True Life Spy Stories

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A farmer, three vans, a quantity of petrol, and a handler known only as “Ali”. In September, masked men were arrested a couple of miles from RAF Fairford, the Cotswolds base used by US bombers to strike Iran. The UK government says Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was almost certainly behind it, and two men have now been charged under the National Security Act.
In this episode, I look at what happened that night, what prosecutors have alleged in court, how Iran recruits local criminals in the UK, and why the American bombers have since gone home.

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In February 1970, funeral gongs, weeping women, and the voices of dead soldiers echoed through the jungles of Vietnam. They weren't ghosts. They were a US Army psychological operation built on one fear: dying unburied, far from home.
Operation Wandering Soul used recordings, loudspeakers, and leaflets to turn Vietnamese beliefs about restless spirits into a weapon. This video covers how the tapes were made, how they were deployed from helicopters, boats, and the ground, what the Viet Cong did in response, and whether any of it actually worked. It also looks at the earlier playbook of Edward Lansdale and his vampire ruse in the Philippines, the North Vietnamese broadcaster known as Hanoi Hannah, the Mind War paper of 1980, and how Ukraine's "I Want to Live" project echoes these tactics today.
#Vietnam #PSYOP #Espionage #History #WanderingSoul

Originally aired on 2/16/26, now expanded with new details on the story and republished in full video!
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In September 2024, thousands of pagers exploded across Lebanon in a single afternoon. The devices had been built by Israeli intelligence, packed with explosives, and sold to Hezbollah through a network of fake companies stretching from Budapest to Sofia. The operation had been ten years in the making. This is the story of Operation Grim Beeper.

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On 6 October 2026, German police arrested August Hanning, the former head of the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence service. It's the equivalent of a former director of the CIA or chief of MI6 being arrested on suspicion of treason.
Prosecutors allege that for 12 years his former chief of staff, Manfred Dankesreiter, supplied him with around 2,000 secret BND documents in return for payment. Hanning allegedly used them in his private security consultancy, and some of the material may have reached foreign intelligence services. Both men deny the core allegations, and neither has been indicted.
The case only came to light by accident, through a police investigation into the kidnapping of two children from Denmark by a German steakhouse heiress.
This is what we know so far.

Pick up your copy of Operation Sparrow at ⁠https://link.amazon/B02NMVdls⁠ (affiliate link)
Learn more: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/operation-sparrow-jason-bell?variant=45398167388194
Author's website:Jason's website: https://jasonbell.org/
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In this episode I sit down with author and professor Jason Bell to discuss the incredible story of the Sparrows, a World War 2 spy story that has been hidden from history, until now. Jason's new book Operation Sparrow: The Incredible True Story of the Spies Who Tricked Hitler and Won the War, is out now!