[Ads-l] "double agent" = "[single] agent" ?

[Chris Waigl]

I'm not seeing a problem or inflation here, but maybe I'm missing
something. Skripal used to be a member of the Russian military
intelligence service GRU and posted in Malta and Spain, successively. He
was, in common parlance, a spy. Then he was recruited by the British
intelligence service. Then he was sent back to Russia where he continued
a career within the GRU while (allegedly) working for MI6. That makes
him a double agent. He was prosecuted for this in Russia, and then in a
spy exchange came to Britain. He's clearly something more complicated
than a Russian spy or a British spy, even though he was both, and even
for a time simultaneously.

To me, this fits Charlie's original definition "an individual who
pretends to be spying on country X for the benefit of country Y but is
actually
betraying country Y to country X", except that he probably was spying
more generally on Western Europe for Russia (or at least, I don't know
what his brief was on the part of Russia while he was hanging out in
their embassies) in the beginning, and in the very beginning, was
working for the Soviet  Union, not Russia, but these, to me, are minor
quibbles. I think, for me, "a spy for country X who is turned by a
foreign intelligence organization to spy *against* country X" is enough
for me to count as a double agent.

Chris

PS: Wikipedia has more biographic information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Skripal#Life_and_career

PPS: Skripal is commonly referred to as a double agent in the UK press.
Here is (free tabloid-ish) Metro's explainer
(http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/12/double-agent-russian-spy-sergei-skripal-living-uk-7380256/):
> What is a double agent? A double agent is a spy who has been posted in
> a foreign country and ordered to secretly provide information to the
> authority back home. But the spy then opts to ‘turn’ and start feeding
> information to the enemy who they’re spying on, sometimes because
> they’ve been offered money. Often the double agent will supply
> information (some true, some false) to both parties at once, hence
> ‘double’ agent. If a double agent is exposed the penalty can be
> severe, and in the case of Sergei Skripal – who was poisoned along
> with his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last week – it seems he has not
> been able to escape the betrayal he made against his home country, Russia.
They don't seem to approve of the career choice...



On 3/19/18 4:14 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> CNN refers to him as a "double agent" as well.
>
> JL
>
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 3:19 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Inflation, like those medium-sized “colossal olives”.
>>
>> Checking the first few cites on Google, I find:
>>
>> an agent who pretends to act as a spy for one country or organization
>> while in fact acting on behalf of an enemy.
>>
>> an employee of a secret intelligence service, whose primary purpose is to
>> spy on a different target organization, but who, in fact, is a member of
>> the target organization
>>
>> a spy pretending to serve one government while actually serving another
>>
>> ...but also this more complicated one, requiring the involvement of three
>> different countries/governments:
>>
>> a person employed by a government to discover secret information about
>> enemy countries, but who is really working for one of these enemy countries
>> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/double-agent
>>
>> Still, none that conform to Maddow’s use.
>>
>> LH
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Mar 16, 2018, at 2:19 PM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
>>>
>>> Two nights ago, the usually articulate and precise Rachel Maddow several
>> times referred to Russians accused or convicted of espionage on behalf of
>> Britain or the US, and expelled or executed, as "double agents."
>>> But aren't they simply "agents"?
>>>
>>> I've always understood a double agent to be an individual who pretends
>> to be spying on country X for the benefit of country Y but is actually
>> betraying country Y to country X --like the character Dominika in Jason
>> Matthew's terrific espionage novel _Red Sparrow_ (don't bother with the
>> movie!). That is, a spy who has been found out and "turned."
>>> OED's definition of "double agent" I find confusing: "a spy who works on
>> behalf of mutually hostile countries, usually with actual allegiance only
>> to one."
>>> --Charlie
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>

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