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This is a list of spies who engaged in direct espionage. It includes Americans spying against their own country and people spying on behalf of the United States.
- Sir Francis Walsingham
- Belle Boyd
- Mata Hari
- Fritz Joubert Duquesne
- Lise de Baissac
- Dušan Popov
- Anthony Blunt
- Aldrich Ames
Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster between 1573 and 1590, Sir Francis Walsinghamplayed a pivotal role in Tudor intelligence gathering. Acting under the authority of his Queen, who was fearful of a Catholic uprising, Walsingham recruited informers, cryptographers, and seal-breakers to protect the interests of the crown. His efforts resulted in, amongst o...
Maria Isabella Boyd, known to most as ‘Belle’, was a notorious Confederate spy during the American Civil War. She was recruited as a Confederate asset after a violent altercation with a Union soldier. The man, apparently intoxicated, offended both Boyd and her mother. In response, Boyd shot him dead. Boyd was spared arrest for the offence and went ...
Born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Holland, Mata Hari later styled herself as an exotic dancer of royal Indonesian heritage. She became an on-stage sensation during World War One, renowned for her racy live performances. But Hari’s fabricated upbringing wasn’t the only mysterious aspect of her character. She was also a spy. While acting as an elit...
Born and raised in South Africa, Fritz Joubert Duquesne witnessed atrocities at the hands of the British Army during the Boer War, including the detaining of his mother and sister in a concentration camp. Vehemently anti-British, Duquesne was later recruited as a German spy during World War One. He masqueraded as a scientist, gaining access to Brit...
Mauritian-born, British-affiliated spy Lise de Baissac operated prolifically during World War Two, as part of Britain’s highly secretive Special Operations Executive(SOE) unit. Baissac was recruited to the SOE in 1942. She then embarked upon a solo spying mission through German-occupied France, living in the Gestapo headquarters in Poitiers for som...
Born in Serbia, but with allegiances to Britain, Dušan ‘Duško’ Popov served as a secret agent for MI6 during World War Two. One of the most notorious moments in Popov’s espionage career came in 1941. Popov’s efforts led him to believe that the Japanese were planning an assault on Pearl Harbor. He relayed the information to the FBI in August 1941, s...
In 1979, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcherrevealed that a Soviet spy had been working from the heart of the British Establishment, managing the Queen’s paintings. The agent in question, Anthony Blunt, was a Cambridge-educated scholar with Marxist allegiances who had started working at Windsor Castleduring World War Two. According to Michelle...
Aldrich Ames was a double agent for the Soviet Union, who used his position in the CIA to leak confidential information from the US during the Cold War. Ames’ position in the CIA was as an analyst, and he used that role to cripple American investigations into the USSR. Ultimately, Ames revealed the names of every American agent on the ground in the...
Discover some fascinating spies in our Spies & Spymasters exhibit, such as Morten Storm, who volunteered to spy against Al Qaeda; celebrated dancer Mata Hari, who spied for the French during WWI; and Mosab Hassan Yousef, a spy for Israeli intelligence.
Any individual or spy ring (a cooperating group of spies), in the service of a government, company, criminal organization, or independent operation, can commit espionage. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome.
- Julia Child. “Bon appétit” became the familiar catchphrase of celebrity chef Julia Child. But decades earlier, before sharing culinary secrets, she worked directly for OSS chief William Donovan as part of America’s wartime spy agency.
- Moe Berg. Professional baseball player Moe Berg was a third-string catcher…and a first-rate spy for US intelligence, sent behind enemy lines during WWII.
- Harriet Tubman. America’s bloodiest conflict, the Civil War (1861-1865), pitted North against South, state against state, brother against brother. In that era, few would have expected free blacks or enslaved people to be secretly gathering information or passing messages.
- Josephine Baker. To escape racism at home, African American singer-dancer Josephine Baker left the US for France in the 1930s. She swiftly became the toast of Paris, among France’s most successful and beloved entertainers, and a French citizen.
To gain access to secret information, governments use espionage, a blend of subterfuge, deception, technology and data analysis. Espionage can also be used to counteract the spying efforts of the enemy, mainly be supplying them with false information.
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