BlindLoop

5 Famous Spies in the History

November 25, 2010 History, People

Mata Hari

Mata Hari was born in Netherlands in 1876 and her real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. After a failed marriage, she started working as an exotic dancer and a sex seller.Highly successful in Paris Mata Hari’s attractiveness, as well as her apparent willingness to appear almost nude on the stage, made her a huge hit. She cultivated numerous lovers, including many military officers. Her relationships with elite class and military gave her access to highly confidential information. It is said; when she was 40 she fell in love with a 21 years old Russian captain and agreed to spy for France. But in 1917, German military sent secret messages to Berlin about receiving highly confidential and accurate information from the spy code named as H-21. France intercepted the messages and after investigation found out that H-21 is Mata Hari. She was arrested and admitted being a double agent and passing information on to the Germans and was shot in Paris by a firing squad.

Klaus Fuchs

Klaus Fuchs was born on December 29, 1911, in Rüsselsheim, Germany.Fuchs was a gifted physicist who made major contributions to the Manhattan Project in the theory of gaseous diffusion cascades, and in implosion theory. At the outbreak of second world war he was appointed to work on British Atomic bomb research project.In 1943, Fuchs was among the British scientists sent to the U.S. to collaborate on the atom bomb.There he started providing confidential information to Russia.He also provided key data on the production of uranium 235, allowing the Soviets to determine the number of bombs possessed by the United State. On his return from USA he was interrogated by British agencies as the result of deciphering of interrupted Russian messages. He was found guilty and was sentenced 14  years if prison. He was freed after spending 9 years in jail and lived rest of his life in Germany.

Julia Child

Julia Child was a famous American Chef , author and a television personality.After graduation, Child joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) after finding that she was too tall to enlist in the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) or in the U.S. Navy through the WAVES. For some time she worked as a typist but soon was promoted to research assistant position in the Secret Intelligence division. Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to further details  information about OSS involvement was so guarded that relatives often couldn’t confirm a family member’s work with the group.Child, who died in 2004, just short of her 92nd birthday, was stationed in both China and Sri Lanka, and helped develop a repellent to keep sharks from setting off underwater mines.

Aldrich Ames

Born on May 26, 1941, Ames is a former Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst, who, in 1994, was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. During his job with CIA, he was stationed in Ankara, Turkey and was assigned the task of targeting Russian intelligence officer’s for recruitment.Ames’ performance was rated only as “satisfactory,” and Ames, discouraged by the critical assessment, considered leaving the CIA.Later on Ames was assigned to the CIA’s European office where he had direct access to the identities of CIA operatives in the KGB and Soviet Military. Due to crises in personal life mainly associated with high spending and heavy drinking he started sharing information with Russian intelligence. According to some sources, he provided Russian intelligence with the details of every CIA operative working in Russian in exchange of $4-5 million. In mid 80’s CIA officials began to notice that they are losing critical assets with a very fast pace.Finally investigations revealed Ames’ invovlemnt in selling information and he was sentenced life in prison.

Richard Sorge

Born on October 4, 1895, Sorge was one of the best spies in the history of Russia.He worked in both Germany and Japan, in the disguise of a journalist,where he was imprisoned for spying and eventually hanged. In May 1933, the Soviet Union decided to have Sorge organize a spy network in Japan.On 14 September 1941 Sorge advised the Red Army that the Japanese were not going to attack the Soviet Union until a) Moscow was captured, b) the size of the Kwantung Army was three times that of the Soviet Union’s Far Eastern forces and c) a civil war had started in Siberia. Sorge was arrested on October 18, 1941 in Tokyo, in the house of his lover after a policeman picked up a note that he threw on to the road instead of destroying, warning him that he was being watched

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