Here are real life spies that operated through extreme secrecy!
9 - Lucky Luciano
Charles or “Lucky” Luciano’s story as a spy has an uncanny resemblance to the movie
Suicide Squad.
Having coming from a family of crime lords, Luciano was responsible for bringing about
a change in the way the mafia and other criminal organizations worked.
He was born in November 1897 and was of Italian-American ethnicity.
For someone sentenced to 30-50 years in prison, he did extremely well for himself when he
was negotiated a secret deal with the U.S.
Government.
In 1942, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence was concerned about German and Italian agents
entering the United States through the New York waterfront.
They also worried about sabotage in these facilities, so because of the fact that the
Cosa Nostra controlled the waterfront, the Navy struck a deal with Luciano.
Luciano promised the complete assistance of his organization in providing intelligence
to the Navy in exchange for a lesser sentence.
Luciano ally Albert Anastasia, who controlled the docks, allegedly promised no dockworker
strikes during World War 2.
However, the value of Luciano's contribution to the war effort is highly debated.
In 1947, the naval officer in charge of Operation Underworld discounted the value of Luciano's
wartime aid.
But, on January 3, 1946, as a presumed reward for his alleged wartime cooperation, Governor
Thomas E. Dewey reluctantly commuted Luciano's sentence on condition that he didn’t resist
deportation to Italy.
Luciano accepted the deal, although he still maintained that he was a U.S. citizen and
not subject to deportation.
On February 2, 1946, two federal immigration agents transported Luciano from Sing Sing
prison to Ellis Island in New York Harbor for deportation proceedings.
Wellps, there you have it, how many of you guys knew Lucky Luciano was a spy?!
8 - Virginia Hall
The Limping Lady is what she goes by.
You might be wondering why.
Virginia Hall, an American spy born in Maryland, used her prosthetic leg to secretly transmit
information.
Well, I guess that’ll do it.
She worked for the British Special Operations Executive and also for the CIA.
Hall severed her dream of joining the Foreign Services when she accidentally shot herself
in the leg during hunting.
Wow, she Plaxico Burressed herself?!
The left leg had to be cut off and replaced with a wooden prosthetic.
However, even with her disability, she was a force to be reckoned with.
She’s pretty much considered America’s greatest female spy.
Virginia Hall had made it to the German most wanted list.
She was helping the French Resistance in the then occupied France, having equipped three
brigades with the necessary knowledge and skill to fight back against the Germans.
She had proved that she was an absolute essential element in defeating the Axis Forces.
She was also successful in providing valuable reports to the SOE and had never been caught
by the enemies.
For her efforts in France, General William Joseph Donovan in September 1945 personally
awarded Hall a Distinguished Service Cross — the only one awarded to a civilian woman
in World War II.
President Truman wanted a public award of the medal; however Hall declined, stating
that she was quote, "Still operational and most anxious to get busy."
She was also made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire
Fun fact – she named her prosthetic leg “Cuthbert” and used the name as a code
during her entire career as a spy.
7 - Noor Inayat Khan
Born on 2nd January 1914, Noor Inayat Khan, also known as Nora Baker or Madeleine, was
an Allied Special Operations Executive agent, trained to carry out espionage missions.
She was a British spy, of Indian and American origin, who furthered the French Resistance.
She was a descendant of a South Indian ruler, Tipu Sultan.
She joined the Physician network headed by Francis Suttill and continued to send messages
to London regarding the status quo of the network.
Gradually, the members of the network were arrested and security was amped up.
You’d think that with difficult times raining down on her, she would have gone back to London.
But in fact, she was the only member of the circuit left, so she continued to elude the
Nazi officers in an attempt to serve the SOE.
She couldn’t make public appearances for long and had to be on the move constantly,
while contacting her bosses in London.
What’s incredible is that even though her employers betrayed her, she refused to give
up any insider information to her captors.
After her capture in Paris, she was tortured and shot in the head by the Nazis.
Her last words were recorded and supposedly to be "Liberté".
She was later bestowed with the prestige of the George Cross award.
Noor Inayat Khan is the first Asian - Muslim women to have a bronze sculpture established
in her honor in Britain.
6 - Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Fuchs was a nuclear physicist from Germany, who worked for the British on a secret atom
bomb project called “Tube Alloys”.
He had also worked on the American and Canadian Manhattan Project.
He’s closely associated to the origin of nuclear weapons and the hydrogen bomb.
He had fled along with his family to Britain in 1933 to avoid being persecuted by the Nazis.
After the Tube Alloys project began, the Soviet officials had contacted him to obtain information
about the project.
He started sharing vital information with the Soviets through secret meetings after
World War II.
In 1950, he confessed to being a spy for the USSR to the British forces.
Stripped of his British citizenship, he began to serve his imprisonment term for fourteen
years.
A lot of people surrounding Fuchs were also implicated in this case, including his co-worker
and sister in law.
It was Fuchs contributions that propelled the Soviet research into the right direction.
He was released from jail in 1959, his term having been reduced cause of good behaviour,
and sent to East Germany.
5 - Mata Hari
A Dutch spy who worked for Germany, Margaretha MacLeod led a more colourful life in terms
of her dancer background.
She was known to be a courtesan and believed to be the quintessential femme fatale, what
with her using her powers of seduction to wriggle out information from army officers.
For you dudes out there that can’t figure out what courtesan means, let’s just say
the more common term rhymes with hook, and ends with errrr.
Having studied to be a teacher, Margaretha built the perfect façade.
When she visited her lover in the hospital, she was roped in to work as a spy by the German
forces.
They believed that she’d be able to allure the Crown Prince into telling her secrets
of grave importance.
As part of the German Secret Services, she continued to perform in bars, attracting officials
and other important authorities.
This enabled her to supply Germany with reports.
However, the French were alerted about her inconspicuous activities and began to track
her.
To save face, she had to show her loyalty to the Allies and for that very reason she
went to Brussels with French orders.
It all went down the drain when the French caught wind of a message pinpointing Mata
Hari to be a German spy.
She was executed in France on 15th October, 1917 by a firing squad.
Yeah, definitely some big risks for these type of jobs.
4 - Earl Pitts
A former student of the University of Missouri, Earl Pitts was in the army for five years
and also a former FBI special agent.
Having gotten a job at the FBI office in New York City, his responsibility was to investigate
intelligence officers of the Soviet Union roaming undercover as diplomats.
However, Pitts was found to be a traitor to the US.
Apparently, he sold the information he had on these officers to a Russian spy, simply
because he had issues with the FBI.
Really?
That’s all it takes?
What happened and how officials found out he was playing for the other team is for sure
just like out of a movie.
What had happened was that Pitts himself had contacted the Russian embassy offering to
sell his information as a past spy.
That letter fell in the hands of a very cunning Russian diplomat named Alexsandr Karpov, who
later himself became a turncoat for the US, and when he defected was when he ratted Pitts
out to the US.
The FBI caught Pitts by convincing him that the Russian government wanted to reactivate
him as a spy.
Pitts offered his services to the Soviets in 1987 while he was assigned to the FBI's
New York office where he was assigned to hunt and recruit KGB officers.
After the sting began, Pitts' ex-wife, Mary Pitts, also a former FBI employee, told the
FBI that she suspected her husband was a spy, though he never disclosed his status as a
double agent to her.
Now I bet that’s one of the toughest things to do, being a spy and not being able to tell
anyone!
3 - Josephine Baker
Invisible ink has helped many of us.
But who’d have thought that it made for excellent spying tool?
Baker was an entertainer during the jazz age.
She had become very popular as a dancer, and was given titles like “Creole Goddess”,
“Black Pearl” etc.
However, she was later hired by the French military intelligence to assimilate all the
information she possibly could about the Germans.
Baker collected what information she could about German troop locations from officials
she met at parties.
She specialized in gatherings at embassies and ministries, charming people as she had
always done, while gathering information.
Her fame enabled her to rub shoulders with those in the know, from high-ranking Japanese
officials to Italian bureaucrats, and to report back what she heard.
She attended parties and gathered information at the Italian embassy without raising suspicion.
Maybe they were fooled into thinking what she could possibly do with such data.
For a little while, when the Germans took over France, she went into hiding.
But, later she resumed her role as a spy in North Africa.
When the Germans invaded France, Baker left Paris and went to her home in the south of
France.
She housed friends who were eager to help the Free French effort led by Charles de Gaulle
and supplied them with visas.
As an entertainer, Baker had an excuse for moving around Europe, visiting neutral nations
such as Portugal, as well as some in South America.
She carried information for transmission to England, about airfields, harbors, and German
troop concentrations in the West of France.
Notes were written in invisible ink on Baker's sheet music.
I wonder how many famous musicians are spies now?!
Hmmmm…….
2 - Yoshiko Kawashima
Raised in Japan, Yoshiko Kawashima was a Chinese princess Manhu Descent.
Born in May 1907, she worked as a spy for the Japanese Kwantung Army, while the Second
Sino-Japanese War was going on.
Her spy career began in Shanghai, when she met, Tanaka Ryukichi, a Japanese intelligence
officer.
He used her connections to gain information and even after he left for Japan, she continued
to supply the Japanese with intelligence.
Her missions were successful to an extent and she quickly gained the favour of the Royal
family in China.
Kawashima became well-acquainted with Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, who
regarded her as a member of the imperial family and welcomed her into his household during
his stay in Tianjin.
It was through this close liaison that Kawashima was able to persuade Puyi to become a figurehead
ruler for Manchukuo, a puppet state created by the Japanese in Manchuria.
She is known to have trained 3000-5000 bandits.
When she was captured for treason, she momentarily adopted her Chinese identity; only to discard
that so as to evade the charge.
Her downfall came in 1948 in China, when she was executed by Chinese counter-intelligence
officers, with a shot in the back of the head.
1 - Jason and Suzanne Matthews
Nicknamed the real life Mr. and Mrs Smith, Jason and Suzanne Matthews were spies who
have been involved in operations concerning the Stasi, Soviet Union’s KGB, and North
Korea, for example.
In case you forgot, Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a movie about a married couple who discover
that they were both assassins with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie playing the couple.
Jason and Suzanne worked for the American CIA and Jason described his work as a spy
as protecting his country’s secrets while stealing those of the opposition.
Now, a bestselling novelist, Jason’s book, Red Sparrow, has been edited by the CIA and
is is set to be made into a blockbuster movie.
Kinda interesting, but it’s a little ironic because I’d imagine when you work for the
government, you’d think that you have a lifetime worth of secret-keeping to do!
Guess not!
Anyways, it seems to be that they had a very superhero-esque job.
During the day, they worked in embassies as diplomats and at night, they were scouring
for information beyond borders.
Reportedly, they have experienced home invasions, threats and the likes of which would give
anyone the inability to sleep at night.
And that went on supposedly even after their retirement!
That speaks volumes about the delicate nature of their previous jobs as spies.
For most people, learning a different language for their job is the toughest part of the
job, but for Jason and Suzanne, it was probably as easy as it got!
Here’s what’s next!