Sexpionage

Sexpionage is the involvement of sexual activity (or the possibility of sexual activity), intimacy, romance, or seduction in espionage. Sex, or the possibility of sex, can function as a distraction, incentive, cover story, or unintended part of any intelligence operation.

In the Soviet Union, female agents assigned to use such tactics were referred to as "swallows", while male agents were known as "ravens". A commonly known type of sexpionage is a honey trap operation, which is designed to compromise an opponent sexually to elicit information from that person.

Sexpionage is a historically documented phenomenon, though a 2008 CIA review of intelligence in public literature called The Intelligence Officer’s Bookshelf, compiled and reviewed by Hayden B. Peake, noted that then-recent books on the subject suffered from factual errors and a lack of supporting documentation.

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