Talk:Espionage

Contents

1 what about Mata Hari? 2 intelligence = espionage; eschew 'doublespeak' 3 unknown affiliation confusing 4 Earliest spy 5 Snitch?

what about Mata Hari?

Isn't Mata Hari worth mentioning?

Well, ... The French (or someone in French counterintelligence) thought she was -- maybe -- a German spy. Though she had, apparently been working for the French earlier -- doing what has never been too clear. The Germans were suspicious of her, but seem to have decided that whatever she was doing it wasn't enough of a problem to them to arrest her. The English may have had an opinion, but I can't recall a credible account of it. However it may all be that one or the other thought she was a spy, or that she really did tell someone something she shouldn't have, she was apparently trapped with fake evidence by the French who proceeded to execute her. So, was she a spy and if so for whom? I can't figure it out. Can anyone? ww 19:56, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

intelligence = espionage; eschew 'doublespeak'

From the article:

The word "espionage" in governmental language has been replaced by the doublespeak "intelligence"; thus intelligence agency for "espionage agency".

Far from being a recent doublespeak innovation, the term "intelligence" originally meant something along the lines of "timely news gathered elsewhere" (from Latin inter, between or among, and legere, to choose, to gather, or to read), and has been used at least since Shakespeare's time to mean both the products of espionage (or any other information gathering activity), and various meanings along the lines of "perception". What has happened is that the original meaning has generally fallen out of use in everyday English, though it is still used in formal speech, while the "perception" type meanings have come to dominate. "Doublespeak" however implies a deliberate and dishonest obfuscation, thus I consider the statement quoted above to be of dubious NPOV-ness, and also largely wrong. -- Securiger 03:02, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Intelligence also implies the analysis of open source and legally obtained data to obtain information that the originators would like to keep secret.

The definition of espionage in the article would apply to, say, a company reverse-engineering a rival's product to discover the secret manufacturing techniques used to produce it. This is not what most people would consider espionage. Illegal should be somewhere in the definition but, even then, some countries consider the possession of secret information illegal regardless of how it was obtained. GreatWhiteNortherner 05:14, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

unknown affiliation confusing

What's with the "unknown affiliation" list? Most of the persons on that list have a perfectly well known affiliation. Have I missed a discussion disputing the conventional history of these persons, or did the person who categorised the list just not know about them? Securiger 00:55, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Although I do see some problems:

• James Armistead - presumably James Armistead Lafayette, but definitely for American rebels in that case.
• Mansfield Cummings - arguable not a spy so much as a bureaucrat in charge of an intelligence agency.
• Ian Fleming - undoubtedly British intelligence, why is he here?

Admin for Naval Intelligence in WWII. Is there any reason to believe he was anything else -- before or after? ww 18:57, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Reinhard Gehlen - worked for Nazis during WWII, later for the CIA

perhaps CIA whilst working for W Germany post WWII, but otherwise bureaucrat like Cummings

• Anatoli Golitsin - with this "affiliation" based list, how do we class defectors?

I'd suggest 'belonged to/spied for KGB', 'defected to US'.

• David Greenglass - only his family and friends don't believe he was KGB

'working for' is different than 'belonging to'? need we/should we make this distinction? ww 18:57, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Reino Hayhanen - another defector

ex belonged to KGB ww 18:57, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Gordon Lonsdale - definitely for Russia, why is he here?
• Ana Montes - for Cuba. Having sub-categories for every small country will result in more markup than content.
• Harold Nicholson - double agent, CIA and KGB.

can this be clarified, please. This is new to me! ww 18:57, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Alfred Redl - double agent, Austro-Hungary and czarist Russia

General Staff Austrian Army, spy for Russia. Double agent how? ww 18:57, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Saville Sax - clearly KGB but never prosecuted; maybe double agent?

helped his college friend make contact w/ Soviets in NYC, I know of no further espionage activity. Is he so 'clearly KGB'? His friend never was prosecuted either. ww 18:57, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• John Vassall - definitely KGB. Why listed as unknown?
• Greville Wynne - definitely MI6, why listed as unknown?

Maybe we should change this sub-list to "Double agents, multiple affiliations, or disputed status"? Basically, the whole "for XXXX" categorisation is problematic in the murky world of espionage. Still, several of them are wrong. I don't think there's the slightest doubt Ian Fleming was a British agent, for example. Securiger 01:17, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

The answer to your question is "the person who categorised the list," namely I, "just [did] not know about them." The list as I found it was just a long list of names with no other information. I thought it would be more helpful if it were sorted in some way, and whom-they-spied-for seemed as good a sorting method as any. (I followed links to find affiliations; thus those without writeups are in the unknown pile.) I suppose in a perfect world we would have a grid with "spied for" and "spied on" as the axes, but given the width of most screens I'm not sure how successful that would be. --Rjyanco 16:24, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

One could question whether Vassall's real allegiance was to the KGB. He was entrapped and blackmailed by them into becoming their agent, and then did very well out of it as they doubled his salary, but had that not happened I would have thought he would have been a loyal subject. Dbiv 23:20, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Earliest spy

Who was the earliest famous spy? -wshun 08:24, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Snitch?

Why does snitch redirect here? If that is correct, and not just a fu, then it should be mentioned somewhere on the page. Snitch is certainly not a synonym of espionage. AFAIK it's a someone who tells the police (for example) whodunnit, so to speak.