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.
SPY REGISTER / THE ARCHIVE
The Archive
Operations, double lives, stolen secrets and the people behind them.
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NSA / Spy games · History
The Pentagon’s Plan to Frame Cuba for Terror in America
The Joint Chiefs approved proposals for manufactured attacks, a wrecked American ship and a fake airliner incident to build support for an invasion.
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.
Mossad / Spy games · History
Mossad’s Eichmann capture opened a courtroom to the world
The 1960 operation in Argentina led to a diplomatic clash and a Jerusalem trial that put deportation records and survivor testimony before a global audience.
The U-2 pilot’s survival exposed Washington’s weather-flight story
Francis Gary Powers survived being shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. His capture gave Moscow the evidence to unravel America’s cover account.
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.
The BND’s founding bargain—and the past it carried into the Cold War
A new German intelligence service inherited Gehlen’s network, American sponsorship and personnel whose wartime records could not be wished away.
Opinion · The Editorial
CIA / Spy games · History
United Fruit Lost Its Land. Guatemala Lost Its President.
The banana company’s property dispute became entangled with Washington’s Cold War crusade. The CIA’s own record shows how far the intervention went.
ASIO / Spy games · History
Australia asked editors to keep the Petrovs’ whereabouts secret
The Petrovs’ 1954 defections exposed Soviet espionage. Protecting the couple brought questions about citizenship, publicity and voluntary national-security press notices.
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.
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.