A TIMELINE OF  ESPIONAGE

c.544-496 B.C.

Sun Tzu writes the Art of War about the importance of a secret intelligence system

218 A.D.

Hannibal places spies in Rome before he leads soldiers and elephants across the Alps into Italy

1587

Mary Queen of Scots is killed when Elizabeth I’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham discovers a conspiracy

1633

In France, Cardinal Richelieu creates the Cabinet Noir, a private agency that gathers secret intelligence for King Louis XIII

1653

Royalists in England form the Sealed Knot to get Charles II back on the throne

1778

Benjamin Tallmadge organizes the Culper Ring to spy on the British during the American Revolutionary War

1861

Allan Pinkerton is hired as the head of the Union Intelligence Service during the American Civil War

1909

The UK creates the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6

1914

WWI begins

1926

The German Army begins using the Enigma, a machine that creates coded messages

1938

The English mansion, Bletchley Park, becomes a center of secret training and code-breaking

1939

WWII begins

1947

The CIA is founded

1950

The atomic spies are uncovered. They gave secret information about the U.S., U.K., and Canadian nuclear bomb projects to the Soviet Union

1953

Ian Fleming writes the first James Bond book

1954

WWI beginsThe Soviet Union forms its own secret agency, the KGB

1960

The U.S. spy satellite, Discoverer 14, takes images of the Soviet Union from Space

1991

The Cold War between the Soviet Union and U.S. ends

2005

The U.S. creates a new intelligence strategy after the terrorist attacks on September 11th