Espionage

Plaud Note：https://bit.ly/4oBQtyo (20% off in Black Friday sale!)
Plaud Note Amazon： https://amzn.to/3XlrP94 (20% off in Black Friday sale!)

Thank you to Plaud for sponsoring this video!

Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson
Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284

Listen to my spy stories on the True Life Spy Stories podcast!
🎙️https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/true-life-spy-stories

Harold Adrian Russell Philby was known to everyone as Kim. Four years after the infamous defection to the Soviet Union of British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, Kim was preparing to hold a press conference at his mother's Kensington flat.

Ever since the disappearance of the two defectors behind the Iron Curtain, whispers of another betrayal - a so-called "Third Man" started to hang like a dark cloud over Kim Philby’s head.

And so there he sat, ready to set the record straight.

When asked point-blank whether he was the "third man" who had tipped off Burgess and Maclean, he met the question with measured calm, denial.
This infamous proclamation of his innocence was delivered with such sincerity that he was able momentarily to silence his accusers.

The press conference in many ways served its purpose, allowing Kim Philby to continue on for the next 8 years.

He had, of course, been lying through his teeth. It was only after he disappeared in 1963 that questions started to be asked. How could this have happened? Did British intelligence know about it all along and did they allow him to flee to avoid an even greater scandal?

Even today, in 2025 newly declassified documents are shedding fresh light on this most extraordinary case of intrigue and betrayal.

This is the story of Kim Philby, the Cold War's most notorious spy and traitor.

Sources and further reading:

Books (Amazon affiliate links):

📕Kim Philby: The Spy I Married, Eleanor Philby - https://archive.org/details/kimphilbyspyimar00phil
📘A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, Ben Macintyre - https://amzn.to/4p6ObHk
📕Kim Philby: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal, Tim Milne - https://amzn.to/3K833pX
📘My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy, Kim Philby - https://amzn.to/44eFt1v
📕The Private Life of Kim Philby: The Moscow Years, Rufina Philby - https://amzn.to/3LGnw5O

#plaud #plaudnote #blackfriday

1.4K 169

Ways to support the channel:

Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson
Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284

Listen to my spy stories on the True Life Spy Stories podcast!
🎙️https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/true-life-spy-stories

01:18 - The John Walker Spy Ring
42:57 - Larry Wu-Tai Chin
1:15:30 - Ronald Pelton
1:42:14 - Edward Lee Howard
2:13:53 - Sharon Scranage
2:36:28 - Jonathan Pollard

1985. American intelligence was bleeding secrets like a ruptured artery.

The Soviets were reading encrypted Navy communications. The Chinese knew what the CIA was translating before Washington did. Israel, an ally, had penetrated the heart of U.S. intelligence operations.

Fourteen Americans were arrested that year on espionage charges. Fourteen caught. How many remained hidden?

The damage was catastrophic. Decades of intelligence work evaporated overnight. Agents were executed. Military capabilities were exposed. The technological edge that kept America ahead in the Cold War vanished into enemy hands.

Their stories are varied and they came from all corners of the US intelligence world. Navy communications specialists. NSA analysts. CIA officers. Translators. Each had their reasons for betrayal. Each left a trail of destruction.

This is the year of the spy. These are the stories of betrayal that changed the Cold War forever.

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #yearofthespy

367 47

Play War Thunder now with my links, and get a massive, free bonus pack including vehicles, boosters and more on PC and consoles: https://playwt.link/philipthompson | Mobile: https://wtm.game/philipthompson

Errata: At 1:12 a scene depicting the civil war in Liberia is shown in error when talking about Ghana. I have applied a blur to that scene within the YouTube editor, although it may take some time for it to reflect on the video.

Ways to support the channel:

Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson
Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284

Listen to my spy stories on the True Life Spy Stories podcast!
🎙️https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/true-life-spy-stories

The country on the west African coast called Ghana is hardly the place one expects a true Cold War espionage drama to play out. It had no Berlin Wall. No missile sites. In truth, it was just a nation of gold mines and cocoa plantations trying to find its way after independence in 1957.

But it was in its capital city, Accra, that Ghana became a Cold War battleground in the proxy war between the United States and Soviet Union as they competed for the soul of an entire continent. This silent war raged for years, with neither side giving an inch. But then, disaster.

It was a textbook honey trap operation that obliterated America's intelligence network across West Africa. Ghanaian intelligence services engineered a sophisticated romance targeting the most vulnerable point in any spy operation: the human heart.

All it took was one charming operative targeting a lonely American woman on assignment for the CIA. Eighteen months of seduction and manipulation ended in the complete destruction of the CIA's presence in Ghana. The consequences for the CIA extended far beyond the borders of the West African country and onto the global stage of geopolitics.

This is the story of Sharon Scranage, which was yet another devastating blow for American intelligence in the infamous Year of the Spy that was 1985.

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #honeytrap

3.6K 464

Ways to support the channel:

Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson
Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284

Listen to my spy stories on the True Life Spy Stories podcast!
🎙️https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/true-life-spy-stories

6 June 1944 - D-Day. The largest seaborne invasion in history. But the landings on Normandy’s beaches were not won by force of arms alone.

Behind the front lines, a secret war was being fought: a war of lies, deception, and misdirection. A handful of double agents, run by Britain’s MI5, wove a web of falsehoods so convincing that Hitler and his generals kept their armies waiting in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There are countless others, many of whom have been forgotten to history, who bravely contributed to the war effort and to the ultimate deception that paved the way for victory in Europe.

This collection of documentaries tells the stories of just a handful of the men and women whose stories have been preserved.

They are representative of every individual who fought so valiantly for the freedom we today so take for granted.

These are the D-Day Spies.

The double-agents covered in this supercut:

Introduction: 0:00
Tricycle (Dušan 'Dusko' Popov) 1:12
Bronx (Elvira Chaudoir) 47:16
Tate (Wulf Schmidt) 1:09:44
Zigzag (Eddie Chapman) 1:34:20
Brutus (Roman Czerniawski) 2:05:38
Treasure (Lily Sergueiew) 2:32:35
Garbo (Juan Pujol García) 3:09:59

Further reading (affiliate links):

📕 Double Cross: The True Story of The D-Day Spies - Ben Macintyre: https://amzn.to/45LW1xP
📕 The Big Network - Roman Czerniawski (out of print - look on eBay)
📕 Agent Tate: The Wartime Story of Harry Williamson - Tommy Jonason, Simon Olsson: https://amzn.to/4oJyTJl
📕 Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy - Ben Macintyre (https://amzn.to/4k03xKH)
📕 Mrs Zigzag: The Extraordinary Life of a Secret Agent's Wife - Betty Chapman (https://amzn.to/45ykOau)
📕 Double Agent: The Eddie Chapman Story - Frank Owen, Steve Chadde (https://amzn.to/448IvDB)
📕 The Real Eddie Chapman Story - Eddie Chapman (https://amzn.to/4liR6uI)
📕 Codename Tricycle - The True Story of the Second World War's Most Extraordinary Double Agent - Russell Miller (https://amzn.to/3K8VZZZ)
📕 Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-day, Stephen Talty - https://amzn.to/4anSNkn
📕 Operation Garbo: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Spy of World War II, Juan Pujol Garcia & Nigel West - https://amzn.to/3QNz6M4
📕 Garbo: The Spy Who Saved D-Day, National Archives - https://amzn.to/3K2eagu
📕 Codename TREASURE: The Life of D-Day Spy, Lily Sergueiew (https://amzn.to/3KBK5VR)

341 30

Ways to support the channel:

Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson
Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284

Listen to my spy stories on the True Life Spy Stories podcast!
🎙️https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/true-life-spy-stories

It was 16 November 1996, and Harold James Nicholson was walking across the tarmac at Dulles International Airport, his camera bag slung over his shoulder. He was the Branch Chief in the Counterterrorism Center based at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Inside his bag were 10 rolls of undeveloped film containing some of America's most closely guarded secrets.
He was boarding a flight to Switzerland, where Russian intelligence officers were waiting to pay him for betraying his own country. But what Nicholson didn't know was that FBI agents were closing in from all sides.
As he approached the aircraft stairs, the trap sprung. Agents surrounded him, and in that moment, they had within their grasp the highest-ranking CIA officer ever caught spying for a foreign power. But this arrest wasn't the end of Jim Nicholson's story of betrayal. In fact, it was only the beginning.

Further reading (affiliate links):

📕 The Spy's Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia - Bryan Denson: https://amzn.to/46agWLv

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #jimnicholson

3.2K 290

161 13

145 21

120 6

Ways to support the channel:

Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson
Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284

Listen to my spy stories on the True Life Spy Stories podcast!
🎙️https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/true-life-spy-stories

The radio operator's fingers moved across the Morse key with practiced precision. In a cramped attic room in Richmond Hill, London, each tap sent another carefully crafted lie racing through the ether toward Nazi Germany. The messages bore the authentication codes of Agent Hubert—a trusted German spy who had penetrated the highest levels of Allied command. But the man dictating these reports wasn't German at all, nor did he hold any loyalty to the Nazis.

Roman Czerniawski was a Polish patriot who had already survived capture, recruitment by the Abwehr, and a desperate flight to freedom. Now, in the spring of 1944, his fabricated intelligence about phantom American armies massing in southeast England was being read by Adolf Hitler himself.

The irony was exquisite. The Führer, studying reports of General Patton's fictional invasion force, had no idea that his most trusted source was a man whose hatred for the Nazi regime burned with the intensity of a thousand suns.

Roman Czerniawski was a wartime double agent who was nearly lost to history. Fortunately, his story has been preserved so that his bravery may never be forgotten.

Further reading (affiliate links):

📕 Double Cross: The True Story of The D-Day Spies - Ben Macintyre: https://amzn.to/45LW1xP
📕 The Big Network - Roman Czerniawski (out of print - look on eBay)

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #agentbrutus

1.1K 60