SpyCast
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.
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.
576
Putin’s End Game in Ukraine
Peter and SPY Historian Vince Houghton are joined by retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin. They discuss the current confrontation between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea, Crimea’s strategic place in Russian history, and the potential conflict over Ukr...
26 min
577
America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists...
Intelligence historian Hugh Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIA’s pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agency’s three most influential—and colorful—officers in the Middle East: Kermit Roosevelt, Archie Roose...
50 min
578
Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying...
Six months after the 9/11 attacks, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly initiated a straightforward, yet audacious, antiterrorist plan to be implemented in the Big Apple, dispatching a vast network of undercover officers and informants to track suspe...
50 min
579
Author Debriefing: Cyber War Will Not Take Place
Is cyber war really coming? Renowned scholar Thomas Rid of the Department of War Studies at Kings College London argues that the focus on war distracts from the real challenge of cyberspace: non-violent confrontation that may rival or even replace vio...
56 min
580
Shadow Warrior: William Egan Colby and the CIA
Historian Randall B. Woods of the University of Arkansas discusses his new biography of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the postwar period: William Egan Colby. World War II commando, Cold War spy, CIA station chief in Saigon, a...
51 min
581
The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of America...
When 26 Army nurses and medics boarded a transport plane in November, 1943, they never anticipated the crash landing in Nazi-occupied Albania that would lead to their months-long struggle for survival. The group dodged bullets and battled blinding win...
36 min
582
The Life of a Military Attaché: Moscow, Almaty...
In this continuation of the discussion with US Army Colonel James Cox, we hear about the day-to-day work of US military attachés: being military diplomats for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Colonel Cox tells SPY Historian Mark Stout what it was like...
16 min
583
The CIA Analyst and the Polish Colonel
During the 1970s, Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski was a rising star in the Polish General Staff during the Cold War. He was also a spy for the CIA. Colonel Aris Pappas was a rising star in the CIA’s analytic ranks whose specialty was Poland. Pappas sat do...
50 min
584
The Life of a Military Attaché: Moscow During ...
In the summer of 1991, US Army Colonel James Cox arrived in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, to serve as Assistant Army Attaché. Little did he know that Communist hardliners were about to launch a coup. When the coup started, the intelligence...
43 min
585
Espionage in Traditional China
Sun Tzu’s 2500 year old book The Art of War contains a famous chapter on spies. However, Master Sun was not the only Chinese author to address this topic centuries before Westerners did. In fact, many Chinese authors built on his work. SPY Historian...
27 min
586
The OSS in Burma: Jungle War Against the Japanese
“One could not choose a worse place for fighting the Japanese,” said Winston Churchill of northern Burma, but it was there that the fledgling Office of Strategic Services conducted its most successful combat operations of World War II. Troy Sacquety, ...
49 min
587
Deceiving the Iraqis in Operation Desert Storm
Military deception was an important part of Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 coalition effort to eject the Iraqi Army from Kuwait. The man in charge of that U.S. Marine Corp’s part of that deception was Brigadier General Tom Draude. Despite the fact ...
36 min
588
A Legal Perspective on the Snowden Case
Mark Zaid is one of the nation’s top national security lawyers and has defended many alleged whistleblowers and leakers. SPY Historian, Mark Stout, called him in for a consultation on the case of Edward Snowden who has admitted leaking to the press to...
42 min
589
A Western Spy among Terrorists in Yemen
Morten Storm was a Danish convert to Islam who became a close associate of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American imam who was a senior member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen. He even ate in Awlaki’s home and helped find him a wife. When ...
56 min
590
Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutio...
Can you keep a secret? Maybe you can, but the United States government can’t. Since the birth of our country, nations from Russia and China to Ghana and Ecuador, have stolen some of our country’s most precious secrets. Michael Sulick, former director ...
54 min
591
The Rice Paddy Navy: U.S. Sailors Undercover in...
After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US Navy knew it would need vital information from the Pacific. Captain Milton ‘Mary’ Miles journeyed to China to set up weather stations and monitor the Chinese coastline—and to spy on ...
41 min
592
The United States Military Liaison Mission in E...
Major General Michael Ennis was one of the rare Marine officers admitted to the Foreign Area Officer program where he became a specialist on the Soviet Union. This led to an assignment as a translator on the Washington-Moscow Hotline at the White House...
38 min
593
American Communism and Soviet Espionage: A Look...
In the 1970s, historian John Earl Haynes was researching the American labor movement when he discovered interesting connections to the Communist party. Fast forward 20 years to the 1990s, when that ongoing research on the Communist party led him into t...
45 min
594
Born Under an Assumed Name
Looking back on her childhood, Sarah Taber remembers that “my identity was problematic because of moving from country to country and the overall atmosphere of growing up in the CIA.” As an adult she wrote about what it was like to be raised in a cultu...
26 min
595
Intelligence in Support of UN Peacekeeping in B...
The United Nations thinks “intelligence” is a dirty word but it still needs intelligence to conduct peacekeeping operations. The result is a euphemism: “military information.” SPY Historian Mark Stout talks with Tom Quiggin, a former Canadian intellige...
42 min
596
From Nazi Germany to the OSS to the CIA (Part 2)
In this Spycast Peter finishes his conversation with Peter Sichel. Listen to this insider talking about CIA operations in Germany after World War II, the futile support for anti-communist guerrillas in Ukraine and China during the 1940s and 1950s, the ...
26 min
597
Canada’s Security Intelligence Service in the P...
Canada’s Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) operates on a very different model from the American CIA, being neither strictly a foreign intelligence agency nor a domestic intelligence agency. Today SPY Historian Mark Stout discusses CSIS with Ray Boi...
41 min
598
The Zimmermann Telegram: Intelligence, Diplomac...
In January 1917, British naval intelligence intercepted what became the most important telegram in all of American history. It was a daring proposition from Germany's foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, offering German support to Mexico for regaining...
39 min
599
From Nazi Germany to the OSS to the CIA (Part 1)
Today Peter begins a conversation with the remarkable Peter Sichel, OSS veteran, senior CIA official of the 1950s, and onetime head of Blue Nun wines. After fleeing Nazi Germany with his family in the 1930s and eventually finding himself in the United...
22 min
600
The Evolution of Spy Fiction: Bond and His Bret...
The modern spy novel was born in early twentieth century Britain with writers such as Erskine Childers and William LeQueux whose one-dimensional heroes were English gentlemen holding back the barbarians. How did we get from there to the gray and morall...
43 min