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.
601
Author Debriefing: The Twilight War: The Secret...
The United States and Iran have been at daggers drawn for more than thirty years. While this rivalry has never erupted into open war, it has been an enduring “twilight war” in which spies and terrorists often play the lead role. US Government historian...
47 min
602
Author Debrief: Castro's Secrets: The CIA and C...
In Castro’s Secrets, Brian Latell, former National Intelligence Officer for Latin America and long-time Cuba analyst, offers a strikingly original image of Fidel Castro as Cuba's supreme spymaster. Latell exposes many long-buried secrets of Castro's le...
60 min
603
Author Debriefing: The Art of Intelligence: Les...
In the days after 9/11, the CIA directed Henry Crumpton to organize and lead its covert action campaign in Afghanistan. In less than 90 days Al Qaeda and the Taliban were routed. The Art of Intelligence draws from the full arc of Crumpton’s espionage a...
57 min
604
The Red Cell: Fact and Fiction
The surprise of September 11 2001 was, in part, a failure of imagination and CIA Director George Tenet did not want that to happen again. On September 13 he created the Red Cell and staffed it with “people who were willing to take their analysis to a w...
35 min
605
Agent Garbo: How a Brilliant & Eccentric Doubl...
Juan Pujol was the Walter Mitty of World War II, a nobody who at one doomed venture after another while dreaming of doing something interesting with his life -- saving Western civilization, if possible. Journalist Stephan Talty, whose work has appeare...
42 min
606
Our Man in the Middle East (Part 3)
Peter concludes his conversation with longtime CIA officer George Cave with a brief discussion of some of the funny and unusual events that took place in the course of his career in the Clandestine Service.
12 min
607
Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secre...
The history of Israel’s intelligence community—led by the feared and famous Mossad—includes stunning successes and embarrassing failures with important implications for war and peace today. CBS journalist Dan Raviv co-author with Israeli journalist Yos...
60 min
608
Spies and Commissars: The Early Years of the Ru...
Russia was a chaotic hotspot after the Revolution of 1917 and an extraordinary collection of spies, adventurers, and opportunists poured into the roiling Russian political scene. Outsized characters like Sidney “Ace of Spies” Reilly, communist activist...
56 min
609
Our Man in the Middle East (Part 2)
Peter continues his discussion with career CIA officer George Cave. They cover Cave’s time in Saudi Arabia—from which he was expelled when a candid cable he wrote about Saudi politics leaked to the press—and back in Washington where he became embroiled...
29 min
610
Our Man in the Middle East (Part 1)
George Cave is a legend in the CIA’s Clandestine Service. He was recruited into the CIA in 1956 as a fluent Farsi speaker and was pulled out of his entry training and sent to Afghanistan to deal with an urgent operation there. He never looked back. Joi...
39 min
611
Dick Holm: the Perils and Rewards of a Life in ...
Peter continues his discussion with legendary case officer Dick Holm, the author of The Craft We Chose: My Life in the CIA. Holm discusses several highlights and low points of his career. Learn about his work with Belgian intelligence in thwarting a B...
30 min
612
Author Debriefing: Alger Hiss - Why He Chose Tr...
In 1948, when Whittaker Chambers accused Ivy League-educated senior diplomat Alger Hiss of spying for the Soviets, few Americans were willing to believe him. In fact, Hiss went to his grave protesting his innocence, but now it seems clear that he was ...
56 min
613
The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedo...
Josh Meyer, co-author with Terry McDermott of The Hunt for KSM, visits the International Spy Museum to talk about the decade-long FBI and CIA effort to capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Meyer discusses the repeated failed attempts to find the evil geniu...
26 min
614
Dick Holm: the Perils and Rewards of a Life in ...
Today Peter starts a conversation with Dick Holm, a legendary CIA operations officer, who has served all over the world. Dick, the author of The Craft We Chose: My Life in the CIA, talks about the importance of intelligence and reveals the terrible pr...
17 min
615
Leak: Why Mark Felt became Deep Throat
Intelligence officers and investigative journalists both depend on clandestine sources to divulge secrets. But why do people betray a trust? Peter interviews veteran journalist Max Holland about his new book, Leak, which probes the mind and motivations...
36 min
616
Author Debriefing: Shadow Commander: The Epic S...
During the Vietnam War, perhaps the US Army’s most secretive unit was the Studies and Observations Group (SOG). This unit conducted reconnaissance missions, captured enemy prisoners for interrogation and rescued American POWs. It also ran teams of clan...
34 min
617
Eavesdropping in Vietnam: One Man’s Experience
SPY Historian Mark Stout explores the importance of signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the Vietnam War with retired National Security Agency cryptanalyst Tom Glenn. Glenn served more time in country than any other civilian of the NSA. Hear about the si...
35 min
618
The Power of Open Source Intelligence
With the ever increasing global connectivity, more and more information is available merely for the asking. This has led to a flourishing of the discipline of open source intelligence collection. SPY Historian Mark Stout has a probing discussion with...
30 min
619
Author Debriefing: Smersh: Stalin's Secret Wea...
In the early James Bond novels, the hero battled the villainous forces of Smersh, a shadowy Soviet intelligence organization. Bond was fictional, but Smersh really existed. Drawing its name from smert shpionam Russian for “death to spies,” it was Stali...
61 min
620
Investigating Historical Spies
Researching spy history is a difficult business. Spies carefully cover their tracks and intelligence agencies classify everything and release their records only after many years, if at all. Given these difficulties how do historians reconstruct espiona...
29 min
621
The Intelligence War Against Terrorism
Since 9/11, the United States Intelligence Community has expanded into an $80 billion behemoth and taken on many new tasks, for instance spying on terrorists in cyberspace and even becoming a combat organization in its own right. Are we getting value ...
35 min
622
Intelligence and Espionage in the U.S. Civil War
Spies, cavalry, and telescopes were the traditional intelligence tools available during the Civil War, but there was also cutting edge high tech: the telegraph and the observation balloon. How did Civil War generals combine these to help make strategi...
30 min
623
Author Debriefing: MH/CHAOS: The CIA’s Campaign...
Operation MHCHAOS was the code name for a secret domestic spying program conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1960s and early 1970s charged with unmasking any foreign influences on left wing protestors. CIA counterintelligence offic...
44 min
624
The Silent Listener: British Eavesdropping in t...
D. J. Thorp, a signals intelligence officer in the British Army, spent many years eavesdropping on the hot spots of the Cold War in Europe and the Middle East. In 1982 he found himself on board a Royal Navy ship intercepting signals from the Argentine...
43 min
625
J. Edgar Hoover: Fact vs. Fiction
Clint Eastwood’s movie, J. Edgar, gives a Hollywood take on the controversial Director of the FBI. However, many people have criticized the movie for whitewashing Hoover’s abuses while others have criticized it for its implication that Hoover may have...
34 min