espionage

(ĕs'pē-ə-näzh', -nĭj)

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

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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.

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.

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• Espionage and Intelligence - espionage: spying to obtain information about plans and activities of foreign government
• Intrigues, Plots, and Corruption - espionage: intelligence gathering by agents of one government or company about plans and actions of another

"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 a government or individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, as it is taken for granted that it is unwelcome and, in many cases, illegal and punishable by law. It is a subset of intelligence gathering - which otherwise may be conducted from public sources and using perfectly legal and ethical means.

Espionage is usually part of an institutional effort by a government or corporation, and the term is most readily associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies primarily for military purposes. Spying involving corporations is known as industrial espionage.

One of the most effective ways to gather data and information about an enemy (or potential enemy) is by infiltrating the enemy's ranks. This is the job of the spy (espionage agent). Spies can bring back all sorts of information concerning the size and strength of an enemy army. They can also find dissidents within the enemy's forces and influence them to defect. In times of crisis, spies can also be used to steal technology and to sabotage the enemy in various ways. Counterintelligence operatives can feed false information to enemy spies, protecting important domestic secrets and preventing attempts at subversion. Nearly every country has very strict laws concerning espionage, and the penalty for being caught is often severe. However, the benefits that can be gained through espionage are generally great enough that most governments and many large corporations make use of it to varying degrees.

Further information on clandestine HUMINT (human intelligence) information collection techniques is available, including discussions of operational techniques, asset recruiting and the tradecraft used to collect this information.

Contents 1 History 2 Targets of espionage 3 Methods and terminology 3.1 Organization 3.2 Industrial espionage 4 Agents in espionage 5 Law 6 List of famous spies 6.1 Espionage under Elizabeth I of England 6.2 Espionage in the American Revolution 6.3 Espionage in the Napoleonic Wars 6.4 Espionage in the American Civil War 6.5 Espionage in the Aceh War 6.6 Espionage in the Second Boer War 6.7 Espionage in World War I 6.8 Espionage in World War II 6.9 Espionage post World War II 7 Espionage technology and techniques 8 Spy fiction 9 See also 10 References 11 Further reading 11.1 World War II: 1939–1945 11.2 Cold War era: 1945–1991 12 External links

History

Events involving 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 in India, 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. Spies were also prevalent in the Greek and Roman empires.^[1] During the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongols relied heavily on espionage in their conquests in Asia and Europe. Feudal Japan often used ninja 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.^[2] Aztecs used Pochtecas, people in charge of commerce, as spies and diplomats, and had diplomatic immunity.

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. Since 2008 the United States has charged at least 57 defendants for attempting to spy for China.^[3]

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^[4]) officers were judged by the number of agents they recruited.

Targets of espionage

Espionage agents are usually trained experts in a specific targeted field. This allows them to differentiate mundane information from a target which has intrinsic value to own organisational development. Correct identification of the target at its execution is the sole purpose of the espionage operation.

The broad areas of espionage targeting expertise are:

• Natural resource strategic production identification and assessment (food, energy, materials)

Agents are usually found among bureaucrats that administer these resources in own countries

• Popular sentiment towards domestic and foreign policies (popular, middle class, elites)

Agents often recruited from field journalistic crews, exchange postgraduate students and sociology researchers

• Strategic economic strengths (production, research, manufacture, infrastructure)

Agents recruited from science and technology academia, commercial enterprises, and more rarely from military technologists

• Military capability intelligence (offensive, defensive, manoeuvre, naval, air, space)

Agents are trained by special military espionage education facilities, and posted to area of operation with covert identities to prevent prosecution

• Counterintelligence

Operations specifically targeting opponents' intelligence services themselves, such as breaching confidentiality of communications, recruiting defectors or moles

Methods and terminology

While news media may speak of "spy satellites" and the like, espionage is not a synonym for all 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. Many HUMINT activities, such as prisoner interrogation, reports from military reconnaissance patrols and from diplomats, etc., are not espionage.

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. Black's Law Dictionary (1990) defines espionage as: "...gathering, transmitting, or losing...information related to the national defense". Espionage is a violation of United States law, 18 U.S.C. §§ 792–798 and Article 106 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice".^[5] 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.

Organization

An intelligence officer’s clothing, accessories, and behavior must be as unremarkable as possible — their lives (and others’) may depend on it.

A spy is a person employed to obtain such secrets. Within the United States 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. Case officers are stationed in foreign countries to recruit and to supervise intelligence agents, who in turn spy on targets in their countries where they are assigned. A spy need not be a citizen of the target country - hence does not automatically commit treason when operating within it. While the more common practice is to recruit a person already trusted with access to sensitive information, sometimes a person with a well-prepared synthetic identity, called a Legend in tradecraft, may attempt to infiltrate a target organization.

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).

Spies may also be used to spread disinformation in the organization in which they are planted, such as giving false reports about their country's military movements, or about a competing company's ability to bring a product to market. Spies may be given other roles that also require infiltration, such as sabotage.

Many governments routinely spy on their allies as well as their enemies, although they typically maintain a policy of not commenting on this. Governments also employ private companies to collect information on their behalf such as SCG International Risk and others.

Industrial espionage

Main article: Industrial espionage

Reportedly Canada is losing $12 billion^[6] and German companies are estimated to be losing about €50 billion ($87 billion) and 30,000 jobs^[7] to industrial espionage every year.

Agents in espionage

In espionage jargon, an agent refers to the person who does the spying; a citizen of one country who is recruited by a second country to spy on or work against his own country. In popular usage, this term is often erroneously applied to a member of an intelligence service who recruits and handles agents; in espionage such a person is referred to as an intelligence officer or case officer. There are several types of agent in use today.

• Double agent, "is a person who engages in clandestine activity for two intelligence or security services (or more in joint operations), who provides information about one or about each to the other, and who wittingly withholds significant information from one on the instructions of the other or is unwittingly manipulated by one so that significant facts are withheld from the adversary. Peddlers, fabricators, and others who work for themselves rather than a service are not double agents because they are not agents. The fact that doubles have an agent relationship with both sides distinguishes them from penetrations, who normally are placed with the target service in a staff or officer capacity."^[8]
  • Re-doubled agent, an agent who gets caught as a double agent and is forced to mislead the foreign intelligence service.
    • Unwitting double agent, an agent who offers or is forced to recruit as a double or re-doubled agent and in the process is recruited by either a third party intelligence service or his own government without the knowledge of the intended target intelligence service or the agent. This can be useful in capturing important information from an agent that is attempting to seek allegiance with another country. The double agent usually has knowledge of both intelligence services and can identify operational techniques of both, thus making third party recruitment difficult or impossible. The knowledge of operational techniques can also affect the relationship between the Operations Officer (or case officer) and the agent if the case is transferred by an Operational Targeting Officer to a new Operations Officer, leaving the new officer vulnerable to attack. This type of transfer may occur when an officer has completed his term of service or when his cover is blown.
      • Triple agent, an agent that is working for three intelligence services.
• Intelligence agent: Provides access to sensitive information through the use of special privileges. If used in corporate intelligence gathering, this may include gathering information of a corporate business venture or stock portfolio. In economic intelligence, "Economic Analysts may use their specialized skills to analyze and interpret economic trends and developments, assess and track foreign financial activities, and develop new econometric and modeling methodologies."^[9] This may also include information of trade or tariff.
• Access agent: Provides access to other potential agents by providing profiling information that can help lead to recruitment into an intelligence service.
• Agent of influence: Someone who may provide political influence in an area of interest or may even provide publications needed to further an intelligence service agenda. I.e. The use of the media to print a story to mislead a foreign service into action, exposing their operations while under surveillance.
• Agent provocateur: This type of agent will instigate trouble or may provide information to gather as many people as possible into one location for an arrest.
• Facilities agent: A facilities agent may provide access to buildings such as garages or offices used for staging operations, resupply, etc.
• Principal agent: This agent functions as a handler for an established network of agents usually Blue Chip.
• Confusion agent: May provide misleading information to an enemy intelligence service or attempt to discredit the operations of the target in an operation.
• Sleeper agent: A sleeper agent is a person who is recruited to an intelligence service to wake up and perform a specific set of tasks or functions while living under cover in an area of interest. This type of agent is not the same as a deep cover operative who is continually in contact with their case officer in order to file intelligence reports. A sleeper agent will not be in contact with anyone until activated.
• Illegal agent: This is a person who is living in another country under false credentials that does not report to a local station. A non official cover operative is a type of cover used by an intelligence operative and can be dubbed an "Illegal"^[10] when working in another country without diplomatic protection.

Law

Espionage is a crime under the legal code of many nations. The risks of espionage vary. A spy breaking the host country's laws may be deported, imprisoned, or even executed - especially in wartime, a summary execution may well be the penalty. 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.^{[citation needed]}

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 are also targets.^{[citation needed]}

Communications both are necessary to espionage and clandestine operations, and also a great vulnerability when the adversary has sophisticated SIGINT detection and interception capability. Agents must also transfer money securely.^{[citation needed]}

The United States in World War I passed the Espionage Act of 1917. Over the years many spies, such as the Soble spy ring, Robert Lee Johnson, the Rosenberg ring, Aldrich Hazen Ames,^[11] Robert Philip Hanssen,^[12] Jonathan Pollard, John Anthony Walker, James Hall III, and others have been prosecuted under this law.

However espionage laws are also used to prosecute non-spies. In the United States the Espionage Act of 1917 was used against socialist politician Eugene V. Debs. It was later used to suppress publication of periodicals, for example of Father Coughlin in WWII. In the early 21st century, the act was used to prosecute officials who communicated with US journalists, such as Thomas Andrews Drake and Stephen Jin-Woo Kim^[13]

List of famous spies

This article is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this article to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (March 2010)

Howard Burnham (1915)

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

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

• Thomas Knowlton, The First American Spy
• Nathan Hale
• John Andre
• James Armistead

Espionage in the Napoleonic Wars

• William Wickham

George Adams

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.

• Belle Boyd^[14]

Espionage in the Aceh War

Dutch professor Snouck Hurgronje world leading authority on Islam was a proponent of espionage to quell Muslim resistance in Aceh in the Dutch East Indies. In his role as Colonial Advisor of Oriental affairs he gathered intelligence under the name "Haji Abdul Ghaffar".

His knowledge of Islamic and Aceh culture enabled him to devise strategies which significantly helped crush the resistance of the Aceh inhabitants and impose Dutch colonial rule on them, ending the 40 year Aceh War with varying casualty estimates of between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants dead and about a million wounded.

• Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje

Espionage in the Second Boer War

• Fritz Joubert Duquesne

Espionage in World War I

See also: Espionage in Norway during World War I

• Fritz Joubert Duquesne
• Jules C. Silber
• Mata Hari
• Howard Burnham
• T.E. Lawrence

Espionage in World War II

Informants were common in World War II. In November 1939, the German Hans Ferdinand Mayer sent what is called the Oslo Report to inform the British of German technology and projects in an effort to undermine the Nazi regime. The Réseau AGIR was a French network developed after the fall of France that reported the start of construction of V-weapon installations in Occupied France to the British.

Counterespionage included the use of turned Double Cross agents to misinform Nazi Germany of impact points during the Blitz and internment of Japanese in the US against "Japan's wartime spy program". Additional WWII espionage examples include Soviet spying on the US Manhattan project, the German Duquesne Spy Ring convicted in the US, and the Soviet Red Orchestra spying on Nazi Germany. The US lacked a specific agency at the start of the war, but quickly formed the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Spying has sometimes been considered a gentlemanly pursuit, with recruiting focused on military officers, or at least on persons of the class from whom officers are recruited. However, the demand for male soldiers, an increase in women's rights, and the tactical advantages of female spies led the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to set aside any lingering Victorian Era prejudices and begin employing them in April 1942.^{[citation needed]} Their task was to transmit information from Nazi occupied France back to Allied Forces. The main strategic reason was that men in France faced a high risk of being interrogated by Nazi troops but women were less likely to arouse suspicion. In this way they made good couriers and proved equal to, if not more effective than, their male counterparts. Their participation in Organization and Radio Operation was also vital to the success of many operations, including the main network between Paris and London.

See also Honeypot

Espionage post World War II

Further information: Cold War espionage

In the United States, there are several federal agencies that form the United States Intelligence Community. The Central Intelligence Agency operates a Clandestine Service (NCS)^[15] to collect human intelligence and perform Covert operations.^[16] The National Security Agency collects Signals Intelligence. Other agencies do similar work. The CIA used to head the IC but after the September 11 attacks a new agency was formed, the Director of National Intelligence, to lead the group.

Espionage technology and techniques

See also: Tradecraft and List of intelligence gathering disciplines

• Agent handling
• Concealment device
• Covert agent
• Covert listening device
• Cut-out
• Cyber spying
• Dead drop
• False flag operations
• Honeypot
• Interrogation
• Numbers messaging
• Non-official cover
• Official cover
• One-way voice link
• Safe house
• Side channel attack
• Steganography
• Surveillance
• Surveillance aircraft

Spy fiction

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2011)

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, much 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. Attractive and sociable real-life agents such as Valerie Plame find little employment in serious fiction, however. The fictional secret agent is more 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.

Johnny Fedora achieved popularity as a fictional agent of early Cold War espionage, but James Bond is the most commercially successful of the many spy characters created by intelligence insiders during that struggle. His less fantastic rivals include Le Carre's George Smiley and Harry Palmer as played by Michael Caine.

Jumping on the spy bandwagon, other writers also started writing about spy fiction featuring female spies as protagonists, such as The Baroness, which has more graphic action and sex, as compared to other novels featuring male protagonists.

See also

• Nations
  • Chinese Intelligence Operations in the United States
  • Covert United States foreign regime change actions
  • History of Soviet espionage
• People
  • Labor spies
  • List of cryptographers
  • Mole (espionage)
  • Ninja
  • Spymaster
  • Stalker
• Artifacts
  • Classified information
  • Dumpster diving
  • Mitrokhin Archive
  • Operation Snow White
  • Safe house
  • Security clearance
• Types
  • Corporate espionage
  • Counter-espionage
  • Economic and Industrial Espionage
  • Intelligence (information gathering)
  • Military intelligence
  • Sabotage

References

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

1. ^ "Espionage in Ancient Rome". HistoryNet.
2. ^ Henrywotton.org.uk
3. ^ Arrillaga, Pauline. "China's spying seeks secret US info." AP, 7 May 2011.
4. ^ Suvorov, Victor (1987). Inside the Aquarium. Berkley. ISBN 042509474X. 
5. ^ 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 2007-10-01. 
6. ^ "Defectors say China running 1,000 spies in Canada". CBC News. June 15, 2005.
7. ^ "Beijing's spies cost German firms billions, says espionage expert". The Sydney Morning Herald. July 25, 2009.
8. ^ "Double Agent". cia.gov. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol6no1/html/v06i1a05p_0001.htm. 
9. ^ Cia.gov
10. ^ Illegal Mi5.gov -How spies operate.
11. ^ "Aldrich Ames Criminal Complaint". jya.com. http://www.jya.com/ames.htm. Retrieved 2011 03 19. 
12. ^ "USA v. Robert Philip Hanssen: Affidavit in Support of Criminal Complaint, Arrest Warrant and Search Warrant". fas.org. http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/ci/hanssen_affidavit.html. Retrieved 2011 03 19. 
13. ^ Josh Gerstein (11.3.7). "Despite openness pledge, President Obama pursues leakers". politico.com. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50761.html. Retrieved 2011 03 19. 
14. ^ Famous Spies in History, CNN
15. ^ "Offices of CIA > Clandestine Service > Who We Are". cia.gov. https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/clandestine-service/who-we-are.html. Retrieved 2010-06-18. 
16. ^ "Offices of CIA > Clandestine Service > Our Mission". cia.gov. https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/clandestine-service/our-mission.html. Retrieved 2010-06-18. 

Further reading

• Jenkins, Peter Surveillance Tradecraft: The Professionals Guide to Surveillance Training ISBN 978-9535378-22
• Felix, Christopher A Short Course in the Secret War, 4th Edition Madison Books November 19, 2001
• West, Nigel MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations 1909-1945 1983
• Smith Jr., W. Thomas Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency 2003
• 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 978-1-4144-0621-3
• Lerner, K. Lee and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, eds. Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security 2003 1100 pages.
• 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. First published in 1967.
• Johnson, Robert Spying for Empire: The Great Game in Central and South Asia, 1757-1947 London: Greenhill 2006
• Friedman, George America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between the United States and Its Enemies 2005
• Doyle, David W., A Memoir of True Men and Traitors (2000)
• Tunney, Thomas Joseph and Paul Merrick Hollister Throttled!: The Detection of the German and Anarchist Bomb Plotters Boston: Small, Maynard & company 1919 | available on Wikisource: s:Throttled!
• Beesly, Patrick || Room 40 1982
• Burnham, Frederick Russell Taking Chances 1944
• 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: 1939–1945

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
Colella, Jim	My Life as an Italian Mafioso Spy	-	2000	-
Craig, R. Bruce	Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter Spy Case	University Press of Kansas	2004	ISBN 978-0-7006-1311-3
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 Enigma Books 2009 - Post Cold War era
• Ishmael Jones The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture Encounter Books 2008, rev. 2010
• Michael Ross The Volunteer: The Incredible True Story of an Israeli Spy on the Trail of International Terrorists McClelland & Stewart 2007, rev. 2008

External links

Look up espionage in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Espionage

• An Interactive Rosenberg Espionage Ring Timeline and Archive
• GCHQ: Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency

v d e Espionage Agent handling Asset Black operation Black bag operation Concealment device Cryptography Cut-out Dead drop Eavesdropping False flag Industrial espionage Intelligence assessment Interrogation Numbers station One-way voice link Official cover Non-official cover Resident spy Steganography Surveillance

v d e Intelligence cycle management Intelligence collection management Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Clandestine HUMINT (recruiting · operational techniques · Covert action · Direct action · Clandestine cell system) Special reconnaissance (organizations) Espionage (Agent handling · Asset · Black operation · Black bag operation · Concealment device · Cryptography · Cut-out · Dead drop · Eavesdropping · False flag · Industrial espionage · Intelligence assessment · Interrogation · Numbers station · One-way voice link · Official cover · Non-official cover · Resident spy · Steganography · Surveillance) Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) SIGINT by alliances, nations and industries · SIGINT operational platforms by nation · SIGINT in modern history · TEMPEST · Direction finding · Traffic analysis Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) Electro-optical · Nuclear · Geophysical · Radar · Radiofrequency · Materials · Casualty estimation Others Open source intelligence (OSINT) · Imagery intelligence (IMINT) · Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) · Financial intelligence (FININT) · Technical intelligence (TECHINT)  · Market Intelligence (MARKINT) 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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