Cover (intelligence gathering)

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A cover in foreign, military or police human intelligence or counterintelligence is the ostensible identity and/or role or position in an infiltrated organization assumed by a covert agent during a covert operation.

Official cover

Representative clandestine operations run from diplomatic cover

In espionage, an official cover operative is one who assumes a position in an organization with diplomatic ties to the government for which the operative works such as an embassy or consulate. This provides the agent with official diplomatic immunity, thus protecting them from the steep punishments normally meted out to captured spies. Upon discovery of an official cover agent's secret hostile role, the host nation often declares the agent persona non grata and orders them to leave the country.

Official cover operatives are granted a set of governmental protections, and if caught in the act of espionage, they can request diplomatic protection from their government. In other words, official cover operatives are agents officially recognized by their country.[citation needed]

Non-official cover

In espionage, operatives under non-official cover (NOC) are operatives without official ties to the government for which they work who assume covert roles in organizations.

This is in contrast to an operative with official cover, where they assume a position in their government, such as the

strawman
entities are established in order to provide false identities for agents.

History

Fake birth certificate used by Virginia Hall during the Second World War; it gave her the alias of a Frenchwoman named Marcelle Montagne.

An agent sent to spy on a foreign country might, for instance, work as a businessperson, a worker for a non-profit organization (such as a humanitarian group), or an academic. For example, the

CIA's Ishmael Jones spent nearly two decades as a NOC.[2]

Many of the agents memorialized without names or dates of service on the CIA Memorial Wall are assumed to have been killed or executed in a foreign country while serving as NOC agents. In nations with established and well-developed spy agencies, the majority of captured non-native NOC agents have, however, historically been repatriated through prisoner exchanges for other captured NOCs as a form of gentlemen's agreement.

Some countries have regulations regarding the use of non-official cover: the CIA, for example, has at times been prohibited from disguising agents as members of certain aid organizations, or as members of the clergy.[citation needed]

The degree of sophistication put into non-official cover stories varies considerably. Sometimes, an agent will simply be appointed to a position in a well-established company which can provide the appropriate opportunities.[

front companies can be established in order to provide false identities for agents.[citation needed
]

Examples include

WMD investigations and made public as a result of the Plame affair.[citation needed
]

Examples

Former MI6 officer "Nicholas Anderson" wrote an account of his service in a fictionalized autobiography (as per British law) entitled NOC: Non-Official Cover: British Secret Operations, and two sequels: NOC Twice: More UK Non-Official Cover Operations and NOC Three Times: Knock-On Effect (Last of the Trilogy).[3]

).

Fictional notable examples include

.

See also

References

  1. ^ Shannon, Elaine (February 20, 1995). "Spies for the New Disorder". Time. Archived from the original on January 14, 2009. Retrieved 2008-02-19.
  2. ^ John Weisman (September 7, 2010). "Tripping Over CIA's Bureaucratic Hurdles". Washington Times. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
  3. ^ "Our Kind of Traitor: an interview with former MI6 intelligence officer Nicholas Anderson". historyextra.com. Immediate Media Company. May 11, 2016. Retrieved February 21, 2018.