SPYCRAFT 101

Today Justin talks with Michael Hershman. Michael served as a special agent with US Army Intelligence beginning in the late 1960s. He then went to work as an investigator for New York City, New York State, and then as a senior staff investigator for the Senate Watergate Committee led by US Senator Sam Ervin. Later, he joined the Federal Election Commission as chief investigator and was responsible for audits and investigations of c...

Today Justin sits down with Lisa Story. Lisa graduated from the University of Nevada - Las Vegas, where she studied Communications and Journalism. Since then, she has worked in and around Nevada as a public relations professional. She's the author of two books, both of which focus on her uncle Walter Reca. Walt was an airborne soldier, professional, skydiver, occasional criminal, and conman possible CIA operative, and one of the pr...

Today Justin talks with Tim Scherrer. Tim earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in History from Truman State University and is a Distinguished Military Graduate of the Army ROTC program. He served as a military intelligence officer in the Army Reserve for 28 years. His assignments included an intelligence briefer to the commander in chief of US Transcom during Operation Desert Storm, basic training company commander and chief ...

Today Justin sits down with Matthew John Heath. Matthew served in the US Marine Corps from 1999 until 2003, including a combat deployment to Iraq. Afterwards, he worked with the US State Department as a private contractor in Afghanistan. In 2020, Matthew was arrested inside Venezuela, near the Colombian border, and charged with multiple false offenses, including treason and arms trafficking. He spent more than two years captive in ...

Today Justin sits down with Dr. Brian J. Ellison. Brian has a Master's degree in International Security from American University and a PhD in War Studies from King's College London. He's worked as a senior research scientist at the Center for Naval Analysis and at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory where he has specialized in Chinese strategic affairs, naval warfare and intelligence. His work has led to signifi...

This week Justin talks with Mike Yeagley. Mike is a graduate of St. Lawrence University and is currently the Chief Strategy Officer for cohort.ID. For the past decade, Mike has been working in a variety of positions to understand and reveal how advertising and marketing data can be both an asset and a detriment in intelligence and targeting operations. He's here today to discuss his work regarding the many ways that data can be bou...

This week Justin sits down with Ana Margarita Martinez. Ana fled to the states at age six as a Cuban political refugee, and settled in South Florida as part of the Cuban Exile community. In 1992, she met Juan Pablo Roque, a Cuban Air Force pilot, who had recently arrived in Miami after defecting. They dated for three years and then married in 1995. A year later, Juan Pablo suddenly disappeared and Ana discovered that he had really ...

Today Justin talks to retired FBI Special Agent Sheldon Fung. Sheldon has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biochemistry from the University of California Davis, and a Master's Degree in Criminology and Weapons of Mass Destruction from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. spent more than 21 years with the FBI as a bomb technician and a WMD coordinator. He's here to discuss one of the biggest WMD cases he ever worked on, which began in...

Today, Justin welcomes retired FBI supervisory special agent James Gaylord. Jim spent nearly 32 years with the FBI, including six years supervising a counterintelligence squad at the Los Angeles Field Office's Santa Ana Resident Agency. If you're a longtime listener of the podcast, you might remember Jim as one of our earliest guests from episode 12, recorded nearly four and a half years ago. Today he's back to talk about two of th...

Today Justin sits down with Gregg Bergersen. Gregg spent 19 years in the Department of Navy's office of Naval Intelligence as an intelligence research specialist. He was then asked to join the Department of Defense as a weapons systems policy analyst at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency in Arlington, Virginia, where he oversaw complex command control, communication, computer intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance fore...

Today Justin sits down with Sam Farran. Sam moved to United States from his birth place in Lebanon and joined the US Marine Corps in 1978. He was later trained as an interrogator and worked on orders with the Defense Intelligence Agency and as an at attache officer. After retiring from the Marine Corps, he worked as a civilian contractor all over the Middle East and in particular in Yemen. In 2015, Sam was captured by Houthis Fight...

Today Justin is joined by repeat gues Trevor Barnes, who writes on national security issues for the London Standard Newspaper and is a former senior reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation. He is the author of Dead Doubles The Extraordinary Worldwide Hunt for One of the Cold War's Most Notorious Spy Rings. That was the story of the infamous KGB Portland spying, which operated in England in the 1950s. If you're a longtime ...

Today Justin talks with Dr. Brad Williams. Brad is an associate professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies at the City University of Hong Kong. He has studied, taught and conducted research in Australia, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Taiwan, and the United States. He is the author of Resolving the Russo-Japanese Territorial Dispute, which was published in 2007 and has published on a diverse range of issu...

Today Justin talks with Chris Feistl. Chris worked for 26 years as a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He spent much of his career in Columbia beginning in 1994. Since then, he's been featured in several different documentaries, including the Discovery series Finding Escobar's Millions, plus German Cocaine Cowboy and Narco Wars. He's here today to discuss his book, After Escobar. It's the story of his time in ...

Today Justin sits down with Aidan Raney. Aidan is the founder of Farnsworth Intelligence, a digital intelligence service, which he founded after unmasking a phishing network online which was harvesting credentials from unwitting Facebook users on a massive scale. Aidan is here to discuss his work at the forefront of digital intelligence, and in particular, his interactions with North Korean IT workers attempting to infiltrate Ameri...

Today's guest is Peggy Wirgau. Peggy is a graduate of Michigan State University and George Mason University. She's an active member of American Christian Fiction Writers, The Historical Novel Society, and The Colorado Authors League. Her debut novel, The Stars in April, was published in 2021. She's also written for Appleseeds, Insight, Learning through History, and more. She's here today to discuss the story of Agent 355, the only ...

This week Justin talks with Kati Marton. Kati is an author, journalist, and correspondent who has worked with National Public Radio and later with ABC News where she was the bureau chief in Germany. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Times of London, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and many other publications. She's also published nine books and has served as an advocate for human righ...

Today Justin sits down with Laken Pavan. Laken is a 19-year-old student from Vancouver, Canada. In April, 2024, he left Vancouver and traveled to Eastern Ukraine to join a volunteer group there called InterBrigade. Shortly after arriving, he was confronted by agents from the Russian FSB Federal Security Service, who recruited him to work on their behalf gathering information elsewhere in Europe. He first traveled to Denmark and lat...

Today Justin speaks with Dr. David Tuch. David is a technology entrepreneur and author. His writing uncovers overlooked stories at the intersection of organized crime and espionage. David is originally from New York and has lived in England and France, but now resides in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife and children. He's here to discuss his new book about Harold Derber, a merchant sailor and radio operator during World War I...