espionage

The act or practice of spying or of using spies to obtain secret information, as about another government or a business competitor.

[French espionnage, from espionner, to spy, from Old French espion, spy, from Old Italian spione, of Germanic origin.]

Act of spying. An example is spying on the activities of another company by improperly gathering information about the competing company's new products or practices. Usually the spy is paid a fee for the information obtained.

n.the act of obtaining, delivering, transmitting, communicating, or receiving information about the national defense with an intent, or reason to believe, that the information may be used to the injury of the nation or to the advantage of any foreign nation.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

For more information on espionage, visit Britannica.com.

George Washington was already a devotee of military intelligence when he assumed command of the Continental army. While serving as a British officer in the French and Indian war, he had ruefully noted the benefits that accrued to the French through their alliance with the natives of the North American forests. Small parties of white men, he observed, were not "so dexterous at skulking as Indians; and large parties will be discovered by their spies early enough to have a superior force opposed to them."

By employing such tactics in the revolutionary war, Washington prevailed against overwhelming military odds: his deployment of spies and his wise evaluation of the information they brought in helped him keep his nationalist guerrilla soldiers out of reach of the enemy and intact as a fighting force. The events of these years began to shape the American attitude toward espionage and spies. There were verifiable tales of true heroes: Nathan Hale on the American side, and Maj. John André on the British. Equally, the mercenary treachery of Benedict Arnold made a deep impression on the American mind.

Although some of the main lineaments of espionage are discernible in the earliest days of the Republic, developments in the nineteenth century were slow. Absorbed by the challenges of their own continent and heeding the isolationist advice of Presidents Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe, Americans saw no need to practice systematic international intrigue, or even to defend themselves against it.

To be sure, some nineteenth-century Americans engaged in espionage. Stories abound about the exploits of secret agents in the Civil War. Belle Boyd was only seventeen when federal soldiers burst into her Virginia home, enraging her to such a degree that she variously resorted to homicide, espionage, and charm on behalf of the Confederacy. Although arrested several times between July 1862 and the spring of 1864, she escaped severe retribution, obtaining a pardon from President Abraham Lincoln on one occasion and marrying her jailer on another. Yet, the tale is more redolent of glamour than of competence. Neither side developed an effective espionage or counterespionage network in the course of the war.

Many Americans remained suspicious of espionage in the 1890s. One reason was the ill repute of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, an organization that had occasionally served the federal government. For the "Pinkerton men" had spied on labor unions and, in 1892, were involved in a notorious shoot-out with striking workers at Andrew Carnegie's showpiece steelworks at Homestead, Pennsylvania. Another reason was the White House's habit of evading congressional scrutiny by using secret agents to conduct unofficial diplomacy. Following the acquisition of Hawaii in this manner, Senator George Hoar of Massachusetts secured passage of a resolution stating that a presidential spy "could be in no sense an officer of the United States."

Yet America was on the eve of a long run of success in the counterintelligence field. In the Spanish-American War of 1898, Spain set up a spy network in Montreal under the leadership of Ramón de Carranza. But John E. Wilkie, a Chicago businessman with a weakness for loud bow ties, had just been put in charge of the U.S. Secret Service, and he soon mopped up the "Montreal spy ring." In World War I, Franz von Papen--a future chancellor of Weimar Germany--organized a spy and sabotage ring. The Secret Service and fledgling fbi eliminated it. In the 1930s, the fbi was effective against Nazi agents in both the United States and South America. So far as we know, neither the Russian kgb nor any other foreign intelligence agency has ever effected a serious penetration of the cia.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, surprised the defending forces, a circumstance that suggested a need for improved U.S. facilities for the collection and analysis of intelligence. In the course of World War II, the Office of Strategic Services attempted to meet these needs and also established for itself a covert operational role. In 1945, the traditional American distrust of espionage resurfaced, and the world's first superpower was temporarily shorn of a large-scale intelligence capability. But on July 26, 1947, Section 102 of the National Security Act established the cia, the world's first democratically sanctioned secret service.

Fear of foreign espionage for a while far exceeded reservations about an American "police state." In 1950, former State Department official Alger Hiss went to prison after being accused of spying for the Soviet Union. In 1953, the married couple Julius and Ethel Rosenberg died in the electric chair in Sing Sing prison, having been convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Russians. The evidence in both these cases is suspect, and it is possible that Hiss and the Rosenbergs were at least partly innocent. But this was the McCarthy era, and their respective trials were patently unfair. In the name of freedom, American judges and juries had impaired the very liberties they were supposed to be defending.

In due course, a strong reaction set in, at some cost to the intelligence agencies. Liberals, who took exception to the involvement of the fbi in some of the McCarthyist excesses, became even more vehement in their denunciations when they learned about the bureau's harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Cold war calumny abroad added to the furor. Presidents had begun to rely on the cia's covert operational capabilities to produce quick fixes--most notoriously, the overthrow of the democratically elected, if leftward-leaning, governments of Guatemala and Chile in 1954 and 1973, respectively. After the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs venture, an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba, the cia became increasingly vulnerable to criticism.

Nevertheless, the intelligence community retained widespread respect and support for several reasons. In contrast to the fbi's J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, the 1950s' cia director, had refused to cooperate with Senator Joseph McCarthy, a stand that won his particular agency well-deserved support. With the passage of time and the declassification of documents, it also emerged that both the cia and military intelligence had issued sound warnings about the unsatisfactory progress of the Vietnam War. Even more important, the intelligence community's "Soviet estimate" has, in general, been sound, a circumstance that helped protect America and its allies from Soviet attack and prepare the groundwork for arms agreements in the Nixon, Carter, and Reagan administrations. In 1975, vigorous congressional investigations into their agencies shook many intelligence officers, but in fact they prepared the way for some confidence-boosting reforms, such as the ban on assassination as an instrument of state policy.

In the 1980s, the intelligence agencies were indirectly involved in an illegal scheme to sell weapons to Iran and divert the profits into the pockets of the Contra resistance movement in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra affair reminded many Americans that espionage remained a dirty game. They still had reason to retain some of their old ambivalence, even if they could claim to have recovered from their nineteenth- century antipathy to espionage.

Bibliography:

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (1989); Nathan Miller, Spying for America: The Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence (1989).

Author:

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

See also Alger Hiss Case; Arnold, Benedict; Central Intelligence Agency; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Iran-Contra Affair; Pinkertons; Rosenberg Case; U-2 Affair.

Early modern Europeans believed spying to be a necessary complement to both warfare and effective government. At home governments were continually on the lookout for dangerous opinions and plotting by their subjects. In dealing with foreign powers, they needed information on opponents' plans and resources: the sizes and movements of their armies, the state of their fortifications, the funds they had available. When campaigning in unfamiliar territory, generals needed informants who could describe local geography and alert them to its dangers and possibilities. All governments sought to provoke dissension among their enemies, encouraging rebellions and suborning rival commanders whenever possible, and as wars wound down, each combatant needed to know as much as possible about what the others would accept in an eventual peace treaty. After about 1650, as governments became more alert to the economic components of power, they also sought a better understanding of the economic conditions of their rivals.

Motives and Patterns of Action

It has not been easy for historians to sort out the complex patterns of espionage that responded to these needs. Documentation concerning spying is inevitably difficult to interpret, and the best studies of early modern espionage have been close examinations of specific cases rather than general histories. Nonetheless, these case studies have established some elements of a general history of early modern espionage. They have shown, first, the remarkable range of opportunities that governments had for recruiting foreign informants at all levels of society. Before about 1650, ideas of patriotism and national loyalty remained weak, and many aristocrats held on to medieval ideas of their political autonomy; when aristocrats believed the state had mistreated them, it was often possible for a foreign government to secure their services. In 1587–1588 the English ambassador to France (a high aristocrat and relative of Queen Elizabeth I [ruled 1558–1603]) used his position to pass English secrets to Spain and send home misleading information about Spanish intentions—this as Spain was preparing to invade England. The ambassador was moved partly by greed and partly by the belief that he had been slighted in his pursuit of influence at court. Fifty years later the Spanish succeeded in securing the services of Henri Coeffier-Ruzé d'Effiat, marquis de Cinq-Mars (1620–1642), a favorite courtier (and possibly a lover) of the French king Louis XIII (ruled 1610–1643). Cinq-Mars was moved principally by ambition for a larger political role, which he found blocked by Cardinal Richelieu's (1585–1642) domination of French politics. Even when not moved by greed or ambition, aristocrats were logical targets for espionage efforts. Many had familial connections in other countries, creating divided loyalties and the frequent exchange of information, and it proved easy for well-dressed adventurers to make friendships in the highest social circles and to acquire political secrets in the process.

Farther down the social scale, there were other opportunities for recruiting spies. Political and military leaders were always surrounded by crowds of servants, secretaries, and dependents, many of them poorly paid yet with constant access to important documents. Presumably it was some such source that made possible the immediate diffusion of detailed plans for the Spanish Armada as it prepared to invade Britain. The Spanish government understood the value of these plans and went to great lengths to keep them secret. Yet in 1586 one set of plans reached London within weeks of being drafted, and in 1588, as the armada was about to sail, illicit copies of its final arrangements reached pro-Spanish governments in Florence, Venice, and Rome. Merchants were another crucial source of information. Even the most savage early modern warfare rarely interrupted commercial relations between the combatants, allowing merchants to report regularly on ship movements, public opinion, and a variety of other topics of interest to rival governments. Indeed such reporting scarcely differed from the news reports that merchants drew up as part of their normal business practices. Among the peasantry, especially in border areas long used to smuggling, military commanders easily recruited guides to lead their troops through unfamiliar terrain. At these levels valuable information might cost governments very little money. Whereas it might cost huge sums to bribe important aristocrats, secretaries, merchants, and peasants were ready to supply information for the equivalent of a few days' wages.

Government Organization

Because information was both so necessary and so readily available, spying remained a private enterprise through the eighteenth century; lords, generals, and politicians all paid for spies who reported directly to them. But over the period espionage services tended to become more centralized in a few government offices, where greater control could be exercised over their activities and greater professionalism could be enforced. In England, Elizabeth I's secretary of state Sir Francis Walsingham (c. 1532–1590) established a full-scale espionage service to deal with the Spanish threat. He had agents working throughout Europe and specialized messengers to collect their information. In Louis XIV's (ruled 1643–1715) France also, it came to be understood that espionage services reported to the secretary of state for foreign affairs. Techniques also were marked by this trend toward professionalization. Fourteenth-century governments already used cyphers and codes to keep their messages secret, and in 1466 the Florentine polymath Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) invented a cypher disk system that remained the basis for cryptography through the nineteenth century. The first printed book devoted to coded messages appeared in 1518, and later sixteenth-century publications spread advanced versions of these techniques throughout Europe. In turn governments devoted more resources to decoding one another's messages. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they systematically opened diplomatic mail, copied it, and set trained specialists to decoding the contents. During the short span of the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), Britain accumulated at least twenty-seven large volumes of messages intercepted from other powers.

In establishing their networks, spymasters were aided by the growing assumption that governments should maintain representatives in one another's capitals. Permanent embassies were first employed by the Italian states of the fifteenth century; after 1500 the practice was taken up in northern Europe in response to the intensification of international rivalries during these years. Each country's embassy formed a pole around which spies clustered. Ambassadors of course were formally instructed to learn as much as possible about the country they resided in and were ready to bribe locals for that purpose. But host countries also acquired information from embassy staffs. In late-sixteenth-century London the wandering Italian philosopher and heretic Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) ingratiated himself with the Spanish ambassador, even taking up lodging in the ambassador's residence. He used this intimacy to uncover networks of Catholic missionaries in Britain, whom he promptly named to the English authorities.

Bruno's example illustrates the complex motives that might underlie early modern espionage. Most spies acted from self-interest, but Bruno and many others saw themselves as combatants in the great religious struggles that followed the Protestant Reformation. In Bruno's case this meant primarily hatred of the Catholic Church, which had persecuted him for heresy and would eventually have him burned at the stake in 1600, and a commitment to thwarting Catholic regimes wherever possible. After 1685, when Louis XIV expelled about 300,000 Protestants from his domains, France replaced Spain as the most visible threat to Protestantism's existence. In the face of these attempts at Catholic hegemony, religious exiles accepted the risks that spying entailed because of their sense that they were participants in a great ideological struggle against evil opponents. From his Dutch exile, the Calvinist theology professor Pierre Jurieu (1637–1713) organized a network of spies to observe French ports and sought to encourage Protestant rebellion within France itself. (In turn the French government succeeded in placing an informer within this group and learned about most of its doings.) Jewish exiles, forced to leave Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1580, were another group of potential informants, especially useful because many of them had contacts across Europe.

Because so much early modern European warfare concerned religion and because fomenting rebellion abroad was a normal tool of foreign policy, governments did not distinguish clearly between internal and external espionage. All maintained significant numbers of police spies to report on the opinions and doings of their own populations. The police spies of eighteenth-century Paris accumulated an enormous documentation on the "bad opinions" they overheard in taverns and other public spaces; such reports of disaffection commonly led to arrests and lengthy imprisonments. In Spain and Italy governmental policing of this kind was reinforced by the inquisitorial activities of the Catholic Church. In the late sixteenth century the Spanish Inquisition maintained a staff of about twenty thousand salaried "familiars" charged with collecting information on their neighbors' opinions and practices.

How much did all this activity matter for the course of European international politics? For individuals the consequences of espionage might be dire. Walsingham's spies entrapped numerous Catholic plotters, many of whom were executed after being tortured to name accomplices. Walsingham's ability to intercept and decipher their correspondence with Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots; ruled 1542–1587) ensured her execution and thus had implications for British high politics. In the late seventeenth century, however, there developed something of an espionage stalemate among the European states. All governments had specialists proficient in code breaking and information gathering, and none gained much tactical advantage from them. Even earlier, their espionage successes had confronted states with another paradox: they now often found themselves burdened with too much information without the capacity to organize it and act on it effectively.

Bibliography

Bély, Lucien. Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV. Paris, 1990.

Bossy, John. Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair. New Haven and London, 1991.

Haynes, Alan. Invisible Power: The Elizabethan Secret Services, 1570–1603. Wolfeboro Falls, N.H., 1992.

Kahn, David. The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing. New York, 1967.

Parker, Geoffrey. The Grand Strategy of Philip II. New Haven and London, 1998.

Read, Conyers. Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth. Cambridge, Mass., 1925.

Thompson, J. W., and S. K. Padover. Secret Diplomacy: A Record of Espionage and Double-Dealing, 1500–1815. London, 1937.

—JONATHAN DEWALD

Espionage is the use of spies, or the practice of spying, for the purpose of obtaining information about the plans, activities, capabilities, or resources of a competitor or enemy. It is closely related to intelligence, but is often distinguished from it by virtue of the clandestine, aggressive, and dangerous nature of the espionage trade.

The term espionage comes from a French word meaning to spy. The Middle French espionner appears to be related to the Old Italian spione, which in turn is linguistically akin to the Old High German spehon. This is interesting philologically, since French, Italian, and German have very different historic roots: the first two derived from the Latin of the Roman Empire, while the third comes from the language of the Romans' "barbarian" foes across the Rhine. It is perhaps fitting that the very etymology of espionage would reflect surreptitious connections.

A brief history. Though the word itself entered the English language from the French in 1793, at a time when the foundations of modern espionage were being laid, the concept of espionage is as old as civilization. Ancient and classical era scripts often mention spies and the use of espionage (e.g., the Bible mentions spies some 100 times) while the Greek legend of the Trojan horse suggests that covert operations and "dirty tricks" are nothing new. The roots of espionage in the East are likewise very deep: in the third century B.C., both the Mauryan empire of India and the China's Ch'in dynasty ensured control over their vast realms with the help of spy networks.

Despite this early evidence of organized spying in east Asia, espionage tended to be an ad hoc enterprise until the late eighteenth century. The reign of terror that followed the French Revolution—significantly, in 1793— marked the beginnings of the modern totalitarian police state, while the American Revolution a few years earlier saw the beginnings of a consistent interface between military operations and intelligence. Military intelligence came into its own during the American Civil War, while the late nineteenth century saw the birth of the first U.S. military intelligence organizations.

The twentieth century and beyond. Espionage reached a new level of maturity in World War I. Although Mata Hari may have been the most visible, and romantic, spy of the war, there were many others on both sides. The war also gave birth to the first true totalitarian state, in Russia, and this was followed soon afterward by the establishment of fascism in Italy. Totalitarianism spawned its own elaborate spy networks, and increased the requirements for espionage activities on the part of democracies, as evidenced by the U.S. experience with Nazi and later Soviet infiltrators on American shores.

The era that perhaps most commonly comes to mind at the mention of the word espionage is the Cold War, which lasted from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet empire. Yet the end of Soviet communism was certainly not the end of espionage, a fact that became dramatically apparent as new U.S. enemies emerged among Islamist terrorists and their supporters.

In any case, espionage is not solely the enterprise of governments: companies have long sought to gain the advantage over competitors through the use of economic or industrial espionage. In a world increasingly dominated by huge corporations, economic espionage is not likely to disappear. Nor is espionage only undertaken against enemies: the United States has captured, and punished, spies who passed U.S. secrets to such allies as Israel and South Korea.

Further Reading

Books

Bennett, Richard M. Espionage: An Encyclopedia of Spies and Secrets. London: Virgin Books, 2002.

Dulles, Allen Welsh. The Craft of Intelligence. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

Haynes, John Earl. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.

Martin, David C. Wilderness of Mirrors. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.

Wright, Peter. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer. New York: Viking, 1987.

The act of securing information of a military or political nature that a competing nation holds secret. It can involve the analysis of diplomatic reports, publications, statistics, and broadcasts, as well as spying, a clandestine activity carried out by an individual or individuals working under a secret identity for the benefit of a nation's information gathering techniques. In the United States, the organization that heads most activities dedicated to espionage is the Central Intelligence Agency.

Espionage, commonly known as spying, is the practice of secretly gathering information about a foreign government or a competing industry, with the purpose of placing one's own government or corporation at some strategic or financial advantage. Federal law prohibits espionage when it jeopardizes the national defense or benefits a foreign nation (18 U.S.C.A. § 793). Criminal espionage involves betraying U.S. government secrets to other nations.

Despite its illegal status, espionage is commonplace. Through much of the twentieth century, international agreements have implicitly accepted espionage as a natural political activity. This gathering of intelligence has benefited competing nations that wish to stay one step ahead of each other. The general public never hears of espionage activities that are carried out correctly. However, espionage blunders can receive national attention, jeopardizing the security of the nation or the lives of individuals.

Espionage is unlikely to disappear. Since the late nineteenth century, nations have allowed each other to station so-called military attachés in their overseas embassies. These "attachés" collect intelligence secrets about the armed forces of their host country. Attachés have worked toward the subversion of governments, the destabilization of economies, and the assassination of declared enemies. Many of these activities remain secret in order to protect national interests and reputations.

The centerpiece of U.S. espionage is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), created by the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C.A. § 402 et seq.) to conduct covert activity. The CIA protects national security interests by spying on foreign governments. The CIA also attempts to recruit foreign agents to work on behalf of U.S. interests. Other nations do the same, seeking to recruit CIA agents or others who will betray sensitive information. Sometimes a foreign power is successful in procuring U.S. government secrets.

One of the most damaging cases of criminal espionage in U.S. history was uncovered in the late 1980s with the exposure of the Walker spy ring, which operated from 1967 to 1985. John A. Walker, Jr., and his son, Michael L. Walker, brother, Arthur J. Walker, and friend, Jerry A. Whitworth, supplied the Soviets with confidential U.S. data including codes from the U.S. Navy that allowed the Soviets to decipher over a million Navy messages. The Walker ring also sold the Soviets classified material concerning Yuri Andropov, secretary general of the Communist party until 1984; the Soviet shooting of a Korean Airlines jet in 1983; and U.S. offensives during the Vietnam War.

John Walker pleaded guilty to three counts of espionage. He claimed that he had become an undercover informant for the thrill of it, rather than for the money. He was sentenced to a life term in federal prison, with eligibility for parole in ten years. Michael Walker pleaded guilty to aiding in the supply of classified documents to the Soviets. He was able to reach a plea-bargain under which he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Arthur Walker was convicted of espionage in Norfolk, Virginia. His conviction was affirmed in United States v. Walker, 796 F.2d 43 (4th Cir. 1986). Like John Walker, he was sentenced to a life term in federal prison. Jerry Whitworth received a sentence of 365 years for stealing and selling Navy coding secrets (upheld in United States v. Whitworth, 856 F.2d 1268 [9th Cir. 1988]).

The ring's ample opportunity to exploit the lax security of the Navy left a legacy of damage. The armed forces frantically scrapped and rebuilt their entire communications system, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $1 billion. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) had to withdraw security clearances from approximately 2 million military and civilian personnel worldwide. The DOD also reduced the number of classified documents in order to limit the number of remaining security clearances.

These reforms only touched the tip of larger, underlying problems. The exploits of Aldrich Hazen Ames brought security problems within the CIA to the fore. As a double agent, Ames sold secrets to Moscow from 1985 to the end of the cold war and beyond. As a CIA agent and later a CIA official, Ames was responsible for, among other things, recruiting Soviet officials to do undercover work for the United States. His position put him in contact with Soviet officials at their embassy in Washington, D.C. While in the embassy, he discussed secret matters related to U.S. intelligence. The CIA's lack of security measures, which usually consisted of no more than the collection of questionable lie detector data, gave Ames the opportunity to illegally acquire a fortune.

In 1986, the CIA suspected the presence of a mole (a double agent with the objective of rising to a key position) in the system. Investigators could not be certain of the mole's identity but determined that something in their operations had gone awry. Two officers at the Soviet Embassy who had been recruited as double agents by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been recalled to Moscow, arrested, tried, and executed. Years later, a major blunder on Ames's part led the CIA to suspect him of leaking information that may have contributed to the death of the agents. Ames had told his superiors in October 1992 that he was going to visit his mother-in-law in Colombia. He actually went to Venezuela, where he met a Soviet contact. His travels were under surveillance, and the CIA took note of the discrepancy.

By May 1993, Ames had become the focus of a criminal investigation dubbed Nightmover. Investigators found that Ames's continued activity with the Soviets had led to the execution of at least ten more agents. Ames's continuing financial struggle necessitated that he continue to sell secrets. While criminal espionage brought him more than $2.5 million from the Kremlin, Ames's carelessness with the money led to his demise. According to court documents, Ames and his wife spent nearly $1.4 million from April 1985 to November 1993. Ames's annual CIA salary never exceeded $70,000.

When Ames pleaded guilty on April 28, 1994, to a two-count criminal indictment for espionage and tax evasion, government prosecutors sought to negotiate the plea to avoid a long trial. A trial, they feared, could force intelligence agencies to disclose secrets about the Ames case, which had already embarrassed the CIA. Escaping the ordeal of a drawn-out trial, Ames was sentenced to life in prison.

As a result of the Ames case, the CIA made a number of changes, including requiring CIA employees to make annual financial disclosures and tightening the requirements for top security clearance.

See: Hiss, Alger; Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel.

(DOD) The act of obtaining, delivering, transmitting, communicating, or receiving information about the national defense with an intent, or reason to believe, that the information may be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation. Espionage is a violation of 18 United States Code 792-798 and Article 106, Uniform Code ofMilitary Justice. See also counterintelligence.

• Kevin's Security Scrapbook Eavesdropping news, espionage, wiretapping, bugging, spying trends, TSCM, electronic surveillance

"Spy" and "Secret agent" redirect here. For other uses, see Spy (disambiguation) and Secret agent (disambiguation).

For other uses, see Espionage (disambiguation).

Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, as the legitimate holder of the information may change plans or take other countermeasures once it is known that the information is in unauthorized hands. See clandestine HUMINT for the basic concepts of such information collection, and subordinate articles such as clandestine HUMINT operational techniques and clandestine HUMINT asset recruiting for discussions of the "tradecraft" used to collect this information.

Contents 1 History 2 Various forms 3 Risks 4 Spies in various conflicts 4.1 Espionage under Elizabeth I of England 4.2 Espionage in the American Revolution 4.3 Espionage in the Napoleonic Wars 4.4 Espionage in the American Civil War 4.5 Espionage in the Second Boer War 4.6 Espionage in World War I 4.7 Espionage in World War II 4.8 Espionage in the Cold War 5 Espionage technology and techniques 6 Spy fiction 7 Further reading 7.1 Surveys 7.2 World War I 7.3 World War II: 1931-1945 7.4 Cold War era: 1945-1991 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

History

Incidents of espionage are well documented throughout history. The ancient writings of Chinese and Indian military strategists such as Sun-Tzu and Chanakya contain information on deception and subversion. Chanakya's student Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Maurya Empire, made use of assassinations, spies and secret agents, which are described in Chanakya's Arthasastra. The ancient Egyptians had a thoroughly developed system for the acquisition of intelligence, and the Hebrews used spies as well, as in the story of Rahab. Feudal Japan often used ninjas to gather intelligence. More recently, spies played a significant part in Elizabethan England (see Francis Walsingham). Many modern espionage methods were well established even then.^[1]

The Cold War involved intense espionage activity between the United States of America and its allies and the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and their allies, particularly related to nuclear weapons secrets. Recently, espionage agencies have targeted the illegal drug trade and those considered to be terrorists.

Different intelligence services value certain intelligence collection techniques over others. The former Soviet Union, for example, preferred human sources over research in open sources, while the United States has tended to emphasize technological methods such as SIGINT and IMINT. Both Soviet political (KGB) and military intelligence (GRU^[2]) officers were judged by the number of agents they recruited.

Various forms

Unlike other forms of intelligence collection disciplines, espionage usually involves accessing the place where the desired information is stored, or accessing the people who know the information and will divulge it through some kind of subterfuge. There are exceptions to physical meetings, such as the Oslo Report, or the insistence of Robert Hanssen in never meeting the people to whom he was selling information.

The US defines espionage towards itself as "The act of obtaining, delivering, transmitting, communicating, or receiving information about the national defense with an intent, or reason to believe, that the information may be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation. Espionage is a violation of United States law, 18 U.S.C. § 792–798 and Article 106 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice^[3]." The United States, like most nations, conducts espionage against other nations, under the control of the National Clandestine Service. Britain's espionage activities are controlled by the Secret Intelligence Service. Espionage is usually part of an institutional effort (i.e., governmental or corporate espionage), and the term is most readily associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies, primarily for military purposes, but this has been extended to spying involving corporations, known specifically as industrial espionage. Many nations routinely spy on both their enemies and allies, although they maintain a policy of not making comment on this. In addition to utilizing agencies within a government many also employ private companies to collect information on their behalf such as SCG International Risk and others. Black's Law Dictionary (1990) defines espionage as: "...gathering, transmitting, or losing...information related to the national defense."

While news media may speak of "spy satellites" and the like, espionage is not a synonym for all types of intelligence functions. It is a specific form of human source intelligence (HUMINT). Codebreaking (cryptanalysis or COMINT), aircraft or satellite photography (IMINT) and research in open publications (OSINT) are all intelligence gathering disciplines, but none of them are espionage. Not all HUMINT activities, such as interviewing prisoners, reports from military reconnaissance patrols and from diplomats, etc., are espionage.

A spy is a person employed to obtain such secrets. Within the US intelligence community, asset is a more common usage. A case officer, who may have diplomatic status (i.e., official cover or non-official cover) supports and directs the human collector. Cutouts are couriers who do not know the agent or case officer, but transfer messages. A safe house is a refuge for spies.

In larger networks, the organization can be complex, with many methods to avoid detection, including clandestine cell systems. Often the players have never met and are sometimes unaware that they are participating. This is often referred to as "the Tyson Effect," where important players are unaware of their own participation.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]} See Clandestine HUMINT for details of the actual operations and people of espionage systems.

Case officers are stationed in foreign countries to recruit and supervise intelligence agents, who in turn spy on targets in their countries where they are assigned. A spy may or may not be an actual citizen of a target country. While the more common practice is to recruit a person already trusted with access to sensitive information, there are cases where a person may attempt to infiltrate a target organization, with a well-prepared synthetic identity for them, called a legend in tradecraft.

These agents can be moles (who are recruited before they get access to secrets), defectors (who are recruited after they get access to secrets and leave their country) or defectors in place (who get access but do not leave).

Risks

The risks of espionage vary. A spy breaking the host country's laws may be deported, imprisoned, or even executed. A spy breaking his/her own country's laws can be imprisoned for espionage or/and treason, or even executed, as the Rosenbergs were. For example, when Aldrich Ames handed a stack of dossiers of CIA agents in the Eastern Bloc to his KGB-officer "handler," the KGB "rolled up" several networks, and at least ten people were secretly shot. When Ames was arrested by the FBI, he faced life in prison; his contact, who had diplomatic immunity, was declared persona non grata and taken to the airport. Ames's wife was threatened with life imprisonment if her husband did not cooperate; he did, and she was given a five-year sentence. Hugh Francis Redmond, a CIA officer in China, spent nineteen years in a Chinese prison for espionage—and died there—as he was operating without diplomatic cover and immunity.

Many organizations, both national and non-national, conduct espionage operations. It should not be assumed that espionage is always directed at the most secret operations of a target country; national and terrorist organizations and other groups needed to get agents into target countries to learn security routines around their targets. They also needed to arrange secure ways of transferring money.

Communications both are necessary to espionage and clandestine operations, and also a great vulnerability when the adversary has sophisticated SIGINT detection and interception capability.

See espionage organizations for national and non-national groups that conduct clandestine human operations, for any of a number of reasons: assessment of national capabilities at the strategic level, warning of the movements of security and military organizations; financial systems; protective measures around targets. Be aware that certain organizations who have an association with espionage, such as the US FBI, UK Security Service, and Canadian Security Intelligence Service do not perform espionage, but, with these three examples, all monitor and defend against it, the CSIS principally at an analytical levels. In the US and UK, respectively, the National Clandestine Service, part of the Central Intelligence Agency, performs espionage, while the Secret Intelligence Service does so for Great Britain. Canada does not appear to run espionage, although it collects SIGINT. The Russian SVR performs espionage while the FSB defends against it.

Spies in various conflicts

See also: Intelligence agency, Special Operations Executive, and United States government security breaches

Espionage under Elizabeth I of England

• Sir Francis Walsingham

Espionage in the American Revolution

• Nathan Hale
• John Andre

Espionage in the Napoleonic Wars

• William Wickham

Espionage in the American Civil War

One of the innovations in the American Civil War was the use of proprietary companies for intelligence collection. See Allan Pinkerton

Espionage in the Second Boer War

• Fritz Joubert Duquesne

Espionage in World War I

• Fritz Joubert Duquesne
• Jules C. Silber

Espionage in World War II

FBI file photo of the leader of the Duquesne Spy Ring (1941)

With a few notable exceptions, most espionage in World War II was conducted by "rings", or teams of agents.

• Duquesne Spy Ring
• Richard Sorge
• Abwehr
• Red Orchestra
• Lucy Ring
• Espionage turned: Double Cross System, Operation North Pole

Espionage in the Cold War

• Cold War

Espionage technology and techniques

See also: Tradecraft and List of intelligence gathering disciplines

• Agent Handling
• Concealment device
• Covert listening device
• Cut-out
• Cyber spying
• Dead drop
• False flag operations
• Honeypot
• Interrogation
• Nonofficial cover (NOC)
• Numbers messaging
• One-way voice link
• safe house
• Steganography
• Side-channel attack
• Surveillance

Spy fiction

Main article: Spy fiction

An early example of espionage literature is Kim by the English novelist Rudyard Kipling, with a description of the training of an intelligence agent in the Great Game between the UK and Russia in 19th century Central Asia. An even earlier work was James Fenimore Cooper's classic novel, The Spy, written in 1821, about an American spy in New York during the Revolutionary War.

During the many 20th century spy scandals, a large amount of information became publicly known about national spy agencies and dozens of real-life secret agents. These sensational stories piqued public interest in a profession largely off-limits to human interest news reporting, a natural consequence of the secrecy inherent to their work. To fill in the blanks, the popular conception of the secret agent has been formed largely by 20th and 21st century literature and cinema. While it is obvious from reading news accounts that many real spies, such as Valerie Plame, are attractive and sociable, the fictional secret agent is often a loner, sometimes amoral—an existential hero operating outside the everyday constraints of society. Loner spy personalities may have been a stereotype of convenience for authors who already knew how to write loner private investigator characters that sold well from the 1920s to the present.

While fictional secret agents, such as Johnny Fedora, were popular during the 1950s and 60s, James Bond, the protagonist of Ian Fleming's novels, who went on to spawn an extremely successful film franchise, is the most famous fictional secret agent of all: he uses the best toys and excels at fighting and seduction, completely ignoring the more tedious side of espionage. In direct contrast to this, John le Carré's character George Smiley is often considered the "anti-Bond" and one of the more realistic fictional spies: he is a finite and imperfect man, initially defeated by enemies within the Secret Service, who eventually prevails by patience, intelligence, and compassion. Another is the boy spy Alex Rider, created by Anthony Horowitz; Rider is said to be useful due to his youth. Other popular spies are the characters Johnny Fedora by Desmond Cory; Quiller by Adam Hall; Philip McAlpine by Adam Diment. Nikita, played by Peta Wilson, and Michael Samuelle, played by Roy Dupuis, in the TV series La Femme Nikita (1997–2001), Jack Ryan in numerous Tom Clancy novels, as well as Jason Bourne from Robert Ludlum's Bourne trilogy, and Sydney Bristow, played by Jennifer Garner, in the TV series Alias (2001–2006). The British TV series Spooks is another example of spy fiction.

Spy fiction has also become prevalent in video gaming, where the "wetwork" aspect of espionage is highlighted. Game situations typically involve agents sent into enemy territory for purposes of subversion. These depictions are more action-oriented than would be typical in most cases of espionage, and they tend to focus on infiltration rather than information-gathering. Some examples are GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, Thief, Metal Gear and Splinter Cell. Recent incarnations have attempted to introduce more psychological aspects of infiltration, such as social camouflage and moral decision making, into gameplay.

Further reading

There is a vast and ever-growing body of literature devoted to espionage. The following reading list features some of the better known and more comprehensive accounts. The lists are sortable, using the icons next to the headings. In this way the reader can sort the lists by author, title, date and so forth. This is of value especially in terms of the year, for espionage literature tends to build on earlier material as well as on newfound sources.

Surveys

Author(s)	Title	Publisher	Date	Notes
Jenkins, Peter	Advanced Surveillance: The Complete Manual of Surveillance Training	-	-	ISBN 0953537811
West, Nigel	MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations 1909-1945	-	1983	-
Smith Jr., W. Thomas	Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency	-	2003	popular
Richelson, Jeffery T.	The U.S. Intelligence Community	-	1999	fourth edition
Richelson, Jeffery T.	A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century	-	1977	-
Owen, David	Hidden Secrets: A Complete History of Espionage and the Technology Used to Support It	-	-	-
O'Toole, George	Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence, Espionage, Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA	-	1991	-
Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth & K. Lee Lerner, eds.	Terrorism: essential primary sources	Thomas Gale	2006	ISBN 9781414406213
Lerner, K. Lee and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, eds.	Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security	-	2003	1100 pages. 850 articles, strong on technology
Knightley, Philip	The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century	Norton	1986	-
Kahn, David	The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet	-	1996	Revised edition, 1200 pages. First published in 1967.
Johnson, Robert	Spying for Empire: The Great Game in Central and South Asia, 1757-1947	London: Greenhill	2006	British Intelligence and its imperial connection
Friedman, George	America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between the United States and Its Enemies	-	2005	since 9-11
Bungert, Heike et al. eds.	Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century	-	2003	essays by scholars
May, Ernest (ed.)	Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars	-	1984	-
Black, Ian and Morris, Benny	Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services	-	1991	-
Andrew, Christopher	For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush	-	1996	-

World War I

Author(s)	Title	Publisher	Date	Notes
Tunney, Thomas Joseph and Paul Merrick Hollister	Throttled!: The Detection of the German and Anarchist Bomb Plotters	Boston: Small, Maynard & company	1919	Chapter 9 is about Duquesne and is available on Wikisource: see text
Beesly, Patrick	Room 40	-	1982	Covers the breaking of German codes by RN intelligence, including the Turkish bribe, Zimmermann telegram, and failure at Jutland.
Burnham, Frederick Russell	Taking Chances	-	1944	Chapter 2 is about Duquesne
May, Ernest (ed.)	Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars	-	1984	-
Tuchman, Barbara W.	The Zimmermann Telegram	Ballantine Books	1966	-

World War II: 1931-1945

Author(s)	Title	Publisher	Date	Notes
Babington-Smith, Constance	Air Spy: The Story of Photo Intelligence in World War II	-	1957	-
Bryden, John	Best-Kept Secret: Canadian Secret Intelligence in the Second World War	Lester	1993	-
Hinsley, F. H. and Alan Stripp	Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park	-	2001	-
Hinsley, F. H.	British Intelligence in the Second World War	-	1996	Abridged version of multivolume official history.
Hohne, Heinz	Canaris: Hitler's Master Spy	-	1979	-
Jones, R. V.	The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945	-	1978	-
Kahn, David	Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II'	-	1978	-
Kahn, David	Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943	-	1991	FACE
Kitson, Simon	The Hunt for Nazi Spies: Fighting Espionage in Vichy France	-	2008
Lewin, Ronald	The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan	-	1982	-
Masterman, J. C.	The Double Cross System in the War of 1935 to 1945	Yale	1972	-
Persico, Joseph	Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage	-	2001	-
Persico, Joseph	Casey: The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey-From the OSS to the CIA	-	1991	-
Ronnie, Art	Counterfeit Hero: Fritz Duquesne, Adventurer and Spy	-	1995	ISBN 1-55750-733-3-
Sayers, Michael & Albert E. Kahn	Sabotage! The Secret War Against America	-	1942	-
Smith, Richard Harris	OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency	-	2005	-
Stanley, Roy M.	World War II Photo Intelligence	-	1981	-
Wark, Wesley	The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933-1939	-	1985	-
Wark, Wesley	"Cryptographic Innocence: The Origins of Signals Intelligence in Canada in the Second World War" in Journal of Contemporary History 22	-	1987	-
West, Nigel	Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain's Wartime Sabotage Organization	-	1992	-
Winterbotham, F. W.	The Ultra Secret	Harper & Row	1974	-
Winterbotham, F. W.	The Nazi Connection	Harper & Row	1978	-
Cowburn, B.	No Cloak No Dagger	Brown, Watson, Ltd.	1960	-
Wohlstetter, Roberta.	Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision	-	1962	-

Cold War era: 1945-1991

Author(s)	Title	Publisher	Date	Notes
Aldrich, Richard J.	The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence	-	2002	-
Ambrose, Stephen E.	Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Intelligence Establishment	-	1981-	-
Andrew, Christopher and Vasili Mitrokhin	The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB	Basic Books	1991, 2005	ISBN 0465003117
Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky	KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev	-	1990	-
Aronoff, Myron J.	The Spy Novels of John Le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics	-	1999	-
Bissell, Richard	Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs'	-	1996	-
Bogle, Lori, ed.	Cold War Espionage and Spying	-	2001-	essays
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin	The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World	-	-	-
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin	The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West	Gardners Books	2000	ISBN 978-0-14-028487-4
Jim Colella	My Life as an Italian Mafioso Spy	-	2000	-
Dorril, Stephen	MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service	-	2000	-
Dziak, John J.	Chekisty: A History of the KGB	-	1988	-
Gates, Robert M.	From The Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story Of Five Presidents And How They Won The Cold War'	-	1997	-
Frost, Mike and Michel Gratton	Spyworld: Inside the Canadian and American Intelligence Establishments	Doubleday Canada	1994	-
Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr	Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America	-	1999	-
Helms, Richard	A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency	-	2003	-
Koehler, John O.	Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police'	-	1999	-
Persico, Joseph	Casey: The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey-From the OSS to the CIA	-	1991	-
Murphy, David E., Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey	Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War	-	1997	-
Prados, John	Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II	-	1996	-
Rositzke, Harry.	The CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action	-	1988	-
Srodes, James	Allen Dulles: Master of Spies	Regnery	2000	CIA head to 1961
Sontag Sherry, and Christopher Drew	Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espinonage	Harper	1998
	Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations	Greenwood Press/Questia	2004	-

Anderson, Nicholas NOC - 2008 eBook [1] and 2009 published Enigma Books

See also

• Classified information
• Corporate espionage
• Counter-espionage
• Dumpster diving
• Intelligence (information gathering)
• Labor spies
• List of cryptographers
• Military intelligence
• Mitrokhin Archive
• Mole (espionage)
• Ninja
• Operation Snow White
• Sabotage
• Safe house
• Security clearance
• Spymaster

References

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (April 2009)

1. ^ http://www.henrywotton.org.uk/
2. ^ Suvorov, Victor (1987). Inside the Aquarium. Berkley. ISBN 042509474X. 
3. ^ US Department of Defense (2007-07-12). "Joint Publication 1-02 Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms" (PDF). http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp1_02.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-10-01. 

External links

• An Interactive Rosenberg Espionage Ring Timeline and Archive

v • d • e Espionage Agent handling · Black operation · Black bag operation · Concealment device · Cryptography · Dead drop · Eavesdropping · False flag · Clandestine HUMINT asset recruiting · Industrial espionage · Interrogation · Non-official cover · Official cover · Steganography · Surveillance (Computer · Cyber)

v • d • e Intelligence cycle management Intelligence collection management HUMINT/ Human Intelligence Clandestine HUMINT (recruiting · operational techniques · Covert action · Direct action · Clandestine cell system) Special reconnaissance (organizations) Espionage (Agent handling · Black bag operation · Concealment device · Cryptography · Cut-out · Dead drop · Eavesdropping · False flag operations · Honeypot · Non-official cover · Interrogation · Numbers messaging · One-way voice link · Steganography · Surveillance) SIGINT/ Signals Intelligence SIGINT by Alliances, Nations and Industries · SIGINT Operational Platforms by Nation · SIGINT in Modern History · TEMPEST · Direction finding · Traffic analysis MASINT/ Measurement and Signature Intelligence Electro-optical · Nuclear · Geophysical · Radar · Radiofrequency · Materials · Casualty estimation Others OSINT/Open Source Intelligence · IMINT/Imagery Intelligence · FININT/Financial Intelligence · TECHINT/Technical intelligence Intelligence analysis management Intelligence analysis · Cognitive traps for intelligence analysis · Words of Estimative Probability · Analysis of Competing Hypotheses · Intelligence cycle (target-centric approach) Intelligence dissemination management Intelligence cycle security · Counter-intelligence · Counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism organizations · List of counterintelligence organizations · Counterintelligence failures

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - spionage

Nederlands (Dutch)
spionage

Français (French)
n. - espionnage

Deutsch (German)
n. - Spionage

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - κατασκοπεία

Italiano (Italian)
spionaggio

Português (Portuguese)
n. - espionagem (f)

Русский (Russian)
шпионаж

Español (Spanish)
n. - espionaje

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - spionage, spioneri

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
间谍组织, 间谍活动

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 間諜組織, 間諜活動

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 염탐, 스파이

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - スパイ行為, スパイの利用

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) جاسوسيه, تجسس‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮ריגול‬

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