Cooptee

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.^[1] Cooptees often have little to no formal intelligence training and sometimes only exchange tasking and information with their handler through a cutout.^[2] In some authoritarian countries such as East Germany, cooptees can be ordinary civilians who inform on their neighbors and coworkers to their secret police or domestic intelligence agency.^[3] A cooptee's usefulness may be disproportionate, potentially confusing hostile surveillance in assessing the strength of the organization, acting as a decoy to draw away unwelcome attention from the local security apparatus, or surveying sites suitable for dead drops.^[4]