Mole in Charge: Difference between revisions
→Real Life
(update links) |
Jason taylor (talk | contribs) |
||
Line 92:
== [[Real Life]] ==
* Soviet Agent Kim Philby ended up as the head of British Intelligence's ''anti-Soviet'' branch, Section IX, for a brief time before he was suspected of being [[The Mole]] and moved to a different position.
**Part of it was that he was a superficially charming person, both to comrades and to women (whom he betrayed even more flippantly than he betrayed his country). However another part which might have contributed is that he was often head of counterintell on a neutral station during [[World War 2]] where an under-the-table meeting with the Soviets is easily explained in an [[Enemy Mine]] context ("Hey, this informant is endangering my men and yours,etc"). He wouldn't have even had to hide the fact that he was meeting the Russians from his own team, and security would not have suspected him of giving something away that he shouldn't because English Boys Don't Do That.
** There were constant suspicions that 'the Fifth Man', the undiscovered Cambridge Spy and Philby's colleague, was actually whoever was the current 'C' of MI-6, a literal example of this trope.
** A similar story exists during [[World War II]]. Apparently, up until [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]'s fourth ([[Killed Off for Real|and final]]) election, his Vice President was Henry A. Wallace, who in recent documents was indicated to actually be a Soviet plant. He was eventually removed in favor of [[Harry Truman|Harry S. Truman]], although that had less to do with suspicions of Wallace being a Soviet plant as it was due to them realizing that FDR was likely to die and wanting to ensure they had someone else for president.
* Admiral Canaris who was actually head of the [[Abwehr]] while also being part of the German Resistance.
**In ''The Unseen War in Europe'' by John Waller it tells how Canaris once took a tour with insufficient security and Philby suggested an [[SOE]] team assassinate him. His boss vetoed the idea without saying why except with some vague idea about his usefulness. Philby later claimed that an intermediary had opened contact, and possibly thought that would be more useful to the Western Allies than the Soviets or just that it would blow him personally.
* At the height of the [[Red Scare]], it was believed by some of the wackier [[Conspiracy Theorist]]s that President [[Dwight Eisenhower]] was a [[Dirty Communist|Soviet]] plant.
* Alfred Redl was the most devastating spy [[The Sound of Martial Music|Austria-Hungary]] ever had, giving [[Tsarist Russia]] virtually every scrap of data he could get his hands on to the point where by the time he was found out and forced to commit suicide, over a year of preparation did not even start to repair the damage by the time [[World War I]] started. Redl's role? Director of Austro-Hungarian intelligence!
| |||