Key Spy Terms from Secrets, Lies, Gizmos, and Spies

These terms are or were used to identify intelligence agencies all around the world.

• Abwehr - Germany's military intelligence organization during the 1930s and early 1940s
• Cheka - Soviet agency responsible for state security (1917 - 1922); evolved into many others over the years; became the KGB in 1954
• CIA - United States Central Intelligence Agency, founded in 1947
• Cold War - the competition between the United States and its allies and Soviet Union and its allies; began approximately at the end of World War II; ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
• DNI - Director of National Intelligence; post created in 2004
• FAPSI - Russian counterpart to the United Stated NSA
• FBI - United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, founded in 1935; descendant of the BI (Bureau of Investigation)
• Gestapo - Nazi Germany's Secret Police (1933 - 1945)
• GRU - (1918 - today) Soviet/Russian military intelligence agency created under Lenin
• HVA - East German foreign intelligence, part of the Stasi
• Jedburgh - elite team of British and American intelligence officers and radiomen trained by the SOE and OSS
  
• KGB - the Soviet agency responsible for foreign intelligence and domestic security (1954 - 1991)
• Maquis - an organization formed by French communists and socialists; part of the French Resistance during World War II; members were called Maquisards
• MI5 - the British domestic counterintelligence service; it is focused on internal security within the United Kingdom (MI stands for military intelligence)
• MI6 - the British foreign intelligence service; conducts operations to obtain intelligence and disrupts threats from foreign sources; also known as the SIS
• NSA - National Security Agency; includes the Central Security Service (CSS); protects US information systems and produces foreign intelligence; the principal American code-breaking organization
• OSS - Office of Strategic Services; the American foreign intelligence service during World War II; it was modeled in part on the British SOE and was disbanded in 1945
• Pentagon - the five-sided building that is the headquarters of the Department of Defense in Washington, D.C.; "The Pentagon" is often used to refer to the leaders of the US military
• SIS - the British Secret Intelligence Service; established in 1909; also known as MI6
• SOE - British Special Operations Executive; established in 1940 to engage in "sabotage, subversion, and the formation of resistance groups in German-occupied Europe"
• Soviet Union, USSR - the Soviet Union, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was the name of all the Soviet States or Republics from 1922 to 1991
• Stasi - East Germany's Ministry of State Security; dismantled in 1990
• SVR - Russia's foreign intelligence service; established in 1991; up until that time, foreign intelligence activities were coordinated by the KGB

Want to learn more about these intelligence agencies? Check into my blog for information all each and every one of them!