Show Notes
Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284 On 28 August 2013, a woman named Monica Witt sent an email from Dubai. She was about to board a flight to Tehran. The message went to a contact in Iran who had been managing her movement for months. "I'm signing off and heading out!" she wrote. "Coming home." She included a smiley-face emoji. Witt was a former U.S. Air Force cryptologic language analyst who had held a Top Secret clearance and access to some of America’s most sensitive counterintelligence programmes. In February 2019, a federal grand jury indicted Monica Witt on charges of conspiracy to deliver national defence information to a foreign government and two substantive counts of delivering that information. Each count carries a potential life sentence. An arrest warrant was issued, but only on 14 May 2026 was a $200,000 bounty placed on her head. But who is she, and why does the FBI now, 13 years later, want her back so badly?
More from True Life Spy Stories
Originally aired on 2/16/26, now expanded with new details on the story and republished in full video! Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284 In September 2024, thousands of pagers exploded across Lebanon in a single afternoon. The devices had been built by Israeli intelligence, packed with explosives, and sold to Hezbollah through a network of fake companies stretching from Budapest to Sofia. The operation had been ten years in the making. This is the story of Operation Grim Beeper.
Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284 On 6 October 2026, German police arrested August Hanning, the former head of the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence service. It's the equivalent of a former director of the CIA or chief of MI6 being arrested on suspicion of treason. Prosecutors allege that for 12 years his former chief of staff, Manfred Dankesreiter, supplied him with around 2,000 secret BND documents in return for payment. Hanning allegedly used them in his private security consultancy, and some of the material may have reached foreign intelligence services. Both men deny the core allegations, and neither has been indicted. The case only came to light by accident, through a police investigation into the kidnapping of two children from Denmark by a German steakhouse heiress. This is what we know so far.
Pick up your copy of Operation Sparrow at https://link.amazon/B02NMVdls (affiliate link) Learn more: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/operation-sparrow-jason-bell?variant=45398167388194 Author's website:Jason's website: https://jasonbell.org/ Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284 In this episode I sit down with author and professor Jason Bell to discuss the incredible story of the Sparrows, a World War 2 spy story that has been hidden from history, until now. Jason's new book Operation Sparrow: The Incredible True Story of the Spies Who Tricked Hitler and Won the War, is out now!
Originally aired 1 July 2026 as an audio-only episode. Now fully edited as a video documentary. Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284 On 6 September 1976, Soviet Air Force Lieutenant Viktor Belenko defected to the West in a MiG-25 interceptor, landing at a civilian airport in Japan and handing American intelligence the most secret aircraft in the Soviet arsenal. The MiG-25 was studied for 67 days before being returned to the Soviet Union in pieces. What the West found overturned a decade of assumptions about Soviet air power. This is the story of how Belenko did it, what the analysis revealed, and what became of the man who pulled it off. 📚 Sources & Further Reading (affiliate link): 📕 MiG Pilot by John Barron
Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284 Welcome to this week's Intel Dossier: A Swindon man is denied bail over an alleged plot to sabotage UK drone factories for Russia; Two more Britons are arrested on suspicion of spying for Iran; Russian submarine crews rehearse cutting NATO's Arctic internet cables; and A Sydney consultant is jailed for feeding gossip to Chinese intelligence.