In the field of

counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...

, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to

spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organization for the target organization. Double agentry may be practised 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 Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the L ...

or to identify other agents as part of

counter-espionage Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...

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.

Double agents

Re-doubled agent

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". *

Vitaly Yurchenko Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko ( rus, Виталий Сергеевич Юрченко; born May 2, 1936) is a former high-ranking KGB disinformation officer in the Soviet Union. After 25 years of service in the KGB, he defected to the United States ...

Triple agent

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 is usually considered to have been always 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: * Abdul Razak Hussein * Ibrahim Ismail * Humam Khalil * Katrina Leung

Events in which double agents played an important role

Babington plot The Babington Plot was a plan in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, and put Mary, Queen of Scots, her Catholic cousin, on the English throne. It led to Mary's execution, a result of a letter sent by Mary (who had been imp ...

Battle of Lexington The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, ...

Battle of Normandy Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Norm ...

Camp Chapman attack Forward Operating Base Chapman was a United States Armed Forces Forward Operating Base located in Khost province, Afghanistan. As a prominent U.S. base, it was a repeated target of terror attacks. There have been at least seven attacks; t ...

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

Duquesne Spy Ring 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" Joubert Duquesne were convicted after a lengthy inve ...

Gukurahundi The ''Gukurahundi'' was a genocide in Zimbabwe which arose in 1982 until the Unity Accord in 1987. It derives from a Shona language term which loosely translates to "the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains". Duri ...

Stormontgate Stormontgate is the name given to the controversy surrounding an alleged Provisional Irish Republican Army spy ring and intelligence-gathering operation based in Stormont, the parliament building of Northern Ireland. The term was coined in Oc ...

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

War on Terrorism The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...

Yom Kippur War The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from October 6 to 25, 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by E ...

References

External links

F. M. Begoum: Observations on the Double Agent
{{DEFAULTSORT:Double Agent * Spies by role Military command staff occupations