stay-behind

plural stay-behinds · alternative stay behind

1. idiomaticOne who remains when expected to leave or after others have left.

   In areas where stay-behinds could be a threat, however, motion detectors should be used.

   1988, Robert L. Barnard, Intrusion Detection Systems, page 46

   2 more examples

   The stay-behinds then tend to move out of the house into a tent. This might have been the case at IT.

   1996, Dick Stapert, Lykke Johansen, “Ring & Sector Analysis, and Site ‘IT’ on Greenland”, in Palaeohistoria, volumes 37-38, page 60

   But the image to remember is of a few families enjoying a day within the forest steppe - away from the barking dogs, the smelly rubbish heaps, the grumpy stay-behinds of their village.

   2006, Steven Mithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC, page 44

2. espionageAn agent who resides in a foreign country, and can be activated in certain circumstances.

   a. 2000, Sam Halpern, Quoted in 2000, James Srodes, Allen Dulles: Master of Spies, page 545, Bobby Kennedy believed the Mafia had lots of interests in and people in Cuba; he was absolutely convinced that they had left stay-behinds in Cuba and all they had to do was tap into those stay-behinds.

   2 more examples

   Diem chose instead to use his military forces and police to capture and kill the Viet Minh “stay-behinds,” even though these actually posed little or no threat to the country, since a good share of them were simply not Communists and those that had been had either recanted in favor of the Diem government or returned to the north.

   2003, Bradley O'Leary, L. E. Seymour, Triangle of Death, unnumbered page

   Ganser closely documents activities of “stay-behinds” in 14 western nations — spies and agents with Nazi and Fascist backgrounds, secretly installed by NATO following the Second World War to counter a supposed Soviet threat.

   2011, David MacGregor, “Update: September 11 as “Macchiavellian^([sic]) State Terror””, in Paul Zarembka, editor, The Hidden History of 9/11, unnumbered page