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SpyCast

SpyCast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum, is a journey into the shadows of international espionage. Each week, host Sasha Ingber brings you the latest insights and intriguing tales from spies, secret agents, and covert communicators, with a focus on how this secret world reaches us all in our everyday lives. Tune in to discover the critical role intelligence has played throughout history and today. Brought to you from Airwave, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum. 

The Spy Museum does not endorse, approve, or support the opinions stated by guest speakers. Statements made by speakers do not represent the position or opinion of the International Spy Museum.

Retired Colonel Justin Sapp was a Green Beret detailed to the CIA after the September 11th terrorist attacks. He was part of Team Alpha, the first eight Americans to drop behind enemy lines into the mountains of Afghanistan. At 29, Justin was its youngest member. There was no time to onboard him, and he was told he was leaving the next day, departing from the DC area to a base in Uzbekistan, then touching down in northern Afghanistan on a Black Hawk helicopter. Justin would go on to clear the way for follow-on forces to land, secure alliances with warlords to oust the Taliban, interrogate enemy fighters who had been captured. He would also tragically lose his colleague, Johnny “Mike” Spann. Justin takes us back into that historic mission 25 years later. 

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories: https://sashaingber.substack.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/@sasha-ingber 

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

25 Years After 9/11: The CIA's First Moments Behind Enemy Lines in Afghanistan

Graphic content warning: Not recommended for younger listeners. This episode contains material that may be triggering to some audiences, including violence and harm, medical and bodily content, sexual abuse, sexual enslavement, and forced medical experimentation.

The Asia-Pacific theater saw its own scenes of brutality during World War II. But many of us don't know about them. Jenny Chan co-founded Pacific Atrocities Education to raise awareness of these lesser-known horrors. This conversation focuses on the Imperial Japanese Army, which occupied parts of China between 1937 and 1945 as part of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Jenny uncovered new details that showed how intelligence-gathering and covert research enabled war crimes.

For more information, please visit Pacific Atrocities Education: https://www.pacificatrocities.org/

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories: https://sashaingber.substack.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/@sasha-ingber 

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

Japanese Surveillance, Enslavement, and Experimentation in Wartime China

In 2017, journalist Katie Sanders discovered an episode of a radio program called This Is Your Life. It was a scratchy recording from 1949, and she heard the voice of 2nd Lt. Murray Simon, her grandfather, for the first time. In the episode, Murray was reunited with a man named Peter Ortiz, who had rescued him after his plane crashed over Nazi-occupied France in 1944. Ortiz became one of the most decorated Marine officers of World War II, undertaking missions now handled by units like the Navy SEALs and Green Berets. Katie and Nicholas Reynolds, a former CIA historian, went on to write Ortiz's War.

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories: https://sashaingber.substack.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/@sasha-ingber 

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

Peter Ortiz: The WWII Marine Who Foreshadowed Modern-Day Special Forces

You might find Meredith Cavan playing music in an Irish pub. But long before her first album dropped, she clocked more than 20 years at the CIA. One of her jobs there was Southeast Asia Department chief, where she oversaw covert action, intelligence operations, and analysis across 30 countries. We're talking about the years 2021 to 2023, when terrorism was taking a back seat to strategic competition, and her priority was trying to thwart China's influence and infrastructure in its most consequential playground.

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories:

https://sashaingber.substack.com/

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: 

https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

What It Takes to Run the CIA's Southeast Asia Department

For decades, Cuban intelligence has been seen as a force that punches above its weight. Shaped during the Cold War through cooperation with the Soviet Union, its intelligence officers received extensive training by the KGB. But where does Cuba’s spy service stand today, especially as it faces pressure from Washington? Retired FBI special agent Peter J. Lapp, who wrote Queen of Cuba, came in to discuss Havana’s capabilities, the Americans who spied for Cuba, and the Cubans who spied for the US.

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories:

https://sashaingber.substack.com/

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: 

https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

Cuba's Spies, Defectors, and the Ex-FBI Agent Who Met Them All

In Cold War Britain, a secret propaganda department saw its list of targets and tactics widen. Personnel inside the Information Research Department went beyond forgeries, fakes, and plants, conducting bold impersonations to smear critics and stoke tensions among foes. The team, which consisted of refugees, ex-journalists, and even daughters of aristocrats, hatched a slew of audacious operations across Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. They also had their own internal dramas. Author Rory Cormac pored over thousands of recently declassified files to uncover and chronicle their work in his book Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Line.

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories:

https://sashaingber.substack.com/

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: 

https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

Smears, Fakes & Phantoms: Cold War Britain's Secret Propaganda Department

For those of you who have visited the International Spy Museum, you may be familiar with one of our most prized artifacts, the ice ax used to assassinate Leon Trotsky in 1940. Trotsky was the operational mastermind of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and when Vladimir Lenin died, many assumed Trotsky would succeed him as the central figure of the revolution. Joseph Stalin had other plans. What followed was a bitter rivalry that ended in Trotsky's demise. Our guest today, H. Keith Melton, not only tracked down the murder weapon but, alongside his colleague Nigel West, wrote the most comprehensive account of the plot and the assassination to date. H. Keith and Nigel join guest host Dr. Mark Jacobson to discuss their book, The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: Espionage, Scandal, and the Crime of the Century, ahead of their live program coming up on August 6, here at the International Spy Museum.

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories:

https://sashaingber.substack.com/

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: 

https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

Murder in Mexico City: The Assassination of Leon Trotsky

The DGSE, or Directorate General for External Security, is France's foreign intelligence service. It's found inside the Ministry of Defense but reports to the president. It was established under that name in 1982, learning the hard way, through a string of high-profile blunders, how to conduct espionage. The service is responsible for all sources of intelligence and has benefited from a popular TV show about its inner workings. Drawing on documents never before available, Damien Van Puyvelde, the author of the book The DGSE: A Concise History of France's Foreign Intelligence Service, traces the agency's history from its early failures to its sweeping reforms and modern-day successes.

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories:

https://sashaingber.substack.com/

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: 

https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

The Triumphs and Failures of France's Foreign Intel Service

Ahana Datta Fasel became the British government’s first ethical hacker in 2014, testing vulnerabilities in computer systems and networks that hackers could potentially exploit. She was only 23, but that gave her an early look at state-sponsored cyber intrusions, which have of course grown more serious and sophisticated. Today, her book, Full Stack Spies: Cyber Espionage in the Age of US-China Competition, explores China’s business of spying online. She joins Sasha from London to talk about the competition, vanities, and betrayals between hackers, tech companies, and the government, all through some of Beijing’s most destructive military and civilian cyber operations.

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories:

https://sashaingber.substack.com/

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: 

https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

Inside China's Cyber Espionage Business

You may have heard of the long-running TV show NCIS, based on the real work of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. But you may never have heard of a unit inside it, called the Office of Special Projects, where staff work on espionage cases that originate inside the U.S. Navy. Case agent Mike Garzon has worked in the office for four years. He sits down with Sasha to talk about a case that closed in 2024. It's the first case in a few decades that the Navy prosecuted from start to finish. It revolved around Bryce Pedicini, who was working for the Navy in Japan as a fire controlman chief. That meant he could operate and maintain advanced weapons systems on ships. And in 2023, he entered a classified government network, took photographs that he sent to a foreign agent, and received payment through PayPal. Pedicini said he needed the money because of… inflation. He was dishonorably discharged and now he's spending 18 years behind bars, which comes to $377 per year for the information he was paid to share.

Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories:

https://sashaingber.substack.com/

For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: 

https://www.spymuseum.org/

And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

The Navy Spy who Sold Secrets for $377 a Year

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Thomas Drake, former senior executive of the NSA – and whistleblower – who in 2010 was indicted on 10 felony counts; charges that would have carried decades of prison time had Drake been convicted. Instead, in early June 2011, the government dropped all of the charges and agreed not to seek any jail time in return for Drake's guilty plea to a misdemeanor of misusing the NSA’s computer system. Although the legal case was settled, the controversy would continue, as a new wave of whistleblowers (or leakers – depending on your perspective) burst on to the public scene, and dramatically changed the way many Americans viewed the power of their government.

The Whistleblower: An Interview with Thomas Drake

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