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

[Chris Waigl]

On 3/19/18 7:47 PM, Dave Hause wrote:
> This simply uses Maddow's transcript to validate Maddow's usage.  The
> intelligence officer biographies I've read are pretty uniform:  the
> person who openly joins an intelligence agency (CIA, FSB, GRU) as a
> career describes himself as an intelligence "officer".  "Agents" are
> the spies that an intelligence officer recruits.  For GRU Colonel
> Penkovsky to have been a DOUBLE agent, after the CIA recruited him
> (actually, I seem to remember he volunteered his services) the GRU
> would have had to have learned of his recruitment and used him to give
> false information to the CIA.  Same for Skripal.
> Dave Hause

Huh, that's too much espionage sophistication for me. I'd agree that I'd
refer to a civilian of country B who's recruited by the secret service
of country A to pass on secret information about B's government to A's
government as a spy. But I'd also call a spy a member of the secret
service of country A who's sent to country B under the pretense that
they're some sort of consular attaché while in reality their job is to
collect, collate and forward secret information - which was basically
(AFAIK) Skripal's job description at one point.

In my parlance, the "recruiting a civilian" step is entirely optional.
I'd probably even be ok with the word spy for anyone who does any spying
by deception. I looked up the Wikipedia page for "James Bond, fictional
character" and in the little bio box it says "occupation: spy". As I 
remember, his character is repeatedly referred to as a spy
notwithstanding his status as an MI6 officer.

Chris

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