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The afternoon of 26 June 2010 was sweltering in Manhattan. Inside a coffee shop in lower Manhattan, a young woman with distinctive red hair sat across from a man she'd never met. Anna Chapman was nervous. The man claimed to be from the Russian consulate, using coded phrases that only someone from Moscow Center would know. He told her that her laptop needed to go back to Russia for repairs. She hesitated, feeling dubious.

What she didn't know was that the man across from her was an FBI agent. The laptop she'd handed over would never see Moscow. And within 36 hours, her life as a Russian intelligence operative in America would be over.

This is the story of Anna Chapman, the red-headed socialite spy who infiltrated London and New York's elite circles. Born in Volgograd to a KGB officer, she acquired British citizenship through marriage, moved through Mayfair's high society, and eventually landed in Manhattan where she transmitted encrypted data to Russian handlers using covert wireless networks. Her arrest in June 2010, alongside nine other Russian illegals, marked the end of Operation Ghost Stories and the largest US-Russia spy swap since the Cold War.

But Anna's story didn't end with her capture. It had only just begun.

From coffee shops in Manhattan to the Kremlin's halls of power, from FBI surveillance to magazine covers and television shows, this is the true story of the spy who came in from the cold and found the spotlight warmer than she'd ever imagined.

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #annachapman

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Harold Adrian Russell Philby was known to everyone as Kim. Four years after the infamous defection to the Soviet Union of British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, Kim was preparing to hold a press conference at his mother's Kensington flat.

Ever since the disappearance of the two defectors behind the Iron Curtain, whispers of another betrayal - a so-called "Third Man" started to hang like a dark cloud over Kim Philby’s head.

And so there he sat, ready to set the record straight.

When asked point-blank whether he was the "third man" who had tipped off Burgess and Maclean, he met the question with measured calm, denial.

This infamous proclamation of his innocence was delivered with such sincerity that he was able momentarily to silence his accusers.

The press conference in many ways served its purpose, allowing Kim Philby to continue on for the next 8 years.

He had, of course, been lying through his teeth. It was only after he disappeared in 1963 that questions started to be asked. How could this have happened? Did British intelligence know about it all along and did they allow him to flee to avoid an even greater scandal?

Even today, in 2025 newly declassified documents are shedding fresh light on this most extraordinary case of intrigue and betrayal.

This is the story of Kim Philby, the Cold War's most notorious spy and traitor.

#philipthompson #truelifespystories #kimphilby

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New Zealand convicts its first ever spy

Over in the UK, spy trials don't get out the starting gates. Not so in New Zealand, where in August 2025, the New Zealand courts convicted its first spy, sending a thus-far unnamed soldier in its defence forces to detention in a military camp for 2 years.

In this episode I detail the sting operation that went into apprehending and prosecuting the would-be spy who tried to pass classified New Zealand materials to a foreign power.

#PhilipThompson #deaddrop #TrueLifeSpyStories

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