SpyCast

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the radical force behind the nation’s most revolutionary, high-tech military initiatives over the past half century. To write the first definitive history of the world’s most powerful and productive military science agency, bestselling author Annie Jacobsen tracked down DARPA scientists, past and present, including current neuroscientists building an artificial brain, cell biologists working on limb regeneration, and even the Nobel Laureate who invented the laser. From conflict-tested science experiments, like Agent Orange and electronic barriers on the battlefield during Vietnam, to War on Terror insect drones, smart rockets, camera-filled war zones and advanced computer programs, she tracks DARPA from its Cold War inception to present day research controversies. Jacobsen shared her journey to the heart of the military-industrial complex—a place where science fiction and military science collide—and revealed a future that is fascinating and potentially frightening.

In Part 2 of this three-part series, SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Ali Watkins, who covers intelligence and national security for the Huffington Post. Houghton and Watkins discuss the difficulties in reporting on this most secret of topics, the dangers – and benefits – of using anonymous sources, and the ever-changing nature of intelligence and national security journalism. Part 1 of this series was with Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times, and Part 3 will be with Greg Miller of the Washington Post.

In Part 1 of this three-part series, SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mark Mazzetti, who covers intelligence and national security for the New York Times. Houghton and Mazzetti discuss the difficulties in reporting on this most secret of topics, the dangers – and benefits – of using anonymous sources, and the ever-changing nature of intelligence and national security journalism. Part 2 of this series will be with Ali Watkins of the Huffington Post, and Part 3 will be with Greg Miller of the Washington Post.

SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with career US Foreign Service Officer J. Andrew Plowman to discuss his book, Climate Change and Conflict Prevention. Plowman uses the Darfur conflict as a case study to examine how the effects of climate change might lead to future violent conflicts, and he assesses the best way to prevent these conflicts. Mr. Plowman’s service with the State Department has included assignments to Peru, Panama, Kazakhstan, and Brazil, as well as Washington assignments with the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and the Economics, Energy, and Business Affairs Bureau.

SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Cuban-exile-turned-CIA-officer Felix Rodriguez to discuss his extraordinary intelligence career. As a teenager, Rodriguez joined the effort to overthrow (and kill) Fidel Castro. After that mission failed, he trained and led the team that hunted – and captured – the guerilla Che Guevara in Bolivia. By the late 1960s, he took his counterinsurgency experience and applied it in covert operations against America’s enemies in Vietnam. This, and much more.

Warning: This podcast contains some salty language. Consider it PG-13.

SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Cuban-exile-turned-CIA-officer Felix Rodriguez to discuss his extraordinary intelligence career. As a teenager, Rodriguez joined the effort to overthrow (and kill) Fidel Castro. After that mission failed, he trained and led the team that hunted – and captured – the guerilla Che Guevara in Bolivia. By the late 1960s, he took his counterinsurgency experience and applied it in covert operations against America’s enemies in Vietnam. This, and much more.

SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with Cuban-exile-turned-CIA-officer Felix Rodriguez to discuss his extraordinary intelligence career. As a teenager, Rodriguez joined the effort to overthrow (and kill) Fidel Castro. After that mission failed, he trained and led the team that hunted – and captured – the guerilla Che Guevara in Bolivia. By the late 1960s, he took his counterinsurgency experience and applied it in covert operations against America’s enemies in Vietnam. This, and much more.

While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States. From David Hoffman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand, comes the riveting story of the CIA's most valuable spy in the Soviet Union and an evocative portrait of the agency's Moscow station, an outpost of daring espionage in the last years of the Cold War. Drawing on previously secret documents obtained from the CIA, as well as interviews with participants, Hoffman will reveal how the depredations of the Soviet state motivated one man to master the craft of spying against his own nation until he was betrayed to the KGB by a disgruntled former CIA trainee. No one has ever told this story before in such detail, and Hoffman's deep knowledge of spycraft, the Cold War, and military technology makes him uniquely qualified to bring to the International Spy Museum this real life espionage thriller.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Joe Wippl, the Director of Graduate Studies and Professor of the Practice of International Relations, Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies. Wippl is also a former CIA officer, who spent a 30 year career as an operations officer in the National Clandestine Service – at the time (as it is again) the Directorate of Operations. Houghton and Wippl discuss his time serving overseas as an operations officer and operations manager in Bonn, West Germany; Guatemala City; Luxembourg; Madrid, Spain; Mexico City; Vienna, Austria; and Berlin, Germany – where he was the Station Chief. Later, while on assignments in CIA headquarters, he served as the Deputy Chief of Human Resources, as the Senior NCS representative to the Aldrich Ames Damage Assessment Team, as Chief of Europe Division and as the CIA’s Director of Congressional Affairs.