Countries with major counterintelligence failures are presented alphabetically. In each case, there is at least one systemic problem with seeking penetration agents when few or none may actually have existed, to the detriment of the functioning of the national service involved. Many of the individuals named have separate articles in Wikipedia. The emphasis here is on both national-level counterespionage problems, and how the individuals eluded detection.

German counterespionage failures

Wilhelm Canaris

Red Orchestra

Otto John

Russian and Soviet counterespionage failures

The Czarist Russia had a secret police before the Soviet Union, and modern Russia still has intelligence services that may have been impacted by events during the Soviet period. While there were penetration accusations after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the great mass of large-scale accusations and purges, after Stalin consolidated power but before WWII, tend to blur into the

Great Terror The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the assassination of Sergei Kirov by Leonid Nikolaev ...

. After Stalin's death,

Lavrenti Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria ka, ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია} ''Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria'' ( – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph ...

, heading state security, attempted to gain control, but was shot and his subordinates purged.

Anatoliy Golitsyn

Yuri Nosenko

Oleg Penkovsky

Oleg Penkovsky Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky (; 23 April 1919 – 16 May 1963), codenamed Hero (by the CIA) and Yoga (by MI6) was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Penkovsky informed the United States and the U ...

was a UK-US defector in place, in an extremely key position in the Soviet system. His position was such that he not only was able to provide information about what the Soviets had learned about the West, but also about the real capabilities of the Soviets. A book, ''The Penkovsky Papers'', was prepared, posthumously, with assistance from US intelligence. A 1976 Senate commission stated that "the book was prepared and written by witting agency assets who drew on actual case materials." Much of the material provided by Penkovsky has been declassified.

Petr Popov

Adolf Tolkachev

Vladimir Vetrov

One example of counter-intelligence in action involves the case of Soviet defector Vladimir Vetrov, codenamed "Farewell," who gave several classified documents in 1981 to French Intelligence detailing

industrial espionage Industrial espionage, also known as economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage, is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrat ...

committed by the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

in various western nations in a collection called the

Farewell Dossier The Farewell Dossier was the collection of documents that Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, a KGB defector "en place" (code-named "Farewell"), gathered and gave to the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST) in 1981–82, during the Cold War. ...

. The information was passed on to the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

, who exploited it by secretly preparing sabotaged "intelligence" for Soviet spies to collect. After the Soviet's incorporated the flawed industrial technology, it caused numerous technical failures in the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

including a massive

oil pipeline A pipeline is a system of pipes for long-distance transportation of a liquid or gas, typically to a market area for consumption. The latest data from 2014 gives a total of slightly less than of pipeline in 120 countries around the world. The Un ...

explosion which damaged the economy.

Igor Gouzenkov

UK counterespionage failures

A group of Soviet sympathizers, in respected positions in British society, formed the

Cambridge Five The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were e ...

, sometimes called the Cambridge Four, and it has never been established how many active agents were involved. Of these, the most devastating was

Kim Philby Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secr ...

. Other confirmed members included Donald Duart Maclean, Guy Burgess, and Anthony Blunt. See

for other suspects.

was an effective Soviet agent while in the British counterintelligence service, warning the Soviets of countersurveillance, while casting suspicion on loyal officers. Philby came under suspicion but was able to escape to the USSR. Philby even was, at one time, considered as a possible head of

MI5 MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...

. He was able to protect numerous Soviet operations in Britain. British intelligence also suffered from internal suspicion that may or may not have been directed at the right targets, but caused suspicion to be thrown at the highest counter-intelligence officers, with severe effects on morale. Peter Wright, while later extremely controversial about revelations his 1987 book, ''Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer'', also developed techniques that allowed the UK to track numerous Soviet clandestine agents, and agents under diplomatic cover.

Kim Philby

US counterespionage failures

James Jesus Angleton James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917 – May 11, 1987) was an American CIA officer who served as chief of the counterintelligence department of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1954 to 1975. According to Director of Central Intelligence ...

, the legendary CIA director of counterespionage and a poet himself, used

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...

's term "an infinity of mirrors" to describe the intricacies of agent to double agent to triple agent so common in counterespionage, with works describing him as paranoid, while others described him as brilliant. Perhaps the truth may only emerge with the novelist's pen. It is clear that searches for foreign penetration, whether present or not, came close to paralyzing US intelligence.

Philip Agee

Aldrich Ames

On February 24, 1994, the agency was rocked by the arrest of 31-year veteran case officer Aldrich Ames on charges of spying for the Soviet Union since 1985.

Robert Hanssen

Edward Lee Howard

William Hamilton Martin and Bernon Mitchell

These two cryptologists working for the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

disappeared in September 1960 and then re-appeared as defectors at a news conference in Moscow.

Francis Gary Powers Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929August 1, 1977) was an American pilot who served as a United States Air Force officer and a CIA employee. Powers is best known for his involvement in the 1960 U-2 incident, when he was shot down while fly ...

speculated that they were responsible for the downing of the

Lockheed U-2 The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed the "''Dragon Lady''", is an American single-engine, high–altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since the 1950s. Designed for all- ...

he was piloting over the Soviet Union causing the

1960 U-2 incident On 1 May 1960, a United States Lockheed U-2, U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance inside Soviet Union, Soviet territory. Flown by American pil ...

. The analysis of the National Security Council, however, determined that the two were not recruited by the Soviets and that their defection was "impulsive."

William Kampiles

David Henry Barnett

Denial and deception

Analysis of foreign

denial and deception Denial and deception (D&D) is a Western theoretical framework for conceiving and analyzing military intelligence techniques pertaining to secrecy and deception. Originating in the 1980s, it is roughly based on the more pragmatic Soviet practices o ...

(D&D) activities is arguably among the most challenging of intelligence analytic disciplines. Throughout history, nations have sought advantage over rivals through the manipulation of valued information. Such manipulation spans a spectrum of activities from the simple act of keeping certain information exclusive or secret to sophisticated deceptions that seek to confuse or mislead an adversary's collection, analytic, and decisionmaking process. This spectrum includes denial, in which information is used in a "defensive" way by keeping it both secret and hidden (where the information gains further advantage through exclusivity and obscurity), and deception, in which information is used in an "offensive" way to mislead or confuse an adversary and which can include the use of both truthful and overt as well as false information in such a way as to influence a rival nation's perceptions. The discovery and uncovering of the first, and protection against the second, are "the two great purposes of intelligence One of the greatest bargains in espionage history was the Soviet purchase of the technical manual for the KH–11 reconnaissance satellite from former CIA employee (now convicted spy) William Kampiles for a paltry $3,000. As a result of this theft and other compromises, U.S. intelligence must assume as a matter of course that overhead imagery and other technical collection will be met by D&D efforts.

References

External links

A new style of turncoat
by

James Bamford James Bamford (born September 15, 1946) is an American author, journalist and documentary producer noted for his writing about United States intelligence agencies, especially the National Security Agency (NSA). ''The New York Times'' has calle ...

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' April 27, 2008
Why they spy
OPED by

The Courier-Journal The ''Courier Journal'', also known as the ''Louisville Courier Journal'' (and informally ''The C-J'' or ''The Courier''), and called ''The Courier-Journal'' between November 8, 1868, and October 29, 2017, is a daily newspaper published in ...

'' May 4, 2008 {{Intelligence cycle management F Types of espionage Intelligence analysis