GLOSSARY OF TERMS
LANGUAGE OF ESPIONAGE
The shadow world has inspired — and mandated — a vivid vocabulary of words and
codenames for secret operations, missions and agents. These words are carefully
chosen to clarify or confuse, depending on the need to know.
Agent
Agent-in-place
Agent-of-influence
Asset
Babysitter
Bagman
Bang and Burn
Birdwatcher
Black Bag Job
Black Chamber
Black Operations
Black Propaganda
Bletchly Park
Blowback
Blown
Bombe
Bona Fides
Bridge Agent
Brush Pass
Bug
Burned
Camp Swampy
Camp X
Carnivore
Cell
Center
A person unofficially employed by an intelligence service
A (government) employee who is influenced to cooperate
with a foreign government instead of defecting; now
working for two employers instead of one
A person who works within the government or media of a
target country to influence national policy
A clandestine source or method, usually an agent
Bodyguard
An agent who pays spies and bribes authorities
Demolition and sabotage operations
Slang used by British Intelligence for a spy
Secret entry into a home or office to steal or copy
materials
A room set aside for the interception and decoding
of messages, especially referring to espionage and
international code breaking
Covert operations that are not attributable to the
organisation performing them
Disinformation that is deniable by (and not traceable to)
its source
Location of allies biggest code breaking location in
Britain, where most Enigma codes were cracked
A deception planted abroad by an intelligence agency to
mislead another country that returns to the originating
nation with bad consequences
Discovery of an agent’s true identity or a clandestine
activity’s real purpose
Polish electromagnetic device created to decipher 3-rotor
Enigma combinations; early precursor to the modern
computer
Proof of a person’s claimed identity
An agent who acts as a courier from a case officer to an
agent in a denied area
A brief encounter where something is passed between case
officer and agent
Electronic device used to transmit or record sounds
When a case officer or agent is compromised
CIA’s secret domestic training base (also known as ‘The
Farm’)
Canada’s secret domestic training base
Computer program designed by the FBI to allow the FBI
(in compliance with court orders) to collect electronic
communications from a specific user targeted in an
investigation (at the exclusion of all other users’
transmissions)
A group of spies
KGB headquarters in Moscow
Cheka
Russian secret police founded in 1917 to serve the
Bolshevik party; one of the many forerunners of the KGB
Chief of Station
The officer in charge at a CIA station, usually in a
foreign capital
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency; US’s foreign intelligence
gathering service
Cipher
A system for disguising a message by replacing its letters
with other letters or numbers or by shuffling them
Clandestine Operation
An intelligence operation designed to remain secret for as
long as possible. Covers spying, sabotage and planting of
false information or propaganda
Clean
Unknown to enemy intelligence
Cobbler
A spy who creates false passports, visas, diplomas and
other documents
Code
A system for disguising a message by replacing its words
with groups of letters or numbers
Codebook
A list of plain language words opposite their codeword or
codenumber
Colossus
An electronic device that helped solve German cryptograms
COMINT
All intelligence gathered from intercepted communications
The Company
An unofficial term for the CIA popularised by fiction
Compartmentation
The principle of keeping information controlled on a
need-to-know basis to prevent information being leaked or
revealed if agents are captured and interrogated
Compromised
When an operation, asset, or agent is uncovered and cannot
remain secret
Contact
A person who gives information to, or receives information
from a spy
Controller
Officer in charge of a string of agents (a handler)
Counterintelligence
Spy-catching, information collected or other intelligence
activities for or on behalf of foreign powers/persons
Courier
A person that carries information between places or people
Cover
The purported occupation or purpose of an agent; it must
be consistent with the agent’s background and presence in
the target area; their disguise
Covert Action Operation An influence operation designed to effect foreign affairs
Cryptanalysis
The art of cracking codes
Cryptographer
A person who works on discovering the hidden messages in
codes or ciphers
Cryptography
The science of creating codes
Cut-out
A mechanism or person used to create a compartment between
the members of an operation to allow them to pass material
or messages securely; also an agent who functions as an
intermediary between a spymaster and other subagents
Dangle
A person who approaches an intelligence agency with the
intent of being recruited to spy against his or her own
country
Dead Drop
A secret location where materials can be left for another
party to retrieve
Debrief
A report by or questioning of a spy returning from a
mission
Decode/decipher
Translation of a message into plain text from encoded text
GLOSSARY OF TERMS - page 2
Defect/defector
Defector-in-place
Disinformation
Discard
Double Agent
Drop
Dry Clean
Ears Only
Echelon
ELINT
Encode
Enigma
Escort
Espionage
Executive Action
Exfiltration Operation
Expats
Eyes Only
FBI
Fist
Flaps and Seals
Floater
Frequency Analysis
Friends
Fumigate
Ghoul
GRU
Handler
To leave one country to live and support another (enemy)
country
See Agent-in-place
Planted stories and false information developed and
planted to confuse the enemy
An agent whom a service will permit to be detected and
arrested so as to protect more valuable agents
A spy who works for two intelligence services, usually
against his or her original employer
To leave information (message or objects) for collection
Actions agents take to determine if they are under
surveillance
Material too secret to commit to writing
A computer program developed by the NSA that captures
satellite, microwave, cellular, and fiber optic traffic
and processes them through filtering technologies for the
purpose of gathering information
Electronic intelligence usually collected by technical
interception
To convert a message into code
The machine used by the Germans to encode messages during
WWII
The operations officer assigned to lead a defector along
an escape route
The act of spying. Includes all forms of intelligence
gathering
Assassination
A clandestine rescue operation designed to bring a
defector, refugee, or an operative and his or her family
out of harm’s way
Expatriates who have taken up residence in another country
and are helping to define its culture
Documents that may be read but not discussed
Federal Bureau of Investigation; US’s domestic counterintelligence service
German radio operators signature data entry style
The tradecraft involved when making surreptitious openings
and closings of envelopes, seals, and secure pouches
A person used one-time, occasionally, or even unknowingly
for an intelligence operation
Comparing the frequency of recurring letters/numbers in a
sentence, used to break codes
General slang for members of an intelligence service;
specifically British slang for members of the Secret
Intelligence Service
To remove bugs from a room
Agent who searches obituaries and graveyards for names of
the deceased for use by agents
[Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie] The chief
administration organisation for Soviet military
intelligence
A case officer who is responsible for handling agents in
operations
GLOSSARY OF TERMS - page 3
Honey Trap
Hospital
Hostile
HUMINT
Illegal
Illness
IMINT
Industrial espionage
Infiltration
Innocent Postcard
Intelligence
Jedburghs
KGB
L-Pill
Legend
Lifting
MASINT
MI-5
MI-6
Microdot
Mole
Music Box
Musician
Naked
Neighbors
Network
NSA
Nugget
Slang for use of men or women in sexual situations to
intimidate or snare others
Russian slang for prison
Term used to describe the organisations and activities of
the opposition services
Intelligence collected by human sources
KGB/SVR operatives infiltrated into a target country
without the protection of diplomatic immunity
Russian slang for someone under arrest
Imagery intelligence
One company using various spy methods to steal secrets
from another company
The secret movement of an operative into a target
area with the intent that his or her presence will go
undetected
A postcard with an innocuous message sent to an address in
a neutral country to verify the continued security of an
undercover operative
All information about a foreign country that can be used
for military or government planning
OSS and SOE term for teams dropped into Europe before
D-Day to help resistance groups
[Komitet Gosudarstvennoe Bezopasnosti] Soviet Union’s
all-powerful intelligence and security service between
1954 and 1991. Can also be used when referring to earlier
organisations performing the same function.
A poison pill used by operatives to commit suicide
A spy’s claimed background or biography, usually supported
by documents and memorised details
To remove fingerprints from a room
Measurement and Signature Intelligence; uses elements that
do not fit into the traditional scope of IMINT and SIGINT
The British domestic counter-intelligence service
The British foreign intelligence service
Microscopic film used to hide information or text. Dot is
placed in letter, magazine or newspaper and read using a
microscope
An agent of one organization sent to penetrate a specific
intelligence agency by gaining employment
Slang for a clandestine radio
Slang for a clandestine radio operator
A spy operating without cover or backup
The KGB and GRU referred to each other as neighbors
A group of spies working together
National Security Agency; branch of the US Department of
Defense responsible for ensuring the security of American
communications and for breaking into the communications of
other countries; ‘No Such Agency’.
British term for the bait (money, political asylum, sex,
or career opportunity) used to offer a potential defector
GLOSSARY OF TERMS - page 4
Nursemaid
Okhrana
One-time Pad
Open-source
OSINT
OSS
Paroles
Pattern
PHOTINT
Pig
Plaintext
Playback
Pocket Litter
Provocateur
Purple
RADINT
Raven
Recognition signal
Red
Rezident [Resident]
Rolled-up
RQ-1 Predator Unmanned
Aerial Vehicle
Ruse de guerre
Sabotage
Safe house
Russian term for the security service officer who
accompanies delegations to other countries to prevent
anyone from defecting
Secret police under Russian tsars 1881-1917
Sheets of paper/silk with strings of random numbers for
singular use as a key in enciphering messages. Both sender
and receiver must use copies of the same sheet to encode
and decode the message
Intelligence gained from public materials
Open Source Intelligence; an all-source process which
includes HUMINT, IMINT, SIGINT, and MASINT which analysts
must understand and integrate to produce the best possible
intelligence
Office of Strategic Services; US’s WWII intelligence,
sabotage, and subversion organization; “Oh So Secret”/ “Oh
Such Snobs
Passwords to identify agents to each other
The behavior and daily routine of an operative that makes
his or her identity unique
Photographic intelligence, usually involving high-altitude
reconnaissance using spy satellites or aircraft
Russian intelligence term for traitor
The original message before encryption
To provide false information to the enemy while gaining
accurate information from him or her
Items in a spy’s pocket (receipts, coins, theater tickets,
etc.) that add authenticity to his or her identity
An operative sent to incite a target group to action for
purposes of entrapping or embarrassing them
American name for the Japanese diplomatic cipher machine
used from 1939-1945
Intelligence gathered from radar
A male agent employed to seduce people for intelligence
purposes
The signals used by agents when meeting for the first
time. Can involve signals, specific phrases or a carried
item
American name for an early Japanese Diplomatic cipher
machine
KGB chief of station in any foreign location
When an operation goes bad and an agent is arrested
A medium-sized, long-endurance asset for reconnaissance,
surveillance, and target acquisition in moderate risk
areas, minimizing the risk to human life
French expression used to apply to types of deceptions
including the use of devices to deceive or confuse the
enemy such as false preparations, incorrect flags or
planted false documents
Destruction of equipment or facilities
An apartment or house available for agents to use for
accommodation or meetings unknown by local intelligence
agencies
GLOSSARY OF TERMS - page 5
Sanitise
Satellite
Shadow
Shoe
SIGINT
SIS
Sleeper
SMERSH
SOE
Source
Special Operations
Spook
Sputnik
Spying
Spy master
Spy ring
Stasi
Station
Steganography
Subversive activities
SVR
Swallow
Surveillance
Tail
TECHINT
Terminated
The Take
Throwaway
Timed Drop
To delete specific material or revise a report or other
document to prevent the identification of intelligence
sources and collection methods
(Usually) an electronic device orbiting the Earth to
gather or relay information
To closely follow someone
A false passport or visa
Signals Intelligence; an amalgamation of COMINT and ELINT
into one unit of intelligence gathering dealing with all
electronic data transmissions
Secret Intelligence Service; another name for Britain’s
MI-6
Agent living as an ordinary citizen in a foreign country;
acts only when a hostile situation develops
[Smert Shpionam] Death to spies! The assassination
division of the KGB
Special Operations Executive; Britain’s WWII sabotage and
subversion organisation
Refers to the different ways of getting information,
includes agents, informants and signals or other technical
means for getting information
Covert military operations carried out by specialist
soldiers
Secret agent/spy
On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union became the first
country to successfully launch a satellite into outer
space
To observe secretly
The leader of intelligence gathering activities, and an
agent handler extraordinaire
A group of spies working closely together
East Germany’s Cold War domestic and foreign intelligence
service
Post where espionage is conducted
Techniques for concealing the very existence of a message
(secret inks or microdots)
Political or sabotage activities intended to subvert
normal processes
[Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki] The Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service, formed on 18 December 1991
A female agent employed to seduce people for intelligence
purposes
A close watch kept over someone or something
To follow someone closely
Technical intelligence; analysis of fielded equipment for
training, research, and the development of new weapons and
equipment for eventual intelligence use
Murdered
Information gathered by espionage
An agent considered expendable
A dead drop that will be retrieved by a recipient after a
set time period
GLOSSARY OF TERMS - page 6
Tradecraft
Traffic Analysis
Turned
U-2
Ultra
Uncle
Venona
Walk-in
Wet Job
Window Dressing
The methods developed by intelligence operatives to
conduct their operations
Methods for gaining intelligence from the patterns and
volumes of messages of radio intercepts
A secret agent working for one country is captured and is
coerced into sending false information to his original
organisation
The world’s most famous spy plane, developed by the US
specifically for intelligence collection in the thin
atmosphere 55 000 feet above the Soviet Union; it is still
in use today
Codename for all Allied code breaking activities during
WWII
Headquarters of any espionage service
Coded diplomatic messages sent between Soviet consular
offices in the USA and Moscow
A defector who declares his or her intentions by walking
into an official installation and asking for political
asylum or volunteering to work in-place
An operation in which blood is shed
Ancillary materials that are included in a cover story or
deception operation to help convince the opposition or
other casual observers that what they are observing is
genuine
GLOSSARY OF TERMS - page 7