cover

A false identity or explanation that conceals a person’s true identity or purpose.

The CIA glossary defines cover as a false identity or explanation that conceals a person’s true identity or intentions. When the truth comes out despite the cover, the officer or agent is blown. The International Spy Museum also describes so-called pocket litter – small items carried in the pockets, such as receipts, coins or theatre tickets, that make a false identity more convincing.^1,2

A whole operation can have a cover. According to the US State Department’s Office of the Historian, after the U-2 was shot down over the USSR on 1 May 1960, the US authorities first stated that it had been a routine weather flight and that the pilot had lost consciousness because of a fault in the oxygen system. On 7 May Nikita Khrushchev revealed that the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was alive and that the aircraft, with its photographic equipment, had been recovered almost intact; on 11 May President Eisenhower admitted that he had known about the overflight programme.³

In January 1980 the CIA got six American diplomats out of Tehran as a supposed Canadian film crew, with a fictitious production company, Studio Six Productions, and a film project called Argo (see exfiltration).⁴