Mole (espionage)

In espionage jargon, a mole (also called a “penetration agent”, “deep cover agent”, or “sleeper agent”) is a long-term spy (espionage agent) who is recruited before having access to secret intelligence, subsequently managing to get into the target organization. However, it is popularly used to mean any long-term clandestine spy or informant within an organization, government or private.

The term was introduced to the public by British spy novelist John Le Carré in his 1974 novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and has since entered general usage, but its origin is unclear, as well as to what extent it was used by intelligence services before it became popularized. Le Carré, a former British intelligence officer, has said that the term mole was actually used by the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, and that a corresponding term used by Western intelligence services was sleeper agent. While the term mole had been applied to spies in the book Historie of the Reign of King Henry VII written in 1626 by Sir Francis Bacon Le Carré has said he did not get the term from that source.

A mole may be recruited early in life, and take decades to get a job in government service and reach a position of access to secret information before becoming active as a spy. Perhaps the most famous examples of moles were the Cambridge Five, five upper-class British men recruited by the KGB as left-wing students at Cambridge University in the 1930s who later rose to high levels in various parts of the British government. By contrast, most espionage agents, such as CIA Director of Counterintelligence Aldrich Ames and FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who spied on the US government for the KGB, were either recruited or offer their services as spies after they were in place as members of the target organization.

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