SpyCast

SPY Executive Director Peter Earnest and former KGB General Oleg Kalugin discuss the current espionage conflict between Russia and Georgia, reminisce about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and bring an old question to light: Was Isaac Stone a Russian spy? From October 2006.

SPY Executive Director Peter Earnest sat down with author Mark Riebling to discuss his new book on the wartime espionage of the Catholic Church. The Vatican’s silence in the face of Nazi atrocities remains one of the great controversies of our time. History has accused wartime pontiff Pius the Twelfth of complicity in the Holocaust and dubbed him “Hitler’s Pope.” But a key part of the story has re...

When Jason Hanson joined the CIA in 2003, he never imagined that the same tactics he used as a CIA officer for counter intelligence, surveillance, and protecting agency personnel would prove to be essential in everyday civilian life. In addition to escaping handcuffs, picking locks, and spotting when someone is telling a lie, he can improvise a self-defense weapon, pack a perfect emergency kit, an...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the radical force behind the nation’s most revolutionary, high-tech military initiatives over the past half century. To write the first definitive history of the world’s most powerful and productive military science agency, bestselling author Annie Jacobsen tracked down DARPA scientists, past and present, including current neuroscientists bu...

In Part 3 of this three-part series, SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Greg Miller, who covers intelligence and national security for the Washington Post. Houghton and Miller discuss the difficulties in reporting on this most secret of topics, the dangers – and benefits – of using anonymous sources, and the ever-changing nature of intelligence and nat...

In Part 2 of this three-part series, SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Ali Watkins, who covers intelligence and national security for the Huffington Post. Houghton and Watkins discuss the difficulties in reporting on this most secret of topics, the dangers – and benefits – of using anonymous sources, and the ever-changing nature of intelligence and national security journalism. Part 1...

In Part 1 of this three-part series, SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mark Mazzetti, who covers intelligence and national security for the New York Times. Houghton and Mazzetti discuss the difficulties in reporting on this most secret of topics, the dangers – and benefits – of using anonymous sources, and the ever-changing nature of intelligence and...

SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with career US Foreign Service Officer J. Andrew Plowman to discuss his book, Climate Change and Conflict Prevention. Plowman uses the Darfur conflict as a case study to examine how the effects of climate change might lead to future violent conflicts, and he assesses the best way to prevent these conflicts. Mr. Plowman’s service with the State Department h...

SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Cuban-exile-turned-CIA-officer Felix Rodriguez to discuss his extraordinary intelligence career. As a teenager, Rodriguez joined the effort to overthrow (and kill) Fidel Castro. After that mission failed, he trained and led the team that hunted – and captured – the guerilla Che Guevara in Bolivia. By the late 1960s, he took his counterinsurgency exper...

SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Cuban-exile-turned-CIA-officer Felix Rodriguez to discuss his extraordinary intelligence career. As a teenager, Rodriguez joined the effort to overthrow (and kill) Fidel Castro. After that mission failed, he trained and led the team that hunted – and captured – the guerilla Che Guevara in Bolivia. By the late 1960s, he took his counterinsurgency exper...

SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Cuban-exile-turned-CIA-officer Felix Rodriguez to discuss his extraordinary intelligence career. As a teenager, Rodriguez joined the effort to overthrow (and kill) Fidel Castro. After that mission failed, he trained and led the team that hunted – and captured – the guerilla Che Guevara in Bolivia. By the late 1960s, he took his counterinsurgency exper...

While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States. From David Hoffman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand, comes the riveting s...

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Joe Wippl, the Director of Graduate Studies and Professor of the Practice of International Relations, Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies. Wippl is also a former CIA officer, who spent a 30 year career as an operations officer in the National Clandestine Service – at the time (as it is again) the Directorate of Operations. Houghton and Wippl...

For three nerve-wracking years, Naveed Jamali spied on the United States for the Russians – or so the Russians believed. Hear Naveed bring his unbelievable, yet true, story to life. By trading thumb drives of sensitive technical data for envelopes of cash, he pretended to sell out his own country across noisy restaurant tables and in quiet parking lots. Although he had no formal espionage training...

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down (remotely) with biographer Phyllis Birnbaum to discuss her newest book, based on the life of Kawashima Yoshiko, who supported the puppet Manchu state established by the Japanese in 1932--one reason she was executed for treason after Japan's 1945 defeat. The truth of Yoshiko's life is still a source of contention between China and Japan: some believe she was ex...

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Dr. Gen Lester to discuss her new book, When Should State Secrets Stay Secret. Lester’s book examines the oversight mechanisms that have developed within all three branches of government, how they interact, and what types of historical pivot points have driven change among them. She suggests ways to improve oversight mechanisms based on her expert analysi...

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Representative Will Hurd, a Republican from Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, to discuss his unique background as a former CIA officer who is now a Member of the US House of Representatives. After spending most of a decade working in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, Rep. Hurd brought his experiences and lessons-learned to the Halls of Congress, where h...

More than sixty years after their execution in June 1953 for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for the Soviet Union, debate still rages about the Rosenbergs. Mike Meeropol, the son of Julius and Ethel, has spent his life in pursuit of the real story behind his parents’ secret lives, their trials, their convictions for espionage, and ultimately their executions. Sam Roberts, journalist for The New...

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Kelsey Davenport, the Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association, where she provides research and analysis on the nuclear and missile programs in Iran, North Korea, India, and Pakistan and on nuclear security issues. Vince and Kelsey discuss the complexity of the arms control process, the role of intelligence in verifying the sta...

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with historian and author Alex Rose, whose book Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring, is the source material for AMC Network’s series TURN. Drs. Houghton and Rose (who is a writer and co-producer of TURN) discuss history on TV, and the plotline of the second season of the hit series. They also take time to focus on the real history of the...

Former SPY Historian Mark Stout sat down with Marine Maj. Gen. (ret.) Mike Ennis to discuss human intelligence (HUMINT) within the Defense Department and the CIA. In 1998, Ennis commanded the Joint Intelligence Center of the United States Pacific Command, was later named Director of Marine Corps Intelligence Command in 2000, and was the Director of HUMINT for the DIA. In 2006, he was named Deputy...

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down (remotely) with Australian author Stephen Dando-Collins to discuss his new book, Operation Chowhound. Beginning with a crazy plan hatched by a suspect prince, and an even crazier reliance on the word of the Nazis, Operation Chowhound was devised. Between May 1 and May 8, 1945, 2,268 military units flown by the USAAF, dropped food to 3.5 million starving Dutch...

The history of American intelligence in the Revolution and Civil War has been extensively covered by both professional and amateur historians. But what about the time in between the wars? SPY historian Vince Houghton sat down with retired career CIA operations officer and historian Ken Daigler to discuss American espionage during the earliest period of United States history. Who were the first for...

For more than forty years, the United States has played an indispensable role helping the Chinese government build a booming economy, develop its scientific and military capabilities, and take its place on the world stage, in the belief that China’s rise will bring us cooperation, diplomacy, and free trade. But what if the "China Dream" is to replace us, just as America replaced the British Empire...

What do Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and Ana Montes have in common? Two things: they all spied against the United States, and they all had Plato Cacheris as their lawyer. SPY Historian Vince Houghton and Executive Director Peter Earnest sat down with the legendary defense attorney to discuss many of his most (in)famous clients – including Ames, Hanssen, Montes – who stole some of America’s most g...