Member article
BND / Spy games · History
The BND hired an author to attack its KGB mole. Bonn stopped the book.
Heinz Felfe’s exposure produced a second intelligence struggle over memoirs, reputations and the public record.
SPY REGISTER / REPORTING & ANALYSIS
Soviet Union
Intelligence reporting from Soviet Union.
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18 reports
MI6 / Spy life · History
The MI6 Traitor Escaped a 42-Year Sentence on a Ladder Made With Knitting Needles
George Blake’s helpers got him over the wall, hid him and drove him toward East Germany beneath the seats of a family campervan.
Member article
ASIO / Spy games · History
Kay Marshall took Moscow’s spy gadget to a rendezvous that never happened
Kay Marshall’s controlled recruitment exposed covert communications and forced Ivan Skripov out of Australia.
Shin Bet / Spy life · History
Israel’s Military Historian Had Invented His Own War Record
Israel Beer’s lawyer acknowledged the fabricated combat past after his arrest. The historian’s espionage conviction eventually brought a 15-year sentence.
CIA / Spy games · History
The CIA Raided a Soviet Ice Station and Hooked Its Men Out of the Arctic
Operation COLDFEET recovered 150 pounds of documents, film and equipment. Getting the collectors home required a balloon, a line and a passing B-17.
Janet Chisholm kept Penkovsky’s Moscow film pipeline moving
The Soviet colonel’s intelligence depended on an inside contact who collected his photographs, replenished supplies and heard his fears.
CIA / Cyber & technology · History
America’s Spy Satellite Dropped Its Secrets Into a Waiting Aircraft
CORONA photographed the Soviet Union from orbit. Reading the film required an extraordinary catch over the Pacific.
MI5 Had to Make an Atom Spy Confess to Protect Its Codebreaking Secret
Klaus Fuchs helped build the bomb and passed its secrets to Moscow. Catching him required turning intelligence into a prosecution.
MI6’s mole exposed the Berlin tunnel before it began listening
George Blake betrayed the joint CIA–MI6 operation during planning. The KGB protected him while Western analysts collected almost a year of Soviet traffic.
MI6 / Power & scandal · History
MI6’s Missing Frogman Exposed a Mission Eden Had Forbidden
Lionel Crabb vanished during a dive against Soviet warships in Portsmouth. The failed operation reached ministers more than two weeks later.
FBI / Spy games · History
A Paperboy Dropped a Nickel. Moscow’s Secret Fell Out.
A five-cent coin split open on a Brooklyn floor in 1953. The coded message inside defeated the FBI for four years.
GRU / Spy life · History
Moscow’s Cipher Clerk Brought His Secrets to a Newspaper. The Paper Sent Him Away.
Igor Gouzenko’s 1945 defection exposed a Soviet network in Canada. His first problem was persuading anyone to listen.
Moscow Gave America Its Own Seal—with a Spy Inside
Soviet schoolchildren delivered the gift. An American ambassador hung it in his office. The listening device stayed hidden until 1952.
The reused code pages that opened Moscow’s secrets
VENONA grew from a small Army project into a decades-long intelligence partnership. Its surviving messages also show the limits of reading an enemy’s traffic.
NSA / Spy life · History
Six Messages Gave Genevieve Grotjan a Way Into Japan’s Secret Code
Her discovery opened PURPLE. Her next breakthrough helped unlock KGB traffic.