8 Influential Spies Who Earned Their Spot in History

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  • Lise de Baissac – Lise de Baissac was Mauritian, but she later became a British-affiliated spy that had a prolific activity during World War Two, as part of Britain’s highly important and secretive “Special Operations Executive” unit. Baissac started working on SOE in 1942. Then, she started working on a solo spying mission through German-occupied France, living in various Gestapo headquarters in Poitiers for 11 months. She played the role of an amateur archaeologist, and then she started cycling around France to collect more information and weapons and rally a resistance network for the Allies. She also started arranging clandestine departures of different agents and resistance leaders that went back to England.
  • DuÅ¡an Popov – Popov was born in Serbia, but as he had allegiances to Britain, he served as a secret agent for MI6 during World War Two. One of the most notorious moments of his career happened in 1941. All of his efforts led him to believe that the Japanese were planning to assault Pearl Harbor. He then relayed the info to the FBI in August 1941, 4 months before the attack happened. However, it is believed that the American authorities didn’t really act on his warning, because the FBI’s director at the time was Edgar Hoover, and he didn’t trust Popov at all. However, Popov’s espionage career was, even so, extremely influential. Even if he worked in intelligence, he operated alongside author Ian Fleming, who was serving at the time as a Naval Intelligence Officer.
  • Anthony Blunt – Back in 1979, the British Prime Minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher, revealed that a Soviet spy was operating inside the British Establishment, managing the Queen’s paintings. The agent in question was Anthony Blunt, and he was a Cambridge-educated scholar with deep Marxist allegiances who started working at Windsor Castle during World War Two. It is believed that Blunt provided Soviets with 1,771 documents between 1941 and 1945. However, Russians were extremely suspicious that he was acting as a triple agent.
  • Aldrich Ames – Aldrich Ames worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union, and he used his position in the CIA in order to leak very confidential info from the US throughout the Cold War. Ames’ position in the CIA was as an analyst, but he used the role to cripple American investigations into the USSR. Ames was the one who revealed the names of every single American agent on the ground in the Soviet Union, and it is believed that his actions eventually led to the executions of no less than 10 CIA officials.

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