The services
Agencies
The intelligence and security services whose operations fill these files, in order of founding. Each page covers the service's origins, mission and key events, and lists its operations here.
United States · 1908
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
The US Justice Department's investigative service, founded in 1908: chief hunter of foreign spies at home from the 1930s, and under J. Edgar Hoover the author of secret domestic programs exposed in the 1970s.
United Kingdom · 1909
Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)
Britain's foreign intelligence service, founded in 1909 as the foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau, run by a chief known as 'C', and not placed on a statutory footing until the Intelligence Services Act 1994.
United Kingdom · 1909
Security Service (MI5)
Britain's domestic security service, founded in 1909 as the home section of the Secret Service Bureau: hunter of German spies in two world wars, runner of the Double-Cross System, and a target of Soviet penetration.
Soviet Union · 1917–1946
Cheka, OGPU and NKVD
The Soviet political police from 1917 to 1946 under its successive names: Cheka, GPU, OGPU and NKVD. It ran the Red Terror, the Trust deception, the Great Terror, Katyn and Stalin's killings abroad.
Soviet Union · 1918–1992
GRU (Soviet military intelligence)
The Red Army's foreign intelligence service from 1918 to 1992: its interwar illegals, its wartime networks in America, the Western spies inside it, and its part in the war scare of the 1980s.
United Kingdom · 1919
GC&CS and GCHQ
Britain's codebreaking agency: founded in 1919 as the Government Code and Cypher School, it broke Enigma at Bletchley Park, became GCHQ in 1946 and anchored the UKUSA signals partnership with the United States.
Germany · 1920–1944
Abwehr
The German armed forces' intelligence service from 1920 to 1944: spies, saboteurs and counterintelligence under Admiral Canaris, outplayed by the FBI and MI5 and finally absorbed by the SS.
United Kingdom · 1940–1946
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
Britain's wartime sabotage and subversion service, created in July 1940 to arm resistance movements in occupied Europe and Asia. It ran Anthropoid and Gunnerside, suffered the Englandspiel, and was wound up in 1946.
United States · 1942–1945
Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
America's wartime intelligence service, 1942–1945: William Donovan's mix of scholars, spies, saboteurs and propagandists, abolished by Truman and reborn in parts as the CIA.
Czechoslovakia · 1945–1990
StB (Czechoslovak State Security)
Communist Czechoslovakia's secret police from 1945 to 1990. It staged fake escape routes to the West, broke the post-1948 resistance with show trials, and in the 1970s and 1980s hounded dissidents into exile.
France · 1946–1982
SDECE and DST (French intelligence)
France's Cold War pair: the SDECE, its foreign intelligence and action service from 1946 to 1982, and the DST, the police counterespionage directorate that ran the KGB defector-in-place known as FAREWELL.
West Germany · 1946
Gehlen Organization and BND
West Germany's foreign intelligence service grew out of a network run for the US Army and the CIA by Hitler's Eastern Front intelligence chief. It hired former SS men, and the KGB penetrated it deeply.
United States · 1947
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
The US civilian intelligence service, created by the National Security Act of 1947 to coordinate foreign intelligence, which within a year also became Washington's instrument for covert action.
Israel · 1949
Mossad
Israel's foreign intelligence and covert action service, founded in 1949 and answerable only to the prime minister. Its early record runs from the capture of Eichmann to the Lillehammer killing of an innocent man.
East Germany · 1950–1990
Stasi (Ministry for State Security)
East Germany's secret police and foreign intelligence service, 1950 to 1990: by the end 91,000 staff and 189,000 informers, answerable only to the ruling party, with a spy placed beside Willy Brandt.
United States · 1952
National Security Agency (NSA)
America's signals intelligence and communications security agency, created by a secret Truman directive in 1952 out of the Armed Forces Security Agency, and exposed to public scrutiny by the Church Committee in 1975.
Soviet Union · 1954–1991
KGB
The Soviet Committee for State Security, 1954–1991: foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence, border troops and political police under one roof, from Khrushchev's reforms to the failed coup of August 1991.
United States · 1961
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
The joint Pentagon-CIA office set up in 1961 to build and fly America's spy satellites and, for a time, its spy planes. Its name was secret until 1992.