The “Rino” Case: Our Man in the CIA. How Czechoslovakia’s prime agent network was managed by Soviet Intelligence from 1973 to 1976
The “Rino” Case: Our Man in the CIA. How Czechoslovakia’s prime agent network was managed by Soviet Intelligence from 1973 to 1976

Summary/Abstract: In the mid-1970s the collaboration of the Czechoslovak First FMV Directorate (I. správa FMV) with Karel Koecher (code names “Tulian”, “Pedro”, “Petr”, “Rino”) and his wife Hana (“Hanka”, “Adrid”), a pair of agents sent abroad in September 1965 by the Czechoslovak State Security (StB) with the task of infiltrating the American intelligence apparatus, culminated. In July 1973, less than two years after the suspension of cooperation, the First FMV Directorate resumed contact with Koecher. After finding out that he works at the operational‑technical unit of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), dealing with wiretapping of foreign representations of the communist bloc, the „Rino“ case is connected with the participation of the headquarters of the Soviet First KGB Main Directorate. During his two‑year contract with the Transcription Unit, Koecher handed over the Czechoslovak and Soviet intelligence at secret meetings in Zurich, Geneva, Vienna, during the withdrawal behind the Iron Curtain to the Czechoslovakia and further through his wife, data on several dozen of his collaborators, on the basis of which the First KGB Main Directorate apparently tried to recruit several CIA employees. At the same time, he reported on CIA wiretapping operations in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, especially in Bogota, Beirut, Kabul and Tunis. His information was valued at $ 20,000 by KGB Chairman Y. V. Andropov. The analysis of the agency documentation on the “Rino” and “Adrid” cases made it possible to reconstruct the cooperation of the Czechoslovak and Soviet intelligence both at the central level, through the apparatus of the deputy chief representative of the KGB at FMV ČSSR col. P. J. Nyedosekin, as well as in the USA at the level of residencies in New York. The controversial couple’s collaboration did not end in September 1976, but continued on a low profile into the 1980s before they were finally apprehended by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in late November 1984.

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