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.^[1] Cooptees often have little to no formal intelligence training and sometimes only exchange tasking and information with their handler through a cutout.^[2] 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.^[3] 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.^[4]

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.^[3]

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.^[4]

Libya

In 1996, the United Kingdom's Mi5 recommended that an employee in the de facto embassy of Libya, Khalifa Ahmad Balzelya, be declared persona non grata for acting as a cooptee of the Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya.^[5]

Russia

In 2020, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that George Papadopoulos "was not a witting cooptee of the Russian intelligence services.”^[6]

Saudi Arabia

A 2017 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."^[1]

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."^[7]

References

1. Golden, Tim (2023-04-27). "Focus of 9/11 Families' Lawsuit Against Saudi Arabia Turns to a Saudi Student Who May Have Been a Spy". ProPublica. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
2. Brown, Amy Elizabeth (April 17, 2009). Directed or Diffuse? Chinese Human Intelligence Targeting of US Defense Technology (PDF) (M.A. thesis). Georgetown University.
3. Schiller-Dickhut, Reiner; Rosenthal, Bert (2014-02-01). The "European Network of Official Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files" (PDF) (Report) (2nd ed.). Berlin: Bundesarchiv/Stasi Records Agency. ISBN 978-3-942130-98-1.
4. West, Nigel (2006). Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8108-5578-6.
5. "Libyan Intelligence Service Activity in the UK". Cryptome. Mi5. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
6. Carney, Todd; Fry, Samantha; Jurecic, Quinta; Schulz, Jacob; Sewell, Tia; Taylor, Margaret; Wittes, Benjamin (2020-08-21). "A Collusion Reading Diary: What Did the Senate Intelligence Committee Find?". Lawfare. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
7. "CHAPTER VI Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations", The Reform of FBI Intelligence Operations, Princeton University Press, pp. 133–159, 2015-03-08, doi:10.1515/9781400868193-007, ISBN 978-1-4008-6819-3, retrieved 2025-01-08