SpyCast

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 Presid...

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...

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 thi...

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...

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...

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.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton traveled to Politicon in Pasadena, CA and sat down (before a live audience) with Jon Ronson, author of The Men Who Stare at Goats, and all-around interesting person.