Podcast Nuggets Episode 3

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This month another batch of treats for the ears from around the Internet. We have a CIA officer with an incredible career that spans three decades, a secret nuclear powered military base in Greenland and military missions in Germany that kept the Cold War from getting too hot.

SPYCAST - Cuba Libre Part I, Part II and Part III are a series of fascinating interviews with Felix Rodriguez, a former paramilitary operations officer of the CIA's Special Activities Division. In 1961 he was the leader of the CIA counter-intelligence operation and entered Cuba weeks before the Bay of Pig Invasion. In 1967 he headed and trained a team to track down Che Guevara. Two years later he enlisted in the US Army and flew countless intelligence mission in Vietnam for special CIA units and even got caught up in the Iran-Contra affair. No wonder that they needed three episodes to get his story recorded. Check out Part I, Part II and part III.

STUFF THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW - Project Iceworm is the construction of a secret U.S. military base on a remote icy plain in Greenland in 1960. The United States had obtained permission from the Danish government to build an arctic research complex to conduct experiments of construction under arctic conditions, the use of small nuclear power plants in remote environments and various other scientific experiments. A least, that was the official version. The real reason for this arctic adventure in the height of the Cold War was less scientific. Camp Century was part of the top secret Project Iceworm, the construction of an underground, or rather, under-ice network of nuclear missile launch sites. This would enable medium-range nuclear missiles to hit Moscow in the event of a nuclear war. See also Camp Century - Greenland Going Nuclear.

SPYCAST - The US Military Liaison Mission in East Germany was one of four Liaison Mission, established after the Second World War. The British, American, Soviet and French allies agreed to accredit military liaison missions near the headquarters of each others occupation zones in Germany. These military liaison missions continued throughout the Cold War until 1990. Initially implemented for economical monitoring and a communications channel between the different allied powers in occupied Germany, the liaison's mission gradually changed into a military intelligence mission when tension rose between the West and the Soviet Union. Major General Michael Ennis, a specialist on the Soviet Union, was one of the officers who spied in East Germany as part of the US Military Liaison Mission. See also The Military Liaison Mission for more information.

MALICIOUS LIFE - Seasons 1, 1.5 and 2 are Ran Levi's fascinating series of podcasts about malware, hacking, cyber crime and war. Season 1 covers the early hackers, spamming and state actors. The whole season 1.5 is dedicated to Stuxnet, the virus that crippled Iran's nuclear gas centrifuges by infecting their control systems with a highly sophisticated worm virus. Season 3 is all about the state actors and cyber war, whistleblowers, propaganda and fake news, North Korean hackers and hacking as a weapon.