Espionage

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 often part of an institutional effort by a government or commercial concern, however the term is generally 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.

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. 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. 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 and its allies and the Soviet Union and 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.

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 ) 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, and Article 106a of the Uniform Code of Military Justice". 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


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.

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.

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.

Industrial espionage
Reportedly Canada is losing $12 billion and German companies are estimated to be losing about €50 billion ($87 billion) and 30,000 jobs 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 or a third 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."
 * 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." 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" 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.

In United States law, treason, espionage and spying are separate crimes, the former two of which have graduated punishment levels, the latter for which death is a mandatory sentence.

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, Robert Philip Hanssen, 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

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

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

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
 * Sidney Reilly

Espionage in The Russo-Japanese War

 * Sidney Reilly
 * Ho Liang-Shung

Espionage in World War I

 * Fritz Joubert Duquesne
 * Jules C. Silber
 * Mata Hari
 * Howard Burnham
 * T.E. Lawrence
 * Sidney Reilly

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. 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
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) to collect human intelligence and perform Covert operations. 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

 * 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
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.

Cold War era: 1945–1991

 * 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