ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Espionage and Intelligence, Early Historical FoundationsBelle Boyd was a spy for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.©BETTMANN/CORBIS.ancient civilizations, beginning 6,000 years ago inMesopotamia, begat institutions and persons devoted tothe security and preservation of their ruling regimes.Clandestine and covert operations garner the most intrigue,but the history of espionage is better described interms of the evolution of its more mundane componentsof tradecraft. Throughout history, intelligence has beendefined as the collection, culling, analysis, and disseminationof critical and strategic information. Its practice andimplications, however, are widely diverse.Espionage in the Ancient WorldHistorical and literary accounts of spies and acts of espionageappear in some of world’s earliest recorded histories.Egyptian hieroglyphs reveal the presence of courtspies, as do papyri describing ancient Egypt’s extensivemilitary and slave trade operations. Early Egyptian pharosemployed agents of espionage to ferret-out disloyal subjectand to locate tribes that could be conquered andenslaved. From 1,000 B.C. onwards, Egyptian espionageoperations focused on foreign intelligence about the politicaland military strength of rivals Greece and Rome.Egyptian spies made significant contributions to espionagetradecraft. As the ancient civilizations of Egypt,Greece, and Rome employed literate subjects in their civilservices, many spies dealt with written communications.The use of written messages necessitated the developmentof codes, disguised writing, trick inks, and hiddencompartments in clothing to his communications. Egyptianspies were the first to develop the extensive use ofpoisons, including toxins derived from plants and snakes,to carry-out assassinations or acts of sabotage.The rise of the Greek civilization brought forth newconcepts of government and law enforcement. Between1500 B.C. and 1200 B.C., Greece’s many wars with its regionalrivals led to the development of new military andintelligence strategies. The early Greeks relied on deceptionas a primary means of achieving surprise attacks ontheir enemies. So renowned were Greek employments ofdeceptive strategies, that Greek literature from antiquitycelebrated its intelligence and espionage exploits. Thelegendary incident of the Trojan Horse, a wooden structuregiven to the city of Troy as gift, but which containedseveral hundred Greek soldiers seeking safe entrance intothe heavily fortified rival city, became the symbol of Grecianintelligence prowess.In the era of democratic Greek city-states, espionagewas chiefly employed as a political tool. Agents of espionagespied on rival city-states, providing rulers with informationon military strength and defenses. The most farsightedcontribution of the ancient Greek intelligencecommunity, however, was its creation of a complex andefficient means of communication between cities. Couriersdelivered messages between cities, but important messageswere also relayed between a series of outposts ortowers using semaphore, a form of communication thatutilized signals to convey messages. Greek communicationswere so efficient that they remained unparalleleduntil the modern era.In the Middle East, and later Byzantium, the largegovernment bureaucracy established one of the earliestcivilian intelligence agencies. Civilian agents of espionageculled information abut foreign militaries and economicpractices from traders, merchants, sailors, and other businessmen.Outside of the Mediterranean region, other civilizationsutilized and contributed to the art of espionage.Written records from the fifth century mention the use ofspies in the Indus Valley 2,500 years ago. In China, Sun Tzupenned the comprehensive military treatise, The Art ofWar, which contained several chapters devoted to the useof spies both on and off the battlefield.No civilization in the ancient world relied more heavilyon intelligence information, nor furthered the developmentof espionage more than ancient Rome. Over a millennium,the Romans created the largest empire of theancient world, necessitating the governance of the mostexpansive infrastructure, military, and bureaucracy orthe period.Rome’s most famous case of espionage and intrigueculminated in the assassination of Julius Caesar on March15, 44 B.C. The exact details of the assassination conspiracyremain a mystery to historians, but records haveestablished that the Roman intelligence community knew416 Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security