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History

U.S. Liberators Tell Stories of the Horror of Liberating Concentration Camps

9 March 2010

Roll Call, 9 March 2010: We must never forget. It is the creed of the survivors who braved unspeakable horrors at the hands of the Nazis. The brave Allied soldiers who battled to free them share it, too. But the reality is, as time moves forward, fewer and fewer firsthand voices remain. As they go, [...]

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Revealed: Nazi spy duped by failed actor in ‘Monty’s Double’ hoax

8 March 2010

Times of London, 8 March 2010: . . . . On the eve of D-Day the failed actor found himself plucked from obscurity to play the starring role in the war’s most melodramatic deception — as the spitting image of Monty. The operation, codenamed “Copperhead”, became the basis for the 1958 film I Was Monty’s [...]

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New MI5 Security Service files released

8 March 2010

UK National Archives, 8 March 2010:  Security Service records released today include personal files on US film director Carl Nathan Foreman, Irish playwright Brendan Behan and Nazi propagandist Gottfried Rosel, as well as investigations into the dangers posed by bicycling groups of Hilter Youth and the Communist links of Theatre Workshop. The 196 files cover subjects [...]

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MI5 tales: An imperfect spy

8 March 2010

Guardian, 8 March 2010: A German spy sent to wartime Britain to discover Royal Air Force (RAF) secrets passed on only “entirely worthless” information to his Nazi spymasters, according to MI5 files released to the National Archives today.
Swiss-born Werner Strebel became involved in espionage because he though it would be a cushy life. Recruited as [...]

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Operation Dib-dib-dib: how Nazis tried to infiltrate the Boy Scouts

8 March 2010

The Indendepent, 8 March 2010: Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, responded enthusiastically to a Nazi charm offensive aimed at aligning his movement with the Hitler Youth in the run-up to the Second World War, according to secret MI5 documents. The colonial warrior, whose best-selling military training manuals started the Scouting phenomenon, was [...]

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The spy who loved me: Charlotte Philby returns to Moscow in search of her grandfather Kim Philby

8 March 2010

The Indepdent, 6 March 2010: . . . As well as being my grandfather – whom I remember from childhood trips to Russia as a funny old man with a beaming smile, who dressed almost exclusively in white vests and braces – Kim Philby, to this day, remains one of the most significant double agents [...]

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The Capture and Execution of Colonel Penkovsky

5 March 2010

CIA, 5 March 2010: On the afternoon of October 22, 1962, a nondescript man was suddenly seized off the streets of Moscow by the KGB. He had been under surveillance on suspicion of treason. Thus ended Oleg Penkovsky’s career of spying for the United States and Great Britain. Penkovsky is considered one of the most [...]

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New Book Tells Tale of Tea Espionage

1 March 2010

World Tea News, 1 March 10: On sale this week in the U.S. is a new book that tells of the British Government’s 19th-century plot to clandestinely acquire China’s tea secrets. . . . . For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History (in UK known as, [...]

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Girl Guides’ War Effort Revealed

1 March 2010

The Sun, 27 Feb 10: THEY are best known for getting badges for embroidery, baking or helping the elderly. Working as an undercover spy is probably the last thing you would expect of a Girl Guide. But now The Sun can reveal a top-secret document which proves that 90 teenage Guides became spooks working for [...]

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KGB secrets to be published

24 February 2010

Baltic Reports, 24 Feb 10: President Dalia Grybauskaitė Wednesday ordered that all documents relating to the KGB secret services in Lithuania be released for the general public to view. The order to release the documents is part of what is known as the “lustration” process, which is the outing and punishing of former KGB agents [...]

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Russian spy lived in Ohio, stole secrets

15 February 2010

Dayton Daily News, 14 Feb 10: Anyone looking up his name in the city of Dayton directory back in 1945 would have found nothing to raise their suspicions: “Koval, George. R 827 W. Grand Ave. Chemist, Monsanto Corp.” Nor would neighbors have noticed anything unusual about the tall, polite, bespectacled young man coming and going [...]

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CIA opens files on project to raise Soviet sub

15 February 2010

AFP, 13 Feb 10: The CIA for the first time has revealed details about an ultra-secret Cold War-era project to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the depths of the Pacific Ocean in 1974. The high-risk salvage operation, code-named “Project Azorian,” had been shrouded in secrecy for decades but the spy agency broke its silence [...]

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Uncovered documents reveal spy who fed information on Hitler’s secrets

15 February 2010

Times of London, 13 Feb 10: MI6 obtained vital secrets from a spy operating at the very heart of Hitler’s high command during the most crucial years of the war, newly discovered intelligence documents have revealed. The secret agent, code-named “Knopf”, furnished the intelligence service with information on Hitler’s plans in the Mediterranean and on [...]

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Death anniversary of Cold War spy

12 February 2010

Polish Radio, 11 Feb 10: Today marks the 6th anniversary of the death of Colonel Ryszard Kukliński. One of the top officers of the General Staff in the Polish Armed Forces during the 1970s in communist Poland, he defected to the United States on the eve of the introduction of Martial Law in December 1981. [...]

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NeoClassics Films brings L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL to the US in May; story of KGB officer Vladimir Vetrov

12 February 2010

Broadway World, 11 Feb 10: Canadian-based NEOCLASSICS FILMS LTD. has acquired all US rights to the international hit thriller L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL from Pathé International. A film by Christian Carion, whose MERRY CHRISTMAS was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Foreign Film in 2006, and produced by Christophe Rossignon, the cold war era spy epic [...]

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Today in History: ‘Doll Woman’ indicted for WWII espionage

11 February 2010

Washington Examiner, 11 Feb 10: On this day, Feb. 11, in 1944, Velvalee Dickinson was indicted in a plot to deliver messages to the Japanese during wartime through her doll business. Known as “The Doll Woman,” Dickinson used her doll shop in New York to send information about U.S. naval forces such as “Doll in [...]

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Johnny X was global spy who became a Canuck

8 February 2010

Canadian Press, 7 Feb 10: Johnny X is Canada’s spy who came in from the cold. An enigmatic secret agent, he spent a lifetime covertly battling Nazis and Communists on several continents while living under a death sentence.
Johnny X, one of his many shadowy aliases, appears only sporadically in the historical record of 20th-century espionage. [...]

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New exhibits at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC

8 February 2010

We Love DC, 5 Feb 10: Every Friday for the next six weeks, the International Spy Museum (ISM) will be debuting a new exhibit within the museum, including the addition of several new rare artifacts from the shadowy world of espionage. These new additions (some for a limited time only) join the already-extensive collection regarding [...]

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Whittaker Chambers’ Farm in Jeopardy

5 February 2010

AIM, 4 Feb 10: A library featuring the personal papers of anti-communist hero Whittaker Chambers is being planned on the site of his farm in Maryland. Unfortunately, local authorities are considering a water project that could damage part of the property. Chambers’ son John is asking for help to save the farm. Time is of [...]

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Sorge’s spy is brought in from the cold

1 February 2010

Japan Times, 31 Jan 10: Long reviled in his homeland and all but forgotten by Moscow, a Japanese former Soviet agent in Tokyo is finally accorded the respect that his devoted niece has sought for so long.
Toshiko Tokuyama was 14 years old when she found out that her uncle had been a spy, and that [...]

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A World War I-era terror plot hatched in Baltimore

1 February 2010

Baltimore Sun, 30 Jan 10: The father and son enjoying lunch at the Maryland Club in 1915 would not have attracted any attention. The Hilkens, Henry and Paul, were pillars of Baltimore’s German community. The son, Paul Hilken, ran the Baltimore operations of the North German Lloyd Steamship Co., as his father did before him. [...]

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1960 CI History: Spy’s Sister Admits Contacts

28 January 2010

International Herald Tribune, 27 January 1960: KARLSRUHE, GERMANY — Alleged spy Horst Ludwig received mysterious orders from Soviet intelligence shortly before he was posted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization naval base at Lossiemouth, Scotland, the West German Supreme Court was told today [Jan. 27]. Ludwig’s sister, Mrs. Hanni Jaeger, told the court she received [...]

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Noor Inayat Khan: Princess, Spy, Martyr, Heroine

27 January 2010

PakTribune, 27 Jan 10: . . . . Although Noor Inayat Khan was deeply influenced by the pacifist teachings of her father, she and her brother Vilayat Inayat Khan decided to help defeat Nazi tyranny. (Vilayat Inayat Khan later became head of the Sufi Order International.) So on November 19, 1940 she joined the Women’s [...]

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StB lookout, once used to spy on US Embassy, to be opened to public

27 January 2010

Radio Prague, 26 Jan 10: Later this year, ABL FM services, a company in charge of a number of Prague’s historic sites, will re-open the bell tower on St Nicholas’ Church, where 20 years ago the Communist-era secret police, the StB, kept a hidden lookout. The cubby-hole with views of Prague’s Malá strana district was [...]

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Former ‘mole-hunter’ Stephen De Mowbray speaks out

26 January 2010

BBC, 26 Jan 10: For 30 years Stephen De Mowbray has maintained a self-imposed silence on a career that once took him to the heart of one of British intelligence’s most controversial episodes. In 1979 he quit his job with the Secret Service because he believed officials had failed to take seriously the claim that [...]

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Canada’s man in Tehran was a CIA spy

25 January 2010

Globe and Mail, 23 Jan 10: Ken Taylor, the Canadian diplomat celebrated 30 years ago for hiding U.S. embassy personnel during the Iranian revolution, actively spied for the Americans and helped them plan an armed incursion into the country. Mr. Taylor, ambassador in Iran from 1977 to 1980, became “the de facto CIA station chief” [...]

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Soviet spy map reveals Norfolk secrets

21 January 2010

Norfolk Eastern Daily Press, 21 Jan 10: Even for people who live in Norfolk the pronunciation of names such as Happisburgh, Costessey and Wymondham can prove tricky. However, we are left to wonder if Russian cartographers, given the task of translating the place names for a map of the county produced during the Cold War [...]

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‘Sorge’ spy case suspect’s kin get Soviet-era award

15 January 2010

Japan Times, 15 Jan 10: A Soviet-era decoration was awarded Wednesday to a relative of Yotoku Miyagi, a painter accused of complicity in leaking Japanese intelligence data to a wartime Soviet spy.
At the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, Russian Ambassador to Japan Mikhail Bely awarded the Order of the Patriotic War medal, second class, to Toshiko [...]

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The Radical Legacy of 1979

4 January 2010

Wall Street Journal, 1 Jan 10: If ever one year in recent times was a catalyst for change in the broader Middle East and Muslim world, it was 1979. . . . three events had dire consequences with which we live today.
First, there was the overthrow of the shah of Iran by the Ayatollah [...]

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