Long ahead of Austin Powers was once a randy undercover agent, there was once Karel Koecher.
Koecher was once a Czechoslovakian émigré who lived in New York City from the Nineteen Sixties to the ’80s. Although he spied for a number of competing businesses — the American CIA, the Soviet Union’s KGB, and Czechoslovakia’s StB — Koecher was once maximum memorable as an keen player within the East Coast’s early sex-club scene. And he was once the rest however beneath the radar.
“Koecher was once a little bit atypical. Usually other people stay their garments on no less than one of the crucial time, however he was once at all times strolling round bare,” recollects a fellow orgy visitor in
While Koecher was once an enthusiastic swinger, he was once a reluctant undercover agent. Born in 1934 close to Prague, he was once unsatisfied with Czechoslovakia’s socialist flip after World War II, and so fought in opposition to its Communist Party.
Koecher was once rebellious — he referred to as himself an “excessive individualist” — and had a large number of clashes with the Czech state police right through the Nineteen Fifties, many associated with his libido. He was once given a one-year suspended prison time period for bitterly calling native police “peeping Toms” once they stuck him canoodling with a female friend. After the StB later trumped up fees that Koecher “violated the ethical code . . . of underage ladies” he won two extra years of probation.
The police harassment didn’t forestall. Although a very good scholar and speaker of 4 languages (English, French, Russian and Czech), Koecher was once to start with stored from attending college, forbidden from accepting a fellowship in Cameroon (so he couldn’t defect), and in becoming a member of the Communist Party (which he did only within the hopes of discovering higher jobs).
Eventually, Cunningham writes, Koecher learned “He may now not beat them, so …. had little selection however to enroll in them.”
With assist from a chum throughout the company, Koecher joined the StB in 1963. The company’s overview wasn’t sparkling, calling Karel “over-confident, hypersensitive, antagonistic in opposition to other people, money-driven … with an delinquent nearly psychopathic persona.”
When the StB warned Karel to inform no person about his new task, he straight away confessed it to his new spouse, Hana. (He did the similar factor when a later lover sought after him to depart Hana for her — “I will’t,” Koecher shrugged, “I’m a undercover agent.”)
Still, between his language abilities and connections within the West honed from years operating as a Prague excursion information, the StB had no higher candidate to ship to the United States. After two years of doing little in Czechoslovakia, the StB despatched Karel to New York to “penetrate the CIA.”
Asked how, the StB stated, “That’s as much as you.”
With his connection to Professor Charles Kline from an previous Prague excursion, Koecher attended Columbia University and earned a PhD in 1971. Columbia’s job-placement carrier then instructed Karel practice for a role . . .on the CIA. Soon Koecher was once translating Russian paperwork for America’s primary undercover agent company, all whilst nonetheless operating for the StB and their superiors on the KGB.
When the CIA focused Soviets in the United States to recruit, Koecher “kind of sabotaged their efforts through telling the Soviets who the goals had been.”
But Koecher was once by no means all that the task. “The StB suggested him to tell on coworkers . . . however he by no means actually were given round to it,” Cunningham writes.
The downside was once that Karel was once a great consultant of the Nineteen Seventies “Me” decade.
“It is ready loyalty to your self. . . . I don’t give a f–okay about belonging,” he stated.
Koecher’s number one passion was once as an alternative New York’s intercourse scene. With Hana — whom others described as “strikingly stunning” and “extremely orgasmic” — the Koechers continuously attended nightclubs like Studio 54, along with swingers golf equipment like New York’s infamous Plato’s Retreat, Capitol Couples Club in Washington, DC, and an upstate nudist colony referred to as Stockholm. Plus, “At least a few times every week, Koecher and Hana had one or two {couples} over for dinner, or went to their houses, to switch spouses for intercourse,” Cunningham stocks. America’s libertine existence was once eagerly welcomed through the couple who had grown up in the back of the Iron Curtain.
Koecher at all times believed the StB didn’t pay him sufficient, so he continuously left out conferences with them and every now and then advised them to “f–okay off.” He had no lawsuits about his Soviet stipend, however to offer protection to his personal position a KGB normal who was once additionally a CIA mole raised doubts about Karel’s loyalties. That were given Koecher decommissioned through each Communist businesses. By the mid-70s, his occupation was once kaput.
“The double agent was once an agent not more,” Cunningham writes.
The KGB did recommission Koecher all through the Reagan management, to make use of his connections in New York society to pursue “knowledgeable gossip” from other people operating in U.S. govt.
“I might socialize for socialism,” Koecher stated.
By then, the FBI was once on Koecher’s path — his wild spending of KGB money raised their suspicions — and in 1984 the web was once last. The night time ahead of they had been arrested as spies, Karel and Hana Koecher introduced a pleasant couple again to their rental.
“On their closing night time of freedom within the U.S., FBI wiretaps verify that Karel and Hana went down swinging,” Cunningham writes.
As a undercover agent, Koecher confronted the dying penalty, however after being detained for two years — when prosecutor Rudy Giuliani did not make a case stick — US and Soviet government swapped the Koechers for Jewish dissident Anatoly Shcharansky at the Glienicke Bridge, a okay a the “Bridge of Spies.”
Banned from ever returning to the United States, the swinging undercover agent’s days of American decadence had been performed.
Source Link: https://nypost.com/2022/08/13/this-double-agent-cia-and-kgb-spy-was-also-a-famous-swinger/