Karel František Köcher, usually referred simply as Karel Köcher, sometimes written as Karl Koecher (born 21 September 1934) is a Czechoslovak mole known to have penetrated the CIA during the Cold War.
Early life
Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, his father was a Viennese-born Czech and his mother Irena, a Slovak Jew. and the Czechoslovak intelligence service in 1962 using the codename Pedro.
Czechoslovakia State Security (StB) career
Koecher claimed that constant harassment from the Czechoslovakia State Security (StB) due to his history of anti-state and anti-social behavior, ruined his different careers and in order to end the harassment, he decided to join the StB. With the help of a friend within the StB and his language skills, he was recruited into the intelligence service.
;Immigration to the United States
In 1965 he and his wife, Hana Koecher (the daughter of a Communist Party official),
;CIA work
With the purge of his superiors at the StB during the aftermath of the 1968 Soviet Union led invasion of Czechoslovakia, he found himself out of touch with the service and approached the FBI instead in an attempt to defect and use his knowledge against the Soviets but they were not interested.
He quickly became one of the USSR's best sources of information, allowing them to mount an effective defense against CIA covert actions. He translated documents from a key CIA asset in Moscow, Ogorodnik.