FSB / Spy games
He Went to Meet a Woman. Russia Gave Him 15 Years.
An online romance took David Adrian Kercso to the Black Sea. Detention records exposed a problem with the FSB’s arrest film: he was already a prisoner.
SPY REGISTER / REPORTING & ANALYSIS
United Kingdom
Intelligence reporting from United Kingdom.
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MI5 says China’s spy funding reached projects involving 100-plus UK-linked academics
Britain’s Security Service says CGTRI-backed projects strengthened Chinese intelligence work; Beijing rejects the allegation as fabricated.
United Kingdom / United States / Russia / Cyber & technology
Met suspended Oxygen Forensics software after US Russian-ownership charges
The London force reviewed its use of the forensic tools as US prosecutors accused company leaders of concealing Russian control.
MI6 / Spy life
MI6 chief puts Python and human agents on the same front line
Blaise Metreweli’s first doctrine for MI6 pairs agent-running with technical fluency, a more operational posture and calculated risks below the threshold of war.
GCHQ / Cyber & technology · History
Britain Built Colossus to Read Hitler’s Messages. Then It Smashed Eight Machines.
The electronic breakthrough at Bletchley Park outlived the war inside GCHQ—and remained hidden from the people writing computing history.
GRU / Power & scandal · History
UK inquiry says GRU’s discarded Novichok bottle killed Dawn Sturgess
A statutory inquiry traced the poison from a state-authorised assassination attempt to a counterfeit perfume bottle found months later. Russia denies any role, and three charged suspects remain wanted.
Member article
FSB / Power & scandal · History
The poisoned teapot London traced to the FSB—and probably Putin
A radioactive trail led investigators from a Mayfair hotel to two Russian visitors, an earlier failed attempt and an operation the UK inquiry said was probably approved at the top.
Member article
Mossad / Spy life · History
Israel’s Nuclear Whistleblower Wrote His Kidnapping on His Hand
Mordechai Vanunu exposed Dimona, disappeared into Israeli custody and found a way to tell reporters where he said the operation had taken him.
GCHQ’s encryption breakthrough spent a generation in secret
Ellis, Cocks and Williamson reached public-key ideas inside British intelligence. Independent researchers carried the field into public use before GCHQ disclosed its work.
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.
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.
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.
Member article
The CIA’s Instructions for Overthrowing Iran’s Prime Minister
A surviving internal account sets out the target, the replacement and the political machinery behind Mosaddeq’s fall.
United Kingdom / Spy life · History
Odette Hallowes’s George Cross citation recorded how she protected fellow agents under interrogation
The SOE courier maintained a cover story, protected colleagues and survived more than two years in enemy custody.
MI5 / Spy games · History
GARBO: the imaginary spy network Germany learned to trust
MI5’s double agent built fictitious sources, carefully timed truths and a persuasive story about D-Day. His German handlers rewarded him for it.
CIA / Spy life · History
Virginia Hall escaped the Gestapo’s hunt—and went back
Rejected by the Foreign Service after losing a leg, Hall built resistance networks in France and returned for an OSS mission before D-Day.
MI6 / Spy life · History
Jeannette Guyot parachuted ahead of the spies to find their hiding places
The French Pathfinder agent prepared refuges, contacts and drop sites for the Allied Sussex intelligence teams in 1944.
NSA / Cyber & technology · History
Churchill’s Secret Telephone Ran on Records That Operators Destroyed
SIGSALY turned encrypted speech into a vast operation of turntables, couriers and technicians.
United Kingdom / Spy games · History
Operation Mincemeat gave a dead man an invented life to carry false invasion plans
British intelligence planted a fictitious Royal Marine officer off Spain in 1943, using personal papers and a briefcase to direct German attention away from Sicily.