Суық соғыс шпионы Карл Франтишек Коехер

Czechoslovak spy

Karl František Koecher (born 21 September 1934 in Bratislava) is a Czech mole known to have penetrated the CIA during the Cold War.

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.

Koecher returned to Czechoslovakia to a hero's welcome and was given a house and a Volvo car as a reward for his services. He was also given a job at the Prague Institute for Economic Forecasting, where many future politicians worked; Václav Klaus and Miloš Zeman the future Czech presidents were among them. Some U. S. journalists stated they had seen Koecher issuing orders at the Laterna Magika theatre during the early days of the Velvet Revolution (1989). Koecher denied any involvement in the Velvet Revolution, saying that journalists must have mixed him up with the then unknown Václav Klaus, who had a similar appearance. The fall of communism has seen Koecher fall from prominence, with the exception of his alleged involvement in a scheme run by Oswald LeWinter, a self professed former CIA operative, to defraud Mohammed Al Fayed with false documents that would support his conspiracy theories about the death of Princess Diana. He continues to live in the Czech Republic in relative obscurity. His wife, Hana Koecher, made the headlines in the Czech Republic, when she was fired from her new job as a translator for the British Embassy in Prague. The British were completely unaware of her espionage past until a Czech newspaper reporter notified them. A suit she filed against a media organisation for revealing her past as a spy, damaging her business, was rejected. An episode of the 2004 Canadian documentary series Betrayal! covered the Koecher case.