the main spies of the 20th century

Taiwan spy nest. A retired rear admiral and a former deputy were taken into custody on Friday 20 January. These two senior officials of the island are suspected of having violated the law on national security, within the framework of an investigation for espionage.

These accusations have been recurrent since the installation of the Taiwanese government, rival to the Chinese mainland since the proclamation of its independence in 1949. Since the end of the Second World War and the advent of the Cold War, several spies have been arrested for having transmitted information on behalf of a rival country.

♦ Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the bomb spies

During the Cold War, a New York couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were accused of having transmitted confidential data to the Soviet regime on the manufacture of atomic weapons, in particular the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. They were arrested in 1950 and imprisoned in Sing Sing prison. Despite their denial, they were sentenced to death and executed in 1953, thus becoming the only Western citizens put to death for espionage in the Western world after the Second World War.

♦ Georges Easter, a Russian mole in Paris

The Georges Easter affair involves a senior French official who worked in the NATO offices in Paris in the 1950s. Approached by several Soviet intelligence officers a few years earlier while in Algeria, he was approached after the end of the war to transmit documents on the defense projects of NATO countries.

For nearly twenty years, he disseminated this information to Soviet agents in exchange for sums of money before being arrested by the intelligence service of the Ministry of the Interior in 1963. Sentenced to life for treason the following year , he was finally pardoned in 1970 by Georges Pompidou.

♦ “Farewell”, the Soviet spy tracker

KGB recruit living in France for five years, Vladimir Vetrov returned to Moscow in the 1970s. He decided to collaborate with the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST), a former branch of French intelligence.

Anonymized under the code name of “Farewell”, he transmits many documents allowing in particular to reveal the identity of Soviet spies in several Western countries. Its information also allows the French and the Americans to know more about the hierarchy of the Soviet intelligence services, in the midst of the Cold War. Arrested in 1982 during a brawl then identified by the KGB the following year, he was sentenced to death and executed in 1985.

♦ The “Cambridge Five”, aristocrats in the pay of the USSR

The “Cambridge Five” refers to a network of several students recruited at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, after the First World War. Recruited by the ancestor of the KGB, the NKVD, they worked on behalf of the Soviets for almost thirty years. Coming from the upper classes and the British aristocracy, these Britons embraced communist ideology, in search of greater social freedom.

♦ Ana Montes, a spy betrayed by her family

American spy Ana Montes helped pass classified information to the Cuban government from 1984 to 2001. A US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) employee, this analyst was recruited by Cuban intelligence services when she was a student in the 1980s.

Among the documents passed to the Cuban government were the identities of four American spies in Cuba and the location of a US military camp in El Salvador.

Her brother and sister, both FBI agents, helped unmask Ana Montes’ real employer. Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2002, she was finally released on January 6, after spending twenty years behind bars.

♦ Noshir Gowadia, spying in Hawaii

Noshir Gowadia, an Indian-American engineer, was accused of having transmitted sensitive technological data to several countries including China, Germany, Israel and Switzerland. In 2005, federal investigators discovered evidence in his Hawaiian accommodation that he was collaborating with the Chinese regime to help them develop their cruise missiles.

He pleads guilty during his trial but denies having transmitted classified documents. He was sentenced to 32 years in prison in 2011.

♦ Chi Mak, “the perfect sleeping agent”

Chinese citizen of naturalized American origin, Chi Mak is an engineer working in the American defense industry in California. As part of a mission planned as early as the 1970s, Chi Mak became integrated into an American company, to the point of having access to sensitive plans for ships, submarines and naval weapons.

And then transmit them to the Chinese government, before being spotted by American intelligence. In 2008, this “perfect sleeper agent” was sentenced to 24 and a half years in prison by a federal judge. A heavy sentence imposed voluntarily as a warning to China.

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