Show Notes
Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284 13 October 1943. For four months, the Gestapo in Paris had been hunting a British wireless operator codenamed Madeleine. She changed her appearance and safe houses constantly, vanishing every time the German direction-finding vans closed in on her signal. She was the only Allied radio link left in the city. Every other operator was locked up, or dead.But her luck had sadly run out. On the thirteenth of October, the Gestapo set a trap. They had a name. They had an address. And they were waiting. What happened next would determine the fate of the entire Allied network in Paris.The Germans had finally caught their ghost. She was the most unlikely of secret agents - she was a pacifist and the daughter of a Sufi mystic descended from Indian Muslim royalty. Post-war accounts referred to her as the Spy Princess.Her name was Noor Inayat Khan, and this is her story. 📚 Sources & Further Reading (affiliate links):📕 Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu - https://amzn.to/4bNhvP9📘 Agent Noor: The World War II Spy Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice by Ethan Quinn - https://amzn.to/4dlXIri📕 A Forgotten Woman: The Story of the Unsung Heroine of the SOE Noor Inayat Khan by Iris Jenkins - https://amzn.to/3N7rLbJ📘 A Life In Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE by Sarah Helm - https://amzn.to/4lvxwfM📕 Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code Maker's War, 1941-45 by Leo Marks - https://amzn.to/3NFxsOc
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.