Alfred Redl
Alfred Redl (1864 – 1913) was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, who rose to become chief of that empire’s counterintelligence from 1900 to 1912, in charge of tracking down and rooting out traitors and spies. All the while, he was himself a traitor, betraying his country and selling its secrets to its main rival and likeliest future enemy, tsarist Russia, whose chief spy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire he became. It is suspected that he also spied for both the French and Italians in exchange for money.
The son of a railway clerk, Redl was born into a poor family in the Galician province of Austria-Hungary, in what is now Ukraine. Notwithstanding his lack of wealth and family connections, the usual prerequisites in those days for joining the Austro-Hungarian Army’s officer ranks and advancing, Redl had been precocious from an early age and was highly intelligent, which enabled him to secure a commission.
He had a talent for languages, and his facility with Russian led to his assignment to the intelligence branch. There, he impressed its chief, a General von Geisl, whose protege Redl quickly became. In 1900, Geisl promoted Redl and made him his deputy, placing him in charge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s counterintelligence corps. Redl quickly gained a reputation for innovation in what had been a disorganized and backward branch, streamlining the system, and introducing new technologies such as the use of recording devices and cameras.
Redl, however, was gay, at a time when homosexuality was a taboo fatal to both social standing and career prospects. Russian intelligence learned of Redl’s homosexuality, entrapped him in a compromising position and caught it on camera, and used it to blackmail him into turning traitor, sweetening the extortion with the offer of money in exchange for secrets. Redl accepted, and in his first major act of treason, in 1902 he passed on to the Russians Austria-Hungary’s war plans. When word reached the Austrians that the Russians had a copy of their war plans, General von Geisl tasked Redl with finding the traitor.
Redl covered his tracks by unmasking minor Russian agents who were fed him by his tsarist spymasters, and by framing innocent Austro-Hungarian officers with falsified evidence, thus enhancing his reputation within the Austro-Hungarian establishment as a brilliant head of counterintelligence. Over the next 11 years, he sold the Russians Austro-Hungarian mobilization plans, army orders, ciphers, codes, maps, reports on road and rail conditions, and other secrets.
His career finally came to an end because of sloppiness by his handlers. In 1912, Redl’s mentor, von Geisl, was promoted to head an army corps and took Redl with him as his chief of staff. Postal censors working for Redl’s successor in counterintelligence intercepted envelopes stuffed with cash and nothing else, but with registration receipts tracing back to addresses abroad that were known to be used by Russian and French intelligence.
A sting operation was set up, the envelopes were delivered under surveillance, and Redl eventually showed up to claim them. Arrested, he confessed to treason and requested that he be left alone with a revolver. His request was granted, and after writing brief letters to his brother and to von Geisl, he committed suicide.