The spy business is all about masking the truth. One CIA agent’s deceptions and sham identities were so enterprising that he earned the nickname “Master of Disguise."

Related episodes

• The rat that helped win the Cold War
• The pistols that almost fell from the sky
• The pistols that almost fell from the sky
• That time the CIA stole a Russian submarine
• The ax that killed Leon Trotsky

Joseph Stalin wanted his political rival dead. When bullets didn’t do the job, his intelligence service tried something even more gruesome.

Related episodes

• The rat that helped win the Cold War
• The pistols that almost fell from the sky
• The pistols that almost fell from the sky
• That time the CIA stole a Russian submarine

When a Russian sub sank at the height of the Cold War, the CIA got help from Howard Hughes and created a fictitious mining operation to snag the vessel at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Related episodes

• The rat that helped win the Cold War
• The pistols that almost fell from the sky
• The ax that killed Leon Trotsky

During World War II, U.S. intelligence operatives devised a plan to airdrop one-shot handguns, nicknamed the Liberator pistol, to allies in Europe in hopes of ending the war quickly.

Related episodes

• The rat that helped win the Cold War
• That time the CIA stole a Russian submarine
• The ax that killed Leon Trotsky

In the first of a weeklong series of episodes about spies, subterfuge and intelligence, a look at how the CIA used dead rats to send secret messages in the former Soviet Union.

Related episodes

• The pistols that almost fell from the sky
• That time the CIA stole a Russian submarine
• The ax that killed Leon Trotsky