SpyCast

Since its emergence in 2014, the Wagner Group operated as the Kremlin's shadow army, deploying mercenaries across Africa and the Middle East. It gave Vladimir Putin plausible deniability, expanding Moscow's geopolitical influence by propping up leaders through military assistance and securing Moscow's economic interests through weapons deals and access to natural resources. UN experts and human rights organizations accused the mercenaries of disappearances, torture, executions, mass graves, rape, and pillaging. Three years ago this week, its financier and leader Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a failed rebellion. He then died an untimely death, and Putin's security services moved to assert direct control of the paramilitary. This week, Sasha sits down with expert Candace Rondeaux to discuss Wagner's successor, Africa Corps, which has kept the expeditionary force in Africa and Ukraine. The author of Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse into Mercenary Chaos, she discusses Africa Corps' struggles and conquests as it helps keep Putin's war machine churning. Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories: https://sashaingber.substack.com/ For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: https://www.spymuseum.org/ And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org. This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

As an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who later embedded with the CIA, Wes Tabor worked to dismantle criminal networks in Central and South America - think gangs like MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel, and Tren de Aragua. In 2006, he was stationed in Guatemala, a transit corridor for South American cocaine to enter the US. It was during this time that he created a gang intelligence system to help identify gang members, using biodata and records from regional prisons and police departments. As confirmed by two retired DEA agents, the FBI then took the database and made it their own. This is how it happened. *Clarification: The US arrested Guatemala's anti-drug chief in 2009, while three high-ranking, anti-narcotics police officers were arrested by the U.S. in 2005. Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories: https://sashaingber.substack.com/ For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: https://www.spymuseum.org/ And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org. This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

When The Night Manager aired in 2016, it was an instant success. Based on the 1993 John le Carré novel of the same name, the series centered on former British soldier Jonathan Pine. In the show, Pine is recruited by MI6 to infiltrate the secret network of a notorious arms dealer. Ten years later, the series returns, despite the fact le Carré never wrote a sequel before he died. Georgi Banks-Davies, the director of this second season, gives us a behind the scenes look at how the series charts new territory for Pine in the world of espionage. Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories: https://sashaingber.substack.com/ For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: https://www.spymuseum.org/ And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org, This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

John le Carré, born David Cornwell in 1931, was a British novelist renowned for his morally complex spy fiction. Writing under a pen name gave him the freedom to publish while he worked in both MI5 and MI6, but after the breakthrough success of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, he left the intel community world for good. Le Carré’s work spanned the globe, covering terrorism and drug networks, private banking and pharmaceutical exploitation, arms trades and resource plundering- often drawing on the people and places he knew firsthand. Le Carré’s vast personal archive is all on display in the new John le Carré: Tradecraft exhibition at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Historian and curator Jessica Douthwaite joins Sasha to talk about the exhibition and what it reveals about his life and work. Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories: https://sashaingber.substack.com/ For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: https://www.spymuseum.org/ And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by E-mail at SpyCast@Spymuseum.org, This show is brought to you from Goat Rodeo, Airwave, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.