Eyewitness

Serving on the West German destroyer “Hamburg”

Karl-Heinz served in the Bundesmarine as a Signalman on the West German destroyer “Hamburg” in the late 70s. He talks of his training, his role and shares details of manoeuvres in the North Sea and Baltics involving East German and Soviet ships. He also speaks about a cruise to West Africa where the sailors were … Read more

Cold War British Army fighting tactics in West Germany

Frank Baldwin was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1979 and served for ten years, rising to the rank of Major. The first battlefield study he planned was in 1989 for HQ 4th Armoured Division. Since then, he has been a guide or historian for over 200 realities of war tours, battlefield studies and staff … Read more

The CIA director responsible for creating spy devices

After service in the US Army during the Vietnam War Bob Wallace was recruited into the CIA. In the CIA his initial assignments were as a field case officer. He rose through the ranks at the agency and was Chief of Station in three locations where he directed the full range of CIA activities. In … Read more

Britain’s Cold War Human Chemical Warfare Experiments

  Ian Foulkes was exposed to the deadly nerve agent Sarin in 1983 at the  Porton Down Chemical & Biological Defence Establishment. Porton Down is one of the UK’s most secretive and controversial military research facilities. Ian describes in detail the process and the ill effects this caused him and shares details of a little-known … Read more

Vietnam War draftee to US Army Rangers

Bob Wallace joined the US Army in 1968 as a reluctant conscript.  He describes the draft process, and his attempts to avoid conscription. After basic training, Bob is assigned to a long-range reconnaissance unit and ambush unit in five or six-man teams in the Mekong delta. Bob served with Company E, 75th Rangers from 1968-1970 … Read more

Helping the Soviet Refuseniks

  Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to Israel, by the authorities of the Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc. The term refusenik is derived from the “refusal” handed down to a prospective emigrant from the Soviet authorities. Eric Hochstein … Read more

My father the KGB spy

Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google PodcastsBecome a Patron! In 1978, Ieva Lesinska was a university student in Soviet Latvia with dreams of becoming a writer. She had just spent a heady month in New York visiting her father, Imants Lesinskis, a Soviet translator working at the United Nations. He was an employee … Read more

A Cold War childhood in Albania

Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was almost impossible to visit, almost impossible to leave. It was a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and secret police. To Lea, it … Read more

Born into a family of Canadian Communists

Fred Weir was a third-generation red diaper baby from Toronto and a long-time member of the party. His uncle, trained at the Lenin School in Moscow in the 1920s as an agent of the Communist International, the Comintern and spent many years in the USSR. Fred had visited a few times, had studied Russian history … Read more