An Enterprising Intelligence Star
Alfred Redl (1864 – 1913) was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, who headed that empire’s counterintelligence from 1900 to 1912, in charge of rooting out traitors and spies. All the while, he was himself a traitor. Redl betrayed his country and sold its secrets to its main rival and likeliest future enemy, tsarist Russia, whose chief spy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire he became. His betrayal was not limited to espionage on behalf of the Russians: 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. Redl wanted to join the military, but he faced a serious handicap. He lacked wealth and family connections, the usual prerequisites in those days for admission into the Austro-Hungarian Army’s officer ranks and advancement.
Fortunately for Redl, he had been precocious from an early age and was highly intelligent. That enabled him to secure a commission. He had a talent for languages, and his facility with Russian got him assigned to the intelligence branch. There, he impressed its chief, a General von Geisl, whose protege Redl quickly became. In 1900, Geisl promoted Redl, made him his deputy, and placed 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 backwards branch. He streamlined the system, and introduced 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. As seen below, that left him vulnerable to blackmail.
