The U.S. Navy held a preliminary hearing to review criminal charges against one of its officers on Friday. According to a redacted report obtained by USNI News, investigators suspect the seaman of two counts of espionage and three counts of attempted espionage. The Navy didn’t release the name of the officer but sources close to…
Category: Espionage Files
Espionage Files: Turkey Arrest Senior Official For Selling Weapon Plans to U.S. Firm
A senior official of Turkey’s state-run weapons manufacturer has been arrested on espionage charges, after he was caught selling weapons blueprints to the employee of an arms firm based in the United States. The official was named by Turkish authorities as Mustafa Tanriverdi, the general manager of one of Turkey’s largest weapons production facilities, located…
Espionage Files: The Strange Trip Surrounding MK-Ultra
Ten scientists, some from the CIA, gathered in a cabin in Maryland for their semiannual review and conference in November 1953. On day two, a bottle of Cointreau — spiked with LSD — appeared; after it was emptied, Sidney Gottlieb, a CIA program director, informed his colleagues that they were in for a wild ride….
Espionage and Cold War Files: Extraordinary Lecture by Legendary Soviet Mole and Spy Kim Philby Emerges
A videotaped lecture by Kim Philby, one of the Cold War’s most recognizable espionage figures, has been unearthed in the archives of the Stasi, the Ministry of State Security of the former East Germany. During the one-hour lecture, filmed in 1981, Philby addresses a select audience of Stasi operations officers and offers them advice on…
Espionage Files: A CIA Officer’s Long, Futile Secret War
WASHINGTON — In Douglas Laux’s final days as a CIA officer, the futility of his mission prompted him to quote George Orwell to his boss. Laux had spent months in 2012 working with various Middle Eastern nations that were trying to ship arms to Syria to help disparate rebel groups there. But it had become…
Espionage Files: CIA Trained Spy Allegedly Arrested in Russia
The Russian government says it has arrested a senior Ukrainian intelligence officer, who was allegedly trained by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and tasked with infiltrating the Russian secret services. In a statement published on Thursday, Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as FSB, said the alleged infiltrator is a “senior level employee” of the…
Espionage Files: More Foreign Spies in U.S. Now Than At Any Other Time in History
There are currently more foreign intelligence operatives in the United States than at any point in the country’s history, the former head of the House Intelligence Committee claimed on Wednesday. “There are more spies in the United States today from foreign nation states that at any time in our history — including the Cold War,”…
Espionage Files: WW2 British General Bernard Law Montgomery was Best Man at Philby’s Wedding
Things I didn’t know: When St. John Philby got married in India in 1910, his best man was Bernard Law Montgomery. The Philby marriage of course produced H.A.R. “Kim” Philby, the greatest traitor of the 20th century. From the same book, Anthony Cave Brown’s biography of Sir Stewart Menzies, I learned the old World War II headquarters…
Cold War Files: JFK’s Plan to Invade Cuba with Airborne and Marines
Over the weekend I was looking through some handwritten notes in the papers of Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, placed on-line by the National Defense University. The document is undated and unsigned. The NDU catalog lists it as created by Lemnitzer, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff early in the JFK era, until Kennedy…
Espionage Files: Decorated SS Commander was a Mossad Assassin
A notorious lieutenant colonel in the Waffen SS, who served in Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguard unit, worked as a hitman for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad after World War II, it has been revealed. Austrian-born Otto Skorzeny became known as the most ruthless special-forces commander in the Third Reich. Having joined the Austrian branch…