Was it possible to avoid KGB surveillance in Moscow as a CIA agent at the height of the Cold War? What motivates someone to spy on their country for an opposing power? And how did Adolf Tolkachev manage to smuggle out the top secret documents the CIA needed to defeat the USSR?
Adolf Tolkachev has been recruited by the CIA as a mole inside a highly sensitiv ... Show More
Feb 2025
The Spy Who Infiltrated Auschwitz | Pilecki’s Great-Grandson on the Man Behind the Mission | 4
Krzysztof Kosior was thirty when he first felt ready to visit Auschwitz. But since childhood, he had heard stories of his great-grandfather’s time there, and of his journey from unknown soldier to one of Poland’s greatest heroes. Talking to actor and spy novelist Charlie Higson, ... Show More
33m 28s
Mar 2024
Fatal Neutrality: Lumumba, the CIA, and the Cold War
In 1960, the Congo gained independence from Belgium. Patrice Lumumba was elected prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president. Within a year, Lumumba was deposed and assassinated. This week on Deconstructed, executive editor of Foreign Affairs and author Stuart Reid joins Ryan Gr ... Show More
46m 10s
Nov 2022
Secrets of a Spy: Alan Nunn May
Alan Nunn May, a British physicist, died aged 91 in 2003. But before he passed away, he gave a dramatic deathbed confession. Nunn had been jailed and sentenced to ten years’ hard labour in 1946 for passing information from the Western allies’ atomic bomb project, to the Soviet Un ... Show More
40m 27s
Jul 2023
Dancing With Jackals, Part One: The Idealist | CIA
In June 1970, a young man is arrested at the Israeli port of Haifa. On his person, police officers discover pro-Palestine propaganda, a Super-8 video camera, and 2 kilograms of high explosive. His name is Bruno Breguet - and his story only gets stranger from here. In this 2-part ... Show More
38m 20s
Apr 2024
The Spy Who Saved MI5 | No Return | 3
There’s panic at MI5 headquarters. Oleg Lyalin, their man inside the KGB, has just been arrested for drunk driving putting Operation Foot in jeopardy. But as MI5 races to reach him before the KGB can, Lyalin is working out a daring new plan that will force the British security se ... Show More
33m 27s