Original subtitles

The Cold War era saw the creation of invaluable technologies

that pushed engineering, physics, and space exploration

to new heights, but at what cost?

We often think of the secondary purpose as being the military one,

when really the military one was the primary purpose.

As nations become uncomfortably aware that they are in the midst

of a new kind of conflict, the need to keep a watchful eye

in the sky becomes increasingly evident.

Importance of radar is key because that's how you know

when there's an incoming aircraft or missile into your territory.

Spies soaring over enemy airspace or tasked with

some of the most important and dangerous jobs of all.

The Soviet Union was extremely defensive of its airspace

and would try to shoot down any airplanes

that came into the Soviet Union.

But cloak-and-dagger activities on the ground are far from over.

Was this a Soviet innovation that they had worked on over the years

or was this from espionage?

After World War II, emerging superpowers stand

on the brink of utter destruction while spies work to control

entire nations in the shadows.

As the Cold War deepens, paranoia persists.

In a world of double agents,

sleeper cells, and cover networks, trust is impossible

and threats are everywhere.

It's the early decades of the Cold War

and the east and west find themselves in a deadlock

with the fate of their people and perhaps the world

hanging in the balance.

Within a decade, the whole military threat

changes so incredibly.

The stakes just got a lot higher and a lot more dangerous.

Everyone's just sitting back and thinking, OK,

so, what's the next step now?

For the USSR, this is all about Russian survival.

After having suffered catastrophic invasions over the centuries,

geopolitical expansion by any means is the only way to avoid

reliving the past.

But after the Second World War, ridiculous losses

really take a bite out of the Soviet state,

both in terms of manpower and economy.

Over 20 million deaths.

The Russian position

was that the Second World War was won with British stubbornness,

American money, and Soviet blood,

and that was where the Iron Curtain gets strong.

The most valuable currency in the Cold War era

is not firepower, but information.

A lot of the intelligence that's going on at this time

is about trying to detect really the military capabilities

of the other.

So, far, the Soviets are the experts

in extracting intel from their enemies through espionage.

So, the United States and the United Kingdom,

although they did have spies operating in the USSR,

had nothing like the networks of human intelligence agents

that were being run against them at home.

The Americans are relatively new to the spy game

and are realising a growing problem -

penetrating the Iron Curtain to gather intel is incredibly difficult.

It's a very closed, tightly regulated society

where people are themselves vigilant.

This made it very difficult to have spies operating in Moscow

or elsewhere in the Soviet Union.

The US and the USSR must develop new methods of reconnaissance

to stay on top.

In the Cold War spy race,

the United States was far ahead of the Soviet Union

when it came to science and technology,

and especially in things like aerial reconnaissance.

Both sides will seek to one up the other publicly

while keeping their greatest technological feats

close to the vest.

Technology is moving so quickly at this point.

It really is constantly a game of catch-up.

The outcomes of this stage of the war will result

in breakthroughs in science and engineering.

But for the opposition, these achievements will spread

more fear than joy.

At the beginning of the Cold War, allied forces turned enemies

when the USSR launched targeted spy missions against the West.

The goal?

Obtain access to top-secret information on nuclear weapons.

Despite great efforts to protect national secrets,

US laboratories had been infiltrated by highly skilled Soviet spy rings.

Formulas and blueprints were now in the hands of Soviet scientists.

The atomic playing field had been levelled.

What happens when you have two nations that have this

now incredibly deadly weapon

that a couple years earlier was completely a dream?

Is this something

that is going to turn the world into a nuclear wasteland?

Now that the US and the USSR are armed with nuclear weapons,

the stakes are perilously high.

The only deterrence to pushing the button

is the fear that the opposition is capable

of equal or greater devastation

resulting in mutually assured destruction.

Both sides were so powerful that if one side were to try

to destroy the other, they could be guaranteed or assured

that they themselves would be destroyed.

That deadlock, I believe, is what really kept the Cold War cold.

The goal of international espionage shifts from stealing formulas

to keeping a watchful eye behind enemy lines

and predicting potential attacks.

Knowing where there are weapons, where there are planes,

where there are other facilities within enemy territory.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union

are in a constant state of preparedness.

The efforts move more to surveillance.

The best way to do this is from above.

Americans know their talent in aircraft engineering is unmatched,

so resources are funnelled

into developing a new long-range, subsonic, jet-powered bomber the B-52

and the shorter ranger B-47.

The Soviets are busy observing the skies from below,

making sure everything they consider Soviet airspace,

including some places they wish to be, remain clear.

The thing about the Soviet Union is that it is so wide.

They amassed all sorts of territory during the Second World War,

and so their borders extended.

That leaves them quite vulnerable to attacks.

The Americans have a great advantage in the number of partners

that they have, regional partners that, in effect,

that allows them to encapsulate the Soviet Union.

Turkey, a country that has long acted

like a bridge between the east and the west.

It is also home to a key strip of land

the Soviets had hoped to own for quite some time.

Despite Turkey being home to a den

of German spies during World War II,

the country's neutrality during the war blocked Germany's access

to the Middle East,

aiding the allies without becoming active combatants.

However, pre-existing tensions between the Soviet Union and Turkey

are intensified when Turkey is given control

of two internationally significant waterways in the north-west

known as the Turkish Straits.

The Straits offer an important connection

between the Aegean and Mediterranean seas to the Black Sea.

I imagine for Turkey it's almost a delicate dance

of allying yourself to the superpower next door

with the knowledge that you possess some valuable assets geopolitically.

Tensions in the regions rise when Turkey refuses to institute

joint military control of the passage.

This isn't the first time Russian relations with allies

have turned rotten, and it won't be the last.

Japan - a significantly smaller country.

This island nation has historically had a competitive relationship

with the Soviet Union with political conflicts dating back

to the competition of the Japanese and Soviet empires

for dominance of North-east Asia.

In World War II,

the Soviet Union stationed spies in Japan to gather information

about the activities of the Japanese and German governments.

One of those spies was a man named Richard Sorge,

a German journalist and Soviet military intelligence officer.

Sorge was sent to work as a press officer in the German embassy

in Tokyo, where he headed a successful Soviet spy ring.

He was responsible for gathering valuable intelligence,

including details on the timing of Adolf Hitler's invasion

of the Soviet Union

and Japan's plans to remain neutral in the conflict.

His cover was eventually blown.

He was tortured, forced to confess to espionage, tried and hung.

Stalin declined to intervene.

This contentious relationship continues into the Cold War

as Japan occupies a distinct role with Western allies

and communist enemies.

The Cold War really engulfed all these countries.

When you look at Tokyo in Japan,

there is no option to remain neutral.

Do we tolerate a foreign power and control from our neighbour,

which would mean almost certain territorial expansion,

or do we tolerate it from a foreign power that's kind of far away?

Accepting military bases or accepting support from either one

will then put us at odds with the other superpower.

During the Cold War, both Japan and Turkey draw lines

in the sand when it comes to the Soviet Union.

They turn to the US for assistance.

Both are provided support

through the Mutual Defence Assistance Program,

a program established by the United States

in the late 1940s to provide military and economic aid

to its allies in the face of the growing threat from the Soviet Union.

The Soviet expansion following the Second World War was very much

that sense of not having power.

And linked to that is the sense that they are a superior nation.

They can take over these smaller countries.

The MDAP provides Turkey and Japan with supplies and services

to strengthen their defences.

Both countries play a role in the containment of Soviet expansion

in their respective regions.

US military operations are established

in Japan, Turkey and Pakistan,

not only to protect them from being overtaken,

but to establish footholds in greater proximity to their adversary.

A lot of that comes out of actually signals intelligence

because they need listening posts that are close to the Soviet Union.

So, if you can't go inside the Soviet Union,

you want to get as much information

that's coming out of the Soviet Union,

and that includes their electric signals.

So, when they're sending radio signals,

when they're doing missile tests,

when you're looking at the telemetry of the rockets

or the communications with the planes,

the West can take advantage of listening posts

in different parts of the world.

Those same bases allow them to surround the Soviets Union

with basically guns to the head

and to represent a sizeable military threat

that the Soviets really can't match.

Despite gaining allies and ground,

the US is still hesitant to fly into Soviet airspace.

What would the Soviets do to American pilots caught flying overhead?

How far had their technology advanced

and how high could they fly?

One thing the US can be sure of

is that the Soviets possess radar technologies

that they had obtained in World War II.

When the US and the USSR were still allies

in the fight against Nazi Germany,

the Soviets were able to obtain access

to advanced Western technology,

including radar systems through joint military projects,

technical exchanges, and intelligence gathering.

This sharing of information

would backfire on the US during the Cold War

now that the Soviet Union was able to further advance

the very radar systems used to spot US planes.

The Soviet Union was pouring so much money

into military technology.

The importance of radar is key

because that's how you know when there's an incoming aircraft

or missile into your territory.

By 1951, Stalin is feeling pressured to pressure to protect

the northern and eastern borders.

He orders the construction of a long-range interceptor

capable of countering potential attacks.

The result is a two-speed twin-engine jet fighter, the Yak-120.

It's predecessors are only more fierce.

The Yak-25M is an incredible all-weather interceptor

with an impressive range.

The Yak-25RV boasts an impressive altitude ceiling

to perform high altitude reconnaissance spy missions

during the Cold War.

Both would be successful in catching US pilots off guard.

These interceptor aircraft play a very important role

during the 1950s because the primary threat

was the nuclear weapons would be dropped by aircraft from the enemy.

And so you needed to create the interceptors

to be able to prevent those bombers

from getting access to your territory.

Stalin was deeply worried about any penetration of Soviet airspace

by American aircraft or any aircraft really.

And so the Soviet Union was extremely defensive of its airspace

and would try to shoot down any airplanes

that came into the Soviet Union.

By the 1950s, Soviet air defences

are aggressively attacking offending aircraft,

but the threat of Soviet fire extends beyond their clear borders

as even those in Japanese airspace seem to be at risk.

On June 13, 1952,

American pilot Major Sam Busch and his crew

take off from Yokota Air Base in Honshu, Japan.

Their mission?

Survey shipping activity in the Sea of Japan.

Three hours later, contact is lost.

The aircraft never returns to base.

What happened to the crew in that three-hour window?

With no survivors or wreckage found,

the event remains shrouded in mystery

until a revealing memo is released in 1993.

It wasn't until 40 years later

that archival documents in the Soviet Union revealed

that Stalin knew the Soviet Union had shot down this airplane.

The US now know their current aircraft, the Boeing RB-47,

can't evade current Soviet radar or outmanoeuvre their latest planes,

the Yak-25RV or MiG-17.

To gain access above enemy lines,

they would need to develop something that could.

In 1954, the US approved a secret CIA program

to build a special purpose high altitude reconnaissance aircraft -

codename Aquatone.

Project Aquatone is really a signature of the CIA.

It's a pretty new agency created in 1947,

and it is given a preponderant amount of authority.

So, showing its power,

the CIA, with the Eisenhower Administration's blessing,

is able to go to corporations,

Lockheed in particular, and say, "Can you build something?"

And of course they say, "For sure.

"How much money are you going to give it?"

And they form a very cosy union,

which in effect becomes this first step

in the military industrial complex.

This is the beginning of a very, very close relationship

between US Intelligence, represented chiefly by the CIA, and corporate.

A covert team from the top-secret Lockheed Skunk Works division

begins work on an aircraft

with the endurance to overfly the Soviet Union.

This will usher in a secret, game-changing aircraft

that will become legend, the U-2.

The man in charge of it all is Sergeant Kelly Johnson.

It has an extremely long range.

It flies at a very high altitude

to almost outer space.

It's right at the edge.

The pilot has to wear almost like a space suit,

a pressurised suit.

Beyond the targeting capability

of anti-aircraft systems in the Soviet Union,

almost beyond the capability of detection at first.

As well, it's equipped with a camera that has high definition capability

for aerial photography.

This was because the purpose of the plane wasn't to attack.

It was to gather information.

It had no onboard weapons.

It was purely a reconnaissance aircraft.

The ultimate goal of the U-2 is to photograph Soviet military bases

so the US can keep track of their enemies' arsenals.

They've been caught off guard by their enemies in the past

in the attack on Pearl Harbour.

This time, they would be prepared.

For the Americans, there was the fear of the unknown.

They know that there's nuclear weapons,

but they don't know how many.

Did they have a lot of missiles as Khrushchev was claiming

or did they not?

So, it gave the US the ability to really kind of survey

the Soviet Union at a safe distance

and also try to map out

where their missile silos were actually located.

You're also simultaneously trying to listen to the Soviets,

trying to understand how they scramble, how they respond.

So, the U-2 is quite complex.

In the 1950s, Edwin Land from the Polaroid Corporation

and James Baker from Harvard

collaborate on a special project to develop a camera lens

capable of stereoscopic photographs for recon missions.

The Hycon model cameras

are the first high altitude optical surveillance systems.

They enable the US to observe global hotspots in astonishing detail,

helping to maintain military balance in the Cold War.

It represents the cutting edge of US technological capacity.

All of that R&D - research and development - that we talk about

is much better supported in a free enterprise economy.

Those incentives don't really exist in a socialist state.

In July 1955 at the Geneva Summit,

President Eisenhower proposed the Open Skies treaty

permitting countries to make over-flights of one another

to conduct mutual aerial inspections of nuclear facilities.

The proposal was outright rejected by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

And of course, Khrushchev is worried not

about the Americans finding out

that he has this robust missile system.

He's worried the Americans are going to find out

that he has no robust missile system.

He's been lying.

With no Open Skies Treaty in place,

investments into the U-2 spy plane program are more important than ever.

Germany.

Historically, it posed a major threat to its Russian neighbours.

During the Cold War, the country is divided into two separate states,

the Federal Republic of Germany in the west,

and the German Democratic Republic in the east.

The division was agreed upon by the Allied powers,

including the United States, the United Kingdom, France,

and the Soviet Union.

In 1949, through political and military means,

Joseph Stalin gained control over Eastern Germany,

turning it into a Soviet zone and communist state.

In August 1955, the U-2 was finally ready to fly

and capable of reaching a ceiling of 70,000 feet,

a height that should be out of reach to the Soviets.

The U-2 leaves from West Germany

flown by Air Force Pilot Hervey Stockman.

American officials hold their breath in anticipation

as the U-2 captures photographs over a USSR airfield

over the south-west of Leningrad.

Well, you can imagine the kind of anxiety

that's probably going through those pilots' minds.

They're flying over enemy territory

where they know other people have been shot down.

Intercepted radio transmissions alert US officials

that Soviet interceptors are in the air and approaching the U-2.

They are shocked to learn that the Soviets are able

to intermittently track them even at 70,000 feet.

So, while the Americans are developing their U-2 spy plane,

the Soviets are developing their radar capabilities.

They're developing their rocket technology, their missile defence.

However, the MiG-17s and the Soviets' surface-to-air missiles

cannot reach the U-2's impressive height.

I would imagine the Soviets would be feeling pretty vulnerable

at that time that all of a sudden now the United States

has the capability to observe you at a safe distance

and you can't do anything about it.

Throughout the four-year over-flight period,

U-2 aircraft were launched from Germany, Japan, Pakistan,

Turkey, and Alaska.

By continually observing, you get more information

about essentially what's normal for the Soviets

so that you start to understand what's not normal

and then what could potentially be a first strike coming your way.

There was the question of, "What do we do if this is discovered?

"How do we cover ourselves

"when we're doing something that's undiplomatic?"

It was illegal under international law, so it had to be done secretly.

It had to have plausible deniability

so that the president could say,

"No, this isn't something that I had authorised."

So, the backdrop for all of these U-2 overflights is pretty basic.

You're going to say that they're misguided planes

who are really up there to test atmosphere.

They're weather planes.

Now, the Soviets aren't going to buy that for a second.

That's really important.

So, that's for cover and that's for international consumption,

for the American public's consumption.

But Moscow's not stupid.

Everybody in Moscow knows that these are spy planes.

The frustration for them

is that they do not have the technical capacity to get them.

And so the Soviets, embarrassed by the fact

that the Americans can fly over their country,

don't say anything about the U-2 over-flights

because it would only reveal their own weakness.

And instead, they start to think about ways

they can deal with these planes on their own.

Knowing these flights were going on and unable to stop them,

the Kremlin is furious.

Their anger grows in 1956 as a U-2 plane flies directly over Moscow.

Pilot Carmine Vito departs from his station at Wiesbaden in West Germany

and soars over a network

of newly built air defences that ring the city.

The camera produced incredible images of the Fili airframe plant

where Soviets were building their first jet bomber, the Bison,

a bomber arsenal in Ramenskoye, a rocket engine plant in Khimki,

and a missile plant in Kaliningrad.

Even while it was flying at these extremely high altitudes,

its camera could take pictures with such remarkable resolution

that analysts could see what was actually happening on the ground.

They could actually count the number and type of aircraft

they saw at airports.

They could see the building of missile launch sites.

It was an incredible piece of technology.

But when the US seemed to have the upper hand,

the Soviets would shock them and the entire world.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik,

the world's first artificial satellite

and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth's orbit.

This comes as a shock to Western powers

because it seemingly comes out of nowhere.

It may have triggered a range of emotions in people.

Some people may have doubted what they were seeing as being real.

"Was this actually happening?"

And I think for others it may have been a sense of surprise and shock

that the Soviet Union was able to pull this off.

And, more importantly, pull it off before the Americans.

And of course the Russians are super proud of it

and very, very happy, and the Americans are devastated.

What does this mean for surveillance on one side?

What does this mean for military weapons on the other?

Because this is rocket technology.

Sending up a satellite had enormous geopolitical consequences

for the Cold War.

The fact that the USSR could send a satellite into space

meant that it was very far along in the technology it needed

to send ballistic missiles into space,

missiles that could fire nuclear warheads tremendous distances

across the globe.

It meant that soon the United States

would be in range of the Soviet nuclear weapons.

(SIREN WAILS)

Where you may have had hours of awareness

that a Russian bomber was headed your way with a nuclear missile,

you're starting to get into the realm

where you now have minutes.

In 1954, the Soviets wanted to build an intercontinental rocket

capable of carrying a hydrogen bomb to any point on the planet.

To do so, they would need to build

something that could travel further, faster,

and withstand more force than ever before.

The design of the R-7 was based on the V-2 rocket,

a weapon used during World War II.

The only people in the world with the knowledge and experience

to build such a device were former scientists from Nazi Germany.

At the end of the Second World War, there was a scramble by the Soviets

and the Americans and the British

to round up any of the Nazi scientists

that had been working on really high technology projects during the war.

The Americans realised that they needed to get a jumpstart

on rocket technology.

Before the end of World War II in 1945,

US President Harry S Truman authorised a secret program

called Operation Paperclip.

Until the late 1950s, more than 1,500 German scientists, engineers,

and technicians,

many of whom had been members of the Nazi party,

were brought to the United States for employment

in military and civilian research programs.

They made a deal with those scientists.

They wouldn't be subjected to punishment for what they did

in the Second World War in exchange for providing help

for the Americans to develop their own technology.

One of these scientists was Wernher von Braun.

Von Braun is a German engineer and scientist

who helped lead the development of the V-2 rocket during World War II.

He's brought into the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency,

where he was instrumental in several US accomplishments

during the space race.

He helped develop the Redstone rocket,

which was used to launch America's first satellite Explorer 1 in 1958

and later the development of the Saturn V rocket

used to send Apollo astronauts to the moon.

The way that scientists are treated or recruited

is actually really reflective of the Cold War ideology.

Well, the Soviet method is much more brutal and forceful

with lots of threat.

In 1946, more than 2,500 former Nazi German scientists and engineers

along with 4,000 family members were transported

by the Soviet Army to Russia in a joint mission

with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The launch of Sputnik exacerbates longstanding fears

that the US is trailing behind the USSR in ballistic missile technology.

It immediately becomes huge international public attention

about how the Americans have proverbially dropped the ball,

how they're now behind the Russians in technology.

It's not true, but the public becomes obsessed with that,

particularly in the US.

There was this real fear and sense of despair

that somehow the United States and its people had been let down,

that science and technology and learning in the US

was somehow pale in comparison

to what was happening in the Soviet Union.

So, it led to a lot of soul-searching in the United States.

How can the United States do better?

The bold move by the USSR launched both countries

into a very public competition

to prove their technological superiority

by developing artificial satellites, unmanned space probes,

and, ultimately, human space flight.

The common fear was the nation that dominated space

could dominate the earth.

President Eisenhower in the United States is under real pressure

to show that the United States can catch up

to these gains that the Soviet Union has made in space.

And so he declares the creation of NASA.

In July 1958, President Eisenhower signed

the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the agency.

Not only does this facilitate further space exploration,

but it would prove a useful excuse

for future suspicious aerial activity.

People who have been working on the rocket program before that

had been begging for funds, but then, after Sputnik,

they were given as much funding as they wanted.

When these technologies are being developed,

we often think of the secondary purpose as being the military one,

when really the military one was the primary purpose.

The secondary purpose was the civilian one

because that's really what drove the creation

of a lot of these technologies -

is finding ways to attack somebody else more efficiently,

more destructively, and faster.

And then beyond that, it is of course about national pride,

and that is part of the game of the Cold War, right?

You're trying to win hearts and minds as the expression goes.

So, you want to look tough and strong.

You want to be the first and the best at something.

And so what better demonstration could you have

than being the first ever people to go to the moon?

That must have been an incredible period of time,

of excitement, of purpose.

And remember, this is during the civil rights movement.

So, the whole space race and the public excitement

for it was something that's unifying.

The fight for space dominance captivates the world

while the US and the USSR are perfecting

their rocket and missile technology.

Pakistan - a country caught between Soviet and US forces

shifting with the changing geopolitical climate.

On May 1, 1960, American pilot Francis Gary Powers

flew a U-2 espionage mission to take photographs

of the secretive Soviet ICBM development program.

Powers leaves from northern Pakistan

and heads towards the Soviet Union.

Despite belief that Soviet missiles

can't reach the cruising heights of the U-2,

he is shot down over the Ural Mountains.

Each time the other side gets a technological advantage,

it causes anxiety for the enemy.

And so the Soviet response to the U-2 was,

"We have to figure out a way to counter this threat."

So, the Soviet Union began

a very quick research and development project

for better surface-to-air missiles - or SAMs.

On May 1, that weapon is what locks onto the U-2 spy plane.

The first missile explodes near the plane,

forcing it to drop to a lower altitude.

The second is a direct hit.

This is irrevocable proof that the Soviets had finally caught up

to U-2 technology, but how?

Was this a Soviet innovation that they had worked on

over the years?

Was this from German scientists?

Or was this from espionage

and an understanding of how the U-2 plane operated?

In 1958, a CIA source working in the USSR reveals

that Soviet intelligence had obtained vital information

on the American's top-secret plane.

How did the CIA learn of this vital information leak?

And who was the informant?

In 1953, a GRU officer named Pyotr Semyonovich Popov

was stationed in Vienna.

Fuelled by a deep anger at the Soviet government's treatment of peasants,

Popov's allegiance flips

and he sees an opportunity to begin working for the other side.

To make his intentions known,

Popov slips a note into the parked car

of an American diplomat that reads:

The letter is passed onto the leader of the CIA's Vienna base.

In the letter,

Popov outlined details for a meeting with the CIA.

It's a nightmare for any desk officer in an embassy

when a guy comes in and says, "I want to spy for you."

"Whoa! You want to spy for me or you want to spy against us from inside?"

It's a bit of a catch-22 because in one sense

you're very apprehensive about it because it could be a ploy.

So, it's a risky endeavour, but it's also one

that you can't really turn down.

You have to actually entertain

that maybe they really do want to help us.

How do you come to trust somebody who's a spy to begin with

and then offers their services as a double agent?

That's innately untrustworthy, isn't it?

So, what they'd be doing with Popov is essentially testing his access,

testing his knowledge,

giving him little tasks to see if he'll complete them.

And if he completes a small task, you give him a slightly bigger task.

And if he's able to continually complete these tasks,

he's starting to prove that he's serious,

his intelligence collection is good.

If you can assess that and verify it, corroborate it,

you give him more.

Popov is vetted and becomes the first GRU officer

to offer his services to the CIA.

He takes on the role of a double agent

continuing to pose as a GRU officer while leaking intel to the CIA.

If I'm not mistaken, he's the highest ranking GRU official

ever to work for the Americans.

And as a military intelligence man himself,

he was privy to all sorts of information.

So, he is a really important asset.

Popov's handler is CIA officer George Kisevalter,

a Russian-speaking CIA officer in Vienna.

The pair pass information through third-party couriers.

When passing documents, Popov and the courier would wear

a distinct pair of gold cuff links to identify themselves.

Each time the documents and the cuff links

would make their way back to Kisevalter

who would decipher the intel.

In 1955, the Soviets sent Popov to East Berlin

to work with their illegal agents being sent to the West.

While there, Popov hears a senior KGB officer

boasting about having full technical details

on the US Lockheed U-2 spy plane.

In 1958, Popov passes on the message to Kisevalter.

We do know that Popov pays for this.

He's compromised and executed.

It's now clear that the Soviet Union has access

to a tremendous level of detail about the U-2 and how it works.

But where did they get this information?

People have argued that there were leaks within the US military,

including the U-2 program itself,

that may have led the Russians

to dramatically and quickly improve their capability,

both radar and also their ground-to-air defence systems.

Assuming Powers is dead

and with the hope of protecting the secrecy of the U-2 program,

President Eisenhower uses the cover story

that the U-2 had been conducting routine weather flights

when a malfunction caused it to drift into Soviet airspace.

Although the sensitive cameras and information in the U-2

was supposed to be destroyed

if the plane crashed or was shot down,

a lot of the technology and Powers actually survived being shot down.

The pilot was given a suicide device.

If by any chance he gets shot down, he has to kill himself.

When the plane is shot down,

he ejects successfully from the plane,

but declines the privilege

of committing suicide for the United States,

which the United States does not know.

Powers is captured by the Russians

and his aerial camera system is recovered, mostly intact.

This proves that the weather survey story is a coverup.

This of course is a disaster for the Americans

because the plane's supposed to disintegrate and so is the pilot.

He's supposed to be dead, leave no evidence.

There's plausible deniability.

The Americans know the plane is missing and of course they panic.

It doesn't show up in Norway

and they start to say, "What are we going to do about this plane?"

And the Russians cleverly keep it a secret that they have Powers.

And so once Powers doesn't appear anywhere in the next 24, 48 hours,

Americans either think that he died in a crash

or he did what he was supposed to do - he committed suicide.

And so now they release this story

that there was a problem in the oxygen system,

and that he became disoriented on the weather operation in Turkey

and drifted across Turkish border and crashed in Russia.

And then the next day the Russians trot out Powers.

"Here he is, your 'weather plane pilot'.

"And by the way, here's the camera and all the footage that he shot

"of our military installations."

Suddenly the Americans were now face-to-face

with the reality that they had been fearing for years -

that they would be caught out.

Now, how do they deal with this diplomatically?

Eisenhower is forced to admit

that the US had been flying spy missions over the USSR

for several years.

The timing couldn't be worse.

Leading up to the crash,

there had been a process referred to as detente,

which were negotiations between the US and the USSR.

Both Eisenhower and Khrushchev

are scheduled to attend the Paris Summit

to discuss the easing of tensions between their two countries.

So, all of this is on the line,

and that's what makes the U-2 episode so important

because now the Russians are faced with

a really huge dilemma.

"Do we reveal this to the world

"that we've caught an American pilot and a spy plane,

"in which case we walk away from all of that opportunity.

"We walk away from potentially the end of the Cold War."

Khrushchev, I think he agonised over it to some degree,

but he eventually decides to out the Americans

and to go very public with it.

It puts an end to detente, it puts an end to negotiation.

And for Khrushchev, he takes a hard turn.

He becomes a hardliner as it were

because he has to worry about his own regime.

What's more, US citizens are now aware

that their government hasn't been entirely forthright

about its activities in foreign countries.

It was the first kind of disconnect with the broader American public

that a president can actually tell a blatant lie that way.

They always presented themselves as on the defensive.

"We're containing communism. We're not the aggressors here."

Americans had to wonder

whether the United States was totally innocent in this Cold War

or whether it was provoking the Soviet Union

at least some of the time.

Russian engineers reverse engineered their version of the U-2,

known as Beriev S-13, using parts from the top-secret plane.

The remnants are eventually placed in a museum in Moscow

as proof of the public deceit.

The U-2 incident caused a lot of finger pointing

between the Soviet Union and the United States

as they both blamed each other for being the first to spy.

Soviets could point to the wreckage of the U-2

and the camera and Gary Powers,

but the United States could point to something as well.

On day four of the UN Security Council meetings

convened by the Soviet Union over the U-2 incident,

US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr

presents a wooden replica of an American seal,

claiming it to be a bugging device used by Soviet spies

to eavesdrop on conversations

in the Moscow residence of the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

The US attempt to use this as a defence

for their illegal over-flights of the USSR.

The Americans can now turn around and use the seal

as an example of Soviet trickery and duplicity

and sneaky, covert actions against Americans with good intentions.

In 1945 as World War II is coming to an end,

schoolchildren from the Vladimir Lenin

All-Union Pioneer Organisation

present the seal to the new US Ambassador,

W Averell Harriman, as a gift of friendship

seemingly to commemorate the success against Nazi Germany.

It's a ceremony.

It's meant in the good faith of culture.

Why would you necessarily suspect that it's full of listening device?

You probably should, but they don't.

Here is the quintessential Trojan horse.

It's a gift given by your enemy, and it's not what you think it is.

This covert listening device was created by Leon Theremin.

Leon Theremin is a Russian-born inventor known around the world

for his invention of a musical instrument

that can be played without being touched, the theremin.

In 1939, with the Nazi threat growing stronger,

Theremin decides to leave his US home to return to Russia.

Upon arrival, he is implicated as a traitor

and sentenced to hard labour in the country's Gulag system.

Less than a year later, he is brought to Moscow

to work at a sharashka,

one of several secret Soviet research and development laboratories.

There he creates a covert listening device

that would go on to puzzle and impress the world.

What was so ingenious about this particular listening device

was that it was wireless.

It was built totally into the seal.

Disguised as decor,

it hangs on the wall of the ambassador's residential study

for five years before it's detected by sheer accident.

And then the Americans kept this discovery in their back pocket,

ready to use it when they need it.

On August 19, 1960, Powers was convicted of espionage

and could face death.

Instead, Powers proves a useful bargaining chip

and is sentenced to prison.

While Powers is held by the Soviets,

a disgruntled KGB agent decides to defect

and offers intel to the CIA in exchange for his safety.

Part of his deal involves giving up his former partner,

high-level spy Rudolf Abel.

Abel's work is vital to helping the USSR create their atomic weapons.

Abel denies any acts of espionage even after his capture,

but damning evidence found in his hotel room

proves the US's suspicions.

The Soviets want their agent back

and agree to strike a deal for his return.

On February 10, 1962, at the Glienicke Bridge

between Potsdam and West Berlin, Abel is exchanged for Powers

in what would be the first US-USSR spy swap of the Cold War.

The day before Powers is sentenced,

the US launches the CORONA 14 KH-19, or Keyhole-1,

the first successful US spy satellite as part of the CORONA program.

This marks a significant advancement in US reconnaissance capabilities.

So, gone now our worries about aircraft being shot down

or spies being discovered.

Here instead is a spy lens looking down from above the earth.

And right here we see how quickly the technology is shifting

and symbolically how one chapter of spying and surveillance is ending

and how another chapter is beginning.

The camera on the Keyhole satellite captures images of the earth below,

recording them on film that is housed in a re-entry capsule.

The CORONA program collectively identifies over 64 Soviet airfields.

It proves the Soviets had deployed

only a handful of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The startling news disproves the once-feared missile gap.

They were able to alleviate a lot of their own fears.

By the time the first CORONA successfully flew in August 1960,

the Soviets were already designing their own spy satellite,

the Zenith satellites, to fly over the United States.

Once the Americans developed this ability to spy via satellites,

the Soviets need to match it as well.

The Soviet satellites were able to provide remarkable images

of the Earth's surface,

and the Soviets were tasked with taking pictures of cities.

The Soviet Union would map over 2,000 cities around the world

using images from the satellite,

and that included 120 cities in the United States.

The maps that were created continue to be useful

even after the Cold War comes to a close.

Years after the Soviet Union collapses,

the US, Russia and 22 other nations signed the Open Skies Treaty,

allowing for mutual aerial observation.

The treaty symbolically promise some sort of peace,

some sort of cooperation.

Since the signing, both countries have accused each other

of violating the provisions of the treaty,

leading to its unravelling.

After several alleged infractions in 2020,

President Donald Trump announced a withdrawal from the treaty

banning Russian recon flights over the US.

The following year, Russia followed suit,

citing the inability of member nations

to guarantee that information would not be shared with the US.

So, with the United States and Russia withdrawing

from the Open Skies Agreement,

we are getting back to more of a Cold War mentality

where there isn't agreement about over-flights,

and we see states being far more protective of their own airspace.

The decision to pull out of the Open Skies Treaty

brings up concerns and questions about what this could mean

for global security going forward.

Is such a pact even relevant

in a time of high-tech surveillance drones?

With satellite technology now,

everything is an open sky around the globe.

Where it does mean something is of course the bigger context.

It means that you're talking to each other.

It means diplomacy.

It means that, in earnest, you're actually concerned about tensions

that could lead us all to Armageddon.