Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence). A person who commits espionage is called an espionage agent or spy. Any individual or spy ring, 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. In some circumstances, it may be a legal tool of law enforcement and in others, it may be illegal and punishable by law.
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral and the chief of the Abwehr from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi regime. Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, however, Canaris turned against Hitler and committed acts of both passive and active resistance during the war.
William G. Sebold was a United States citizen who was coerced into becoming a spy when he visited Germany after being pressured by several high-ranking Nazi members. He informed the American Consul General in Cologne before leaving Germany and became a double agent for the FBI. With the assistance of another German agent, Fritz Duquesne, he recruited 33 agents that became known as the Duquesne Spy Ring. In June 1941, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested all of the agents. They were convicted and sentenced to a total of 300 years in prison.
Jack Soble was a Lithuanian who, together with his brother Robert Soblen, penetrated Leon Trotsky's entourage for Soviet intelligence in the 1920s. Later, in the United States, he was jailed, with his wife Myra, on espionage charges. He was born in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania as Abromas Sobolevicius and sometimes used the name Abraham Sobolevicius or Adolph Senin.
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American NKVD spymaster, who was recruited from within the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union as the primary handler of multiple highly placed moles within both the United States Federal Government and the Office of Strategic Services from 1938 to 1945. She defected by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and debriefing about her espionage activities.
As early as the 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its GRU, OGPU, NKVD, and KGB intelligence agencies, used Russian and foreign-born nationals, as well as Communists of American origin, to perform espionage activities in the United States, forming various spy rings. Particularly during the 1940s, some of these espionage networks had contact with various U.S. government agencies. These Soviet espionage networks illegally transmitted confidential information to Moscow, such as information on the development of the atomic bomb. Soviet spies also participated in propaganda and disinformation operations, known as active measures, and attempted to sabotage diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and its allies.
The Street with No Name is a 1948 American film noir directed by William Keighley. A follow-up to The House on 92nd Street (1945), it tells the story of an undercover FBI agent, Gene Cordell, who infiltrates a deadly crime gang. Cordell's superior, FBI Inspector George A. Briggs, also appears in The House on 92nd Street. The film, shot in a semidocumentary style, takes place in the Skid Row section of fictional "Center City."
Boris Morros was an American Communist Party member, Soviet agent, and FBI double agent. He also worked at Paramount Pictures, where he produced films as well as supervising their music department.
The American Theater was a theater of operations during World War II including all continental American territory, and extending 200 miles (320 km) into the ocean.
Kurt Frederick Ludwig was a German spy and the head of the "Joe K" spy ring in the United States in 1940–1941.
Confessions of a Nazi Spy is a 1939 American spy political thriller film directed by Anatole Litvak for Warner Bros. It was the first explicitly anti-Nazi film to be produced by a major Hollywood studio, being released in May 1939, four months before the beginning of World War II and two and a half years before the United States' entry into the war.
Frederick "Fritz" Joubert Duquesne was a South African Boer and German soldier, big-game hunter, journalist, and spy. Many of the claims Duquesne made about himself are in dispute; over his lifetime he used multiple identities, reinvented his past at will, claimed family ties to aristocratic clans and famous people and even asserted the right to military titles and medals with no third-party verification.
Charles Gordon Booth was a British-born writer who settled in America and wrote several classic Hollywood stories, including The General Died at Dawn (1936) and Sundown (1941). He won an Academy Award for Best Story for The House on 92nd Street in 1945, a thinly disguised version of the FBI "Duquesne Spy Ring saga", which led to the largest espionage conviction in the history of the United States. He also penned the short story "Caviar for His Excellency" which was the basis for the play "The Magnificent Fraud" and was the basis for Paul Mazursky's 1988 film Moon Over Parador.
This page is a timeline of published security lapses in the United States government. These lapses are frequently referenced in congressional and non-governmental oversight. This article does not attempt to capture security vulnerabilities.
The Duquesne Spy Ring is the largest espionage case in the United States history that ended in convictions. A total of 33 members of a Nazi German espionage network, headed by Frederick "Fritz" Duquesne, were convicted after a lengthy investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Of those indicted, 19 pleaded guilty. The remaining 14 were brought to jury trial in Federal District Court, Brooklyn, New York, on September 3, 1941; all were found guilty on December 13, 1941. On January 2, 1942, the group members were sentenced to serve a total of over 300 years in prison.
13 Rue Madeleine is a 1947 American World War II spy film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring James Cagney, Annabella, Richard Conte and Frank Latimore. Allied volunteers are trained as spies in the leadup to the invasion of Europe, but one of them is a German double agent.
John Anthony Walker Jr. was a United States Navy chief warrant officer and communications specialist convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1985 and sentenced to life in prison.
Madame Spy is a 1942 American spy film directed by Roy William Neill and starring Constance Bennett, Don Porter and John Litel. It was produced and distributed by Universal Pictures. The screenplay concerns an American intelligence officer who goes undercover and infiltrates a ring of Nazi spies.
Nikolaus Ritter is best known as the Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr who led spyrings in the United Kingdom and the United States from 1936 to 1941.
