List of Famous Spys

Ian Robert Maxwell was a British media proprietor, Member of Parliament (MP), suspected spy, and fraudster. Originally from Czechoslovakia, Maxwell rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire. After his death, huge discrepancies in his companies' finances were revealed, including his fraudulent misappropriation of the Mirror Group pension fund.

Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, better known by the stage name Mata Hari, was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I. Despite her having admitted under interrogation to taking money to work as a German spy, many people still believe she was innocent because the French Army needed a scapegoat. She was executed by firing squad in France.

Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter pilot. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide.

Eliyahu Ben-Shaul Cohen, commonly known as Eli Cohen, was an Israeli spy. He is best known for his espionage work in 1961–65 in Syria, where he developed close relationships with the Syrian political and military hierarchy, and became the chief adviser to the Minister of Defense.

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian FSB secret service who specialised in tackling organized crime. According to US diplomats, Litvinenko coined the phrase "mafia state".

Sarabjit Singh Attwal was an Indian national allegedly convicted of terrorism and spying by a Pakistani court. He was tried and convicted by the Supreme Court of Pakistan for a series of bomb attacks in Lahore and Faisalabad that killed 14 bystanders in 1990. However, according to India, Sarabjit was a farmer who strayed into Pakistan from his village located on the border, three months after the bombings.

Sergei Viktorovich Skripal is a former Russian military intelligence officer who acted as a double agent for the UK's intelligence services during the 1990s and early 2000s. In December 2004, he was arrested by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and later tried, convicted of high treason, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He settled in the UK in 2010 following the Illegals Program spy swap. He holds both Russian and British citizenship.

Nicholas Stephen Alkemade was an English tail gunner in the Royal Air Force during World War II who survived a freefall of 18,000 feet (5,490 m) without a parachute when abandoning his out-of-control, burning Avro Lancaster heavy bomber over Germany.

Yevgeny Nikolayevich Zinichev, is a Russian statesman, politician and military officer. He serves as the Minister of Emergency Situations since May 18, 2018. He is also the member of the Security Council of Russia since May 28, 2018. In 2016, he served as the acting Governor of Kaliningrad Oblast before being replaced by Anton Alikhanov. He is ranked General of the Army as of 2020.

Perseus (Персей) was the code name of a hypothetical Soviet atomic spy that, if real, would have allegedly breached United States national security by infiltrating Los Alamos National Laboratory during the development of the Manhattan Project, and consequently, would have been instrumental for the Soviets in the development of nuclear weapons.

Robert Philip Hanssen is a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) double agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history." Hanssen is currently serving fifteen consecutive life sentences at ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado.

Ravindra Kaushik was an Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) agent who lived undercover in Pakistan before he was jailed and died.

Francis Gary Powers was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.

Anthony Frederick Blunt, styled Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO from 1956 to 1979, was a leading British art historian who in 1964, after being offered immunity from prosecution, confessed to having been a spy for the Soviet Union.

Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, real name William August Fisher, was a Soviet intelligence officer. He adopted his alias when arrested on charges of conspiracy by the FBI in 1957.

David John Moore Cornwell, better known by his pen name John le Carré, was a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). His third novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works.

Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence was a British archaeologist, army-officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–1918) against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.

Erich Gimpel was a German spy during World War II. Together with William Colepaugh, he took part in Operation Elster ("Magpie") an espionage mission to the United States in 1944, but was subsequently captured by the FBI in New York City.

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets.

Werner Teske was an East German Hauptmann (Captain) of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) who was executed for "planned treason" in June 1981.