Hi Europe, let’s hear some interesting stories on spies, whether from your country or operating there.

Key spy figure in my country’s history is [Ryszard Kukliński](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Kukli%C5%84ski), a Polish colonel during the communist times, working for the CIA between 1971 and 1981. Over the years he passed some 35,000 pages of secret Soviet documents concerning strategic plans on nuclear weapons, technical data about missiles, satellites and military systems, among much more.

He has informed about the upcoming imposition of [martial law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Poland), a month before which he fled the country, being secretly transported out of Poland by the CIA. He then lived in the US with his family for the rest of his life, though unfortunately losing both of his sons in “accidents” under suspicious circumstances.

He was dubbed “the first Polish officer of NATO”, and when active as a spy, he was believed by the US to be the single most valuable informant in the communist bloc, codenamed “Jack Strong”. Some KGB officers later commented that Kukliński had “full knowledge on the most important affairs and strategic plans of the Warsaw Pact”.

16 comments

  1. Allegedly, the last postmaster general of the UK, a minister of state for technology, and an MP [John Stonehouse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stonehouse) was a Czechoslovak secret service spy in the 60s. He also failed to fake his own death and got arrested. Honestly just read the Political Career part of the linked wiki page.

  2. Virginia Oldoini, countess of Castiglione. She was a cousin of Camillo Benso di Cavour, one of the architects of the Italian unification and prime minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the only independent kingdom of the peninsula in the XIX century.

    As one of the great beauties of the XIX century, she was sent by her cousin to seduce Napoleon III and report on the imperial court in Paris.

    She played a part in the rapprochement between the second French empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was sealed with the treaty of Plombieres, in which France would help the liberation from Austrian occupation of Lombardy and Veneto in exchange of Savoy and Nice.

  4. The England of Elizabeth I’s era was in a threatened position. Preoccuiped in a lengthy conquest of Ireland, enemies pressed at its borders. Both Scotland and Spain were rival kingdoms. Spain was probably the most powerful empire in Europe at the time, having colonies spanning the whole globe. There are several famous courtiers and others who are strongly suspected to have been spies, but it can’t be known for absolutely certain.

    One of them is Christopher Marlowe. He was probably a spy (and probably also an atheist and a gay man, but I digress), but was known in his own time for being a playwright and one of William Shakespeare’s greastest influences. He had a good command of the Spanish language, and there is some evidence of a spy at the Scottish royal court during this time, who many suspect may be Marlowe himself, operating under a pseudonym and posing as a tutor to the Scots nobility.

    Another is John Dee. Dee was a Welsh wizard, who could summon up the spirits of the dead, as well as commune with angels through his magic Aztec mirror. He was mostly responsible for trying to avert black magic attempts on the Queen’s life, and rumour has it he was capable of calling up storms in case of imminent attacks by Spanish ships. He may have served as an inspiration for James Bond.

    In more modern times there was Ian Fleming himself, as well as Aleister Crowley, a magician and occultist dubbed the “wickedest man in the world”, who worked as a freelance spy during both World Wars. In his own life he was sort of a mix between Dee and Marlowe above.

  6. Mata Hari of course, although she did not spy for or in the Netherlands.

    Johanna Charlotte Carolina Röell ( Utrecht , July 5 , 1911 – Apeldoorn , November 5 , 1998 ) was a secret agent during World War II

    Leonie Brandt ( Würselen , October 28, 1901 – Amsterdam , January 27, 1978), born as Gertrud Franziska Pütz and also known by the stage name Leonie Reiman , was a German-Dutch actress and double spy . Before and during the Second World War she spied for both the Netherlands and Germany.

  7. Mata Hari is most famous, I think. She’s from The Netherlands but she spied for Germany. Another well-known figure is Günter Guillaume, who was the adjunct of chancellor Willy Brandt and spied on him for East German Stasi. And then there’s Werner Mauss, who was a private eye and negotiator in some kidnapping cases in South America. Later he became a figure in the Barschel affair, when Schleswig-Holstein state prime minister Uwe Barschel was found dead in a bathtub in Geneva.

    Less known in Germany but important, the German physicist Klaus Fuchs, who worked on the Manhattan project, spied for the Soviet Union.

  8. I don’t know of any slovenian (famous) spy and since Yugoslavia doesn’t exist anymore and we were a constituent part of it, I claim [Duško Popov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du%C5%A1ko_Popov) in the name of our joint history. He was supposedly one of the primary inspirations for Ian Flemings James Bond, especially the part about seducing women while on missions. The two did meet in person. There’s some claims he was one of the people trying to prevent Pearl Harbor happening but was ignored. He was also instrumental in the D-Day deception. I have no clue how true all that is. Interesting person all in all.

    Edit: Is it just me or is there something really Daniel Craig-ish about him?

  9. I come from a small seaside town in the North of England, Whitley Bay. The school I went to had the usual range of alumni; minor league footballers, D-list celebrities, and one of the most illustrious Soviet spies, Rudolph Abel.

    He worked as a spy for many years, spying on the Manhattan Project amongst others, ending up posing as a photographer in New York until he was arrested in 1957. Eventually he was exchanged for Gary Powers, the pilot of the infamous U-2 spy plane shot down over the USSR.

    There was a movie made about him in 2015, “Bridge of Spies”.

  12. > Gevork Vartanian was primarily responsible, together with his wife Goar Vartanian, for thwarting Operation Long Jump, concocted by Adolf Hitler, which was an alleged attempt to assassinate Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt at the Tehran conference in 1943

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gevork_Vartanian

  14. I guess that would the CIA agent Gust Avrakotos. Known for his involvement with the military junta in Greece at 70s and later known of his missions to Afghanistan in order to support the mujahideens against the soviets.

    His mission in Afghanistan has made it to a book and a movie (see “Charlie Wilson’s War”)

    Edit: link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gust_Avrakotos

  15. Alfred Redl. He was an officer of the Austro-Hungarian army and spied for practically everyone until shortly before WW1. He was discovered through a letter with a lot of money (that he received for his services) and that couldn’t be delivered and raised suspicion when it was opened to inquire about the sender. Some claimed that he was blackmailed by the Russians, because he was gay, but that’s most likely not true. There’s no evidence they even knew. He possibly just did it to finance his lavish lifestyle. The army tried to cover it up, so they send some high-ranking officers to him to strongly suggest he should commit suicide. They left and he was found dead the next morning.

    The cover-up was unsuccessful because the commission to ‘investigate’ (=shove under the rugs) his death made the mistake to hire a civilian locksmith to open the apartment who right after told the whole story to a well-known journalist he was friends with.

  16. [Joan Pujol García, aka Garbo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzQ4Osnwmyw). He was a British double agent during WWII. He told Hitler D-Day would happen at the Strait of Dover, earning him the German Iron Cross. It was actually carried out at Normandy, earning him the British MBE. He is, undoubtedly, one of the bravest people from my country. Also, “Garbo, l’home que va salvar al món” (Garbo, the man who saved the wolrd) is a very good documentary about him (it won a Goya, the most prestigious film award in Spain), it’s the video I linked, which is in catalan (since he’s from Catalonia), but I can translate some sections, and I think that there’s an english version called “Garbo, the spy”

    From 35:00 to 40:00 he talks about the Normandy landings, in detail:

    “The departments of war, navy and air wanted the Germans to send their forces to Calais and reinforce that position, so in order to do that we faked a big quantity of army corps, a big division with an emblem and everything, with an animal patch. We created fake patches so that the real spies would belive it. We created 3 corps, 9 divisions, that we’d say we’d send to Calais, so that the Germans would belive it.

    When Normandy started I had to really make them belive that I was well informed, beacause I myself had created a fake web of agents, all ficticious, that in total amounted 22 and 16 at the same time. They were kind of my children. And since they were mine they couldn’t decive me (he keeps referring to the fake agents as real people).

    I had a very hard code to talk with the Germans, 40 words took an hour to decode, and we sent them via Madrid. Very few people know this, but two hours before Normandy, I sent a message to the germans telling them that the real location was actually Normandy. Of course, this wasn’t treason, we had this planned, and the germans trusted in me absolutely. This allowed me to convince the germans that actually, Normandy was the distraction and Calais the real one.”

    The whole interview is just amazing, I may translate more if there’s interest

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