The Rest Is Classified

Earlier this month, MI5 issued a stark warning to Westminster: a “covert and calculated” Chinese espionage campaign was targeting parliament - and doing so at an industrial scale. Not with trench-coats and dead drops, but with something far more mundane: LinkedIn messages. This week, Gordon and David look at two high-profile cases of alleged Chinese-backed spying in Britain. Those in the frame alw...

*Declassified Club exclusive: ⁠⁠⁠SUBSCRIBE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to listen to the full series* Vladimir Putin is on the cusp of becoming Russia's all-powerful leader, but how did a humble boy from St Petersburg reach such elite heights? Listen as David and Gordon are once again joined by one of the world's leading experts on Russian organised crime, Mark Galeotti, to conclude their series on the rise of Putin. --...

Could this have been the day when Putin fell from power? In June 2023, Prigozhin marched on Moscow, threatening to bring Putin’s authoritarian regime to its knees.  In their final episode on the dramatic rise and fall of Yevgeny Prigozhin, David and Gordon take us back to the coup that almost toppled Putin and how the autocratic leader carried out the ultimate revenge.  ------------------- THE RES...

It’s 2022 and Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine. But, for Putin, all is not going to plan. Enter: Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group.  Listen as David and Gordon tell the story of the disastrous first few months of the war in Ukraine and how Prigozhin’s force of cannibals and sex offenders were fed to the trenches in a desperate attempt to stay in Putin’s orbit.  ------------------- THE RE...

*Declassified Club exclusive: ⁠⁠⁠SUBSCRIBE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to listen to the full series* Vladimir Putin has left Soviet East Germany and is now back in St Petersburg, dipping his toe in the world of organised crime. Listen as David and Gordon are once again joined by one of the world's leading experts on Russian organised crime, Mark Galeotti, to explore the rise of Russia's authoritarian overlord. --------...

From St Petersburg to the Central African Republic, Yevgeny Prigozhin and the infamous Wagner Group are extending their grip across the Global South and leaving death and destruction in their wake. In this episode, David and Gordon explore how the Wagner Group became embedded in the African military landscape and how their influence pervades to this day.  ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED...

Prigozhin is now one of America’s most wanted but his star is only just on the rise. Realising Putin’s need for greater geopolitical power and influence, the Russian oligarch forms the Wagner Group, with the help of a neo-Nazi soldier.  Listen as David and Gordon chart the growth of one of the world’s most infamous mercenary groups as Prigozhin embeds himself in the Middle East, helping President...

*Declassified Club exclusive: ⁠⁠SUBSCRIBE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to listen to the full series* How did Vladimir Putin rise from a nobody in St Petersburg to the most powerful man in Russia? Did he always crave the power of public office? Or was this relentless determination beaten into him by the KGB? Listen as David and Gordon are joined by one of the world's foremost experts on Russian organised crime, author and...

How did Donald Trump win the 2016 US election? Was Russian interference really behind his unlikely success? And how does one man rock the electoral system of the world’s most powerful nation? In the second instalment of their series on Yevgeny Prigozhin, David and Gordon delve into the murky story of how the Internet Research Agency interfered in the 2016 election and changed the course of history...

From Putin’s chef to Putin’s butcher, this is the story of Prigozhin. A man on the brink of oligarchical power who flew a little too close to the sun… Listen as David and Gordon begin a new series on the ill-fated life of the head of the infamous Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.  ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026: Buy your tickets HERE to see David and Gordon live on stage at Lo...

THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026: Buy your tickets HERE on Friday 7th November at 12pm GMT. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND, were listening to the encrypted messages of at least 62 countries around the world. This intelligence was then passed to allies and used to win wars, depose leaders and influence the world order. From sharing secrets w...

Over the past seventy-five years, the United States has developed an insatiable appetite for global surveillance. The stories exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013 were only the tip of the mountain: the CIA had been spying on the world for decades. For more than half a century, a Swiss‑based firm called Crypto AG built encryption machines and sold them to governments around the world. But what its cus...

*Declassified Club exclusive: ⁠⁠SUBSCRIBE⁠⁠⁠⁠ to listen to the full series* Were the Cubans plotting to kill John F. Kennedy? Did Castro have it out for his American adversary? Or did they simply not have the resources to take on the US establishment?  Listen as David and Gordon conclude their exclusive mini-series on who was truly behind the assassination of JFK. ------------------- Join The Decl...

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. While Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested as the lone gunman , the political context - the intense anger of Cuban exiles, the deep resentment from parts of the CIA, and the agency's secret relationship with the mob  - immediately fuels doubt. Join Gordon and David as they explain why the case is absolutely not closed in...

"It's personal now ." The CIA's failure at the Bay of Pigs does not end the fight with Cuba; instead, the heat's actually going to get turned up. The Kennedy brothers are now even more committed to defeating Castro.  Join Gordon and David as they detail the ongoing assassination attempts on Castro. This is the tense calm before a new, much larger crisis is about to engulf the Kennedy administratio...

*Declassified Club exclusive: ⁠SUBSCRIBE⁠⁠⁠ to listen to the full series* Was the assassination of John F. Kennedy a Mafia plot? Or is this just another bonkers conspiracy theory? Listen as David and Gordon are joined by former White House Communications Director and host of The Rest Is Politics: US, Anthony Scaramucci, to discuss his theory on how the Mob killed JFK. ------------------- Join The...

"We not only look like imperialists, we look like stupid ineffectual imperialists, which is worst of all." That was the assessment of one of Kennedy's aides following the swift collapse of the Bay of Pigs invasion. The landings fall apart almost immediately: the beaches are laced with coral, winches are rusty and loud, and an exploding ship, the Rio Escondido, detonates the brigade's primary suppl...

Upload notice - 20th Oct: Is episode 3 sounding the same as episode 2 on your device? There has been a technical error (since rectified). Please go back to episode 2, clear your downloads, and listen again for the updated version. "Hell, Mr. President, we are involved." That was Admiral Burke's desperate plea to John F. Kennedy as the Bay of Pigs operation was underway. In the days before the Apri...

*Declassified Club exclusive: SUBSCRIBE⁠⁠ to listen to the full series* Who really killed John F. Kennedy in Dallas on 22 November 1963? Did the CIA have a vendetta against the 35th President of the United States after their failure against Castro in Cuba? Or was Lee Harvey Oswald just a lone gunman with a need for "justice"? Listen as David and Gordon begin a 3-part exclusive mini-series for Decl...

Re-upload notice - Oct 20th: This podcast was previously uploaded with a later episode's audio/video, meaning those who listened to it upon release wrongly heard episode 3 instead of episode 2. This has since been rectified and replaced with the correct file. Please clear your downloads to hear the correct version of episode 2. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. "I think about it as little as...

“I think that Senator Kennedy's policies and recommendations for the handling of the Castro regime are probably the most dangerously irresponsible recommendations that he's made during the course of this campaign.” That was Richard Nixon, in the final presidential debate of 1960, targeting John F. Kennedy's stance on Cuba. Fidel Castro has seized power, transforming Cuba, a former “playground” for...

*Declassified Club exclusive: ⁠SUBSCRIBE⁠ to listen to the full interview* This week Gordon and David are joined by Kent Walker, Google's President of Global Affairs, to discuss the Aurora cyber attacks, his thoughts on the future of Artificial Intelligence, and what it was like to grow up in Silicon Valley before it became the world's technology hub. ------------------- Join The Declassified Club...

When we left the team at Google's headquarters, they were deep inside their "war room," planning the counter-strike against the sophisticated adversary they now knew was coming from China. Their mission: to kick the hackers out permanently. But with the attackers deep inside the corporate network, this required a drastic, company-wide action. Join Gordon and David as they explain why Google - a co...

"Like many other well-known organisations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis." This was the striking public statement from Google's chief legal officer in January 2010. What began as a major security incident - a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure, originating from China" and resulting in the theft of intellectual property - quickly...

Hezbollah thought they’d found the perfect solution to Israeli surveillance: the pager. In the midst of their paranoia, they negotiated a cut-price deal for thousands of new devices, but what they received was a trap. The mass explosions on September 17 2024, injured 3,000 people and killed dozens, including civilians and children. The victims - many of them part-time militia members or political...