10 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. It wasnt easy, to be sure. Famous illegals include Rudolf Abel, unmasked as a Soviet spy in the US in 1957 . The U.S. government allegedly granted the cartel bosses free rein to traffic drugs to the point of using CIA-recruited American pilots to fly cocaine into the United States to sell for cash so the cartel could make donations to buy more weaponry for the Contras. FBI.gov is an official site of the U.S. Department of Justice. 10 Great Movies About Undercover Agents, Ranked (According To Rotten Tomatoes) By Matthew Flores Published Jun 23, 2021 Mobsters, thieves, and dirty cops - from 21 Jump Street to BlackKklansman, these are the best movies about people going undercover. In Michael Bays The Rock, hes essentially James Bond in all but name; there are even fan theories that John Mason is intended to be Connerys Bond, with the repeated mention of Masons adventures as a British Intelligence operative working in the mid-1960s. Courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A federal court in Chicago convicted Guzik, who got a five-year sentence. What makes Nikita so watchable is its lead characters reluctance to become an agent and undercover state assassin. On one occasion, he flew to California to track down a defector (he later learned, to his immense relief, that the man, a psychology professor, had not been assassinated). Other undercover roles of his ended in the arrests of a Mexican drug boss and members of the Aryan Brotherhood gang. Some, he says, could still be out there, living undercover in the United States, though he finds it hard to believe that anyone exposed to life in the US would retain an unwavering communist faith for long. Im not a field agent, he protests down the phone to his superiors at the CIA. With Kingsman: The Golden Circle in theaters right now, here's our pick of the sneakiest secret agents on film. That got Malone invitations to play poker and trade gossip with the gang, then dinner at their hangout, the New Florence, and then to attend the birthday party Capone planned for Frank Nitti at the Lexington. Irey appointed Special Agent Frank Wilson, Malone and several others to the get Capone team. Gallardo also believed he had CIA and Mexican official protection. When we talk about things like Americans playing soccer against Germans, I say 'us'. Like Pistone, Garcias undercover career is chronicled in a memoir, Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family. Gravel-voiced and glum, Hoffman's impeccable. To date, Harrison Fords incarnation of Ryan is arguably the best; hes smart, tenacious and, despite his tendency to use his brain rather than his fists to win his battles, still capable of holding his own in a violent encounter. '", Deep Undercover - My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America, by Jack Barsky and Cindy Coloma, is published next month. Then the police pinched Al himself following his 1931 indictment on tax charges. Now, obviously, there is anti-Semitism in there, but secondly, the stupidity of that statement is that they sent me to New York. Coburn gives Flint an easy charm, and hes highly effective in his combat scenes. The evidence he delivered for the FBI resulted in the arrest of 32 Gambino members and associates, including DePalma, Gambino boss Arnold Zeke Squitieri and underboss Anthony The Genius Megale. Dobyns teamed with another ATF agent, two other undercover officers and a pair of paid informants. In 2016, Georgia police officer Vancito Gumbs came under investigation when he was spotted by fellow officers doing lines of cocaine in a sports bar with an alleged drug kingpin. Malone then reported Capones plot to hire five gunman from New York to kill four federal officials in Chicago including Wilson. He told people he had had a "tough start in life" in New Jersey and had dropped out of high school. Garcia said he witnessed DePalma commit a crime almost every day. And Dittrich began his new life as Jack Barsky. It has a crazed criminal organisation, mad scientists with a dangerous device (in this instance, a weather-altering machine) and, of course, a suave secret agent James Coburns Derek Flint. Secret agents go by many names. 1. He had to tell lieslots of liesconvincingly, about who he was and what he was up to. Based on the picture, the Angels took the bait and let them hang out and ride with them. To begin with Barsky lived in constant fear for his life, remembering that threat on the subway platform. One morning, on a subway platform a resident agent delivered a chilling message: "You have got to come home or else you're dead. He also carried out some industrial espionage, stealing software from his office - all of it commercially available - which was spirited away on microfilm to aid the floundering Soviet economy. And I am finally getting to live the life that I should have lived a long time ago. Caine is perfect for this early attempt to capture the grittier, more prosaic side of life as a spy, and the allure of the character was such that he played the character four more times in the sequels Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain, and in the 1990s thrillers Bullet To Beijing and Midnight In Saint Petersburg. DeSantis won't say he's running. And when it did, it felt good.". "I wrote this letter, in secret writing, that I wouldn't come back because I had contracted Aids, and the only way for me to get treatment would be in the United States. Pistone endured the rigorous course alongside recruits in their 20s. Over the next year, he parlayed Jack Barsky's birth certificate into a library card, then a driver's licence and, finally, a social security card. To maintain his cover, he had to divert his mind away from his wife and kids. While undercover as Jack Falcone with the Gambinos familys chapter in Westchester County, New York, for two years, he flashed cash, Rolex watches, diamond rings, flat-screen TVs and other supposed stolen property (items seized in other FBI cases). "There was nothing like we were taught. "My loyalties to communism and the homeland and Russia, they were still pretty strong. He wore a wire to record conversations, and committed to memory names and license plates since taking notes would obviously raise red flags. Pistone had to think, talk, and act like a crook (he spent two full weeks, for example, studying the jewelry industry). We know shes some kind of spy, but whose side is she on: the U.S. or Russias? "I am in good health. ', "And that completely backfired. He was the first law enforcement officer to infiltrate the Angels. In Camarenas honor, in 1985 the National Family Partnership started the National Red Ribbon Campaign, a volunteer anti-drug use and education effort that urges youths to recite a pledge to refrain from drugs, and celebrates Red Ribbon Week on drug awareness each October. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. And it ultimately led to more than 100 federal convictions. A superbly drawn character, her inner-strength is offset by her capacity for drink. Meanwhile, a DEA force organized by Camarena seized a large cache of cocaine shipped by cartel boss Miguel Felix Gallardos operation to New Mexico and Texas. The judge gave him 11 years in the federal pen and a $50,000 fine, plus court costs. Garcia gave DePalma a cell phone that the talkative mob capo used prodigiously, not knowing the FBI had bugged it. During the fall of 1984, Quintero held meetings with top cartel traffickers Gallardo, Ernesto Don Neto Fonseco Carrillo and Ruben Zuno Arce. Also, correctly pronouncing Italian food matters as Tony Soprano might say, those long pasta shells are not manicotti, but manicote. Another valuable lesson he learned is that his Mob brethren loved compliments his favorite one: Where did you get those nice threads? . After stepping out of his car, he was approached by a man in civilian clothes, who held up a badge and said in a calm voice: "Special agent Reilly, FBI. He spoke in an Italian accent, introduced himself as Mike Lepito, met Capone men playing craps and played the part of a mobster. Much of the cash he held went to pay for expensive dinners mobsters, he said, are notoriously cheap when the check comes. Based on the book, actor Johnny Depp portrayed Pistone in the 1997 feature film Donnie Brasco, with Al Pacino as Ruggerio. I wanted to really hate the people and the country and I couldn't bring myself to hate them. But with characteristic bravado he asked the FBI man: "What took you so long?". They bound and blindfolded him, turned on a tape recorder and questioned him, during which he was severely beaten and tortured. According to a veteran law enforcement official who worked with him, Garcia is "the best undercover agent the Bureau has ever had." While undercover, Garcia posed as a jewel thief mobster who also sold drugs. He vowed revenge against Camarena. Long before Top Secret! This article was first published on Aug. 28, 2015. The agency beforehand had to rely on informants. While playing his part, Pistone could have been seen with the wrong person or been recognized by someone he knew. The task force confiscated 20 tons of marijuana, burned the crop and made 177 arrests. He took advantage of his fluency in Spanish and Italian, being careful not to mix things up when the phone rang. A three-year long Internal Affairs investigation proved this to be only the tip of the iceberg. In Spy, Melissa McCarthys CIA desk jockey is suddenly sent on a life-or-death mission across Europe, which takes in a bomb in a suitcase, casinos, explosions, and fast cars. Best known for the famous final scene, which taught kids of all ages that guns and gasoline . Best Spy Name Ideas: After Malones death in 1960, Wilson described him to a news reporter as the best undercover agent we ever had.. Vera Atkins: The Most Powerful Woman in the History of Espionage Vera Atkins was a young Romanian working in Bucharest when she met the dashing Canadian William Stephenson, according to William. Below youll find plenty of famous names from the world of espionage, but weve also picked out a few other great secret agents from cinema history who, we think, deserve their own brief moment in the spotlight. As the agent walked from the U.S. consulate to meet his wife for lunch, they forced him at gunpoint into a car and drove him to a residence used for cartel rendezvous. In the summer of 1950 both of the Rosenbergs were arrested. He participated in the highest number of undercover cases in FBI history. These days, he delivers lectures on his life to audiences at universities and law enforcement associations nationwide. I am a German. ), Schwarzenegger plays the particularly brawny Harry Tasker a covert operative who pretends to his wife and daughter that hes a computer salesman. The man who exposed him was a KGB archivist, Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin, who defected to the West in 1992 - after the fall of communism - with a vast trove of Soviet secrets, including the true identity of Jack Barsky. Deservingly, Oldman was nominated for an Academy Award for his outstanding turn here. And most people can't handle it. In years past, the Bureau had some success in gathering intelligence on the mob, but typically only around the edges. Shaken but not stirred, often imitated but never bettered. But, he adds, "what eventually softened my attitude" was the "normal, nice people" he met in his daily life. According to Michelle Carter, who wrote a biography named Anthony Blunt: His Lives, Blunt provided Soviet intelligence officers with 1,771 documents between 1941 and 1945. Jackie Chan affectionately sent up the spy genre with The Tuxedo, in which he plays an ordinary taxi driver whos transformed by a feat of technological magic into a suave secret agent in the James Bond mold. Camarena, born in Mexicali, Mexico, in 1947, moved with his impoverished family to Calexico, California. Albert Dittrich is Jack Barsky in the eyes of the US government. Altogether, he served in more than 500 undercover operations disguised as a hitman and Mob debt collector. Where Ian Flemings spy novels were about the glamor and fantasy of the spy game, John Le Carrs books are closer to the mundane, downbeat reality. In New York City during the mid-1970s, the FBI investigated a rash of truck hijackings happening each day. Blowing his cover would have proved fatal. Richard Burton brings a wonderfully bitter, grim edge to Alec Leamas, a British agent caught in an intelligence intrigue in the midst of the Cold War. Although experiencing some unpleasant situations that Bond has skilfully managed to avoid in his own career (see Ian Flemings original Live and Let Die novel and 1989s unusually violent Licence to Kill), Leiter remains an affable counterpoint to 007s icy resolve. "I am glad it didn't work out because I could have done some damage. In James Camerons True Lies (a remake of Frances La Totale! He filed suit in federal court against the agency alleging it did not protect him while he was on duty. Mata Hari (1931) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. And what an intelligence goldmine it was. His work ended with 16 arrests from the Angels gang. Fury of the Gods Brings Back the "Shazamily": Inside DC's New Superhero Adventure, Scream 6's Brutal NYC Trip: "You Can't Trust Anyone" This Time, Cocaine Bear Is Not Just About a Killer "Coked-Up" Bear, It's Also an "Underdog Story", How Marvel's Wastelanders Podcast Created an Exciting Story with No Visual Safety Net, The Top 25 Secret Agents in Movie History. Initially a drug-addled drop-out, Nikita (Anne Parilaud) is given a stark choice: either train to become an operative or die in prison. But most of all, Philip Seymour Hoffman is ideal casting as the crumpled, weary Gunther Bachman, the leader of an undercover counter-terrorist unit. They thought he was doing top secret but very well-paid work at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The idea was to create a fake biker gang with the aid of one of the informants who once served in a motorcycle gang based in Tijuana, Mexico. BeforeKingsmancame out this year, few would have imagined that Colin Firth would be so effective as a combat-ready secret agent. While he had fallen for the American Dream and the trappings of the consumer society, he still had some conflicting feelings. The . He took part in investigations of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I just read books! In a film pregnant with paranoia and the constant threat of danger, Redfords on career-best form here. In the early 1980s, in what he called Operation Padrino, Camarena arranged for U.S. agents to seize international bank accounts held by wealthy cartel drug lords. This failure weighed heavily on him. "It required some interesting gymnastics to make me legal because one thing I didn't have was proof of entry into the country. Notably lacking in zinging one-liners though she is, Mallorys a convincingly tough character in a story full of betrayal and would-be assassins. Meanwhile, a group of wealthy business executives in Chicago, called the Secret Six, donated large sums of money for expenses to assist the feds in getting Capone. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. A young John Gielgud is magnificent in this 1930s thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. At that point, I would have been in a situation to socialise with people that were of value.". Joaqun "Jack" Garca (born 1952) is a Cuban-American retired FBI agent, best known for his undercover work infiltrating the Gambino crime family in New York City. Infiltrators. Director Philip Noyce and writer Kurt Wimmer keep that question dangling from Salts beginning until almost the end, but its Jolies performance that keeps the story simmering: shes dangerous, sly and, perhaps, a traitor. With their black suits and matching glasses, Agents K (Tommy Lee Jones) and reluctant partner J (Will Smith) bicker their way through the most obscure jobs on the planet: keeping an eye on the activities of extraterrestrials walking our planet, without alerting the general public to their presence. Read about our approach to external linking. "I also told the Russians in the same letter that I would not defect, I would not give up any secrets. Wearing a fancy suit, purple shirt and white hat, Malone sat in the lobby, reading newspapers for days on end. The cartel had the two mens bodies buried, then dug up and relocated to a farm in another state, where Mexican police found them in early March. Undercover Agent Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco. On July 26, 1981, he and his fellow wise guys learned that Donnie Brascowho they knew as a small-time jewelry thief and burglar, who they thought was their partner and even their friend, who they were about to officially induct into the Bonnano crime familywas actually FBI Agent Joe Pistone. That is, the FBIs mob school, where he received an education in how to hit the ground running with veteran mobsters. With his retro glasses, expensive tailoring and precise hair, Firths Harry Hart is a spy in the 60s mold, but just wait until hes backed into a corner. McCarthys great value as an unlikely secret agent, and her scenes with Jason Statham, who happens to play the sweariest secret agent in film history, are a real high-point. Perhaps because of the gravity of the investigations, and the financial resources required, all of these undercover officers worked for agencies of the U.S. government. The Den of Geek quarterly magazine is packed with exclusive features, interviews, previews and deep dives into geek culture. Governments throughout history have stolen ideas, formulas, and technology to undercut rivals or "borrow" innovations. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Without a passport, Barsky was limited to low-level intelligence work and his achievements as a spy were, by his own account, "minimal". But without qualifications in Barsky's name, or any employment history, his career options were limited. And all of thats what makes her so compelling to watch. It's no secret that the Russians have long tried to plant "sleeper agents" in the US - men and women indistinguishable from normal Americans, who live - on the surface - completely normal lives. Barsky is now married for a third time and has a young daughter. And I am now a grandfather. ", The colour drained from Barsky's face. In 1961, she published "Mastering the Art. Some have trained for the life of a spy, but many of them have the world of espionage and imminent death thrust upon them. "By chance it turned out that the messenger job was actually really good for me to become Americanised because I was interacting with people who didn't care much where I came from, what my history was, where I was going," he says. He might have let a word slip. As embodied by Matt Damon, Jason Bourne felt like a breath of fresh air when he first appeared in 2002. He gradually let his guard down and settled into the life of a typical middle-class American in a comfortable new home in upstate New York. The . A pioneer of long-term undercover work, FBI agent Joseph Pistone spent six years with two American Mafia crime families, infiltrating the Bonanno family and the Colombo family in the 1970s. The museum also worked with the FBI and three famous undercover agents who fought the Mob, including Joe Pistone, made famous by the movie "Donnie Brasco." The museum was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums in 2017. This was for Barsky was to study for a degree and gradually work his way up the social order to the point where he could gather useful intelligence - a mission he describes as "nearly impossible". Most great undercover agent movies are based on true stories, but Johnny Utah is strictly Hollywood. Agent #3: "Both life and job experiences contribute to being a successful undercover agentbeing a team player, having a good work ethic and a sense of humor, staying flexible, and exercising . Between 2001 and 2003, Alcohol . The only thing that fooled me was your looks, Capone is said as to have remarked to Malone. The agency assigned agent Joseph Joe Pistone to go undercover for six months to find out where the Mob-connected thieves took the stolen cargo. On the other hand, the KGB's original plan for him might actually have worked, he says. Wikimedia commons Undercover agent Joseph Pistone as Donnie Brasco, with the lowlevel wiseguy who took him under his wing, Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero. So for the first two, three years I had very few questions that I had to answer.". The lead interrogator was the crooked head of the secret police in Guadalajara, Sergio Espino Verdin. Zuno Arce gave the order. 9. Economic espionage is the clandestine gathering of information from an economic competitor. While working undercover cases in the late 1980s for the ATF, hed been injured twice from a gunshot wound to the back from a suspect in Tucson and when gunrunners hit him with a car during an attempted getaway in Chicago. Not even dislike them.". Even when the alien effects and action spin wildly out of control, Smith and Jones provide the franchises rock-solid center. The KGB had not done anything.". I am not German any more. Federal prosecutors blamed the ATF, saying the agency did not reveal evidence from informants. Pistone went so deep that even other federal agents and the NYPD believed him to . In a recorded conversation, Garcia as Falcone replied to DePalma, Im honored for that, he said, in the tape later used in court. And it became a staple of the Bureau's intelligence tradecraft, a crucial arrow in the quiver used to protect the American people. April 3, 2013. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. Barsky had supreme self-confidence, a near-flawless American accent, and $10,000 in cash. But after a few months, he began to breathe more easily. He may not have superpowers, but Agent Coulson has rapidly become one of the most popular supporting characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Just look at how high Coburn can kick, and try to imagine Roger Moore doing the same thing. In Brooklyn and Manhattan, he roamed bars and restaurants frequented by Mob types. The following are ranked in descending order, from least to best. So in the kitchen I told her, 'By the way, this is what I did. One mobster in particular who liked his money and goods, and would become his almost daily companion, was Gambino capo Gregory DePalma. Robert Redford plays him as a CIA analyst utterly unprepared for the world of violence and murder thrust upon him. DePalma went to trial in 2006. Enrique Kiki Camarena, the late Drug Enforcement Administration agent assigned to investigate drug trafficking in Guadalajara, Mexico, in the 1980s, is famous as one of the most heroic DEA agents ever. He discreetly phoned Wilson about what hed overheard within the gang. Malone, assigned to find him, followed Nittis wife to an apartment building in Berwyn, Illinois. But he was keeping a far bigger secret from his KGB bosses than his wavering commitment to communism. In 2014, the year he retired after 27 years with the ATF, he filed another suit, for $17.2 million, saying the ATF failed to safeguard his family amid death threats. Sure, hes an indescribably tough former agent with the kind of skills that most of us could only dream of, but his amnesia and grim past mark him out as an underdog worth rooting for. Garcias inquiries led him to meet DePalma in 2003. He ordered a special master to investigate government actions in the case, and possible misconduct by the feds in the arson investigation. Malone had heard that Phil DAndrea, Capones bodyguard, planned to bring a concealed gun into the courthouse. The original pre-Code era drama film is loosely based on the life of the real Mata Hari, an exotic dancer executed for espionage during World War I. Both men died about two days later, angering Fonseco, who told Quintero not to kill Camarena. Dobyns certainly had the physical part down with his beard and six-foot, one-inch frame he used as an all-conference football player for the University of Arizona. The news spread fast to Capone and his men. But inside he was panicking that he would be sent to jail and that his American family, which he had been trying to hold together, would be broken up. By 1976, hed won the trust of important Bonnano members, notably family soldier Benjamin Lefty Guns Ruggiero, said to have killed 26 people, and capo Dominick Sonny Black Napolitano. MMA fighter Gina Carano turned action hero in Steven Soderberghs Haywire. Undercover Agent Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco Special Agent Pistone (left) sits with Sonny Black (Dominick Napolitano) of the Bonanno family and unidentified woman in the 1970s during an. Investigators cleared him. After finessing his way into Capones inner circle in 1929, Malone proved invaluable to his superiors in the Treasury Department pursuing a tax evasion case against the Chicago crime boss. Joseph Whicher, a trusted agent of Pinkerton's National Detective agency, had been discovered in the Missouri woods, bound, tortured and shot deadyet another victim of Jesse James, the outlaw. The operation gave the FBI a window into the inner workings of the Mafia generally and the Bonanno family specifically (and to a lesser degree, some of the other families), not only in New York, but in Florida, Michigan, and elsewhere. Despite the danger, Malone kept an iron will. But his operation was interrupted in 2002 with the now-famous riot and shootout among members of the Angels and a competing biker gang, the Mongols, at the Harrahs casino in nearby Laughlin, Nevada, during the annual River Run motorcycle rally. Barsky later found out that he was part of a "third wave" of Soviet illegals in the US - the first two waves having failed. He would update Moscow Centre on his progress in weekly radio transmissions, or letters in secret writing, and deposit microfilm at dead drop sites in various New York parks, where he would also periodically pick up canisters stuffed with cash or the fake passports he needed for his trips back to Moscow for debriefing. In police work, a mole is an undercover law-enforcement agent who joins an organization in order to collect incriminating evidence about its operations and to eventually charge its members. A trained officer knows how to strategize, win the confidence of their targets and get them to reveal whats needed to build a case to take to trial. Sean Connery gave us the flinty streak present in Ian Flemings novels, even as the later films continuously upped the one-liners and action set-pieces. He was a man with no past and no identification papers - except for a birth certificate obtained by an employee of the Soviet embassy in Washington, who had kept his eyes open during a walk in the Mount Lebanon cemetery. He played his part so well members of the gamed Gambino crime family took him in and made him a top member in their administration. Jack Barsky died in September 1955, at the age of 10, and was buried in the Mount Lebanon Cemetery in the suburbs of Washington DC. He mailed letters to friends in Philadelphia, who wrote back. I would just disappear and try to get healthy.". But Hunt (Tom Cruise) is also a master of disguise and a cunning tactician how else can he so reliably get into high-tech, impossibly fortified buildings? Caro Quintero believed his operation had the protection of the Mexican army, and the CIA, since he owned a farm used to train the U.S.-backed Contras. In 1981, the situation intensified again when the crime family commanded him to kill an adversary. But he also remembered their "morally superior" attitude to the Aids epidemic - their belief that it "served the Americans right" and their determination to protect the motherland from infection. Like many undercover agents before him, he began to realise that much of what he had been taught about the West - that it was an "evil" system on the brink of economic and social collapse - was a lie. Using the name Donnie Brasco, he infiltrated the New York Mafia and helped produce 200 indictments. Also present, thanks to rampant corruption bought by the Guadalajara cartel, were Mexicos minister of domestic affairs and DFA chief Manuel Bartlett Diaz, plus Mexicos defense minister, the head of Mexicos Interpol office and the governor of the state of Jalisco. "I wouldn't mind meeting one or two of those fellows I worked with and saying 'Hey, see I did it! He had then worked on a remote farm for years before deciding "to give life another chance and move back to New York city".