Category Archives: History

Behind the Scenes – Celebrity Spies

For some of these big-name personalities, spying taught them the skills that made them famous; for others, being famous made them the perfect spies. With that in mind, we blow the cover of ten of our favorite celebrity spies: Josephine … Continue reading

Posted in A Well-Read Spy, Ask A Spy, History, In The News, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

CONSPIRACY OF ONE

Tyler Kent’s Secret Plot against FDR, Churchill, and the Allied War Effort  How a handsome young American diplomat stole thousands of secret documents and nearly changed the course of World War II in this gripping story of espionage, love, and … Continue reading

Posted in A Well-Read Spy, History, In The News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Spy Photo That Fooled Us All

History is a tricky thing.  And it turns out that we here at the International Spy Museum had part of it wrong.  Our only excuse is that a lot of other fine institutions had it wrong, too, including NPR, the … Continue reading

Posted in A Well-Read Spy, Ask A Spy, History, In The News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Whistleblower

Bradley Manning’s life just got worse.  He is presently on trial at Fort Meade, Maryland on charges related to passing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks. He has admitted passing those documents, so there’s not a lot of … Continue reading

Posted in Cyber, History, In The News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

America and Russia’s Long History of Espionage

As Russia and America deal with an alleged spy scandal involving a US diplomat who is accused of trying to recruit a Russian agent to work for the CIA, a look back at some espionage cases between the two countries … Continue reading

Posted in A Well-Read Spy, History, In The News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cold War Pop Culture: Dirty Spy Wars

During the Cold War the American public had an endless appetite for information and entertainment about the menace from the Soviet secret services.  Nazi spies had never really lived up to their promise and the Nazi regime had been rapidly … Continue reading

Posted in A Well-Read Spy, Ask A Spy, History, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cold War Pop Culture: Our Communist Frenemies

The United States and the Soviet Union spent years locked in ideological conflict as each side sought to subvert the other and spies from both sides tried to penetrate the others’ halls of power.  This war was not fought solely … Continue reading

Posted in A Well-Read Spy, History, In The News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Realistic is Argo?

When it comes to spy fiction, the question inevitably gets asked “how realistic is it?” A leading scholar of intelligence, Professor Wesley Wark, has said that one can discern two different types of realism. The first type of realism involves … Continue reading

Posted in History, In The News, SPY at The Movies, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Give Me That Old Time Intelligence

Historian Mark Stout – Feb 10,2012 Intelligence is a field that usually builds on itself.  Old tools and techniques stay useful for years, even centuries.  Spies figured in the oldest battle about which we have detailed tactical information, the Battle … Continue reading

Posted in History | 2 Comments

My September 11th and Beyond at the CIA

September 8, 2011 Historian Mark Stout On September 11th, 2001 I was a team chief, leading a small group of analysts at the CIA.  My part of the Agency did not work on terrorism.  Some of us knew a bit … Continue reading

Posted in History | Leave a comment