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.
SPY REGISTER / THE ARCHIVE
The Archive
Operations, double lives, stolen secrets and the people behind them.
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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.
AMAN / Unit 8200 / Spy games · History
The Radio Chatter That Exposed Moscow’s Secret Air War
Russian voices betrayed the Soviet pilots flying from Egypt. Israeli intelligence then helped prepare a fighter ambush over the Suez front.
CIA / Cyber & technology · History
The CIA Built a Robot Dragonfly. A Breeze Could Blow Its Cover.
A miniature engine made its wings beat; a laser was meant to guide it. Crosswinds kept the Insectothopter out of the field.
AMAN / Unit 8200 / Cyber & technology · History
Israel Stole Egypt’s Radar. The Helicopter Almost Couldn’t Lift It.
A Soviet radar was worth taking home intact. In December 1969, Israeli commandos dismantled it in the dark and discovered their prize was dangerously heavy.
Europe / Spy games · History
Five embargoed gunboats slipped out of France on Christmas morning
A fictitious oil-service deal, hidden naval crews and refueling ships helped Israel take its paid-for boats out of Cherbourg in December 1969.
North Korea Seized an American Spy Ship With Its Secrets Still Aboard
The Pueblo’s crew tried to destroy the cryptographic equipment. The ship’s design made that desperate job harder.
CIA / Cyber & technology · History
The White House Retired the CIA’s 2,200-MPH Spy Plane After One Campaign
OXCART delivered nearly a mile of film on its first operational flight. Satellites and the Air Force’s Blackbird narrowed its future.
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.
Mossad / Spy games · History
Mossad recruited an Iraqi pilot—and landed his Soviet fighter in Israel
Munir Redfa's 1966 defection delivered a working MiG-21 to Israel. The United States borrowed it for secret tests at Area 51 two years later.
Mossad / Spy life · History
Mossad’s Champagne Spy Rode Into Egypt’s Military Bases
Wolfgang Lotz’s horses, gifts and supposed German military past opened doors for an Israeli agent in Cairo.
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.
Mossad Hunted a Missing Boy Across Three Continents
A child hidden under false identities became a mission for the spy chief who had captured Eichmann.