Double agent

Double Agent or double agent is a term for an employee ( agent, spy or commanding officer ) of an intelligence service, who works for two mutually working intelligence services simultaneously. Here, different constellations are possible:

  • So it is both possible that there is an already unmasked at a double agent of the opposing side or this reveals wealthy person acts that can turn around for fear of having under the influence of financial incentives threat of punishment and / or and now effectively only is really still run by one of the intelligence agencies involved ( and the other service usually with more or less worthless information that will be often placed there deliberately, "feeds" ).
  • Rarely is the constellation that neither of the two intelligence services involved is aware of the double action.
  • Possible, but relatively rare, is also carried on simultaneously for more than two services.

Most double agent working one of the services, such as Richard Sorge only for the KGB, pro forma but also for the defense only in the sense. Some of them were also reversed. When a double agent blows up (so-called bust ), it is switched off.

The British MI5 had during the Second World War remarkable success with turned German agents; see counterintelligence # History.

Well-known double agent

  • Aldrich Ames, who reportedly highest paid double spy story
  • Walter Barthel, Stasi of East Germany and there in order, with the BND or West Berlin Protection of the Constitution
  • George Blake, a double agent of MI6 and the Soviet Union
  • Denis Donaldson, Northern Irish spy in the service of MI5
  • Oleg Gordijewski, former KGB colonel and double agent for MI6
  • Mata Hari, Dutch spy during the First World War
  • Kim Philby, MI6 agent and member of the so-called Cambridge Five spy ring
  • Alfred Redl, imperial officer of the so-called evidence Offices
  • Paul Thummel, known as Agent A-54, Abwehr agent, the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service and the MI6, was even close friend of Heinrich Himmler, unmasked by Major William Ergert
  • Intelligence concept
  • Double agent
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