Spies engineer some of the world’s most audacious thefts from infiltrating military strongholds to pilfering data with surgical precision. This week, we shine a spotlight on the architects of intrigue, highlighting some of their most cunning crimes from the CIA heist of a Soviet MiG fighter jet to a Mossad black bag job that’s in a premier league of its own. Don't forget to explore our Archive and Share & Subscribe with your friends!
Project Azorian
Whispers reached the CIA in 1968 about a sunken, nuclear-armed Soviet submarine that lay three miles beneath the Pacific Ocean - deeper, even, than the Titanic. Navy spies triangulated the location but an outright theft could trigger WWIII. A covert CIA operation would require $350m, six years of planning, and the help of billionaire Howard Hughes but the Hollywood-style heist was too intoxicating to resist.
The Baker Street robbery was a $1.5m heist led by an ex-British soldier inspired by Sherlock Holmes’ Red-Headed League. The theft occurred in 1971 when Anthony Gavin’s crew burrowed 40 feet underground and blasted into a subterranean Lloyds bank vault just steps away from Holmes’ 221B. Curiously, Britain’s government then sealed the files for 100 years. So what, exactly, are Scotland Yard and MI5 hiding?
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Deep undercover in Tehran, Iran’s government transferred the last of 32 locked safes to a lightly secured, suburban warehouse in 2018 while Israeli spies filmed from the shadows. Mossad figured they could disable the depot’s alarm and blowtorch their way into the safes but the heist would require at least a dozen spooks and a ballet of precision timing. Then again, Iran’s nuclear secrets had never been so vulnerable.
Operation Rubicon was hailed as the intelligence coup of the century, a sneaky Swiss operation that saw the US and Germany sell encryption gadgets to foreign governments, then snoop on their clients. A second, lesser-known encryption op was also underway in Geneva during the Cold War - one orchestrated by the CIA’s Heidi August, one of the Agency’s first female spymasters.
In the night skies above Egypt, a CIA officer watched as an unlit military transport plane made its descent under cover of darkness into Cairo’s international airport. Its precious consignment? A cutting-edge Russian fighter jet. This week, our True Spies podcast team flies cargo class with Jim Fees - the American spy who stole a MiG-23 from under the nose of the Soviet Union in the late 1970s.
Espionage thefts certainly aren’t limited to elaborate stings and sneaky operations. Some of the most ingenious robberies are online heists of data, money, and intelligence stolen by foreign governments - often during holidays when tech security can be at its weakest. These Top 10 thefts involved digital subterfuge, strategic infiltration, and spies who let their fingers do the talking.
