Counter-intelligence - Types of Offensive Counterespionage Operations - Double Agent

Double Agent

Before even considering double agent operations, a service has to consider its own resources. Managing that agent will take skill and sophistication, both at the local/case officer and central levels. Complexity goes up astronomically when the service cannot put physical controls on its doubles, as did the Double Cross System in World War II.

From beginning to end, a DA operation must be most carefully planned, executed, and above all, reported. The amount of detail and administrative backstopping seems unbearable at times in such matters. But since penetrations are always in short supply, and defectors can tell less and less of what we need to know as time goes on, because of their cut-off dates, double agents will continue to be part of the scene.

Services functioning abroad—and particularly those operating in areas where the police powers are in neutral or hostile hands—need professional subtlety as well. Case officers must know the agent's area and have a nuanced understanding of his language; this is an extremely unwise situation for using interpreters, since the case officer needs to sense the emotional content of the agent's communication and match it with the details of the information flowing in both directions. Depending on whether the operation is being run in one's own country, an allied country, or hostile territory, the case officer needs to know the relevant laws. Even in friendly territory, the case officer needs both liaison with, and knowledge of, the routine law enforcement and security units in the area, so the operation is not blown because an ordinary policeman gets suspicious and brings the agent in for questioning.

The most preferable situation is that the service running the double agent have complete control of communications. When communications were by Morse code, each operator had a unique rhythm of keying, called a "fist". MASINT techniques of the time recognized individual operators, so it was impossible to substitute a different operator than the agent. The agent also could make deliberate and subtle changes in his keying, to alert his side that he had been turned. While Morse is obsolete, voices are very recognizable and resistant to substitution. Even text communication can have patterns of grammar or word choice, known to the agent and his original service, that can hide a warning of capture.

Full knowledge of past (and especially of any prior intelligence associations), a solid grasp of his behavior pattern (both as an individual and as a member of a national grouping), and rapport in the relationship with him.

The discovery of an adversary intelligence officer who has succeeded in penetrating one’s own organization offers the penetrated intelligence service the possibility of “turning” this officer in order to use him as a “double agent”. The way a double agent case starts deeply affects the operation throughout its life. Almost all of them begin in one of the three ways following:

• Walk-in or talk-in
• Detected and doubled, usually under duress
• Provocation agent

Double agent

Starts in A

Recruited by B

Defects and tells B all he knows (defector)

operates in place (Agent doubled in place) and continues to tell B about A

False flag double agent

Starts in A

Assigned to C

B creates a situation where agent believes he is talking to C, when actually receiving B disinformation

Active penetrator

Starts in A and is actually loyal to A

Goes to B, says he works for A, but wants to switch sides. Gives B access to his communications channel with A

Keeps second communications channel, X with A, about which B knows nothing

Reports operational techniques of B to A via X

Provides disinformation from A to B via X

Passive Provocateur

A does an analysis of C and determines what targets would be attractive to B

A then recruits citizens of C, which A believes will be more loyal to B

The A recruit, a citizen of C, volunteers to B

A can then expose B's penetration of C, hurting B-C relations.

This may be extremely difficult to accomplish, and even if accomplished the real difficulty is maintaining control of this “turned asset”. Controlling an enemy agent who has been turned is a many-faceted and complex exercise that essentially boils down to making certain that the agent’s new-found loyalty remains consistent, which means determining whether the “doubled” agent’s turning is genuine or false. However, this process can be quite convoluted and fraught with uncertainty and suspicion.

Where it concerns terrorist groups, a terrorist who betrays his organization can be thought of and run as a double-agent against the terrorist’s “parent” organization in much the same fashion as an intelligence officer from a foreign intelligence service. Therefore, for sake of ease, wherever double-agents are discussed the methodologies generally apply to activities conducted against terrorist groups as well.

A double agent is a person who engages in clandestine activity for two intelligence or security services (or more in joint operations), who provides information about one or about each to the other, and who wittingly withholds significant information from one on the instructions of the other or is unwittingly manipulated by one so that significant facts are withheld from the adversary. Peddlers, fabricators, and others who work for themselves rather than a service are not double agents because they are not agents. The fact that doubles have an agent relationship with both sides distinguishes them from penetrations, who normally are placed with the target service in a staff or officer capacity.

The unwitting double agent is an extremely rare bird. The manipulative skill required to deceive an agent into thinking that he is serving the adversary when in fact he is damaging its interests is plainly of the highest order.

For predictive purposes the most important clue imbedded in the origins of an operation is the agent's original or primary affiliation, whether it was formed voluntarily or not, the length of its duration, and its intensity. The effects of years of clandestine association with the adversary are deep and subtle; the Service B case officer working with a double agent of service A is characterized by an ethnicity or religion may find those bonds run deep, even if the agent hates the government of A. The service B officer may care deeply for the double.

Another result of lengthy prior clandestine service is that the agent may be hard to control in most operations the case officer's superior training and experience give him so decided an edge over the agent that recognition of this superiority makes the agent more tractable. But add to the fact that the experienced double agent may have been in the business longer than his U.S. control his further advantage in having gained a first-hand comparative knowledge of the workings of at least two disparate services, and it is obvious that the case officer's margin of superiority diminishes, vanishes, or even is reversed.

One facet of the efforts to control a double agent operation is to ensure that the double agent is protected from discovery by the parent intelligence service; this is especially true in circumstances where the double agent is a defector-in-place.

Like all other intelligence operations, double agent cases are run to protect and enhance the national security. They serve this purpose principally by providing current counterintelligence about hostile intelligence and security services and about clandestine subversive activities. The service and officer considering a double agent possibility must weigh net national advantage thoughtfully, never forgetting that a double agent is, in effect, a condoned channel of communication with the enemy.