SPYCRAFT 101 - Justin Black

Latest Episodes:

207. Russia's Sleeper Agents Infiltrating the West with Shaun Walker Aug 04, 2025

Show notes

Today Justin talks to Shaun Walker. Shaun worked as a reporter in Moscow for more than a decade starting in 2007, first for The Independent and later for The Guardian. He now lives in Warsaw, Poland, where he is the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Guardian, and mostly covers the war in Ukraine. Besides his many articles for The Guardian and other media outlets, he's also the author of The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and The Ghost of the Past. He's here this week to discuss his newest book which tells the story of decades of painstaking effort to select, train, and deploy a very small number of highly-effective spies all across the world, and their successes and failures at infiltrating Russia's greatest adversaries for years at a time.

Connect with Shaun:

Twitter/X: @shaunwalker7

Check out the book, The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West, here.

https://a.co/d/82GyXpt

Connect with Spycraft 101:
Get Justin's latest book, Murder, Intrigue, and Conspiracy: Stories from the Cold War and Beyond, here.
spycraft101.com
IG: @spycraft101
Shop: shop.spycraft101.com
Patreon: Spycraft 101
Find Justin's first book, Spyshots: Volume One, here.
Check out Justin's second book, Covert Arms, here.
Download the free eBook, The Clandestine Operative's Sidearm of Choice, here.

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206. Behind the Lines from Belfast to Sierra Leone with Tim Spicer Jul 28, 2025

Show notes

Today Justin is joined once more by Tim Spicer. Tim served for 20 years in the British Army where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and saw active service in Northern Ireland, The Falklands Campaign, the Gulf War, and the Balkans, as well as serving in the Far East, Cyprus, and Germany. Today, he's back to discuss his own life and career, which has been full of danger and adventure as well. Tim wrote about it all in his autobiography which covers his service all over the world, as well as his work as the founder of a private military company not long after he left the British Army.

Check out Tim's first appearance in ep 200: 'From Biffy to Bond: The Real Spy Who Inspired "From Russia, with Love"' here.

Connect with Tim:

timspicerauthor.com

IG: @timspicerauthor

Check out the book, An Unorthodox Solider, here.

https://a.co/d/6wZaj6Y

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205. The CIA, The United Fruit Company, and Communism in Guatemala with Dr. Luca Trenta Jul 21, 2025

Show notes

This week Justin welcomes Dr. Luca Trenta. Luca is an associate professor in international relations at Swansea University in Wales, and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Higher Education Academy. He's written extensively on covert action and assassination as tools of foreign policy. He's the host of the Out of the Shadows Podcast with nine episodes available now, and he has appeared on four episodes of the Secret Wars Uncovered series on the History Channel. This is Lucas's second appearance on the podcast. Today, he's back to discuss his research into the effects of covert action on the relationship between the US executive and legislative branches, specifically as it applies to Operation PB Success, the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954. PB Success took place during what could be called the Golden Age of Intelligence Operations, which also coincided with very little formal oversight by Congress.

Check out Luca's first appearance on episode 150: 'The President's Kill List' here.

Connect with Luca:
swansea.ac.uk/staff/l.trenta
Bluesky: @lucatrenta.bsky.social
Check out the article, ' Secrecy and the Politics of Selective Disclosures: The US Government's Intervention in Guatemala', here.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2023.2279317

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204. Behind the Atomic Curtain: 80 Years into the Nuclear Age with Dr. Frank Close Jul 14, 2025

Show notes

This week Justin reconnects with Dr. Frank Close. Frank is Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics and Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College at the University of Oxford. He was formerly the head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the Ruthford Appleton Laboratory Vice President of the British Science Association and Head of Communications and Public Understanding at CERN. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and won their Michael Faraday Medal for Excellence in Science Communication in 2013. He received the Order of the British Empire for services to research and the public understanding of science in 2000. You may remember Frank from episode 195, when he joined the show to unveil the life of atomic scientist Bruno Pontecorvo.

Frank is back today to discuss his newest book, Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age, which is available now. It's a complete history of atomic research and its weaponization plus the spies who work to steal this research for the benefit of their own governments.

Check out Frank's first appearance on episode 195: 'Nuclear Physicist or Soviet Spy? The Enigma of Bruno Pontecorvo' here.

Connect with Frank:

Twitter/X: @CloseFrank

Check out the book, Destroyer of Worlds, here.

https://a.co/d/f8XcXDN

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203. A Diplomat’s Journey in Cold War Romania with Ernest Latham Jul 07, 2025

Show notes

*Ernest joined us via telephone call, so some parts of this interview may be difficult to understand due to unreliable audio quality. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Today's guest is Ernest Latham. Ernest is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Roosevelt University. During his career with the US State Department, Ernest worked all over the world, including Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and West Germany. From 1983 to 1987, he was assigned to the US Embassy in Bucharest, Romania as a cultural attache where he was under constant surveillance by the Romanian Securitate Intelligence Organization as a suspected CIA case officer.
Following his retirement from the State Department and the collapse of the Romanian government at the end of the Cold War, Ernest was able to get access to the counterintelligence file compiled by the Securitate in the 1980s. This was an incredibly rare opportunity to find out just what a foreign intelligence organization learned and surmised about an American government employee in their country. He's here today to discuss his years with the State Department in Romania.

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202. Britain's SOE Jungle Warrior in Burma with Dr. Richard Duckett Jun 23, 2025

Show notes

Today Justin talks with Dr. Richard Duckett. Richard received a master's degree from the University of Reading and a doctorate from Open University. He's taught history and politics for more than 20 years. He's also the author of three previous books on British military history in Burma. He's here to discuss the story of Lieutenant Colonel Edgar Peacock, who led mainly indigenous forces to incredible victories against Japanese forces in Burma and India during World War II.

Connect with Richard:

soeinburma.com

Twitter/X:

Check out the book, Jungle Warrior: Britain's Greatest SOE Commander, here.

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201. Psychic Spying: The Truth about Remote Viewing with Dr. Paul H. Smith Jun 16, 2025

Show notes

Today Justin sits down with Dr. Paul H. Smith. Paul is a retired Army intelligence officer and a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University, a Master of Science degree in Strategic Intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College, and a Doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. He's also the president of Remote Viewing Instructional Services Incorporated, and Vice President of the Nonprofit International Remote Viewing Association. He's here to discuss the seven years he spent in the Department of Defense's Remote Viewing Program, where he served as an operational remote viewer, theory instructor, security officer, and unit historian.

Connect with Paul:

rviewer.com

Check out the book, Reading the Enemy's Mind, here.

https://a.co/d/3YT0zpp

And check out The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing here.

https://a.co/d/3bbftW3

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200. From Biffy to Bond: The Real Spy Who Inspired "From Russia, with Love" with Tim Spicer Jun 09, 2025

Show notes

Today Justin is joined by Tim Spicer. Tim served for 20 years in the British Army where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and saw active service in Northern Ireland, the Falklands Campaign, the Gulf War, and the Balkans, as well as serving in the Far East, Cyprus, and Germany. After retiring, he founded private security company Aegis in 2001. He's also the author of several books, including his autobiography, titled An Unorthodox Soldier. He's here to discuss the story of Biffy Dunderdale's decades long career with British intelligence, which put him at the center of some of the most significant events in Europe between the Russian Revolution and the heights of the Cold War.

Connect with Tim:

penguin.co.uk/authors/208198/tim-spicer

IG: @timspicerauthor

Check out the book, A Suspicion of Spies, here.

https://a.co/d/dloaYL6

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199. [ARCHIVE] Flying for the CIA: A Continental Air Services Contractor with Toby Scott Jun 02, 2025

Show notes

Today we're going back into the archives again with a replay of episode 60, originally published in September 2022. We're excited to reintroduce you to the incredible story of Toby Scott and Jerry Daniels. Randolph Toby Scott is a former smoke jumper with the US Forest Service, who later worked in Southeast Asia under contract with Continental Air Services during the Secret War in Laos. He also took part in Operation Cold Feet in the Arctic Circle, one of the most daring and ambitious missions of the Cold War.
Toby was right in the middle of some incredible events over the years, and he's got a lot to share in particular about his very good friend Jerry Daniels. Jerry was a smoke jumper and continental air sources employee as well, who was later recruited by the CIA to become a case officer himself. Jerry spent nearly 20 years altogether in Southeast Asia until 1982 when he suffered a tragic and mysterious fate that continued to raise many questions for the next 35 years.
This episode contains details about Operation Cold Feet that expert and friend of Spycraft 101, Lee Gossett, believes have never been made public before.

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198. Project Mind Control: The Dark Secrets of MK Ultra with John Lisle May 26, 2025

Show notes

Today Justin sits dow with repeat guest John Lisle. John has a PhD in history from the University of Texas where he is now a professor of The History of Science. He's received research and writing awards from The National Academy of Sciences, The American Institute of Physics, and The National Endowment for the Humanities. His work has been published in Skeptic, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, and elsewhere. If you are a longtime listener of the podcast, you might remember John from our fourth episode four years ago. Today he's back to discuss his newest book, Project Mind Control, which tells the tragic story of the CIA's MK Ultra experiments.

Check out John's first appearance on Ep 4: Cyanide Pills and Glowing Foxes here.

Connect with John:

johnlislehistorian.com
Twitter: @JohnLisle

Check out the book, Project Mind Control, here.

https://a.co/d/0ncO4Ts