01x09 - Spy Tech

[bunniefuu]

Throughout time, governments

and the people who work for them

have done strange

and even terrible things

in the name of

national interest.

Tonight, real-life spy gadgets.

A giant toy saves a double agent

the life of one of CIA's

most valuable assets

rests in the hands

of a pop-up doll.

A secret message inside a nickel

brings down a Soviet spymaster

this tiny coin was

the key to everything.

And an alien

invasion of balloons.

Alien spacecraft are

as good a cover as any.

Sometimes spies need

the right tech for the job.

Now it's time to bring these

strange innovations to life.

It's 1953, and a young

kid named Jimmy bozart

finds an unusual nickel.

It turns out to contain

secret messages

from enemy agents

operating a spy ring on us soil.

So Jimmy bozart is a

paperboy in New York City.

He's doing his paper route.

He gets some nickels as

tips from different apartments

as he delivers the paper.

He's counting his change.

One of the nickels opens up.

It's no normal nickel.

It's hollowed out in the middle,

almost like two lids of a jar.

And inside the nickel is a

thin piece of photo paper.

And on that paper

is a strange pattern

that he doesn't understand.

Jimmy can't figure out

what the patterns mean,

so he passes the

coin and its contents

onto a local detective.

And the police look at it,

and they also don't

know what to make of it,

so they take it to the FBI.

The FBI analyze it through

a microfiche machine.

They have their best scientists

trying to decode this message,

but they can never break it.

The strange nickel

and its message

remain a mystery for four years.

Then in may 1957, the

feds catch a lucky break.

The American government

gets a phone call

from a guy named hayhanen.

Reino hayhanen

is a Soviet handler

that's operating

a ring of sources

inside the United States.

He says he's fearful that

he's gonna be ex*cuted

because he has stolen

some of his boss's money.

So he's now

defecting to america.

A spy who steals from his bosses

doesn't sound like the

most reliable source,

so the FBI want to

verify hayhanen's story.

They needed to

check his credibility.

So they went to his house,

and they found all kinds

of materials that are

very difficult to explain

if you're not a spy.

And they also found a nickel

that matched Jimmy

bozart's nickel.

When the FBI asks

hayhanen about Jimmy's nickel,

he knows all about it.

How?

Because the nickel

that Jimmy found

was originally

meant for hayhanen.

He picked it up in a dead drop.

But instead of

opening it immediately

and decoding the message,

hayhanen makes a mistake.

When hayhanen

picked up the coin,

he put it in his pocket

with other coins.

And then he lost

track of which coin

was actually

carrying the message.

So he accidentally spent

the coin somewhere.

Now hayhanen finally

reveals the secret

to cracking the code.

The mysterious message

is simply a welcome

note to hayhanen

upon his arrival in New York.

All of this mystery,

all of this effort,

all of this concern

over a message

that was nothing more

than a greeting card

between two Russian agents.

The FBI knows what the nickel is

and what the

message inside says.

But who sent it?

Hayhanen leads the feds

to a photographic studio

in Brooklyn he claims

is run by his spy handler.

The FBI raids this

spy's apartment

at this photography studio.

And they discovered

hollowed pencils,

hollowed nickels, and some

other spy gizmos and gadgets.

This Soviet spy is captured.

He tells the FBI,

under interrogation,

that his real name

is Rudolf Abel.

He is a colonel in the kgb.

Using the spy tech as evidence,

the FBI charges Rudolf Abel

with conspiracy and espionage

in August 1957.

The trial reveals Abel has

run a network of kgb agents

across the us for eight years,

stealing military

and nuclear secrets

and sending them

back to mother Russia.

He becomes the

highest ranking Russian

ever to be convicted in the us.

So as a result of

this famous spy case,

Rudolf Abel gets

sentenced to 30 years,

Jimmy bozart gets a

commendation from the New York

police department,

and hayhanen goes

into witness protection.

It is amazing that without

Jimmy bozart's nickel,

none of this would

have happened.

Like Jimmy's nickel, not

all spy tech is high-end.

In 1982, when the CIA's top

man in Moscow goes missing,

the agency turns to a

gag toy to track him down.

In 1982, Moscow is the center

of all espionage

activity in the world.

And inside Moscow we

had one of our best assets,

someone that we called

the billion dollar spy.

The billion dollar

spy is Adolf tolkachev,

a senior Russian electronics

engineer who, since 1977,

has been a one-man

data mine for the CIA.

His specialty was in

avionics and aviation,

working on cruise missiles,

working on airplanes.

He had been

giving the us secrets

that had resulted

in billions of dollars

worth of saved research.

Suddenly, america's

billion dollar spy falls silent.

By December 1982, the last five

scheduled meetings with

tolkachev have been aborted.

He was missing meetings.

So we get really,

really concerned.

Maybe he's sick.

Maybe he has a security problem.

Charged with tracking him down

is his CIA handler, the

operative bill plunkert.

But locating a double agent in

Moscow is anything but easy.

There is no way to

overstate how difficult

an operating environment

Moscow really is.

Bill knows he's being

watched 24/7 at all times.

Wherever you were, you

had surveillance in Moscow.

No matter what you did, if you

were walking, they were there.

If you were driving,

they were there.

If plunkert is going

to have any chance

of meeting tolkachev,

he needs to figure out a

way to lose the kgb agents

looking over his shoulder.

The CIA's top engineers come

up with a surprising solution,

inspired by a kid's toy, a

super-sized Jack-in-the-box.

The idea behind the

Jack-in-the-box invention

was that an operative

could leave a car

that another

operative was driving,

meaning without

the surveillance team

realizing anybody had

ever left the car at all.

When a trailing kgb car

is momentarily out of sight,

the operative can

put on a disguise

and slip out of the

car and disappear.

And then the Jack-in-the-box

pops up to make it look like

they're still in the seat.

From the position

of the surveillance,

it would still look like

there were two people

driving in the car.

Bill will be the first

ever CIA officer

to field test this

piece of spy tech.

Failure could lead kgb agents

straight to the

CIA's greatest asset.

Success hinges on

getting the Jack-in-the-box

into the car without

the kgb seeing it.

To do that, bill plunkert

organizes a cover story.

Before plunkert's next

scheduled meeting

with tolkachev, the

CIA Moscow office

deliberately discusses

a fictional birthday party

on phone lines

bugged by the kgb.

On the big day, plunkert

and his associates

walk out of the us embassy,

plunkert carrying a big cake.

They get into their

car and they drive off.

And as they do,

they are fully aware

that the kgb is tailing them.

That's not a problem.

They have a plan.

When his car swings

around the corner,

plunkert leaps out.

Right away, his

companion takes the cake

and lays it on top

of the vacated seat.

With a sudden crack,

the false top of the cake

flings open and the

Jack-in-the-box passenger

snaps into position.

So by the time the

kgb rounds the corner,

they see a vehicle

filled with Americans

with the exact same headcount.

They have no reason

to suspect that plunkert

is actually the old man

that they're driving right by.

The Jack-in-the-box gives

plunkert just enough time

to track down the

CIA's greatest informant.

Bill plunkert meets

with tolkachev.

They exchange packages.

And tolkachev was

able to give the CIA

new information

that proved invaluable

to the defense department.

The full story of

the Jack-in-the-box

finally comes to light in 2008,

in a CIA-sanctioned book.

The trick becomes a key part

of the CIA's field

operation toolkit.

During the cold w*r,

both superpowers

looked for innovative

ways to spy on each other.

But when Soviet missiles

bring down america's

spy plane program,

the us responds by taking

its cameras to new heights.

In 1949, the Russians

tested their first a-b*mb.

So the Americans need to see

what else they could be up to.

Aerial surveillance seems

to be the only answer.

But the Soviets warn

that they will sh**t down

any NATO aircraft that

enters Russian airspace.

In 1960, this threat

becomes a reality

when an American

u-2 is shot down

and its pilot put on

trial for espionage.

Us intelligence agencies

race to find a new, safer way

to get an eye in the sky.

So they decide to send a

new camera even higher,

where they're certain

no Soviet m*ssile

could ever reach.

The Americans come

up with a pretty bold idea.

What if the overflights

happen from space

using a

satellite-mounted camera?

I mean, that way,

no pilots risk capture.

You have no chance

of being shot down

and there are no

violations of airspace.

The audacious mission is

given to the newly formed

national reconnaissance office,

who begin work on a series

of top-secret spy satellites.

In 1971, this results

in the kh-9 hexagon,

a brand new, photographic,

reconnaissance satellite.

And it's as large

as a school bus.

The technology in the kh

satellite is groundbreaking.

It has the primary panoramic

camera and a mapping camera.

And what that gives

you is pinpoint locations

on the ground.

This can capture

objects 2 to 3 feet wide

from a hundred miles in space.

It's a cutting-edge space camera

to snoop on their rivals.

But what good is a camera

if you can't get the

picture back home?

Engineers at the

reconnaissance office

need to transport the

camera's photographic film

from outer space, 95

miles down to earth,

to be developed.

They devise an

ingenious solution.

Once the photos

are taken in space,

the exposed film is stored

in four detachable buckets.

Over a period of weeks,

these are ejected into space

to carefully drop back to earth,

toward the pacific ocean.

Collecting these buckets

falls to the us air force,

who must play a game of catch

over the entire pacific ocean.

Air force pilots are tasked

with picking up these packages,

falling out of the sky,

before they hit the water.

Nothing like it has

been attempted before.

It's a sight to behold.

Pilots had to fly around

and just keep an eye out

for the parachute that would

be dropping the film canister

slowly toward the ocean.

Once they saw it, their

mission was to fly over top of it

and snag the parachute with a

hook hanging under their plane.

You're dropping a

1,500-pound metal canister

from earth's orbit,

and then calculating

its re-entry point

with pinpoint precision.

It's an extraordinary

airborne mission.

But when the pictures come

in, they're worth all the effort.

When the first batch

of film is developed

from the kh-9 satellite,

one of the officers exclaims,

they never thought

it would be so good.

The imagery gathered

from this bucket

covered 2/3 of all of

the Soviet m*ssile bases.

Hexagon is one of the

most effective programs

of the cold w*r.

Over 15 years, 19

hexagon satellites image

over 877 million

square miles of earth.

Film canisters dropped

from the sky proved to be

a great way to spy,

but it's far from perfect,

as the us finds out in 1971

when pilots lose one

after a malfunction.

The answer could be another

incredible piece of technology.

July 10, 1971.

The recovery team

realize they have a problem

with one of the canisters.

The parachute failed.

And it smashes into the ocean,

going 400 feet per second.

So suddenly,

there's this canister

just full of top-secret

information

stuck at the

bottom of the ocean.

This film is

critically important

because it reveals

just how high resolution

our early generation

spy satellites were

at a critical time

in the cold w*r.

We just can't take the

risk of allowing this material

to fall into Soviet hands.

The us government

decide to launch

an unprecedented

deep-sea rescue mission.

This lost film

canister is 5 by 7 feet,

and it's buried under

16,000 feet of water.

That depth is equivalent

to 10 times the height

of the empire state building.

In order to rescue this pod,

the Americans have to turn

to another

cutting-edge technology,

a submersible named trieste ii.

For this mission,

trieste ii is armed with

a custom-built

articulating claw arm

that can retrieve the canister.

And its nearly

4-inch-thick steel hull

can carry a three-man

crew to the sea floor.

But it's never gone this deep.

Even so, the

Navy sail the trieste

to where they think the

canister splashed down.

Using the bucket's trajectory

and the wind speeds,

they're able to narrow

down the search region

to a location 350

miles north of Hawaii.

It's a strip about a

mile and a half wide

and eight miles long.

Starboard ahead one

third. Come left 30 degrees.

However, trieste ii still

has a vast area to scour

on the pitch-black sea floor.

Starboard ahead one third.

Coming left 30 degrees.

The trieste ii is

effectively looking

for a needle in a haystack.

The trieste launches

two unsuccessful dives.

These are incredibly

challenging and dangerous.

And there is a question

of how many more dives

are even possible.

Finding the small film

bucket on the pacific floor

starts to look like

an impossible task.

Nearly a year after

the bucket is lost,

the trieste ii

makes its third dive.

It's basically do or die time.

Roger.

We passed a large rock.

After descending over

the course of two hours,

trieste ii reaches the sea

floor and begins searching.

Three and a half hours

later, they don't have anything.

And then, within

minutes of having to begin

their long, arduous

ascent back to the surface,

they spot it.

Against all odds,

they've found the canister.

Using the trieste's

articulating claw arm,

they reach out,

grab it, recover it,

and then begin their

return to the surface.

The crew of trieste ii are

ultimately commended

for having completed the

deepest navigation search

and recovery

mission in the world.

The trieste recovers

the photos of critical

intelligence from the sea floor.

But more importantly,

thanks to the trieste ii,

the incredible power

of the us spy satellites

remains top secret.

And the rescue operation

will remain secret

until the CIA declassify the

astonishing details in 2012.

The spy tech you

see in the movies

and the rescue operation

will remain secret

is often inspired

by real life events.

But in the '70s, when

the CIA in Moscow needs

the ultimate disguise to tap

into a trove of Soviet secrets,

the agency goes Hollywood.

In the late 1970s, the

CIA is actively monitoring

what's happening in

Moscow through satellite.

And they identify

a suspicious trench

that's being dug between

the ministry of defense

and the nuclear weapons

research institute.

They realize they're laying

communication cables.

So this was a golden

opportunity for the CIA.

If you could tap into the

line that's being created

between these two locations,

then that is an information

line that's carrying

some really valuable secrets.

Closer inspection of the route

reveals a series of manholes.

Maybe they could enter

and hack into this stream

of classified information.

Identifying a secret

cable is one thing,

but getting inside a

manhole undetected to tap it

is another thing entirely.

Moscow is a very

difficult place to operate.

It's one of the most

heavily-surveilled locations

on the planet.

CIA agents know they

are probably being followed

24 hours a day.

From the moment you

set foot, as an American,

inside of Russia, you

are target number one,

enemy number one.

To avoid kgb scrutiny,

the CIA needs a

creative solution.

They turn to

legendary CIA master

of disguise, Tony Mendez.

My husband, Tony Mendez,

had been at the CIA for a while.

Best-known for

the argo operation.

He smuggled six American

civilians out of Tehran

at the height of the

Iranian revolution.

Tony wonders if CIA

operatives could lose

their kgb tails by totally

altering their appearances

in the blink of an eye.

Tony Mendez was

really a revolutionary.

He devised a suit,

a quick-change suit.

A simple pull of a velcro

tab releases the new outfit.

It's really clever.

He also sews some vital

tools into the disguise.

But a change of clothes

alone won't be enough

to give the kgb the slip.

Tony wants to make agents

impossible to recognize.

Tony knew that out in

Moscow, they were very aware

of what our faces looked like.

They had photographs

of everyone that came in

and was working for the embassy.

You can change your

clothes very, very easily.

But you really can't

change your facial features.

For that, Tony needs a

cutting-edge spy mask,

and turns to the

unlikeliest of places

to someone he thinks can help.

Tony Mendez's background

was in Hollywood.

He had quite a network.

So Tony pays a visit to master

mask maker John chambers.

John chambers was a

makeup artist out in Hollywood.

He won an Oscar for the

"planet of the apes" masks.

It soon becomes clear,

John's award-winning masks

need two big changes if

they're gonna work for spies.

These masks that were

used in "planet of the apes"

would take three hours to apply.

Well, in a life or

death situation,

when you're doing

a CIA operation,

you don't have three hours.

Also, at this point in time,

facial masks didn't move

and they were very easy

to tell that they were fake.

So Tony has to develop a

mask that can be taken on

and off very quickly.

The mask also has to

stand up to kgb scrutiny.

After months of work,

the disguise is ready.

The mask can be

put on in a flash

and molds to the face perfectly.

You can pop them on,

and they fit in a almost

vacuum-sealed kind of way

to people's faces

so that they moved.

So you were having

masks that showed smiles,

that showed laughs,

that showed a little

bit more emotions,

and it became a more

believable disguise.

Those masks could radically

change the way you looked.

Now the CIA needs

to find someone

to wear their new spy mask

and tap into the Russians'

nuclear communications.

They pick a 38-year-old

CIA officer, Jim Olson.

Jim Olson thinks is a

joke, because how on earth

am I gonna get a mask

on and off in three seconds,

get into a manhole

cover, tap into wires,

and then get out undetected?

He soon discovers

they're deadly serious.

Olson accepts the mission

and travels to Moscow.

To lose his

ever-present kgb tail,

he will need the

perfect cover scenario.

Olson's mission begins

in 1979 with a picnic.

He and his wife know

that they are under constant

kgb surveillance.

They took some sandwiches,

some wine, a little blanket.

And then Jim, dressed

like an American diplomat,

decided to take a

little stroll into the trees.

Jim steps around

the back of a bush.

He knows he only

has a few seconds

to transform into his disguise.

He put on this mask.

He emerges from the park

this older, not so well-off man.

Once Olson emerges,

he makes sure

that he has no

agents surveilling him.

And when he realizes

that he doesn't,

he knows that it's safe

to go to this manhole.

Jim Olson slips

underground and photographs

the communications cable,

allowing a second team

to develop a tech to hack it.

Sure enough, they

also use Tony's disguise

to get into the hole

to lay down their tap.

For six years, the

CIA is able to collect

defense information,

nuclear secrets

from the Russian government.

It is not until a defector

lets the kgb know

what the CIA is doing,

that the lines are

eventually cut.

Details of this quick

change mission

don't come out for

another 40 years,

when Tony Mendez

makes a dying request

to share his story

with the world.

The CIA give the green light.

And to this day, Tony's

disguise technology

is still used by agents in

need of a quick change.

Intelligence services

are often willing

to recruit dubious agents.

But in 1967, the CIA

takes that a step too far,

when it enlists

a four-legged spy

with an embedded

listening device.

The mission is

called acoustic kitty.

It's the '60s,

and kgb agents working

in Washington know

that their offices

are often bugged,

and the CIA suspect

that they're conducting

their top meetings outside.

So the CIA turn

to biotechnology.

In 1961, the R&D department

of the central intelligence

agency wants to utilize cats

as an intelligence-gathering

mechanism

to deploy them against

our Soviet adversaries.

Household companion

animals have been militarized

at various points

in our history.

Dogs have certainly been that.

Cats have, too.

The idea is that nobody

really pays attention to cats.

They're essentially unnoticed.

What they want to

do is have the cat

wander through sensitive areas,

where it will just collect

intelligence as it goes.

Unfortunately for the cat,

turning it into an

intelligence collector

involves surgery.

It has a power pack

implanted in its abdomen,

a microphone in its ear canal,

and a 3/4-inch transmitter

at the base of the skull

with wires running

to its ears and tail,

which acts as an antenna.

Basically, you end up

getting half cat, half cyborg.

In Washington in 1967,

the CIA's cyborg cat

gets its first deployment,

to discover if it really

is the future of spying.

On that day in 1967,

two CIA operatives arrive

at the rendezvous point

of their kgb targets,

carrying with them the

result of six years of R&D

and a reported $15

million of investment.

This is the first example

of cats being used

to carry out an

espionage operation.

The cat is released

from the CIA Van.

The cat starts moving

toward its target.

But after walking

a short distance,

it suddenly veers off course

and is squashed by a taxi.

It couldn't have

gone more wrong.

It's only discovered in 2001,

when the CIA declassify a series

of heavily-redacted documents.

Among them, one details

the plans for a cat project.

Believe it or not, there's a

memo that emerges from the CIA

entitled, views on trained cats,

that lays out why this is not

actually a practical solution

to collect intelligence

from the Soviets.

The CIA learns the hard

way that cats may not

have what it takes to be spies.

It doesn't stop the agency's

hunt for animal agents.

Their next recruits

don't live on land,

but have brains

larger than humans.

In the 1960s, as the

newly-released film "flipper"

explodes in popularity,

the public has no idea

that america is looking

to the real-life flippers

to give them an edge

in the escalating cold w*r.

The clandestine dolphin project,

known as oxygas,

only surfaces in 2019.

The CIA wanted

to use their dolphins

to conduct surveillance

of enemy harbors.

Initially to the CIA,

the dolphins provide

very promising results.

But by the late 1960s,

the CIA is plowing

the modern equivalent

of $50 million a year

into the project.

And they're just

not seeing enough

spying potential to justify

their huge investment,

so they pull funding.

While the CIA

dolphin's project fails

to make the grade,

the us Navy also has

their own

dolphin-training program.

Well, you see, whatever

the dolphin lacks in size,

it makes up in brains.

The department of

defense makes a movie

titled, "the dolphins

that joined the Navy."

And it's all about how

we are experiencing

great success at bringing

these dolphins into Navy service.

Whereas the CIA was asking

the dolphin to do something

that it really wasn't good at,

the Navy only asked the dolphin

to do things that it

was naturally great at.

Echolocation and

performing tasks

to receive an immediate reward,

dolphins are terrific at that.

The program

continues for decades.

The Navy takes advantage

of dolphins' incredible

natural sonar to find mines.

Emitting clicks from its

head, a dolphin can detect

a tennis-ball-sized mine

from two football fields away,

even when they're

buried under sand.

The dolphin training

program has its finest hour

in Iraq in 2003.

Operation Iraqi

freedom is underway.

Iraq doesn't have

a lot of coastline.

And the only way to

essentially transport

heavy military

equipment is over water.

The port at umm qasr, which

is Iraq's only deep-sea port,

suddenly became very important.

The Navy needed to

clear the port of umm qasr.

It had been mined heavily,

and now the Navy

needed this port

for the delivery of supplies.

The Navy decides

that now is the time.

They will take a team

of dolphins trained

at the marine mammal

research facility in San Diego

and send them in.

This crack team

of eight dolphins

zipped through the water

hunting for enemy mines.

They're trained to alert their

handlers when they find one,

but also to Mark it with

an acoustic transponder.

This allows divers

to disarm it later on.

That job would have taken

an enormous amount of time

were it not for the dolphins.

The dolphins

cut the job in half.

They very successfully

cleared the port

of about a hundred mines.

Everybody loves dolphins.

It's the logo of the

submarine force.

In a remote desert location,

a team of military engineers

are testing a piece

of advanced spy tech.

This highly-classified

tech program

will accidentally inspire

a long-running mystery.

This is a very technologically

advanced program.

So secret that the

individuals working on it

don't know what

they're working on.

Nearly everyone on

this program are told

that they're working on

meteorological equipment.

Even the code name,

mogul, is classified.

Project mogul is being built

to keep the us in the lead

of the nuclear arms race.

As far as the Americans know,

the Soviets don't

have the technology

to build the atomic b*mb.

But they also know that

it's only a matter of time

before they do.

The Soviet union is filled

with these vast wildernesses.

The Americans are concerned

that they're gonna be able

to test these weapons

in total secrecy.

This is in an age where

we can't get over the

Soviet union undetected.

So they have to

come up with an idea

on how to monitor the Soviets

as they test nuclear weapons.

The answer comes from a

renowned us geophysicist

and oceanographer, who

claims he can make tech

that can listen for

the Soviet tests.

Dr. W. Maurice ewing is

convinced sound channels exist

at high altitudes,

which could be used

to detect nuclear explosions.

His idea gets the attention

of us air force officials,

who authorize a

top-secret research effort

called project mogul.

The concept is simple,

to place microphones

eight and a half

miles in the air

in the aerial sound channel

to listen for

nuclear detonations.

The idea may be simple,

but the execution is not.

The Americans have to

figure out how to get these

microphones up to altitude,

70,000, 100,000 feet,

and stay up there

for a very long time.

Dr. Ewing thinks the

answer is to float them

using helium balloons.

Helium balloons

don't make any sound.

They can stay aloft

for days at a time.

And they don't need

any fuel or a crew.

They're basically the

perfect autonomous vehicle.

In 1947, the mogul

team head into the desert

to begin the secret

testing of these balloons

and the cutting-edge audio

spy tech they will carry.

The payload equipment,

sound monitors,

ballast, and batteries,

they all hung below.

This stretches up to

600 feet from tip to tail,

which is twice as tall

as the statue of Liberty.

Rising to 45,000 feet,

balloons can withstand

temperature fluctuations of

up to 160 degrees fahrenheit

and winds of over

30 miles per hour.

It takes just one accident

for this top-secret program

to ignite an enduring mystery.

There's one problem.

These balloons cannot

always be controlled.

They don't always go

where you want them to.

And sometimes they crash.

In June 1947, a rancher

stumbles upon strange,

mangled, high-tech

metallic debris.

The rancher brings a

sample of the wreckage

to a nearby army airfield.

When the airfield

public affairs officer

releases a statement

about the debris,

he has no idea about the

air force's mogul program.

He says there is a flying

disk among the debris

now being analyzed

at a nearby airfield.

It is called roswell.

Headlines around

the world appear,

"ufo, roswell, new Mexico."

The air force is thrilled.

It needs a cover

for these balloons,

and alien spacecraft are

as good a cover as any.

As a result,

roswell, new Mexico,

has become synonymous

with ufos, and still is today.

No one connects the dots

for nearly five decades.

The truth is only

revealed in 1995,

when an investigation

into the roswell ufo incident

makes the link to the

top-secret balloon program.

For the military, the

alien invasion cover story

is a huge success,

but the project is not.

Mogul's use of balloons

to detect a-bombs

proves a failure.

In the new millennium,

British agents

face an old problem

how to communicate with

Russian assets in Moscow.

They devise a new

piece of spy tech,

placing it in something so dull

no one would look at it twice.

In the mid-2000s, the British

were still running assets

in Russia to keep

tabs on military,

nuclear, and geopolitical

developments out there.

The problem is they're

living in a city covered in cctv.

Moscow now is a 24-hour,

7-day-a-week cctv city.

And so the British

secret service

need to figure out a more

covert way to communicate.

If anything goes wrong, it

could put their Russian assets

in mortal danger.

The answer is a simple

but brilliantly effective

piece of spy tech that

can hide in plain sight

a fake, hollowed-out rock.

The spy rock is designed to be

a modern upgrade of the

classic espionage technique,

the dead letter drop.

The dead letter drop

was always a tool

that spies could use to

keep themselves safe.

It allowed one officer to

drop a letter in a secret place

and another officer to

pick it up at a different time,

essentially separating

the two officers.

With the spy rock, it

completely changed the game.

Costing several million

dollars to develop,

with a state of the art

radio transmitter receiver,

which has a range

of up to 65 feet.

It's also got a battery

lifespan of up to three months

and is strong enough

to withstand a fall

from a building

nine stories high.

It's the dead letter

drop of the digital age.

The way it works is

an agent for the British

will walk past the rock

and remotely upload data

to the device within

it, and then disappear

into the streets of Moscow.

Later on, that

agent's handler will

download the data remotely.

Meaning, they

never have to leave

incriminating material that

could be found by the Russians.

So the program is rolled

out and it's a success.

Information is exchanged.

The secrecy of the

program is maintained,

until disaster strikes.

In January 2006,

the Russian state TV

broadcasts a news report

that the British secret

service have been dreading.

There's a report showing a

video of a man in Moscow.

He walks down a street, slows,

and glances down at a

rock before walking away.

A while later, another man

walks by and picks it up.

The Russians were

actively surveilling

people of interest.

And what they

found was a pattern

where these individuals

would behave a certain way

around a rock on the streets.

So the Russians

put a hidden camera

to observe anyone walking past.

And that's how they

discovered the evidence

that the rock was, in

fact, a technical dead drop.

They are identified as

British embassy staff.

And this video is pointed

to as evidence of espionage.

Britain's ambassador in

Moscow denies any wrongdoing.

This severely challenges

diplomatic relations

between Russia and the UK.

But in an unexpected twist,

putin doesn't kick the

guilty agents out of Russia.

Putin makes a public

joke that he doesn't want

to expel them,

because if he did,

the British might send smarter,

more capable

officers in their place.

The British government

maintains its innocence

until 2012.

In a TV interview with the BBC,

a former government

chief of staff admits

the spy rock allegations.

The spy rock was embarrassing.

They i mean, they

had us bang to rights.

Clearly, they'd known

about it for some time

and had been saving it

up for a political purpose.

Despite Russia's public

outrage at the spy rock,

it seems that, at

least, some of its spies

were impressed with

the British ingenuity.

In 2021, despite its outrage

at the spy rock incident,

Russia unveils its own

version of the same technology.

It's revealed to the

world just months

before the full-scale

invasion of Ukraine.

Opening files on the

secret world of spy tech

reveals that cutting-edge

innovation is always

a crucial part of

intelligence gathering,

one that can be

the key to success.