Originally, this weblog post was titled Steganography, which is one of the words defined below. However, with the Ukrainian War continuing past Donald Tariff’s second inauguration day, it seemed time to write a post that explained and expanded the vocabulary of espionage. Then I began to think that I needed to write another post, Words of the year, for 2025.
I remember an early venture into espionage, when I was in my teens, reading some Ian Flemming (1908 – 1964) fiction. This was my low point. Then I discovered other authors who better suited my personality including, in alphabetical order: Kingsley Amis (1922 – 1995), Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 – 1936), Erskine Childers (1870 – 1922), David Cornwell = John le Carré (1931 – 2020), Len Deighton (1929 – ), Frederick Forsyth (1938 – 2025), Graham Greene (1904 –1991), Anthony Horowitz (1955 – ) and Nevil Shute (1899-1960).
There is one serious omission with the list, the lack of women. In 2026, I will attempt to rectify that by reading Gayle Lynds’ (1945 – ) Masquerade (1996) and Stella Rimington (née Whitehouse 1935 – 2025), such as her first (Liz Carlyle) novel At Risk (2004) and her memoir Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5 (2001).
The list of espionage terms, somewhat modified below, originally comes from a modern source.
No, I am not expecting any of the readers of this weblog to be either spies or agents, but situations could arise where one encounters either group. Most of Europe is experiencing difficulties with Russian intrusion.
Agent: an officer of an intelligence service, providing secrets or operational support. In Britain often referred to as a birdwatcher.
Agent handler: source handler = case officer (CIA) = person managing an agent (spy), including recruiting, instructing, paying, debriefing and/or advising other agents.
Alias: a false identity, to conceal a genuine one, used in physical and/ or digital worlds.
Analyst: an expert used to gain crucial insights from field observations, resulting in written reports and oral presentations.
Anti-surveillance: drills used to find out if people are watching an agent, without letting them know.
Asset: a source of information or operational assistance.
Backstop: names and addresses of front companies that support a spy’s legend.
Bang-and-burn operation: Sabotage and demolition operations.
Black bag operation: In a black bag operation, you break into a building to collect intelligence. You might have to pick locks, clone keys, crack safes. Survey and photograph. Plant listening devices. The name comes from the black bags burglars often use to carry their tools.
Black operation: “It wasn’t us.” That’s the official line on black ops. These are missions so sensitive they have to be deniable. The people at the top must be able to say they never knew. So if you’re discovered, it’ll look like you were working for some private group or organization. You’re on your own.
Blowback: The conseuences if something goes wrong with a covert operation. A term coined by the CIA.
Blown: A mission or identity that has been fully discovered.
Bona fides: More than good faith. Claims will need cold, hard proof, with credentials.
Brush contact = Lightning contact: Minimal contact allowing for an exchange: a word, an envelope, a key.
Bump: You need to find a target of interest in a public place and manufacturing a reason to get him/her talking to build up the relationship. It’s time to organize a bump, all part of the CIA Field Tradecraft course taught at the Farm.
Burned: Someone has slipped up. Your identity has been compromised.
Car Pick Up (CPU): A situation where you are waiting on a dark street and hear a gentle rumbling. A vehicle rolls up slowly, and swift as a shadow, you’ve vanished inside. The meeting – a car pick up – begins.
Case officer: CIA term for an agent handler.
Chicken feed: Minor intelligence of no operational worth that an agent or double agent passes to a foreign intelligence service to prove their value.
Cipher: something that scrambles a message into nonsense by substituting (and adding to) the letters in it. For someone to read it, they’ll either need the key or to be skilled at cryptanalysis.
Clandestine operation: An operation so secretive that the whole thing is designed to remain unknown and deniable. Clandestine premises = safe house.
Classified information: Information protected by law from public view, because a government feels it’s too sensitive to reveal. To get to it you’ll either need the right security clearance or another, less official way in.
Clean: Undetected, unsuspected.. A spy always aims to stay clean: That way, s/he is able to acquire and pass on information free from surveillance.
CCTV: Closed-circuit television, used for surveillance. Spies use CCTV cameras to follow targets.
Cobbler: A forger of identity documents. If a spy needs a passport for the next assignment, s/he must use the cobbler. Note: On 2025-10-09, it was reported that Polish authorities charged a former Warsaw city council employee with espionage for allegedly providing Russia with fake identities for its spies.
Code: A system of words that represent other words. Often used when a spy doesn’t know who might be listening to a conversation. This predefined code prevents the communication from being compromised.
Compromise: The discovery by an enemy party of some aspect of an operation, asset or cover. This uncovering of the truth means that what has been found has been compromised.
Concealment device: Need to hide secrets? Put them in something that looks ordinary: a suitcase with a false bottom, a hollowed-out coin, a USB flash drive. The best concealment devices are things that you carry with you every day.
Conscious: A person who is not part of an intelligence service, but knowingly talking to someone who is. They describe you as conscious – aware of what they really do.
Counterintelligence: Everyone knows everyone else is spying on them. So intelligence services devote a lot of energy to counterintelligence: thwarting foreign spying operations (which includes flushing out traitors).
Counter-surveillance: This is the use of teams to watch for followers. Think of it as surveillance on surveillance.
Cover: You need a cover to mask the fact that you work for an intelligence service. Sometimes it’s just a false name. Other times you might need to carry business cards. In extreme cases, you’ll need a full-on legend.
Covert operation: The last domino falls – but no one saw the first one go. A covert operation is a hidden operation designed to influence events in a foreign, probably hostile, place. Everyone sees the result. But no one knows you created it.
Cryptanalysis: The art of deciphering coded messages without being told the key.
Cryptologist: A mathematical master of making and breaking codes.
Cultivation: The development of a relationship with an intelligence target (prior to recruitment) during which an intelligence officer explores the target’s motivations to spy.
Cut-out: You need to get vital information to someone. But if they’re seen with you, their cover will be blown. So how do you get from A to B? You use C: a cut-out. A third party both of you trust, but whose presence won’t alert the enemy.
Cyberhacker: a person who spies on a computer.
Dangle: One way to catch fish involves dangling bait in the water. And one way to collect intelligence involves dangling an officer in front of the enemy. If the enemy bites, you’ve got a double agent on the inside, someone to gather secrets or spread disinformation. You may also use a dangle to identify enemy officers with the intent of removing them from your country.
Dead drop: How to pass something to someone who it’s not safe to meet? How about a dead drop site? A secret location where you can leave it for them to pick up later.
Decryption: Breaking a code, with or without a key.
Deep cover: A so complete diplomatic cover even embassy colleagues don’t know that the person is an intelligence officer.
Defector: A person who needs to get out of a country, willing to defect to an opposing one. Defectors sometimes gain entry to their new country by offering valuable intelligence.
Deniable: The operation is extremely sensitive and those in government don’t want it linked back to them. So you make it deniable. You set it up in a way that if a higher-up is ever asked, they can plausibly say they knew nothing.
Diplomatic cover: Someone who is both an intelligence officer and a diplomat. The cover gives that person a reason for being in the target country as well as diplomatic immunity, including safe passage home, if s/he gets blown.
Disinformation: One way to disrupt the activities of an enemy intelligence service is to spread disinformation: falsehoods, rumors, and fake stories. (Not to be confused with misinformation, which is unintentionally false.)
Double agent: A very risky position. A person pretending to work for one intelligence service, while secretly working against it for another one.
Dry cleaning: A process that gets rid of spots. So if a spy think s/he’s been spotted, that’s what s/he does: carry out measures to see if s/he is being surveilled. (See also anti-surveillance and counter-surveillance.)
Ears only: A situation where an agent is dealing with material so sensitive it must not be committed to writing.
Eavesdrop: Use of a hidden mic or a bugged phone. There are many ways to eavesdrop – to listen in to (supposedly) private conversations.
Eyes only: Information that may be read but not discussed, or that can only be shown to specific people.
Elicitation: The subtle art of drawing out valuable information from a target.
Encryption: The protection of data by encrypting it with a cipher. To read it again one needs to decrypt it with a key.
Exfiltration: A secret rescue operation to bring an agent, defector or intelligence officer (and sometimes his or her family) out of immediate danger and into a safe zone.
False flag operations: Operations designed to look like the work of another nation. Pirates flew the original ‘false flags’ to fool the ships they were about to attack into believing they were friendly.
Front organization: The best smokescreens make no smoke. One way to keep your operations secret is to act through a front organization, usually a business, that no one knows you control.
Get off the X: When something bad is going down, get off the X. Find somewhere else that is safe.
Going gray: How does one get into a building they don’t have clearance for? Or catch conversations you’re not meant to hear? By going gray: looking and acting in a way that blends you into your surroundings.
Handle: This is information or means that an agent handler can use to control an agent.
Hard target: A person, nation, group, or technical system often hostile to the US and its allies, or heavily protected with a counterintelligence capability that presents a potential threat to the US or its interests, and provides significant difficulty for agent infiltration or penetration.
Honey trap: That attractive stranger smiling from across the bar: possible romance, or a honey trap ready to seduce secrets out of you? They may even have been sent by your own side, to test your loyalty. The KGB named their male seducers ravens and the females swallows.
Human Intelligence (HUMINT): Spying is often about personality not physicality. HUMINT is intelligence gathered through personal contact with agents.
Illegal: A member of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents in the US, arrested in 2010.
Infiltration: Most soldiers are stationed on the front line or behind their own lines. An intelligence officer may infiltrate behind enemy lines, usually to gather intelligence for his/her spymasters or to help an agent escape danger.
Intelligence: valuable, often secret, information. Countries will go to great lengths to protect or steal it. (The word can also refer to the world of espionage as a whole.)
Intelligence cycle: Intelligence goes around in a cycle:
Planning: Politicians decide what they need to know in discussion with spymasters.
-Collection: Intelligence officers collect the target information through a range of operations.
-Analysis: Analysts pore over what’s been collected, connect the key details with what they already know, and create useful intelligence.
-Dissemination: Spymasters discuss the new intelligence with the politicians. They plan future operations to collect more, if that’s what’s needed. And the cycle begins again.
Intelligence officer: Someone who works for an intelligence service, gathering or analyzing intelligence with the ultimate goal of helping a government and nation.
Intelligence operative: People involved in an array of operations from servicing dead drops to setting up safe houses.
Jailbreak: Often used in relation to the iPhone, the term jailbreaking is circumventing the security of a device to remove a manufacturer’s restrictions. It is considered ‘jailbreaking’ because it frees users from the ‘jail’ of limitations.
Key: In secure, encrypted systems sometimes the same key – usually a string of letters and numbers – locks and unlocks your data. And sometimes the sender and recipient have different keys, which makes life even safer. Protect any keys that unlock important data: If your enemies find the key, you’re stuffed.
Kompromat: Often used to describe compromising material gathered by Russian or Soviet officials. Kompromat is also used generally to describe compromising material gathered for blackmail or to discredit and manipulate someone for political gain or leverage.
Legend: A sophisticated cover that amounts to an entire artificial life history (and supporting documents) to fool even determined counterintelligence professionals.
Limited hangout: Shutting down further inquiry by giving away a portion of the truth and making an apology.
Live drop: A face-to-face meeting to exchange secrets or money with an opposing agent. Very different from a dead drop.
MICE: Motivation for spying: MICE = Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego.
Microdot: An image or a whole page of text shrunk down to the size of a period, so as to escape notice by the enemy. (See also steganography.)
Mole: An intelligence agent who passes secrets to the enemy. Often moles are recruited before they even work for their target service, making them even harder to spot than most agents.
Morse code: A unique combination of dots and dashes sent flashing a torch, or tapping it out over a radio.
Naked: Acting without any assistance.
Need-To-Know: The first rule of espionage: No one should know anything they don’t need to. Tell people exactly what they need to know – and no more.
Numbers station: A shortwave radio station used to broadcast coded messages to an operative in the field. All you have to do is tune your radio and know how to interpret the code.
One-time pad: In theory, an unbreakable encryption system, where only the sender and the receiver have the pad = key, needed to encrypt and decrypt the message. The pad is randomly generated. To read the message, an enemy would have to get hold of the pad.
Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT): intelligence collected from overt, publicly available sources. Mainly the internet nowadays.
Operation: The activities after an agent is assigned a specific goal.
Operational security (OpSec): If an agent wants to keep secrets and identities, s/he will need to hide his IP address, and not leak personal information.
Plaintext: A message, before it gets scrambled with a cipher.
Plant: Someone secretly placed to gather intelligence.
Playback: Fake intelligence. An agent supplies false information. The target thinks it’s real, and gives the agent something in return.
Propaganda: Biased information put out to promote a cause or point of view. If the source is obvious, it’s white propaganda. If it pretends to be from one side, but is actually created by its enemy, it’s black propaganda.
Recognition phrase = parole (CIA): a pre-agreed recognition phrase – a snippet no one else would find strange. Small talk with big meaning.
Recognition signal: Something to confirm a contact’s identity. The signal must be distinctive. Any random person might be carrying a brown leather bag, but it probably won’t be diagonally over their left shoulder.
Recruitment: An agent spots someone who could be useful to his/her service. Recruitment is often the final step in a process, after spotting, targeting, cultivating and assessing.
Redaction: Some secrets have to stay secret. That’s why many documents are redacted, meaning their most sensitive passages are deleted or blacked out. Even declassified documents from decades ago may have redactions. Some things only a few people can know.
Sanitizing: The process of getting rid of anything incriminating. Burn it, purge it from the record, amend the documents.
Safehouse: a secure, secret location to hide in. Just don’t expect luxury. Most safehouses look as ordinary as possible.
Signals Intelligence (SIGINT): intelligence gathered by intercepting communications between people. Because such communications are often encrypted, cryptanalysis plays an important role.
Sleeper = sleeper agent: a person living in a foreign country as an ordinary citizen, who only acts if a hostile situation develops.
Special operations officer: an agent with the skills to operate weapons and explosives. Courage also helps. Often engaged in missions to gather intelligence and destroy targets in hostile environments.
Spook: slang for intelligence officer. The primary meaning of spook is a ghost. Like them, intelligence officers operate in the shadows.
Spy: a person passing secrets to a foreign intelligence service, not an intelligence officer.
Spycatcher: a specialist in counterintelligence, thwarting enemy spies.
Spymaster: a leader of an intelligence service.
Stakeout: clandestine assessment of a location, including its inherent dangers and potential exit routes.
Station: the location where espionage is conducted.
Steganography: hiding a message, image or file in another message, image or file. Examples include the microdot. See this source for further information.
Surveillance: secret observation.
Surveillance aware = the opposing side knows that that the other side knows. It can be seen from their behavior.
Surveillance Detection Route (SDR): a predetermined, carefully selected route to lure a surveillant into following their target and exposing hostile surveillance.
Technical Intelligence (TECHINT): Intelligence about weapons and equipment used by foreign armed services. If you know what your adversaries are capable of you can plan accordingly.
Technical operations officer: A person who gathers intelligence by tapping phones, breaking into buildings, planting cameras and other means.
Tools: Binoculars, cameras, audio recorders and similar aids.
Trap: something that gives an intruder away. Common examples: a hair along a drawer that will drop invisibly when disturbed; a microscope slide under the carpet that will shatter inaudibly if someone walks on it.
Tradecraft: The array of methods and tools used in covert intelligence operation. Get the tradecraft right and you give an operation the best chance of success. Get it wrong and there’s every chance you’ll get blown.
Traffic analysis: gathering intelligence by recognizing particular patterns or discrepancies in intercepted messages. It allows you to infer things without needing to read the messages themselves.
Trigger: A person in a surveillance team whose eyes are glued to the target, tasked with reporting the target’s movements. Meanwhile the others stay back to avoid spooking the target.
Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) = bug sweeps. Flushing out listening devices or covert cameras in an office.
Uncle: slang term for headquarters.
Undercover: operations conducted using a false identity, lasting from a few hours to several years, depending on the operation.
Walk-In = someone suddenly appearing willing to betray their country and provide vital information.
Wallet Litter = content to make a fake wallet look like a real one, with receipts, travel documents, event tickets, to add convincing detail to a cover.
Retronyms
taken from a YouTube video.
Great War => World War I
Movie, before the Jazz Singer (1927) => silent movie
Talkie, after the Jazz Singer (1927) => Movie
The first talkie in Britain was Alfred Hitchcock’s, Blackmail (1929). It was made in two version, one silent, the other a talkie. It came out of copyright on 2025-01-01, which means anyone can download it legally. I secured a copy of it on 2025-01-02.
Telephone => landline, from about 2010. Although, the first use of landline was in 1865.
Milk => dairy milk/ cow’s milk/ whole milk, in contrast to oat milk and soy milk.
Flavoring => natural flavoring, to distinguish it from artificial flavoring/ chemical ingredients.
Book => paper book, a hard copy (early 2000s) is a paper copy of a document originally found on a computer, originally it referred to a manuscript that had been edited and proofread. Also called a dead-tree copy.
Signature => wet signature, when signed with a pen by a person, in contrast to an electronic signature.
Event or meeting => physical event/ in-person meeting, after COVID and the imposition of online meetings. consultation => face to face consultation.
Internet was assumed to use cable. => wired internet. It is assumed otherwise that it is wireless. Wireless as a term dates to 1891. At one time it referred to a radio.
Guitar => acoustic guitar. Now the world is a better place because we have electric guitars.
Store/ shop => brick & mortar store (American)/ high street shop (British).
The New World, => America. Some want to measure it from its re-discovery by Columbus (1451 – 1506) in 1492. Not me. I measure this rediscovery from the Vikings, especially with Erik Thorvaldsson = Erik the Red (950 – 1003). About 982, Erik was exiled from Iceland for three years for murdering Eyjolf the Foul and Hrafn the Dueller. During this banishment he explored Greenland, eventually culminating in his founding of the first successful European settlement on the island. Other parts of North America were discovered about 1000. Note: People have lived in North America for at least 30 000 years, with evidence suggesting that early humans arrived as far back as 40 000 years ago. Recent discoveries indicate that these early inhabitants may have migrated by boat along the coast rather than solely through land routes.
Other words of the year 2025
Parasocial (Cambridge) = an adjective describing a one-sided relationships, as for example between celebrities and their audience or fans
Vibe coding (Collins) = a chatbot-based approach to creating software where the developer describes a project or task to a large language model, which generates code based on that prompt.
67 (Dictionary.com) = a Gen Alpha term pronounced six-seven not sixty-seven. While the term is largely nonsensical, some argue it means so-so, or maybe this, maybe that, especially when paired with a hand gesture where both palms face up and move alternately up and down. Some relate the term with Skrilla’s = rapper Jemille Edwards (1999 – ), 2024 song Doot Doot (6 7).
AI slop (Macquarie) = low-quality AI-generated content.
Rage Bate (Oxford) = Online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage, typically to increase traffic or engagement on a web page or social media. Shortlisted words: Aura Farming = Cultivating an impressive or charismatic public image to convey confidence or mystique. Biohack = Attempting to improve physical or mental performance through various means, including diet and technology.
Cliff Cottage
At Cliff Cottage, we have also introduced new words in connection with Duolingo. On Signal, our communication app, Trish and I report our activities to each other like this: Duo dun. 2 more-ons, 2 quests, 40 so far in Duocember. More literate people would probable write: Duolingo done. 2 lessons, 2 quests, 40 so far in December. I have also thought of rewriting the dated yet offensive term moron, as lesson. Remember: It used to be, less is more, more is less! Now it is, more is more, less is less.