Watching the Jackals: Cold War Terror, Espionage, and Prague’s Secret Role

How did communist Czechoslovakia become a hub for Cold War terrorists like Carlos the Jackal and Abu Daoud? And what can today’s intelligence professionals learn from its uneasy covert alliances? In this episode, Dr Daniela Richterova, Senior Lecturer in Intelligence Studies at the Department of War Studies, joins Dorothea Gioe, Visiting Research Fellow at the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence, to discuss her new book Watching the Jackals. Drawing on newly declassified archives, she reveals how Czechoslovakia’s State Security Service (StB) navigated its complex, and often contradictory, ties with radical non-state actors—and how those Cold War entanglements still echo in today’s security landscape.