SpyCast

International Spy Museum

Since recently the International Spy Museum offers a SpyCast. These podcasts are interviews with ex-spies, intelligence experts and espionage scholars, that you can download and play on your PC or MP3 player. The SpyCast is hosted by Peter Earnest, a former CIA operations officer, and gives you the change to hear intelligence stories right from the key players themselves.

I just listened to some interesting interviews, or SpyCasts as they are called. The first one was with Oleg Kalugin, former Major General of the Soviet KGB and now living in the US. He discusses the espionage conflict between Russia and Georgia about the four GRU officers, and he goes back into time to talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In the second interview with former CIA officer Bob Rayle and KGB General Oleg Kalugin they discuss on the poisoning of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko. Bob Rayle also tells the story on the extraordinary defection of Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Josef Stalin, and how he escorted her out of India to flee the USSR.

These and more interviews or programs are available for download at the International Spy Museum Spycast page, or the SpyCast feed on FM Player. I can recommend a visit to the Spy Museum site with lots of inside information from the past, or you can even visit the museum which is located in Washington DC.

Site Review: National Security Archive

Visit the National Security Archive

Top secret projects, Intelligence Agencies or high level diplomatic arm wrestling are most appealing topics and we all have our opinion on what the spooks are doing behind our backs or try to find a more or less paranoia top secret government project behind a UFO spotting. One way to understand things that happen today is to look at the past, which can be found in the archives.

Although reading government archives will bring you only their side of the story it can help you to form your own idea of what happened. Unfortunately, too few people take the effort to dig their nose into the wealth of archives that are collecting dust. A great source is the National Security Archive from the George Washington University. Although you won't find here secret stuff about G.W. Bush or Rumsfeld you can read about the past, how things were handled back then, and project this to the present.

In the Documents Section you find the nuclear history, the Cuban missile crisis, nuclear first strike options, Vietnam, Latin America, government secrecy. Enough to keep you reading for months. You think you got the right to know something? The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a federal law that establishes the public's right to obtain information from federal government agencies. In the News Section you can read the newest archive entries.

Russian MK-85C "ANCRYPT" Crypto Device

MK-85C   © Andrew Davie
(source: Museum Of Soviet Calculators)

The MK-85C was a secret portable cryptographic device used mainly by the Russian military. Information has recently surfaced and was published on Andrew Davie's Museum Of Soviet Calculators.

The MK-85C is a modification of the MK-85 CMOS BASIC calculator, developed by the Russian firm ANCORT. The text for ciphering is entered from the alphanumeric keyboard and can be edited on a 10 digit display. The device has a key space of 10¹⁰⁰ and the device and encrypts in both numeric and alphanumeric mode.

More details on the MK-85C and a story of its use at an archived version of the Ancort website.  Andrew's web pages on Soviet Calculators contains a remarkable collection of old and more recent Russian build machines. Most interesting!

More cipher machines at Cipher Machines and Cryptology, where you also find a Cipher Machines Timeline.

Update: Andrew's pages are no longer available, and his links now redirect to preserved copies at the Internet Archive. Christos military and intelligence corner has an interesting book presentation about "Encryptors and Radio Intelligence. Shield and Sword of Information World" by Anatoly Klepov, the President of ANCORT. The Book's cover shows the MK-85C.