Picking Up the Czech

The FBI charges that an ex-CIA translator spied on the U.S.

For someone in a hush-hush occupation, Karl Koecher never seemed very secretive about his work. He would tell acquaintances that he was a CIA employee. And indeed he was, from 1973 to 1977, in Washington and New York City. On a résumé that he assembled earlier this year when he ran for the management board of his ritzy Manhattan apartment building, Koecher described himself as “a consultant on national security matters.” That was true too, after a fashion. According to federal authorities, Koecher did have one client, to whom he told everything he knew about U.S. national security: the Czechoslovak intelligence service. Koecher, 50, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was charged last week with spying for his native Czechoslovakia.

Koecher was arrested with his wife Hana, 40, who is also a Czech turned American, four hours before the couple were to board a flight bound for Zurich. Although federal prosecutors say that Hana worked between 1974 and 1983 as a transatlantic courier for Czechoslovak intelligence, she was taken into custody last week only as a witness to her husband’s alleged crimes. She was not charged, a Justice Department official suggested, because the FBI bungled her arrest. If convicted, Karl Koecher could be sentenced to life in prison.

The Koechers, federal authorities say, were classic moles, emigrants who arrived from Czechoslovakia 19 years ago with the express purpose of infiltrating U.S. intelligence. Karl was allegedly recruited by the Czech agency in 1962, and trained as a spy for two years before being dispatched with his young wife to the U.S. They settled in New York, where Karl, who claims doctorates in physics and philosophy, taught at a local college.

In 1973, a full decade after he is said to have got his marching orders from Czechoslovak officials, Koecher managed to penetrate the CIA. He worked first as a translator for the agency in Washington for two years, then in New York until 1977. Meanwhile Hana took a sales job with a diamond firm. Karl eventually returned to teaching and, friends say, made a great show of his supposed anti-Communist fervor.

The criminal complaint against him cites one specific event: in the spring of 1975, Koecher stole and copied a four-page CIA document marked SECRET, wadded the copy inside an empty cigarette pack, then passed it to another Czech agent, possibly with Hana as the go-between. Among the documents Koecher allegedly pilfered and gave to the Czechs were lists of undercover CIA agents.

During a confrontation with FBI agents the day after Thanksgiving, according to the FBI affidavit, Koecher “voluntarily made and signed a written statement” admitting the theft and cigarette-pack transaction. Officials would not explain why he had confessed or why he was allowed to roam free for the five days before his arrest.

There are other intriguing questions about Koecher’s behavior. He and Hana, who are childless, were planning a new life in Austria before Karl confessed. “We saw them at a farewell dinner in our home,” says one friend. “There was no indication they were apprehensive.” The day before the Koechers’ arrest, they sold their cooperative apartment for more than a quarter of a million dollars. Did they believe the FBI would simply let them take the money and run? The Koechers, says their lawyer, were “doublecrossed” by the FBI. He would not elaborate. –