Spymaster
Encyclopedia
A spymaster is a ring leader of a spy
ring, run by a secret service
.
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
ring, run by a secret service
Secret service
A secret service describes a government agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For instance, a country may establish a secret service which has some...
.
Historical spymasters
- Dai LiDai LiMajor General Dai Li was born Dai Chunfeng with the courtesy name of Yunong in Baoan, Jiangshan, Zhejiang, China. He studied at the Whampoa Military Academy, where Chiang served as Chief Commandant, and later became head of Chiang's Military Intelligence Service.-Early life:At age four, his...
(Republic of China) - Francis WalsinghamFrancis WalsinghamSir Francis Walsingham was Principal Secretary to Elizabeth I of England from 1573 until 1590, and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster". Walsingham is frequently cited as one of the earliest practitioners of modern intelligence methods both for espionage and for domestic security...
(Elizabethan era England) - James Jesus AngletonJames Jesus AngletonJames Jesus Angleton was chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's counterintelligence staff from 1954 to 1975...
(United States) - Joseph PetersJ. PetersJ. Peters was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was an ethnic Jewish journalist and political activist who was a leading figure of the Hungarian language section of the Communist Party USA in the 1920s and 1930s...
(Soviet Union) - George WashingtonGeorge WashingtonGeorge Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
and the Culper RingCulper RingThe Culper Ring was a spy ring organized by Major Benjamin Tallmadge under the orders of General George Washington in the summer of 1778 during British occupation of New York City at the height of the American Revolutionary War. Their name was derived from the aliases taken by two of its main...
(United States) - Mansfield Smith-CummingMansfield Smith-CummingCaptain Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming, KCMG, CB was the first director of what would become the Secret Intelligence Service , also known as MI6...
(United Kingdom) - Markus WolfMarkus WolfMarkus Johannes "Mischa" Wolf was head of the General Intelligence Administration , the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security . He was the MfS's number two for 34 years, which spanned most of the Cold War...
, known as "Spymaster's Spymaster" (East Germany) - Michael CollinsMichael Collins (Irish leader)Michael "Mick" Collins was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance and Teachta Dála for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919, Director of Intelligence for the IRA, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Subsequently, he was both Chairman of the...
(Ireland) - Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev (Russian Empire)
- R. N. KaoR. N. KaoRameshwar Nath Kao was a spymaster and the first chief of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing from its founding in 1969 to 1977....
(India) - Semyon SemyonovSemyon SemyonovSemyon Markovich Semenov was a Soviet intelligence agent. He was born in Odessa and graduated from the Moscow Textile Institute in 1936 with a specialty in power engineering....
(Soviet Union) - Toyotomi HideyoshiToyotomi Hideyoshiwas a daimyo warrior, general and politician of the Sengoku period. He unified the political factions of Japan. He succeeded his former liege lord, Oda Nobunaga, and brought an end to the Sengoku period. The period of his rule is often called the Momoyama period, named after Hideyoshi's castle...
(Sengoku era Japan) - William StephensonWilliam StephensonSir William Samuel Stephenson, CC, MC, DFC was a Canadian soldier, airman, businessman, inventor, spymaster, and the senior representative of British intelligence for the entire western hemisphere during World War II. He is best known by his wartime intelligence codename Intrepid...
, one of the real-life inspirations for James BondJames BondJames Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
(Canada, United Kingdom) - William Wickham (England)
Fictional spymasters
- Arvin SloaneArvin SloaneArvin Sloane is a fictional character played by Ron Rifkin. He was the former director of SD-6 on the television series, Alias.-Background:...
, a character in the American TV series AliasAlias (TV series)Alias is an American action television series created by J. J. Abrams which was broadcast on ABC for five seasons, from September 30, 2001 to May 22, 2006...