Defector
Defector is an intelligence service term for an employee of an intelligence service who physically goes to the side of another service and usually reveals information from his previous service that is to be kept secret.
The respective readiness of an intelligence service to get involved with a defector is very different and is also checked in individual cases. The Soviet secret service KGB , for example, was considered very cautious and suspicious of defectors. Mind US intelligence services even create targeted advertising programs for defectors, such as the operation Redcap of the CIA in the 1950s.
Well-known defectors were:
- William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell , two NSA cryptologists who defected to the Soviet Union in 1960
- Anatoly Michailowitsch Golitsyn (defected 1961)
- Oleg Antonowitsch Gordijewski , fled to the West in 1985 as the highest-ranking public defector of the KGB.
- Hansjoachim Tiedge (constitutional protection officer, defected from the Federal Republic to the GDR in 1985)
- Werner Stiller - in 1979 he fled to the West under spectacular circumstances with numerous secret documents from the GDR espionage department “Headquarters Enlightenment (HVA)” of the GDR State Security.
- Alexander Walterowitsch Litvinenko - he defected from Russia to MI6 in 2003 and became famous for the spectacular circumstances surrounding his death in London.
In the military, defectors are also referred to as deserters - from the point of view of the side that is being abandoned.
literature
- Colin Forbes: The Defector. Heyne Verlag, ISBN 3-453-03286-1
- Helmut Roewer , Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl : Lexicon of the secret services in the 20th century . Herbig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2317-9 .
- Dieter Krüger, Armin Wagner (ed.): Conspiracy as a profession. German intelligence chiefs in the Cold War. Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-287-5 .
- Andreas Kabus: Order Windrose. The military secret service of the GDR. Verlag Neues Leben, 1993, ISBN 3-355-01406-0 .
