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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.
SPY REGISTER / THE ARCHIVE
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Operations, double lives, stolen secrets and the people behind them.
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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.
Shin Bet / Spy life · History
The Future Shin Bet Chief Entered Israel on a False Passport
Amos Manor survived Auschwitz, left Romania under an assumed name and joined Israel’s security service within weeks. Four years later, he was running it.
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.
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.
France / Spy life · History
The Resistance spies whose daughter grew up without knowing who they were
Jacques and Lotka de Prévaux gathered and carried intelligence in southern France before their arrest and execution.
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
Josephine Baker Took State Secrets on Tour in Her Sheet Music
The star’s fame opened borders and embassy doors. French intelligence used the access—and the musical scores in her luggage.
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.
Australia / Singapore / Spy games · History
Six Men Paddled Into Singapore Harbour. Seven Ships Paid the Price.
A captured fishing boat carried Allied raiders through Japanese-held waters in 1943. Its disguise survived an encounter with a destroyer at barely 100 yards.
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.
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.
MI5 / Spy games · History
Eddie Chapman’s fake aircraft-factory attack built his cover as Agent Zigzag
A safecracker sent to sabotage Britain surrendered after landing in December 1942; MI5 used a staged factory bombing to convince his German handlers he had succeeded.
NSA / Spy games · History
A Fake Water Shortage Helped Nimitz Set Japan’s Midway Trap
American codebreakers planted a lie where Japanese intelligence could find it.
MI5 / Spy games · History
MI5’s Fake Gestapo Office Collected the Secrets Meant for Hitler
Eric Roberts used a forged German identity card and a bugged London flat to receive military information from British Nazi sympathisers.
FBI / Spy games · History
The FBI’s Fake Office Put Nazi Spies on Film
Germany sent William Sebold to New York as an agent. His handlers’ messages and his visitors were soon passing through an FBI trap.
GCHQ / Cyber & technology · History
A German Operator Repeated a Message. Britain Rebuilt His Secret Cipher Machine.
One breach of procedure gave Bletchley Park an opening into the communications of the German High Command.
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.
GCHQ / Spy life · History
Joan Clarke: the codebreaker the payroll called a linguist
The Hut 8 specialist helped attack naval Enigma, became a wartime deputy and continued her intelligence career at GCHQ.
GCHQ / Spy life · History
Britain’s Enigma Expert Threw a Tantrum When Poland Showed Him the Answer
The July 1939 meeting outside Warsaw exposed how far Polish codebreakers had advanced—and helped turn Britain toward the methods Enigma required.
NSA / Power & scandal · History
Herbert Yardley Turned America’s Codebreaking Secrets Into a Bestseller
Washington closed his bureau. Its former chief put the operation into print.