SpyCast
SpyCast
300 episodes
SpyCast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum, is a journey into the shadows of international espionage. Each week, host Sasha Ingber brings you the latest insights and intriguing tales from spies, secret agents, and covert communicators, with a focus on how this secret world reaches us all in our everyday lives. Tune in to discover the critical role intelligence has played throughout history and today. Brought to you from Airwave, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum.
More about the show
The Spy Museum does not endorse, approve, or support the opinions stated by guest speakers. Statements made by speakers do not represent the position or opinion of the International Spy Museum.
Episodes page 1 of 6
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General Petraeus on Ukraine and the Shadow War
Winter is coming, and that means Ukraine has to gear up for another brutal season of strikes on its energy infrastructure - Russia’s bid to cut off power and heat, making life harder for all Ukrainians. Earlier this…
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Unraveling a Secret KGB Investigation That Separated a Father and Son
The Kremlin is not a fan of Alex Goldfarb. He left the Soviet Union as a scientist, becoming a prominent author and human rights activist. In 2006, he was in the room with ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, reading…
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Ukraine’s Nord Stream Attack: Underwater Sabotage and Its Fallout
Correction: At 3:27, Bojan Pancevski refers to the “Danish” military intelligence agency. He meant the Dutch military intelligence agency, which picked up the intelligence and passed it to the CIA. The trial of a…
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A Plan to Be Captured: How Three American Commandos Deceived Their Nazi Captors Before D-Day
In the spring of 1944, three elite commandos parachuted into Hungary. The country was aligned with Nazi Germany, and these men intended to be captured in what was meant to look like a failed operation. Their real…
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Inside Sweden's Cold War Stay-Behind Operation
It was preparation for an invasion that might never come, and never did. Across Cold War Europe, stay-behind networks were established on the premise that Soviet forces might successfully invade and occupy sovereign…
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How the CIA Captured Carlos the Jackal
Before he became one of the world's most notorious terrorists in the 1970s and '80s, inspiring movies, books, and future terrorists, Carlos the Jackal was born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez to a privileged family in Venezuela.…
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A House Divided: The CIA, State, and a Coup in South Vietnam
It's a dark moment in American history that leads to a lot of what-ifs. By the spring of 1963, eight years into the Vietnam War, two opposing factions across the CIA and the State Department had President John F.…
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25 Years After 9/11: The CIA's First Moments Behind Enemy Lines in Afghanistan
Retired Colonel Justin Sapp was a Green Beret detailed to the CIA after the September 11th terrorist attacks. He was part of Team Alpha, the first eight Americans to drop behind enemy lines into the mountains of…
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Japanese Surveillance, Enslavement, and Experimentation in Wartime China
Graphic content warning: Not recommended for younger listeners. This episode contains material that may be triggering to some audiences, including violence and harm, medical and bodily content, sexual abuse, sexual…
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Peter Ortiz: The WWII Marine Who Foreshadowed Modern-Day Special Forces
In 2017, journalist Katie Sanders discovered an episode of a radio program called This Is Your Life. It was a scratchy recording from 1949, and she heard the voice of 2nd Lt. Murray Simon, her grandfather, for the…
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What It Takes to Run the CIA's Southeast Asia Department
You might find Meredith Cavan playing music in an Irish pub. But long before her first album dropped, she clocked more than 20 years at the CIA. One of her jobs there was Southeast Asia Department chief, where she…
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Cuba's Spies, Defectors, and the Ex-FBI Agent Who Met Them All
For decades, Cuban intelligence has been seen as a force that punches above its weight. Shaped during the Cold War through cooperation with the Soviet Union, its intelligence officers received extensive training by the…
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Smears, Fakes & Phantoms: Cold War Britain's Secret Propaganda Department
In Cold War Britain, a secret propaganda department saw its list of targets and tactics widen. Personnel inside the Information Research Department went beyond forgeries, fakes, and plants, conducting bold…
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Murder in Mexico City: The Assassination of Leon Trotsky
For those of you who have visited the International Spy Museum, you may be familiar with one of our most prized artifacts, the ice ax used to assassinate Leon Trotsky in 1940. Trotsky was the operational mastermind of…
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The Triumphs and Failures of France's Foreign Intel Service
The DGSE, or Directorate General for External Security, is France's foreign intelligence service. It's found inside the Ministry of Defense but reports to the president. It was established under that name in 1982,…
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Inside China's Cyber Espionage Business
Ahana Datta Fasel became the British government’s first ethical hacker in 2014, testing vulnerabilities in computer systems and networks that hackers could potentially exploit. She was only 23, but that gave her an…
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The Navy Spy who Sold Secrets for $377 a Year
You may have heard of the long-running TV show NCIS, based on the real work of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. But you may never have heard of a unit inside it, called the Office of Special Projects, where…
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Closer than Cuba: the Able Archer Nuclear Crisis of 1983
It's November of 1983, the closest the world came to nuclear war, some may argue even closer than the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Yet the Able Archer 1983 exercise incident is relatively unknown by comparison. A…
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Putin’s Paramilitary 2.0
Since its emergence in 2014, the Wagner Group operated as the Kremlin's shadow army, deploying mercenaries across Africa and the Middle East. It gave Vladimir Putin plausible deniability, expanding Moscow's…
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Tricked and Extradited: Inside the First FBI Operation to Lure a Chinese Spy to the US
The FBI won’t discuss exactly how Chinese spy Xu Yanjun came to the attention of special agents. Xu was handling a GE Aviation engineer in Ohio who specialized in composite fan-blade technology. That engineer, David…
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The Flip That Broke the Cali Cartel
Now that drug cartels can be labeled foreign terrorist organizations, how do you dismantle one? As part of his 26 years at the Drug Enforcement Administration, retired Special Agent Chris Feistl was on a team that…
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The Weather Report that Changed History
"If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone." This is the end of the announcement Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight David Eisenhower had prepared in June 1944 in case the D-Day landings…
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From Cartels to Terrorists, the CIA, FBI, and White House: The Vast Career of Karen Schaefer
Karen Schaefer retired from the CIA in 2019, after 26 years of service. She started out in Latin America and ended with a stint at the FBI. In between, she earned numerous intelligence awards and held key positions…
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From Ivory Tower to Iron Curtain: The Academics Who Reshaped the CIA
In 1947, a new civilian intelligence agency was established: the CIA. But a series of intelligence failures undermined its credibility. The White House and Congress were up in arms, and a new mission was formed- to…
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The Civil War Spies and Saboteurs Across the Canadian Border
It’s 1864, and against the backdrop of the US Civil War- a war the Confederacy is losing- a group of spies and saboteurs have set up a base in Montreal, Canada. Today we would call this a sanctuary or a safe haven.…
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How Far the US Went to Rescue Hostage Bowe Bergdahl
In 2009, Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his Army post in eastern Afghanistan, only to be abducted and held hostage until 2014. He was captured by the Taliban and then handed to the Haqqani network, an aligned terrorist…
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From the Kaiser to the Führer: Inside the World of Lothar Witzke
One of the more notorious German spies of the 20th century, Lothar Witzke lived a life of intrigue: from escaping the death penalty in the First World War to joining the Nazi party in the Second. It's a story that…
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The Hunt for American Turncoats in World War II Europe
It’s a story that journalist and veteran Stephen Harding uncovered: a secret component of the FBI’s “European Operation,” whereby agents traveled abroad working undercover to track down American citizens who had…
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The Story Isn't Over: Inside Havana Syndrome and the CIA’s Response
Confusion and controversy are growing around the intelligence community’s handling of Havana Syndrome. This is what the government refers to as Anomalous Health Incidents, or AHIs. The mysterious health condition has…
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Palmer Luckey on the Next Generation of Intelligence
He may dress like he’s on a vacation in Hawaii, but Palmer Luckey has been busy designing weapons for the Pentagon. He founded California-based defense technology firm, Anduril, in 2017, named after a sword from the…
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Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin: Lies, Spies, and Hitler
Half-truths. Lies. Distrust. And spying. These were part and parcel of the tenuous relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin - the “Big Three” who were eventually brought together…
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Fake Shahs and Exfiltrations: Memories from CIA's Former Disguise Chief
Jonna Mendez knows how to blend in and when to stand out. Starting out as a secretary at the CIA, she left as its Chief of Disguise. Her career took her into denied areas, where her special abilities assisted in a…
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When the CIA Lost a Nuclear Device in India
In the 1960s, the CIA lost a plutonium-fueled generator on top of a mountain in India. The generator was supposed to power an unmanned listening station, intended to pick up signals from China’s missile tests. But when…
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AI Companions May Be China's Next Recruitment Tool
When you’re sitting alone, and you want company or advice, have you ever turned to Artificial Intelligence? Chip Usher, who spent 32 years in the CIA, has been looking at AI companions. The tech companies behind them…
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Roald Dahl: The Spy Behind the Storyteller
Children grew up reading Roald Dahl’s tales of giant peaches and chocolate factories. Adults know about the controversy surrounding the antisemitic statements he made in his later years. But before becoming one of the…
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In Bed With Beijing: The Double Agent Who Seduced Her FBI Handler
Katrina Leung, code name Parlor Maid, received nearly two million dollars from the FBI for being their top China informant. But little did the Bureau know… she was a double agent, collecting intelligence for China’s…
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Exfiltrating María Corina Machado from Venezuela
Before Delta Force captured Nicolás Maduro, Bryan Stern went on a secret mission in Venezuela. The veteran and Purple Heart recipient was there to extract opposition leader María Corina Machado, who had been living in…
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Hezbollah’s Long Game in Latin America
A 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina opened the world’s eyes to Hezbollah’s presence in Latin America. But the Iranian proxy, a US-designated terrorist group, has operated in the region since the…
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Building the US’s First Known Gang Intelligence Database in Latin America
As an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who later embedded with the CIA, Wes Tabor worked to dismantle criminal networks in Central and South America - think gangs like MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel, and…
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Looking Back on the US Invasion of Panama
This January marks the anniversary of the conclusion of Operation Just Cause, which began days before Christmas, on December 20th, 1989, when about 27,000 US troops deployed to Panama. Their mission was to capture…
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Directing The Night Manager
When The Night Manager aired in 2016, it was an instant success. Based on the 1993 John le Carré novel of the same name, the series centered on former British soldier Jonathan Pine. In the show, Pine is recruited by…
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Inside the CIA’s Most Covert and Dangerous Branch: The Special Activities Center
For SpyCast’s 20th year, we’re kicking off the season with Brian Carbaugh. After serving in the CIA for over two decades, he retired as Director of the Special Activities Center- the Agency’s arm for covert action,…
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The Man Behind John le Carré
John le Carré, born David Cornwell in 1931, was a British novelist renowned for his morally complex spy fiction. Writing under a pen name gave him the freedom to publish while he worked in both MI5 and MI6, but after…
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Inside Operation Odyssey Lightning in Libya
From August to December 2016, then Marine Special Operations Officer Ivan Ingraham lived on an assault ship off the coast of Sirte, a city in northern Libya that lies between Tripoli and Benghazi. It was the hometown…
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Auctioning Off the Key to Kryptos
At the CIA headquarters in Langley, you will find Kryptos, a large curved copper panel that holds the letters to four encrypted messages. The first three messages- K1, K2, and K3- were solved in the nineties, but K4…
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An Interview with the CIA’s Former “Q”
Bob Wallace was appointed Deputy Director of the CIA’s Office of Technical Service in 1995 and became its director three years later. In other words, he was the CIA’s “Q.” The storied office dealt in microdots and…
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Inside the CIA’s Book Club Designed to Bring Down Communism
The CIA’s book club, known by the codename QRHELPFUL, was a secret 35-year program born of the fear that communism would dominate the globe. About 10 million books were smuggled into the Soviet Union during the Cold…
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The Hunt for China’s Spy Family
For decades, California-based engineer Chi Mak quietly stole secrets on war-fighting technologies. He and his family members shared the intelligence with spies in China, giving Beijing astounding insights they hadn’t…
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A Family of Spies and a Bloodline of Secrets
No other American has a family history quite like Christine Kuehn. Through years of doing painstaking interviews, hunting down letters, and pouring through FBI records, Christine learned that her German-born aunt had a…
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From the SpyCast Vault: The Lumumba Plot and The Station Chief's Story
In our last episode, author Stuart Reid peeled back the curtain on 'The Lumumba Plot,' the CIA’s plan to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically-elected Prime Minister of the Congo. Station Chief Larry…
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