Spy Lingo from The Daring Book for Girls

• Acorn - someone who is performing an intelligence function
• Agent - a person officially employed by an intelligence service
• Agent (Undercover) - a secret agent
• Agent (Deep-cover) - an agent under permanent cover
• Agent (Double) - an agent simultaneously working for two enemies
• Agent-in-charge - the head agent
• Babysitter - bodyguard
• Blowback - unexpected negative consequences of spying
• Blown - detected, as in "your cover is blown"
• Bona Fides - proof of a person's claimed identity
• Brush Contact or Brush Pass - brief contact between two agents who are passing information, documents, or equipment
• Burn Notice - an official statement from an intelligence agency saying that an individual or group is an unreliable source
• Chicken Feed - low-grade information given by a double agent to an adversary to build the credibility of the double agent
• Cobbler - spy who creates false passports, visas, diplomas, and other documents
• Comm - small note or other written communication
• Cover - a secret identity
• Dead Drop - a secret hiding place somewhere in public where communications, documents, or equipment are placed for another agent to collect
• Doppelganger - a decoy or look-alike
• E&E - escape and evasion
• Ears Only - documents too secret to commit to writing
• Eyes Only - documents too secret to be talked about
• Floater - a person used occasionally or even unknowingly for an intelligence operation
• Friend - an agent or informant providing information
• Front - a legitimate-appearing business created to provide cover for spies and their operations
• Ghoul - agent who searches obituaries and graveyards for names to be used by agents
• Honey Pot or Honey Trap - slang for use of men or women to trap a person using affection or romance
• Informant - a person who provides intelligence to the surveillance team
• Joe - a deep-cover agent
• Legend - a background story or documents to support your cover
• Letterbox - a person who acts as a go-between
• Mole - an agent who penetrates enemy organizations
• Naked - a spy operating without cover or backup
• Paroles - passwords agents use to identify each other
• Peep - photographer
• Pocket litter - items in a spy's pocket (receipts, coins, etc.) that add authenticity to her identity
• Ring - a network of spies or agents
• Safehouse - a secret hideout
• Sanitize - to "clean up" a report or other document to hide sensitive information
• Sleeper Agents - spies who are placed in a target country or organization, not to undertake an immediate mission, but to be activated later
• Spook - another word for spy
• Target - the person being spied on
• Target (Hard) - a target who actively maintains secrecy and doesn't let on that she is aware of the surveillance team
• The Take - information gathered by spying
• Trigger - an agent who watches for the target and alerts the rest of the surveillance team when the target is spotted
• Unsub - an unknown subject in a surveillance operation
• Undercover - disguising your identity, or using an assumed identity, in order to learn secret information
• Walk-ins - agents (or non-agents) who offer their services
• Window Dressing - like pocket litter, this is extra information included in a cover story to help make it seem more real

- from The Daring Book for Girls by Miriam Peskowitz