History Main / CityofSpies

** And again in the 60s and 70s. Everything that could go wrong in an increasingly rich country with a U.S. Friendly Monarchy and massive borders with the Soviet Union did go wrong. The two Soviet backed Communist parties (the Tudeh party and the Jangal party) were becoming increasingly popular, Mosaddeq and his bunch were doing anything they could to make the country into a full Democracy, the Shah and his American supporters wanted to maintain the fragile peace and in the middle of it all a certain charismatic cleric became ridiculously famous after causing a lot of trouble by encouraging hatred for Israel. There was a coup (ordered by, of course, Richard Nixon) and then there was a wave of StateSec arrests and communist terrorist organizations being formed.

* Tehran during UsefulNotes/WW2. Reza Shah's Pro-Axis administration was overthrown in a British coup a few weeks into the war and his Pro-Ally son was quickly crowned. British forces controlled the city while their enemies at the time (The Soviets) were ravaging the Gilan, Mazandaran and Azerbaijan regions just north of the Alborz mountains. The strong American, British, French, Russian and German presence in the city was one of the reasons the conference that finally got the Allies to pull themselves together was held there.
** And again in the 60s and 70s. Everything that could go wrong in an increasingly rich country with a U.S. Friendly Monarchy and massive borders with the Soviet Union did go wrong. The two Soviet backed Communist parties (the Tudeh party and the Jangal party) were becoming increasingly popular, Mosaddeq and his bunch were doing anything they could to make the country into a full Democracy, the Shah and his American supporters wanted to maintain the fragile peace and in the middle of it all a certain charismatic cleric became ridiculously famous after causing a lot of trouble by encouraging hatred for Israel. There was a coup (ordered by, of course, Richard Nixon) and then there was a wave of StateSec arrests and communist terrorist organizations being formed.

* Tehran during UsefulNotes/WW2. Local government was too weak to do anything with spies.

* ''Series/WonderWoman'': Washington, D.C. was a den of spies. From with [[TheMole Steve Trevor's first secretary]] (who Wonder Woman personally knocked out to take her job) to [[TheBaroness Baroness Von Gunther]] to [[SurgicalImpersonation spies posing as Treasury Department managers]], the first season had so many spies that there must have been a storage of both housing and abandoned warehouses.

** It isn't just technology that foreign operatives are after, but also political influence and intel. California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, one of the longest-serving U.S. Senators to date and a native of San Francisco, was revealed in 2018 to have had [[https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/01/details-chinese-spy-dianne-feinstein-san-francisco/ a Chinese spy on her staff]] that had been working for her for ''20 years.'' Feinstein's office only found out about it in 2013, after which they quietly fired him (no other information about this person has been officially publicized, but one media outlet believes he may be Russell Lowe, [[[[http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/06/feinstein-chinese-spy/ who matches all the information available]]).

** It isn't just technology that foreign operatives are after, but also political influence and intel. California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, one of the longest-serving U.S. Senators to date and a native of San Francisco, was revealed in 2018 to have had [[https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/01/details-chinese-spy-dianne-feinstein-san-francisco/ a Chinese spy on her staff]] that had been working for her for ''20 years.'' Feinstein's office only found out about it in 2013, after which they quietly fired him (no other information about this person has been officially publicized, [[http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/06/feinstein-chinese-spy/ but one media outlet believes he may be Russell Lowe, who matches all the information available]]).

* San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area region in the 21st century. Due to the presence of Silicon Valley and the many technology & media companies engaged in cutting edge research, countries all over the world [[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/27/silicon-valley-spies-china-russia-219071 are flooding the city with spies to steal as much tech as possible.]]

* San Francisco in the 21st century. Due to the presence of Silicon Valley and the many technology & media companies engaged in cutting edge research, countries all over the world [[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/27/silicon-valley-spies-china-russia-219071 are flooding the city with spies to steal as much tech as possible.]]

* Kathmandu (since about the early 2000s): With Nepal being sandwiched between the two next likely superpowers, and a strategic prize for either, the capital has become like this. Sympathetic towards India mostly, but makes sure to keep Beijing in the loop.

** For a while it looked like that Helsinki had lost its importance as a spy city in the aftermath of the Cold War as Finland was no longer situated in between two powerful military alliances. However following the Russian annexation of Crimea military intervention in Syria and the resulting tensions with the United States, spy activity has once again spiked and according to Finnish Security Intelligence Service it has reached Cold War era levels.

* The Village in ''Series/ThePrisoner.'' All the inhabitants are forcibly retired spies.

** More recently, spy swaps between countries like the US, Russia and Britain have still been known to take place in the area. The (now infamous) MI6 informant Colonel Sergei Skripal was 'exchanged' at Schwechat airport in the early 2000s.

** More recently, spy swaps between countries like the US, Russia and Britain have still been known to take place in the area. The (now infamous) MI6 informant Colonel Sergei Skripal was 'exchanged' at a Viennese airport in the early 2000s.

* Vienna (UsefulNotes/ColdWar). Most people don't realize this, but Austria, like Germany, was carved up into four occupation zones after the end of World War II, with Vienna also being divided. The terms under which the occupation of Austria ended mandated that Austria become a neutral state, which it did, so its situation ended up being rather like Finland's. Also, a large number of international institutions are based in or have major offices in Vienna; of these, the most important are the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

->''"Let me pass on to you the one thing I've learned about this place. '''No one''' here is exactly what he appears. Not Mollari, not Delenn, not Sinclair... And not me."''

* In the ''Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures'' novel ''Death and Diplomacy'', spying, deception and intrigue are the [[PlanetOfHats Hat]] of the Saloi, to the point that every Saloi is secretly spying on not only their two enemy cultures, but every other Saloi. (Except it's ''not'' a secret, because everybody ''knows'' that, so maybe that's just what they ''want'' people to think, and so on...)

* Grantville in ''Literature/{{1632}}'' becomes this in later books, as everyone and his mother wants to get their hands on up-time technology. Subverted in that the spying is done fairly openly - most of the information they want is public knowledge, and the Americans don't actually care that much.

* Tallinn, Estonia (Today), because it was once part of the Soviet Union, but is now firmly in the Western camp (part of the EU and NATO). Since 2008 the city is home to the UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} Cyber Defense Center. This last is not particularly surprising: Internet penetration in Estonia is ridiculously high (the country was the first to hold official online elections), the country has a large number of internet-based companies, and Estonian systems are a common target for Russian hackers.

* The AI in ''VideoGame/CivilizationV'' will almost always plant its spies in the city with the highest espionage potential (because they can steal technologies from it faster), which is based on science output per turn and therefore [[ArtificialStupidity almost certainly a/the player's capital]], especially in single-player. Place one counterspy in your capital and watch him rapidly level up to Special Agent by killing spies from around the world every few turns as world leader after world leader crawls to you, embarrassed and begging for forgiveness.

* Pottsylvania from ''RockyAndBullwinkle'' is shown to be a whole country of spies in the few times it is shown.