THE SWINGING SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706430001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 1, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PARE /3?z _
STAT
February 1987
14 e was a tall, lanky man of dour demeanor, the kind
with a chip on his shoulder. According to the FBI
agents who bugged his apartment, he could fly into
a rage if a coffee cup was misplaced or the window
blinds were adjusted to the wrong height.
His wife was a petite blonde who easily warmed to people.
She dressed fashionably, and although it was her husband who
ad the university degrees, she seemed the smarter of the two.
STAT When the FBI first accused them of spying in Washington on
behalf of the Czech Intelligence Service, he began confessing.
Wary, she didn't cooperate.
They were Kariad Hana KKoecherj husband-and-wife spy
eam who hone large yl unnoticed, even though intelli-
ence officials say Karl was the first Eastern European spy
ever to infiltrate the CIA. Their names are known to few
Americans, even though the Koechers were a crucial part of
last February's trade that allowed dissident Anatoly Shcha-
ransky to leave the Soviet Union.
While other spy cases-and certainly the freeing of Shcha-
ransky-garnered headlines over the past year, the Koechers
departed the United States with little media fanfare. Although
they were arrested in November of 1984, there was no trial
before they left the country, and the circumstances of their
lives are little known outside intelligence circles.
But The Washingtonian has learned that the Koechers were not
your ordinary spies. First of all, they were very successful; Karl
Koecher's penetration of the CIA demonstrates that. When he
was a mole in the CIA, Karl, with the help of his wife, passed
along to Eastern European intelligence agencies the names of
He Was a Czech IntelligeneeAgent Who Penetrated the
CIA. His Wife ft a Blond Beauty Who Shared His
Enthuszasynfor WashingtonSezParties. TheirStay
Ended with the Swap That Brought Sovietlhmdent
AnatolySheharansky to the US.
CIA "assets" in foreign countries, inteuigence aocuments, and
the names of CIA agents abroad. In at least one case, intelligence
officials fear that information provided by the Koechers led to the
death of a Soviet mole funneling the CIA information from inside
the Soviet foreign ministry in Moscow.
Then there was the Koechers' methodology. Covert agents
everywhere try to make friends with the natives in order to
gather information. And occasionally sex is used as a prelude
to blackmail or to gain the trust of a source.
But Karl and Hana Koecher gave the game a new twist.
While Karl Koecher worked for the CIA, in both Washington
and New York, he and his wife were avid sexual swingers,
frequenting clubs and parties here where couples swapped
mates for sex. And among the Koechers' fellow swingers
were other senior CIA employees.
Sex and Spies In the Suburbs
Twice a week between the fall of 1974 and the summer of
1976, about 50 upper-middle-class professional men and
women met in a rented Fairfax house on Union Mill Road to
trade partners for sex. Called the Virginia In-Place, the
swingers' club was run by the owner of a suburban Virginia
real estate company.
Among the several hundred members, according to sources
who were present twelve years ago, were a prominent US
senator, an assistant secretary of Commerce, a GS-16 from
the Smithsonian Institution, reporters for the Washington Post
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STAT
and the New York Times, and a host of
men and women who by day worked in
visible jobs. There were also CIA em-
ployees and, occasionally, a young
Czech couple known as Karl and Hana.
The Fairfax house was a nondescript
place maintained by a caretaker who
cleaned up after parties. Most important,
there were seven bedrooms, though any
available space could serve as a romping
ground. One large walk-in closet had
two double mattresses on the floor.
Lying down was not always a requisite
for sex; one group activity involved a
chain of couples making love while
standing up, a son of sexual "bunny
hop," as one participant remembers it.
Five couples, mostly in their thirties,
put up $1,000 each to provide initial
capital and to rent the Virginia In-
Place's residential home. Couples "do-
nated" $20 at the door and brought their
own liquor; a bartender provided
mixers.
"No dope," recalls one of the club's
organizers. "These were the yuppies of
our generation-we were all legitimate
businesspeople doing our thing, and we
wanted to have no reason to have a
knock on the door. "
No police action was taken against
the club. But upon their return from a
State Department posting in Mexico,
the owners of the house heard about the
orgies and filed suit against the man
who had handled the rental of the prop-
erty and had helped organize the sex
club. The lawsuit also identified some
of the people who had attended the sex
parties, names obtained as a result of
the police surveillance reports of
months earlier.
Among those named were one CIA
official and others whose Washington
jobs required top security clearance. The
lawsuit languished for two and a half
years until the summer of 1979, when
the lawyer for the complainant decided
to subpoena many of the partygoers.
Within two weeks, the suit was quietly
settled out of court.
Three years later, perhaps tipped off
by an Eastern Bloc defector, the FBI
became interested in Karl Koecher, a
Czech Emigre, naturalized citizen, and
former employee of the CIA. In the
course of investigating the Koechers.
FBI counterintelligence agents learned
of the Koechers' sex life. Had Karl
Koecher used his wife and fellow CIA
swingers to secure his CIA job?
Both the FBI and the CIA decline to
discuss the Koecher case, but The Wash-
ingtonian learned that in 1982 FBI
agents began asking police forces in the
Washington area for information about a
beautiful Czech woman who, they said,
was involved in group sex parties. In
particular, the FBI wanted details about
a sex club. The counterintelligence in-
vestigation was so sensitive that the FBI
asked area police to search their files in
such a way that no record would be kept
of the FBI inquiry.
What manner of spies, they wanted to
know, were these Koechers?
The Mole Burrows
Five years after he joined the Commu-
nist party in Prague, Karl Koecher emi-
grated with his wife to the United States.
They arrived in New York in December
of 1965 and claimed to be political de-
fectors. Later Karl would tell acquaint-
ances that his departure from Czechoslo-
vakia had been necessitated by the fact
that he had secretly worked in his home-
The FBI describes the Koechers
as "sleepers," agents sent
abroad to worm their way Into
sensitive positions.
land for Radio Free Europe. His first job
in the US was as a freelance writer for
Radio Free Europe in New York.
But in statements he would later make
to the FBI, Karl admitted he had begun
working for Czech intelligence in 1962
and that he had been sent to America to
infiltrate the US government. He had a
doctorate in physics from Charles Uni-
versity in Prague, and it was the academ-
ic world to which he turned when he and
his wife began building their lives in the
US as naturalized citizens.
Between 1969 and 1973, Karl taught
philosophy at Wagner College on Staten
Island and received a doctorate in philos-
ophy from Columbia University. During
a two-year course at Columbia's Russian
Institute, Karl studied under the man
who would eventually serve as President
Carter's national-security adviser. Zbig-
niew Brzezinski.
The FBI describes the Koechers as
"sleepers," agents sent abroad to worm
their way into sensitive positions that
could produce intelligence for their real
bosses. In late 1972, Karl Koecher did
that after-he later claimed-he saw a
flyer at Columbia announcing job inter-
views with the CIA.
He moved to Washington and, after
passing a lie-detector test affirming his
loyalty to the US, began working for the
CIA in February 1973. His wife stayed
in New York, where she worked in Man-
hattan's diamond district. She visited her
husband on weekends and participated in
sex parties in Washington.
At the CIA, Karl worked in what is
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called the AE Screen unit. He translated
"conversations from the Russian and
Czech languages ... that were collected
clandestinely by the CIA," according to
Kenneth Geide, an FBI agent who inves-
tigated Karl Koecher.
"In addition," Geide says, "he was
responsible for writing assessments on
individuals who were speaking in those
conversations, providing background
and personality observations concerning
those individuals.... Everything that he
produced on his job was classified. The
work of other individuals in the AE
Screen unit that he had access to was also
classified. He also had knowledge of the
identities of fellow workers and their
assignments abroad which was extreme-
ly sensitive information."
In his work with the AE Screen unit,
Karl was assigned to study and assess a
Soviet official named Aleksander Dmi-
trevich Ogorodnik. Ogorodnik was a
valua3M-CIA asset who, according to
John Barron's book KGB Todav, was
"turned" by the CIA in 1974 when he
served in the Soviet Foreign Service in
Bogota, Colombia.
Later, Ogorodnik went to work in the
Global Affairs Department of the Minis-
try of Foreign Affairs in Moscow, an
office that receives sensitive political re-
ports from Soviet ambassadors and KGB
agents around the world. Information
supplied to the CIA by Ogorodnik, says
Barron, was circulated to the White
House and State Department. Some-
how-and the CIA and FBI suspected
Koecher of the leak-the Soviets learned
there was a mole in their capital, and
according to Barron, Ogorodnik was
caught photographing sensitive docu-
ments in Moscow in 1977.
The information collected by Karl
Koecher was sometimes passed in ciga-
rette cases by his wife to Soviet or East-
ern European agents in the Washington
and New York areas. The Koechers also
used "dead drops" around Washington,
primarily in the Virginia suburbs.
In August 1975, Karl left the AE
Screen unit. He moved back to New
York, bought a two-bedroom co-op for
$40,000, and, still a contract employee
for the CIA, began writing a paper on the
decision-making process of Soviet lead-
ership. The CIA will not say what other
duties he had in New York before he left
the employ of the agency in April 1977.
Apparently at no point during Karl's
CIA years was he or his wife under
suspicion, for it wasn't until 1982 that
the FBI began nosing around Washing-
ton for information about his earlier ac-
tivities. In the ensuing years, Karl
Koecher made attempts to return to col-
lege teaching, but his personality didn't
win him friends and his frustration at not
finding a good job grew. He was turned
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down for full-time jobs at the CIA, Ra-
dio Free Europe, and the State Universi-
ty of New York at Old Westbury, though
he did teach humanities there between
September 1979 and August 1980.
There were two things friends of the
Koechers never failed to notice: Hana's
sexy good looks and Karl's virulent an-
ti-communism. Once, when Czech ten-
nis star Ivan Lendl wanted to buy a
$700,000 apartment in the Koechers' co-
op, it was Karl Koecher who voted
against him. (The cost of units in the co-
op skyrocketed in the late '70s, and their
fellow residents included actress Anne
Bancroft, director Mel Brooks, and
Broadway choreographer Tommy
Tune.)
The Steamy '70s
According to a federal law-enforcement
official who has spent a career sounding
the depths of Washington's sexual un-
derworld, the 1970s were a particularly
busy time for sexual operatives in the
nation's capital. Both American and for-
eign intelligence agents worked the call-
girl rings. Some hung around the gay
bars. And others, like the Koechers, en-
tered into the "swinging" clubs that, in
the wake of the sexual revolution, were
in vogue in Washington.
In 1973, when Karl Koecher moved
from New York to the Virginia suburbs,
there were at least four clubs in the area
catering to couples looking for group
sex. In Jessup, there was the Swinging
Gate, operating out of a large country
house outfitted with wall-to-wall mat-
tresses and black lights, which, accord-
ing to a regular, "had an amazing effect
if you're looking at someone who has a
The Swinging Gate operated
out of a large country house with
wall-to-wall mattresses and
black lights.
tan." Upstairs there was a "tent room"
with billowing parachutes hung from the
ceiling. In the basement were a sauna
and some utility rooms "for people who
did things shunned by society."
The Gate, as it was called, had a repu-
tation for steamy parties. One woman
who attended a couple of affairs there
recalls an impromptu floor show that
featured a pair of bisexual midgets from
Baltimore. According to another visitor,
porno movie stars from New York
sometimes drove down for the parties.
It isn't known whether the Koechers
ever visited the Gate-or a second club
in Upper Marlboro. Former patrons of
both clubs do not recognize pictures of
the Koechers, which is not surprising
because the two Maryland clubs were
usually known as hangouts for the six-
pack crowd. The Koechers, it appears,
were targeting more upscale partygoers.
The Virginia In-Place in Fairfax County
and Capitol Couples in downtown DC
suited their purposes better.
The real estate agent who organized
the Virginia In-Place-and was sued for
using a client's house for parties-re-
members Karl Koecher clearly.
"Of course, you usually knew every-
one by just their first names," he says.
"But there was definitely a Karl. A
good-looking fellow who spoke English
quite well, but with a slight Czech ac-
cent." He identified the accent because
his mother-in-law was Czechoslovaki-
an, and he had picked up a few phrases in
the language.
"Sometimes," adds the real estate
agent, "I even talked a little Bohunk
with him while his wife was parrying. "
The real estate agent had begun the
Virginia In-Place in 1973 when his mar-
riage went bad. A wealthy Virginian
who presents himself to the world as a
good of boy, he attended parties with a
young woman from his real estate firm.
The woman, who went on to work as an
Continued
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STAT
ing. Incredibly orgasmic. I
went to bed with her several
times.
"But I thought Karl Koech-
er was a bit strange. I thought
he took some sort of special
drug-he was always naked at
the parties. Usually people
keep their clothes on at least
some of the time, but he was
always walking around na-
ked. And he always had an
erection. The women he was
with said he was a terrible lov-
er, very insensitive. His wife
was everything he wasn't. "
administrative assistant in the Carter
White House, is now on the staff of a
House committee. Before it was dis-
banded in the summer of 1976-shortly
after the owner of the house filed the
lawsuit-the Virginia In-Place had a
mailing list of more than 200 couples.
The Koechers' other favorite club was
Capitol Couples.
' Ah, yes," says the man who organ-
ized Capitol Couples in 1970. "1 re-
member them quite well. I found them
an interesting couple. He was a profes-
sor. She was a diamond merchant. Strik-
ingly beautiful. Warm, sweet, ingratiat-
Memories and Mysteries
The club's organizer, a frail,
nervous man in his mid-for-
ties, says the Koechers were
"regulars" at Capitol Cou-
ples parties for a period of
about a year and a half, start-
Another couple, now living in Flori-
da, remembers meeting the Koechers in
1973. At the time, they say, they were
"seeing" an Army major and his wife
who talked constantly about a beautiful
and sophisticated couple they had met.
The major and his wife jealously refused
to divulge the names of this beautiful
couple, but the Florida couple eventual-
ly succeeded in meeting the Koechers.
They remember Karl as "the most
brilliant man" they had ever met. Karl
told the couple that he had three PhDs-
two from Czechoslovakia, in philosophy
and drama, and another in physics that
Koechers after the spies moved back to
New York in 1976. Sometimes they
would go to Plato's Retreat, Manhat-
tan's sexual emporium, and sometimes
to a nudist camp on the New Jersey
shore. In retrospect, says the economist,
there was reason to be suspicious of the
Koechers' activities.
Karl, he says, was always complaining
about being out of work. He talked about
opening a school or a restaurant and said
he couldn't get a job in academia be-
cause the universities were too liberal.
Nevertheless, says the economist, al-
though Karl never seemed to have a job.
every morning he would leave
the house before nine, return-
ing at five or six o'clock. The
economist says that in 1982 he
offered to help Karl get a job
at the Treasury Department,
but Karl wasn't interested.
The Koechers' financial sit-
uation was intriguing. Karl
was apparently unemployed,
and Nana earned only about
$20,000 a year as a clerk at
Savion Diamonds, according
to her employer. But, as the
economist and wife note, the
Koechers were able to main-
tain an expensive lifestyle. On
one of their visits to New
York in 1984, says the econo-
mist, Hana went shopping and
returned with a mink coat.
When she opened the closet to
hang it up, they saw that the
Iii. KSosher In 1175, the you Karl moved hock to Nn York, when
Nana worked le the Nowed district. "She ?es a put salsstromaa,"
rmft diamoed Nord" Joao SWISS.
ing in 1973. At the time, the members of
Capitol Couples met every Saturday
night at a downtown bar, the Exchange,
where the club's organizer worked.
There, members would strike up new
friendships and find out where parties
were being held later on. Unlike the
other swingers' clubs in the area, Capi-
tol Couples was an "off-premises" op-
eration. In theory, at least, all the action
was reserved for the parties, which were
held in members' homes or, on special
occasions, in a hotel suite rented by the
club. In 1974, when the club's organizer
took a new job at the Class Reunion and
then, in 1976, at Marigolds, Capitol
Couples moved with him.
He also remembers the time two years
ago when FBI agents showed up with
photographs of the Koechers for him to
identify. He was able to do so without
difficulty, although Hana, who had been
a blonde, had allowed her hair to return
to a darker color. All the FBI agents
wanted to know, he recalls, was what
parties the Koechers had attended.
"They went to the big ones," he told
them, "the ones where they could meet
lots of people. "
he had earned after coming to the US.
The Koechers also told them they were
"freedom fighters" who had come to
the US just before the Russian tanks
rumbled into Prague. (In fact, the Rus-
sians cracked down on Czechoslovakia
in 1968, about three years after the
Koechers first came to the US.)
The Florida couple called the FBI in
November 1984, the moment they heard
that the Koechers had been arrested as
spies. They were shocked.
"We told the FBI that we had known
the Koechers for a long time," says the
husband. "The FBI agents we talked to
said, 'We know. We've been watching
you for a long time.' "
Subsequently, the husband and wife
were interrogated and given lie-detector
tests. According to the wife, one of the
FBI agents said they had been on to the
Koechers since 1976. At one point, she
says, the agent asked her if they and the
Koechers had been close.
"No," she said, "we just got together
and f---ed. "
Another couple-the husband is an
economist with the Treasury Depart-
ment-continued swinging with the
closet was filled with other fur
coats.
Someone was paying the Koechers
well during the eight years they lived in
New York. Because the government
isn't willing to talk about it, what they
did to earn the money is still a mystery.
The Dead Speak and the
Watergate Reporter
Other mysteries lie just beneath the sur-
face of the case of the swinging spies.
One of them involves a former CIA
agent, John Paisley. who occasionally^
took dates to swinging clubs.
A badly mutilated body said to be his
was found floating in the Chesapeake
Bay in October 1978. The cause of death
was a gunshot wound to the head. Pais-
ley, an expert on strategic weapons, had
retired from the CIA four years earlier
but continued to work for the CIA as a
contract agent.
When the body was found, CIA
spokesmen labeled Paisley's death a sui-
cide and described him as a low-level
analyst. In fact, when Paisley retired
from the CIA in 1974 he was deputy
director of the Office of Strategic As-
sessment, with a rank of GS-17. At the
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i
f hi
di
STAT
nuclear strength. There is a good deal of
testimony from CIA sources, supported
by documents obtained through the
Freedom of Information Act, that at the
time of his disappearance Paisley was
also engaged in counterintelligence ac-
tivities-caught up in the CIA's frantic
efforts to find a Soviet mole inside the
agency.
Only the CIA knows for certain
whether Paisley was ferreting out Soviet
moles, but if the timing was right. he
could have socialized with the Koechers
at the Virginia In-Place and Capitol Cou-
ples. Although it now appears that the
Koechers left Washington's swinging
scene before Paisley became a partici-
pant, the possibility must have occurred
to federal investigators that the paths of
Paisley and the Koechers might have
crossed in a bedroom.
According to a friend of Paisley's, the
ex-CIA agent didn't discover the swing-
ing scene until about 1977, which would
rule out another favorite theory among
Watergate conspiracy theorists:
A Washington journalist well known
for his Watergate reporting was a fre-
quent participant in local swinging
clubs. While Paisley was working full-
time at the CIA, he was the agency's
liaison with the White House "Plumb-
ers," whose dirty tricks caused the Nix-
on administration so much trouble. Did
Paisley and the Watergate reporter get
acquainted at a sex club? Was Paisley
Deep Throat, providing information
about the Plumbers' skullduggery?
gaged in a top-secret study of Soviet
t
me o
s
sappearance, he was en-
One member of the Virginia In-Plac
have developed while frolicking. One of
the reporter's acquaintances in the
swinging scene was an assistant to Pais-
ley in the CIA's Office of Strategic As-
sessment, a fact that could not have
cheered investigators seeking details of
the Koechers' stay in Washington.
says he recalls two or three parties, in his
own home, where both men were present.
The reporter has said he never met Pais-
ley. Whatever the truth, Paisley was not
the only CIA source the reporter might
met. But another member of the grou
who was a friend of both the spook an
the reporter says he doesn't think the tw
Baiting the Trap
BY the summer of 1984, the FBI had
Planted bugs in the Koechers' New York
apartment, their car, their apartment tel-
ephone, and the telephone at Hana
Koecher's office. It seems clear that both
the CIA and the FBI knew the Koechers
were-or had been-spies but did not
have enough evidence to allow the Jus-
tice Department to prosecute them.
Later, when confronted by the FBI,
Karl Koecher said he presumed his cover
had been blown by an bmigr6, perhaps
from Czechoslovakia. But even if some-
one had fingered him as a spy, any pros-
ecution would require more evidence
than hearsay. And because the FBI had
begun investigating the Koechers sever-
al years earlier in connection with the
swingers' clubs, one could presume
that-as of the bugging in 1984-the FBI
had not yet been able to gather that evi-
dence. It must have been disconcerting,
then, for the FBI to learn from eaves-
dropping on the Koechers' conversa-
tions in mid-1984 that the couple intend-
An agent In the front seat
radioed colleagues waiting at
the hotel to say the "male
package had been picked up."
ed to move to Austria.
Unable to find a good job, Karl Koech-
er told friends it was time to leave the
country. He said he would use the profit
from selling the couple's co-op-bought
a decade earlier for $40,000, it fetched
about $280,000 in November of 1984-
to invest in a hotel or supermarket in
Europe. In the autumn of 1984, as the
Koechers made final preparations to
leave for Vienna, it was clear to the FBI
and the CIA that if they didn't move
against the Koechers in some way, their
quarry might elude them.
In meetings between FBI agents and
erry Brown-the chief of a counterintel-
igence section in the CIA's Office of
ecurity, it was decided to take a
"friendship approach" with the Koech-
ers. Without enough hard evidence to
arrest the couple, the FBI couldn't com-
pel them to talk; the trick was to per-
suade them to cooperate.
Twelve days before the Koechers were
due to leave the United States, the FBI
staked out a bank where, wiretaps had
revealed, the Koechers had a 10 AM ap-
pointment. Fourteen FBI agents were
involved in the operation that morning,
Thursday, November 15, 1984. Several
agents were assigned to follow Karl,
several to trail Hana, and several to as-
sist at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel, where
the FBI had rented a suite in which to
question the Koechers.
When the Koechers left the bank at
10:45, they walked toward 30 West 47th
Street, Hana's office in Manhattan's dia-
mond district. Several agents followed
the couple and waited while the Koech-
ers entered the building. When Karl
emerged alone, he was approached by an
FBI agent he vaguely knew because they
both worked out in the same health club.
After an exchange of greetings, the
agent introduced him to Kenneth Geide,
an FBI agent who had spent several
years on the New York counterintelli-
gence squad that tracked Czech agents.
"Karl," said Geide, "I am aware of
your plans for the future, and in view of
your ... past employment with the CIA,
I think perhaps we should talk. "
"I think we should," answered
Koecher. "All right."
Let's Make a Deal
An unmarked government car pulled up
to the curb, and the agents joined Koech-
er in the back seat. During the ride to the
hotel. Geide remembers, Koecher was
"calm, composed, relaxed." An agent
in the front seat radioed colleagues wait-
ing at the hotel to say the "male package
had been picked up."
Ten minutes later, the agents and
Koecher took the service elevator to
Room 2640, a suite with a balcony and a
view of Sixth Avenue and Central Park
South. In an adjoining bedroom, FBI
agents monitored taping equipment;
Room 2640 was equipped with a hidden
microphone and a camera that video-
taped the conversation between Koech-
er, Geide, and the CIA counterintelli-
gence specialist, Jerry Brown.
"Well, as I briefly told you out
there," began Geide, "we are aware, of
course, of your plans and activities. "
During the next two hours, Karl
Koecher outlined his recruitment and
training by Czech intelligence as well as
his assignment to penetrate the US gov-
ernment. Geide and Brown were startled
that his cooperation came so quickly.
Their success wasn't complete, how-
ever. Later that day, in a nearby room,
FBI agent Richard Dorn Jr. was having
no luck convincing Hana Koecher to co-
operate. Hana was as distraught as her
husband was cool. Dorn brought her into
her husband's suite, where, still very
upset, she blurted: "I will, I will cooper-
ate. I am going there. I delivered things.
That's all I can offer because I don't
want to be involved in any business....
I'm not by nature a spy. I don't want to
ever be in my whole life. "
When Hana Koecher mentioned pris-
on, Dorn reassured her she wasn't going
to jail. And Brown begged her to calm
down, assured her no one meant to harm
either her or her husband, and told her
that if she cooperated, there would be
very little disruption in your life."
The Koechers went about their plans to
leave the United States, and on Novem-
ber 27 the FBI agents volunteered to
drive the Koechers to Kennedy Interna-
tonal Airport for their flight to Europe.
But when the Koechers showed up at the
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000706430001-4
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000706430001-4
6.
Barbizon Plaza Hotel with their luggage,
the FBI arrested Karl Koecher and
charged him with providing classified
national-security information to the
Czechoslovakian Intelligence Service
(CIS). Hana was not charged but was
held as a material witness.
Karl wouldn't see the outside of a jail
for another fifteen months. After four
months in prison, his wife was freed on a
$1 million bond posted by friends, sev-
eral of whom had been sexual partners of
the spy couple.
Endgame: the Exchange
A year after the Koechers were arrested,
their attorney, Atlanta lawyer Robert
Fierer, argued that the Koechers had
been sandbagged, that the government
agents who questioned Karl had clearly
told him if he cooperated everything
would be all right.
The government argued during several
days of hearings that neither the FBI nor
the CIA agents present during the ques-
tioning of Karl Koecher had the authori-
ty to make any deals, that only the Jus-
tice Department can finally decide
whether or not to press charges.
As it turned out, a jury or judge never
had to determine the Koechers' guilt or
innocence. During trips in early and
mid-1985 to Prague, attorney Fierer
suggested to a Czech government offi-
cial that they persuade their Soviet col-
leagues to trade dissident Anatoly Shcha-
ransky for the Koechers.
Wolfgang Vogel, a debonair East Berlin
millionaire who had represented the East
on numerous exchanges, got the green
light from Moscow to negotiate the release
of Shcharansky. He represented the Soviet
On February 11, 1086, the trade
took place on the drab-green
Glienlcke Bridge between West
and East Germany.
Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia and
met during the last half of 1985 with the
American ambassador to East Germany,
Francis J. Meehan, and an aide to the
American ambassador to West Germany,
Richard Burt. Meeting secretly at an Aus-
trian ski resort in December 1985, the
group nailed down the list of prisoners
available for trading.
A possible snag: Would the Koechers,
now US citizens, agree to be expelled
from the country that had adopted them?
Vogel flew to the US, and, to no one's
surprise, the Koechers were more than
happy to return to their homeland.
In a secret court proceeding, Karl
Koecher pleaded no contest, which is
tantamount to a guilty plea, and was
sentenced to time served since his arrest,
on the condition he be swapped for
Shcharansky.
On February 11, 1986-after about a
year of jockeying on the part of Fierer
and Vogel, as well as American, West
German, Soviet, and Czech government
officials-the trade took place on the
drab-green Glienicke Bridge between
West and East Germany. Except for
Shcharansky, everyone involved in the
trade was a suspected, accused, or con-
victed spy. In addition to Shcharansky,
the East released two Germans and a
Czech; the West handed over the Koech-
ers and three suspected Eastern Bloc
spies who had been in West German
prisons.
The CIA may never know exactly
what kind of damage Karl Koecher
caused. Or if the agency knows, it isn't
saying. And no one knows if the Koech-
ers gathered pillow talk worth sending
back to Moscow during their evenings at
various Washington swingers' clubs.
All the world can be sure of about Karl
and Hana Koecher's stay in the United
States is that the couple made a very
good profit on the sale of their New York
apartment. Q
Editorial intern David C. Mitchell contributed research to this article.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000706430001-4