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 opposin...
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SpyCast
Each week, the International Spy Museum will offer a new SpyCast featuring interviews and programs with ex-spies, intelligence experts, and espionage scholars. The SpyCast is hosted by Dr. V...
Episodes
20 of 762 episodes25 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...
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, inc...
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,...
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...
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...
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 Dep...
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 t...
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...
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 tha...
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 h...
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...
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...
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 O...
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 Enforcem...
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 Dwig...
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....
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...
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...
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 captur...