Oleg Penkovsky is back in the USSR, ready to feed Soviet secrets to his new MI6 contact: a pram-pushing mother of three. But with the Berlin Crisis about to boil over, his intel could be the difference between war and peace. But with the KGB lurking everywhere smuggling these secrets out of Moscow will demand nerves of steel.
Listen to The Spy Who ad-fre ... Show More
Aug 2024
The Spy Who Defused the Missile Crisis | Unpacking the mind of a spy legend | 5
<p>Few spies have motives as hard to decipher as those of Oleg Penkovsky. Was he a hero, an egotist or a madman? The Spy Who's Tristan Donovan sits down with Jack Basu-Mellish, host of the LSE Cold War Podcast, to discuss Penkovsky’s actions, plus the lessons to learn from the ev ... Show More
38m 37s
Feb 2025
16. Crossing the Iron Curtain: Escape From the KGB (Ep 3)
How would you disguise a cyanide pill for a CIA spy in Moscow during the Cold War? What risks could Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Beatles pose to Adolf Tolkachev’s mission against the Soviet state? And will the CIA’s mole in Moscow be discovered by the KGB?
It’s 1985, and fo ... Show More
47m 1s
Feb 2025
The Man Who Stopped WWIII
In 1983, the Cold War escalated to new heights after the Soviet Union mistakenly shot down a passenger jet, Korean Air Flight 007, killing all 269 people on board. Just weeks later, Russian Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was on duty when the nuclear missile detection system ... Show More
39m 37s