CIA cryptonym

CIA cryptonyms are code names or code words used by the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) to reference projects, operations, persons, agencies, etc. The cryptonyms described in this article were in use at least from the 1950s to the 1980s. It is likely that they have since been replaced by another system.

Introduction
The term "code word" was used by the CIA during the 1960s as a partial designation for a Top Secret report on a highly classified and sensitive intelligence topic, and for compartmenting information. In the context of discussing code words used in the President's Daily Brief (PDB) during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, former CIA Director Richard Helms wrote:

"'At the time, the highest security classification was known as Top Secret/Code Word. In practice, the slug — as we called it — 'Top Secret/Code Word' was followed by a noun, so scrupulously chosen that even the most intuitive intruder could not associate a glimpse of the code word with the subject matter it protected. In my day there were a dozen or more of these tightly compartmented classifications of information. Aside from the President and a few others — usually the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Advisor — no other government official was automatically cleared for 'all source' reports. The lesser recipients of specific code word data had to have a clearly established 'need to know' the substance of the compartmentalized report. Compartmentation, as we called it, is one of the most effective means of protecting sensitive data. As surely as Heaven gave us little green apples, it would be my luck to pick a five-letter noun that is in current use.'"

Top Secret/Code Word documents contained "highly classified and sensitive intelligence."

Format of cryptonyms
Each CIA cryptonym contains a two character prefix called a digraph, which designates a geographical or functional area. Certain digraphs were changed over time; for example, the digraph for the Soviet Union changed at least twice.

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.

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. TRIGON, for example, was the code name for Aleksandr Ogorodnik, a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in what was then the Soviet Union, whom the CIA developed as a spy; 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. 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 Bob 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." 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.

Some cryptonyms relate to more than one subject, e.g. a group of people. 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.

Partial list of digraphs and probable definitions

 * AE: Soviet Union
 * AM: Cuba (1960s)
 * AV: Uruguay
 * BE: Poland
 * BI: Argentina
 * CK: Soviet Union
 * DB: Iraq
 * DI: Czechoslovakia
 * DM: SFRY|Yugoslavia
 * DN: South Korea
 * DU: Peru
 * EC: Ecuador
 * ES: Guatemala
 * GT: Soviet Union
 * HA: Indonesia (1958)
 * IA: Angola


 * JM: Cuba
 * KU: Part of CIA (1960s)
 * LC: China
 * LN: United States
 * LI: Mexico
 * MH: Worldwide operation.
 * MK: CIA Technical Services Division (1950s/1960s)
 * MO: Thailand
 * OD: Other US Government Departments (1960s)
 * PB: Guatemala
 * PO: Japan
 * SD: Iran
 * SM: United Kingdom
 * ST: Tibet (1950-1972)
 * TP: Iran (1953)
 * TU: South Vietnam
 * WI: Democratic Republic of the Congo (1960s)
 * ZR: Intelligence intercept program of CIA Staff D ops, the group that worked directly with the NSA (National Security Agency).

Unidentified digraphs
BG, CA, DT, ER, FJ, HB, HO, HT, JU, KM, QK, SC, SE, SG, WS, ZI

Known cryptonyms

 * AEFOXTROT: Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, a Soviet defector.
 * AELADLE: Anatoliy Golitsyn, a Soviet defector.
 * AMBIDDY-1: Manuel Artime.
 * AMBLOOD-1: Luis Torroella y Martin Rivero, a CIA agent.
 * AMCLATTER-1: Bernard Barker, one of the Watergate burglars.
 * AMBUD
 * AMCLEOPATRA
 * AMCOBRA
 * AMCROW
 * AMCRUZ or AMCRUX?
 * AMFOX
 * AMGLOSSY
 * AMHALF
 * AMJUDGE
 * AMLASH: Plan to assassinate Fidel Castro associated mainly with Rolando Cubela. AMLASH has been referred to as a "basically one-person Cubela operation".
 * AMLASH-1: Rolando Cubela Secades, a Cuban official involved in plot to kill Fidel Castro in 1963.
 * AMOT: Cuban exile informants of David Sánchez Morales.
 * AMPALM-4
 * AMQUACK: Che Guevara, Argentinian (later Cuban) guerrilla leader.
 * AMTHUG: Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of Cuba 1959-1976.
 * 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", 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". AMTRUNK has also been described as a "CIA-DIA Task Force on Cuba", and as "a plodding bureaucratic effort" that "had worked for months to identify Cuban leaders who might be able to stage a coup".
 * AMWHIP-1: Business associate of Santo Trafficante, Jr. who was in contact with Rolando Cubela (AMLASH) in 1963.
 * 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. Some Cuban exiles referred to C-Day as "Plan Omega".
 * DBACHILLES: 1995 effort to support a military coup in Iraq.
 * DBROCKSTARS: Iraqi spy ring recruited by the CIA shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
 * HTAUTOMAT: Photointerpretation center for the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft project.
 * HTKEEPER: Mexico City
 * HTLINGUAL: Mail interception operation 1952-1973.
 * HTNEIGH: National Committee for Free Albania (NCFA) [1949-mid1950s]
 * HTPLUME: Panama
 * JMADD: CIA air base near city of Retalhuleu, Guatemala 1960-1961
 * JMATE: CIA Air operations office for the Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961
 * JMBELL: CIA office (location unknown) 1961
 * JMBLUG: John Peurifoy, U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala.
 * JMFURY: Preparatory strikes against Cuban airfields before Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961
 * JMGLOW: CIA Washington 1961
 * JMTIDE: CIA air base in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua 1961
 * JMTRAX: CIA covert air base/training camp in Guatemala 1960-1961
 * JMWAVE: CIA station in Miami (that operated against Cuba).
 * JMZIP: CIA office (location unknown) 1961
 * KMFLUSH: Nicaragua
 * KMPAJAMA: Mexico
 * KMPLEBE: Peru
 * KUBARK: CIA Headquarters, Langley
 * KUBASS: CIA Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T)
 * KUCAGE: CIA Overseas Paramilitary / Propaganda Operations
 * KUCLUB: CIA Office of Communications
 * KUDESK: CIA Counterintelligence department
 * KUDOVE: CIA Deputy Director for Operations (DDO)
 * KUFIRE: CIA Foreign Intelligence Staff
 * KUGOWN: CIA Psychological and Paramilitary Operations Staff
 * KUHOOK: CIA Paramilitary Operations Staff
 * KUJAZZ: CIA Office of National Estimates
 * KUJUMP: CIA Contact Division
 * KUKNOB: CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI)
 * KUMONK: CIA Office of Political Analysis (OPA)
 * KUMOTHER: James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA counter intelligence.
 * KUPALM
 * KURIOT: CIA Technical Services Division.
 * KUSODA: Center for CIA Security.]).
 * KUTUBE: CIA Foreign Intelligence Staff.]).
 * LCFLUTTER: Polygraph, sometimes supplanted by truth drugs: Sodium Amytal (amobarbital), Sodium Pentothal (thiopental), and Seconal (secobarbital) to induce regression in the subject.
 * LCPANGS: Costa Rica
 * LNHARP: United States Government
 * LIENVOY: Wiretap or intercept program.
 * LINCOLN: Ongoing operation involving Basque separatist group ETA.
 * LIONIZER: Guatemalan refugee group in Mexico.
 * LITEMPO: Spy network, operated between 1956–1969, to exchange information with Mexican top officers.
 * LITEMPO-2: Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, President of Mexico 1964-1970.
 * LITEMPO-8: Luis Echeverría, President of Mexico 1970-1976.
 * MHCHAOS: Surveillance of antiwar activists during the Vietnam War.
 * MKCHICKWIT: Identify new drug developments in Europe and Asia and obtain samples, part of MKSEARCH.
 * MKDELTA: Stockpiling of lethal biological and chemical agents, subsequently became MKNAOMI.
 * MKNAOMI: Stockpiling of lethal biological and chemical agents, successor to MKDELTA.
 * MKOFTEN: Testing effects of biological and chemical agents, part of MKSEARCH.
 * MKSEARCH: MKULTRA after 1964, mind control research.
 * MKULTRA: Mind control research. MKULTRA means MK (scientific projects) and ULTRA (top classification reference, re: ULTRA code breaking in World War II. Renamed MKSEARCH in 1964.
 * ODACID: United States Department of State/U.S. embassy
 * ODEARL: United States Department of Defense
 * ODENVY: Federal Bureau of Investigation
 * ODOATH: United States Navy
 * ODOPAL: Counterintelligence Corps, United States Army
 * ODUNIT: United States Air Force
 * ODYOKE: Federal government of the United States
 * PBFORTUNE: CIA project to supply forces opposed to Guatemala's President Arbenz with weapons, supplies, and funding; predecessor to PBSUCCESS.
 * PBHISTORY: CIA project to gather and analyze documents from the Arbenz government in Guatemala that would incriminate Arbenz as a communist.
 * PBJOINTLY: Operation that built a tunnel from the American sector of Berlin, to the Russian sector.
 * PBPRIME: the United States
 * PBRUMEN: Cuba
 * PBSUCCESS: (Also PBS) CIA covert operation to overthrow the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954.
 * POCAPON: Taketora Ogata, Japanese politician in the 1950s.
 * PODAM: Matsutarō Shōriki, Japanese businessman and politician.
 * QJWIN: European assassin. Also described as an "assassin recruiter".
 * QKCIGAR: United States Government
 * QKELUSION: West German Social Democratic Party (SPD)
 * 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".
 * QKFLOWAGE: United States Information Agency
 * SMOTH: UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)
 * TPBEDAMN: U.S. operation to counter communist subversion in Iran with propaganda and bribes.
 * TPAJAX: Joint US/UK operation to overthrow Mohammed Mossadeq, Prime Minister of Iran.
 * TPCREDO: Italy
 * TPROACH: Yugoslavia
 * TPTONIC: National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE)
 * ZRRIFLE: An assassination plot targeting Fidel Castro

Unidentified cryptonyms
AEBARMAN, AEFOX, AEROPLANE, AVBLIMP, AVBRANDY, AVBUSY, CABOUNCE, CLOWER, ECJOB, ESGAIN, ESODIC, FJDEFLECT, GOLIATH, HBDRILL, HOPEFUL, JUBATE, JUBILIST, LCPANES, LICOZY, LPHIDDEN, ODIBEX, ODEUM, PBCABOOSE

Operations and projects

 * ALERT: U.S. civil defense exercise 1954 to 1962.
 * 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.
 * AQUATONE: Project name for Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft project, succeeded by CHALICE.
 * ARGON: satellite-intelligence mapping project 1962 to 1964.
 * ARTICHOKE: Anti-interrogation project. Precursor to MKULTRA.
 * AZORIAN: Project to raise the Soviet submarine K-129 from the Pacific Ocean.
 * BGGYPSY: Communist.
 * BIRCH
 * BLACKSHIELD: A-12 aircraft reconnaissance missions off Okinawa.
 * BLUEBIRD: mind control program
 * BOND: Puerto Barrios, Guatemala.
 * BYEMAN: A retired control system covering certain overhead collection systems, including CORONA and OXCART. Transferred to TALENT and KEYHOLE.
 * CAMTEX: Undercover FBI operation targeting Carlos Marcello (CAMTEX, for Carlos Marcello, Texas). According to informant Jack Ronald Van Laningham, in 1985 Marcello admitted he was responsible for having President Kennedy assassinated.
 * CATIDE: Bundesnachrichtendienst
 * CHALICE: Second name for the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft project. Preceded by AQUATONE.
 * CHARITY: Joint CIA/OSO-Italian Naval Intelligence information gathering operation against Albania (1948–1951).
 * CHATTER: Identification and testing of drugs to be used in interrogations and the recruitment of agents.
 * CHERRY: Covert assassination / destabilization operation during Vietnam war, targeting Prince (later King) Norodom Sihanouk and the government of Cambodia. Disbanded.
 * CONDOR: 1970s CIA interference in Latin American governments, some allege in the coup and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile.
 * CORONA: Satellite photo system.
 * DTFROGS: El Salvador
 * ECHELON: Worldwide signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community.
 * ESCOBILLA: Guatemalan national.
 * 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.
 * FIR
 * FJGROUND: Grafenwohr, West Germany paramilitary training ground.
 * FJHOPEFUL: Military base.
 * FPBERM: Yugoslavia
 * FUBELT: Project to prevent Salvador Allende rise to power, and to promote a military coup in Chile.
 * GANGPLANK: KYP, Greek Central Intelligence Service (1952–1974)
 * GESENIOR: Afghan tribal agents working with the CIA during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Later called FDTRODPINT.
 * GPFLOOR: Lee Harvey Oswald, J.F. Kennedy's assassin.
 * GPIDEAL: John F. Kennedy, US president.
 * GRALLSPICE: Sergei Popov (bioweaponeer), Soviet defector.
 * GUSTO: Project to design a follow-on to the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. Succeeded RAINBOW. Succeeded by OXCART.
 * HBFAIRY: France
 * HTCURIO: American or U.S. [Not Government]
 * IAFEATURE: Operation to support UNITA and FNLA during the Angolan civil war.
 * IDIOM: Initial work by Convair on a follow-on to the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. Later moved into GUSTO.
 * IVY BELLS: Monitoring of a Soviet communications cable lying on the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk.
 * Project JBEDICT: Tripartite Stay-Behind project.
 * JENNIFER: Document control system for Project AZORIAN.


 * KEMPSTER: Project to reduce the radar cross section (RCS) of the inlets of the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft.
 * KMHYMNAL: Maine-built motor sailer JUANITA purchased by CIA to use as floating, clandestine, propaganda broadcast facility in Mediterranean/Adriatic (1950–53).
 * KEYHOLE: Compartment created August 1960 for satellite intelligence.
 * LANYARD: Satellite intelligence 1963.
 * 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.
 * MOCKINGBIRD: Recruitment of American journalists for CIA work.
 * 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".
 * MURKIN: Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination files. Cryptonym possibly based on Martin lUtheR KINg.
 * OAK: Operation to assassinate suspected South Vietnamese collaborators during Vietnam war.
 * OXCART: Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft. Succeeded GUSTO.
 * PANCHO: Carlos Castillo Armas, President of Guatemala, also RUFUS.
 * PAPERCLIP: US recruiting of German scientists after World War II.
 * PHOENIX: Vietnam covert intelligence/assassination operation.
 * PINE
 * RAINBOW: Project to reduce the radar cross section (RCS) of the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. Succeeded by GUSTO.
 * QKWAVER: Egypt
 * RUFF: Satellite imagery intelligence codeword.
 * RUFUS: Carlos Castillo Armas, President of Guatemala, also PANCHO.
 * RYBAT: Indicates that the information is very sensitive.
 * SARANAC: Training site in Nicaragua.
 * SCRANTON: Training base for radio operators near Nicaragua.
 * SGCIDER: Germany
 * SGUAT: CIA Station in Guatemala
 * SHERWOOD: CIA radio broadcast program in Nicaragua begun on May 1, 1954.
 * SKILLET: Whiting Willauer, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras.
 * SKIMMER: The "Group" CIA cover organization supporting Castillo Armas.
 * SLINC: Telegram indicator for PBSUCCESS Headquarters in Florida.
 * STANDEL: Jacobo Arbenz, President of Guatemala.
 * STARGATE: Investigation of psychic phenomena.
 * SYNCARP: The "Junta," Castillo Armas' political organization headed by Cordova Cerna.
 * TALENT: Codeword created in the mid-1950s for the Lockheed U-2.
 * THERMOS: Unclassified codeword used in lieu of RAINBOW
 * 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.
 * 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 [sic] Johnny Roselli". 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 Soviety missiles still on the island".
 * TRINE: Signal intelligence codeword.
 * TROPIC: Air operations flown over North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union by CAT pilots during the 1950s.
 * TSS: CIA Technical Services Staff.
 * UMBRA: Particularly sensitive communications intelligence.
 * UNIFRUIT: United Fruit Company Note: unlikely to be a cryptonym as such.
 * VALUABLE: British MI-run Albanian operations 1949 to 1953.
 * VENONA: Interception and decoding of Soviet messages 1940 to 1948.
 * WASHTUB: Operation to plant Soviet arms in Nicaragua.
 * WBFISHY: British Foreign Office
 * WSBURNT: Guatemala
 * WSHOOFS: Honduras
 * WTF: WikiLeaks Task Force
 * ZAPATA: Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961.