Putin’s Path to the KGB
Using his unique access to the Kremlin, German journalist Alexander Rahr shares the inside story on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s formative years in Leningrad and his path to the KGB.
Using his unique access to the Kremlin, German journalist Alexander Rahr shares the inside story on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s formative years in Leningrad and his path to the KGB.
Recent stories focusing on the 'migrant crisis' and 'the Cologne attacks' - among other incidents - are provoking racial and religious tensions in Europe. In this episode I look at the simple-minded dialogue around these trends and events, identifying the Russian state as playing a critical role in the incitement.
GRU Maj. Gen. Dmitry Polyakov (1921-1988) was a decorated veteran of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) and an old-line Stalinist. Yet beginning in 1959, when on assignment under diplomatic cover at the UN Mission in New York, he was also a US intelligence asset after he volunteered his services to the FBI.
We are joined once again by our friend Robbie Martin to discuss the latest installment of his documentary series A Very Heavy Agenda. In part two, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the New Neocons, Robbie picks up where he left off by exploring the rise of a new breed of neocons. Robbie and I discuss how deeply entrenched with in the media this new brand of neocon has become. Going beyond the likes of Bill Kristol and think tanks, the neocons have now infiltrated organizations such as The Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Vice, and other media outlets.
Colonel Aleksei Mikhailovich Kozlov (1934-2015) was a deep-cover intelligence officer in the KGB’s elite Directorate S, the Illegals, during the height of the Cold War. Posing as a traveling German businessman, he was captured by South African counterintelligence in 1980, but not before passing onto Moscow Center shocking information on joint South African-Israeli nuclear weapons tests.
I recently had the pleasure of previewing The Secret Garden - an independently made spy thriller. The film is inspired by the short story The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges, but transplants the themes and existential quandaries of that story into a CIA Cold War setting. While some recent films contain sequences where the characters dwell on the moral and psychological torment of espionage, in The Secret Garden this is as much a part of the story as nuclear terrorism.
Retired KGB Major General Boris Ratnikov has a story to tell – about the Soviet and Russian intelligence services’ use of psychic espionage in the Great Game. While Ratnikov’s story may sound fantastic, the details on Cold War-era remote viewing programs in both the United States and Soviet Union are very real. With that in mind, perhaps the general’s claims aren’t so far-fetched after all.
Tom Clancy was one of the best selling spy authors of all time, known not only for his technical accuracy - gleaned through extensive government contacts - but also for an uncanny ability to predict the future. Part of his FBI file was released in 2014 but in recent weeks another section has been made available.
Marxism usually gets a bad rap in the Truth Movement, but the two share a lot of key ideas. This week I explore the schizoid relationship the Truth Movement (or sections of it) have with Marxism, looking at how the notion of 'waking up' functions in much the same way as 'class consciousness', how both Marxists and conspiracists predict the inevitable self-destruction of the economic system, and the downright bizarre confusion over Marxism's approach to central banking.