The second-oldest profession after prostitution, spying was mentioned in the Bible. The best account of spying appeared in the book Art of War by ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu. He identified different spy roles, from secret informants to disinformation agents who mix true and false details to confuse the enemy. He also mentions counter-espionage, double agents, and psychological warfare.
THE SECRET WARS
In the wars of the past two hundred years, some ingenious methods have been used to get secrets out. During the American Civil War, Elizabeth Van Lew, an abolitionist living in Confederate Virginia, hid valuable information in eggshells and used her African-American servants to deliver it to the Union army. During the World Wars, many spies were recruited locally among the occupied populations. In World War Two, Resistance movements used modern equipment such as radio sets to transmit intelligence.
THE GOLDEN AGE
Organisations such as the CIA and the KGB have become synonymous with Cold War espionage. With technology unsophisticated, states relied on infiltrators, such as the Atomic Spies who worked on American nuclear projects and delivered intelligence that helped the USSR build an atomic bomb.
CYBER SPIES
Today, technology has made it possible to access classified information from anywhere. Cyberspying uses hacking techniques and malicious software to observe or destroy data in the computer systems of government agencies and big enterprises. Yet even in the 21st century, traditional methods are still sometimes used. In 2010, the American model Anna Chapman was arrested as part of a spy ring. Traded for Russians convicted of spying for the US, Chapman returned to Russia a celebrity.
1 Mata Hari
A famous Dutch exotic dancer who toured Europe performing strip shows. At the start of World War One, she seduced officials belonging to the Allies and convinced them to provide details about weapons and military operations; information which resulted in the deaths of thousands. In 1917 she was executed by a French firing squad.
2 Melita Norwood
In the 1930s, Norwood was a secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association, a cover organisation for the UK’s nuclear weapons programme. Acting under the code name “Hola,” she copied files on nuclear technology and gave them to KGB handlers at her home. Her identity was revealed in a book published in 1999, but still the 87-year-old refused to give away her Russian accomplices, claimingmemory loss.
3 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
This Jewish-American married couple was accused of spying for the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Found guilty of providing top-secret information about radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines and valuable nuclear weapon designs, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage and executed in 1953.
4 Harold “Kim” Philby
A British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union, in 1963, Kim Philby was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a KGB spy ring who were all recruited while studying at the prestigious UK university. To save himself, Philby defected to Moscow where he lived until his death in 1988.
5 Bernard Boursicot
In 1964, a naive Frenchman who worked at the embassy in Beijing, China fell in love with an opera singer named Shi Pei Pu; only the performer was a man pretending to be a woman. To keep up appearances, Shi Pei Pu said that she had given birth to Boursicot’s son, a baby actually purchased from a hospital. The love affair continued for 20 years; Boursicot providing classified documents and Shi Pei Pu giving them to the Chinese Secret Service.