SpyCast

Jack Devine is one of the legendary spymasters of our time. He was in Chile when Allende fell; he ran Charlie Wilson’s war in Afghanistan; he had too much to do with Iran-Contra for his own taste, though he tried to stop it; he caught Pablo Escobar in Colombia; and he tried to warn George Tenet that there was a bullet coming from Iraq with his name on it. His new book, Good Hunting, is Devine’s guide to the art of spycraft and his belief in the CIA’s vital importance as a tool of American statecraft. Although it has been caricatured by Hollywood, lionized by the right, and pilloried by the left, Devine believes the CIA remains one of the least understood instruments of the United States government.

Moe Berg—the major league baseball player, OSS operative and legendary linguist—was one of the most remarkable secret agents ever deployed by the US. Whether authorized by the government as an atomic spy or choosing to surreptitiously film Tokyo of his own volition, Berg relished and accomplished his espionage missions, yet he died penniless and with little acclaim. Nicholas Dawidoff brought Moe Berg’s achievements to light in his best-selling 1994 book The Catcher Was a Spy. In honor of the Pennant Race, Dawidoff will share his latest thoughts on the only Major League baseball player to have his card on display at CIA headquarters.

Leading up to the US entry into WWII, Germany set up a sophisticated and productive espionage ring, which effectively utilized well-placed German Americans in the States. They were able to infiltrate key military and industrial facilities, and succeeded in obtaining critical information, including plans for the exceptionally accurate and very secret Norden bombsite device. When naturalized American William Sebold visited his native Germany in 1939, German intelligence officers saw him as a prime target for recruitment. Threatened with arrest, Sebold seemingly agreed to work for the Germans, but they woefully misjudged him. Returning to New York, he contacted the FBI and told all. In his new book Double Agent, journalist Peter Duffy uncovers how Sebold became the center of a 16-month investigation that led to the arrest of 33 enemy agents in June 1941. Known as the Duquesne Spy Ring, the colorful cast of traitors included military contractors, a South African adventurer with an exotic accent and a monocle, and even a Jewish femme fatale.

Baseball has been played in the United States since the mid-19th Century, and from the very beginning teams were trying to gain a competitive edge against their rivals. In many cases, this involved stealing signs – the messages passed from coaches to players or from catchers to pitchers. In essence, this is a signals intelligence operation: one team is encrypting its messages, while the other is attempting to intercept these messages, decrypt them, and use the resulting intelligence to their advantage. SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Bryan Soderholm, a former CIA analyst who is now putting his training to use analyzing baseball statistics and history. They discussed the influence of spycraft on the game of baseball – in particular, the infamous case of the 1951 New York Giants, who set the standard for baseball espionage.

Join SPY Historian Vince Houghton as he continues his conversation with Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister of CNN. Both men share their expertise on ISIS and the threat of Islamic Jihadism, and Tim, who has traveled to Ukraine on four different occasions this year alone, provides his insight into the current conflict between Ukrainian separatists, the Ukrainian government, and Russia. This interview was conducted September 8, 2014

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister of CNN to discuss their new book Agent Storm: My Life Inside Al Qaeda and the CIA. The book, which they co-wrote with terrorist-turned-double-agent Morten Storm, traces an improbable journey of conversion, radicalization, reassessment, and redemption. Join Vince, Paul, and Tim as they reflect upon a story that is so incredible it would be completely unbelievable – if it wasn’t completely true. This interview was conducted September 8, 2014

Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold may be the most famous spies of the American Revolution, but they were hardly alone. George Washington’s use of spy networks and wider intelligence efforts were critical to the fight for independence. In Spies, Patriots, and Traitors, former CIA officer Kenneth Daigler closely examines American intelligence activities during the era of the Revolutionary War from 1765 to 1783. Daigler will explain how America’s founders learned and practiced their intelligence role, providing insight from an intelligence professional’s perspective and revealing how many of the principles of the era’s intelligence practice are still relevant today. After the talk, see the Museum’s famous George Washington spy letter. This event took place July 15, 2014.

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 in joined by Dr. Michael Goodman of King’s College in London. Dr. Goodman is the official historian for the British Joint Intelligence Committee, and in that role he has published the book The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee: Volume I: From the Approach of the Second World War to the Suez Crisis. Drs. Houghton and Goodman discuss the early development of British intelligence coordination, which spans two of the most momentous decades of the Twentieth Century, and includes events such as the Spanish Civil War, WWII, the end of the British colonial empire, the Cold War, and the Suez Crisis. This interview took place on June 16, 2014

Travel back to a time when literature had the power to influence the world. Washington Post national security correspondent and former bureau chief in Moscow, Peter Finn tells the dramatic first account of how a forbidden book in the Soviet Union became a secret weapon in the battle between East and West. The CIA secretly printed Doctor Zhivago in Russian and smuggled it into the Soviet Union. It was snapped up on the black market and passed surreptitiously from friend to friend fueling flames of dissent. Finn shares how he and his co-author used their special access to otherwise classified CIA files, to create an irresistible portrait of the charming and passionate Pasternak and a twisty thriller that takes readers back to a fascinating period of the Cold War.

Pulitzer Prize- winning biographer Kai Bird gives the inside story of his compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history, Robert Ames. Through Bird’s personal connection to Ames’ family, he gained access to his personal correspondence and range of contacts. Eventually more than forty retired CIA and Mossad officers told Bird their memories of Ames. Those seasoned spies all seemed to feel that they had been waiting for someone to tell the incredible story of Bob Ames, and how he carefully cultivated his ten-year relationship with Ali Hassan Salameh, Yasir Arafat’s intelligence chief. This highly clandestine relationship between the CIA and the PLO planted the seeds for the Oslo peace process. Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/the-good-spy-book.html#.Vz3puPkrIdU

The development of overhead reconnaissance technology is one of the most important – if not the most important – advances in the history of intelligence. Policymakers today use IMINT from spy planes and satellites in their daily assessments of global threats, but did you know that overhead reconnaissance technology predates the advent of powered flight? SPY Historian Vince Houghton is joined by Dr. Jim Green, Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA, to discuss Civil War balloon reconnaissance. Dr. Green, an expert in the field, explains the role of balloons in the greater Union strategy, their impact on the war effort, and the numerous and significant innovations developed by Union “aeronauts” (including the first aircraft carriers!). This interview took place May 30, 2014

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sits down with engineer Phil Pressel to discuss his role in developing the KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite. The Hexagon, which was the last US spy satellite to use film, was declassified in 2011, allowing Pressel to write his book, Meeting the Challenge: The Hexagon KH-9 Reconnaissance Satellite. Houghton and Pressel discuss the formation of the project, the daunting technological hurdles, the impact of the satellite on US national security, and the top secret mission to recover film lost in the deepest waters of the Pacific Ocean.Video of interview available on the Spy Museum youtube page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmWlw8Ufo6Q This interview took place May 8th, 2014.

Former SPY Historian Mark Stout sat down with SPY Executive Director Peter Earnest to discuss Peter’s CIA career. After his recruitment and espionage training at the Farm, Peter’s entry into the world of spying came at an important turning point in the Cold War. From his posts overseas in hot spots while living undercover, Peter’s fascinating career culminated in a very public role as the Agency’s spokesperson. Join Peter for this reflection on a life in the shadows. This interview was conducted June 1, 2012.

The world sends 3 million emails every second. How do Western intelligence agencies cope with such massive amounts of data? The Spy Museum's Executive Director Peter Earnest sits down to discuss the future of intelligence with historian Richard Aldrich, Professor of International Security at the University of Warwick (UK) and Director of the Institute of Advanced Study. With the prevalence of the internet, social media, integrated communications systems, and surveillance capabilities, everyone is now a de facto member of the intelligence community. Dr. Aldrich discusses Snowden, leakers, whistleblowers, and what he calls “the end of secrecy.” Who – and when – will be the next Snowden? This interview took place April 3, 2014.

Peter and SPY Historian Vince Houghton are joined by retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin. They discuss the current confrontation between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea, Crimea’s strategic place in Russian history, and the potential conflict over Ukraine’s strategic shift toward Europe and away from Russia. They then discuss the role intelligence and special operations forces might play in any future war between Russia and Ukraine. This interview took place March 14, 2014.

Intelligence historian Hugh Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIA’s pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agency’s three most influential—and colorful—officers in the Middle East: Kermit Roosevelt, Archie Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland. With their deep knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs, the three men were heirs to an American missionary tradition that engaged Arabs and Muslims with respect and empathy. These “Arabists” propped up authoritarian regimes, attempted secretly to sway public opinion in America against support for the new state of Israel, and staged coups that destabilized the nations with which they empathized. They were fascinated by imperial intrigue, and were eager to play a modern rematch of the “Great Game,” the nineteenth century struggle between Britain and Russia for control over central Asia. This event took place January 7, 2014.

Is cyber war really coming? Renowned scholar Thomas Rid of the Department of War Studies at Kings College London argues that the focus on war distracts from the real challenge of cyberspace: non-violent confrontation that may rival or even replace violence in surprising ways. In this provocative talk, the author will trace the most significant hacks and attacks and explore some key questions: What are cyber weapons? How have they changed the meaning of violence? How likely and how dangerous is crowd-sourced subversive activity? Why has there never been a lethal cyber-attack against a country's critical infrastructure? How serious is the threat of cyber-espionage? And who is most vulnerable in the cyber realm? This event took place on September 10, 2013 .http://www.spymuseumstore.org/

Six months after the 9/11 attacks, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly initiated a straightforward, yet audacious, antiterrorist plan to be implemented in the Big Apple, dispatching a vast network of undercover officers and informants to track suspected terrorists. In Enemies Within, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalists Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman for Associated Press reveal the effectiveness of the domestic spying plan. Based on hundreds of previously unpublished New York Police Department internal memos and exclusive interviews with intelligence sources, including 25-year FBI veteran Don Borelli who assisted with the book, they found that many of those strategies aren’t even close to being useful, functional, or successful. As Assistant Special Agent in Charge in the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), Borelli was responsible for top investigations and counterterrorism missions that spanned the globe. Join Apuzzo and Borelli for an unbridled look at the breathtaking race to avert a second devastating terrorist attack on American soil. This event took place September 26, 2013. Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/enemy-within-book.html#.Vz3rRfkrIdU

Historian Randall B. Woods of the University of Arkansas discusses his new biography of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the postwar period: William Egan Colby. World War II commando, Cold War spy, CIA station chief in Saigon, and ultimately CIA director under Presidents Nixon and Ford, Colby played a critical role in some of the most pivotal events in twentieth-century history. Despite his strong commitment to global democracy and economic and social justice, he was also drawn to the shadowy world of covert action… This event took place on April 18, 2013.

In this continuation of the discussion with US Army Colonel James Cox, we hear about the day-to-day work of US military attachés: being military diplomats for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Colonel Cox tells SPY Historian Mark Stout what it was like working in Moscow after the failure of the 1991 coup. He also shares his experiences in Almaty, the capital of the newly independent country of Kazakhstan and later in Poland, a once-communist country, as it joined the NATO alliance.

When 26 Army nurses and medics boarded a transport plane in November, 1943, they never anticipated the crash landing in Nazi-occupied Albania that would lead to their months-long struggle for survival. The group dodged bullets and battled blinding winter storms as they climbed mountains and fought to survive, aided by courageous villagers who risked death at Nazi hands as well as Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American OSS. Listen to author Cate Lineberry, a former writer and editor for Smithsonian Magazine, tell this mesmerizing tale of World War II courage and heroism. This event took place August 13, 2013. Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/the-secret-rescue-book.html#.Vz3qN_krIdU

During the 1970s, Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski was a rising star in the Polish General Staff during the Cold War. He was also a spy for the CIA. Colonel Aris Pappas was a rising star in the CIA’s analytic ranks whose specialty was Poland. Pappas sat down with SPY Historian Mark Stout to discuss the Kuklinski case, the important information that Kuklinski passed about the Soviet and Warsaw Pact militaries and the imposition of martial law in Poland, and how he and Kuklinski eventually met and became friends.

In the summer of 1991, US Army Colonel James Cox arrived in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, to serve as Assistant Army Attaché. Little did he know that Communist hardliners were about to launch a coup. When the coup started, the intelligence agencies in Washington immediately needed up-to-the-minute information on developments, so the attachés went out on the streets to get it. Hear Colonel Cox tell SPY Historian Mark Stout what it was like chasing tanks on the streets of Moscow and witnessing Boris Yeltsin make his stand at the Russian White House.

Sun Tzu’s 2500 year old book The Art of War contains a famous chapter on spies. However, Master Sun was not the only Chinese author to address this topic centuries before Westerners did. In fact, many Chinese authors built on his work. SPY Historian Mark Stout met up with Ralph Sawyer, the translator of the definitive edition of The Art of War and the author of The Tao of Spycraft, to discuss the sophisticated theory and remarkable practice of espionage in traditional China.

“One could not choose a worse place for fighting the Japanese,” said Winston Churchill of northern Burma, but it was there that the fledgling Office of Strategic Services conducted its most successful combat operations of World War II. Troy Sacquety, an Historian for the US Army’s Special Operations Command, ventures into Burma’s steaming jungles in the first book to fully cover the exploits and contributions of the OSS’s Detachment 101 against the Japanese Imperial Army. In this Author Debriefing, Sacquety describes how Detachment 101 succeeded and created a prototype for today’s Special Forces. This event took place on May 13, 2013. Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/oss-burma-book.html#.Vxk39JMrJTY

Military deception was an important part of Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 coalition effort to eject the Iraqi Army from Kuwait. The man in charge of that U.S. Marine Corp’s part of that deception was Brigadier General Tom Draude. Despite the fact that he had no previous background in deception, General Draude and his team of clever American planners put together an elegant and effective deception plan. Hear him tell Peter how they exploited the expectations of Iraq's military to put them off guard and out of place. Also learn about the role in that books such as The Man Who Never Was and John Le Carre’s The Little Drummer Girl played in General Draude’s thinking.

Mark Zaid is one of the nation’s top national security lawyers and has defended many alleged whistleblowers and leakers. SPY Historian, Mark Stout, called him in for a consultation on the case of Edward Snowden who has admitted leaking to the press top secret material from the National Security Agency. Hear them discuss Snowden’s present legal position, the options open to a would-be whistleblower, and the actual meanings of treason and asylum.

Morten Storm was a Danish convert to Islam who became a close associate of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American imam who was a senior member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen. He even ate in Awlaki’s home and helped find him a wife. When Storm repented of his radical ways, he turned to the Danish intelligence service and offered inside access to AQAP. Hear him tell SPY Historian Mark Stout how MI6 and CIA came into the picture and how he helped tracked down Awlaki, who died in a controversial CIA drone attack in September 2011.

Can you keep a secret? Maybe you can, but the United States government can’t. Since the birth of our country, nations from Russia and China to Ghana and Ecuador, have stolen some of our country’s most precious secrets. Michael Sulick, former director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, discusses his book, Spying in America, which presents a history of more than thirty espionage cases inside the United States. This event took place on January 15, 2013. Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/spying-in-america-book.html#.Vxk4FpMrJTY

After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US Navy knew it would need vital information from the Pacific. Captain Milton ‘Mary’ Miles journeyed to China to set up weather stations and monitor the Chinese coastline—and to spy on the Japanese. After a handshake agreement with Chiang Kai-shek's spymaster, General Dai Li, the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) was born. This top-secret network worked hand in hand with the Nationalist Chinese to fight the Japanese invasion of China while erecting crucial weather stations, providing critical information to the US military, intercepting Japanese communications, blowing up enemy supply depots, laying mines, destroying bridges, and training Chinese peasants in guerrilla warfare. Join author Linda Kush as she reveals the story of one of the most successful covert operation efforts of World War II. This event took place on March 5, 2013.

Major General Michael Ennis was one of the rare Marine officers admitted to the Foreign Area Officer program where he became a specialist on the Soviet Union. This led to an assignment as a translator on the Washington-Moscow Hotline at the White House and then got him a license to spy in communist East Germany in the 1980s as part of the US Military Liaison Mission. Hear him tell SPY Historian Mark Stout what it’s like to penetrate a Soviet command bunker at night or be chased by a Soviet tank, and learn the intelligence value of a hunk of concrete.

In the 1970s, historian John Earl Haynes was researching the American labor movement when he discovered interesting connections to the Communist party. Fast forward 20 years to the 1990s, when that ongoing research on the Communist party led him into the murky world of Soviet espionage. SPY Historian Mark Stout sits down with this groundbreaking historian to look back on his career and learn how he became a leading and unlikely expert on Soviet espionage in the America. Follow along on this fascinating journey from Minnesota, to the halls of power in Washington DC, to dusty archives in Moscow.

Looking back on her childhood, Sarah Taber remembers that “my identity was problematic because of moving from country to country and the overall atmosphere of growing up in the CIA.” As an adult she wrote about what it was like to be raised in a culture of “secrecy, stoicism and silence” in her book Born Under an Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spy’s Daughter. Feel the stresses and learn the secrets of a CIA family in this heart-to-heart talk between Sarah and Peter, himself a CIA father.

The United Nations thinks “intelligence” is a dirty word but it still needs intelligence to conduct peacekeeping operations. The result is a euphemism: “military information.” SPY Historian Mark Stout talks with Tom Quiggin, a former Canadian intelligence officer who worked alongside Americans, Swedes, Jordanians, Russians, and others in the Military Information Office supporting UN peacekeeping operations in Bosnia during the 1990s. Hear what it’s like to pass through a checkpoint manned by drunken teenage soldiers or to know that your warnings of an upcoming massacre in Srebrenica are being ignored.

In this Spycast Peter finishes his conversation with Peter Sichel. Listen to this insider talking about CIA operations in Germany after World War II, the futile support for anti-communist guerrillas in Ukraine and China during the 1940s and 1950s, the strains of leading an undercover life and his friendship with legendary CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton.

Canada’s Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) operates on a very different model from the American CIA, being neither strictly a foreign intelligence agency nor a domestic intelligence agency. Today SPY Historian Mark Stout discusses CSIS with Ray Boisvert, who was one of the founding members of the Service in 1984 and rose to become its Assistant Director, Intelligence, a position from which he retired in 2012. Hear them talk about the concept of “security intelligence” in a democratic society and explore the dilemmas which the Service faces in an era of terrorism emanating from groups such as al Qaeda and foreign covert influence from nation states.

In January 1917, British naval intelligence intercepted what became the most important telegram in all of American history. It was a daring proposition from Germany's foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, offering German support to Mexico for regaining Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in exchange for a Mexican attack on America. Five weeks later, America entered World War I. Former SPY Historian Dr. Thomas Boghardt who is now at the US Army’s Center of Military History talks about his new account of the Zimmerman Telegram. This event took place on, November 27, 2012. Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/zimmermann-telegram-book.html#.Vxk4aZMrJTY

Today Peter begins a conversation with the remarkable Peter Sichel, OSS veteran, senior CIA official of the 1950s, and onetime head of Blue Nun wines. After fleeing Nazi Germany with his family in the 1930s and eventually finding himself in the United States, Sichel joined the OSS and in 1944 he went back to Europe where he recruited German prisoners of war to spy for the US 7th Army. Hear him talk about his operations in Europe and his friendship with future Director of the CIA, Richard Helms.

The modern spy novel was born in early twentieth century Britain with writers such as Erskine Childers and William LeQueux whose one-dimensional heroes were English gentlemen holding back the barbarians. How did we get from there to the gray and morally ambiguous world of John Le Carré? And how does all this relate to James Bond and even George Orwell’s 1984? Listen to SPY Historian Mark Stout discuss the development and importance of spy fiction with intelligence historian Wesley Wark.

The United States and Iran have been at daggers drawn for more than thirty years. While this rivalry has never erupted into open war, it has been an enduring “twilight war” in which spies and terrorists often play the lead role. US Government historian David Crist will discuss his groundbreaking book which pulls back the curtain on many of the deepest secrets of this lethal struggle. Among other fascinating revelations, hear about the massive spy network that the CIA developed in Iran with German help in the 1980s, how these spies communicated with their handlers using invisible ink, and how their discovery led to the deaths of more than two dozen people. This event took place on 1 August 2012.

In Castro’s Secrets, Brian Latell, former National Intelligence Officer for Latin America and long-time Cuba analyst, offers a strikingly original image of Fidel Castro as Cuba's supreme spymaster. Latell exposes many long-buried secrets of Castro's lengthy reign, including the extent of Cuba’s double agent operations against the United States. In writing this book, Latell spoke with many high-level defectors from Cuba’s powerful intelligence and security services; some had never told their stories on the record before. He also probed dispassionately into the CIA's plots against Cuba, including previously obscure schemes to assassinate Castro and presents dramatic new conclusions about what Castro actually knew of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This event took place on October 10 2012.

In the days after 9/11, the CIA directed Henry Crumpton to organize and lead its covert action campaign in Afghanistan. In less than 90 days Al Qaeda and the Taliban were routed. The Art of Intelligence draws from the full arc of Crumpton’s espionage and covert action exploits to explain what America’s spies do and why their service is more valuable than ever. This event took place 12 June 2012.

The surprise of September 11 2001 was, in part, a failure of imagination and CIA Director George Tenet did not want that to happen again. On September 13 he created the Red Cell and staffed it with “people who were willing to take their analysis to a whole new zip code.” CIA analyst Mark Henshaw’s first novel, Red Cell, is about the adventures of two analysts assigned to that team during a military crisis with China. The story is fiction, but it draws on Henshaw’s three years in the Red Cell. Join him and SPY Historian Mark Stout as they discuss what goes on in Room 2G31 at CIA Headquarters.

Juan Pujol was the Walter Mitty of World War II, a nobody who at one doomed venture after another while dreaming of doing something interesting with his life -- saving Western civilization, if possible. Journalist Stephan Talty, whose work has appeared widely, including in the New York Times Magazine and GQ, has told the remarkable story of how against all the odds, Pujol did just that by becoming agent GARBO, the most important double agent of World War II. Hear Talty discuss his new book with SPY Historian Mark Stout in this author debriefing which took place on July 12, 2012.

Peter concludes his conversation with longtime CIA officer George Cave with a brief discussion of some of the funny and unusual events that took place in the course of his career in the Clandestine Service.

The history of Israel’s intelligence community—led by the feared and famous Mossad—includes stunning successes and embarrassing failures with important implications for war and peace today. CBS journalist Dan Raviv co-author with Israeli journalist Yossi Melman, of Spies Against Armageddon, traces this history from the country’s independence in 1948 right up to the crises of today.

Russia was a chaotic hotspot after the Revolution of 1917 and an extraordinary collection of spies, adventurers, and opportunists poured into the roiling Russian political scene. Outsized characters like Sidney “Ace of Spies” Reilly, communist activist John Reed, and author/spy Somerset Maugham all played their parts…under the watchful eye of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the head of the ruthless Cheka, the first of the Soviet state security organizations. Listen to renown British historian Robert Service discuss his thrilling new book about this turning point of twentieth century history.

Peter continues his discussion with career CIA officer George Cave. They cover Cave’s time in Saudi Arabia—from which he was expelled when a candid cable he wrote about Saudi politics leaked to the press—and back in Washington where he became embroiled in the Iran-Contra Affair. Hear his account of a clandestine trip with Robert McFarlane and Oliver North for talks with Ayatollah Khomeini’s government and other inside details of this scandal.

George Cave is a legend in the CIA’s Clandestine Service. He was recruited into the CIA in 1956 as a fluent Farsi speaker and was pulled out of his entry training and sent to Afghanistan to deal with an urgent operation there. He never looked back. Join Peter and George as they relive the assassination attempts in Iran against the US Ambassador and George himself in the early 1970s and discuss CIA’s operations in the Middle East over three decades.