During the tense period of the Cold War, the U.S. government sought to deploy a potent new weapon against the Soviet Union: mind-reading. In a highly classified project conducted first in a California research lab in the 1970s, and later at an Army base in Maryland, the CIA, Army ...read more
The most famous kitty in spy history is probably the white Persian of James Bond flicks. The image of a faceless villain stroking the cat in the early 1960s films is now a meme (see: Inspector Gadget, Austin Powers). Lesser known is the cat whom, during the same decade, the CIA ...read more
On June 6, 2013, Americans learned that their government was spying broadly on its own people. That’s when The Guardian and The Washington Post published the first of a series of reports put together from documents leaked by an anonymous source. The material exposed a ...read more
After World War II, a critical MI5 spy named Juan Pujol Garcia faked his own death, and kept it secret for almost four decades. And that’s not even the most interesting thing about him. Pujol was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War who had come to loathe totalitarianism, both in ...read more
During World War II, Nazi officials were constantly hunting down resistance fighters and the allied spies who aided them. But there was one foreign operative the Third Reich held special contempt for—a woman responsible for more jailbreaks, sabotage missions and leaks of Nazi ...read more
Tattoos are more common in the workplace than ever before, but they can still be an occupational hazard. Particularly when your profession happens to be spy. Spycraft often involves moving between legal and criminal worlds—and few things are as risky as being discovered while ...read more
When James Bond needed nifty espionage gadgets, like a Rolex-turned-circular-saw or a peel-off fake fingerprint, he could count on the Q branch of the British Secret Service. When American operatives need to snap photos on the down-low or transmit a secret code, they have the ...read more
On April 21, 1963, three emaciated Americans walked out of Cuba’s LaCabana prison and flew to freedom, released in a prisoner exchange after being held for 949 days under brutal conditions. The three men were undercover CIA officers, who the Cuban authorities had caught seemingly ...read more