“The Foundations of American Intelligence in WWI” – with Mark Stout

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 clandestine agents, and conducted psychological operations. The leader of this group in the mid-1960s was a legendary Army officer, Donald Blackburn. Listen to author Mike Guardia describe Blackburn’s colorful life in this event which took place on 16 February 2012.

2 Apr 201235min

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 sixth sense that good SIGINTers need to have, the difficulties of working in foreign languages, and how Glenn and his colleagues were able to predict every major Communist offensive. Learn also why American commanders did not always believe them. Finally, hear the wrenching story of Glenn’s last days in Saigon in 1975 as the city was falling to the North Vietnamese Army.

28 Mars 201237min

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 one of the world’s leading practitioners of this art: Arno Reuser of the Dutch military intelligence service. With the growth of open source, can we stop stealing secrets?

21 Mars 201231min

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 Stalin’s wartime terror apparatus and it cut a bloody swath of death across Eastern Europe. Its job was to “filter” the Red Army for spies and it was responsible for the arrest, torture, and execution of many thousands of innocent people. Listen to historian Vadim J. Birstein as he discusses this bloodthirsty organization and discusses the evidence suggesting that Raoul Wallenberg was one of its victims. This event took place on 12 January 2012.

17 Feb 20121h 3min

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 espionage history? SPY Historian Mark Stout explores this issue with Dr. R. Bruce Craig, the author of Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Spy Case. Hear Craig describe how a receipt for $1.25 allowed him to discover the real identity of the mysterious “Agent Zero” who spied for the Soviets before World War II. Also listen as Craig tells of his forthcoming book about Alger Hiss and how he has brought lawsuits that forced the government to open up sealed grand jury records for Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

8 Feb 201230min

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 for our money? To what extent did the invasion of Iraq divert important intelligence resources from Afghanistan? And why is the FBI flying reconnaissance flights over northwest D.C.? Intelligence historian, Matthew Aid, the author of the new book Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror, grapples with these and other questions in a discussion with SPY Historian Mark Stout.

18 Jan 201236min

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 strategic decisions? As we observe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, SPY Historian Mark Stout discusses this question with Professor William Feis of Buena Vista University, the author of Grant’s Secret Service: The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox.

13 Jan 201231min

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 officer Frank Rafalko was a part of that operation. When The New York Times revealed MHCHAOS in 1974 and Congress investigated, MHCHAOS took its place in the pantheon of intelligence abuses. However, in his new book Rafalko says that the operation was justified and that the CIA was the logical agency to conduct it. Listen as he defends his perspective with dramatic intelligence collected on the New Left and black radicals. This event took place on 26 October 2011.

19 Dec 201145min