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 m...
8 Sep 48min
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...
1 Sep 41min
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 grandf...
25 Aug 38min
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 chi...
18 Aug 42min
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 extensi...
11 Aug 41min
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...
4 Aug 41min
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 operatio...
28 Jul 42min
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 ...
21 Jul 38min
