True Life Spy Stories

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In 1982, an American signals intelligence sergeant walked past the Soviet consulate in West Berlin and dropped a letter through its mail slot, offering his services to the KGB. Within weeks he had opened a second channel to the East German Stasi, selling the same secrets to both.
For six years, James W. Hall III operated out of Field Station Berlin — one of the most sensitive NSA listening posts in Cold War Europe — passing material an NSA official later estimated cost three billion dollars in damage. He was paid roughly three hundred thousand dollars for it.
This episode tells the story of how he did it, what he sold, and how an unrelated shoplifting arrest in West Berlin set the chain of events in motion that would end his career in a motel room outside Savannah, Georgia.
📚 Sources & Further Reading (affiliate link):
📕 Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catchers World by Stuart A. Herrington - https://amzn.to/4uVZXac

Ways to support the podcast:
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Welcome to Dead Drop.
In this week's dossier:
FSB operative Zarubina jailed 14 months in New York;
the Pentagon raises Israel's espionage threat rating to critical;
Tulsi Gabbard resigns as US Director of National Intelligence; and 
China arrests US Myanmar scholar on suspicion of espionage.

Ways to support the podcast:
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John Anthony Walker Jnr. ran the largest and most damaging espionage ring in Cold War history. For nearly 18 years he and his co-conspirators sold US Navy secrets to the Soviets.
Yet things inevitably got too big and too messy. John Walker’s contempt for his wife and those around him meant that it was only a matter of time before his house of cards went tumbling down.
In the year of the spy, John Anthony Walker Jnr. was the spy of the decade.
#philipthompson #truelifespystories #johnwalker
Primary sources and further reading (afiiliate links):
📕 Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring, Pete Earley - Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring - https://amzn.to/4v0Sgjw
📘 Spy Hunter: Inside the FBI Investigation of the Walker Espionage Case, Robert W. Hunter - https://amzn.to/4ekCCYq
📕 Breaking the Ring, John Baron - https://amzn.to/3VgiKgo
Media shown in this video (affiliate links):
🎞️ On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) - https://amzn.to/4b4L9vQ
🎞️ The Vietnam War (2017) - https://amzn.to/3VqClux

Ways to support the podcast:
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Donate via PayPal: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠paypal.me/PhilipT284⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Welcome to Dead Drop.

In this week's dossier:
A former CIA officer steals gold bars worth more than 40 million dollars; 
Former MI6 chief, Sir Alex Younger, dies at the age of 62; 
IRA spy asks a judge if she can take off her ankle tag to go wedding dress shopping; and 
Former MI6 chief reveals how his cover was blown by a Christmas card.

Ways to support the podcast:
Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
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On 28 August 2013, a woman named Monica Witt sent an email from Dubai. She was about to board a flight to Tehran. The message went to a contact in Iran who had been managing her movement for months. "I'm signing off and heading out!" she wrote. "Coming home." She included a smiley-face emoji.
Witt was a former U.S. Air Force cryptologic language analyst who had held a Top Secret clearance and access to some of America’s most sensitive counterintelligence programmes.
In February 2019, a federal grand jury indicted Monica Witt on charges of conspiracy to deliver national defence information to a foreign government and two substantive counts of delivering that information. Each count carries a potential life sentence. An arrest warrant was issued, but only on 14 May 2026 was a $200,000 bounty placed on her head.
But who is she, and why does the FBI now, 13 years later, want her back so badly?