University, and became an American citizen in 1971. 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. His supply of information to the StB dwindled from 1969 until 1971, but he continued to integrate himself in American society. Taking a CIA prescreening employment exam in November 1972, he passed and was employed. After several years as a sleeper he was hired by the CIA as a translator/analyst in 1973 due to his fake dissident credentials and skills in a number of Eastern European languages. He was given high level security clearance and given the job of translating and analyzing documents handed over by CIA agents and transcripts of wiretaps and bugs. 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. According to Martha D. Peterson, a retired CIA officer, Koecher is believed to have betrayed Aleksandr Dmitrievich Ogorodnik, a Soviet diplomat who spied for the CIA. KGB death threat and CIA retirement In September 1976, however, Koecher was summoned back to Prague to a meeting with KGB head of counter-intelligence, Oleg Kalugin. Kalugin claims that after interrogating Koecher, Kalugin argued that he was in fact a triple agent and his information could not be trusted. According to Koecher, the StB then ordered Koecher to resign from the CIA or face death. After seven days of interrogation, Koecher returned to New York and retired, leaving the CIA for a post in academia teaching philosophy. Reactivation By 1982, Koecher was rehabilitated by the KGB after Kalugin was demoted from chief of foreign counterintelligence and Koecher's past intelligence had been reassessed. In the 1980s, Koecher was one of a number of agents reactivated, when he was reproached by the StB intelligence officer Jan Fila in New York. He returned to work part-time for the CIA. Although the FBI asserts that they had been monitoring and surveilling Koecher and his wife from the early 1980s, it was at least three years before he was arrested. To this day, neither the FBI nor the CIA will