SpyCast

Is cyber war really coming? Renowned scholar Thomas Rid of the Department of War Studies at Kings College London argues that the focus on war distracts from the real challenge of cyberspace: non-violent confrontation that may rival or even replace violence in surprising ways. In this provocative talk, the author will trace the most significant hacks and attacks and explore some key questions: What are cyber weapons? How have they changed the meaning of violence? How likely and how dangerous is crowd-sourced subversive activity? Why has there never been a lethal cyber-attack against a country's critical infrastructure? How serious is the threat of cyber-espionage? And who is most vulnerable in the cyber realm?

This event took place on September 10, 2013 .http://www.spymuseumstore.org/

Historian Randall B. Woods of the University of Arkansas discusses his new biography of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the postwar period: William Egan Colby. World War II commando, Cold War spy, CIA station chief in Saigon, and ultimately CIA director under Presidents Nixon and Ford, Colby played a critical role in some of the most pivotal events in twentieth-century history. Despite his strong commitment to global democracy and economic and social justice, he was also drawn to the shadowy world of covert action…

This event took place on April 18, 2013.

In this continuation of the discussion with US Army Colonel James Cox, we hear about the day-to-day work of US military attachés: being military diplomats for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Colonel Cox tells SPY Historian Mark Stout what it was like working in Moscow after the failure of the 1991 coup. He also shares his experiences in Almaty, the capital of the newly independent country of Kazakhstan and later in Poland, a once-communist country, as it joined the NATO alliance.

When 26 Army nurses and medics boarded a transport plane in November, 1943, they never anticipated the crash landing in Nazi-occupied Albania that would lead to their months-long struggle for survival. The group dodged bullets and battled blinding winter storms as they climbed mountains and fought to survive, aided by courageous villagers who risked death at Nazi hands as well as Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American OSS. Listen to author Cate Lineberry, a former writer and editor for Smithsonian Magazine, tell this mesmerizing tale of World War II courage and heroism.

This event took place August 13, 2013.

Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/the-secret-rescue-book.html#.Vz3qN_krIdU

During the 1970s, Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski was a rising star in the Polish General Staff during the Cold War. He was also a spy for the CIA. Colonel Aris Pappas was a rising star in the CIA’s analytic ranks whose specialty was Poland. Pappas sat down with SPY Historian Mark Stout to discuss the Kuklinski case, the important information that Kuklinski passed about the Soviet and Warsaw Pact militaries and the imposition of martial law in Poland, and how he and Kuklinski eventually met and became friends.

In the summer of 1991, US Army Colonel James Cox arrived in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, to serve as Assistant Army Attaché. Little did he know that Communist hardliners were about to launch a coup. When the coup started, the intelligence agencies in Washington immediately needed up-to-the-minute information on developments, so the attachés went out on the streets to get it. Hear Colonel Cox tell SPY Historian Mark Stout what it was like chasing tanks on the streets of Moscow and witnessing Boris Yeltsin make his stand at the Russian White House.

Sun Tzu’s 2500 year old book The Art of War contains a famous chapter on spies. However, Master Sun was not the only Chinese author to address this topic centuries before Westerners did. In fact, many Chinese authors built on his work. SPY Historian Mark Stout met up with Ralph Sawyer, the translator of the definitive edition of The Art of War and the author of The Tao of Spycraft, to discuss the sophisticated theory and remarkable practice of espionage in traditional China.

“One could not choose a worse place for fighting the Japanese,” said Winston Churchill of northern Burma, but it was there that the fledgling Office of Strategic Services conducted its most successful combat operations of World War II. Troy Sacquety, an Historian for the US Army’s Special Operations Command, ventures into Burma’s steaming jungles in the first book to fully cover the exploits and contributions of the OSS’s Detachment 101 against the Japanese Imperial Army. In this Author Debriefing, Sacquety describes how Detachment 101 succeeded and created a prototype for today’s Special Forces.

This event took place on May 13, 2013.

Get the book: http://www.spymuseumstore.org/oss-burma-book.html#.Vxk39JMrJTY

Military deception was an important part of Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 coalition effort to eject the Iraqi Army from Kuwait. The man in charge of that U.S. Marine Corp’s part of that deception was Brigadier General Tom Draude. Despite the fact that he had no previous background in deception, General Draude and his team of clever American planners put together an elegant and effective deception plan. Hear him tell Peter how they exploited the expectations of Iraq's military to put them off guard and out of place. Also learn about the role in that books such as The Man Who Never Was and John Le Carre’s The Little Drummer Girl played in General Draude’s thinking.

Military deception was an important part of Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 coalition effort to eject the Iraqi Army from Kuwait. The man in charge of that U.S. Marine Corp’s part of that deception was Brigadier General Tom Draude. Despite the fact that he had no previous background in deception, General Draude and his team of clever American planners put together an elegant and effective deception plan. Hear him tell Peter how they exploited the expectations of Iraq's military to put them off guard and out of place. Also learn about the role in that books such as The Man Who Never Was and John Le Carre’s The Little Drummer Girl played in General Draude’s thinking.