In the KGB headquarters in Moscow they were confounded by the publicity surrounding Wright and Hollis. British Intelligence knew this because their agent told them. ibid.
Harold Wilson was a frequent visitor to Moscow. It could be said Wilson brought suspicion on himself … Later Wilson became suspicious of MI5’s interest in him and thought they were leaking stories to the newspapers. ibid.
Wilson was innocent but other Labour colleagues weren’t. ibid.
Any secret agent walks a tightrope. You have to know when to keep going and when to jump off. This is the story of Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, one of the West’s most valuable Cold War agents. It’s how he risked everything to avert a Third World War that would destroy civilisation. And how he left everything he knew and everyone he loved to attempt one of the most daring escapes of living memory. Damian Lewis: Spy Wars s1e1: The Man Who Saved the World, History 2019
Copenhagen 1996: Oleg Gordievsky was the son of a loyal KGB officer, an ambitious diplomat stationed in the consulate apartment of the Soviet embassy in Denmark. ibid.
By the summer of 1975 MI6 had their man … Gordievsky wasn’t to receive any payment in exchange for secrets. ibid.
Gordievsky’s early missions for MI6 involved smuggling top secret microfilm documents from the Soviet embassy and passing them to his British handlers in a classic brush past. ibid.
For four years Gordievsky continued to provide top-secret Russian intelligence to the British. ibid.
Oleg Gordievsky had been posted back to Moscow. ibid.
Gordievsky was being posted to the one place where he could do the most damage to the KGB: London. ibid.
Gordievsky’s allegations against the leader of the opposition [Michael Foot] and prominent trades union leaders, including Jack Jones and Ron Brown, led to deep concern about the extent to which the British establishment had been penetrated by the KGB. ibid.
The CIA would seek out the source … [Aldrich Ames] realised the source must have been a high-ranking KGB man in London … Ames himself was a KGB spy. ibid.
From the boot of the car Gordievsky wouldn’t know if he had made it to freedom. ibid.
In the 21st century the rules of the Spy War have been rewritten. Today, Intelligence Agencies fight a new, more elusive and fanatical enemy, radicalised abroad but very much homegrown. Damian Lewis: Spy Wars s1e2: Bombs in the Sky
On June 24th 2006 a flight from Islamabad, Pakistan, landed at London’s Heathrow Airport. Disembarking was a British citizen, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, on his way home to east London. But Ali was being tracked by the British security service MI5. ibid.
A suspected mastermind behind a series of deadly terrorist attacks throughout Europe … He [Abdulla Ahmed Ali] was placed under 24 hour surveillance … The joint investigation was named Operation Overt … based in the Major Incident Room … The team believed that Ali was setting up a terrorist cell. ibid.
The security services were now convinced the Walthamstow flat was a bomb factory … a new type of liquid explosive device. ibid.
Through the night 46 properties across London and the South East were raided. ibid.
July 2010 and four American spies stand on the airport tarmac. After years of imprisonment they are just moments from freedom: they are there to be traded for ten deep-cover Russian agents being sent home after a lifetime of deception in the West. Damian Lewis: Spy Wars s1e3: Spies Next Door
This is a story of loyalty, betrayal and revenge. ibid.
A deadly spy war was in full swing … The FBI had passed information of a sinister Russian plot that would shock America to its core. The FBI’s focus was on a young and seemingly entirely ordinary American couple: Cynthia and Richard Murphy of Montclair, New Jersey. ibid.
Operation Ghost Stories: A deep cover spy ring of ten Russian agents … The decade-long surveillance would become one of the longest running counter-espionage operations in FBI history. ibid.
What [Leon] Panetta was offering harked back to the height of the Cold War: a spy swap … A message came back from the Kremlin: the swap was on. ibid.
[Sergei & Yulia] Skripal: many believe evidence pointed to a Russian state-sponsored assassination plot. ibid.
We may just be entering a new era, one in which Russia’s spymaster-in-chief has taken his spy war directly on to British and American soil. ibid.
Moscow 1987: They were not alone in being betrayed. This is the story of Robert Hansen, an American traitor who systematically dismantled the United States’ network of undercover Soviet agents from the inside out. Perhaps the most dangerous spy in US history. Damian Lewis: Spy Wars s1e4: A Perfect Traitor
He wasn’t your typical FBI agent … ‘He was a very strange man’ … Hansen had talents that made him valuable … ‘Bob Hanson’s hobby was running computers’ … Hansen was the Russian spy … Hansen was sitting on an intelligence goldmine. ibid.
‘He compromised hundreds of double agents.’ ibid. expert
Investigators were unable to link all of the intelligence leaks to Aldrich Ames. ibid.
A disgruntled former KGB agent … The FBI had paid seven million dollars for a secret KGB file that would unmask a mole. ibid.
In a world of spies a cover story and an alias must be watertight. This requires more than just convincing paperwork. It’s how you look, what you say, from the way you act. And it means staying in character no matter what. This is the remarkable story of how one man used inspiration from Hollywood to school six frightened diplomats in the art of being someone else. Damian Lewis: Spy Wars s1e5
Tehran, January 1980: Iran was in the grip of an Islamic revolution … CIA agent Tony Mendez entered Iran on a covert mission: his task to rescue a group of six American diplomats from almost certain death. ibid.
The Iranian hostage crisis had begun … 13 embassy workers made a break for it, but in the confusion they were forced to split up. ibid.
The Iranians brought in teams of carpet-weavers to piece together the fragments of paperwork. ibid.
The Canadian government had supplied the American diplomats with genuine Canadian passports. ibid.
Life as a double agent can cause anyone to break. The story of Vladimir Vetrov, high ranking KGB officer and secret operative for the French Intelligence Service, is one of the most bizarre to emerge from the Cold War. Part thriller, part charade, it’s a tale of infidelity, bravery and betrayal that led to one of the most astonishing Trojan horse operations in the history of espionage, and ultimately to the collapse of the entire Soviet system. Damian Lewis: Spy Wars s1e6: Trojan Horse
The French Intelligence services … made contact with Vetrov in Moscow … ‘He put a bundle of documents like that into his hands’ … The DST believed these documents were just the tip of the iceberg … codenamed Farewell. ibid.
The largest cache of stolen information ever to emerge from the Soviet Union. ibid.
They [Americans] came up with a plan to use Vetrov as a Trojan horse – a source at the heart of the KGB through whom they could feed faulty technology back to the Russians. ibid.
No-one could have predicted just how spectacularly things would fall apart. ibid.
On March 6th 2008 Vicktor Bout, a former Soviet military intelligence officer and billionaire protected by the Russian state, touched down in Bangkok. He was there to shake hands on a substantial arms deal, yet Viktor Bout’s arrival in Thailand marked the closing stages of Operation Relentless. This is the story of one of the most audacious sting operations ever conducted in the War on Terror. How a team of undercover operatives pitted their wits against a notorious criminal known as the Merchant of Death. Damian Lewis: Spy Wars s1e7: Merchant of Death
In under five years, Viktor Bout had a devastating impact across Africa. ibid.
Sources told the DEA of Bout’s clandestine meetings in the prison with undisclosed Russian officials. ibid.
This is the story of how MOSAD sent undercover agents into enemy territory to secretly repatriate the lost tribe of Israel. It’s one of the most daring rescue missions in the history of espionage. Damian Lewis: Spy Wars s1e8: Exodus
Tigray region, Ethiopia: This ancient tribe of over 80,000 Jews were the descendants of those who had fled Jerusalem more than 2,500 years ago … in an enclave of around 500 villages … Operation Brothers: and smuggle their Jewish brethren from the refugee camp to the Sudanese coast. ibid.
Kim – an Englishman who spied for the Soviet Union. Storyville: The Spy Who Went Into the Cold, BBC 2013
Harold Macmillan was asked a question about it in Parliament ... He had no option but to clear Philby: ‘There was no reason to conclude that he had, at any time, betrayed the interests of Britain, or to identify him with the so-called third man, if there was one.’ ibid.
Ndola, Rhodesia, September 18 1961: This could either be the world’s biggest murder mystery or the world’s most idiotic conspiracy theory. If the latter is the case, I am very sorry. Storyville: Murder in the Bush: Cold Case Hammarskjold, opening scene, BBC 2019
The remains of the secretary-general’s plane were sighted from the air. ibid. dude addresses general assembly