligence contacts— but further investigation is necessary to see if they are real or if they areprovocateurs from counterintelligence. A provocateur can be from the local agency, or even from a third country false-flag provocation.
“Persons wanting to make money usually produce a large quantity of documents and talk much and willingly about themselves, trying to make a favorable impression. Ex- tortioners and blackmailers usually act impudent, making
20 CHAPTER 6. CLANDESTINE HUMINT
their offer in the form of an ultimatum and even resorting to open threats.”
Defector in place
Another method is to directly recruit an intelligence of- ficer (or terrorist member) from within the ranks of the adversary service (terrorist group) and having that officer (terrorist) maintain their normal duties while spying on their parent service (organization); this is also referred to as recruiting an “agent” or defector in place.[14]
Starts in A
Stays working in A but reporting to B
As mentioned, Oleg Penkovsky was a key US-British agent, apparently detected through Soviet counterintel- ligence work. Adolf Tolkachev, an electronic engineer working on Soviet radar, was another defector in place for the US, who was exposed by the CIA defector,Edward Lee Howard, who fled to the KGB before being arrested. Penkovsky and Tolkachev, both motivated by ideology, were executed by the Soviets.
To give a sense of the “infinity of mirrors” involved in agent work, Howard was exposed by an apparent So- viet walk-in defector,Vitaly Yurchenko, who walked into the US Embassy in Rome and defected to the United States. While Yurchenko also identified Ronald Pel- ton as a Soviet defector-in-place working in the NSA, Yurchenko himself re-defected back to the USSR within a few months. It is possible that Yurchenko was acting as adouble agent, sent by the Soviets to sacrifice less impor- tant Soviet assets in order to protect the more important CIA defectors in place, e.g.Aldrich Ames.
False Flag Penetrator
A special case of a mole is afalse flagrecruitment of a penetrator:
Starts in C
Believes being recruited by A
Actually is recruited by B and sends false infor- mation to C
False flag recruitments, admittedly for covert action rather than pure HUMINT, were reported[15] as a tech- nique used byEdwin P. Wilson, who left CIA in 1971, and then went to work for a Navy HUMINT unit, Task Force 157 until 1976, when he went private.[16]During his time working for CIA, he was both officially and un- officially involved in arms sales. “His assignments some- times required him to establish and use “front” compa- nies to gain access to information and to support CIA op- erations here and abroad commercially.”[16] Three men,
found dead under mysterious circumstances, had believed they had been recruited by Wilson, “under the pretense that he was still a CIA executive.” According to Epstein, “Wilson maintained a close association with two of the agency’s top executives-Thomas G. Clines, the director of training for the clandestine services, and Theodore G. Shackley, who held the No. 2 position in the espionage branch. Both of these men sat in on meetings that Wil- son held with his operatives and weapon suppliers and, by doing so, helped further the illusion that his activities had the sanction of the CIA— an illusion crucial to keeping his false flag attractive.”[15]Wilson was involved in then- banned arms sales to Libya, and it is unclear who actually sponsored these sales.
He was in Libya in 1982, but came to the Dominican Re- public in 1982, where he was arrested for illegal arms sales, and sentenced, in 1984, to 52 years in prison. He was 55 years old at the time.
Continuing Freedom of Information Act and other re- search by his attorney caused a federal judge to throw out the conviction,[16] on the basis that prosecutors “de- liberately deceived the court”, in the words of the judge, “America will not defeat Libyan terrorism by double- crossing a part-time, informal government agent.”
6.5.2 Double Agent
The first thing to consider about a double agent is that he is, at least minimally, a trained intelligence asset. He may not be a full case officer of the other side, but he may, at least, have been an agent of theirs. They had some rea- son to trust him. Like all other intelligence operations, double agent cases are run to protect and enhance the na- tional security. They serve this purpose principally by providing current counterintelligence about hostile intel- ligence and security services and about clandestine sub- versive activities. The service and officer considering a double agent possibility must weigh net national advan- tage thoughtfully, never forgetting that a double agent is, in effect, a condoned channel of communication with the enemy .[17]
Before even considering double agent operations, a ser- vice has to consider its own resources. Managing that agent will take skill and sophistication, both at the lo- cal/case officer and central levels. Complexity goes up astronomically when the service cannot put physical con- trols on its doubles, as did theDouble Cross Systemin WWII. In theDouble Cross System, the double agents were motivated by coercion: they knew they would be ex- ecuted if they did not cooperate. Few of them were highly trained intelligence officers, but opportunists to start. For predictive purposes the most important clue imbed- ded in the origins of an operation is the agent’s original or primary affiliation, whether it was formed voluntarily or not, the length of its duration, and its intensity. The effects of years of clandestine association with the adver-
6.5. RECRUIT TYPES 21
sary are deep and subtle; the Service B case officer work- ing with a double agent of service A is characterized by an ethnicity or religion may find those bonds run deep, even if the agent hates the government of A. The service B officer may care deeply for the double.
Another result of lengthy prior clandestine service is that the agent may be hard to control in most operations the case officer’s superior training and experience give him so decided an edge over the agent that recognition of this superiority makes the agent more tractable. But add to the fact that the experienced double agent may have been in the business longer than his U.S. control his further ad- vantage in having gained a first-hand comparative knowl- edge of the workings of at least two disparate services, and it is obvious that the case officer’s margin of superi- ority diminishes, vanishes, or even is reversed.
One facet of the efforts to control a double agent opera- tion is to ensure that the double agent is protected from discovery by the parent intelligence service; this is espe- cially true in circumstances where the double agent is a defector-in-place.
Double agent operations must be carefully planned, exe- cuted, and above all,reported. One of the problems with double agent operations in the US, run by theFBI, is that the FBI culture has been very decentralized to the field office level. This is, perhaps, an overreaction to the ex- tremely centralized culture under J. Edgar Hoover. Prior to 9/11, information in one field office, which might re- veal problems in a HUMINT operation, is not necessarily shared with other offices. FBI Director Robert Mueller cited the changes since 9/11: “We then centralized co- ordination of our counterterrorism program. Unlike be- fore, when investigations were managed primarily by in- dividual field offices, the Counterterrorism Division at Headquarters now has the authority and the responsibil- ity to direct and coordinate counterterrorism investiga- tions throughout the country. This fundamental change has improved our ability to coordinate our operations here and abroad, and it has clearly established accountability at Headquarters for the development and success of our Counterterrorism Program.”[18]
“The amount of detail and administrative backstopping seems unbearable at times in such matters. But since pen- etrations are always in short supply, and defectors can tell less and less of what we need to know as time goes on, be- cause of their cut-off dates, double agents will continue to be part of the scene .[19]"
Services functioning abroad-and particularly those oper- ating in areas where the police powers are in neutral or hostile hands—need professional subtlety as well. The agent handlers must have full knowledge of [the agent’s] past (and especially of any prior intelligence associa- tions), a solid grasp of his behavior pattern (both as an individual and as a member of a national grouping), and rapport in the relationship with him.[17] Case officers must know the agent’s area and have a nuanced under-
standing of his language; this is an extremely unwise situ- ation for using interpreters, since the case officer needs to sense the emotional content of the agent’s communication and match it with the details of the information flowing in both directions. Depending on whether the operation is being run in one’s own country, an allied country, or hos- tile territory, the case officer needs to know the relevant laws. Even in friendly territory, the case officer needs both liaison with, and knowledge of, the routine law en- forcement and security units in the area, so the operation is not blown because an ordinary policeman gets suspi- cious and brings the agent in for questioning.
If at all possible, the service running the double agent have complete control of communications, which, in practice, need to be by electronic means or dead drop. Meetings between the double and his Service A handler are extremely risky. Even text communication can have patterns of grammar or word choice, known to the agent and his original service, that can hide a warning of cap- ture, by the use of a seemingly ordinary word. Some con- trolling services may paraphrase the double’s text to hide such warnings, but run into the possibility of being de- tected by sophisticated analysis of the double’s normal choice of words.
Basic Double agent Starts in A Recruited by B
Defects and tells B all he knows (defector) operates in place (Agentdoubled in place) and continues to tell B about A
Redoubled Agent
A service discovering an adversary agent, who entered one’s own service either as a penetrator or an asset in place may offer him employment as a double. His agreement, obtained under open or implied duress, is unlikely, how- ever, to be accompanied by a genuine switch of loyalties. The so-called redoubled agent whose duplicity in dou- bling for another service has been detected by his original sponsor and who has been persuaded to reverse his affec- tions again -also belongs to this dubious class. Many de- tected and doubled agents degenerate into what are some- times called “piston agents” or “mailmen,” who change their attitudes with their visas as they shunt from side to side.[17]
Operations based on them are little more than unautho- rized liaison with the enemy, and usually time-wasting exercises in futility. A notable exception is the detected and unwillingly doubled agent who is relieved to be found out in his enforced service to the adversary.[17]
22 CHAPTER 6. CLANDESTINE HUMINT
False flag double agent Starts in A
Assigned to C
B creates a situation where agent believes he is talking to C, when actually receiving B disin- formation
Active provocateur
There can be active and passive provocation agents. A double agent may serve as a means through which a provocation can be mounted against a person, an orga- nization, an intelligence or security service, or any af- filiated group to induce action to its own disadvantage. The provocation might be aimed at identifying members of the other service, at diverting it to less important ob- jectives, at tying up or wasting its assets and facilities, at sowing dissension within its ranks, at inserting false data into its files to mislead it, at building up in it a tainted file for a specific purpose, at forcing it to surface an activity it wanted to keep hidden, or at bringing public discredit on it, making it look like an organization of idiots. The Soviets and some of the Satellite services, the Poles in particular, are extremely adept in the art of conspiratorial provocation. All kinds of mechanisms have been used to mount provocation operations; the double agent is only one of them.[17]
An active provocateur is sent by Service A to Service B to tell B that he works’ for A but wants to switch sides. Or he may be a talk-in rather than a walk-in. In any event, the significant information that he is withholding, in com- pliance with A’s orders, is the fact that his offer is being made at A’s instigation. He is also very likely to con- ceal one channel of communication with A-for example, a second secret writing system. Such “side-commo” en- ables A to keep in full touch while sending through the divulged communications channel only messages meant for adversary eyes. The provocateur may also conceal his true sponsor, claiming for example (and truthfully) to rep- resent an A1 service (allied with A) whereas his actual control is the A-a fact which the Soviets conceal from the Satellite as carefully as from us.[17]
Starts in A and is actually loyal to A
Goes to B, says he works for A, but wants to switch sides. Gives B access to his communi- cations channel with A (channel Y)
Keeps second communications channel, X with A, about which B knows nothing
Reports operational techniques of B to A via X
Provides disinformation from A, via X, which he disseminates to B
(A may also send disinformation di- rectly through Y, since B should as- sume A doesn't know line of com- munication Y is compromised)
Passive provocateur
Passive provocations are variants involving false-flag re- cruiting.
In Country C, Service A surveys the intelligence ter- rain through the eyes of Service B (a species of mirror- reading) and selects those citizens whose access to sources and other qualifications make them most attrac- tive to B. Service A officers, posing as service B officers, recruit the citizens of country C. At some point, service A