Espionage.html



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.

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 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 1200s and 1300s 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

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 (GRU³) 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".⁴ 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. Canada is losing $12 billion a year due to industrial espionage.⁵ It is estimated that German companies were losing about €50 billion ($87 billion) and 30,000 jobs to industrial espionage every year.⁶ 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 neededcitation 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.

Spies in various conflicts

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)

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
• Mata Hari
• Howard Burnham

Espionage in World War II

Informants were common in World War II, examples include the Oslo Report that warned the British of German secret weapons, and the Réseau AGIR reporting 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 the "Japan's wartime spy program".[1] Additional WWII espionage examples include Soviet spying on the US Manhatten project, the German Duquesne Spy Ring convicted in the US, and the Soviet Red Orchestra spying on Nazi Germany.

Women in Espionage

Before the Second World War, it was still viewed as being unethical to have women holding any major position in war or in espionage. However, times were changing and the demand for male soldiers resulted in many women replacing them in their daily jobs. It was this increase in women's' rights, along with the tactical advantages of female spies that lead the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to employ the first British Spies in April of 1942. Their task was to transmit information from the Nazi occupied France back to Allied Forces. The main strategic reason for their implementation was because all men in France were at the risk of being interrogated by Nazi troops, and so women were safer and less likely to arouse suspicion. In this way they made good couriers and proved equal, if not more effective than their male counterparts. The two other main areas of espionage that women were included in were Organization and Radio Operation. These were vital to the success of many operations including the main network between Paris and London.

Espionage technology and techniques

• 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
• Side-channel attack
• Steganography
• Surveillance

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^{citation needed}: 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.

A recent example of a secret agent that took a different path than the previous ones is Michael Westen from Burn Notice. Michael Westen is known for being very skilful in creating gadgets similar to James Bond, however Michael Westen's gadgets have the appearance of working with modern day technology.

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.

Surveys

World War I

World War II: 1931-1945

Cold War era: 1945-1991

• Anderson, Nicholas NOC - 2008 eBook⁷ and 2009 published Enigma Books.

See also

Look up espionage in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Espionage

• 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)

External links

• An Interactive Rosenberg Espionage Ring Timeline and Archive
• Bug Detector