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Espionage

Espionage is the use of spies to discover secret information about a country or an organization. Spies take great risks to serve their country, particularly in wartime, when they are likely to be executed if caught.

Most spies work for an intelligence or secret service. They may be sent on some specific operation, such as killing a traitor, carrying a message, or organizing a resistance movement, or generally to find out any information that might be useful. All modern spies use the latest scientific aids. Many have radio transmitters to send coded messages some use other latest developed techniques. They may write messages in invisible ink or use microdot photography by which a whole page of writing can be concealed under a dot the size of a period.

Many countries have counter-espionage organizations which guard their country's secrets, catch spies, or perhaps feed them with false information. Counter-espionage services sometimes use double agents, men who pretend to spy for the enemy, but are in fact loyal.

Spies are as old as history. Moses sent twelve men to spy out the land of Canaan. Delilah used her beauty to betray Samson, as did Mata Hari in the First World War to gain secrets for the Germans. Delilah was more successful than Mata Hari, who was shot by the French. Sir Francis Walsingham knew all about the Spanish Armada long before it sailed. One of his agents is said to have been the dramatist Christopher Marlowe.

Perhaps the most successful of all was the Russian spy Richard Sorge. In World War II, he was in Japan, where he discovered German plans before and after the invasion of the USSR. He almost certainly saved Moscow from capture. Another famous agent "of that war was 'Cicero', who got himself appointed valet to the British -ambassador in Turkey. He was able to photograph top-secret documents and pass them to the Germans.