The New Spymasters

 

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To Sophie and Daniel

Glossary

Modern spying terms

Analyst
Someone employed to examine secret and open-source intelligence and draw conclusions.

Betrayal
In order to gather human intelligence, a spy must inevitably betray someone.

Case officer
An employee of an intelligence service who recruits and manages secret agents. Such operatives typically object to being called spies, since it may imply betrayal.

Clandestine action
Secret political or military action abroad.

Cover
or
legend
The fictional identity, biography and/or purpose of an intelligence officer or secret agent, created to allow them access to certain individuals or places.

Covert action
Political or military action by a secret service, the sponsoring country of which remains hidden and unacknowledged.

Dangle
A walk-in (
see below
) sent to a secret service by an enemy as a plant or double agent in order to provide false information or otherwise cause damage.

Dead drop
A pick-up place for an agent to leave secret intelligence he has stolen.

Debriefing
Questioning a source, agent or captive; can also be a euphemism for harsh interrogation.

Diplomatic cover
Most intelligence officers travel abroad under cover as diplomats. This provides them with immunity from being prosecuted for spying.

Double agent
A secret agent working for one master who is persuaded to work for another too.

False flag
A trick used by a secret service to make a secret agent think he is being recruited by another country's service.

Handler
The term for a case officer who manages or ‘runs' a secret agent. Keeping the agent alive and sober is hard.

HUMINT
Intelligence from all kinds of human sources including spies and ordinary contacts. This may also include intelligence from debriefings and interrogations.

Illegal
The exception: an intelligence officer who works without diplomatic cover and carries out spying. In the US, illegals are known as NOCs: Non-Official Covers.

Informer
Someone who provides tip-offs to secret services or a law enforcement agency, but who may not be under their active control.

Intelligence officer
A staff employee of a secret service. He may, among other roles, be a case officer or analyst.

Laws
 … are to be obeyed at home and broken abroad. Spying is illegal in every country of the world, even for diplomats.

Requirement
(also known as ‘tasking') Instructions from a secret service's political masters to collect specific intelligence on a target or subject.

Secret intelligence
Vital information that is kept secret: i.e. is protected in some way. Protected government information is usually marked as such: e.g. labelled Top Secret, NOFORN (i.e. ‘no foreign national') or Official.

Secret intelligence service
A government agency whose function is to gather intelligence and carry out secret tasks, whether recruiting spies, gathering SIGINT (
see below
), analysing secret intelligence or carrying out covert and/or clandestine actions.

Secret police
A secret service that identifies, watches and may secretly arrest and interrogate alleged enemies of the state. (A security service like MI5, with no power of arrest, is not in this sense a secret police.)

SIGINT
Signals intelligence: i.e. intercepting electronic signals, including from communications systems, radar and weapons systems. The great seductive rival of human intelligence.

Spy
or
Secret agent
Any person who steals secret intelligence and then passes it on to a government agency, in their own country or abroad.

Sub-agent
or
Sub-source
An agent working for another agent, providing hearsay intelligence.

Targeter
An analyst who locates targets for assassination or capture.

Triple agent
A double agent who is ‘re-doubled' to betray his new master and work for his original master.

Walk-in
A volunteer for a spy agency who may literally walk into an embassy or contact the secret services by email, telephone, letter or some other means.

Secret agencies and their role

United States

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Includes both a clandestine service (the National Clandestine Service), which handles spy operations, and a larger intelligence division, which analyses the product from multiple sources of intelligence, including open sources. The main CIA customer is the US president, who must also authorize its covert actions.

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
Part of the Department of Defense; similar in structure to the CIA, with a clandestine service and with analytical and science and technology directorates, all providing military-related intelligence.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Self-tasking agency which functions generally as a federal police but has counterintelligence, counterterrorism and national security divisions that carry out domestic secret intelligence work: e.g. running spies inside violent extremist groups. Also responsible for investigating any crimes against US persons or interests abroad.

National Security Agency (NSA)
Huge agency that collects SIGINT globally.

United Kingdom

Defence Intelligence (DI)
Similar to the American DIA; provides all-source intelligence and analysis of a primarily defence and strategic nature.

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)
British equivalent of the American NSA; single-source agency with a focus on SIGINT.

Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)
The main customer and coordinator for UK intelligence. It provides intelligence assessments, covering all sources, and sets requirements for SIS and GCHQ.

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
Also known popularly as MI6 (a cover-name that was used in the 1930s and the Second World War); the foreign intelligence service and the rough equivalent of the CIA's clandestine service; single-source (HUMINT) agency. Analysis is mainly handled by other departments in the British government, including the JIC and DI. All significant operations require ministerial approval.

Security Service (MI5)
Domestic intelligence service. It is still referred to generally by its designation in the First World War, MI5, and called the BSS (British Security Service) by US agencies. It carries out secret security work, targeting violent extremist threats (mainly terrorism) to the UK. It runs agents and interrogates sources, but, unlike a police force, has no power of arrest. MI5 is self-tasking.

France

Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE)
Foreign intelligence service.

Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI)
Internal intelligence service, created in May 2014 and replacing the
Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (DCRI),
itself the result of a merger – in July 2008 – of the
Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST),
the former domestic intelligence service, and the
Renseignements Généraux (RG),
the former police intelligence service.

Germany

Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV)
Domestic intelligence service, which, due to memories of the Nazi-era Gestapo, operates at a state level only and with restricted powers.

Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)
Foreign intelligence service of modern federal Germany.

Stasi
Nickname for the Ministry for State Security (
Ministerium für Staatssicherheit
or
MfS
), the secret service of the former communistrun East Germany (GDR). Its foreign spy service was called the Main Reconnaissance Administration (
Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung
or
HVA
).

USSR/Russia

Committee of State Security (KGB)
Secret service of the USSR, which, among other names, was first called the Cheka (1917–29), then the MVD, NKVD (1934–46), MGB (1946–53) and finally the KGB (1954–91). Only a small elite division of the KGB, the First Chief Directorate, handled spying operations abroad.

Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB)
Domestic secret service of post-Soviet Russia.

Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)
Replaced the First Chief Directorate as Russia's foreign intelligence service.

Main Intelligence Administration (GRU)
All-source Soviet and then Russian foreign military intelligence agency.

Middle East

Countries in the Middle East generally have either one intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, handling both foreign and domestic intelligence and reporting to the country's head of state, or a Mukhabarat and a separate domestic secret police, usually under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior. For example:

EGYPT

The
State Security Investigation Services (SSIS)
or Mabahith Amn ad-Dawla reports to the interior minister. The
Mukhabarat (EGIS),
the foreign service, reports to the president.

JORDAN

The
General Intelligence Directorate (GID)
handles both domestic and foreign intelligence, and reports to the king.

SAUDI ARABIA

The
General Directorate of Investigation (GDI)
is the umbrella department that oversees the
General Security Services (GSS)
or Mabahith, which is the domestic intelligence service and secret police. The
General Intelligence Presidency (GIP),
also known as Mukhabarat al-Ammah or al-Istikhbarat al-Ammah, is the main foreign intelligence agency, but it also coordinates the dissemination of all Saudi intelligence and reports directly to the king.