Karl Koecher

Karel Koecher
Allegiance Czechoslovakia
USSR
Service StB
KGB
Active 1962–1983
Codename(s) Rino[1]
  Turian
  Pedro
Birth name Karel František Koecher
Born (1934-09-21) September 21, 1934
Bratislava, Czechoslovakia
Parents Irena
Spouse Hana Pardemecova
Alma mater Charles University
Indiana University
Columbia University

Karel František Koecher (21 September 1934 in Bratislava) is a mole known to have penetrated the CIA.

Early life

Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, his father was a Viennese-born Czech and his mother Irena, a Slovak Jew.[1] As the son of an Anglophile, Koecher gained his English language skills from an early age attending an English grammar school before the war.[1] Prior to his entry to university, his anti-state activities in his teen years attracted the attention of the security service, the StB, after the Communists took over in Czechoslovakia in 1948.[1] He studied physics and mathematics at Charles University as well as film at the Academy of Performing Arts.[1] After university he tried a few jobs including as a teacher, a reporter for state television, and a radio comedy writer.[1] He became a radio comedy writer and was allegedly frequently scrutinized by the Communist security forces for his satire that mocked the regime (this turned out to be a pre-planned "cover story"). He joined the Communist Party in 1960,[2] and the Czechoslovak intelligence service in 1962.[3] Koecher claims that constant harassment from the StB due to his history of anti-state and anti-social behavior, ruined his different careers and in order to end the harassment, decided to join the StB.[1] With the help of a friend within the StB and his language skills, he was recruited into the intelligence service.[1] In 1963, he married Hanna Pardemecova.[1] His first two years were devoted to training and counter-intelligence work against West Germans in Prague.[1]

Infiltration

Because of his English language skills, Koecher was selected to become a mole in the West. In 1965 he and his wife, Hana Koecher (the daughter of a Communist Party official[4]), seemingly emigrated to the United States via Austria posing as defecting dissidents.[5][1] His language skills and status as a defector aided Koecher in gaining employment at Radio Free Europe and a year long fellowship at Indiana University.[1] He returned to New York in 1967 and he gained a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University,[6][1] and became an American citizen in 1971.[2][7]

With the purge of his superiors at the StB during the aftermath of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he found himself out of touch with the service and approached the FBI instead in an attempt to defect and use his knowledge against the Soviets but they weren't interested.[1] His supply of information to the StB dwindled from 1969 until 1971, but he continued to integrate himself in American society.[1] Taking a CIA prescreening employment exam in November 1972, he passed and was employed.[1] After several years as a sleeper he was hired by the CIA as a translator/analyst in 1973[5] due to his fake dissident credentials and skills in a number of Eastern European languages. He was given high level security clearance and given the job of translating and analyzing documents handed over by CIA agents and transcripts of wiretaps and bugs. He quickly became one of the USSR's best sources of information, allowing them to mount an effective defense against CIA covert actions. He is believed to have betrayed Aleksandr Dmitrievich Ogorodnik, a Soviet diplomat who spied for the CIA.[8]

In September 1976, however, Koecher was summoned back to Prague to a meeting with KGB head of counter-intelligence, Oleg Kalugin.[1] Kalugin claims that after interrogating Koecher, Kalugin argued that he was in fact a double agent and his information could not be trusted.[1] The StB then ordered Koecher to resign from the CIA or face death.[1] After seven days of interrogation, Koecher returned to New York and retired, leaving the CIA for a post in academia teaching philosophy.[1] By 1982, Koecher was rehabilitated by the KGB after Kalugin was demoted from chief of foreign counterintelligence and Koecher's past intelligence had been reassessed.[1] In 1980s, with growing tensions due to the election of Ronald Reagan, Koecher was one of a number of agents reactivated, when he was reproached by the StB intelligence officer Jan Fila in New York.[1] He returned to work part-time for the CIA. Although the FBI asserts that they had been monitoring and surveilling Koecher and his wife from the early 1980s, it was at least three years before he was arrested.[1]

To this day, neither the FBI nor the CIA will reveal what alerted them to Koecher's treachery. Koecher and other KGB officials claim it was Kalugin.[9] Another suggestion by a CIA historian, is that it was the StB intelligence officer, Jan Fila, who betrayed him with the latter disappearing in December 1989, a month after the Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution.[1]

Apprehension

The FBI apprehended Koecher on 27 November 1984, outside the Barbizon Plaza Hotel, and brought him and, soon afterwards, his wife in for several days of questioning.[4][1] Finally, Koecher agreed to become a double agent working for the Americans, provided that they agreed to grant him immunity from prosecution.[1] This was done and Koecher attempted to convince the FBI that he was cooperating.[1]

However, it was then decided that Koecher was not reliable enough to be a double agent and was likely to defect and return to Czechoslovakia. On November 27, 1984, the day after the couple sold their apartment[10] and hours before they were scheduled to fly to Switzerland, Koecher and his wife were arrested in New York City. Koecher was held on espionage charges and Hana Koecher as a material witness.[10] The arrest of the two agents was released to the media.[5] U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani led the case.[10]

It soon emerged that the FBI had badly blundered. Koecher's confession was given only after his interrogators promised him immunity as a ruse, and was thus invalid.[4][11] His wife had been denied access to a lawyer despite frequent requests for one,[10] which reportedly caused Justice Department officials to refuse to charge her.[12] She refused to testify against Karl, asserting spousal privilege, though prosecutors argued this did not apply given the two had been partners in crime.[13] With little concrete evidence, it appeared that Koecher had a good chance of being acquitted.[14]

Koecher was the victim of an attempted stabbing by an unnamed inmate while in prison.[1] The inmate supposedly lunged at Koecher with a pair of scissors in an attack Koecher said was foiled by a Hells Angels member, Sandy Alexander.[1] Koecher claims the inmate was moved to another prison, and could not be located years later, which he says is proof of an attempt by US intelligence agencies to assassinate him.[15]

Koecher, worrying about his own safety, sent through his lawyer a request to the KGB chairman that he be part of a prisoner exchange with the Soviets.[1] KGB chairman Kryuchkov agreed, and so did the prosecutor's office, concerned about the embarrassing chance of an acquittal. Koecher pleaded guilty on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage for Czechoslovakia,[13] and was sentenced to life in prison,[14] which was reduced to time served provided he left the US and never returned.[16] On February 11, 1986, Koecher and his wife were part of a nine-person exchange at Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, of which the most prominent member was noted dissident Anatoly Shcharansky.[14]

Return

Koecher returned to Czechoslovakia to a hero's welcome and was given a house and a Volvo car as a reward for his services.[17] He was also given a job at the Prague Institute for Economic Forecasting,[18] where many future politicians worked; Václav Klaus and Miloš Zeman the future Czech presidents were among them. Some U. S. journalists stated they had seen Koecher issuing orders at the Laterna Magika theatre during the early days of the Velvet Revolution (1989). Koecher denied any involvement in the Velvet Revolution, saying that journalists must have mixed him up with the then unknown Václav Klaus, who had a similar appearance.[19]

As revealed in Ronald Kessler’s book The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, Kessler and his wife Pamela interviewed Koecher and his wife Hana for five days after their return to Prague. The book says Koecher introduced Hana, a sexy blonde with enormous blue eyes, to swinging. She liked it so much that she became a far more avid swinger than he was. As Hana served dinner on the deck of their home, Kessler asked Koecher how he felt about Ogorodnik’s death. “I’m deeply sorry about that,” Koecher told Kessler. “But the people who did him in were the CIA and he himself. They recruited him in such a clumsy manner . . .”[20]

The fall of communism has seen Koecher fall from prominence, with the exception of his alleged involvement in a scheme run by self-professed former CIA operatives to defraud Mohammed Al-Fayed with false documents that would support his conspiracy theories about the death of Princess Diana.[18][21][22] He continues to live in the Czech Republic in relative obscurity. His wife, Hana Koecher, made the headlines in the Czech Republic, when she was fired from her new job as a translator for the British Embassy in Prague. The British were completely unaware of her espionage past until a Czech newspaper reporter notified them. A suit she filed against a media organisation for revealing her past as a spy, damaging her business, was rejected.[17][23]

An episode of the 2004 Canadian documentary series Betrayal! covered the Koecher case.[24]

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Cunningham, Benjamin (30 June 2016). "How a Czech 'super-spy' infiltrated CIA". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 July 2016.
  2. 1 2 Pamela Kessler (2005). Undercover Washington: where famous spies lived, worked, and loved. Capital Books. p. 27. ISBN 1-931868-97-2.
  3. ↑ "Picking Up the Czech", Time Magazine, 10 December 1984
  4. 1 2 3 "Accused spy couple awaiting trial". The Day (New London). N.Y. Times News Service. 13 January 1985. p. D-10.
  5. 1 2 3 "Lawyer calls accused spy double agent". Eugene Register-Guard. 30 November 1984.
  6. ↑ "Czech spy to plead innocent". Prescott Daily Courier. New York. UPI. 29 November 1984. p. 2A.
  7. ↑ "ALERT". www.dhra.mil. Retrieved 2016-06-18.
  8. ↑ Cleveland C. Cram (October 1993), Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature, 1977-92 (PDF), The Center for the Study of Intelligence, p. 58
  9. ↑ "Newyorske listy". www.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2016-06-18.
  10. 1 2 3 4 "Wife of suspected spy not charged". The Pittsburgh Press. 29 November 1984. p. A15.
  11. ↑ Pete Earley (1997). Confessions of a spy:the real story of Aldrich Ames. Putnam Adult. p. 73. ISBN 0-399-14188-X. his statement was inadmissible in court because the two FBI agents and the CIA officer who had interrogated him made promises that they never intended to keep.
  12. ↑ Ronald Ostrow (Los Angeles Times) (8 February 1986). "U.S. includes Czech couple in spy swap". Anchorage Daily News. p. a-8.
  13. 1 2 Aaron Epstein (11 February 1986). "Czech Infiltrator Part Of Planned Spy Swap, A Justice Official Says". Philadelphia Inquirer.
  14. 1 2 3 "East, West exchange spies, Shcharansky". Houston Chronicle. 11 February 1986. Archived from the original on 5 June 2011.
  15. ↑ "Radio Prague - Köcher, espion tchécoslovaque à la CIA, échangé par les Soviétiques contre Sharansky (2e partie)". www.radio.cz. Retrieved 2016-06-18.
  16. ↑ "AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes". www.afio.com. Retrieved 2016-06-18.
  17. 1 2 Jeff Stein (8 July 2010). "Past Russian spies have found post-swap life gets a bit sticky". The Washington Post.
  18. 1 2 Jan Culik (2 August 1999), "Princess Diana, Al Fayed, the CIA and a Czech Spook", Central Europe Review
  19. ↑ Česká televize, 15. 6. 2007 Uvolněte se, prosím
  20. ↑ "Revealing the CIA's Secrets". Newsmax. Retrieved 2016-06-18.
  21. ↑ Anjali Mody (24 July 1999). "Dodi Fayed takes scriptwriters of Di's `assassination' to court". Indian Express.
  22. ↑ Peter Koenig (3 May 1998). "Al Fayed and the CIA conman". The Independent. London.
  23. ↑ "A WOMAN TRANSLATOR'S DARK PAST - Intelligence Online". www.intelligenceonline.com. Retrieved 2016-06-18.
  24. ↑ "Betrayal! - Associated Producers Ltd.". www.apltd.ca. Retrieved 2016-06-18.

See also

Bibliography

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