Clandestine HUMINT Asset Recruiting - Development: Preparation For Actual Recruitment - Compromise During Development

Compromise During Development

Telling one's wife or colleagues about a charming Soviet friend can compromise the entire development. The US is also aware that the Soviet developmental process is, preferably, gradual. "The developmental stage cements the relationship and encourages loyalty to it. The hostile intelligence officer may then, through friendly persuasion, ask for a very innocent and insignificant favor from the candidate and pay him generously for it., thus placing the candidate in a position of obligation. During this stage the future agent becomes accustomed to being asked favors and fulfilling them accurately. The future agent's ambitions, financial and work problems, hobbies, etc., are continuously assessed by an intelligence team to exacerbate weaknesses. The future agent's professional, social, and private personalities are soon stripped away.

It is the goal of the case officer, with appropriate support from his organization, to learn vulnerabilities, build trust, and solve problems for the developmental. These are all preparatory steps to asking, perhaps subtly, the developmental to betray his own side.

Information requests begin innocently, usually asking for public information, but to get the development on the path to betrayal. At first, any requests for documents are for open ones, which the case officer gives some pretext for not himself obtaining. A creative task officer may then ask for a technically restricted, but still fairly innocent document, such as an unclassified telephone directory.

The interaction becomes more sensitive, especially when the case officer asks for something technically classified, but with an explanation that lets the potential recruit rationalize that he is not really betraying any trust. During this time, the case officer is building psychological control. In some cases, it may be possible to get useful information without ever asking the developmental to betray his country. These cases may mean the role of the recruit is not to be as a direct agent, but perhaps as an access or a support agent. The recruit may not even be witting of his relationship to a FIS.

Finally, the relationship will move from clandestine to overt, when the foreign service has significant compromising information on the asset. If the asset had been motivated by money, he will find the tasks given him may become more challenging, but the payments reduce, because he is no longer in a position to negotiate.