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00:00shadowy assassins who vanish into the crown double agents who sell their own country's secrets
00:13and coded messages hiding in plain sight
00:18throughout history spies have played a unique role in shaping world events
00:28and these secret agents work at the behest of an organization a government or perhaps even a
00:33single leader their covert orders could range from simply collecting information or something
00:40as deadly serious as assassinating an enemy secrecy is critical to a spy's success so how do these
00:50masters of deception fulfill their assignments without getting caught well that is what we'll
00:58try and find out
01:13the cia mi6 and mss these are the foreign intelligence services for some of the most powerful countries in
01:23the world these agencies and hundreds of others engage in clandestine operations to aid and protect
01:33their countries for many their mission is to gather the most closely guarded secrets of their enemies
01:40and their secret weapon are often spies spies are utilized by states to collect intelligence that
01:50is necessary to advance policy making from figuring out whether an adversary has nuclear weapons to
01:57figuring out whether a leader of a foreign state is about to die we have intelligence agencies that
02:03specialize in the interception of communications but there are spies that more commonly comes to mind which
02:15is the people at the front line the individuals who are willing to put their lives at risk to share information
02:23at the end of the day it's a life of mystery and intrigue because the spy world is kind of its own
02:30domain it remains this kind of puzzle mystery that most people will not have exposure to beyond those few
02:38moments we read about in the newspaper hollywood movies and books and tv have made it seem like spies are
02:47some kind of superhero that is nothing like real espionage the purpose of espionage is to be so secret
02:54that nobody even knows you're there true professional espionage is in and out without anyone ever even
03:02knowing it happened that makes your average spy much more like an average person and what's required
03:11of a spy changes from day to day one day we're hunting terrorists sometime later we're exchanging information
03:18in secret someday we're fighting a war on drugs some days we're fighting a war on misinformation
03:25it's an incredible web of information and impact that the average person is not aware of
03:33how can we ever hope to understand the mysterious world of espionage if it remains completely hidden from
03:40us well every so often information does come to light that illustrates how a single spy can change the
03:49course of history los alamos new mexico 1943 a massive scientific complex is established in secret
04:02for the research and development of a truly devastating weapon this laboratory becomes ground zero for the most
04:09consequential top secret military program ever devised it's called the manhattan project the manhattan
04:19project was this top secret federally funded two billion dollar program to explore whether it was possible
04:27to develop an atomic weapon in the midst of world war ii and they built this secret city in los alamos
04:36gathering together chemists and engineers and physicists and other scientists into one spot so that these
04:44scientists can collaborate and fully converse inside the secret city to build this weapon as history shows
04:54these scientists would prove successful in creating the atomic bomb but little did they know at the time
05:02there was a spy among them sharing the program's most intimate secrets
05:08his code name was rest but his identity has since been revealed to be a german physicist named
05:16klaus fuchs
05:19klaus came from germany and because of his his prior background as a physicist he quickly got a job within
05:26the manhattan program in los alamos and unknown to the people there fuchs began to share information
05:34with the soviets about the program the u.s counterintelligence program that involved decrypting soviet
05:43communications revealed the scope of the information that fuchs collected and shared with the soviets in his
05:51particular role as a lead scientist within the program and access to the development of the bomb
05:58he was able to share pretty detailed technical information about the science that goes into the
06:04generation and enrichment of plutonium which served a huge deal in advancing the russians capacities in those
06:13spaces and he collected intelligence and shared intelligence for about seven years until it was revealed
06:22the greatest find in the history of espionage is the theft of the atomic secret
06:29klaus fuchs pretty much shared the recipe with the soviet union the soviet union was able to get a nuclear
06:37weapon roughly five years before they could have done it on their own the moment they had the nuke they
06:44were world power if one spy can alter the course of atomic history how else has espionage shaped our world
06:53has secret intelligence informed nearly every major event in human history
06:59you have to assume that you only know about five percent of all espionage operations every negotiation every
07:09diplomatic agreement every transition of power from one president to another president for 167 countries
07:15all over the world over the course of decades intelligence had a role to play in every one of those
07:21so now when you start to ask yourself about how the soviet union fell and you start to ask yourself about
07:26how the end of afghanistan happened and the winning of gulf war ii and the taking down of saddam hussein
07:32you start to see these major instances in history where intelligence worked or failed
07:41so when you try to consider the impact that espionage has had over the long-term history of the world
07:48you have to remember that 95 of what they've done nobody knows about except for need to know secret
07:54circles it's really pretty chilling if you think about the effect that just a single spy or intelligence
08:03source can have on world events and the irony is that we often don't know what that impact is until
08:11many years or even decades later or sometimes ever at all even historians looking back
08:20on historical events or geopolitical movements may never have access to the behind the scenes
08:28intrigue and espionage that took place or the machinations of various intelligence organizations
08:35but for sure spies really can change the course of history
08:41washington dc 2025 the international spy museum this sleek modern building houses over 7 000 unique
08:53artifacts from the history of espionage among them are ingenious devices created to hide things
09:02record secret conversations and some are even meant to kill
09:08the international spy museum houses the world's largest collection of intelligence and espionage related
09:16artifacts we have all kinds of ingenious devices to do all different types of stuff so a lot of the
09:24gadgets that we see are there to try to help to be a more effective agent to recruit spies better to steal
09:32secrets better and we've got a fantastic james bond collection some of the james bond movies have
09:41actually influenced the development of gadgets in the cia cia directors come out of the movie theater
09:49and say guys do we have anything like this and if we don't can someone get on it so we know that there's a
09:56two-way interaction between the gadgets and fiction and in reality when you look at spy gadgets a lot of them are
10:05weapons of one thing or another then you're always trying to come up with new gadgets
10:11so the kgb came up with a lipstick gun which was a little 4.5 millimeter bullet that could be fired from a lipstick tube
10:18the cia had an ice gun which fired a super cool needle of ice preferably through your opponent's heart
10:27that was all around 1960 and then their famous exploding cigars with this they were going to blow off fidel castro's
10:34head but to the extent that secret weapons spy weapons programs exist they're secret which is why you don't
10:43know about them because you're not supposed to over the years some spy gadgets have either been declassified
10:49or leaked to the public however what's less clear is whether any of these fantastical and frankly bizarre
10:57devices were ever successfully put to use but there is a curious instrument of death that many believe
11:04was responsible for one of the most infamous and unsolved assassinations of the 20th century
11:12the 1978 murder of british journalist georgie markov markov was a dissident in bulgaria and he was loud
11:23and uh he he had to flee he wound up in the united kingdom and he got employed by uh the bbc
11:32and radio free europe which we absolutely hated because it was western propaganda directed
11:40to the east and he got louder and louder and the bulgarians i think it was the president he wanted
11:46to get rid of this guy on september 7 1978 at around 1 30 p.m markov was about to catch a bus
11:56on the waterloo bridge in london and something very strange happens
12:02jorge markov bumps into somebody at a bus stop and this individual is carrying an umbrella and jorge markov
12:12feels some pain in his leg and the individual concerned mutters an apology and climbs into a taxi
12:22and markov from that moment onwards becomes ill he goes to hospital later that night and a few days later
12:31he succumbs to a very severe infection
12:39doctors who examined his body found red swelling on the back of his thigh
12:44and in a microscopic examination of the flesh from the wound site they discovered a tiny tiny less
12:54than two millimeter size little ball mostly made out of platinum which had holes drilled in it as a means
13:05to administer a poison the poison which has never been officially identified was most likely ricin which is
13:13a highly toxic substance which is refined from castor beans how was this deadly platinum ball implanted
13:23into georgie markov answers were not easy to come by but then investigators remembered one seemingly
13:30minor detail that may provide all the answers that oh that umbrella yeah what was that all about
13:39and later we learned that one of the things that both the kgb and the bulgarians had come up
13:43with was an umbrella gun they had an old lab working on this and there was a little tiny capsule was
13:51in the tip of the umbrella which had a needle on it and you just poke somebody and then walked away
13:58how do you kill somebody in plain daylight in public without anybody knowing about it and the answer is
14:04that you find a way to create some sort of device like an umbrella that blends in every day but can still
14:10deliver a lethal dose when you need it to this is exactly what makes spy agencies and spy tech something
14:17of interest and renown because there's a great deal of effort a great deal of investment that's put into
14:23making a clandestine weapon the umbrella suspected of killing georgie markov was never recovered so
14:31investigators had no way to definitively confirm such a device was responsible for his murder
14:38but as far as the identity of the mysterious assassin who bumped into markov well that's another mystery
14:48when it comes to assassinating people we know that the kgb did quite a quite a bit of that and we know
14:53that the russian intelligence does it now too there's an arsenal of weapons and markov was a very loud
15:01dissident so he was an enemy of the revolution and he had to be killed but the man who was seen
15:09to stick that umbrella into markov's leg i think he got away with this what history says about the
15:17assassination of georgia markov is a little similar to who was jack the ripper who killed jfk what's the
15:24final definitive story hopefully we'll know one day maybe we never will today a replica of the notorious
15:32umbrella hangs in the international spy museum's collection and while it can never be proven that
15:37a similar device was used to poison georgie markov one thing is certain the deadly tools of spycraft
15:46could be made to look like anything that you wouldn't know it until it's too late
15:55in terms of what could be future spy weapons secret spy gadgets that can come up with
16:01well one of those tiny tiny drones they can fly inside you perhaps administer poisons carry tiny cameras
16:10the use of frequency weapons might be something else essentially some sort of energy beam which is
16:17being directed at people affecting the brain in some way which would create feelings of disorientation
16:25and if it managed to discombobulate the right targets it could interfere with their ability to
16:32perform their duties so energy weapons could be useful in the world of spies but yes there's a secret
16:41war you'll always try to be one step ahead of your opponent by coming up with something that they hadn't
16:46thought of yet and it can be someone passing you by with an umbrella was the assassination of georgia markov
16:56the work of soviet intelligence like the top secret nature of espionage itself there's a lot
17:02we may never know but there is one spy mystery that has intelligence officers worried even now it
17:11involves a foreign asset who infiltrated the american government intent on stealing national secrets
17:20washington washington dc 1947 president harry truman establishes the central intelligence agency
17:34in the wake of world war ii and with the rise of atomic weaponry a new covert war is about to begin
17:42between the united states and the soviet union this unprecedented era of espionage from 1947 to 1991
17:52is known as the cold war at the start of the cold war as we know it in the 1950s the u.s realized that
18:02it needed to advance its internal security measures this is why truman would ultimately generate a
18:09presidential executive order on confidential materials which still to this day is the way
18:16by which we set different degrees of confidentiality around secret documents here in the united states
18:23during the cold war both the cia and the soviet union's kgb employed spies to steal each other's
18:31national secrets and while any civilian could be recruited to spy on their home country for the other side
18:38even more valuable were those already working in the intelligence community these turncodes are known as
18:47double agents to be a double agent for example i'm an agent i'm working with the cia over here but also
18:57working with the kgb over here i'm a double agent in the middle but it's quite often used in shorthand to
19:04refer to anybody who works in this world who also works for the other side there will be a closed
19:12universe of individuals in the know about particular secrets and you need to penetrate those kinds of
19:18closed networks and so the best way to do that is by turning a double agent a person into an information
19:26sharer the u.s intelligence community is made up of 18 different agencies and organizations
19:35so we have to wonder are there double agents among them sharing our most closely guarded secrets with our
19:43enemies remarkably the answer is yes
19:48and many consider the most damaging double agent ever discovered was a 31-year veteran of the cia named
19:58aldrich ames aldrich ames was a counterintelligence officer in the directorate of operations and he was a
20:07senior individual who in 1985 as a result of a bad divorce was short of money and he sold out to the
20:15soviets he just simply went to the embassy asked to speak to a kgb officer and then sold information
20:25through letters which was highly classified operations and a large number of identities who
20:33were people who had worked either for the fbi or the cia in the soviet embassy in washington dc
20:41there were suspicions that there was a spy within the cia because in the 1980s many of our russian sources
20:54in russia started kind of dropping like flies and this set off alarm bells at the cia and so an
21:03investigation was launched but bizarrely it took many many years to realize that it was aldrich ames
21:12even though aldrich ames displayed many of the characteristics of what would be a viable target
21:19for recruitment he had a known problem with alcohol he had married a colombian woman who had very
21:28expensive tastes he bought a house in virginia with cash for 540 000 he bought a jaguar he started to
21:39dress really well he got new teeth and all of these are pretty obvious indicators that someone is working
21:50for a foreign intelligence service because he couldn't afford all that on his cia salary
21:54aldrich ames is one of the most famous cia compromises of all times and he went many many
22:00years clandestinely acquiring and giving information to the russians until his ultimate
22:05arrest in the 1990s it's very difficult to be able to quantify the amount of damage
22:11that aldrich ames did we know that cia spies were systematically killed and even to this day cia is
22:19always training new recruits to understand aldrich ames to make sure that they don't have another
22:24instance like that happen again aldrich ames was sentenced to life in prison and his wife rosario got
22:31five years for aiding her husband in his crimes against the united states but ames was not the only
22:39double agent discovered inside an american intelligence agency
22:43in 2001 an fbi agent named robert hansen was arrested for selling highly classified information
22:52to russia for over 20 years and it begs an urgent question how many more double agents might be
23:00operating within the american intelligence community right now that have never been caught
23:06it is very likely that there is a russian double agent within the u.s government today
23:13in the same way it is very likely that there is a double agent working for the chinese government
23:18with the iranian government or the north korean government the united states has many enemies around
23:23the world and those enemies are interested in gathering intimate information about u.s doings
23:30it's very uncomfortable to admit but one thing that cia officers are taught right out of the gates
23:35is that you must always assume at any given time that the cia and the fbi are penetrated by a foreign
23:40intelligence service we have to assume that if we're lucky there's only one probability wise there is
23:48more than one could there really be a foreign spy deeply embedded in a u.s intelligence agency unraveling
23:58this mystery is truly a matter of national security because gaining secret information on an enemy
24:04can quickly shift the balance of global power the south was the case of world war ii when allied
24:10forces were convinced that a german double agent was leaking d-day plans to the nazis one letter at a time
24:22france 1942
24:24as world war ii raged across europe the allied forces spent five months planning a top secret invasion
24:35to recapture the french coastal town of dieppe
24:41but on august 19th as the allies began their surprise assault
24:45the attack on dieppe was a disaster for the allies something like half of the 6 000 troops who land are
25:03either killed or taken prisoner and so the concern was that classified information was being sent to the
25:12the axis powers to the nazis and that using code breakers or spies the attack had been foiled had been
25:21discovered by the axis powers the allies are repelled by the nazis and the mission is a failure and then
25:29people wanted to know why the defeat was so stunning that british intelligence mi5 started looking for
25:37reasons reasons how did the nazis know the invasion was happening so it was suspected that there could
25:45be a spy sending messages to the nazis to alert them of upcoming attacks after the failed dieppe invasion
25:53british intelligence launched an investigation to find a potential nazi spy in their midst
26:00and in the process they noticed something rather peculiar
26:04just two days before the surprise invasion on dieppe in the british newspaper the daily telegraph
26:11a curious clue appeared in that day's crossword puzzle around august 18th 1942 something very
26:19strange happened in the telegraph's crossroad the crossword puzzle clue was a french port the answer was
26:28dieppe the big question was was the word dieppe in the crossword puzzle innocent or was it a warning to
26:35the nazis alerting them that an attack was imminent is it possible that the dieppe attack failed because
26:43of that crossword puzzle answer was a spy sending top secret allied intelligence to the nazis through crossword
26:51puzzles after interrogating the creator of the crossword mild-mannered school teacher named leonard
26:59dawg british intelligence concluded that the puzzle's use of the word dieppe was nothing more than a
27:06remarkable coincidence it seemed the case was closed until two years later when code words started to
27:15appear in the newspaper's puzzle again in 1944 the allies were planning the d-day invasion amidst a huge
27:26blanket of secrecy and once again the daily telegraph crossword starts spitting out information that should
27:35not be in the public domain about three weeks before the invasion in the daily telegraph in the crossword
27:43puzzle the code word utah appears then a few days later the code word omaha appears these are the
27:52two beaches where the american forces will land then the next puzzle the code word overlord appears
27:59that's the name of the entire mission this is becoming terrifying then the word neptune appears that's the
28:08code word for the british warships for d-day and then the word mulberry appears that's the code word for
28:17the portable docks that were built across the channel when these code words started appearing it was too much
28:24of a coincidence mi5 we're going to get to the bottom of it especially after dieppe once again their search
28:32eventually led them to the author of the puzzle leonard daw is this the nazi spy and finally was determined
28:41that as a reward to some of the boys at the boys school he would let them pick the word to put in
28:47the crossword and there just happened to be a lot of allied soldiers stationed nearby the kids hear these
28:54weird words omaha utah and they say let's put those in the puzzle not realizing they're about to give away
29:02the biggest invasion in history could the appearance of secret code names in british crossword puzzles
29:08have been simply an extraordinary coincidence or was it a clever spycraft tool we may never know for
29:14sure like in the case of another wordplay 70 years after world war ii that some believed was intended
29:23to have deadly consequences in 2012 in venezuela there was speculation that a crossword puzzle in the
29:36daily paper contains coded messages that were meant to signal a threat against the brother of president hugo
29:46chavez there was assassin which means to kill there was rafagas which means burst of machine gun fire
29:54and there was also the first name of chavez's brother and so all of this led to the conspiracy
30:03theory or conspiracy thought that this must mean that an assassination attempt was on the horizon of
30:10chavez's brother the government essentially accused the newspaper and the designer of this crossword puzzle of a plot and of
30:20transmitting this coded threat whether or not this actually was an indication of an imminent threat against
30:29chavez's brother i don't know no attempt on adan chavez's life was made or at least publicly acknowledged
30:38if spies really do send secret messages via crossword puzzles it's still a matter of speculation
30:44and perhaps an ingenious method to share confidential information in plain sight there are aspects of
30:53that that certainly match typical tradecraft so it's not preposterous to think that a crossword puzzle
31:02could be used to deliver a coded message in fact that's a very brilliant way that you might convey a coded message to
31:11a spy sending covert messages through newspaper crossword puzzles is truly a clever way to share secret
31:19information but there was also a simpler tool spies used during the second world war to communicate
31:26in code over vast distances all you needed was a radio
31:31a sleeper agent for the kgb
31:35chicago illinois october 1978 with ten thousand dollars in his pocket 29 year old soviet spy albert
31:44arrives in the united states using a stolen birth certificate he adopts the alias jack barsky
31:51and begins a 10-year mission to spy on americans as a sleeper agent for the kgb
31:58a sleeper agent is somebody who establishes himself in enemy territory and integrates in society and
32:07then waits for the day when it's time to spring into action my mission in the united states focused on
32:14me getting close to people who make foreign policy decisions and or influence foreign policy
32:21this is towards the end of the cold war where there was a spy war going on between the cia and
32:28the kgb and the tension were very high
32:34after relocating to new york city barsky married and began a family
32:39he also took a job at an insurance company to maintain his cover working as a computer programmer
32:44i had access to lots and lots of data and some of the data would have been very important for the kgb
32:53but there was never a meeting between me and another kgb agent on the territory of the united
32:59states i got my instructions and answers to questions through shortwave radio every thursday
33:06at 9 15 i had to turn on my shortwave radio dial my frequency listen to the call signal morse code
33:14only digits no letters and then start writing down the numbers and there you have your message
33:22for nearly 10 years barsky's primary tool for communicating with the kgb
33:27was through a kind of shortwave radio broadcast known as a numbers station
33:34number stations are essentially pirate radio stations you need to register a radio station number
33:41stations are not registered
33:42they were discovered almost accidentally during the cold war you had ham radio operators bouncing
33:51around different frequencies talking to each other all over the world and then they would hit upon a
33:56certain channel and suddenly you hear a robotic voice repeating numbers
34:01or you hear some kind of music or flute or buzzing sounds
34:14it feels like you're eavesdropping on something secret but you don't know what they're saying
34:19number stations can transmit signals to sources globally and they can do so undetected
34:28because to anyone else it might just sound like buzzing or like a series of noises
34:37but what they're transmitting are coded signals to a source in place or a spy
34:45so even though they're very low tech they're very effective
34:50because they're able to exist and to communicate under the radar
35:00during the cold war both the united states and the soviet union regularly employed number stations
35:06to communicate with their agents in the field
35:08but if anyone with the radio can tune in to hear the broadcast how are these coded spy messages kept secret
35:17well according to experts it's an unbreakable method of encryption a simple piece of paper known as
35:26a one-time pad
35:27a one-time pad has little numbers on him and there's two identical versions one is for the encoding of the message
35:36and the other one one is for the decoding
35:41so you would hear something like nine seven six four then you could use the decoder to decrypt your message
35:49a one-time pad is a sheet of paper with banks of numbers you use this and someone else that you're
35:57trying to communicate with uses that same pad the two of you can then communicate
36:03but it's called a one-time pad because after you've used it you then destroy it assuming that you destroy it
36:11you can then go on to use the next one-time pad and if you keep using it
36:16sticking to the protocol is uncrackable if number stations have proven so effective in the past
36:24the real question is are spies still sending and receiving coded messages through them today
36:34even today you can flip through the different channels and you can hear things over the radio that
36:39don't make any sense whether they're verses being read or whether they're words being said nonsensically
36:46or whether they're numbers that are shouted out the blindness of space
36:52so it's very possible somewhere in there there's a spy message that's sent
36:56for a very specific person at a very specific time in a very specific way
37:00one three if spies are still receiving messages via number stations today we'll obviously never
37:08know but what many experts believe may be even more concerning when it comes to national security
37:15aren't relics from the past but the technologies of today
37:19right paterson air force base dayton ohio march 1998 while doing routine computer maintenance the
37:32defense contractor finds evidence that russian spies hacked into the bases network to access top secret
37:40intelligence from the pentagon nasa and other u.s agencies it is the first major cyber espionage
37:50operation that we know of in modern history one of the big advancements in espionage is something
37:58known as the cyber spy or the spy who lives behind a digital wall of some sort they can steal information
38:05they can sell information they can live and hide on the dark web
38:08this is a whole new development and with that development there's new opportunities and there's
38:13new risks we have new technology that cyber spies can use to meet in cyberspace you can meet with them
38:20on video game platforms you can meet with them in chat rooms you can meet with them using commercially
38:26encrypted technology that you and i carry on our phone which makes everything that much more difficult to
38:31track not just for the fbi or for the internal investigation agency but for anyone to see anywhere
38:38advancing technology is empowered cyber spies to not only hack government secrets but also exchange
38:45that information in complete anonymity but some cyber spies are not interested in stealing information
38:53but rather to influence the very beliefs of their adversaries there's a place called the internet
39:02research agency in st petersburg russia where there's a couple hundred nerds that produce these artificial
39:11personas and then they go on social media and befriend real people and they search out groups that are
39:20ideologically oriented it could be particularly in politics it could be the right wing and it could be
39:27left and what they're after is to create confusion in enemy territory
39:37i can give you an example when you're talking about election interference they planted misinformation
39:44what they do is raising doubts about the american system these cyber spies are extremely dangerous
39:55according to america's cyber defense agency cisa during the 2024 u.s presidential election
40:02foreign adversaries conducted influence operations intended to undermine the integrity of u.s elections
40:13and while we can't say for sure how espionage will continue to evolve we know that as long as
40:19there are secrets there will be spies the future of secrets is in many ways what will shape the future
40:26of espionage but that doesn't mean that the history of espionage is any less useful than it was in the
40:30past it's the foundation it's the bedrock on which everything else is built and no matter where our
40:35future takes us we know that those building blocks of espionage those core fundamentals will always be
40:41present and always be there there will always be people meeting with people in dark corners to share secrets
40:47that nobody knows about in the world of spycraft everything is unexplained and your job as an
40:56intelligence officer is to try to gather that information that will help explain it the anomaly of
41:05spycraft is that you're charged with seeking out the truth and the reality is you can never be 100 sure
41:17that you've gotten to the truth you may never have the answers
41:24while it appears that the digital age may be changing the art of spycraft it's pretty safe to say
41:29that as long as there are secrets worth stealing there will be spies hard at work and although we are
41:37intrigued by the elusive double agents at the cia or even the assassin who killed with the probe of an umbrella
41:45it's likely that most tales of espionage and the covert agents who operate undetected will stay top secret
41:55and remain unexplained
41:59and remain unexplained
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