Set up in its present form in 1912, it cut its teeth in World War I and in the 1930s and 1940s was the preeminent intelligence agency in the world. The British external intelligence agency is the inheritor of Walsingham’s legacy, and in many ways the trendsetter in modern spycraft. What was unique about its experiment was that Venice opted for a collective leadership of its espionage, under a so-called Council of Ten that managed the city’s spy network through a combination of personal loyalty and bureaucratic structures. The former city-state set up one of the world’s first centrally organized intelligence services. The keeping of secrets - and exposing the enemy’s - is a central pillar of Venice’s history. That information was used to convict her of treason and execute her. Then, once he was convinced that Mary, Queen of Scots - and Elizabeth’s cousin - was the titular figure around whom those plots revolved, he trapped her by intercepting communications hidden in a beer barrel she was sending out while imprisoned in a castle.
His intensive network of spies helped him identify and disrupt plots by Catholic European nations to invade England and overthrow Elizabeth. Sir Francis Walsingham, the spymaster general and secretary of state of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century, excelled at both these skills. It’s one thing to use espionage to uncover the enemy’s secrets, but something entirely different to use it to capture evidence of a plot you already know of. Such was his success that he became a bogeyman for Romans, who for generations would warn their children in moments of crisis that “Hannibal is at the gates.” His tactics are a central part of the curriculum in most modern military schools. But perhaps his greatest influence on modern espionage was his astute use of psy-ops - getting into the mind of the enemy, filling its soldiers with fear and frustration, and getting them to act irrationally. His spies in Rome and in the empire’s military cantonments used secret hand gestures to communicate. So it was with Hannibal, the iconic Carthaginian military commander and spymaster who ran circles around the mighty Roman Empire, forcing them to adapt to his strategies. When your enemy’s best strategy for defense is paranoia about your abilities, you’ve already won the battle of the mind that is at the heart of intelligence. He outlined the first detailed thesis on spycraft, and identified five kinds of secret sleuths: local spies (who hail from an area they’ve observing) inward spies (plants in the opposition military) converted spies (the enemy’s spies who switch to serving you instead) doomed spies (those who get caught) and surviving spies (those that make it back safely). strategist didn’t just come up with quotable quotes. His famous lines - such as “He who knows the enemy and himself will never in a hundred battles be at risk” - captured in his classic, The Art of War, remain widely quoted in intelligence communities around the world. There’s arguably no military strategist more read and venerated in the West and Asia than Chinese general and philosopher Sun Tzu. But the undeniable winner was the newborn art of espionage. The war ended in a stalemate with both sides claiming victory. They succeeded, and the Egyptians nearly walked into a trap, saved only because they then caught two other spies and tortured them into revealing that the Hittites were close by.
In fact, they were Hittite spies deliberately sent to misinform Ramses. They met two men who claimed they were Hittite defectors and insisted Muwatalli’s army was far away. The ancient Egyptians under Pharaoh Ramses II were marching toward what is today the Syrian-Lebanese border for the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittites under Emperor Muwatalli II. The earliest recorded evidence of espionage and counterintelligence - and unfortunately torture as a part of spying - dates back to the 13th century B.C.
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