Sexpionage

Sexpionage is the involvement of sexual activity (or the possibility of sexual activity), intimacy, romance, or seduction in espionage. Sex, or the possibility of sex, can function as a distraction, incentive, cover story, or unintended part of any intelligence operation.

In the Soviet Union, female agents assigned to use such tactics were referred to as "swallows", while male agents were known as "ravens". A commonly known type of sexpionage is a honey trap operation, which is designed to compromise an opponent sexually to elicit information from that person.

Sexpionage is a historically documented phenomenon, though a 2008 CIA review of intelligence in public literature called The Intelligence Officer’s Bookshelf, compiled and reviewed by Hayden B. Peake, noted that then-recent books on the subject suffered from factual errors and a lack of supporting documentation.

Discrimination and cultural attitudes toward homosexuals have pressured them into spying or not spying for a certain entity, sometimes with drastic consequences. For example, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, former director of the NSA, decided to not fire openly gay employees in exchange for each employee's written promise not to give in to blackmail and that each gay employee would inform his family, eliminating any further potential for blackmail. Earlier in 1960, two NSA analysts had defected to Moscow following a purge of homosexuals from the agency.

Yakov Agranov, deputy of the NKVD, known as one of main organizers of Soviet political repressions and Stalinist show trials in 1920s and 1930s, was responsible for sex spy operations among creative-class intelligentsia. He used Bolshoi ballerinas, as well as cinema and theater actresses. Agranov created a school named the Lenin Technical School (Ленинская техническая школа). The school was opened in 1931 by Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, who was the head of the Joint State Political Directorate. According to legend, Richard Sorge and Nikolai Kuznetsov studied at a Moscow Sexpionage school.

According to former CIA officer Jason Matthews, the Soviet Union had a sexpionage school called "State School 4" in Kazan, Tatarstan, southeast of Moscow, on the banks of the Volga river. The school trained female agents to be "swallows". This school was depicted in Matthews' 2013 novel Red Sparrow. In 2018, a film of the same name was adapted from it.

Matthews believes the Kazan school has been closed, but that Russia now uses independent contractors as honey traps. Matthews has said, "If a human target with access to classified information went to Moscow [today], he’d probably see a modern-day Swallow at one of the bars of the five-star hotels in Moscow."

In a 2015 lecture, former CIA officer Jonna Mendez explained how Czechoslovak husband and wife KGB spies Karl and Hana Koecher used sex to infiltrate the CIA and gather top-secret information. One popular Washington, D.C., swinger club frequented by the couple counted at least 10 CIA staffers and a United States senator as members.