Introducing the Human Intelligence Exposures (HEX) Dataset

Abstract This paper introduces the Human Intelligence Exposure (HEX) dataset, designed to enhance our understanding of espionage and its exposure. HEX will aid researchers, policymakers, and intelligence practitioners in evaluating the effects of public exposures and the success or failure of intelligence and counterintelligence efforts across many topics and regions. The HEX dataset includes 483 observations across 47 dyads and 48 states, spans the years 1946 through 2010, and includes data on the motivations of spies (money, ideology, coercion, ego), their official professions, prison sentencing in years, life sentences (82), death sentences (229), and more than 2,100 confirmed arrests. Official state personnel and those motivated by money were the most frequently accused, and police/intelligence, diplomats, and (ex)military accounted for more than half of all exposures otherwise. Within the dataset, exposures most frequently included the United States and either Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, or China.