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Никто не знал, что он агент.

Никто не знал, что он агент.
No one knew that he was an agent.
From Lesson 462:Crime and investigation II (убийство, агент)·Russian

Questions & Answers about Никто не знал, что он агент.

The English translation says "was an agent", but the Russian says он агент (he is an agent). Why isn't it он был агент?
In Russian reported speech or thought, you keep the tense from the original moment. Since the fact at the time was "he is an agent" (present tense), Russian uses the present tense он агент, even though the main verb не знал is in the past. If you said что он был агентом, it would mean no one knew he had previously been an agent before that time.
If I did want to say "no one knew he had been an agent," would I use агент or агентом with был?
You would typically use the instrumental case: что он был агентом. With the past tense verb был (was), professions and roles almost always take the instrumental case. Because our sentence uses the present tense (meaning the verb "is" is invisible), агент stays in the nominative case.
Would the verb change to знала or знали if we were talking specifically about a group of women?
No, the pronoun никто (no one) grammatically requires masculine singular agreement in the past tense (знал), entirely regardless of the real-world gender or number of the people you are talking about.

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