Podcast Nuggets Episode 4

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We're back with another series of curious events from both sides of the Iron curtain. This time, we catch a spy that should have been catching spies and we take a detour around the moon with the Soviet Lunik 3 mission. There's also the spicy mix of sex and espionage and you can listen how the Russians, barely, managed to keep the Mir space station in orbit. Clean your ears and listen very carefully!

SPYCAST - The Robert Hansen Spy Case is one of the most damaging cases ever for U.S. intelligence operations. In 1979, FBI counter-intelligence agent Robert Hansen approached a Soviet GRU intelligence officer and offered his services. For two decades, Hansen provided the Soviets with crucial information about American intelligence operations and betrayed Russians that work for the CIA. Senior FBI Supervisory Special Agent David Major talks about Hansen and his motives.

DAMN INTERESTING - Faxes From The Far Side is the stunning story of U.S. spy balloons, the precursors of the spy satellite, and how the Soviets were able to capture some of these spy balloons. They removed the temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened photographic film to re-use it for their own Lunik 3 mission to capture the dark side of the moon. Recycling on a Cold War space level.

SPYCAST - Sexpionage tells the story of sexual entrapment and emotional blackmail by intelligence organisations. The Soviets and especially the East-German intelligence service HvA were very succesfull in the art of sexpionage. Keith Melton explains who did it, how they did it, and some of the great successes of the Russian KGB honey traps and the East German Stasi Romeo agents.

CURIOUS MINDS - The Awful and Wonderful History of Mir brings the chilling story of several near fatal accidents that occurred on the Russian space station Mir. Collisions, fires, power cuts, breaches. You name it, they had it. Mir was the first modular in space assembled space station, in orbit from 1986 to 1999. It stayed up eight years longer than the American Skylab but that also had its consequences.