Clandestine HUMINT - Support Services - Couriers

Couriers

A courier has no responsibilities other than clandestine communications. Any involvement of the courier in activities that may draw attention from counterintelligence is unwise. For example, if there is a political party, friendship society, or other organization that would be considered favorable to Service B, couriers, under no circumstances, should be identified with them.

Courier work is among those things that consist of hours of boredom punctuated with moments of sheer terror. Keeping a courier, who is not a member of your service and/or has diplomatic cover, is challenging.

Occasionally, it may be practical to transfer a courier to other, more challenging duties. Once that transfer is made, however, the individual should never be reassigned to courier duty, as the probability of that person having become known to counterintelligence is much higher.

There may be occasions where diplomats, or even members of diplomats' families who have diplomatic immunity, may serve as couriers. Their value in the diplomatic service must be weighed against the near certainty that if discovered, they will be expelled as persona non grata.

Drivers, especially those trained to receive car tosses, are a variant of couriers, and to which the same constraints apply. Using persons with diplomatic immunity may be slightly more sensible in the case of drivers, since their cars are usually immune to search. On the other hand, a diplomatic car will have distinctive license plates and may be under surveillance whenever it leaves diplomatic premises. Counterintelligence services may take the risk, given the potential reward, of putting electronic tracking devices on diplomatic vehicles.