Secret training: Each year the American secret service receives thousands of applications for only a few hundred positions. ibid.
The CIA brought hundreds of Hitler’s ex-Intelligence officers back to the USA after the War. At secret bases they were retrained as CIA spies, then sent back to Germany to spy on the Russians. Secrets of the CIA
On February 24th 1994 Aldrich Ames a CIA Soviet expert who’d worked at the CIA for nearly thirty years, was arrested with a suitcase stuffed full with cash and a plane ticket to Russia in his pocket. ibid.
Agent Topaz’ intelligence was unique. And the Soviets were hungry for more. He responded by gaining access to the most secret document in NATO: it was called MC161. 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse, Channel 4 2008
Topaz ... He was the jewel in our crown. Oleg Gordievsky
Ya, I photographed it in its entirety. Rainer Rupp aka Topaz
Yes, I do think it could have provoked a nuclear war. Rainer Rupp aka Topaz
August 18th 1960: 160 kilometres above the Earth a secret race in space has just begun. Corona – America’s first photographic spy satellite – has become operational. The capsule was loaded with nearly a kilometre of film. Nova: Astrospies, PBS 2008
A new Soviet missile base close to the Arctic was in the final stages of completion. ibid.
Launching a man into space just couldn’t be kept secret. ibid.
They were to be known as astrospies. ibid.
Inside, the astrospies could look through a viewport and observe and photograph high priority targets in Russia and elsewhere. ibid.
In Russian ALMAZ means ‘a diamond in the rough’. It was the codename for the Soviet spy platform. A name that could never be spoken. ALMAZ was a state secret. ibid.
A 1963 Air Force briefing film titled Space and National Security depicted space as a battlefield. ibid.
The MOL’s camera was designed to spot objects as small as three inches. ibid.
At 8.50 on November 3rd the MOL programme got off the ground. ibid.
Major Robert Lawrence was one of the final crew members chosen for MOL. He was one of the Air Force’s best pilots. He had a Phd in chemistry. And he was the first African-American chosen to be an astronaut. ibid.
By the beginning of 1969 the secret race between Russia and the US to launch the first spies into space appeared to be neck and neck. ibid.
The end of the MOL turned out to be as low-key as its beginning. ibid.
Subsequent missions to ALMAZ were problematic. ibid.
This was the digital age of espionage. ibid.
Of the Cold War spy stories two days stand out: the shooting down of America’s top-secret U2 spy plane and the day the Soviet Union and the USA traded spies on the Glienicke bridge in Berlin. Days that Shook the World s2e10: Cold War Spies, BBC 2004
President Eisenhower approved a $35,000,000 programme to produce twenty high-altitude surveillance aircraft. After eight months of trials the U2 was born. The test pilots nicknamed it The Angel. ibid.
For the next ten hours Gary Powers will be completely alone in miles and miles of deep blue sky. ibid.
The U2 is hit: as the pellets tear into the tail and rear fuselage, Powers loses control and begins to lose altitude. ibid.
As a result of the U2 incident the Paris summit ends in disaster. ibid.
Just two years later Gary Powers would be thrust into the Cold War spotlight once again. Berlin February 1962: Germany’s largest city is divided ... An ambitious and unprecedented spy swap. ibid.
Found guilty of espionage Rudolf Abel was sentenced to thirty years and fined $3,000 for spying. ibid.
On his return to the US Powers will attend the CIA Board of Inquiry into the circumstances of his crash. ibid.
The defection to the Soviet Union of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean and the execution in America of Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg … show the cost of betrayal. Days that Shook the World s3e1: Cambridge Spy Ring
25th May 1951: In 1931 whilst at University both met Kim Philby … It is the last time Donald Maclean will join the commuters to the City. ibid.
The scandal is immense and seriously damages relations with American Intelligence. ibid.
The Rosenberg trial has been one of the most sensational in American history. ibid.
1951 ... A ring of double-agents who are to become known as the Cambridge Five. Crimes that Shook Britain
Two British civil servants, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, suddenly disappeared ... As a member of the Intelligence Service, Philby had access not only to secret British anti-Soviet operations but also covert CIA activities. ibid.
It took four decades for the rest of the Five to become known. ibid.
Traitors and spies: how the Gunpowder Plot was foiled, and how the best known conspirator confessed. Portillo’s State Secrets 6/10: Traitors and Spies, BBC 2015
‘The structural condition of HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs presents no problem to a person determined to escape’ ... These files represent a comedy of incompetence. ibid.
The most damaging of all was George Blake. 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.
I was trying to find a man who’d been wanted by the British police for nearly fifty years. Storyville: Masterspy of Moscow, BBC 2015
The most damaging British traitor of the Cold War. The trouble was those secrets were ours. ibid.
‘You cannot punish me for my sins because my sins were put inside me and are not my fault.’ ibid. Blake’s ‘No Other Choice’
‘I came to the conclusion that I was not fighting on the right side.’ ibid. Blake
Blake arrived in Berlin for his next assignment, a married man and still above suspicion. ibid.
A spy ring in London was put on trial. ibid.
A vengeful 42 years in a British jail. The sentence was unprecedented. ibid.
His career as an active spy had lasted just eight years. ibid.
There is something odd I suppose about anyone who betrays their country. But perhaps the oddest of all drank himself to death here in Russia at the age of 52. For the last years of his life he’d lived on the third floor of this apartment block in Moscow dreaming of England behind an unmarked door. Twelve years earlier his disappearance one summer night had delivered a body-blow to British Intelligence. So why did Guy Burgess and others in his gilded circle betray their class and their country? Storyville: Toffs, Queers and Traitors, BBC 2017
An unrestrained appetite for sex with other men. ibid.
Colleagues in the Foreign Office suspected nothing. ibid.
Burgess gets posted to America despite the fact that he was openly anti-American and the embassy didn’t want him anyway. ibid.
Meeting with North Korean arms dealers in Africa, or going to the North Korean embassy in Sweden to pick up secret documents, but this is no fiction … and has been going on for more than ten years. Storyville: The Mole I, BBC 2020
Ulrich Larsen: To infiltrate and expose the most brutal dictatorship of all: North Korea. ibid.
I quietly start my own KFA [Korean Friendship Association] Denmark. ibid.
We have companies in China, Southeast Asia, Malaysia and other countries for making all kinds of transactions. ibid. Alejandro Cao de Benos, International KFA president
Was the KFA really being used as a front for dealing with weapons and drugs from North Korea with Alejandro as the spy in the web? ibid.