SpyCast

SPY Historian sat down with recently retired International Spy Museum Executive Director Peter Earnest to discuss his career in intelligence, his time with the Museum, and his thoughts on life moving forward .

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down (remotely) with Daniel Ellsberg, who is best known for his release of the Pentagon Papers to the public in 1971. He is also the author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, which details his early life as a specialist on the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Paula Doyle, former Associate Deputy Director of Operations at CIA, where she oversaw worldwide HUMINT operations and activities that required the use of air, land, maritime, space-based and cyber technologies.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with political scientist and professor Loch Johnson, whose decade-long career in and out of the intelligence world has culminated in a new book, Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Paul Kix, deputy editor at ESPN the Magazine, and author of the book The Saboteur: The Aristocrat Who Became France's Most Daring Anti-Nazi Commando

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with writer and historian Meredith Hindley to discuss her new book Destination Casablanca: Exile, Espionage, and the Battle for North Africa in World War II

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan to discuss Russian intelligence, their security services, and the Russian use of the internet both internally and externally

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Kevin Maurer, coauthor of the bestseller No Easy Day, and now coauthor of the new book, American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent, which he cowrote with undercover FBI agent Tamer Elnoury .

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Carmen Medina, the CIA’s former Deputy Director of Intelligence and Director of the Center for the Study of Intelligence. She is also the author of Rebels at Work: A Handbook for Leading Change from Within.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with CIA clinical psychologist Dr. Ursula Wilder, who in her over two decades at CIA has worked within the Counterintelligence Center, the Counterterrorism Center, and the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Lynn Wright, the current Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence and the Head of the Naval Intelligence Activity.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Kristin Wood, who spent more than two decades with CIA in a number of roles – from the briefer to the Vice President, to intelligence analyst, to the National Clandestine Service, to the Open Source Center.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former CIA Deputy Director and Acting Director Michael Morell to discuss his career at the Agency, and his role in some of the most momentous intelligence events of the last two decades.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Israeli activist and attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner to discuss the ongoing campaign to disrupt terrorist finance, and her new book Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Ned Price, former CIA analyst and Special Assistant to President Obama on the National Security Council staff, where he also was the Spokesperson and Senior Director for Strategic Communications.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Keith Masback, the CEO of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, to talk all things GEOINT.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with author Jason Fagone to discuss the history of American codebreaking and his book, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with CIA veteran John Sipher, who served multiple overseas tours as Chief of Station and Deputy Chief of Station in Europe, Asia, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and South Asia.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with author Nathan Englander to discuss his new novel, Middle East politics, the Mossad, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and growing up Jewish in America.

In late July, SPY Historian Vince Houghton traveled to Pasadena, CA to take part in Politicon, the “Unconventional Political Convention” (think Comic Con for political junkies). There he sat down with prolific actor Robert Davi, who played Franz Sanchez, Bond’s nemesis in License to Kill.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Dan Golden to discuss his new book, focused on the exploitation of American universities by both foreign and US intelligence agencies.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Bernd von Kostka, the Acting Director of the Allied Museum in Berlin, to discuss some of the key stories from the Cold War in Germany.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with attorneys John Tye and Mark Zaid to discuss their new project Whistleblower Aid, which is a non-profit organization designed to protect whistleblowers – and to prevent them from becoming leakers.

Recorded in front of a live audience at the Museum, SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former CIA operations officer Duane Evans, who led a team of special operators into Afghanistan in the weeks following 9/11.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former Army officer and historian James Kelly Morningstar to discuss the use of intelligence by legendary General George Patton, highlighted in Morningstar’s new book Patton’s Way: A Radical Theory of War.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with author and journalist Josh Dean to discuss Project Azorian, the Glomar Explorer, and one of the most spectacular covert operations in history. Buy The Taking of K-129 from the Spy Museum Store

In the second installment of our recurring series, SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with DIA Chief Historian Greg Elder to discuss the DIA’s role in some of the most momentous events in recent US history.

Because everyone else is going eclipse crazy, we thought we would re-post SPY Historian Vince Houghton’s interview with one of the tops guys at NASA, Dr. Jim Green. Green’s day job is Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA. In his spare time, he has become one to the top experts in Civil War balloon reconnaissance.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Sean McFate, a former paratrooper, private military contractor, and now author, novelist, and expert in foreign policy and national security strategy. Drs. Houghton and McFate discuss military and intelligence privatization, and McFate’s new book, Deep Black.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former CIA operations officer and Deputy Division Chief for Counterintelligence TL Williams to discuss his career and his new novel, Zero Day: China's Cyber Wars.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman to discuss his life in government, and his book “A Whistleblower at the CIA: The Path of Dissent” – an insiders account of the politics of intelligence.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former Green Beret James Stejskal to discuss the role of US Army Special Forces, and their actions against the Warsaw Pact, in Cold War Berlin.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Newsy reporter Liz Wahl to discuss Russian efforts to propagate disinformation to the American public – and her unique role in exposing this threat.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with US Naval Officer and helicopter pilot Jack McCain to discuss the potential lessons learned from his experiences and his new book, Angola, Clausewitz, and the American Way of War.

Hear from former CIA officer Kenneth Daigler, as he closely examines American intelligence activities during the era of the Revolutionary War from 1765 to 1783.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with James Rosen (McClatchy), James Ellenberger (formerly of AFL-CIO), and Curt Harris (NIH National Cancer Institute), authors of High Hand. Their novel, which involves a Republican presidential candidate with close ties to Russia, was written long before the 2016 election.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Tom Nichols, professor at the U.S. Naval War College and at the Harvard Extension School, and the author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

In the first installment of what will become a recurring series, SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with DIA Chief Historian Greg Elder to discuss the DIA’s role in some of the most momentous events in recent US history.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Ben Jones, the former Transition Coordinator for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, where he coordinated the transfer of Afghanistan's security from the coalition to the Afghan National Security Forces. He is also a contributor to the new book, Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down (remotely) with British author Henry Hemming to discuss his newest book Agent M: The Lives and Spies of MI5’s Maxwell Knight.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Stephan Talty, author of two previous books on intelligence, Agent Garbo and The Secret Agent: In Search of America’s Greatest World War II Spy. They discuss his newest book, The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Sven Hughes, a former reserve soldier within British Military Intelligence, Psychological Operations, and UK Special Forces, to discuss counter-radicalization and the effectiveness of influence operations. Mr. Hughes is also the author of the new book, Verbalization: The Power of Words to Drive Change.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Eva Dillon, whose father Paul was a career CIA officer who ran one of the most prolific Soviet spies of the Cold War. Their stories are told in Eva’s new book, Spies in the Family: An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former improv comedienne and CIA operations officer Emily Brandwin to discuss her career(s) and views on many things intel-related.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with author and journalist Yudhijit Bhattacharjee to discuss the fascinating case of wannabee spy Brian Regan, detailed in Yudhijit’s book The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Sharon Weinberger, national security journalist and author of the book The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency that Changed the World.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with intelligence historian Keith Melton, and former chief of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services, Bob Wallace, to discuss their newest collaboration: Spy Sites of Washington, DC. Buy Spy Sites of Washington, DC from the Spy Museum Store

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Jack Barsky, the longest-surviving known member of the KGB illegals program that operated during the Cold War, and author of the memoir Deep Undercover: My Secret Life & Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with six extraordinary journalists to discuss the challenges associated with reporting on intelligence and national security. They include: Ali Watkins (BuzzFeed), Mary Louise Kelly (NPR), Jenna McLaughlin (The Intercept), Nancy Youssef (BuzzFeed), Molly O’Toole (Foreign Policy), and Ellen Nakashima (Washington Post).

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Scott Miller, author of Agent 110: An American Spymaster and the German Resistance in WWII, to discuss the relationship between future CIA director Dulles and those Germans scheming to overthrow Hitler.