Rule 12: Never Lose Sight of the Human Factor. ibid.
These rumours held that Middle Eastern men, presumably Arabs, were arrested in explosives-packed vans in various places around the city on September 11th and that some had even been photographing and celebrating those events … The men were spotted shortly after 8.46 a.m. … at 3.31 p.m. the FBI issued an all-points bulletin … ‘We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.’ The Corbett Report, 9/11 Suspects: The Dancing Israelis
Two of the men had ties to Israeli intelligence. ibid.
‘Our purpose was to document the event.’ ibid. group on Israeli television
However you cut it, this story is unbelievable. ibid.
… And then deported back to Israel. ibid.
So if they were meant to distract from a bigger story, what story could that possibly be? ibid.
An FBI dragnet that swept up the largest foreign spying ring ever caught red-handed on American soil. ibid.
In the Northern Ireland conflict spying was a very dangerous game. The IRA’s chief interrogator explains how he extracted confessions from informers before they were shot. Except that for years the interrogator was himself one of Britain’s most important spies. Codenamed Stakeknife he was uncovered in 2003: real name Freddie Scappaticci. Now Stakeknife and his spy masters are the subject of a major criminal inquiry – were fellow spies sacrificed so that he could continue to spy. Our Panorama investigation suggests they were. Panorama: The Spy in the IRA, BBC 2017
Scappaticci became head of the Nutting Squad during the 1980s. ibid.
‘There’s more to life than killing.’ ibid. Scappaticci to Cook Report investigators
On the frozen weekend of 5th November 1936 a nerve-shredded King Edward VIII made a secret telephone call from his office in Buckingham Palace. In a private conversation with his brother he confided that he could no longer be king if it meant abandoning the woman he loved. But recently declassified documents have revealed that his every word was being scrutinised. Spying on the Royals I, Channel 4 2017
A king suspected of Nazi sympathies … and a top-secret surveillance operation against the king. ibid.
[Albert] Canning began to investigate her background … She had a frustratingly murky past. ibid.
The question of identity of Wallis’s second lover became all-consuming. ibid.
The Prince of Wales seemed set on a woman who seemed far from set on him. ibid.
The press abroad: and they were starting to run the story. Edward and Wallis were becoming more brazen. ibid.
King Edward refused to condemn anti-Semitic violence. ibid.
Rumours of marriage were now beginning to circulate. ibid.
In July 1940, while Britain faced the threat of Nazi invasion, the ex-king Edward VIII and his wife the former Wallis Simpson arrived in Lisbon. They were guests of a Portuguese bankers who was also a known Nazi collaborator. Secretly watching their every moved was a British spy … ‘They are clearly fifth column’. Spying on the Royals II
Six months after giving up his throne Edward married Wallis. ibid.
Giving orders to the British embassy in Berlin to pointedly ignore his brother. ibid.
Edward had offered to help dethrone his brother and become president. ibid.
The Duke and Duchess’s first visit to Britain since their marriage was a disaster. ibid.
The Bahamas was one of the sleepiest outposts of the British empire. ibid.
The Duchess was not finding the Caribbean to her taste. ibid.
The FBI had only recently moved into the murky world of espionage. ibid.
An unsubstantiated allegation that the Duchess had been passing information to the enemy. ibid.
London: For decades cunning games of espionage have been played out on the city’s streets: assassinations, treason and betrayal. Secrets of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, PBS 2014
Today, MI6 has over 3,200 officers operating across the globe. ibid.
Espionage work is neither loud nor high profile. ibid.
London: [Georgi] Markov desperately tries to work out how he’s been poisoned; they only strange thing he can remember happening is at a bus stop on the way to work that morning … ‘prodded him with an umbrella’ … a tiny round pellet the size of a pinhead … ricin. ibid.
2006: dissident Alexander Litvinenko is fatally poisoned at the Millennium Hotel in London when his tea is laced with Polonium 210. ibid.
In the 1980s there seemed to be an epidemic of traitors who had access to America’s deepest secrets and who sold them to the Soviet Union. Traitors Within: Spies Who Sold Out America, History 2016
1985 would become known as the Year of the Spy when four Americans committed treason … They worked for four different intelligence agencies. ibid.
Richard Miller: a twenty-year veteran of the FBI … Miller brought along a FBI foreign intelligence manual offering to sell it … Richard Miller was sentenced to two Life terms plus fifty years … The sentence on appeal was reduced to twenty years in prison. ibid.
Former Navy man John Walker and his rings of spies were arrested … He had access to coded messages ... 30 years old Walker was in debt, he needed money and knew how to get it quickly … [Walker] walked into the Soviet embassy and offered his services as a spy … Many believe to be the most damaging in American history. ibid.
There was still a raging anger towards the CIA and in [Edward] Howard’s mind the way to get revenge was to give away what the Agency valued most: intelligence … Yurchenko defected and described the traitor in their midst. ibid.
National Security Agency: Ronald Pelton … Three life terms plus five years. ibid.
1985: The FBI arrested seven Americans for leaking intelligence secrets to the Soviets. ibid.
[Aldrich] Ames … became the CIA to several … double-agents … He also had a drinking problem … Soviet Counter- Intelligence … Ames had tapped into a goldmine … Ames passed his polygraph … ibid.
Robert Hanssen spied on and off for the Russians for twenty years. ibid.
Israel increases the activities of its internal security agency the Shin Bet. The Green Prince, 2014
‘A new recruit – it’s nickname was the Green Prince; he was considered highly highly dangerous.’ ibid.
‘To collaborate with Israel is the most shameful thing.’ ibid. Green Prince
There are enough nuclear weapons on Earth to wipe out the human race. We have already stood on the very brink of Armageddon. The race for nuclear supremacy has fuelled a world of conspiracy, deceit and espionage. It is a race in which spies risked their lives to betray their country, their friends and their family. And at its heart lies the world’s best-kept secrets. Nuclear Secrets I: The Spy from Moscow, BBC 2007
His [Penkovsky] offer to spy for the West reached Washington but the CIA failed to make contact. ibid.
Penkovsky made an astonishing claim that turned Cold-War perceptions on their head: the Soviets were way behind in the nuclear race, but Khrushchev was planning an all-out nuclear attack. ibid.
Penkovsky was going back behind the Iron Curtain as the Cold War intensified still further. ibid.
In May 1963 Penkovsky & Wynn were tried in Moscow. The KGB had arrested Wynn in Hungary – sentenced to eight years, he was released within eighteen months in a spy exchange. Oleg Penkovsky received the sentence of a common traitor. ibid.
1945: America prepares to unleash the most destructive weapon ever seen. It’s the dawn of the nuclear age … a weapon of mass murder created by men of genius – but one is a communist spy: Dr K Fuchs. Nuclear Secrets II: Superspy
Fuchs was against any country having a monopoly on the bomb. ibid.
The Soviets were progressing fast building four secret nuclear cities to service the bomb project. ibid.
In six London meetings Fuchs passed on ninety documents of nuclear secrets. ibid.