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Espionage and covert operations
The are many forms of espionage. In the case of nations spying on each other,
an intelligence officer commonly operates in the hostile country
from the embassy, under the legal cover of diplomatic immunity.
In some cases however, the officer lives in the hostile country – often with a family – under an assumed identity or legend,
in which case the officer is called an illegal.
The actual task of gathering information from the enemy is rarely carried out
by the intelligence officer himself, but rather by an agent
who has better access to the required information.
In such cases the intelligence officer becomes the case officer,
or case handler, or simply the handler.
Potential agents are commonly motivated by one of four factors,
described in Keith Melton's excellent book Ultimate Spy [1]
by the acronym MICE: Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego.
There are other forms of espionage in which people, organisations or companies
are spying on each other. This sometimes involves infiltration.
Examples are industrial espionage and political espionage,
which are sometimes even carried out with help from national
intelligence agencies.
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Spies Officers Cases Operations Organisations
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Covert stories on this website
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Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Anthony Walker (28 July 1937-28 August 2014)
was working for the US Navy as a communications specialist
when he started spying for the Soviet Union.
In the nearly 17 years that he worked for the Soviets,
he passed thousands of classified documents
to them, compromising US cipher machines like the
KL-7,
KL-47
and KW-7,
and allowing the Russians to decrypt at least one million confidential
documents. The Russians issued him a
Minox C camera
for photographing secret documents and key material.
He build up a spy ring that included his son Michael, his brother Arthur
and senior chief petty officer Jerry Whitworth.
➤ More information
➤ Minox C camera
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Ana Belén Montes
1985-2001
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Senior Cuban analyst Ana Belén Montes (28 February 1957)
worked for the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA)
until she was arrested in 2001 after spying for the Cubans for
16 years. In her possession the FBI
found a Sony ICF-2001D receiver, a
Toshiba laptop and evidence of the use of
OTP ciphers.
➤ More information
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Richard Osborne
1982-1983
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In 1960, during UN talks about the U-2 spy plane incident,
the Americans showed the world how the Russians had been bugging the
office of the US Ambassador in Moscow for nearly eight years with
a bug hidden inside a wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States.
The mysterious bug did not contain any electronic components
and didn't require batteries or any other source of electricity.
Consequently, it became known as The Thing.
➤ More information
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On 23 January 1968, the American information gathering ship (a.k.a. spy ship)
USS Pueblo was attacked by
North Korean forces, whilst on an Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) mission
off the North Korean coast.
Aboard the ship was a wealth of intercept radios, cipher machines and
code material, most of which fell into North Korean hands (and, hence, Russian
hands as well) relatively undamaged.
➤ More information
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In 1972, the Watergate scandal lead to the resignation of US President
Richard Nixon. It revealed that a secret group, known as The Plummers
had the task to uncover sources information leaking to the media, but
branched into illegal activities whilst working for the Committee to Re-elect
President Nixon.
Five people were arrested for breaking into the headquarters of the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) at the Watergate complex in Washington.
➤ More information
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The Gentleman's Agreement
1951-1960
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Ever since WWII, Boris Hagelin and his company
Crypto AG had a good
relationship with the USA, and especially with the AFSA
(later: NSA).
From 1951 to 1960, Hagelin and the NSA had a secret
gentleman's agreement
to weaken the cryptographic security of the
company's cipher machines
when they were sold to certain adversary countries.
➤ More information
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Operation EASYCHAIR
1958-1959
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In 1958, in a joint operation of the American
CIA
and the Dutch BVD,
a covert listening device (bug) was placed in a piece of
furniture that was ordered by the Russian Embassy in The Hague.
The device was of a passive nature, which means that it was powered by
a very strong RF signal beamed at it from more than 100 metres away.
➤ More information
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Operation RUBICON
1970-2018
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There were always rumours that the equipment of the Swiss
crypto-manufacturer Crypto AG
— founded in 1952 by the Swedish inventor
Boris Hagelin —
contained backdoors for the NSA, but the actual
story is even more unbelievable.
In 1970, in a secret covert operation named
THESAURUS
(later: RUBICON),
the German BND
and the American CIA actually purchased the
company and ran it for nearly 50 years. This enabled them
to read nearly all diplomatic traffic of the entire
world for many years.
➤ More information
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Operation GUNMAN
1976-1984
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For no less than eight years, the Soviet Union spied on the US by bugging
the IBM Selectric typewriters of their Moscow enbassy. The bug collected
the text typed on the machine and sent short radio bursts
to a nearby listening post.
The bugs were really sophisticated and could neither be detected by regular
TSCM methods nor by visual inspection.
➤ More information
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IKAR (Icarus) was a secret project of the Russian KGB,
in which they discovered, researched and described covert listening devices
(bug) that had been planted by the CIA in offices, homes and vehicles of the
Soviet mission in the US.
The files of this operation were shared with other members of the Soviet Union
and the Warsaw Pact, and contain detailed photographs of a wide range of
alledgedly American bugs. Some device are recognised by Crypto Museum.
➤ More information
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Operation Trojan Shield
2018-2021
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In an unprecedented sting operation, the FBI took over
the company behind ANOM – a secure messaging platform
predominantly used by criminals – and converted it into a
backdoored honeypot, with help from the Australian AFP.
In 2019, 14 European countries joined the operation, and for
more than 18 months, they were able to read more than 27 million
trusted communications of some 300 criminal networks.
The operation was officially disclosed on 8 June 2021,
after more than 800 people had been arrested
and (illegal) property had been seized.
➤ More information
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WOLKE was the codename of a secret project of the repressive
intelligence service of the former DDR (East-Germany)
– the Stasi (MfS) –
in which radioactive substances were used to invisibly mark
objects, documents and persons, so that they could be traced.
In many cases, the subjects (and even the Stasi officers that followed
them) were exposed to potentially lethal doses of radiation.
➤ More information
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CryptoPhone implant
2013-2018
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Just because a CryptoPhone
uses very strong encryption, does't means it can't
be tapped. This case demonstrates how it is possible to tap the audio circuits
of the telephone and send them out as a short burst upon a trigger signal.
This case describes a high-tech bug that was found inside the
CryptoPhone
used by WikiLeaks when disclosing the revelations of NSA whistleblower
Edward Snowden in 2013.
➤ More information
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On 17 September 2024, more than 4000 pagers used by operatives of the
Libanese terrorist organisation Hezbollah exploded more or less simultaneously,
killing several users and wounding more than 3000.
A day later, around 450 of their handheld radios, also exploded.
It is widely assumed that the Israeli intelligence service Mossad or Shin Bet
is behind this covert operation.
➤ More information
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Counter Observation Team
1980-1995
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The Counter Observation Team (COT),
was a group of Dutch scanner listeners, hobbyists,
hackers and enthusiasts, who – in the 1980s and 1990s – observed and monitored
the modus operandi and movements of serveillance teams of the
Dutch police and intelligence service BVD.
For their hobby, a wide variety of high-tech spy gadgets was developed, some of
which landed in the hands of criminals, who made good use of it.
➤ More information
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- H. Keith Melton, Ultimate Spy
ISBN 978-0-2411-8991-7. pp. 8-9.
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© Crypto Museum. Created: Tuesday 08 September 2015. Last changed: Saturday, 21 September 2024 - 14:39 CET.
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