21-year-old Nathan Hale, perhaps America's best-known early spy, served with Knowlton's Rangers. In September 1776, Washington ordered Knowlton to send some of his men behind British lines in Long Island to reconnoiter enemy forces gathering to attack the
Idara Victor plays fictional Agent 355 in the television series Turn: Washington's Spies. In the show, Agent 355 is the code name of a former slave named Abigail. She had been owned by Anna Strong until the British army seized Selah's property upon his imprisonment.
Among other honorifics, George Washington—known as Agent 711 in the Culper Spy Ring—is often heralded as a great “spymaster,” and indeed, he was. Under Washington's astute watch, several networks of spies operated in both close-knit circles and far-reaching societies.
On September 22, 1776, the British hanged Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale for spying. Born in Coventry in 1755, Hale attended Yale College and later became a schoolteacher. After hostilities erupted in Lexington and Concord in 1775, Hale joined a Connecticut militia and participated in the siege of Boston.
George Washington was America's first spymaster, and his skill as such won the war for independence. George Washington's Secret Spy War is the untold story of how George Washington took a disorderly, ill-equipped rabble and defeated the best trained and best equipped army of its day in the Revolutionary War.
And there is one spy whose story stands out from all the others: Virginia Hall. Though her name may not sound familiar to most people, Hall is regarded as America's greatest female spy. Hall was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1906.
Abraham Woodhull
Woodhull was essentially the leader of the Culper Spy Ring, deciding what information was transmitted throughout the group, which would eventually make its way to George Washington. In order to evade British detection, Woodhull operated under the pseudonym, “Samuel Culper Sr."
Belle Boyd
One of the Confederacy's most famous spies, Belle Boyd's life played out like a James Bond character: she was betrayed by a lover, later captured taking Confederate papers to England, and fell in love with and married her captor.
The Culper. Spy Ring. In October 1778, with the Continental Army encamped outside British-occupied New York City, George Washington and Benjamin Tallmadge masterminded what would become the most successful and enduring espionage network of the war.
Connecticut's Nathan Hale is famous as the young spy who regretted that "I have but one life to lose for my country" when he was captured and executed by British troops in 1776.
On January 12, 1976, Robert Philip Hanssen swore an oath to enforce the law and protect the nation as a newly minted FBI special agent. Instead, he ultimately became the most damaging spy in Bureau history.
Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (née Greenglass; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were an American couple who were accused of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs.
Anna Smith Strong was a spy based in Setauket, Long Island in New York. She was involved in General George Washington's spy ring known as the Culper Spy Ring headed by Major Benjamin Tallmadge. Strong and several other residents of Long Island were recruited by Tallmadge who had grown up in Setauket.
The Culper Code Book was used by the Culper spy ring to send coded messages to George Washington's headquarters during the Revolutionary War. Informants used fake names and a numerical code book consisting of seven hundred and sixty-three numbers representing words, names, and places to communicate their information.
“The 355” is named after the only female spy that George Washington hired during the American Revolution — whom he called “Agent 355” to keep her identity a secret.
The Security Service made a significant contribution to the success of D-Day through its double agent Juan Pujol, codenamed GARBO, who has been described as the greatest double agent of the Second World War.
James Armistead provided critical intel to the Continental Army as a double agent during the Revolutionary War.
First efforts
One early Soviet spy was Jones Orin York who was recruited by the KGB's predecessors in 1935. The Soviets' Amtorg Trading Corporation established in 1924 would become a nexus of espionage.
The Teenaged Spy. Fearless and fiercely loyal to the South, Belle Boyd became a Confederate spy at the age of 17, using her flirtatious charms to pry information from Union officers and soldiers posted near her home in Martinsburg, Virginia (modern-day West Virginia).
On September 21, 1780, Revolutionary War hero Benedict Arnold turned his back on his country in a secret meeting with a top British official.
Jay's directive from Washington was to “close the regular channels of intelligence from the city.” One of the first agents acting on behalf of the patriots was Nathan Hale, who volunteered to spy on the British on Long Island in September 1776.
Perhaps the most well-known Black spy of the American Revolution is James Armistead Lafayette. Born enslaved in Virginia, the French General Marquis de Lafayette recruited him to spy for the patriots in the summer of 1781. With the permission of his owner, James infiltrated General Charles Cornwallis' camp at Yorktown.