'Flamingo' was a German operation planned by Oberstleutnant Richard Gehlen, head of the Fremde Heere Ost (the German army’s intelligence department concerned with the Soviet army), to plant and run one Mishinsky, a Soviet senior commissar and high-ranking communist party official captured in October 1941, within the Soviet high command (1942).

Mishinsky 'escaped' from German captivity with a mass of 'information' useful to the Soviets, and after being welcomed back into the Soviet fold supplied a vast amount of high-level information to the Germans. Similar operations resulted in the location of agents in all levels of the Soviet administration and armed forces.