22 Greatest Spies and Their Top Secret Missions

A former FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union for 22 years starting in 1979, Hanssen was charged with selling information for more than $1.4 million. Considered the “worst intelligence disaster in the US history” he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of espionage and is now serving life imprisonment at the United States Penitentiary […]

Infamously known as “the Falcon and the Snowman,” this unlikely duo somehow managed to create a serious hole in the national security of the US government in the 1970s through their low-profile efforts. Boyce, who was working for an aerospace company on contract with the US government, stumbled upon some top secret information. He decided

Raymond Llewellyn Mawby was a British member of the Parliament for the Conservative Party who spied for the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic during the Cold War. Given the code name “Laval,” he had received £100 for every piece of information that he handed over including the floor plans of the Prime Minister’s office. Raymond Llewellyn “Ray”

Known for his code name “Agent HERO,” Oleg was a Colonel in the Soviet GRU who was supplying intelligence to the United States government during the 1950s and 60s. He was responsible for the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ as he informed the United Kingdom and the United States about the Soviet’s placement of missiles in Cuba.

Klaus Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist, whose significant contributions include the first fission weapons and early models of the hydrogen bomb; he was convicted for leaking out information about the Atomic bomb research (the Manhattan Project) to the Soviet Union in 1950 due to the reasoning that they had the right to know. He

The first civilians in the history of the United States to be executed as spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accused of passing secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Julius obtained the documents from his brother-in-law, David Greenglass, who supplied the documents from Los Alamos and cleared Ethel’s involvement.

An Albanian secret agent who spied for Germany during World War II, Elyesa Bazna sold information to the Germans under his code name “Cicero”. He is credited for selling some of the Allies most damaging secrets and was probably one of the Axis powers top informants. Elyesa Bazna (Albanian, Iliaz Bazda, born July 28, 1904

Though American born yet George Koval moved to Russia as a child and was later recruited by the Soviet GRU and sent back to America to obtain nuclear information as agent DELMAR. When he secured a position as an engineer on the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb during World War II from

Nancy Grace Augusta Wake served as a British agent during the later part of World War II. She became a leading figure in the French Resistance and was one of the Allies’ most decorated servicewomen of the war. Nancy Grace Augusta Wake AC, GM (30 August 1912—7 August 2011) served as a British Special Operations

Popular among the Germans as “Artemis,” Hall was an American spy with the Special Operations Executive during World War II in the 1940s and later on for the Office of the Strategic Services and the Special Activities Division of the CIA. Despite the fact that her leg was amputated from the knee down, her clandestine

Richard Sorge was a German communist and spy who worked for the Soviet Union. He gained great fame among espionage enthusiasts for his intelligence gathering during World War II. He worked as a journalist in both Germany and Japan, where he was imprisoned for spying and eventually hanged. Born October 4, 1895 in Baku, Russia,

“The Ace of Spies” and the model for James Bond 007, Sidney is considered to be the first 20th-century super-spy. Though he was also known for his many aliases including Salomon, Sidney Rosenblaum, and Shlomo yet his birth name was actually Georgi Rosenblaum and he was a Jewish Russian-born secret agent employed by the Scotland

One of the most famous spies in history, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was a high-class courtesan who used her charms to gather information from her clientele of high-ranking military men and others of powerful positions in many countries during World War I. Mata Hari was executed by the French in 1917 for espionage. Though there was

Frederick Joubert Duquesne volunteered to spy for Germany for both World Wars due to his hatred of the British, specifically their treatment of Boer children and women. Known for the moniker “Black Panther,” he also claimed to have sabotaged and sunk the HMS Hampshire, which carried Lord Kitchener on his way to Russia in 1916.

A Dutch scholar of Oriental cultures and languages, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje was not only a leading authority on Islam, but was also a famous spy who used his knowledge of Islam and the Aceh culture in ending the 40-year Aceh War. Under the name “Haji Abdul Ghaffar,” he gathered intelligence and devised strategies that significantly