The possibility that a top politician, corporate executive, government minister, or officer in an intelligence service could be a mole working for a foreign government is the worst nightmare of counterintelligence services. By contrast, most espionage agents, such as CIA Director of Counterintelligence Aldritch Ames and FBI agent Robert Hanssen who spied on the US government for the KGB, are recruited as spies after they are in place as members of the target organization.īecause their recruitment occurred in the remote past, moles are difficult for a nation's security services to detect. Perhaps the most famous examples of moles are the Cambridge Five, five upper-class British men recruited by the KGB as left-wing students at Cambridge University in the 1930s who later rose to high levels in various parts of the British government. While the term mole was applied to spies in the book Historie of the Reign of King Henry VII written in 1626 by Sir Francis Bacon Le Carré has said he did not get the term from that source.Ī mole may be recruited early in life, and may take decades to get a job in government service and reach a position of access to secret information before he becomes active as a spy. Le Carré has said that the term mole was actually used by the Soviet intelligence agency KGB, and that a corresponding term used by Western intelligence services was sleeper agent. The term was introduced to the public by British spy novelist John Le Carré in his 1974 novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and has since entered general usage, but its origin is unclear, as well as to what extent it was used by intelligence services before it became popularized. However it is popularly used to mean any long-term clandestine spy or informer within an organization, whether government or private. To form holes in, as a mole to burrow to excavate as, to mole the earth.In espionage jargon, a mole (also called a penetration agent, deep cover agent, or sleeper agent) is a long-term spy (espionage agent) who is recruited before he has access to secret intelligence, and subsequently works his way into the target organization. Blarina brevicauda.Ī quantity of a substance equal to the molecular weight of a substance expressed in grams a gram molecule the basic unit of amount of substance adopted under the System International d' Unites as, he added two moles of sodium chloride to the medium. (Zool.) any one of several species of short-tailed American shrews of the genus Blarina, esp. They are molelike in appearance and habits, and their eyes are small or rudimentary.
(Zool.) any one of several species of Old World rodents of the genera Spalax, Georychus, and several allied genera. The common European species ( Gryllotalpa vulgaris), and the American ( Gryllotalpa borealis), are the best known. It is said to do damage by injuring the roots of plants. (Zool.) an orthopterous insect of the genus Gryllotalpa, which excavates subterranean galleries, and throws up mounds of earth resembling those of the mole. They have minute eyes and ears, soft fur, and very large and strong fore feet.Ī plow of peculiar construction, for forming underground drains.Ī spy who lives for years an apparently normal life ( to establish a cover) before beginning his spying activities. (Zool.) Any insectivore of the family Talpidæ. A spot a stain a mark which discolors or disfigures.Ī spot, mark, or small permanent protuberance on the human body esp., a spot which is dark-colored, from which commonly issue one or more hairs.Ī mass of fleshy or other more or less solid matter generated in the uterus.Ī mound or massive work formed of masonry or large stones, etc., laid in the sea, often extended either in a right line or an arc of a circle before a port which it serves to defend from the violence of the waves, thus protecting ships in a harbor also, sometimes, the harbor itself.
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