Feeding the Mole in Literature.
- Used in the Belisarius Series when Belisarius and his allies specifically choose an assistant who they know is a weasel and who will report breathlessly to their political enemies exactly what they want him to believe is happening. (As a historical in-joke, said assistant is Procopius, whose Secret History still exists to this day, listing all manner of alleged scandals in the empire of the time.)
- The above tactic is also mentioned in the Bernard Samson Series — unimportant changes in format are placed in top secret reports sent to different government departments, so if a report is leaked the security services can narrow down where it came from.
- John C. Wright's Chronicles of Chaos: In Fugitives of Chaos, Amelia ponders whether Mrs. Wren accidentally or intentionally let slip that they were watching her — or possibly not, and some convolutions of what pose she wanted to take in order for them to interpret her knowledge.
- Attempted in the Dale Brown novel Day of the Cheetah when those involved with an experimental fighter project are each shown slightly different plans for modifications. Unfortunately, the Deep Cover Agent sees right through the ruse and decides not to pass on the information. He even invokes this trope when his handler insists he should have done so anyway.
- Lord Vetinari, Discworld's premiere Magnificent Bastard, uses fiendishly difficult encryptions to protect the semaphore messages he sends to his agents. What would-be codebreakers generally don't know is that he has access to absolutely unbreakable encryptions, but deliberately only uses the very, very difficult ones."Otherwise, how would he know what they thought he thought they were thinking?"
- The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth. At the beginning of the novel the protagonist uncovers a False Flag Operation feeding information to the Soviets. As the mole is a fervent anti-communist (he thought he was giving information to South Africa) British Intelligence decide to make the best of a bad situation and use him to funnel false information to the Soviets. Later they get information that the Soviets are smuggling a nuclear weapon into the country for an unknown purpose. The Chessmaster head of SIS, realising there's no way they can track down the remaining components in time, leaks information through the mole that the Soviet operation has been uncovered and the British are closing in. This causes his Soviet counterpart to deliberately blow the operation (which was being conducted by the General Secretary without his approval) in exchange for a guarantee by The Chessmaster that the whole affair will be covered up.
- Full Disclosure: When Ericson’s disgruntled mistress and personal photographer Buffie becomes a source for Bannerman, she is quickly found out and fed information meant to make Bannerman distrust his allies and fear for his job, although this doesn't deter him.
- Gentleman Bastard: The Republic of Thieves uses a tactic similar to the one from Clash of Kings. Locke and Jean realize that Sabetha has a mole among the Deep Roots party, so they feed three of the most important members a different target, and wait to see which one they go after.
- Robert A. Heinlein:
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Professor Bernardo de la Paz explains:The thing to do with a spy is to let him breathe, encyst him with loyal comrades, and feed him harmless information to please his employers...But it would be the greatest waste to eliminate them — not only would each spy be replaced with someone new, but also killing these traitors would tell the Warden that we have penetrated his secrets.
- Finding the spy involved giving each 'comrade' his own private telephone to "Adam Selene", and so when any number was used by a known Authority figure, boom, spy detected. This has an advantage over identifying them via the secret spy payroll, which could include loyal comrades who were simply taking the Authority's money and feeding them bullshit in return.
- What they do end up doing is putting all of the known moles together in their own cells, independent from the true ones, so the moles end up telling on each other.
- In Sixth Column, the fake church accepts anyone but checks to see if they are from the invaders; if they are, they are given horrible food, excessively harsh work assignments, and an easy opportunity to escape and tell the overlords that this is just another church and not an underground resistance organization.
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Professor Bernardo de la Paz explains:
- From Honor Harrington, one particular character is a high-ranking official of the Committee of Public Safety, and is assigned as the Political Officer to a high-ranking admiral. What the Committee is unaware of is that it's all an act; the official in question is not at all loyal to them, but to the true Constitution of the Republic that had not existed for over two centuries. On top of all that, she's in love with the admiral she's supposed to be reporting on. In possibly the most magnificent and dangerous bit of spycraft in the whole 'verse, she hides her true loyalties (and her relationship) for years, feeding a steady stream of misinformation to the other spies on her ship and to the Committee about the admiral (who shares her loyalties). In the end, they become a critical part of the Thomas Theisman coup that restores the true Republic. The character in question is Eloise Pritchart, the truly elected President of the restored Republic of Haven, a linchpin of the series and one of its most-loved characters, and the man she loves is Javier Giscard, the Republic's Fleet Admiral.
- In Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, it's part of the Back Story about why mockingjays are the symbol of rebellion. The story goes like this: During a time of rebellion, the Capitol created jabberjays, an all-male species of mutation that could memorize and repeat human conversation, and let them loose to spy on the rebels. Unfortunately, the rebels soon figured out what was going on and talked about false information in the jabberjays' range, leading to much embarrassment for the Capitol. When the Capitol realized what was going on, they abandoned the jabberjays, expecting them to die out. Instead, they survived by breeding with female mockingbirds, creating mockingjays.
- Jack Ryan:
- Used by the CIA, in The Hunt for Red October, to plant false information regarding the operation to gain control of the titular submarine for the sake of figuring out a longstanding leak. In his Backstory, Ryan became known to the British intelligence community through his proposal for the "Canary trap", which uses a computer program to randomize minor details of reports written more "flashy" than the traditionally staid "govermentese" normally used by the US government, to entice reporters to quote parts verbatim.
- Also used in the prequel Without Remorse, to determine who leaked news about the Song Tay raid. This culminates with John Kelley confronting the liberal stoner kid who was the source of the leak and offering him a choice between killing himself by lethal injection with heroin earlier taken from a dead pimp, or being shot through the head.
- The James Bond short story "The Property of a Lady", starts when it is revealed the Soviets are rewarding a known mole for her efforts, so MI6 can make more use of this trope.
- In Mara, Daughter of the Nile, Sheftu, the leader of La Résistance, has discovered evidence that Mara is The Mole for the queen, but is not completely sure. So he has Nekonkh feed her false information as a test of her loyalty. Although Mara is The Mole (or more accurately, a Double Agent), she has also Become The Mask, and does not betray Sheftu. Unfortunately, Sahure the juggler was also listening when Nekonkh Fed The Mole, and he is also The Mole.
- In Mr. Standfast, Richard Hannay is asked to help uncover a spy ring that's leaking British military secrets to the Germans during World War I. He assumes at first that the aim is to catch them in the act and arrest them, but Blenkiron quickly and firmly corrects him: they want the ring discovered intact if possible, so that it can be used to feed the Germans with disinformation.
- In Larry Niven's Oath of Fealty, terrorists are trying to take down an arcology, and they have inside information about the defenses of the arcology's hydrogen pipelines. After a test attack (by unknowing dupes), the security chief makes several upgrades to the defenses — and tells different people different things about the upgrades. When the terrorists arrive with countermeasures against some, but not all, of the new defenses, he knows who the mole is.
- In Jason Matthews' Red Sparrow, Vanya Egorov attempts to find the mole among his colleagues by employing a "canary trap": give each of them a piece of information with only one difference unique to each individual, and whichever version would come back to him would tell him who the mole was. The mole learns of another colleague's version of the story, allowing him to draw suspicion away from himself for a while. He later uses this to set his successor up without her knowledge.
- In Brian Jacques's Redwall, Cluny knows that Sela's trying to collect information on his plans in the hopes of getting a reward from Redwall Abbey. So he carefully ensures that she believes he wants to smash through the Abbey gates with a battering ram when he really intends to tunnel in while the defenders' attention is diverted elsewhere. (This trope is not connected to turnip'n'tater'n'beetroot pie.)
- In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the brothers Cai are fed misinformation so that Zhou Yu can set up Huang Gai's false defection. Another of Cao's spies, Jiang Gan, is also fed false information that leads to the execution of two of Cao Cao's most capable admirals.
- "The Thirty-Six Stratagems" also have this trope as one of them, and the name for it is "Let the Enemy's own spy sow discord in the Enemy camp".
- Samson and Delilah: Samson clearly knew his wife was trying to kill him, because every time she asked for the source of his super strength and he fed her a lie, armed soldiers would show up to test the lie.
- Sherlock Holmes: In "His Last Bow", Holmes has been posing as an Irish-American spy for the Germans for some time, feeding them a great deal of false information, meaning the German navy is facing English ships that are faster and better-armed than what they're expecting. Among other things.
- He also stresses the importance to Watson of collecting the information the Germans have gathered so as to know what is and is not known by them (once they remove what Holmes has been telling them).
- A Song of Ice and Fire: In A Clash of Kings, Tyrion assumes at least one of three members of the Decadent Court is Cersei's Mole, and so feeds them all different stories to see which one gets back to her. Tyrion even singles out one of these three whose motives are still mysterious and and tells him everything he's doing and why, thereby trapping the schemer between the choice of playing along or passing the info and thus letting Tyrion know he's truly an enemy. Hell with Littlefinger, Tyrion is the true Magnificent Bastard.
- Star Wars Legends:
- In New Jedi Order, Mara Jade is given the task of feeding controlled disinformation to the many spies within the Alliance government.
- A specific case with Tam Elgrin in the Enemy Lines duology in this series. He's been enslaved and conditioned to spy for the Yuuzhan Vong, and is subjected to intense (and potentially lethal) headaches if he fails to comply. He's also not particularly competent as a spy, and the heroes twig on to him fairly quickly. He ends up sending critical false information to the Yuuzhan Vong. After Tam is freed from his conditioning, he eventually makes the discovery about the false information (foiling a Yuuzhan Vong infiltrator in the process), and is much relieved that his spying did more harm than good to the Yuuzhan Vong.
- In the much earlier-set X-Wing Series, Han Solo was personally flying around slightly-modified sets of orders to check for leaks in communications (quite a valid worry, since the New Republic had lost at least one force to bad intel already). And don't even get started on the plot involving Tycho Celchu (who isn't an Imperial spy, but is suspected [and put on trial for!] being one) and Erisi Dlarit, who really is (the real agent's existence is suspected, but not known for sure). General Cracken and Ysanne Isard are involved, so it's gonna get complicated.
- Used more simply when it was discovered that there was a mole among one of Rogue Squadron's trading partners. Talon Karrde offered to let them execute her in whichever way they desired — he's got a really good reputation to uphold, after all, and having your trading partners sold out to the authorities is bad for business — but they opt to feed her a little information first, letting her find their base in order to draw out the enemy while making it look like they're still taking Properly Paranoid precautions to hide it so that a trap won't be suspected. It takes a lot of money for them to convince Karrde to hold off on executing the traitor until after they're done feeding her.
- In Mercy Kill, "Face" Loran pulls off a stunning example of this on his boss. The Wraiths have been formally disbanded, but the head of Alliance Intelligence feels they might still be useful, so he asks Face to Put The Band Back Together for One Last Job. But Face is suspicious that his reports might end up in enemy hands, so he secretly assembles two teams of Wraiths (in case one is caught, the other can continue the mission) and sends back reports about a third, entirely fictitious team. Sure enough, the head of Intelligence passes on the fake dossiers to the villain and unwittingly exposes his true nature to Face, who takes him down.
- Attempted in The Thrawn Trilogy to identify the ominous Delta Source once the good guys get the mean to decrypt the reports the Source sends to Thrawn. It doesn't work since the Delta Source is not a person. It still proves useful because it pins down the location of Delta Source, which turns out to be an ingeniously hidden recording system.
- In Han Solo at Star's End, Han has discovered the planet that the secret CSA prison is on, and knows that one of his crew is a mole but not which one. So he has the crew do research on the place. But he tells each of them a slightly incorrect name for the planet, knowing that the Mole would unconsciously look up the correct name.
- In New Jedi Order, Mara Jade is given the task of feeding controlled disinformation to the many spies within the Alliance government.
- In "A Tall Tail" by Charles Stross, the Americans come up with the idea of sabotaging the Soviet missile and space program by dreaming up the most technologically ridiculous, dangerous, and unworkable rocket propulsion system they can imagine, and then carefully leaking the information to known Soviet agents except for the supposedly top-secret material which makes the system workable (which doesn't exist), hoping the Soviets will get distracted trying to figure out how the Americans did it, and possibly losing a few test facilities along the way due to the inevitable accidents. To their utter astonishment, the Soviets make it work. Sort of. Once.
- Suggested as a tactic for figuring out who in their spy network has been compromised in The Tamuli, although it ends up not happening.
- In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré, the sort of intelligence deemed suitable for leaking to moles is dubbed "Chickenfeed". The cabal of high-level intelligence officials believe that they are only giving chickenfeed to their pet Soviet mole, while one of their number is in fact feeding the mole with real, vital intelligence. Similarly, they view the intelligence supplied back to them as being gold; Smiley, however, is suspicious from the get-go — "Topicality is always suspect," he remarks of the first report — and confirms in the end that it was all Karla's chickenfeed, with just a few scraps of the good stuff at the start in order to bait the hook.
- Tortall Universe: In the Trickster's Duet, Aly feeds every mole she can find. She even, at one point, manages to get herself made one of them in Trickster's Queen.
- Once the 'villains' of Villains by Necessity learn that Robin is a spy, they tell him a decidedly outlandish story about their alleged plans to report to Mizzamir. The wizard wasn't fooled by the fake intelligence for long, if at all.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel His Last Command, when Ludd reports Gaunt's unusual behavior to Commissiar Balshin, and apologizes, Gaunt explains that he had counted on it. Balshin would have ignored his report. This way, he could lure her to a place where she could see the truth of his words for herself.
- In Graham McNeill's Ultramarines novel Nightbringer, when they arrive on planet, Talhoun comes to greet them. Barzano observes afterward that now he knows he can not trust Ballion. He had suspected that it was so, and now he also knows whose pocket Ballion is in.
- In Dead Sky Black Sun, Honsou uses this to destroy an effort to undermine his fortress.
- In William King's Space Wolf novel Wolfblade, when Gabriella's aunt, who married into a different House, gets her some information, Torin and Ragnor discuss the possible permutations of Feed the Mole that might be going on. Even if it's a trap, it might be good information, to be a good bait.
- In Ben Counter's Grey Knights novel Hammer of Daemons, Alaric tells an eldar, a fellow captive, that he does not trust eldar because of a certain battle, implying he had fought in it. Later, he refuses to let the eldar on the ship, because his captor had said he had been in that battle, when in truth, Alaric had just heard of it. Only the eldar could have told him that. Then Alaric accuses him of having long been The Mole.
- Discussed several times in The Wheel of Time, when Elayne, Perrin, Faile, various Seanchan, and Rand himself deal spies.
- In Worm, Wards member Chariot is a known agent of Coil, a local Diabolical Mastermind. The Wards become aware of this, and decide to use Chariot, because as a powerful tinker with a specialization in transportation he's highly useful, and so that they can feed Coil misinformation. Coil may or may not have been aware of this, but in any case, it's irrelevant to his plans, which only needed Chariot to be present in one specific battle.
