All language subtitles for A.Cold.War.of.Spies.3of4.On.the.Brink.of.Destruction.1080p.HDTV.x264

In a Cold War,

there are no rolling tanks

or droves of soldiers
marching towards the enemy.

Instead, spies are the weapon
of choice.

But the battleground
is just as dangerous.

Because it's not that you're going
to be detected.

You're going to be betrayed
by somebody you might not even know.

People are put to death
for espionage.

After years of rising tensions
between the world's two superpowers,

political posturing and fears
of an impending attack

threatened to turn the Cold War hot.

It's a really bold move
on behalf of Khrushchev,

and Kennedy was young,
and he had a lot to prove.

The presence of these
clearly offensive weapons

of sudden mass destruction

constitutes an explicit threat

to the peace and security
of all the Americans.

It suddenly escalates very quickly,

where the two sides
are threatening one another.

The balance between peace and war
really here came down to minutes.

In this deadly game of chicken,

the very fate of the world
is at stake.

After World War Two,

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 covert networks.

Trust is impossible,
and threats are everywhere.

On August 12th, 1960,

a Russian man approaches
two young American students

strolling back
to their hotel in Moscow.

He had this intelligence

that he thought was important
to share with the West.

But he couldn't just walk
into a United States embassy

to share this information.

He needed to make contact
in a different way.

Intrigued, one of the Americans
accepts an envelope from the man.

So he said, "Please pass
this on to Intelligence."

And that was a huge risk

because, you know, the students
could have done anything with that.

The student brings the letter
to the US Embassy.

Then it makes its way to the CIA.

One of the things about the Cold War

is it's always about maintaining
control in a very chaotic situation.

The dynamics are changing so quickly,
science is changing so quickly,

and, basically, the whole
situation is very uncontrollable.

In the aftermath of the race
to gain atomic power,

the need to crack into the
nuclear secrets of their enemies

continues to push
the US and the USSR

to great technological advancements.

Each side needs to know
what the other is up to.

But the focus has changed.

At the beginning of the Cold War,

the Soviet Union developed
atomic weapons relatively quickly.

What changes as the Cold War goes on
is how many weapons each side has

and how they will be used
and when they'd be used,

in case of a crisis.

Each opponent deploys highly skilled
spies to rub elbows with the elite

and try to turn engineers, agents,
and politicians over to their side.

Who can be trusted
and who has turned.

Following their combined victory
over Nazi Germany in World War Two,

the relationship between the Allied
forces and the Soviet Union

begins to change.

At the close of the Second World War,

the allyship between the two nations
is really disintegrating.

But signs of this rift were present
even prior to the summer of 1945.

The US had long been concerned
over Soviet communism

and the tyrannical rule
of Joseph Stalin.

What the Soviets were fundamentally
opposed to the capitalist values

that ran rampant
in the democratic West.

Once their mutual enemy
had been neutralised,

the need to keep up
the illusion of trust was gone.

The USSR and the US became
enthralled in a spy versus spy game

of cat and mouse.

Throughout the Cold War,

the Soviet Main Intelligence
Directorate, or GRU,

has assigned agents

to collect information on American
life and its military assets.

The US does the same,

but has a far more difficult time
than its adversary.

In the relatively free cities
of the West,

it's possible for Soviet intelligence
officials to surveil Americans

and to look for patterns
in their life

that would make them especially
vulnerable to recruitment.

The same is not true
of the Soviet Union.

They relied far more on Soviet
officers coming to them.

The mysterious letter
was from Oleg Penkovsky,

a senior GRU officer

able to walk right into rooms
where Soviet military files are kept

and privy to conversations
about clandestine plans.

The letter reads:

"I have at my disposal
very important materials

"on many subjects of exceptionally
great interest and importance

"to your government.

"I wish to pass these materials
to you."

To prove his intentions,
the package also contains

the identities of 60 high-ranking
strategic intelligence officers

posted worldwide.

What would lead such a high-level
officer to not simply defect,

but to risk it all
as a double agent?

The danger to those individuals
was very real.

Somebody who would be caught spying
against their own nation

certainly risks potential
life imprisonment or death.

Penkovsky started to distrust
the Soviet leadership.

There are suggestions that
he was personally disappointed

by being passed over for promotion,
which became his motivator.

But I think it's safer to say

that he lost faith
in the Soviet system.

Penkovsky believes his people
deserve better than leaders

like Nikita Khrushchev, who have led
them into famine and oppression.

To Penkovsky,

betraying his government
is a way to save his country.

Most of the secrets
held on both sides

concern the proliferation
of nuclear weapons.

At the moment that the Russians
detonate their first atomic bomb,

Americans right away go,

"Well, now we'll build
a hydrogen bomb."

It just goes like that.

Ping pong.

By the early 1960s,

the US and the USSR have each
built a sizeable arsenal

of short, medium and
intermediate range nuclear weapons,

and both sides have successfully
launched long-range ICBMs.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles
can go thousands of kilometres,

so they actually are launched
from Earth.

They spend most of their time
in outer space

before they come down
into their target.

And to launch an ICBM from Russia
to the United States

can be 20 minutes.

By the early 1960s,

the US is leading the USSR
in missile production.

But this is not a well-known fact
among average Americans.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev

uses this lack of knowledge
to his advantage.

Khrushchev used this incredible
sense of bluster he had

in which he would challenge
the United States,

making it sound like the Soviet Union
had this enormous,

maybe even overwhelming superiority
of nuclear weapons.

He told the world that they were
churning out missiles like sausages,

which is ridiculous.

But that was his quote.

In actuality,
the American ICBM arsenal

outnumbered that of the Soviets
by over 4 to 1.

But Khrushchev's ploy seems
to be having the desired effect

on the American population.

What evolves in the US psychology

is this idea that we have
a missile gap

and that we're trailing
the Russians.

This method of using propaganda
to distract and confuse the enemy

is employed continually
during the Cold War.

These are all tactics
that governments use

to present themselves as
having credible means of retaliation,

should some sort
of aggression come their way.

Americans may have suspected some
misinformation and disinformation,

but the risk of calling that bluff
would mean terrible consequences

should they have been wrong.

One who has mastered this strategy
is Nikita Khrushchev.

He had emerged victorious
in the political power struggle

following the death
of Joseph Stalin,

and started to make some changes.

After Stalin's death in 1953,

the Soviet Union went through
a period of de-Stalinisation.

Once a Stalin loyalist,

Khrushchev gives his famous
secret speech in 1956,

criticising the former
leader's harsh rule

and initiating the process

of making Soviet society
less repressive.

Still, the Premier is determined

to maintain the USSR's appearance
of strength

and will not let the West put them
in a vulnerable position.

The United States was becoming
more advanced than the Soviet Union

in terms of nuclear weapons,
in terms of science and technology,

in terms of power.

And Khrushchev wanted to push
the Soviet Union forward.

The key to the success of
Khrushchev's propaganda

is that Soviet secrets are kept
under wraps,

but double agents like Oleg Penkovsky
are hard at work unwrapping them.

He has to enter offices
where this information is available,

take pictures of it,
and then get that film,

these pictures
of this sensitive intelligence

to someone else
so that it can leave Moscow.

The Americans felt that he was
a little too hot to handle,

so they ended up going through
the British channels.

MI6 recruits this British man,
Greville Wynne,

who's travelling frequently
to Russia doing business.

He's a known entity to the Russians.

They're assuming that he will be
occasionally surveyed.

He was a civilian who had no
experience in the intelligence world

and actually had
a fair amount to lose.

Wynne had already been recruited
for another mission to penetrate

the Soviet State Committee
for Science and Technology,

a cover organisation
for KGB and GRU agents

spying on Western technology.

Penkovsky was a member
of this committee.

That gave a good excuse
for lots of interactions

that would normally give rise
to suspicions from the KGB.

Penkovsky is the specialist
on the Soviet Rocket Forces.

He uses his position to photograph
thousands of top secret documents

with a miniature camera.

Many of these are missile
schematics and plans.

What's their operational range?

How long will they take
to hit their targets?

What kind of fuel systems
do they have?

All really vital information

that allows the Americans
to prepare a defence.

The information that Penkovsky
provided eventually confirms

that they're overestimating
Russian missile strength.

Khrushchev famously claims
his missiles are so advanced

they can, quote,
"Hit a fly in space."

When, according to Pankowski
in his reports, they, quote,

"Couldn't hit a bull in the backside
with a balalaika."

While they only have
a handful of ICBMs,

the Soviet Union does have

hundreds of medium
and intermediate range missiles.

The US also has an impressive
arsenal of these missiles,

and they have one distinct advantage.

The Soviet Union is still
very isolationist,

so its missiles
are within the Soviet Union

or within the Eastern Bloc.

The Soviet missiles basically
could not reach the United States,

with the exception of Alaska.

But the American missiles
were in places like Turkey,

right on the border
of the Soviet Union.

In 1961,

the US installs their PGM 19 Jupiter
missiles in Italy and Turkey.

Jupiter missiles are not ICBMs.

They are shorter-range missiles

that can be fired
from a neighbouring country.

And because Turkey is so close,

they are capable of hitting lots
of targets within the Soviet Union.

While it would take a Soviet ICBM
20 minutes to reach Washington,

American missiles are now
a mere 10-minute flight to Moscow.

The Soviets feel that the Americans

have come into their sphere
of influence with nuclear weapons,

and that for them
is like an affront.

Still unaware that there is a leak
in their seemingly airtight system,

the Soviets realised

they must move their missiles
within range of the US.

But where?

A couple of years earlier,
there was a revolution in Cuba,

which is one of the closest
countries to the United States.

This is only the beginning.

The last battle will be fought
in the capital.

You can be sure.

Cuba is the largest island
in the Caribbean,

located less than 150km from the US.

From 1953 to 1959, revolutionary
Fidel Castro led a guerrilla army

in overthrowing the country's
US backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

When Castro comes to power,

initially, he reaches out
to the Americans,

but they mistrust him.

The Americans viewed nationalist
revolutions at the time

as potentially communist ones,

and really, they refused
to support him

and actually started
tightening trade screws

when it comes to the sugar,
which is a major export for Cuba.

And so he turns to the Soviet Union.

And it's at that point

then he declares his support
for communism.

The US comes up with a plan
to quash the new regime

before it gains more traction.

Kennedy, becoming President
in January of 1961,

was new and inexperienced.

He was young
and he had a lot to prove.

President Kennedy approves a plan
to use a group of Cuban exiles,

trained and financed by the CIA,

to invade Cuba
through the Bay of Pigs.

The hope was that this would
inspire the local population

to rise up and overthrow Castro.

And the whole thing
just gets botched.

The exiles execute this plan
on April 17th, 1961,

but the mission is swiftly crushed
by the Cuban military.

I think the greatest underestimation
that the Americans made here

was assuming that Castro
did not have local support,

that the Cubans were just waiting
for the Americans

to come and liberate them.

And that was not the case.

The failure leaves a stain
on the Kennedy administration.

America has been growing
as a superpower,

and its dominance
within international relations

may be starting to kind of rub people
the wrong way.

So, many other countries are
kind of rooting for the underdog.

Hayamos hecho un revolucion
socialista en la propia.

Castro after the Bay of Pigs
is absolutely convinced

that the United States is going
to try a second invasion,

and this time
it's going to be overt.

So the Cubans and Castro now

very much are looking for an ally
to protect them.

The Soviets are very much looking
for an ally

to help give them an edge
against the United States.

Talks between the Soviet Union
and Cuba

are promising for both sides.

Castro makes a request
for Soviet weapons and soldiers

to boost their defences,

but Khrushchev ups the ante.

Unilaterally,
without consulting the Politburo,

he agrees to deploy
ballistic missiles in Cuba.

Khrushchev proposes to install

R-12 medium range
and R-14 intermediate range

ballistic missiles in Cuba.

The range of those may sound
like intermediate is not far,

but they could go
as far as Hudson Bay,

so it could cover almost
all of continental United States.

And this would really make
the balance of power much more equal

in the Soviet eyes.

If the US learns that missiles
are being transported

so close to their shores,

it could be seen
as an act of aggression

and trigger a response
before the Soviets are ready.

But with the US carefully monitoring
shipments entering Cuba,

how can Khrushchev
get such massive warheads

into the country undetected?

The way that the Soviets
devised their plan

was to keep everybody involved
in the operation

completely in the dark.

In 1962, the Soviet Union
begins Operation Anadyr.

The plan is to deliver the missiles

and a division of mechanised
infantry to Cuba via ship,

under the guise
of sending agricultural assistance.

The codename Anadyr, the name
of a city in Russia's far north,

is chosen to confuse
American intelligence.

Even the participants did not know
exactly where they were going.

They were issuing winter gear
to people going to Cuba

to try to make them believe

that they're going into
some northern climate.

Only a handful of senior Soviet
officers are made aware

of what's really happening,

as 85 ships depart
from eight Soviet ports.

The first ship bound for Cuba

reaches the island
on July 10th, 1962.

There's a lot of traffic
between the Soviet Union and Cuba.

They're now trading partners,
so that's by itself not unusual.

To maintain the illusion
of providing agricultural aid,

Soviet soldiers are dressed
to look like farm workers.

The missiles themselves
are disguised

as agricultural equipment.

The success of Operation Anadyr

is unwittingly aided
by the Americans themselves.

A pause in U-2 surveillance flights
over Cuba

comes just as the Soviet missiles
are being set up.

So the United States had been flying
regular U-2 flights over Cuba

to monitor developments,

but some U-2 flights
on the other side of the world

had had some problems,

and the United States had decided

it was time to pause U-2
flights over Cuba.

And this is going to allow time
for the Soviets to move farther ahead

with their project on the island.

Oleg Penkovsky will help
to supplement this photo gap

with information he gleans
from behind the Iron Curtain.

Penkovsky was a very prolific spy.

He provided thousands of documents,

including key blueprints and photos
that he'd taken.

So this intelligence was extremely
valuable to the West.

When Greville Wynne is not able
to meet with Penkovsky,

the information is instead passed
on through Operation Distant.

This involves a secret meeting
in a Moscow park with Janet Chisholm,

the wife of a British intelligence
officer.

Penkovsky approaches Chisholm,
who pushes her child in a stroller

and gives her a small box
of candy for the kids.

The candy is in fact rolls
of film or secret documents.

So to anyone watching,

it looks like he has just
encountered a baby in a park,

when really what he's done
is pass on intelligence

of an extremely classified
and important nature.

Even without overflight photos,

the US is growing suspicious
of the Soviet-Cuban relationship.

U-2 flights over Cuba resume
in mid-October.

The U-2 is proven to be
a massively important part

of the US's
intelligence gathering operations.

Its impressive photo reconnaissance
abilities

allow the US to survey
foreign countries

that American spies can't penetrate.

The CIA selects two pilots,

Major Rudolf Anderson Jr
and Major Richard S Heyser,

to perform a series of covert
reconnaissance flights over Cuba.

The U-2s are outfitted with
the Hikone model 73 B camera,

capable of identifying objects
less than a metre long

from a height of 18km.

And it's the photos taken by the
U-2 that reveal that the Soviets

are building something
very important in Cuba.

On October 14th, Heyser and Anderson
returned from a mission

with pictures of unknown
facilities under construction.

The next day,

the CIA's National Photographic
Interpretation Centre

reviews the U-2 photographs

and identifies
what they interpret as medium range

ballistic missile sites
near San Cristobal.

But it would take one more piece
of intelligence to be certain.

It's Penkovsky's information
that helps tie this all together.

Penkovsky had provided information

about how the Soviet Union
built its missile sites.

One of the pieces of information

was the pattern of where
you have your refuellers,

or you have your launchers,
where you put the missiles.

And it was a basic standard
military formation.

Penkovsky's intel confirms

what had been shown
in the U-2 photos.

This is exactly what the US
had feared.

The Americans are used
to having Moscow within their sights.

They're not used to having
Washington within the Soviet sights.

It is, to the Americans'
perspective, a declaration of war.

President Kennedy is debriefed
on the situation in Cuba

on October 16th,

and immediately sets up
a group of advisers,

the Executive Committee
of the National Security Council,

or ExComm.

President Kennedy formed ExComm

in order to look at
all the range of options,

from negotiations
at the United Nations

to actually warfare.

The committee consists of JFK
and 12 other men,

including
Vice President Lyndon Johnson,

Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara,

CIA Director John McCone,

and Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

The President and his advisers

will be wrestling with the stakes
of Soviet nuclear weapons

being right off the coast
of the United States.

As the Soviets are gearing
up their missile sites,

double agent Penkovsky continues
to use his position within the GRU

to gather information
on their operations in Cuba.

The Russians aren't going to do
you the courtesy

of packaging missiles
with 'missile' written on it.

And that's where
really technical information

about what Russian missiles look like
becomes instrumental.

Penkovsky provides
US photographic analysts

with hundreds of photographs
relating to Soviet missiles,

including images taken
at Soviet May Day parades

and top-secret field manuals.

When they put all this together,

then the Kennedy administration
now begins to understand

the scope and the urgency
of this threat.

The team comes across a manual

for the Soviets' R-12
medium range ballistic missile.

They realise this is the same
missile seen in the U-2 photos,

meaning the Soviets had missiles
on Cuban soil

that could strike the United States

anywhere between
Dallas and Washington.

And also, they could tell
that those missile sites

weren't quite ready.

And so that information
gave President Kennedy

a sense of how much time he had
to resolve that crisis.

On October 18th,

Kennedy meets with Soviet Ambassador
Anatoli Dobrynin

and Soviet Foreign Affairs Minister
Andrei Gromyko.

Neither the Soviets nor Kennedy
mention the missiles in Cuba.

Instead, Gromyko insists

that any Soviet military assistance
to Havana

is only for the defensive
capabilities of Cuba.

The President is left to wonder
if the missiles they have spotted

are not yet operational,

and therefore not effective
as a deterrent, or worse,

could a surprise attack
be on the horizon?

Good evening, my fellow citizens.

This government...

On the evening of October 22nd,
Kennedy delivers a televised speech

notifying the American people

about the presence
of missiles in Cuba.

..on the island of Cuba.

It shall be the policy of this nation

to regard any nuclear missile
launched from Cuba

against any nation
in the Western Hemisphere

as an attack by the Soviet Union
on the United States,

requiring a full retaliatory response
upon the Soviet Union.

During the speech, Kennedy also
announces a blockade of Cuba,

calling it a quarantine to avoid
implying a state of war.

All ships of any kind
bound for Cuba,

from whatever nation or port,

where they're found to
contain cargoes of offensive weapons,

be turned back.

As the blockade comes into effect,

Soviet submarines head
toward the quarantine line.

Any closer and they could spark
an international conflict.

It's unclear as to
what's going to happen.

Will Russian ships force
their way through?

Will the American ships then fire?

Our resolution will call
for the prompt...

In his speech,

Kennedy demands the Soviets

withdraw the missiles
already in Cuba.

On October 24th,
Khrushchev responds.

He reiterates the claim

that the missiles are intended
for defensive purposes only,

and rejects Kennedy's demand
to remove them.

While your intelligence can tell
you about military capabilities,

it can't tell you about intentions.

For the Americans,

they view these weapons
as offensive weapons,

whereas Cuba views this as defensive

to protect them
against the United States.

Just the same as Russia views
the missiles in Turkey as offensive

and the United States
views them as defensive.

Khrushchev calls the blockade
an act of aggression,

and informs Kennedy

that he has instructed
Soviet ships to ignore it.

However, most Soviet ships turn
around and head back to Europe.

The few that do challenge
the blockade

are found to be carrying
no restricted cargo.

This crisis is not only
about the United States

and the Soviet Union.

Of course, it's happening in Cuba.

With the Soviets and the US
deadlocked,

Fidel Castro tells Khrushchev

that if the Americans
invade Cuban soil,

there will be no choice
but to respond

by launching
the first nuclear strike.

Khrushchev got quite worried.

He knew that the only reason
you have nuclear weapons

is to threaten.

You can't actually use them.

On October 26th, Khrushchev proposes
a deal to remove Soviet missiles

in exchange for a promise
that the US will not invade Cuba.

But the next day, Washington
receives a new demand.

And what is Khrushchev
essentially requesting?

Pull the missiles out of Turkey.

President Kennedy and ExComm

are debating how to respond
to these new terms

when they receive
unsettling news.

Just as this crisis seems
to be moving toward resolution,

the United States gets news that one
of its U-2 aeroplanes,

captained by a Major Rudolf Anderson

has actually been shot down
over Cuba.

Tensions are at an all-time high.

The US could respond
with military force,

unravelling the progress
they've made

and pushing both
countries closer to war,

or choose to move forward
with an agreement.

Kennedy realises that it's not
a purposeful provocation.

It's actually a decision made
by the commanders in Cuba.

And so the Americans agree
to move past this

and move towards a resolution
of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

13 days after the stand-off began,

possibly the closest the world
has ever come to nuclear war,

an agreement is reached.

On October 28th, 1962, Khrushchev
issues a public statement

that the Soviet missiles
will be dismantled and removed

in exchange for an American pledge
to stay out of Cuba.

But a secret side deal was
not disclosed to the public.

The previous night,

Robert Kennedy had met secretly
with the Soviet Ambassador

and made an agreement

to remove the American
missiles from Turkey.

It was very important
for the United States

not to look like they were
removing the missiles from Turkey

as a result of the Russians
removing the missiles from Cuba.

This was all about the bad Russians.

So misinformation, disinformation
continues

so that even military actions

of withdrawing missiles
from Turkey or from Cuba

must be narrated or presented
in a certain way to uphold, you know,

whatever dominant story
that the countries have.

While the world looked favourably
on the actions of Kennedy,

Khrushchev's reputation
did not fare well.

This was an overreach by Khrushchev,
and he paid.

He was removed from power.

But it would be Cuba
that loses the most.

In their eyes,
they now looked as if

both the United States
and the Soviet Union

had abandoned them,

and so they were now essentially
left on their own.

As both nations
breathed a sigh of relief,

the same could not be said
for the spies

who helped the US survive the crisis.

Of course, the Russians
are onto them.

On October 29th, 1962,

Greville Wynne travels
to Soviet-occupied Budapest.

He was advised not to go,
yet went anyway,

at the peak of this tension
between the US and the Soviet Union,

and obviously results in his pick up
and arrest by Soviet authorities.

Wynne will be imprisoned
and then exchanged,

but for Penkovsky,
it's the end of the road.

Penkovsky had been apprehended days
earlier at the height of the crisis.

Once the Soviets realised

classified information
had been leaked to the West.

Russian intelligence officers
raided his apartment

and discovered a Minox camera

that had been used to photograph
secret documents.

The Soviet Union makes an example
of Penkovsky.

He goes through a show trial
where his crimes are made public,

and he's then executed as a symbol
of what will happen to others

who betray the USSR.

But how did the Soviets know
Penkovsky and Wynne were responsible?

The Soviet Union had its own double
agents working in the United States.

Among them are William Whalen,

an aide to the Pentagon's
top military commanders,

and Jack Dunlap,
a National Security Agency employee.

Both are secretly working
for the KGB

and had alerted the Soviets
about Penkovsky

before the Cuban Missile Crisis
began.

So you have one double agent

being betrayed by another double
agent working for another side.

It just shows how messy this type
of intelligence world really is.

With double agents working
in the East and the West,

it becomes difficult
to know who to trust.

It's a challenge.

There's just this inherent disbelief

that an intelligence officer
who signed up to serve their nation

would so willingly cross over

and provide information
to the other side.

And so you have to go through
this process

of vetting their motivations,
evaluating their psychology,

as well as the information
that they're providing

to determine is this real,

or is this something
that's being done against me?

The motivations of defectors
and double agents

aren't always clear.

We talk about the classic motivations

of money, ideology, coercion,
and ego,

but it's way more complex than that.

And the case officer's job
is to kind of understand

those motivations and figure
out how to leverage them.

Some of the best volunteers
that have come through,

folks like Penkovsky,
have been driven by ideology.

Ideology would also be the chief
motivator of another double agent.

One of the important sources
for information

about Soviet spies
operating in the United States

was another Soviet GRU officer
named Dmitri Polyakov.

After serving in World War Two,

Polyakov is recruited by the GRU
and quickly rises through the ranks.

He claims to be fiercely loyal
to the USSR,

but has become disgusted
by the corruption of Soviet leaders.

Polyakov spent a number of years
in the 1950s and '60s

assigned to the Soviet
military delegation

at the United Nations
in New York City.

While he was in the United States,

he contacted the FBI to let them
know he had information for them.

In November of 1961,
at midnight in down-town Manhattan,

Polyakov meets with FBI agent
John Mabey.

He offers his services
as an informant.

To prove himself,
Mabey asks Polyakov

to give up the names
of six Soviet cryptographers

in the GRU's
Washington headquarters.

Polyakov agrees.

Polyakov begins his work
with the FBI

under Operation Courtship,

a mission to identify
Soviet spies working within the US.

He's given the codename Top Hat.

Through covert meetings
in New York's safe houses,

he offers valuable information.

Yeah. Polyakov gives up names,
which is important, right?

That's currency
if you're a double agent.

Late in 1962, Polyakov is called
back to GRU headquarters in Moscow,

giving him access to
even more valuable intel.

Polyakov reveals the names
of American military officers

who were paid by the GRU and KGB
to provide classified information,

including one of Oleg Penkovsky's
betrayers, Sergeant Jack Dunlap.

One of the people
that Polyakov identifies

is a man named Frank Bossard,

who's a British individual
working at the Ministry of Aviation

on long-range guided missiles.

In 1961, Soviet agents
have been keeping an eye on Bossard

and realise he has access
to top secret documents.

They also learn
that he has problems.

If you're trying to recruit spies,

or you're trying to turn people
into double agents,

you go after vulnerabilities.

Does the person have money problems?

Do they have addiction problems?

Do they have any kind of
family problems?

Anything that can provide
you with an access point.

Bossard has both a drinking
problem and financial issues.

The Soviets use
this to their advantage

and approach him with an offer.

British documents for cash.

At this stage of the Cold War,
we're a long way from the volunteers

and those who believed in
Communist and Soviet ideals,

who worked with the Soviet Union

because they believed
in the Soviet Union.

Instead, what we see now are people
who spy for the Soviet Union

because they need money.

Bossard photographs
classified documents,

mostly involving missile
and radar systems,

and passes them to the Soviets.

For every packet of photographs,
he receives ��2,000.

He's instructed to listen
to Radio Moscow

on certain days each month
at an appointed time

when one of five popular Russian
songs would be played.

Those would be signals to him

to go and collect certain documents
from his office.

He'd take those documents to a hotel
and he'd photograph them there.

Bossard is given nine
dead drops around London.

Spy is going to leave
the information in a hollow brick

or in a pipe in some park.

They leave a signal somewhere else
that they've loaded the drop.

Then an intelligence operative
will go stroll over to that location

and pick it up.

Bossard catches the attention
of MI5

when he begins going on
spending binges.

Suspicions are confirmed when double
agent Polyakov provides the FBI

with copies of stolen
British defence documents

that were given
to the Soviets by Bossard.

After weeks of surveillance,

Bossard is confronted by MI5
on March 12th, 1965,

in the Ivanhoe Hotel in London.

The authorities were able to catch
Bossard red handed in his hotel room

with all of the documents
and his camera, and he was arrested.

Polyakov's information about Bossard
impresses the CIA,

who begin to use him as an asset
in 1965.

They give him a new code name,
Bourbon.

After tours working in Burma
and India,

Polyakov again returns to Moscow
in the mid '70s,

where he continues to spy.

But spying in Moscow was
exceptionally difficult.

Everyone was watched, everyone
was monitored.

And so he needed a new way
of transmitting information

that wasn't as obvious as a
dead drop or meeting with someone

to pass information.

One of the ways that the CIA
attempted to mitigate the danger

of physical contact
was through radio contact.

That, though, has problems.

Radio contacts can be intercepted.

To solve this problem,

CIA technicians give him
a special hand-held device

known as a burst transmitter.

You could enter the keystrokes
into kind of a memory system,

then would very quickly transmit
those keystrokes in a burst,

and out it goes.

You have to be relatively
close to the receiver.

In this case, the US Embassy
in Moscow would do nicely.

So he would pass by a building
and essentially send off the signal.

The signal would be then received
by someone who's in the building,

who has the technology
to receive it.

That kind of message,

what would maybe take you a minute
to transmit

if you manually typed it in
very quickly,

goes out in two seconds.

So it's much harder for the Soviets
to catch the content of the message.

But even more important,
the location of the transmitter.

Polyakov retires from the GRU
in 1980,

bringing about the end
of his relationship with the CIA.

But in 1984, US agents
monitoring the Soviet press

find an alarming piece
in a Russian magazine

that Polyakov
had occasionally contributed to.

It includes a recipe for coot,

a small water bird common
in Eastern Europe.

This was Polyakov's signal
that he was in trouble,

so this signal is very alarming
to the Americans.

The recipe is the last the Americans
will hear from Polyakov.

Rumours would pop up
from time to time,

but his fate would remain
a mystery for years.

The answer would come in 1994,

with the arrest of one of
the most prolific Soviet moles

in American history.

Aldrich Ames is in life in prison
without possibility of parole.

Ames is assigned to the Soviet
and East European Division

at CIA headquarters.

There he secretly volunteers
to assist KGB officers

at the Soviet Embassy in Washington
DC, becoming a double agent.

Shortly thereafter,
the KGB paid him $50,000.

Ames started buying Italian suits,

and bought a Jaguar
that was half a year's salary.

Ames 100% should have known better,

but he also thought he was smarter
than everybody else.

As of 1994,

the CIA believes they've found
the man who exposed Polyakov.

Double agent giving up double agent.
That's how it works.

It's tragic, but it is predictable.

But several years later,
another discovery is made.

It seems like not one,
but two Americans

actually helped give up Polyakov.

Aldrich Ames passed information,
and so too did Robert Hanssen.

Hanssen was working for the FBI
and involved in counter intelligence,

so he also had access to
very top secret information

in terms of sources
that were working for the Americans.

In 1985, he decides to start
selling secrets to the Soviets

as a double agent.

On February 18th, 2001,

Hanssen is arrested and charged
with committing espionage.

Hanssen had been paid more than
$1.4 million over 16 years

to provide highly classified
national security information

to the Soviet Union and Russia.

Part of this intel

included information
on Polyakov's activities.

So you couldn't ask for
a deadlier combination

of someone working in CIA
and working in FBI

who are giving up American assets.

After being exposed by
Ames and Hanssen,

Polyakov was arrested
by the KGB in 1986.

The circumstances are unclear,

but it's almost certain
that he was executed.

Polyakov's information
is really big.

I mean, he gives a lot of stuff
up about espionage,

but I would argue that
the most important thing he gave

had nothing to do with espionage
in a conventional sense.

In the 1960s, Polyakov gives
intel to the United States

that the relationship between China
and the Soviet Union is changing,

and that there is a rift.

In the early Cold War,

the Soviet Union and
the People's Republic of China

had been allies
with the Soviet Union,

posing as sort of the
senior brother of communism

and China following along beside.

China and the USSR had begun to veer
in different directions

following Joseph Stalin's
death in 1953.

Khrushchev speaking against Stalin

in an effort to move
the Soviet Union into the future,

had caused a backlash.

Part of this backlash
came from Chairman Mao,

who did not agree
with criticising Stalin.

A series of unfulfilled promises,
like Khrushchev's decision to cancel

the delivery of an atomic bomb
prototype to China,

drive the two countries
even further apart.

In the late 1960s,

US President Richard Nixon

and National Security Advisor
Henry Kissinger

are looking for a way
to exploit this dynamic.

The United States sees
this as a potential

of developing some sort of
connection with China

in an effort to weaken
the Soviet Union.

When the Chinese Communist Party
took power in 1949,

the US refused to recognise
Mao's government.

But in 1972,
Nixon moves to reopen relations.

Nixon was known to be
very anti-communist,

but he was able to do something
quite bold,

and that is to meet with Chairman Mao

and then recognise
the People's Republic of China.

By 1979, the US and China

had established
full diplomatic relations.

But China's relationship
with the USSR would not be repaired

until the late 1980s.

And since that time,

China has gradually strengthened
its ties with the USSR's successor,

the Russian Federation.

They have a number of agreements
together,

and run military exercises together.

They're certainly working
together on the world stage.

What we've seen over
the last 20 or 30 years

is this fundamental reorientation.

Russia remains quite powerful
in a lot of ways,

but has diminished somewhat,
and China has taken that place.

The American government claims

that multiple Chinese cyber attacks
have targeted the US.

In response, President Joe Biden

introduced
a national security strategy

depicting China as a long-time threat
to the security of the country.

Because we're so connected
through electronic means,

it's easy to attack the critical
infrastructure of another country.

You could have another mutually
assured destruction strategy

where if you decide to go
after our infrastructure,

we'll go after your infrastructure.

In the last decade alone,

the US has brought several
high-profile cases

against Chinese espionage operations,

who are attempting
to gather troves of American data,

including the personal information
of US government employees

and trade secrets of American
private sector companies.

And in 2020, Chinese hackers
Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi,

allegedly working on behalf of
China's Ministry of State Security,

were charged by
the US Department of Justice

with stealing terabytes of data

from hundreds of companies
around the world.

China is getting
more and more powerful,

the United States getting
less and less powerful.

So we could be witnessing
a fundamental change

in the orientation of global
politics and therefore of history.

Has a 21st century Cold War,
this time with China,

already begun?