While most people think of spies as a Cold War phenomenon, they've actually been around for hundreds of years, and their ranks include larger-than-life figures like big game hunters, revolutionary war heroes, and even exotic dancers.
1. Allan Pinkerton
Allan Pinkerton was a Scottish detective who pioneered many espionage techniques still used today.
The group was well known in the 1800s and is best remembered for its involvement in the tracking and capture of several old west outlaws. During the American Civil War, Pinkerton was the head of the Union Intelligence Service and a close adviser and confidant of Abraham Lincoln. He helped foil the 1861 Lincoln assassination plot, planted agents inside the Confederate army, and even went undercover as a Confederate officer to provide information on troop movements.
2. Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Fuchs, a German theoretical physicist and specialist in atomic bomb technology, passed a number of important weapons secrets to the USSR while working as a scientist for the American government. Fuchs made several advances in nuclear fission and was part of the famous Manhattan Project, which led to the development of the first A-bomb.
A communist in his youth, he was recruited by a KGB officer in 1941 and spent years passing information on bomb technology and the state of the US weapons stockpile to the Soviets. Fuchs was captured in 1946 after the Soviet code was broken by Allied intelligence forces, and during interrogation he admitted to working for the Russians.
3. Elizabeth Van Lew
Elizabeth Van Lew was a spy working for the Union during the American Civil War.
He also ran a small spy ring based in Richmond that included several high-profile members of the Confederate government, and it is rumored that he even managed to recruit one of his former slaves into the Confederate White House. as a messenger. After the war ended, Van Lew was regarded by Ulysses Grant as the most valuable source of information about the Confederate capital.
4. Aldrich Ames
While most spies espionage for political or ideological reasons, for CIA mole Aldrich Ames, the motivation was purely monetary. Working as a counterintelligence analyst in Washington, Ames was hungry for cash, and in 1985 he began passing secrets to the Soviets in exchange for a fee, eventually receiving more than $4 million from the Russians. Over the course of nine years, Ames passed countless secrets to the Soviets, including the names of more than 100 US informants working in Russia, at least ten of whom were executed.
Ames used his millions to finance his lavish lifestyle, which attracted the attention of the CIA, but thanks to his intelligence training, he was able to repeatedly pass lie detector tests. He was finally arrested in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to espionage. Interestingly, at least $2 million of his royalties remain in an undisclosed bank account, and the Russians have so far refused to hand over this money to American authorities.
5. Richard Sorge
Richard Sorge in hospital, during World War I. Considered one of the most accomplished spies of the 20th century, Richard Sorge was a Soviet espionage master who worked around the world before and during World War II. For much of his career, he operated under the guise of a professional journalist, traveling to various European countries to gauge the chances of possible communist uprisings.
At the outbreak of World War II, Sorge traveled to Japan under the guise of a Nazi correspondent and began providing the Soviets with valuable intelligence on Japanese and German military operations. He warned them about the attack on Pearl Harbor, the planned German invasion of Russia, and countless other missions, but much of his intelligence was ignored by Stalin. Sorge was finally captured by the Japanese in 1944 and executed shortly after, although he never confessed to being a Soviet spy even under torture. The Soviets did not recognize him and his activities until 1964, when he was soon recognized as a national hero.
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