In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organization for the target organization.[1]
Double agentry may be practiced by spies of the target organization who infiltrate the controlling organization or may result from the turning (switching sides) of previously loyal agents of the controlling organization by the target. The threat of execution is the most common method of turning a captured agent (working for an intelligence service) into a double agent (working for a foreign intelligence service) or a double agent into a re-doubled agent. It is unlike a defector, who is not considered an agent as agents are in place to function for an intelligence service and defectors are not, but some consider that defectors in place are agents until they have defected.
Double agents are often used to transmit disinformation or to identify other agents as part of counter-espionage operations. They are often very trusted by the controlling organization since the target organization will give them true, but useless or even counterproductive, information to pass along.
| Context | Agent / Code name | Nationality | Loyal to | Spying on | Comments | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1639 – 1651 | Samuel Morland | English | Restoration | Commonwealth of England | ||
| Richard Willis | Commonwealth of England | |||||
| World War I 1914 – 1918 | Mata Hari |  Dutch | German Empire |  French Third Republic | ||
| World War II 1939 – 1945 | Mathilde Carré "La Chatte" | French |  Double-Cross System | |||
| Roman Czerniawski "Brutus" |  Polish | Double-Cross System | ||||
| Eddie Chapman "ZigZag" | English | Double-Cross System | Infiltrated the German Abwehr during World War II whilst feeding intelligence to MI5. He was so trusted by the Germans that he is reportedly the only British citizen to have ever been awarded the Iron Cross. | |||
| Walter Dicketts "Celery" | English | Double-Cross System (1940-1943) | Ex-RNAS officer sent to Lisbon and Germany to infiltrate the Abwehr, report on invasion plans for Britain, and establish the bona fides of Snow (subsequently imprisoned until the end of war). Subjected to an intensive five-day interrogation in Hamburg and survived.[2] Later sent back to Lisbon to persuade Abwehr officer, George Sessler, to defect and worked undercover in Brazil. | |||
| Roger Grosjean "Fido" | French | Double-Cross System | French Air Force pilot who worked for the British | |||
| Christiaan Lindemans "King Kong" | Dutch | Abwehr (1944) | SOE (1940-1944) Dutch resistance (1941-1944) | |||
| Arthur Owens "Snow" | Welsh | Double-Cross System | ||||
| Johann-Nielsen Jebsen "Jonny" "Artist" | German | Abwehr (1939-1941) MI6 (1941-1945) | Abwehr (1941-1945) | Anti-Nazi German intelligence officer and British double agent. Jebsen recruited Dušan Popov. | ||
| Ivan Popov "LaLa" "Aesculap" "Dreadnought" "Hans" | Serbian | VOA (1939-1945) Abwehr (1940-1944) MI6 (1941-1945) | Abwehr (1941-1945) | Worked for the Yugoslavian agency VOA, as well as the British MI6 and the German Abwehr. Held the rank of Obersturmbannführer in the Gestapo. Brother of Dušan Popov. | ||
| Dušan Popov "Duško" "Tricycle" "Ivan" | Serbian | VOA (1939-1945) Abwehr (1940-1941) MI6 (1940-1945) | Abwehr (1941-1945) | Worked for the Yugoslavian agency VOA, as well as the British MI6 and the German Abwehr. Held the rank of colonel in the British Army. Brother of Ivan Popov. | ||
| John Herbert Neal Moe "Mutt and Jeff" |  Norwegian | Double-Cross System | ||||
| Tor Glad "Mutt and Jeff" | Norwegian | Double-Cross System | ||||
| Juan Pujol García "Garbo" |  Spanish[3] | Double-Cross System | British double agent in German spy service; awarded both an MBE and an Iron Cross | |||
| Johann Wenzel |
|
| Member of Red Orchestra spy ring who, after being unmasked by the Gestapo in 1942, fed false information to the Soviet Union from August until his escape in November. Later joined the Belgian Resistance. | |||
| William Sebold "Tramp" | German  U.S. citizen | FBI (1939) | Abwehr (1939) | Coerced by the Abwehr into becoming a spy, exposed the Duquesne Spy Ring to the FBI. | ||
| Cold War 1947 – 1991 | Aldrich Ames | CIA (1957-1994) | ||||
| John Cairncross "Liszt" | Scottish | MGB Cambridge Five | MI5 (1941-1944) GC&CS (1942-1943) MI6 (1944-1945) | |||
| Anthony Blunt "Johnson" | English | NKVD Cambridge Five | MI5 | |||
| Guy Burgess "Hicks" | English | MGB Cambridge Five | MI5 (1939-1941) Foreign Office (1944-1956) | |||
| Donald Maclean "Homer" | English | MGB Cambridge Five | MI5 MI6 | |||
| Kim Philby "Stanley" | English Born in India | MGB Cambridge Five | MI6 | |||
| George Blake | Dutch | KGB | MI6 | |||
| Oleg Gordievsky "Sunbeam" "Nocton" "Pimlico" "Ovation" | Russian | MI6 (1968-2008) | KGB (1963-1985) | Abducted in Moscow in 1985; escaped to the United Kingdom two months later. | ||
| Indonesia | Indonesia Communist Party | Head of the Indonesian Communist Party Special Bureau which was tasked to gathering information and intelligence and was the mastermind of 30th September Movement.[4] | ||||
| Matei Pavel Haiducu |  Romanian | DST (1981) | DIE (1975-1982) | Defected to France in 1981. | ||
| Dmitri Polyakov | Ukrainian | FBI CIA | GRU | Executed in 1988. | ||
| Robert Hanssen | American | GRU | FBI | Worked for the FBI and sold information to the Soviet Union as a mole. | ||
| Oleg Penkovskiy "Hero" | Russian | NSA MI6 | GRU | A colonel with GRU informed the U.K. and the U.S. about the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba; executed by the Soviets in 1963. | ||
| Stig Bergling |  Swedish | GRU | SÄPO | Among other things, handed over the entire Swedish "FO-code", a top secret list of Sweden's defence establishments, coastal artillery fortifications and mobilization stores. Convicted in 1979 and sentenced to life imprisonment for treason. | ||
| Arab–Israeli conflict 1948 – | Ashraf Marwan |  Egyptian |  Mossad | Egypt | Egyptian businessman and an alleged spy for Israel, or possibly an Egyptian double agent; managed to become celebrated as a hero in each country for his alleged work against the other. | |
| Basque conflict 1959 – 2011 | Mikel Lejarza "El Lobo" | Basque | CESID | ETA | ||
| Northern Ireland conflict 1968 – 1998 | Denis Donaldson | Northern Irish | MI5 PSNI |  Provisional IRA Sinn Féin | Assassinated at his cottage in County Donegal after being exposed by a Northern Ireland newspaper, The Derry Journal. | |
| "Kevin Fulton" | Northern Irish | Royal Irish Rangers Int Corps | Provisional IRA | |||
| Freddie Scappaticci "Stakeknife" | Irish | FRU | Provisional IRA ISU | |||
| Robert Nairac | English born in Mauritius | British Army | Provisional IRA | Murdered by the Provisional IRA in County Louth in 1977. | ||
| South African espionage in Zimbabwe and the Gukurahundi 1980 – 1987 | Matt Calloway | Zimbabwean | NIS | CIO | [5] | |
| Philip Conjwayo | Zimbabwean South African citizen | NIS | CIO | [6] | ||
| Geoffrey Price | Zimbabwean | NIS | CIO | |||
| Michael Smith | Zimbabwean South African citizen | NIS | CIO | |||
| Kevin Woods | Zimbabwean South African citizen | NIS | CIO | |||
| Global War on Terrorism 2001 – | Aimen Dean | United Kingdom (born Bahraini) | Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) | al-Qaeda | Dean's cover was reportedly blown by Ron Suskind who, using CIA sources who had received intelligence under the Five Eyes UKUSA Agreement, disclosed his identity with details that could only be sourced to Dean in an excerpt of The One Percent Doctrine for Time.[7] | |
| "April Fool" | American | United States |  Iraq | Allegedly, an American officer who provided false information to Saddam Hussein | ||
| Iyman Faris | U.S. citizen | al-Qaeda | FBI | |||
A re-doubled agent is an agent who gets caught as a double agent and is forced to mislead the foreign intelligence service. F.M. Begoum describes the re-doubled agent as "one whose duplicity in doubling for another service has been detected by his original sponsor and who has been persuaded to reverse his affections again".[8]
A triple agent is a spy who pretends to be a double agent for one side while they are truthfully a double agent for the other side. Unlike a re-doubled agent, who changes allegiance due to being compromised, a triple agent usually has always been loyal to their original side. It may also refer to a spy who works for three opposing sides, such that each side thinks the spy works for them alone.
Notable triple agents include: