There’s an obvious advantage of having official cover- if the CIA case
officer is caught spying, he/she has the benefit of diplomatic protection and,
at the worst, would be publicly outed and sent home in disgrace.
Some
CIA operatives work under non-official cover and are called “NOCs”. They work
abroad without diplomatic protection, pretending to work for some commercial
enterprise, either for a real company or a fake front entity. Having no
official ties to the U.S. government, NOCs rely heavily on their deep cover
story, or legend, to avoid getting caught. In the world of espionage, “cover” refers to the
amalgam of lies and props, from false names to phony front companies, that
disguise a CIA operative’s true identity and purpose.
It’s
hard to imagine what it would be like to be a CIA NOC working in an unfriendly
foreign country without diplomatic immunity, having no "safety net".
The threat of being captured looms constantly, for if caught, they are charged as
spies committing espionage and receive severe criminal punishments, up to and
including execution. That is why they are well trained to deny any connection
with their government, thus preserving what’s called “plausible deniability”.
Unfortunately, it also denies them any hope of diplomatic legal assistance – or
official acknowledgment of their service.
Unfortunately, many of the operatives memorialized without names or
dates of service on the CIA Memorial Wall were NOCs who were killed or executed
in a foreign country. Most captured NOCs have, thank goodness, been sent back
to the U.S. through prisoner exchanges, called “spy swaps”.
A prime
example of a CIA NOC being outed is Valerie Plame. Under the President George
W. Bush administration, her undercover status was purposefully revealed by political
advisor Karl Rove and VP Dick Cheney. After talking with James Marcinkowski, a
former CIA case officer who was a fellow classmate of Valerie Plame’s at The
Farm, the mysterious CIA training camp, I wrote the article Karl
Rove and Dick Cheney made all Americans ‘Fair Game’. . Marcinkowski
revealed the nature of Plame’s exceedingly deep cover. He told me that Plame’s
cover was a vast mosaic of lies and props, like a puzzle that’s nearly
impossible for enemy intelligence to put together, with each piece important to
protect because, as he put it to me, “You don’t know which pieces the bad guys
are missing.” Then, Rove and Cheney, intentionally revealed to the news media
that she was an undercover NOC.
In the MISSION OF VENGEANCE spy thriller, one of CIA spymaster Corey Pearson’s counterintelligence team has a most unusual deep cover. Here’s a snippet:
Snippet:
“How did team eleven get here so fast?”
“They were right next door, moored off Cap-Haiten,
Haiti, a half-day’s sail away. Arrived here in the Dominican Republic an hour
ago and docked in the Ocean World Adventure Park marina and rented a Land
Rover.”
Agent
Sweeney sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, sir, I like my assignment as leader of
DR-5, but you’ve got to admit their cover story is the ultimate, one any CIA
operative would die for.”
Corey
took swig from a bottle of Santo Domingo Catalina beer that filled half the
refrigerator. Morrison liked to keep his case officers contented. The slight
touch of banana tasted good. “No one would argue with you. They assume the
perfect cover, sailing the Caribbean on a fifty-foot yacht while masquerading
as spoiled rich kids, scuba diving and partying everywhere they go. Who would
imagine they move CIA operational gear, weapons, and undercover agents to wherever
needed?”
“And
to kill when necessary. I heard about the Penumbra Database recovery they
assisted you with at the mansion on Abaco.”
Corey
took a large gulp of Catalina while considering the bullet scars in his leg and
forearm, knife scar in his upper back and scrap of metal in his knee that
resulted from fifteen years of service as a CIA NOC. “Well, Abaco’s another
story. At times, there’s experiences we’d like to forget.”
End of Snippet
Lastly, this video US: CIA claims to be losing troubling number of agents reveals the critical importance for CIA operatives to maintain their deep cover fake identities. Last year, the CIA sent a top-secret message to its global network of stations around the world that said a “concerning number of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the U.S. have been captured, killed or compromised”.
Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and enjoys writing about the U.S. Intelligence Community in his Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster series. Read his newest spy thriller The Shadow War, episode by episode, as he writes it in the new Kindle Vella program.
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