SpyCast

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.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with retired US Army Brigadier General Gerry Galloway and retired US Navy Rear Admiral Dave Titley to discuss the intelligence and national security implication of climate change. Both men are members of the Advisory Board of the Center for Climate and Security. ***NOTE: Vince messed up. The correct link to the survey is podcast.study

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down (remotely) with Joel Whitney, the cofounder and editor at large of Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics, to discuss his book on how the CIA used culture to fight the Cold War, Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former CIA Technical Operations Officer Warren Holston and former Air Force intel specialist Dave White to discuss their new book Beware the Predator: The American’s Guide to Personal Security. Get the Book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/beware-the-predator.html#.WL7Y7xIrJUM

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Alex Howard, the Deputy Director of the Sunlight Foundation, to discuss the public’s right to know what the government is doing in its name.

A year ago, SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former DIA Director and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Here is their conversation.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss the threat of nuclear confrontation and how intelligence can play a vital role in reducing this danger.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Josh Kurlantzick of the Council on Foreign Relations to discuss his new book A Great Place to Have a War: The Secret War in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA.

SPY Historians Vince Houghton sat down to rehash the year that was 2016. He was joined by former SPY Historian Mark Stout, former CIA briefer David Priess, and BuzzFeed intelligence and national security reporter Ali Watkins.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton is joined by John Nixon, who shares what he learned as the first man to conduct a prolonged interrogation of the captured Iraqi president. Get the book:http://www.spymuseumstore.org/spycast-books.html

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with bioterrorism expert Hank Parker to discuss current threats and Parker's new book Containment.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Dmitri Alperovitch, the CTO and co-founder of CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that detected the hack of the DNC, and traced the breach back to Russian intelligence.

Woman in Disguise - Jonna Mendez (November 18, 2008) Jonna Hiestand Mendez began her CIA career as a secretary and ended it as head of the agency’s Office of Technical Services, overseeing the development of gadgets, disguises, and high-tech devices in support of espionage missions. Today, she discusses with Peter some of the operations she was involved in as well as opportunities for women in the intelligence community.

The Iranian Hostage Crisis (September 1, 2008) In November 1979, radical Iranian students overran the U.S. embassy in Tehran, capturing most of the embassy staff—except for six diplomats who found refuge with the Canadian embassy. Today, Peter talks with retired CIA officer Tony Mendez who, in an elaborate deception and disguise operation, managed to exfiltrate the six Americans from Tehran before the Iranians were able to track them down.

The Secret History of Disguises (November 1, 2006) Peter talks with Tony Mendez, former Chief of Disguise for the CIA. Peter and Tony discuss the intricacies of developing disguises for use in hostile environments, the advantages of selective aging, and the secret history of facial recognition technology.

Leon Trotsky — Murder in Mexico (September 1, 2007) Peter’s guest today is H. Keith Melton, renowned intelligence historian and owner of the largest collection of espionage artifacts. Keith sheds new light on one of the most notorious intelligence operations of all time—the assassination of exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940. Keith reconstructs the operation in all its phases, including material from his own original research.

The Litvinenko Murder and Other Riddles from Moscow (December 4, 2006) Peter sits down with former CIA officer Bob Rayle and Oleg Kalugin to talk Russia past and present. The three discuss their perspectives on the recent poisoning of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko. Then, they turn to 1967 and Bob's role in the extraordinary defection of Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Josef Stalin.

An Army of Illegals: Assessing the Russian Spy Case (July 12, 2010) Two weeks ago on 27 June, the FBI arrested a network of 10 Russian "deep cover" spies. Peter sits down with former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin to discuss this remarkable case and the historic spy swap which took place last Friday. Kalugin, who once ran agents in the United States, is forthright in expressing his views about what this case says about the state of Russian intelligence today.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Devlin Barrett and Adam Entous, co-authors of an exceptional long-form article, written for the Wall Street Journal, which highlights the tension between traditional diplomacy and the counterintelligence mission of the FBI.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Dr. Stacey Dixon, the Deputy Director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. Drs. Houghton and Dixon discuss some of the advanced scientific and technological research that will transform intelligence far into the 21st Century.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Twomey to discuss his new book about the attacks of December 7, 1941, Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former Canadian diplomat John Graham to discuss his role as the eyes and ears of Western intelligence following the Cuban Missile Crisis. This story, as well as many others, are told in Graham’s memoir, Whose Man in Havana: Adventures from the Far Side of Diplomacy.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down (remotely) with former SEAL Team 6 member Clint Emerson to discuss his new book, 100 Deadly Skills: Survival Edition, a follow-up to his national bestseller 100 Deadly Skills. Buy 100 Deadly Skills from the Spy Museum Store

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Nate Jones, the Director of the Freedom of Information Act Project for the National Security Archive, and the author of the new book Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War. Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/able-archer-83.html#.WIdjWrYrJTY

Intelligence officers and investigative journalists both depend on clandestine sources to divulge secrets. But why do people betray a trust? Peter interviews veteran journalist Max Holland about his new book, Leak, which probes the mind and motivations of one of the most famous clandestine sources in American history: Deep Throat. Hear why Mark Felt, the Deputy Director of the FBI, betrayed President Nixon by leaking to the Washington Post and Time about Watergate. Were Felt’s motives patriotic or self-serving…or both? Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/leak-shy-mark-felt-became-deep-throat.html#.Vz3q4PkrIdU

SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with NBC News Political Director and Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd to discuss the growing role of intelligence tradecraft in American election politics. Todd, the host of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, explains how political campaigns – on both sides of the aisle – use surveillance, propaganda, disinformation, deception, and covert action to give their candidates a political edge. This interview was recorded on July 29, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g2F6lEJU_c

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Ken Vogel, Chief Investigative Reporter for POLITICO and author of the article, “The Koch Intelligence Agency.” Houghton and Vogel (who tracks the confluence of money, politics, and influence for POLITICO) discuss the use of use surveillance, propaganda, disinformation, deception, and even covert action in modern political campaigns.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with author and literary agent Andrew Lownie, who has been researching Guy Burgess and the Cambridge 5 for over three decades. The culmination of this research is Lownie’s book, Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Thomas Rid, professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and the author of Rise of the Machines. The book tells the sweeping story of how cybernetics, a late-1940s theory of machines, came to incite anarchy and war half a century later.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Dr. Lorenzo Vidino and Jesse Morton from the Program on Extremism at the George Washington University’s Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. Dr. Vidino, and expert on Islamism in Europe and North America, is the Program’s Director, and Morton, a reformed, former extremist who was once a prominent radicalizer in the West, is a research fellow who sees this work as an opportunity to repair some of the damage caused by his radicalization.

At a live event at the International Spy Museum, SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with journalist Kati Marton to discuss Soviet spy Noel Field, the subject of Marton’s new book True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Jeff Stein, who covers the spy agencies and foreign policy for Newsweek in Washington. An Army Intelligence case officer in Vietnam, Stein is an investigative reporter of long standing, specializing in intelligence, defense and foreign policy.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with national security attorneys Mark Zaid and Brad Moss to discuss the impact of the attacks of 9/11 on the US Constitution, and the continuing legal legacy of that fateful day.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Cofer Black, the former Director of CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC), to discuss the role of the CTC before, during, and after the attacks on September 11, 2001.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former CIA analyst Barbara Sude to discuss the intelligence analysis leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Dr. Sude was one of a team of analysts at CIA who focused on Al Qaeda and bin Laden starting in the 1990s.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Charlie Mitchell, editor and co-founder of Inside Cybersecurity, and the author of Hacked: The Inside Story of America's Struggle to Secure Cyberspace. Houghton and Mitchell discuss the ongoing congressional debates over cybersecurity, the landmark framework of cybersecurity standards crafted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the policy ramifications of major hacking events.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with antiterrorism advisor and risk management specialist Tom Ordeman to discuss the little-know case of the Dhofar Rebellion. Often called the “Secret War” (because so few people have heard of it), the Dhofar Rebellion is an example of COIN Theory implemented to perfection.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Ilya Zaslavskiy, who was falsely accused of espionage by Russian security services (the FSB). Unwilling to sit back and allow others to be victimized by a corrupt system, Ilya now dedicates his time to exposing those at the heart of the Russian kleptocracy. See his petition here: https://www.change.org/p/chancellor-chris-patten-oxford-university-and-other-academic-entities-review-cooperation-with-putin-s-oligarchs

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Richard Easton, author of GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones, to discuss the development of GPS and its role in the military, intelligence, and civilian domains. Easton’s father, Roger, led the Space Applications Branch of the Naval Research Laboratory from the Vanguard Satellite era to the early days of GPS development.

Blurred Lines: An Interview with Georgetown International Law Professor Rosa Brooks SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Rosa Brooks, professor of national security law, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, and author of the new book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Stephen Budiansky, the author of seventeen books about military history, intelligence and espionage, science, the natural world, and other subjects, to discuss the history of the NSA and his new book, NSA’s Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with former CIA officer Steve Slick, who spent more than three decades at the Agency as a case officer, chief of station, and senior executive. He is now the inaugural Director of the Intelligence Studies Project at the University of Texas, Austin.