Sexpionage is the involvement ofsexual activity (or the possibility of sexual activity),intimacy,romance, orseduction inespionage. Sex, or the possibility of sex, can function as adistraction,incentive, cover story, or unintended part of any intelligence operation.
In theSoviet Union, female agents assigned to use such tactics were referred to as "swallows", while male agents were known as "ravens". A commonly known type of sexpionage is ahoney trap operation, which is designed to compromise an opponent sexually[1]: 230 to elicit information from that person.
Sexpionage is a historically documented phenomenon, though a 2008CIA review of intelligence in public literature calledThe Intelligence Officer’s Bookshelf, compiled and reviewed by Hayden B. Peake, noted that then-recent books on the subject suffered from factual errors and a lack of supporting documentation.[2]
Discrimination and cultural attitudes toward homosexuals have pressured them into spying or not spying for a certain entity, sometimes with drastic consequences. For example, AdmiralBobby Ray Inman, former director of theNSA, decided to not fire openly gay employees in exchange for each employee's written promise not to give in to blackmail and that each gay employee would inform his family, eliminating any further potential for blackmail.[1]: 85 Earlier in 1960, two NSA analysts had defected to Moscow following apurge of homosexuals from the agency.[1]: 120
Yakov Agranov, deputy of theNKVD, known as one of main organizers of Soviet political repressions and Stalinist show trials in 1920s and 1930s, was responsible for sex spy operations amongcreative-class intelligentsia. He usedBolshoi ballerinas, as well as cinema and theater actresses. Agranov created a school named the Lenin Technical School (Ленинская техническая школа). The school was opened in 1931 byVyacheslav Menzhinsky, who was the head of theJoint State Political Directorate. According to legend,Richard Sorge andNikolai Kuznetsov studied at a Moscow Sexpionage school.[3][4]
According to former CIA officerJason Matthews, the Soviet Union had a sexpionage school called "State School 4" inKazan,Tatarstan, southeast of Moscow, on the banks of theVolga river. The school trained female agents to be "swallows". This school was depicted in Matthews' 2013 novelRed Sparrow. In 2018,a film of the same name was adapted from it.[5]
Matthews believes the Kazan school has been closed, but that Russia now uses independent contractors ashoney traps. Matthews has said, "If a human target with access to classified information went to Moscow [today], he’d probably see a modern-day Swallow at one of the bars of the five-star hotels in Moscow."[5][6][7][8][9][10][11]
In a 2015 lecture, formerCIA officerJonna Mendez explained howCzechoslovak husband and wifeKGB spiesKarl andHana Koecher used sex to infiltrate the CIA and gather top-secret information. One popular Washington, D.C.,swinger club frequented by the couple counted at least 10 CIA staffers and aUnited States senator as members.[12]
In 2018, Mendez toldThe New York Times that an American Marine stationed at the American embassy in Moscow was seduced by a sparrow, and subsequently allowed Russian agents onto the property. Mendez said China and other countries also had such programs.[13]
In 1963, the playwright and screenwriterYuri Krotkov defected to the West. He revealed that he had been told by the KGB to seek out[clarification needed] attractive young women who could be used to seduce men. He would recruit actresses while doing film work, promising better film roles, money and clothes.[14]
Trapped targets during the Soviet Union period included:
TheWashington Post reported in 1987 that "most westerners who have spent any length of time in Moscow have their favorite tale of an attempted seduction by a KGB swallow or raven."[16]
Ghislaine Maxwell’s father,Robert Maxwell, was engaged with both MI6 and the KGB.[17] Ghislaine Maxwell was later alleged to have been involved with a group of young women who were, perhaps, over the UK age of consent, but who were under the age of consent in the USA.[18] Coincidental or otherwise, the interaction between these facts and the timing of legal action against HRH Queen Elizabeth II's son Andrew very close to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee (and to the death of her husband, HRH Prince Philip) largely remains subject to significant debate.[19][20][21]
InEast Germany from the late 1960s onwards, the Ministry of State Security (Stasi) recruitedcall girls, nicknamed "Mielke's Maidens" after the Stasi chiefErich Mielke, to perform a number of sexpionage functions. The women met up with western diplomats and businessmen in order to compromise them, and reported back on their attitudes to East Germany. They also identified lesbians and homosexuals who might be susceptible to blackmail, as well as East Germans who were seeking to escape to the west and had made contact with western businessmen. The Stasi used specific hotels in East Germany as places for these women to take their customers. The hotels were often bugged and some had full-time Stasi employees working there.[22]
A network of male East German spies, called "Romeos", was created byMarkus Wolf, the head of East Germany's foreign intelligence service. These agents were assigned to develop long-term relationships with sources inWest Germany. The sources were usually women, often secretaries in the ministries and government offices of the West German capitalBonn. Around 40 women were prosecuted for espionage in West Germany as a result of romantic relationships with undercover East German agents.[23]
Nadezhda Plevitskaya, a former opera singer known as the "Kursk Nightingale" before theRussian Civil War, found herself living without her former luxuries following theBolshevik Revolution. TheCheka recruited Plevitskaya through her lust for money. "Traveling throughout the white-held areas, she entertained the troops at free concerts, at the same time ingratiating herself with anti-Bolshevik leaders who had long admired the 'Kursk Nightingale.' In the process, she began to collect interesting intelligence tidbits from some of the more indiscreetWhites (including those she slept with to pry even more information)."[24]: 38 However, Plevitskaya was captured by the Whites after intercepting some of her messages to the Cheka and ordered to be executed byfiring squad.Nikolai Skoblin, then a young Whitecavalry officer and a megalomaniac obsessed with the idea of recreating the "Holy Russia", a mythical land that existed before the time of theTsars, saw Plevitskaya refuse a blindfold before her execution. Motivated by her beauty and courage, Skoblin rode up, ordered the firing squad not to fire, and released her in his custody. Then the Cheka used Plevitskaya to recruit Skoblin, and both got married (with Nadezhda's then-husband understandingly serving as best man in the wedding) and moved to Paris, working for the Cheka among the Russian Exile Movement.[24]: 37–42
Amy Thorpe Pack was an American who married a senior British diplomat and began extramarital affairs upon finding her marriage passionless. She volunteered her services toMI6 while living with her husband inWarsaw in 1937. In Warsaw, she seduced aPolish Foreign Ministry Official eliciting from him Poland's plans regarding how to deal withHitler andStalin. Following this, she learned from another Polish official that some Polishmathematicians had started cracking the GermanEnigmaCiphers. Later, inCzechoslovakia, she discovered the German plans to invade Czechoslovakia. After a colorless stint of boredom at a posting inSantiago,Chile, Pack separated from her husband and went to New York City in 1941, whenWilliam Stephenson, then an MI6 chief of station, contacted her and asked her to infiltrate embassies inWashington, D.C. Realizing her motivation was a lust for danger and excitement, Stephenson gave her thecode name Cynthia, after a long-lost love. Pack then seduced the chief of station forItalian military intelligence and acquired the Italian navy cipher. Beginning in early 1942, Pack posed as a pro-Vichy journalist and got Charles Brousse, theVichy French embassy's pressattaché and a Vichy politician, to fall in love with her and agree to work as anOSS asset. In a near six-hour night burglary operation, Pack and Brousse let an OSSsafecracker into the embassy to carry away the Vichycode books for photographing, and at one point Pack undressed to cover for the operation by deceiving a suspicious night guard. After the operation for the Vichy codes, Pack retired from espionage because she fell in love with Brousse.[24]: 107–111
CommanderAnthony Courtney was a "tough and opinionated former naval officer and Member of Parliament who denounced the government of the day and theForeign Office for softness in permitting Soviet andIron Curtain diplomats to abuse their privileges for espionage purposes." The Commander spoke fluent Russian, and in 1961 he went to bed with hisIntourist guide, Zinaida Grigorievna Volkova, who was in fact a regular KGB seductress, and KGB photographers captured their intimate activity. The KGB tried to blackmail Courtney into ending his Parliamentary tirades, though he refused; and they circulated the pictures to other members of Parliament and business associates. Furthermore,Private Eye, a London satirical journal, obtained the photos and published them. Courtney lost his seat in the following election.[1]: 33–35
Maurice Dejean, the former French ambassador to the Soviet Union, was an old friend with close connections toPresident De Gaulle, who had a fondness for women. The KGB took advantage of this and set up Dejean first with Lydia Khovanskaya, a divorcee who spoke French, and laterLarisa Kronberg-Sobolevskaya, an actress.[14] While Dejean was with Kronberg-Sobolevskaya, her pretend husband returned home, as staged, from a geological expedition in Siberia, and beat Dejean, but allowed him to leave upon Larisa's pleading. Dejean went to a Soviet friend, who unbeknownst to him worked for the KGB, to quiet the affair. The Soviets took no immediate action, but preferred to hold their operation as leverage just in case to keep the French ambassador within their sway. Similar KGB honey traps on Dejean's wife, Marie-Claire, were unsuccessful. President De Gaulle and the French found out about the affair fromBritish intelligence, who in turn learned of it fromYuri Krotkov, a defector. Krotkov defected in 1963 after aFrench Air Force attaché, Colonel Louis Guibard, shot himself when the KGB showed him pictures they took of his affair with a Russian woman and presented him with the choice of either exposure or collaboration.[1]: 36–37
SirGeoffrey Harrison, British Ambassador to Moscow, was the target of a KGB blackmail attempt in 1968, when they placed an attractive maid named Galya in the diplomatic mission. Sir Geoffrey fell for the honey trap, and Galya told him that pictures had been taken and that he would be exposed unless he provided information to the KGB. The scandal broke, but Sir Geoffrey had no action taken against him and he retired on full pension.[1]: 73
Yuri Nosenko, a Soviet defector to the West, detailed the use of a honey trap when the KGB launched a night operation to raid theSwedish Embassy in Moscow with a twelve-strong crew of safe-pickers and break-in experts. According to Nosenko, a female KGB seductress lured away the embassy's night watchman, and another agent distracted aguard dog by feeding it meat.[1]: 124–125
Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat who spied for theSoviet Union mostly out of love for it, and he never received pay, although did get a KGB pension. However, to make sure that Maclean would not so easily double-cross the Soviets, they hadGuy Burgess, another British homosexual spying for the Soviets, take photos of Maclean in bed with another man during anorgy.[1]: 111
William John Vassall was an openly gay man who boasted that men said he had "come to bed eyes", and in 1954, as a clerk in the office of theBritish naval attaché, Vassall went to Moscow. A Polish clerk from the embassy brought Vassall to a party with much alcohol, and he became involved in homosexual activity. Soon, Vassall had been blackmailed and was stealingclassified information for the Soviets.[1]: 172
Former AssistantFBI DirectorWilliam C. Sullivan, in testimony before theChurch Committee on November 1, 1975, stated: "The use of sex is a common practice among intelligence services all over the world. This is a tough, dirty business. We have used that technique against the Soviets. They have used it against us."[25]
Aleksandr Ogorodnik, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' planning department, was codenamed TRIGON by the Central Intelligence Agency. He dated a Spanish woman who was recruited by the CIA. In 1973, she persuaded him to supply the CIA with information.[25]
Around the end of 2010 and during 2011, it was disclosed in UK media that a number ofundercover police officers had, as part of their 'false persona', entered into intimate relationships with members of targeted groups and in some cases proposed marriage or fathered children with protesters who were unaware their partner was a police officer in a role as part of their official duties.[26][27][28][29]In the majority of publicly reported cases these police officers were male "ravens".
Beginning with his time as a Dublin, California, city councilor,Eric Swalwell was targeted by a Chinese woman believed to be a clandestine officer ofChina'sMinistry of State Security.[30][31] TheFBI gave Swalwell a "defensive briefing" in 2015, informing him thatChristine Fang was a suspectedChinese agent.[32] She also engaged with two midwestern city mayors in relationships which were of either a sexual or romantic nature.[33] In the media, Swalwell's general relationship with Fang has been characterized as problematic, particularly given the high-profile role that he occupied – a member of theHouse Intelligence Committee – within the intelligence community.[34][35]
However, the journalistJames Palmer ridiculed the idea that China had honeypot traps, saying that he overheard Ministry of State security officials complain about how the Soviets had " “sex camps that trained beautiful women” but China did not have trained female spies who used sex, and were massively incompetent at complex spy work, instead contracting amateurs to do jobs, and that furthermore, most Chinese espionage overseas was aimed at its own citizens in foreign countries who were deemed to be traitors.[36][37]
A male spy with a promiscuous lifestyle is not necessarily a professional raven. For example,Duško Popov was a double agent working forMI5 and feeding information to theAbwehr inWorld War II. He came from a moderately wealthy Yugoslavian family, and had a taste for expensive restaurants, women, and nightclubs. MI5 code-named him TRICYCLE because he was the head of a group of three double-agents. Despite being seen as an inspiration forJames Bond, he was not a raven, but instead used supposed commercial connections to feed faked intelligence to the Nazis.[24]: 98–102
An instance of sex or intimacy which can happen during espionage is when an agent falls for his or her partner. In one example, anIsraeli "champagne spy",Wolfgang Lotz, who pretended to be a formerAfrika Corps vet, covered himself deep in German social circles inEgypt prior to theSix-Day War, and fell in love with his fake "German" wife, who converted toJudaism. Lotz divorced his real wife, who wasIsraeli, for his partner.[24]: 151
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Most variations of theBlack Widow inMarvel Comics are fictional characters depicted as swallows, deliberately based on the Russian program.
James Bond is a fictional character depicted as a raven; his parodical counterpartAustin Powers also uses sexpionage to elicit information. It is also suggested each of those characters was repeatedly targeted by overseas agencies with sexploitation. Examples, for James Bond, may include the (somewhat different to the film of the same name) text of Ian Fleming's 1957 novel,From Russia with Love (particularly, the characterTatiana Romanova) and the 1995 movie (with no link to Ian Fleming's book),GoldenEye (particularly, the characterXenia Onatopp).
A 1987 espionage-themed Americanpornographic film featuring Dana Dylan, Rachel Ashley, andBritt Morgan was titled "Sexpionage".[38]
EVA's interactions with Naked Snake inMetal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater align with classic sexpionage tactics, where seduction is used as a tool for intelligence gathering and manipulation. Throughout the game, she employs flirtation, physical intimacy, and emotional persuasion to gain Snake’s trust while secretly working as a sleeper agent forChina. Her ultimate betrayal—stealing the Philosopher’s Legacy—demonstrates that her seduction was a calculated strategy rather than genuine affection, making her a prime example of the honey trap method in espionage fiction.
In the 2014 filmThe Interview, use of a swallow is somewhat colloquially referred to as "honeypotting", and use of a raven is referred to as "honeydicking".
The 2018 filmRed Sparrow shows a modern version of sexpionage.
The 2021 Indian action espionage thriller streaming television seriesSpecial Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story showshoney trapping by trained and contract based swallows.
Fang's acquaintance with Swalwell, which reportedly began in 2012, is especially scandalous because he later became a member of the House Intelligence Committee, meaning he has access to sensitive state secrets.
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