Retired KGB colonel, STANISLAV LEKAREV testifies to the dangers of espionage, particularly when passing information. "You must prepare the handover and device very carefully as the life of the person at the other end is in your hands". All spies are well-versed in the techniques of passing information without being spotted. Lekarev describes how, as a student at Leeds University, he would hide information inside an old tennis ball and leave it along the route of his morning run. It was essential to use an old and worn-out tennis ball so as not to attract attention.
It was equally important that the spies themselves remained inconspicuous. As author and historian PHILIIP KNIGHTLEY points out, your average spy is not a flamboyant James Bond-type character, but someone who must blend in to society unnoticed - "The more ordinary they are the more successful they are as spies." The Krogers, an unassuming middle-aged couple from Ruislip, were just such spies. For years they were able to send top secret naval information back to the USSR undetected. One of their neighbours, MRS SPOONER, was friends with the Krogers for years without any idea of their real identity as master-spies. "Mrs Kroger was one of the first neighbours to talk to me. There was absolutely nothing to make you wonder about them. I was really very shocked when it all came out that they were spies. Nobody had an inkling at all."
Technology became an integral part of the Krogers' lives and an essential part of the information gathering process. Together with other spies of the day they had a range of specialist cameras to choose from. The ultimate spy camera of the time was the Latvian-made Minox, which was beautifully engineered, compact, and perfect for photographing documents onto micro-film. Other clever devices available included a German camera disguised as a matchbox and a pocket sized photocopier from Russia.
However it was a specially designed microdot making kit supplied by the KGB which was mainly used by the Krogers. Microdots, which are pieces of film the size of a full stop containing pictures of documents, are essential to any spy wishing to move secret information between countries. Peter Kroger's cover was as an antiquarian bookseller, so he was able to smuggle a lot of top secret information using microdots hidden in the text of books. The couple also hid them in talcum powder tins, lighters and matchboxes.

ALAN BATES narrates the second part of this fascinating series which sheds light on the dark history of espionage. Throughout the Cold War, the world's intelligence agencies fought a technological battle to steal secrets directly from the mouths of their enemies. From bugged shoes to trees full of hidden microphones, the eavesdroppers of the CIA, MI6 and the KGB reveal the amazing gadgets and techniques they developed to fight a real war of words.
"Tapping a phone is easy" explains MARTY KAISER, who used to manufacture bugs for the American intelligence community. Marty shows how bugging is not necessarily synonymous with high technology as he demonstrates the amazing ways in which eavesdroppers
GLEN WHIDDEN, one of the first men to become an eavesdropper for the CIA, recounts how he travelled the world bugging Communist embassies and installations. One of the CIA's best men, he frequently worked alone, breaking into buildings and painstakingly concealing bugs in walls and under floors. It was a nerve-wrack
But in the early days of the Cold War the KGB were well ahead of the Americans. LT. GENERAL SERGEI KONDRASHEV explains how, in the late 1940s, he and his KGB colleagues used a revolutionary bug to eavesdrop on the American Ambassador in Moscow. The KGB cunningly hid the bug in the Great Seal of America which the unsuspecting Ambassador hung on his office wall. Amazingly, the KGB was privy to his most secret conversations and later managed to plant another similar bug in the British Embassy.
However, as LEE TRACEY, a former eavesdropper for MI6 reveals, bugging was something at which the British also excelled. He demonstrates how they would cut holes in walls using specially designed drills to bug rooms from an adjacent building or, if they could gain access to the room, hide bugs which would last for years in doors and furniture.
In the 1950s, British and American intelligence worked together on one of the most audacious bugging operations of the Cold War. As retired officer DAVID MURPHY explains, in 1956 they dug a tunnel from the American sector of Berlin and tapped the main telephone lines connecting the KGB's Berlin headquarters with Moscow. Murphy testifies to the importance of the highly skilled GPO workers who installed the tap - "This could never have been done without British expertise in this area". Astonishingly, although Russians learned of the plan from George Blake, a Russian spy inside MI6, they let the tunnel operate uninterrupted for a year, fearing Blake would be exposed if they stopped it; even the KGB in Berlin were never told their telephones were tapped.
Walls Have Ears discloses the ingeniously simple and sometimes bizarre art of the expert eavesdropper and reveals the world they inhabit to be an incongruous mix of international coups and men in sheds tinkering with electronic paraphernalia.

Continuing its enthralling look at the history of espionage, The Spying Game stalks the cloak and dagger world of the killer agents. From the Suffolk farm workers trained as saboteurs to thwart the German invasion and a plot to assassinate Hitler by the Special Operations Executive to the infamous poisoning of Bulgarian dissident GEORGI MARKOV, Assassins And Saboteurs offers a fascinating insight into the darkest of careers.
In 1940, with German invasion appearing ever more likely, a secret underground of trained resistance fighters was set up across Britain in order to harry the invading enemy. So secret were these 'Auxiliary Units' that only last year did the majority of the recruits begin to talk openly about their experiences. Trained as saboteurs, farm workers HERMAN KINDRED and DON HANDSCOMBE were taught to blow up food dumps, fuel supplies, railways and airfields. Herman Kindred recalls with horror the nature of their macabre education ­ "They taught us how to set traps of all descriptions they're not worth describing some of the things we were taught to do."
The Second World War trained a generation in the art of guerrilla warfare, most notably were those secret agents recruited into the Special Operations Executive (SOE). BRIGADIER DERRICK BAYNHAM was dropped into France in order to keep the spirit of resistance alive and, in the words of Churchill, 'set Europe ablaze'. But Baynham had another role to perform ­ to assassinate known informers and collaborators.
Towards the end of the Second World War the SOE plotted the ultimate assassination ­ code-named 'Foxley' ­ an attempt on Hitler's life. The plan was for a sniper to shoot Hitler while on his constitutional morning walk, during which he ordered his bodyguards to keep their distance. But when the Allies began making headway in Europe the plan was binned.
The SOE has become renowned for its technological ingenuity, particularly in the field of weaponry ­ everything from exploding rats to sleeve guns was manufactured. At the Frythe Hotel in Welwyn Garden City, SOE engineers specialised in both silenced and concealed weapons. Most famous of them all was the 'Welrod' ­ a crude but highly effective silenced assassination pistol. PAUL CORNISH of the Imperial War Museum ­ "It's a brutally simple weapon, rather unlovable to look at but extremely functional."
By the end of the war, a generation of highly trained men perfectly capable, given the right tools for the job, of killing anybody, anywhere floated loosely around the world. Those with the political inclination and will were able to use them for their own ends.
Perhaps the most infamous political assassination was that of Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident who worked for the BBC's World Service. On a grey wet afternoon in 1978, Markov was jabbed with an umbrella in the back of the leg while standing at a bus stop. He died four days later. The umbrella, designed by the KGB, had been adapted to fire a minute poison pellet. PROFESSOR JOHN HENRY, a toxicologist from St Mary's Hospital, explains how Markov was poisoned using Ricin. Found in the castor oil plant, this has the ability to "knock out the body's functions one by one."
This was not the first time the KGB had used poison to assassinate one of their opponents. In 1958 in Munich Stephen Bandera, a Ukrainian dissent, was murdered by KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky using a gas gun. The gun, only a foot long, resembled a piece of tubing. The assassin would need to be at close range to his victim and would conceal the cyanide capsule firing weapon in a rolled up newspaper before unloading it directly in the victim's face. John Henry describes what happens to the target next ­ "He feels immensely short of breath, runs towards an open window and usually collapses and dies with a convulsion on the way there." Such technology was unknown in the West. The dead were often diagnosed as having suffered a heart attack.
Two years later, with Bandear's murder on his conscience, Stashinsky defected to the West and gave himself up as the former dissident's murderer. Close to tears, Derrick Baynham confesses how his violent past haunts him ­ "It's always on one's conscience - a pull of a trigger and a life gone ­ it still upsets me to this day."

The fourth episode of The Spying Game focuses on every spy network's most indispensable piece of equipment - the radio transmitter. Those testifying to the power and impact of radio communication include RUTH WERNER, a soviet agent who built part of a transmitter from household objects, BILL WEATHERLY, who became the sole link between the allies and undercover forces in wartime Greece and CHARLES BOVILL, co-designer of the S-Phone - a revolutionary and virtually undetectable radio telephone. Are You Receiving Me? highlights the heroism of these operators whose life expectancy during the second World War was often a mere three weeks.
Ruth's code name was Sonya and she was a Soviet agent for 20 years. For five years during World War Two she smuggled out vital British secrets. She knew that from the moment she went on air there was the potential that she would be intercepted and tracked down, leading to arrest and possible death. "In England I counted on eight years in prison, in China it was a question of life and death..." She was never caught.
While Ruth was busy carrying out her mission, the Radio Security Service (RSS) was set up to find spies like her. The RSS listened to all unidentified radio transmissions. Once an enemy signal had been detected a Special Communications Unit tracked down the origin of the signal with HRO receivers in the back of their Humber Snipe cars. JOHN COSADINOS joined one such unit in 1942 at the tender age of 18. He recalls how it was initially difficult to tell from what direction the signal was coming - "We would be tearing through the countryside ... quite often in the opposite direction!" But MONTY ELLIS, former member of the Radio Security Service describes the HRO as "a first rate receiver... it could pluck signals out of the ether." To their knowledge no German agents ever managed to successfully transmit from this country.
During the war, British agents equipped with transceivers concealed inside suitcases were able to communicate over vast distances. BILL WEATHERLY joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1941 - "They started throwing me out of planes and teaching me how to be naughty... and they suddenly said 'Right - you're going to Greece'." Bill was parachuted behind enemy lines to become the sole link between the undercover group there and British HQ in Cairo. Reducing power and using fast Morse were among the many tricks of the trade employed by Bill to avoid himself and his group being detected by the Germans.
CHARLES BOVILL and his colleagues further helped the SOE when they came up with the S-phone - a ground to air radio telephone whose beam was so directional that it was virtually undetectable by anyone but the plane you were communicating with. Reunited with one of the old phones Charles recalls how invaluable they were, "A lot of people spoke so nicely about it... pilots I knew said it saved their lives, I felt that made everything worthwhile."
But in spite of the ingenuity of the S-phone, radio signals were always potentially detectable. The British Intelligence services decided to use winged agents. The Pigeon service was set up to carry vital maps and messages strapped in containers on the bird's backs and legs. CHRISTINE WOODMAN HARDY'S pigeon fancying father was asked by the war office to take charge of the supply of birds. She remembers his warnings: "If you say anything to anybody your Mum and I could be shot". The Germans eventually cottoned on and ordered all pigeons to be shot on sight.

The fifth programme reveals how the revolution in espionage all stems from the pioneering efforts of the RAF during the Second World War.
BOB GILLAND was the first man to fly the SR-71 'Blackbird', a CIA spy plane which flew so fast it had to be made out of titanium so it would not melt. Flying at 2500 miles an hour, nearly 20 miles high, it allowed the Americans to spy on nations on the other side of the world with unparalleled speed.
As the space race began, America's first step was to develop a spy satellite code-named Corona. "It worked like a billion dollar disposable camera", explains FRANK MADDEN, the chief engineer. Once it had taken pictures of the Soviet Union, the film, which could not be replaced, was ejected from the satellite in a capsule which was then caught by a special aircraft as it parachuted back to earth. The results it produced allowed the CIA's photographic interpreters like DINO BRUGIONI to take presidents on an incredibly detailed aerial tour of Moscow.
In contrast to these hi-tech satellites and jets, the RAF's most successful spy plane turns out to be a tiny single engine training aircraft which astonishingly flew behind the iron curtain on a daily basis for 44 years. At the end of the Second World War, as the Allies divided up Berlin, each of the military missions stationed there was allowed to fly a training aircraft in order that pilots assigned to the British mission, BRIXMIS, could maintain their flying pay. SQD LDR MIKE NEIL, a pilot, and SQD LDR ROY MARSDEN, a photographer, recount how they used the tiny training aircraft to observe and photograph all Soviet tanks and aircraft they spotted on their flights over the city.
Aerial reconnaissance has revolutionised espionage and it all stems from the pioneering efforts of the RAF during the Second World War. As 83-year-old DIANA CUSSONS explains, the principles she used to interpret reconnaissance pictures during the War are exactly the same ones used with today's multi-million pound spy planes. Flying at 8 miles a minute fifty feet off the ground the Jaguars of 41 Squadron demonstrate how the techniques and even some of the cameras used by the RAF then are still in use today. In 1991 they served in the Gulf War and Squadron Leader TED STRINGER shows how they are able to process and develop the film in less than 8 minutes from returning to base.

The last in the series of The Spying Game explores the covert world of counter intelligence. Knowledge is power in the information war and the most effective weapon is the spy, but at the centre of such intrigue nothing can be taken at face value. As important as discovering the secrets of your enemies is the necessity to ensure that your own secrets are not being leaked. Spying on the spies therefore is the counter intelligence officer, searching out those agents operating within their own country.
Throughout the Cold War Berlin was the spy capital of the world, the interface between East and West. After the Second World War, the city was carved into four sections: in the West the American, British and French sections and in the East, the Russian section. In this environment, intelligence officers on both sides could actually meet their opposite numbers - the enemy - in order to compromise them, neutralise them or perhaps even recruit them. Masters of the counter intelligence game were the former East German Ministry of State Security, otherwise known as the Stasi. The vaults at the Stasi headquarters in East Berlin hold over a million surveillance photographs and 113 miles of personal dossiers documenting the lives of both foreign and East German suspects. ALBRECHT HORST, a former Stasi archivist returns to the lengthy corridors of filing cabinets that house the archive. "At first only a few people were registered here, they concentrated mainly on war criminals, eventually they realised it was possible to monitor the whole of the country."
One of the major roles of the counter intelligence officer is to observe foreign embassies. Embassies are a haven for spies and are therefore the subject of surveillance 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is the 'watchers' responsibility to know the role of every embassy worker. Is the chauffeur genuine or does he work for the KGB? From a room overlooking the American Embassy, MARIO BURGE and his team observed US officials. From a distance, he logged and documented the habits of embassy employees, their wardrobe, their mannerisms, every minute detail. He could recognise any one of them night or day. Burge's knowledge of his subjects was so intimate that he was familiar even with the secrets kept between family members.
MICHAEL LYUMBIMOV was a KGB officer operating in London in the early Sixties. Acting as a Second Secretary, Lyubimov's role was to enlist as many spies and informers as he could. "In order to recruit people you may use three ways", says Lyubimov, "The first way is to find an ideological basis; the second way is to use the material basis, money and so on. And the third way is blackmail." But as soon as he landed in London, Lyubimov was being watched by MI5. In 1964 he was returned to Moscow branded 'persona non grata' by the Foreign Office.
Whilst Lyubimov was recruiting spies in London, MI6 had their own man in Moscow. Oleg Penkovsky was a Colonel in military intelligence who had become disillusioned with the Soviet system. He approached MI6 and was recruited as a double agent. But as soon as he began to pass information over, he was put under surveillance by KGB officers. After 6 months of surveillance Penkovsky was arrested and imprisoned in the Lubyanka, the KGB's headquarters. ALEXANDER ZAGVORTSDIN was Penkovsky's interrogator. His methods secured a confession from Penkovsky who was subjected to a Soviet show trial and eventually executed. "Torture is useless because somebody under torture will just tell you what he thinks you want to know, says author PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY. "You use any psychological advantage you may have, by picking on their weak spots. The interrogator is someone with deep psychological insight."
But Knightley reveals a more chivalrous side to the spying game. "One of the fallacies of the spy world is that it's a terribly dangerous business to be in. It wasn't. Considering the number of people involved, the actual fatal casualties are pretty small. And one of the reasons for this was that the two sides had a sort of tacit agreement between each other, we won't deliberately kill each other."
Glienicker Bridge on the outskirts of Berlin and a border between East and West became the customary location for the strangest of transactions; the spy swap. The Spying Game reveals footage of a genuine swap that may not be a thing of the past, the end of the Cold War has not meant the end of the spy. |||