You know, like in spy and crime shows. Idk why my brain isn’t braining, but can someone please what double and triple agents are? Can there be quintuple agents? How does it all work?
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Double agent: “I’m pretending to work for ABC, but I *really* work for their enemies XYZ!”
Triple agent: “I’m pretending to work for ABC, but I really work for their enemies XYZ…haha, fooled you, I really *do* work for ABC, and I’m tricking XYZ!”
An agent is a spy. They work for a spy organization. We’ll call that organization A. They infiltrate a second organization (We’ll call B). They pretend to be a member of B but report back to A.
But, let’s say that they are *really* working for B. They are *pretending* to be a spy working for A spying on B but they’re actually working for B and spying on A. That’s a double agent.
But let’s say all of that is a ruse as well. They actually *are* working for A! But they are pretending to be a double agent working for B pretending to work for A spying on B.
And so forth.
An agent works for some organization.
A double agent works for some organization but secretly reports back to another one.
A triple agent works for some organization, secretly reports back to another one, and then reports about it all to a third organization that’s their real employer. (This “third” organization can also just be the first one.)
An quadruple agent… Well, you get it. It’s all about adding another organization that you really work for.
James Bond flies over to Moscow and pretends to be Yakov Bondikov. He gets a job in the Russian military and starts sending secrets back to England. He is an agent.
But then he decides he doesn’t like England anymore. He tells Russia who he really is, and reveals whatever useful information he knows about England to them. Russia starts advising him not to tell England he hates them, and to continue pretending to be England’s agent. He’ll feed England misleading or less useful information so they still think he’s their agent, but it doesn’t really harm Russia and it hampers England’s goals. He is now a double agent.
But wait! All of that was a ruse! He was only pretending to be a double agent so that Russia would trust him more, and England knows not to trust anything he sends, and he’ll damage Russia when he gets the chance. He is actually a triple agent.
If he actually betrays England after that plan, he’d be a quadruple agent. And so on. So yes, you could theoretically be a quintuple agent. That would mean that you have told both countries that you’re really on their side, and also told them that you’ve told the other country that you’ve told your own country that you’re a double agent… I think?
Let me correct and simplify some of the other responses:
James Bond is not an agent. He’s an *officer*. The British intelligence service MI6 pays his salary, assigns him missions, etc. The various people he gets to help him are *agents*. If those people pretend to help him but are really helping the other side, they’re *double agents*. If Bond figures out that they’re pretending to help him, then convinced them to start pretending to help the other side while actually helping him, that person is now a *triple agent*.
Let’s use a more real-life example. A CIA officer named Bob is working at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, pretending to be an Agricultural Specialist. That’s his cover. Bob finds out that a Russian airplane designer named Ivan hates Borscht and thinks Putin is a jerk. Bob convinces Ivan to hurt Putin by giving him airplane secrets. Ivan is now an agent.
But wait! Bob notices that all the plane secrets he gets turn out to be wrong. He does a little digging and finds out that Ivan actually doesn’t mind Putin, but the Russian FSB is paying him to pretend to hate him so that we’ll use him as an agent. Then they can use him to feed Bob bad information (as well as figuring out that Bob is a CIA officer, if he didn’t already know). Ivan is actually a *double agent*.
Bob can just stop talking to Ivan, or he can try to get him to switch sides for real. He offers Ivan something that gets him to switch his loyalty for real, but keep pretending to be a double agent. Now he’s telling Bob who is FSB contacts are, and feeding bad info back to the FSB. Ivan is now a *triple agent*.
You can’t really go past this. If Ivan runs back to the FSB and tells them everything, he’s still just a double agent.
Spy organizations have agents who collect intelligence for them. Ideally, the foreign power you are spying on will not know the identity of your spies. To them, your spy in the nuclear facility will just be an ordinary worker.
A “double agent” can happen when the foreign power *does* know about the spy and gets them to “switch sides.” They might convince or coerce your spy in the nuclear facility to send you false information about the operation of that facility or to give them information about how your own intelligence agency.
Turn this around again, and you have a “triple agent” – someone the foreign power *thinks* is a double agent but is still collecting accurate intelligence for you, perhaps even about the foreign intelligence agency.
If you want a real world example – the British ran a successful intelligence campaign in World War II fronted by one agent called GARBO.
Juan Pujol was Spanish by birth and had grown to hate the Axis powers. He offered his services to the British, they were suspicious and turned him down.
He then chose to go freelance. He spoke to German intelligence and was recruited as an agent – even though he had never even been to Britain! Pujol then set about creating a complete network of fictitious spies feeding ‘intelligence’ to Berlin. Despite his complete lack of knowledge of the country and its wartime plans, German intelligence thought he was in a league of his own.
Shortly after, Pujol was finally picked up by the British intelligence services and became an official agent. He was now a double agent – the Germans thought he was working for them, in fact, he was only passing on what the British wanted him to say. What was clever was that they mixed complete fiction aimed at deceiving the Germans with accurate material – but made sure that any factual content was delivered too late to change events – but it made GARBO credible.
Working with Tommy Harris, Pujol created a network of 27 completely fictitious agents supposedly working for German in the UK. They sent hundreds of messages to Berlin – and were so effective the Germans saw no reason to try and send further agents to the UK! The GARBO network was a key part at disguising the Allied operations in North Africa and on D-Day.
And here’s where it gets completely incredible – the Germans thought so much of GARBO’s work that he was awarded an Iron Cross by order of Adolf Hitler! (Obviously he couldn’t pick it up in person).
Pujol was awarded an MBE by the British government in 1944 in recognition of his work.
It’s a matter of allegiance.
If you are a spy working for the US spying on Russia, but in actuality you are loyal to Russia and are giving Russia information about the US, you are a double agent.
Take that, but all along you were always loyal to the US, and you’re pretending to be a double agent for Russia to gain deeper intel that you can report back to the US. Now you’re a triple agent.
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