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 ...
30 Jun 39min
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 Mo...
23 Jun 40min
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 ...
16 Jun 37min
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 o...
9 Jun 41min
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-...
2 Jun 35min
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...
26 Mai 40min
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 ...
19 Mai 36min
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...
12 Mai 40min
