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Because their recruitment occurred in the remote past, moles are difficult for a nation's security services to detect. The possibility that a top politician, corporate executive, government minister, or officer in an intelligence service could be a mole working for a foreign government is the worst
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In addition, the security clearance process weeds out employees who are openly disgruntled, ideologically disaffected, or otherwise having motives for betraying their country, so people in such positions are likely to reject recruitment as spies. Therefore, some intelligence services have tried to
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within an organization (government or private). 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.
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reverse the above process by first recruiting potential agents and then having them conceal their allegiance and pursue careers in the target government agency in the hope that they can reach positions of access to desired information.
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A mole may be recruited early in life, and take decades to get a job in government service and reach a position of access to secret information before becoming active as a spy. Perhaps the most famous examples of moles were the
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between 1954 and 1975, was reportedly obsessed with suspicions that the top levels of
Western governments were riddled with long-term communist agents and accused numerous politicians such as former U.S. Secretary of State
108:(espionage agent) who is recruited before having access to secret intelligence, subsequently managing to get into the target organization. However, it is popularly used to mean any long-term clandestine spy or
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Because the spy career of a mole is so long-term, sometimes occupying most of a lifetime, those who become moles must be highly motivated. One common motivation is ideology (political convictions). During the
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to recruit agents is to find the location within the foreign government or organization of the information they want (the
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and has since entered general usage, but its origin is unclear, as well as to what extent it was used by
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Moles have been featured in numerous espionage films, television shows, video games and novels.
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Why Do We Say It?: the stories behind the words, expressions and cliches we use
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in the 1930s who later rose to high levels in various parts of the
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Le Carré, John; Bruccoli, Matthew J; Baughman, Judith (2004).
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before it became popularized. Le Carré, a former
British
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