chief of station

The officer in charge of an intelligence station abroad (at the CIA: Chief of Station).

The CIA glossary defines the Chief of Station as the officer in charge of a CIA station. The International Spy Museum describes a station as a post from which intelligence activity is conducted.^1,2

In Soviet and Russian intelligence the equivalent is the rezident – according to the International Spy Museum, the head of a KGB or GRU station in a foreign country. The foreign cells of the intelligence service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MSW) of the Polish People’s Republic were likewise called rezidenturas (see rezidentura).²

A historical example: according to a review in the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence, the KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky, who had been working with the British SIS since 1973, was due to become the KGB rezident in London in 1985. In May of that year, however, he was summoned to Moscow and fell under suspicion.³