When an public officials act in a way that appears to benefit only favored constituents, business associates or friends, murmurs of “Corruption!” begin to be heard in the community.  We should distinguish between public officials who have been corrupted and those who have been co-opted.  We should also understand that co-opting a public official is often the first step in corrupting him.Corruption of public officials usually refers to specific criminal acts such as bribery or accepting a gratuity. These acts have specific elements which must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law if the charge is to be sustained.   Bribery is defined in most state and federal criminal statutes.  A general legal definition is “The corrupt payment, receipt, or solicitation of a private favor for official action.”[1]

Corruption can also refer to a public official’s making official decisions which financially or in some other meaningful way benefit her, a business partner, a relative, or a friend.  Using confidential information derived from one’s official position to acquire land which will appreciate as a result of the official’s past and future decisions or recommendations is an example of corruption.  In publicly traded companies, this is called insider trading.  

There are many examples of federal and state prosecutions of public officials and contractors alleged to have engaged in corrupt behavior.

Easier to see and demonstrate is that one or more public officials have been co-opted by someone. One definition of co-opt means to appropriate as one’s own[2]. Being co-opted is something most of us can understand because we have experienced it. If we were invited to join a group and have adopted some or all of its precepts as our own, we have been co-opted. The word sounds more evil than it is in most of our lives.

However, co-opting someone can be sinister or dangerous. Charles Manson and Jim Jones co-opted followers, victims themselves really, into their respective cults. Agents committing espionage have been co-opted by their case officers or handlers. In these examples of cults and espionage, acts of kindness, benevolence, and personal support by a handler were really intended to secure a deep and personal loyalty from those being co-opted.   It works.  It often does when the handler is observant, patient, and skilled at manipulating people.

A counterintelligence (CI) investigation is a better model than a criminal investigation for understanding how an manipulative individual can co-opt public officials. A CI investigation looks at the subtleties in a long-term, developmental relationship between the handler and each public official rather than focusing on one or two acts of apparent bribery or receiving a gratuity. A CI investigator looks at the details of each official’s personal and business relationships with the handler to determine if the handler had “groomed” the official for public office. This long-term, developmental relationship strives to create ideological loyalty. Ideological loyalty to the handler is far deeper and more accepted by the official. Coercive loyalty may achieve short-term benefits for the handler, but they require more assertive control over the official.

This is exactly how the world’s intelligence services go about spotting, assessing, recruiting, developing, and controlling human intelligence sources and agents of influence. The process is gradual. Often the ideologically motivated agent (or co-opted public official) truly believes his or her actions on his handler’s behalf are for the greater public good. Even if he doesn’t believe it, he can rationalize what he has come to recognize as manipulated behavior. The handler’s ability to have nearly instant and personal access to an agent in an environment controlled by the handler is a revealing demonstration of the control he exerts over the agent.  

A public official who has been co-opted and controlled by a manipulative handler will likely become stuck in the quicksand that is public corruption.  The longer the official remains without seeking help, the more difficult it becomes to extricate him.