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This sometimes overlaps with [[Good Running Evil]]. A common cause of [[Divided We Fall]], since other subordinates don't realize it, and the requirement for the [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]] to save the day. Sometimes overlaps with [[Hired to Hunt Himself]]. May lead to the Mole in question [[Running Both Sides]].
{{Unmarked Spoilers}}
{{examples}}
▲== [[Anime]] & [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Code Geass]]'', Lelouch, prince of Britannia, is also Zero, leader of its enemies. However, he isn't [[The Mole]] since he honestly opposes Britannia. However, this ''does'' occur when {{spoiler|Lelouch succeeds Charles as emperor of Britannia. Too bad [[La Résistance|The Black Knights]] thought he was evil.}}
** In
* After the [[Time Skip]] in ''[[Death Note]]'', Light is in charge of the task force investigating his mass murder spree.
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** This caused more than a bit of [[Fan Dumb]] as it was during the Bush presidency and the name the Red Skull was using at the time had the initials D.R. OK, admittedly that's a funny coincidence, but "Dell Rusk" ''is'' an anagram of "Red Skull", so what else should the writers have called him?
*** Furthermore, if "Dell Rusk" ''were'' a reference to a real life Cabinet member, it would probably be to ''Dean'' Rusk, who was Kennedy and Johnson's Secretary of State.
* ''[[Runaways]]'': {{spoiler|Alex Wilder}} becomes the undisputed team leader, only for it to be revealed that {{spoiler|he was working with the Pride the entire time.}}
* [[Daredevil]] once found himself ostensibly running the group of evil ninja assassins called the Hand. {{spoiler|They corrupted him to the point that a demon actually possessed him briefly.}}
* This is the entire premise of ''[[Agents of Atlas]]''.
* In ''[[Superman]]
* In ''[[Superman
* For a long time, this was a running sub-plot of the Kree/Skrull war in the ''[[Silver Surfer]]'' comics; a Skrull (locked in the form of a Kree woman) had somehow risen to the very top of the hierarchy of the Kree Empire.
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* ''[[The Departed]]'': {{spoiler|Frank Costello}} is an {{spoiler|FBI informant}}.
** Though that was ''after'' {{spoiler|he had built up his empire}} as a self-defense measure. A better example is {{spoiler|Sullivan}}, Frank's mole in the State Police, who's put in charge of finding the mole in the State police.
* In ''[[Smokin' Aces]]'' it's revealed that the leader of the mob is really {{spoiler|an FBI agent who was burned by his handlers and had to become a criminal for real to survive, eventually rising up the ranks to the top position}}.
* In ''[[Salt]]'', the ending strongly suggests that {{spoiler|the President dies from his wounds, and the Vice President who ascends to succeed him is another Russian sleeper agent.}} There's also the fact that {{spoiler|the CIA agent in charge of hunting down the sleepers is actually a sleeper himself.}}
* In ''[[My Favorite Martian (film)|My Favorite Martian]]'', the {{spoiler|man in charge of the organization hunting aliens}} is himself an alien.
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* In the [[Arsène Lupin]] novel ''813'', the Head of the French Police, the best detective ever seen, the only man everyone trusts to be able to catch [[Gentleman Thief]] Lupin... {{spoiler|turns out to be Lupin himself in disguise}}.
* In ''[[The Man Who Was Thursday]]'' {{spoiler|the protagonist discovers that the Council of Days, supposedly the supreme council of the British anarchist underground, is made up ''entirely'' of undercover police officers like himself.}}
* In Robert Heinlein's novel ''[[The Moon is a Harsh Mistress]]'', Adam Selene, figurehead of the Rebellion against the Lunar Authority, is in actuality a virtual construct of the Authority's main computer, who has quietly attained both sentience and a sense of humor.
* [[David Weber]] is ''very'' fond of this trope. The third book in ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]''
* [[Older Than Radio]], it is. ''Konrad Wallenrod'' by Adam Mickiewicz is a classic of Polish Romanticism, in which he postulated using deceit (as opposed to direct action) against the occupiers. The plot involves a Lithuanian who rises in ranks of [[The Teutonic Knights]], and after many years leads their army to a total defeat.
* An odd variant occurs in [[Jack London]]'s ''The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.'' when Winter Hall, having paid the Bureau to kill its own leader, is placed in charge of handling the Bureau's correspondence and finances—the things the leader would normally do—while said leader is on the run from his team. The members of the Bureau ''know'' Hall is out to destroy them, because he ''told'' them ... but they all have [[Honor Before Reason|an overpowering sense of ethics, and so they respect his honesty]] and consider him a friend. And he considers ''them'' friends, and now wants to find a way to destroy the organization without harming the members.
* The ''Wingman'' pulp series by Mack Maloney begins when the United States Vice President, a Soviet mole, arranges for the assassination of the President and lowers the Star Wars missile shield, allowing the remnants of the USSR to nuke the United States in revenge for destroying them in [[World War III]].
== [[Live
* This happens on ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' at least once every thirty seconds. {{spoiler|Between the "real" nature of SD-6, the loyalties of Derevko, the actions of Sark and the constant flip-flopping of characters between the CIA and other organizations... heck, there are even situations where a mole infiltrates an organization, rises to the top, then stages the infiltration of the organization they were moling for in the first place!}}
* Similarly, ''[[24]]'' has given us versions of [[President Evil]] who are really [[The Mole]] for hostile foreign powers.
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* While most of the fifth season of ''[[Angel]]'' is a case of [[Good Running Evil]], towards the end Angel pretends to have been corrupted by the experience, becoming more of a Mole in Charge.
* Played for laughs on ''[[Get Smart]]'' when [[Flock of Wolves|all four members]] of a KAOS cell turn out to be moles from different agencies: the CIA, the FBI, Naval Intelligence and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|Scotland Yard]]. The only real KAOS agent had died years ago without being replaced.
*
** Except, {{spoiler|Scorpius isn't ''really'' working for the Scarrens. He just lets them think that he is for as long as he can, so that he develop wormhole weapons with which to destroy them}}.
* On ''[[Intelligence]]'', a seasons-spanning storyline involved the discovery of a CIA mole in the highest echelons of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and its fallout.
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== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==
* After the formation of the [[
== [[Video Games]] ==
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[G.I. Joe|
* ''[[Transformers Animated]]''. The head of {{spoiler|Autobot Intelligence}} is {{spoiler|Shockwave, a shapeshifting Decepticon spy.}} Nice going, guys.
* In an episode of ''[[Captain Planet]]'' Gaia gets body-switched with one of the bad guys, leaving one of them to run her organisation and Gaia to "run" the bad guy organisation (by tricking them into acting in eco-friendly ways).
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== [[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!
** Though he was retired when he was found out. Interestingly, he was only found out because he had been so good at his role as a spy master for the Habsburgs: his reforms to the intelligence service had made the counter-intelligence branch quite effective at its job.
* [[Joseph Stalin]] has been accused of this, with some historians suggesting he may have worked as a spy for the Czarist secret police in the days before the Russian Revolution. If true, given that he would later become absolute dictator of the entire country under the movement he spied against and the virtually unchallenged head of the Communist world, it would probably make him the most successful example of a Mole in Charge ever. However, most historians have now dismissed this, as he was always referred to in Czarist police documents as a revolutionary terrorist, whereas their moles were always identified as moles.
* As part of a plea deal Enriqque Tarrio, chairman of the right-wing white supremacist "militia" "The Proud Boys", worked as an informant for the FBI.
{{reflist}}
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