Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny (2025) s01e09 Episode Script

1
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 executed
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 war,
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-bomb.
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 shoot 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 missile
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 missile bases.
Hexagon is one of the
most effective programs
of the cold war.
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 war.
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 war.
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 bomb.
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.
I'm David duchovny.
Thanks for watching
"secrets declassified."