Episodes

  • The Exercise That Almost Started a War

    The Exercise That Almost Started a War
    Nov 13 2026
    In November 1983, for five days, the world came closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis — and almost nobody in the West knew it. There was no crisis and no ultimatum. There was only a NATO exercise, which Moscow read as the cover for a real nuclear first strike. This is the documented story of Able Archer 83, Operation RYaN, and the misunderstanding that nearly ended the world.
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    9 mins
  • The Man Who Sold Every Name He Knew

    The Man Who Sold Every Name He Knew
    Nov 12 2026
    In the late 1980s, the CIA's agents in Moscow began to disappear — arrested, imprisoned, executed. The mole was the man whose job was to find moles: Aldrich Ames, chief of Soviet counterintelligence. This is the documented story of the nine-year betrayal, the $2.7 million, the ten men who died, and the investigation that finally caught him.
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    9 mins
  • The Archivist Who Stole the KGB's Secrets

    The Archivist Who Stole the KGB's Secrets
    Nov 11 2026
    For twelve years, a quiet KGB archivist copied his service's most secret files by hand, smuggled the notes out in his pockets, and hid them under the floorboards of his country house. When he finally defected in 1992, he brought six trunks of notes — and the FBI called it the most complete intelligence ever received from any source. This is the documented story of the Mitrokhin Archive.
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    9 mins
  • The Mathematicians Who Shortened the War

    The Mathematicians Who Shortened the War
    Nov 10 2026
    In a country house in Buckinghamshire, thousands of people worked in secret to read the enemy's mail. But the story of Bletchley Park begins in Poland, with three young mathematicians who broke the Enigma code first — and gave their secret away five weeks before the war began. This is the documented story of the codebreakers, the bombe, and the intelligence called Ultra.
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    9 mins
  • The Resistance That Wasn't There

    The Resistance That Wasn't There
    Nov 9 2026
    In the 1920s, the enemies of the Soviet Union believed there was a resistance movement inside Russia, waiting to rise. Western intelligence believed in it. Two famous men crossed the border to join it — and were arrested the moment they arrived. This is the documented story of Operation Trust: the fake resistance, the real trap, and the deception that destroyed the possibility of belief itself.
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    9 mins
  • The Propellers That Went Quiet

    The Propellers That Went Quiet
    Nov 8 2026
    In the mid-1980s, Soviet submarines began to go quiet — and the reason was a secret purchase from two companies in two allied countries. This is the documented story of the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal: the milling machines, the falsified export permits, the informant who told the truth, and the sale that changed the war under the sea.
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    9 mins
  • The Sailor Who Sold a Million Secrets

    The Sailor Who Sold a Million Secrets
    Nov 7 2026
    For eighteen years, the Soviet Union could read the United States Navy's most secret messages — more than a million of them. They bought the keys from a Navy warrant officer who walked into their embassy and offered to sell them. This is the documented story of the Walker spy ring: a family of spies, the cipher machine that failed, and the ex-wife who finally broke it.
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    9 mins
  • The Camera That Fell From the Sky

    The Camera That Fell From the Sky
    Nov 6 2026
    Three months after the U-2 was shot down, a cargo plane over the Pacific caught a falling capsule from orbit — and inside was film that photographed more of the Soviet Union in one day than every U-2 flight combined. This is the documented story of CORONA, America's first spy satellite, the twelve failures, the mid-air catch, and the photographs that proved the missile gap was a myth.
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    11 mins