This week Justin talks with Robert Lancaster. Robert served in the British Army from 1977 until 1989, including time spent with 22nd SAS, and then in the Australian Army as a reserve special forces soldier. In 1991, he founded Lancaster's Global Risk Consultancy based in Australia, which has offered a wide variety of security surveillance, business intelligence, and counterintelligence services all over the world. His previous clients include governments, multinational corporations, publicl...
Dec 11, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Justin sits down with Naveed Jamali. Naveed is currently an editor at large for Newsweek, where he reports on national security issues. Naveed grew up in New York City, where his parents owned a small business selling technical journals and other hard to find publications. This inadvertently put them in touch with Russian agents working under diplomatic cover at the Soviet mission to the United Nations, who were constantly seeking information on American research and development across...
Dec 04, 2023•56 min•Ep 124•Transcript available on Metacast Today Justin talks with Peter Dowding. Peter worked as a solicitor and barrister for many years in Australia, beginning in 1966. He also served in various positions with the Labour Party and was elected to serve as the 24th Premier for Western Australia from 1988 until 1990. Peter is here to tell the story of his uncle Bruce who was studying in Paris when Germany invaded duriNg WWII and felt the call to contribute in any way that he could. Bruce served in uniform, was captured, escaped, joined t...
Nov 27, 2023•59 min•Ep 123•Transcript available on Metacast This week's guest is Tomasz Awasiewicz. Tom is an author, journalist, and expert on counterintelligence who has taught courses at the SWPS University of Social Sciences in Warsaw and elsewhere. Currently, he focuses on the Cold War-era intelligence and counterintelligence units of the Polish People's Republic. Today, Tom discusses a covert unit of Polish counterintelligence officers who specialized in penetrating foreign embassies to steal their secrets. The unit was filled with safe c...
Nov 20, 2023•2 hr 35 min•Ep 122•Transcript available on Metacast This week Justin is joined by Alex Joske. Alex is an analyst and researcher who focuses on the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party. He has worked for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and has also written articles which have been published in The New York Times , The Washington Post , and with NBC News. Today he's here to discuss the incredible effort China has put into influencing world opinion over the past few decades, and how they've successfully lulled so many p...
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Justin sits down with Robert David Booth. Robert served as a special agent with the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security all over the world for nearly 30 years, in locations like Beijing, Geneva, Tokyo, Haiti, and Paris. He was the deputy director for the Office of Counterintelligence from 1996 until 2002, and afterwards served as a consultant for the same office until 2012. Today Robert shares about his career with the State Department and several of the very famous a...
Nov 06, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep 120•Transcript available on Metacast Repeat guest Rose Mary Sheldon taught history as a professor at Virginia Military Institute for more than 25 years and is a world renowned expert on intelligence activities in the ancient world. She earned her Ph. D. from the University of Michigan in 1987, and has published several books and many articles over the years, as well as serving as an editor for The International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence , and Small Wars and Insurgencies , and The Journal of Military History. T...
Oct 30, 2023•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this solo episode, Justin tells the story of a notorious serial killer active in France during World War II who effectively used the war itself as cover for his crimes. But Marcel Petiot was much more than just a murder. He was a conman, a thief, a doctor, a politician, a target for the Gestapo, and possibly even a source of information for a little known U. S. intelligence organization known as The Pond. Petiot was finally convicted of 26 murders (though his death toll is thought to be betwe...
Oct 23, 2023•41 min•Ep 118•Transcript available on Metacast This week's guest is Stuart Reid. Stuart is a graduate of Dartmouth college and has worked at Foreign Affairs Magazine for the past 15 years, where he's now an executive editor. He's also written for T he Atlantic , The New York Times , The Washington Post , Bloomberg , Businessweek , Politico Magazine , Slate, and other publications. Today he discusses his new book, The Lumumba Plot . It centers ontThe very short and tragic career of the Republic of the Congo's first prime m...
Oct 16, 2023•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's guest is Michael Honegger. Michael is a professional photographer and author. He spent much of his youth growing up in West Germany in the 1960s. His father was an officer with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Michael knew almost nothing of his father's career at the time, but there were a lot of clues that he was involved in some very important and very secretive work. Years later, Michael embarked on a quest to learn more about his father's work and put it...
Oct 09, 2023•48 min•Ep 116•Transcript available on Metacast This week Justin sits down with Joe Augustyn. Joe was a member of the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine service for 28 years, working as a case officer in several locations and later as Chief of Station on three different occasions. After the September 11th attacks, he was appointed the deputy associate director of CIA for Homeland Security until the standup of the brand new Department of Homeland Security in November, 2002. He's also been credited as being one of the original ...
Oct 02, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Justin covers four mysterious espionage deaths. In most of these cases, the exact nature of the events that came to pass is still up for debate. He dives into chilling and complex stories from Cold War Germany to Czechoslovakia, Washington DC, and Scotland. Unfortunately in these cases, we often never find answers. Check out episode 76, Death and the Dangers of Clandestine Work, here . https://www.buzzsprout.com/1780478/11919106 Connect with Spycraft 101: Check out Justin's lates...
Sep 25, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Justin shares the story of the military liaison missions in post-war Germany, or the spies in uniform. If you're a longtime listener, you might recall episode number 23 with Aden Magee, who participated in these missions himself and wrote a book about it titled Cold War Wilderness of Mirrors . Today Justin gives broader overview of the subject today because it was such a unique mission that could only have taken place in a divided Germany caught between the two nuclear superpower...
Sep 18, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Justin shares his interview from the Mark of the Maker Podcast, with hosts Mark Stheiner, Tom Krein, and Sean Kendrick. It's a podcast about knives by knifemakers, discussing everything forging and creation to collecting and history. They dove into some of the most interesting weapons from Justin's book, Covert Arms . Connect with Mark of the Maker: IG: @markofthemaker Connect with Spycraft 101: Check out Justin's latest release, Covert Arms , here . spycraft101.com IG:...
Sep 11, 2023•2 hr 5 min•Ep 112•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Justin sits down with Jennifer O'Leary. Jennifer is an award-winning investigative reporter for BBC Northern Ireland's current affairs program called Spotlight. She has investigated a wide variety of stories, including money laundering by organized crime, criminal conspiracy to export horses unfit for human consumption into the food chain, and the secret intelligence war between the state and the IRA. This week Jennifer tells the story of Father Patrick Ryan, a Catholic priest w...
Sep 04, 2023•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this solo episode, Justin shares a confusing and twisted story he's posted about before on his Instagram page. This is the mysterious death of a Danish diplomat on Long Island in November, 1959. Connect with Spycraft 101: Check out Justin's latest release, Covert Arms , here . spycraft101.com IG: @spycraft101 Shop: spycraft-101.myshopify.com Patreon: Spycraft 101 Find Justin's first book, Spyshots: Volume One , here . Download the free eBook, The Clandestine Operative's Si...
Aug 28, 2023•34 min•Ep 110•Transcript available on Metacast This week Justin talks with author, attorney, public speaker, security expert, and former FBI agent Eric O'Neill. Eric is the founder of the Georgetown Group, a premier investigative services and security firm. In law, he specializes in national security matters. But long before that, he was a young investigative specialist with the FBI. In December of 2000, he was unexpectedly pulled off his normal duties for a special assignment, which would arguably be one of the most important ever in t...
Aug 21, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Ep 109•Transcript available on Metacast In another solo episode, Justin covers a relatively recent assassination. This is the story of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and dissident who was murdered in 2018 after being lured into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Connect with Spycraft 101: Check out Justin's latest release, Covert Arms , here . spycraft101.com IG: @spycraft101 Shop: spycraft-101.myshopify.com Patreon: Spycraft 101 Find Justin's first book, Spyshots: Volume One , here . Download the free eBook, The ...
Aug 14, 2023•27 min•Ep 108•Transcript available on Metacast This week Justin sits down with Rory Cormac. Rory is a professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, specializing in secret intelligence and covert action. He's also given presentations at #10 Downing Street, he UK Ministry of Defense, the US State Department, and the Pentagon. In addition to teaching, he's written five books focusing on British history, covert action, and statecraft. Today, he discusses British covert activities in the pos...
Aug 07, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week's guest is Michelle Black (no relation). Michelle is a mother to two boys and the widow of Staff Sergeant Bryan Black, who was killed in an ambush along with three other Special Forces soldiers in Niger, Africa in October, 2017. Michelle sought answers in the aftermath of her husband's death, but only found more questions. She eventually decided to find out for herself what really happened to her husband, and learned that bad assumptions, bad intelligence, and bad decisions a...
Jul 31, 2023•2 hr 40 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Justin shares his interview from the Thrive Unafraid podcast, hosted by situational awareness expert Kelly Sayre and former CIA case officer Doug Patteson. You may remember Doug from episode two of the podcast in which he discussed his life in the CIA. On their show, Justin discusses how to defend yourself against common manipulation techniques and the importance of personal resilience. Listen to Doug's episode, The Reality of Life in the CIA, here . https://www.buzzsprout.com/17...
Jul 24, 2023•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Justin welcomes repeat guest Fred Burton. Fred is the former Deputy Chief of the Counter-Terrorism and Protective Intelligence Division for the US State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, and is currently the executive director of the Onyx Center for Protective Intelligence. He's also the author of four non-fiction books about counterterrorism and intelligence matters. Today, Fred discusses the murder of CIA Station Chief William F. Buckley in Hezbollah's War Agai...
Jul 17, 2023•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Justin speaks with John Crawley. John grew up in the United States in an Irish immigrant family, and after returning to Ireland for several years he became committed to the cause of Irish independence, vowing to return to join the IRA. After a stint in the USMC as a recon Marine, he brought his combat training back with the intent to fight back against British occupying forces in Northern Ireland. John spent years in an active service unit before coming back to the US again to purchase ar...
Jul 10, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Justin has a conversation with Nicholas Reynolds. After graduating from Oxford University in the 1970s, he served in the US Marine Corps as an infantry officer, and later as a historian. Nick retired from the Reserves as a colonel and the officer in charge of field history. He also served with the Central Intelligence Agency, including as the historian for the Agency's museum at their headquarters in Langley. Today, Nick dives into the origins of the modern intelligence community...
Jul 03, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a special retrospective for episode 101 of the podcast, Justin discusses the lessons he's learned along the way. From getting into contact with incredible guests to growing an audience to some of his favorite episodes, we take a look back at how Spycraft 101 got where it is today. Connect with Spycraft 101: Check out Justin's latest release, Covert Arms , here . spycraft101.com IG: @spycraft101 Shop: spycraft-101.myshopify.com Patreon: Spycraft 101 Find Justin's first book, Spy...
Jun 26, 2023•27 min•Ep 101•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Justin sits down with Barry Meier. Barry is a veteran reporter who has written for the New York Times and received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, along with other members of the New York Times staff. He's also the first journalist to bring significant attention to the dangers of abuse of the prescription drug, Oxycontin, with his book Pain Killer , which was first published in 2003. Today, Justin and Barry discuss the story of a former FBI agent turned priva...
Jun 19, 2023•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Justin speaks with Aaron Stark. Aaron served in the US Army as an Apache helicopter pilot, including on two tours in Afghanistan. He finished his term of service teaching at his alma mater, West Point Military Academy, as an assistant professor of economics after completing his Master's in Business administration at Harvard University, and he now works as a chief of staff at a Fortune 500 tech company. Today, Aaron is discussing the story of the Waltham Watch Company, headquartered i...
Jun 12, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Justin chats with author, veteran, and former CIA case officer James Stejskal. James enlisted in the US Army in 1973 and served for more than 20 years, including with the now famous Special Forces Detachment A in Berlin in the 1970s and 80s. Among other assignments, he was severely wounded in Somalia in 1992 and medically retired from the Army in 1996, after which he joined the CIA as a case officer, where he spent nearly another 15 years. Now fully retired from government service, James ...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep 98•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Justin chats with Olga Sheymov. Olga has worked in high technology, on arts projects, and as a television producer. Her TV credits include the Long-Running series Russia Today, produced from 1997 until 2015, and Your Source TV among other projects. But long before she began her media career, Olga and her husband Victor Sheymov defected to the US and were smuggled out of the Soviet Union and into the Carpathian Mountains by a team from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1980. Victor wa...
May 29, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Ep 97•Transcript available on Metacast Today Justin sits down with Jon and Alex from Fenrir Group. They're licensed private investigators based in Atlanta, Georgia, who offer a wide range of services, including skip tracing, process, serving bond recovery, and boutique litigation support. Not only have they successfully closed hundreds of cases of all types, but they've also developed a very large online following and have been featured in articles with Vox, Vice, and the Discovery Plus series Secrets, Lies and Private Eyes...
May 22, 2023•2 hr 34 min•Ep 96•Transcript available on Metacast 
