Agency Training Officer Richard “Dushan” Kovich

RICHARD KOVICH
He was born Dushan Kovacevich to a Serbian iron ore miner and his wife in the Minnesota town of Hibbing during nineteen twenty-six. Dushan changed his name by nineteen forty to Richard Kovich and subsequently joined the United States Navy amid WWII. He graduated from the University of Minnesota following his wartime service and joined the CIA amongst nineteen fifty. Kovich became a Soviet Division case officer assigned to Tokyo Station targeting possible agent recruitment prospects and three years later he assisted in defector management at CIA headquarters with case officer George Kisevalter. Richard later undertook projects for the Agency’s Berlin Station recruiting agents to serve in Moscow until nineteen sixty-one.

He was reassigned to the CIA’s base in Vienna and returned in the course of nineteen sixty-four to headquarters as the unknowing target of its counterintelligence staff. An ongoing internal hunt for traitors during this period would allow James Angleton to eventually place Richard under surveillance based upon mere suppositions. However, Kovich was never informed of these suspicions and kept training new recruits for the Agency at Virginia’s Camp Peary. He later instructed new agents from CIA headquarters before the nineteen seventies arrived but decided to retire with the arrival of nineteen seventy-four. Richard was informed of the secret charges which impacted his career following his Agency tenure but publicly disputed them. Kovich was officially cleared of the false claims after years of legal maneuvers and petitioning American legislators.