Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought us the renewed prospect of nuclear war, the most threatening moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Vladimir Putin controls the world's largest nuclear arsenal and the US and NATO are taking his threats very seriously. On the 60th anniversary of the crisis in Cuba, we delve into the heart-stopping history of atomic and nuclear secrets and spies.
The Penkovsky problem
For 13 days in October 1962, the world sat on the precipice of a nuclear war. Behind the scenes of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA and MI6 pored over thousands of classified Soviet military papers and photos smuggled out by Russian double agent Oleg Penkovsky. Many people hail Penkovsky as ‘the spy who saved the world’; some say that new intelligence suggests he may have actually been a Moscow agent of deception intent on destroying it!
The horrors of Hiroshima’s WWII survivors are captured by artist Yoshiko Michitsuji and others who survived the massacre unleashed on August 6, 1945 by the Enola Gay - the US B-29 bomber aircraft that dropped the world’s first atomic bomb strike. For decades, no one knew where the uranium came from to make the American bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, ripping the cities apart. The hidden history can now be revealed.
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Using only open-source intelligence, a Stanford professor and a geospatial analyst at the Los Alamos National Laboratory were able to recalculate the epicenters of two North Korean nuclear tests. They’re not alone. Hobbyists are also investigating nuclear secrets that were once the domain of intelligence agencies. The shift is forcing a rethink of the spying game.
British-German physicist Klaus Fuchs was an unassuming man who, by a twist of fate, found himself in a position to alter the balance of world power during WWII. The Russian spy worked on the Manhattan Project and at the Los Alamos laboratory that produced the first atomic bombs. Fuchs also leaked every secret he knew to the KGB. His arrest led to an even bigger catch - a spy ring involving Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Cyber sleuths Liam O'Murchu and Eric Chien were the first people to investigate Stuxnet, the malicious computer worm believed to have seriously damaged Iran's nuclear program. Before they finished their investigation, however, the two men found themselves in a murky world of international spies, coded threats, and mysterious suicides.
Get a FREE copy of a hot new thriller, spy story, or crime novel every Monday with a special Story Mondays ticket to SPYSCAPE HQ. Next Monday it's Mother Daughter Traitor Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal. Inspired by the real mother-daughter spy duo who foiled Nazi plots in Los Angeles during WWII, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a powerful portrait of family, duty, and deception that raises timeless questions about America - and what it means to have courage in the face of terror. Don't miss your FREE copy when you experience SPYSCAPE HQ next Monday.
President George W. Bush mainly justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq with the claim that Saddam Hussein was ramping up his nuclear weapons program. The accusation, based on forged documents, accused Iraq of trying to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium powder that could be enriched and used in nuclear weapons. But who forged the documents and why weren’t they dismissed as obvious fakes?
