Difference between an Intelligence Officer and a Spy

This is one that popped into my head recently.

I'd always assumed Spy and Intelligence officer were vaguely the same thing, but apparently, there is a difference in exactly what they do, although there's some overlap...I think.

So I'm coming here to get some clarification. Does anyone know the difference? And for that matter, any similarities between them?

I'm no expert and I don't think these are standard terms. But my read would be that the main difference is that a spy engages in active human espionage (think James Bond, but a lot more boring and occasionally even using a different name), while an intelligence officer is engaged in planning of operations, analysis of information, or gathering of electronic intelligence (think...uh...I guess various tech guys from various spy movies?). Wikipedia has a more elaborate breakdown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_officer).

Link doesn't seem to work. Says it doesn't have an article with that exact name. You may have made a spelling mistake when writing it or something.

Remove the closing parenthesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_officer

"Intelligence officer" is a pretty specific term, meaning someone who is formally employed by an intelligence body. The work they do can range from combing the news and social media for materials, to analysing and interpreting the information collected (which I believe is what the majority of the workforce at any given intelligence body is devoted to), to recruiting people on the field to collect information on their behalf, to snooping about and doing the collection themselves.

The last part is what we usually associate with the word "spy". Espionage, in common use, is usually distinguished from other forms of intelligence work through its aggressive and often illegal nature. Because of that connotation, you wouldn't, in polite company, typically refer to someone on your side as a "spy" doing "espionage".

There's a scene in Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising where the Soviet government, looking for a pretext to invade West Germany, stages a terrorist attack on the Moscow Kremlin and then fishes out an alleged West German spy, who makes an Engineered Public Confession declaring that he was sent by the latter country's intelligence agency in a plot to reunify the two Germanies by force. Here's a passage from that scene, told from the viewpoint of a pair of CIA analysts watching it on TV:

So would you call someone on your side a "spy" when no one is listening? Well, you could. But that's not the whole story.

See, movies make it look easy to sneak into a foreign place undetected. In order to nab Baddie McBadguy from his lair deep in Country B, all that Agent Coll Bitzron from Country A needs to do is take a short language course, learn a few trivia items about their culture and triangulate the poshest club where all the brooding yet eligible ladies hang out. Real life, on the other hand, isn't a sexy power fantasy, and without deep prior grounding in his operating area, it's unlikely that Agent Coll's heavily-accented pick-up lines will come across as any more "local" or suave than the average Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist getting inebriated at the local expat bar. And that's before he gets caught sneaking about somewhere he's not supposed to.

So what else can you do? You recruit someone who's already in a position to get access to what you want.

It could be a businessperson from Country A, who deals with their counterparts from Country B on the regular and knows how to recruit a select few insiders with access to its industrial secrets. Or it could be one of Country B's military officers, not feeling particularly traitorous towards their home country but nonetheless mad at their Bad Boss for some past slight and wanting payback. Or maybe it's a low-paid migrant from Country C who works at a certain government building and is familiar with its floor plan.

These people might be doing it for money, or ideology, or any kind of personal motivation. They might not even be aware that they're working for Agent Coll, specifically — as far as they're aware, he might just as well be a nice, well-read embassy guy who struck up a conversation with them at a dinner reception and likes to question them on a few interesting issues. What they have in common is that they didn't sign a contract with the agency that Agent Coll works for. They might be compensated behind the scenes; but the point is, the agency is offloading the work to someone who 1) can do it better than any of their own officers, and 2) wouldn't pose a huge liability to Country A if they get captured or otherwise compromised.

You could broadly refer to these people as "informants", "sources" or, more commonly nowadays, "assets". You "cultivate" them by building up the relationship between them and the officer in charge of their case, as well as helping them get in a better position to gather more information — like, say, by giving them money to bribe their way through the ranks. They might develop a personal loyalty to the country they're working for in the process. But then again, it's just as likely that they're feeding back information to the other side, or manipulating Agent Coll and his employers to enrich themselves.

Either way, you probably wouldn't want to get too attached to them — and while they might be useful enough to merit being referred to as an "agent" or "operative" off the record, they exist in a different legal realm from the formally-employed officers that the agency holds full responsibility for.

As a TL;DR: Are all intelligence officers spies? Depends on how you define spying — but if that definition involves sneaking about where you're not supposed to and gathering information through illegal means, then only a small subset of them are. Conversely, a lot of spies definitely aren't intelligence officers, and their employers would prefer to keep it that way.

To me, an intelligence officer is doing analysis away from the front line (and also seems more related to straight-up military operations). A spy is in the field gathering intelligence, and it honestly feels like more of a pejorative; like a spy would more likely use "intelligence agent."

So basically, a spy is the field guy, while the Intelligence Officer does their work in the office, but the two can overlap?

An intelligence officer can absolutely work in the field, usually using diplomatic cover. His/her job would be communicating with the spies who are working on behalf of the officer's country.

I see. So for the most part, they're more coordinators of all the spy work, and while they can go into the field, they're not the ones gathering the info the way a spy does?

So I guess, you could be a spy who then became an Intelligence Officer afterwards then?

Almost never. The majority of "spies" are citizens of the country they are spying on, are breaking the law, and are not employees of the agency that is collecting the information they are gathering.

Sometimes spies are offered asylum in the country of the intelligence agency, esp. by Western countries during the Cold War.

Huh. I had no idea.

So there's a bit of overlap, but officially, they aren't really the same thing are they?

Not remotely.

Edited by DeMarquis on Jan 21st 2022 at 7:08:41 AM

Huh.

I guess that's that.

Not what I was expecting. Like, I assumed somebody in Intelligence would have at least come from Espionage, maybe been a spy themselves.

Shows what I know. And it seems there's a big difference between a Intelligence Officer in the field and an actually secret agent / spy / whatever too.

I guess I'm irked cause I had a thought about a character having been a spy, and then becoming an Intelligence Officer themselves, but that seems unlikely now.

There is one exception. Sometimes people who have a legitamate reason to travel to a foriegn country are recruited to gather intelligence in that country (for example, businessmen who travel overseas to some goods, and then secretly collect information for their home country. Journalists are another possibility). It's rare, but it happens. It's even rarer for such a person to officially join the intelligence service upon their return, but that could happen.

Besides the practical reasons already told (the people who can blend in better with the local population are the ones who already belong to it), there are also political reasons for not wanting your "informants" (or spies) to be officially employed by your intelligence agency, and that is plausible deniability. If a random guy in Country B is caught sneaking around where they're not supposed to, Country A can deny any involvement. But, if an intelligence officer of Country A is caught, then the shit will hit the diplomatic fan very soon.