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Today is a very special episode where I have the amazing History Daily podcast feature two fascinating episodes on the True Life Spy Stories podcast.

First up, The Cold War Spy Swap: February 10, 1962. At the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union conduct a spy exchange.

Followed by, The Zimmerman Telegram Pushes America into World War I: February 24th, 1917. The British present the Zimmermann Telegram to US President Woodrow Wilson, an intercepted message that reveals new threats against the United States and persuades the nation to enter World War I.

History Daily will kindly be featuring an episode from the True Life Spy Stories podcast over on their pod the same day of this upload.

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Notorious Soviet and Russian spy and former CIA officer Aldrich Ames has died in a US prison on 5 January 2026, aged 84.

This is my report.

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #aldrichames

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In 2014, at a mayors' conference in Washington DC, an older Midwestern mayor introduced a young Chinese woman on his arm as his girlfriend. He seemed genuinely smitten. She was beautiful, attentive, and at least two decades younger than him.

What none of them knew was that the FBI already had eyes on the glamorous young lady. She had been photographed meeting repeatedly with a suspected Chinese intelligence officer at the San Francisco consulate.

Her name was Christine Fang, and she was sent to build relationships with up-and-coming American politicians as part of a long-term Chinese influence campaign. This she did for 5 years, penetrating the heart of Silicon Valley.

While FBI investigators waited for concrete evidence before moving in, they allowed Christine Fang to slip through their fingers

This is the story of Fang Fang, the Chinese honeytrap who seduced America.

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #fangfang

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The afternoon of 26 June 2010 was sweltering in Manhattan. Inside a coffee shop in lower Manhattan, a young woman with distinctive red hair sat across from a man she'd never met. Anna Chapman was nervous. The man claimed to be from the Russian consulate, using coded phrases that only someone from Moscow Center would know. He told her that her laptop needed to go back to Russia for repairs. She hesitated, feeling dubious.

What she didn't know was that the man across from her was an FBI agent. The laptop she'd handed over would never see Moscow. And within 36 hours, her life as a Russian intelligence operative in America would be over.

This is the story of Anna Chapman, the red-headed socialite spy who infiltrated London and New York's elite circles. Born in Volgograd to a KGB officer, she acquired British citizenship through marriage, moved through Mayfair's high society, and eventually landed in Manhattan where she transmitted encrypted data to Russian handlers using covert wireless networks. Her arrest in June 2010, alongside nine other Russian illegals, marked the end of Operation Ghost Stories and the largest US-Russia spy swap since the Cold War.

But Anna's story didn't end with her capture. It had only just begun.

From coffee shops in Manhattan to the Kremlin's halls of power, from FBI surveillance to magazine covers and television shows, this is the true story of the spy who came in from the cold and found the spotlight warmer than she'd ever imagined.

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #annachapman

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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.

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #kimphilby

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New Zealand convicts its first ever spy

Over in the UK, spy trials don't get out the starting gates. Not so in New Zealand, where in August 2025, the New Zealand courts convicted its first spy, sending a thus-far unnamed soldier in its defence forces to detention in a military camp for 2 years.

In this episode I detail the sting operation that went into apprehending and prosecuting the would-be spy who tried to pass classified New Zealand materials to a foreign power.

#PhilipThompson #deaddrop #TrueLifeSpyStories

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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

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It's finger-pointing time in Westminster!

In October 2025, the UK's first major Chinese espionage trial collapsed in spectacular fashion when prosecutors offered no evidence against two men accused of spying for Beijing.

The reason? The government refused to call China a "threat" to national security—a legal requirement under the century-old Official Secrets Act.

In this episode, I look at the latest developments in the scandal, including the collision of economic and political interests, and the planned Chinese mega embassy in the heart of London that perhaps stands at the centre of it all.

#PhilipThompson #deaddrop #TrueLifeSpyStories

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In October 2025 in a London courtroom, two men accused of spying for China stood ready for trial.

The case has been building for two and a half years by this point. Security services have invested countless hours and tax payer money. Then, in a matter of minutes, the whole thing evaporates. The prosecutor stan ds up and offers no evidence. Case dismissed.

How does the UK's first major Chinese espionage trial simply collapse? The answer, the full details of which the likes of you and I will probably never know, reveals a government too nervous to call China what MI5 has been screaming it is for years – a threat.

Now the two spies in question, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry have not been convicted of anything and remain innocent until proven guilty. But the reason they so far have not had their day in court has nothing to do with their guilt or innocence. It has everything to do with politics.

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #deaddrop

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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 #yearofthespy