CIA cryptonyms sometimes contain a two character prefix called a digraph, which designates a geographical or functional area.[2] Certain digraphs were changed over time; for example, the digraph for the Soviet Union changed at least twice.[3]
The rest is either an arbitrary dictionary word, or occasionally the digraph and the cryptonym combine to form a dictionary word (e.g., AEROPLANE) or can be read out as a simple phrase (e.g., WIBOTHER, read as "Why bother!"). Cryptonyms are sometimes written with a slash after the digraph, e.g., ZR/RIFLE, and sometimes in one sequence, e.g., ZRRIFLE. The latter format is the more common style in CIA documents.[3]
Examples from publications by former CIA personnel show that the terms "code name" and "cryptonym" can refer to the names of operations as well as to individual persons.[citation needed] TRIGON, for example, was the code name for Aleksandr Ogorodnik, a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the former Soviet Union, whom the CIA developed as a spy;[4] HERO was the code name for Col. Oleg Penkovsky, who supplied data on the nuclear readiness of the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.[5] According to former CIA Director Richard M. Helms: "The code names for most Agency operations are picked in sequence from a sterile list, with care taken not to use any word that might give a clue to the activity it covers. On some large projects, code names are occasionally specially chosen—GOLD, SILVER, PBSUCCESS, CORONA. When Robert F. Kennedy requested a code name for the government-wide plan that Richard Goodwin was drafting, an exception was made. Goodwin was on the White House staff, and the plan concerned Cuba. Occasionally the special code names come close to the nerve, as did MONGOOSE."[6] A secret joint program between the Mexico City CIA station and the Mexican secret police to wiretap the Soviet and Cuban embassies was code-named ENVOY.[7]
Some cryptonyms relate to more than one subject, e.g., a group of people.[3] In this case, the basic cryptonym, e.g., LICOZY, will designate the whole group, while each group member is designated by a sequence number, e.g., LICOZY/3, which can also be written LICOZY-3, or just L-3.[3]
AMLASH: Plan to assassinate Fidel Castro associated mainly with Rolando Cubela. AMLASH has been referred to as a "basically one-person Cubela operation".[23]
AMTRUNK: A CIA plan by New York Times journalist Tad Szulc initiated in February 1963, also called the "Leonardo Plan", that was "an attempt to find disgruntled military officials in Cuba who might be willing to recruit higher military officials in a plot to overthrow Castro",[27] as well as to overthrow the Cuban government "by means of a conspiracy among high-level ... leaders of the government culminating in a coup d'etat".[23] AMTRUNK has also been described as a "CIA-DIA Task Force on Cuba",[28] and as "a plodding bureaucratic effort" that "had worked for months to identify Cuban leaders who might be able to stage a coup".[27]
AMWHIP-1: Business associate of Santo Trafficante Jr. who was in contact with Rolando Cubela (AMLASH) in 1963.[29]
AMWORLD: A plan initiated June 28, 1963, to overthrow the Castro regime in a coup on December 1, 1963 (C-Day), that would have installed Juan Almeida Bosque, a top ranking Cuban military officer, as the new head of state.[25][30] Some Cuban exiles referred to C-Day as "Plan Omega".[31]
CORONA: the CIA's first satellite Reconnaissance program, 1958[35]
DBACHILLES: 1995 effort to support a military coup in Iraq.[36]
DBANABASIS commenced Fall 2002, operation to train Iraqis in Area 51 in Nevada and then to run them on missions of sabotage and assassination inside Iraq.[37]
LILINK: Front company providing cover to CIA agents in Mexico City.[44]
LIOVAL-1: CIA agent, posing as English teacher in Mexico City.[44]
LICOWL-1: CIA agent, owner of a small business near the Soviet embassy in Mexico City.[44]
LICOZY-1, LICOZY-3 and LICOZY-5: Anti-KGB double agents in Mexico City.[44]
LICALLA: CIA surveillance posts for the Soviet embassy in Mexico City.[44]
LIMBRACE: Security team for the CIA station in Mexico.[44]
LISAMPAN: Operation "bugging" the Cuban embassy in Mexico City.[44]
LICOBRA: Operation watching suspicious members of the ruling Mexican PRI party, the ministry of the exterior and other Mexican government officials.[44]
LIFIRE: Operation gathering intelligence from Mexican air travel and acquiring travel manifests from international flights.
QKENCHANT: CIA program associated with E. Howard Hunt (1918–2007), who with G. Gordon Liddy and others, was one of the White House's "plumbers"—a secret team of operatives charged with fixing "leaks".[56]
ZRRIFLE: An assassination plot targeting Fidel Castro
Operations and projects
APPLE: Agent team seen in 1952 by CIA/OPC as best bet to successfully continue BGFIEND Project aimed to harass/overthrow Albanian communist regime. Team was arrested, communists controlled radio ops for 16 months, luring more agents into Albania in 1953, and trying and executing original agents in 1954 to suddenly end BGFIEND.[60]
ARTICHOKE: Researching methods of interrogation. Precursor to MKULTRA. Primary goal of Project Artichoke was to determine whether a person could be involuntarily made to perform an act of attempted assassination. The project also studied the effects of mind control and hypnosis, forced addiction to (and subsequent withdrawal from) morphine, and other chemicals, including LSD, to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in victims.
CHARITY: Joint CIA/OSO-Italian Naval Intelligence information gathering operation against Albania (1948–1951).
CHERRY: Covert assassination / destabilization operation during Vietnam War, targeting Prince (later King) Norodom Sihanouk and the government of Cambodia. Disbanded.
ESMERALDITE: Labor informant affiliated with AFL-sponsored labor movement.
ESQUIRE: James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace.
ESSENCE: Guatemalan anti-communist leader.
FDTRODPINT: Afghan tribal agents, formerly known as GESENIOR, reactivated in the 1990s by the CIA to hunt Mir Aimal Kasi and later Osama bin Laden.[64]
KMHYMNAL: Maine-built motor sailer JUANITA purchased by CIA to use as floating, clandestine, propaganda broadcast facility in Mediterranean/Adriatic (1950–53).
LEMON
LNWILT: US Counterintelligence Corps (CIC)
LPMEDLEY: Surveillance of telegraphic information exiting or entering the United States.
MAGPIE: US Army Labor Service Organization
MATADOR: Project to recover section of Soviet submarine K-129 dropped during Project AZORIAN. Cancelled after Soviet protest.[61]
MK NAOMI: successor to the MKULTRA project focusing on biological projects including biological warfare agents — specifically, to store materials that could either incapacitate or kill a test subject and to develop devices for the diffusion of such materials.
MK ULTRA: a human experimentation program to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. Successor to ARTICHOKE; succeeded by MKNAOMI.
MOCKINGBIRD: a wire tapping operation of two journalists in 1963 to determine the source of leaked information[69]
MONGOOSE: "Primarily a relentless and escalating campaign of sabotage and small Cuban exile raids that would somehow cause the overthrow of Castro," which "also included plans for an invasion of Cuba in the fall of 1962".[70]
STSPIN: Three P-3A Orion aircraft operated from Taiwan in 1966.[74]
SYNCARP: The "Junta", Castillo Armas' political organization headed by Cordova Cerna.
THERMOS: Unclassified codeword used in lieu of RAINBOW[75]
THROWOFF/2: Albanian ethnic agent/radio operator employed by Italian Navy Intelligence/CIA in several early Cold War covert operations against Albania. Was captured, operated radio under communist control to lure CIA agents to capture/death, tried in 1954, death sentence commuted, freed after 25 years. CIA paid his son $40,000 in 1996.[76]
OPERATION TILT: The CIA's name for "an operation put together by John Martino, who was fronting for his boss Santo Trafficante and his roommate Johnny Roselli".[77] OPERATION TILT used "some of the same people working on the CIA-Mafia plots in the spring of 1963 ... [and] involved sending a Cuban exile team into Cuba to retrieve Soviet technicians supposedly ready to defect and reveal the existence of Soviet missiles still on the island".[78]
TROPIC: Air operations flown over North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union by CAT pilots during the 1950s.[62]
^ abSeymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, New York, Random House, 1991 pp. 5
^Friedman, John S. (2005). The Secret Histories: Hidden Truths That Challenged the Past and Changed the World. Macmillan. pp. 278–279. ISBN0-312-42517-1.
^ abKai Bird, The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, Crown Publishing Group, New York, 2014 p. 95
^Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2002, p. 269
^ abBenjamin Weiser, A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country, New York: PublicAffairs, 2003 p. 344
^ abcdefghiMendez, Antonio J.; Mendez, Jonna (2019). The Moscow Rules: The Secret CIA Tactics That Helped America Win the Cold War.
^Annie Jacobsen, Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins. (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019), p. 371-383
^John B. Roberts II and Elizabeth A. Roberts, Freeing Tibet: 50 Years of Struggle, Resilience, and Hope, New York: AMACOM, 2009 p. 82
^ abKenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2002, p.
^Pocock, Chris. The Black Bats: CIA Spy Flights Over China From Taiwan, 1951–1969. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, 2010. ISBN978-0-7643-3513-6.
^Bissell, Richard M., Jr., "[...] Cable Handling Procedures", SAPC-21143, CIA, Washington, DC, 8 November 1957.
^OBOPUS/BGFIEND, AHMET KABASHI, RG263, Name Files, National Archives, College Park, MD
DPD Contracting Officer, Change of Project Funds Obligated under Contract No. SS-100. CIA DPD-2827-59, 30 April 1959.
Helms, Richard and Hood, William. 2003. A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency. Random House, pp. 378–379
Pedlow, Gregory W. and Welzenbach, Donald E. 1992. The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954–1974. CIA History Staff.
Waldron, Lamar and Hartmann, Thom. 2009. Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination. Counterpoint (LS)
Waldron, Lamar and Hartmann, Thom. 2005. Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK Carroll & Graf Publishers (US)
Wallace, Robert and H. Keith Melton. 2008. Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda. Dutton.
