Escape-room challenges are popular among fans of spy thrillers, but what if your life actually depended on the result? This series shares tales and tactics of memorable escapes, rescues, and evasions from the 1970s through today. Explore ingenious rescue and escape plans with the people who developed them and used them, as well as experts familiar with these life-or-death operations. Discover how intelligence services bring back assets from abroad in a hot or Cold War and learn about the 21st-century approach to training people in self-escape and surviving a rescue.
FEATURED SESSION
Next Stop: Execution
When KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky grew disillusioned with the USSR in the early 1970s, he became a prized source for Britain’s MI6. Over the years, he alerted Western intelligence services to many KGB operations and intelligence assets and provided a timely warning about the Soviet leadership’s overreaction to the 1983 NATO “Able Archer” nuclear war game. In 1985, Gordievsky, then acting KGB chief of station in London, came under suspicion and was recalled to Moscow. Placed under intense investigation, Gordievsky flew his distress signal and MI6 initiated an emergency exfiltration plan. Join Daniel J. Mulvenna, a retired RCMP counter-espionage specialist and longtime friend of Gordievsky, for an in-depth exploration of his remarkable espionage career and daring escape from certain death.
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