SpyCast

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 bold impersonations to smear critics and stoke tensions among foes. The team, which consisted of refugees, ex-journalists, and even daughters of aristocrats, hatched a slew of audacious operations across Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. They also had their own internal dramas. Author Rory Cormac pored over thousands of recently declassified files to uncover and chronicle their work in his book Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Line.

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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 operational mastermind of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and when Vladimir Lenin died, many assumed Trotsky would succeed him as the central figure of the revolution. Joseph Stalin had other plans. What followed was a bitter rivalry that ended in Trotsky's demise. Our guest today, H. Keith Melton, not only tracked down the murder weapon but, alongside his colleague Nigel West, wrote the most comprehensive account of the plot and the assassination to date. Keith and Nigel join guest host Dr. Mark Jacobson to discuss their book, The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: Espionage, Scandal, and the Crime of the Century, ahead of their live program coming up on August 6, here at the International Spy Museum.

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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 name in 1982, learning the hard way, through a string of high-profile blunders, how to conduct espionage. The service is responsible for all sources of intelligence and has benefited from a popular TV show about its inner workings. Drawing on documents never before available, Damien Van Puyvelde, the author of the book The DGSE: A Concise History of France's Foreign Intelligence Service, traces the agency's history from its early failures to its sweeping reforms and modern-day successes.

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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 that hackers could potentially exploit. She was only 23, but that gave her an early look at state-sponsored cyber intrusions, which have of course grown more serious and sophisticated. Today, her book “Full Stack Spies: Cyber Espionage in the Age of US–China Competition” explores China’s business of spying online. She joins Sasha from London to talk about the competition, vanities, and betrayals between hackers, tech companies, and the government, all through some of Beijing’s most destructive military and civilian cyber operations.

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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 have heard of a unit inside it, called the Office of Special Projects, where staff work on espionage cases that originate inside the U.S. Navy. Case agent Mike Garzon has worked in the office for four years. He sits down with Sasha to talk about a case that closed in 2024. It's the first case in a few decades that the Navy prosecuted from start to finish. It revolved around Bryce Pedicini, who was working for the Navy in Japan as a fire controlman chief. That meant he could operate and maintain advanced weapons systems on ships. And in 2023, he entered a classified government network, took photographs that he sent to a foreign agent, and received payment through PayPal. Pedicini said he needed the money because of… inflation. He was dishonorably discharged and now he's spending 18 years behind bars, which comes to $377 per year for the information he was paid to share.

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