FBI / Spy games · History
A fake Russian handler drew out the secrets of an American interrogation chief
George Trofimoff’s filmed meeting with an undercover FBI agent became central evidence in the espionage trial that ended his years of freedom.
SPY REGISTER / THE ARCHIVE
The Archive
Operations, double lives, stolen secrets and the people behind them.
99 stories from 135 published reportsClear filters
Member article
Mossad / Spy games · History
Mossad’s Poison Plot Ended With Israel Handing Over the Antidote
The failed attempt to kill Khaled Meshaal in Amman put Israeli agents in custody, enraged Jordan’s king and brought Canada into the crisis.
The spycatcher who guessed a retired NSA clerk’s secret password
An undercover FBI officer used a chess clue to gain Robert Lipka’s trust decades after his Soviet spying. The old case ended in a guilty plea.
Shin Bet / Spy games · History
A Bomb Hidden in a Phone Ended the Hunt for Hamas’s Engineer
Yahya Ayyash had eluded Israeli forces for months. In January 1996, a call said to be from his father reached him through a booby-trapped mobile.
The CIA mole whose cash deposits outpaced the hunt for him
Aldrich Ames sold secrets to Moscow for nine years. An inspector general review later traced the missed opportunities that delayed his arrest.
Shin Bet / Power & scandal · History
Israel’s court barred a pardoned Shin Bet official from a ministry’s top job
The 1993 Ginosar judgment examined the Bus 300 cover-up and the Nafso interrogation and perjury affair.
Mossad / Spy games · History
Israel stripped seats from a jet to fly thousands out before Addis Ababa fell
Operation Solomon moved more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews in 36 hours. The frantic airlift rested on secret preparations, diplomacy and a network already helping families survive.
Germany / Power & scandal · History
The Stasi Kept Its Enemies’ Smells in Glass Jars
East Germany’s secret police built an odour archive to help dogs identify dissidents. A summons for questioning could supply the sample.
DGSE / Power & scandal · History
France breached confinement deal for convicted Rainbow Warrior agents, tribunal ruled
Two DGSE agents received ten-year sentences after the fatal bombing. A later agreement sent them to Hao; arbitration found France breached its obligations there.
ASIS / Power & scandal · History
Five armed men, a sledgehammer and the spy raid that cost ASIS its guns
An ASIS training exercise burst into Melbourne’s Sheraton in 1983. The fallout stripped Australia’s foreign intelligence service of covert-operation powers and weapons.
CIA / Cyber & technology · History
France’s KGB mole handed Washington Moscow’s technology shopping list
The Farewell source exposed a collection network—and gave the Americans a route into its requirements.
The convicted satellite spy who vanished through a prison drainage hole
Christopher Boyce escaped while serving a 40-year espionage sentence. Nineteen months later, marshals found him outside a small restaurant in Washington state.
The Codebreaker Who Turned Rum-Runners’ Radio Chatter Into 650 Prosecutions
Elizebeth Friedman read the smugglers’ secrets, trained their pursuers and later helped expose Nazi agents across South America.
The CIA could buy the guns. Pakistan controlled how fast they reached Afghanistan.
Declassified 1980 memoranda reveal the aircraft, intermediaries and bargaining behind an expanding covert arms pipeline.
The fake film company that gave six Americans a way out of Tehran
The CIA’s Argo cover brought Hollywood paperwork to a Canadian rescue effort. Six diplomats had spent almost three months hidden in Canadian homes.
Member article
CIA / Power & scandal · History
The CIA Drugged Americans. Then It Destroyed the Files.
MKULTRA’s surviving paperwork exposes a vast research network, unwitting subjects and a chemist worried about what his testimony might cost him.
Mossad / Spy games · History
Mossad's Nairobi station turned a family home into Entebbe's secret command post
Israel's 1976 hostage rescue was planned under a deadline and with limited information. Nairobi's role emerges in later reporting.
AMAN / Unit 8200 / Power & scandal · History
Kissinger’s Warning About Israel’s False-Flag Bombers
Twenty-one years after the Egyptian bomb plot, America’s secretary of state brought it up in the Oval Office as a reason to distrust a new arrangement.
CIA / Spy games · History
The CIA’s sunken-submarine gamble—and the burglary that exposed it
Project AZORIAN put a giant claw on the Pacific seabed. Mechanical failure and a stolen document left the CIA’s recovery mission unfinished.
Germany / Power & scandal · History
East Germany Put a Spy at Willy Brandt’s Elbow
Günter Guillaume spent years climbing the Social Democrats’ ranks. His exposure in the chancellor’s personal staff helped end Brandt’s government.
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.
AMAN / Unit 8200 / Power & scandal · History
Israel’s Spies Saw the Armies Moving. Their Report Still Said War Was Unlikely.
AMAN’s October 5, 1973 assessment described emergency deployments and Soviet evacuations, then assigned a low probability to an Egyptian attack. The invasion began the following afternoon.
Mossad / Power & scandal · History
Mossad killed the wrong man in Lillehammer. The arrests exposed a European trail.
Norway’s inquiry traced the murder, the criminal convictions and the diplomatic limits of the investigation.
Switzerland / Israel / France / Cyber & technology · History
Israel Bought Engine Secrets From the Man Sent to Burn Them
A Swiss engineer substituted fake bundles for Mirage engine documents headed to an incinerator. A 1971 judgment laid out the trade.