Aug 2020 – Alan Malcher

National Army Museum London: SOE in France

Part of the National Army Museum Virtual VE Day 75 Festival.

Special Operations Executive: Tools of the Trade

Behind enemy lines: description based on a true account

The Battle for Paris (The French Resistance 1944)

Warning graphic content

Secrets of War, Espionage 04 Weapons of The Shadow War (SOE and OSS)

I decided to share this link after being asked what weapons SOE used. Although this film only covers a few of the weapons available to SOE agents it’s a good introduction.

The legendary William Fairbarin (aka the Shanghai basher and dangerous Dan) makes an appearance during his time in Canada but has been wrongly quoted.

During the re-enactment of training in Scotland we see two former members of SOE’s French Section, Harry Ree and Jacqueline Nearne.

Although there are a number of inaccuracies this film is still worth watching.

Poison- Russia’s weapon of choice for assassinations

Video commentary discussing the Kremlin’s involvement in various assassinations and the role of the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence)

The Russian Intelligence Community in the Current time of Trouble.

9 July 2020

Woodrow Wilson Institute

Between an assassination in Germany, allegations of bounties in Afghanistan, and a continuing campaign of espionage both cyber and human abroad, Russia’s spooks continue to be busy. Has coronavirus affected them? And what are the prospects for future activity, including meddling in US politics?

Jeff Stein is rebooting his well-known and professionally respected SpyTalk column.

I got to know Jeff Stein several years ago and was immediately impressed by his skills as an investigative journalist and subject matter expert in intelligence and national security.

As my defence page has an increasing readership I’m writing with the good news that Jeff Stein is rebooting his legendary SpyTalk column in September as a newsletter on the Substack platform. You may remember Jeff, who I’ve worked with in the past, as the Spytalk columnist for years at Newsweek, and before that, at The Washington Post and before that Congressional Quarterly (where he was also the founding editor of the influential CQ/Homeland Security). Although Jeff is widely known for his many scoops and steady stream of much-needed corrective context on breaking national security stories this time around he’s added to his team such veteran journalists as Elaine Shannon, TIME magazine’s “queen of drugs and thugs,” and Peter Eisner, a prolific investigative author and former deputy foreign editor at The Post. And more.

I hope you’ll follow Jeff and his professional team at https://spytalk.substack.com/about and sign up.

High quality reporting which Jeff is renowned for costs money, so I also hope you’ll be an early paying customer. (It’s really cheap, only $9.95 a month.) But you can also sample the wares for free for a while, beginning in mid-September.

Operation Biting: 2 Para raid on Bruneval 1942.

In February 1942 men of the newly formed 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) were sent to Bruneval in northern France to seize German radar equipment.

My only criticism is one video shows German paratroopers exiting a German aircraft and a number of photographs of non-airborne forces used to illustrate the raid. Apart from these errors, this video provides a good oral historical presentation of the Bruneval Raid which became one of the Battle Honours of the Parachute Regiment.