cooptee

In the lexicon of espionage, a cooptee is an individual, often an embassy employee, who willingly agrees to collaborate with their country's intelligence agency in an operation, usually for a specific task or mission of lesser importance.{{Cite web |last=Golden |first=Tim |date=2023-04-27 |title=Focus of 9/11 Families' Lawsuit Against Saudi Arabia Turns to a Saudi Student Who May Have Been a Spy |url=https://www.propublica.org/article/sept-11-family-lawsuit-saudi-spy |access-date=2025-01-08 |website=ProPublica |language=en}} Cooptees often have little to no formal intelligence training and sometimes only exchange tasking and information with their handler through a cutout.{{Cite thesis |last=Brown |first=Amy Elizabeth |title=Directed or Diffuse? Chinese Human Intelligence Targeting of US Defense Technology |date=April 17, 2009 |degree=M.A. |publisher=Georgetown University |url=https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553457/brownAmy.pdf?sequence=}} In some authoritarian countries such as East Germany, cooptees can be ordinary civilians who inform on their neighbors and coworkers to their secret police or domestic intelligence agency.{{Cite report |url=https://www.bundesarchiv.de/assets/bundesarchiv/en/Downloads/Network-Reader-engl.pdf |title=The "European Network of Official Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files" |last1=Schiller-Dickhut |first1=Reiner |last2=Rosenthal |first2=Bert |date=2014-02-01 |publisher=Bundesarchiv/Stasi Records Agency |location=Berlin |edition=2nd |language=en |isbn=978-3-942130-98-1}} A cooptee's usefulness may be disproportionate, potentially confusing hostile surveillance in assessing the strength of the organization, acting as a decoy to draw away unwelcome attention from the local security apparatus, or surveying sites suitable for dead drops.{{Cite book |last=West |first=Nigel |author-link=Nigel West |title=Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-8108-5578-6 |language=en}}

Prevalence globally

= Czechoslovakia =

Slovakia's National Memory Institute has identified cooptees of the StB, the secret police of the former Czechoslovakia, who have attempted to enter public office.

= France =

In France, journalists, businesspeople, aid workers, and others who volunteer as cooptees to assist the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) are called honorable correspondents.

= Libya =

In 1996, the United Kingdom's MI5 recommended that Khalifa Ahmad Balzelya, an employee in the de facto embassy of Libya, be declared persona non grata for acting as a cooptee of the Libyan Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya.{{Cite web |title=Libyan Intelligence Service Activity in the UK |url=https://linas.org/mirrors/cryptome.org/2001.11.13/mi5-lis-uk.htm |access-date=2025-01-08 |website=Cryptome |publisher=Mi5}}

= Russia =

In 2020, the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that George Papadopoulos "was not a witting cooptee of the Russian intelligence services."{{Cite web |last1=Carney |first1=Todd |last2=Fry |first2=Samantha |last3=Jurecic |first3=Quinta |last4=Schulz |first4=Jacob |last5=Sewell |first5=Tia |last6=Taylor |first6=Margaret |last7=Wittes |first7=Benjamin |author-link7=Benjamin Wittes |date=2020-08-21 |title=A Collusion Reading Diary: What Did the Senate Intelligence Committee Find? |url=https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/collusion-reading-diary-what-did-senate-intelligence-committee-find |access-date=2025-01-08 |website=Lawfare |language=en}}

= Saudi Arabia =

A 2017 U.S. FBI report states that from 1998 until the September 11 attacks, Omar al-Bayoumi "was paid a monthly stipend as a cooptee of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) via then Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan Alsaud."

= Soviet Union =

In a 1973 memo describing HTLINGUAL, a CIA operation which surveilled mail between the United States and the Soviet Union, the agency wrote "Based on KGB and GRU defector information, it is presumed that the visitor is a KGB agent or cooperating with the KGB, i.e., a cooptee."{{Citation |title=CHAPTER VI Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations |date=2015-03-08 |work=The Reform of FBI Intelligence Operations |pages=133–159 |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400868193-007/html |access-date=2025-01-08 |publisher=Princeton University Press |language=en |doi=10.1515/9781400868193-007 |isbn=978-1-4008-6819-3}}

References

Category:Espionage