In the lexicon of espionage, a cooptee is an individual, often an embassy employee, who willingly agrees to collaborate with their country's intelligence agency in an operation, usually for a specific task or mission of lesser importance.
Prevalence globally
Czechoslovakia
Slovakia's National Memory Institute has identified cooptees of the
StB, the secret police of the former
Czechoslovakia, who have attempted to enter public office.
France
In
France, journalists, businesspeople,
aid workers, and others who volunteer as cooptees to assist the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) are called
honorable correspondents.
Libya
In 1996, the
United Kingdom's MI5 recommended that Khalifa Ahmad Balzelya, an employee in the
de facto embassy of
Libya, be declared
persona non grata for acting as a cooptee of the Libyan Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya.
Russia
In 2020, the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that George Papadopoulos "was not a witting cooptee of the Russian intelligence services."
Saudi Arabia
A 2017 U.S. FBI report states that from 1998 until the September 11 attacks,
Omar al-Bayoumi "was paid a monthly stipend as a cooptee of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) via then Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan Alsaud."
Soviet Union
In a 1973 memo describing
HTLINGUAL, a CIA operation which surveilled mail between the United States and the Soviet Union, the agency wrote "Based on
KGB and GRU defector information, it is presumed that the visitor is a KGB agent or cooperating with the KGB, i.e., a cooptee."
