Mikhail Vasenkov was a freelance news photographer, adjunct professor, and Russian spy. Little is known of his early life, but in “Russians Among Us,” Gordon Corera writes that he was “born in Moscow in 1942.” Vasenkov “had been selected for the KGB’s Directorate S, deep in the Cold War.” Once his training was complete, Vasenkov spent a few months in Spain building a legend – a new identity. He then traveled to Peru in 1976 on an Uruguayan passport in the name of Juan Lazaro. “The real Juan Lazaro was a toddler who had died aged three of respiratory failure in 1947.” Vasenkov “used his cover as a photographer to travel and carry out missions for the KGB,” and he continued this work when he moved to the U.S. in 1985. In June 2010, Vasenkov, his wife Vicky Peláez, and eight others were arrested by the FBI for allegedly carrying out long-term, deep-cover assignments in the U.S. on behalf of Russia. The FBI had monitored Vasenkov and Peláez for years, noting his use of invisible ink for intelligence reports; Moscow’s unhappiness with some of his reporting; and trips to Peru to collect money from Russian embassy employees. The ten illegals pleaded guilty in July 2010 and were deported to Russia as part of a spy swap. Following his death in April 2022, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service praised Vasenkov in an obituary: “he created and headed an illegal residency, which obtained valuable political information, which was highly appreciated.” The agency added that he was “arrested by American intelligence agencies due to [Aleksandr] Poteyev’s betrayal.”

Pablo González is a Russian-Spanish journalist and an alleged agent of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. As a journalist, González collaborated with several European and U.S. media outlets, including Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, Publico, and laSexta. But when González was arrested in Poland in February 2022, following a tip from MI6, the authorities issued a brief statement saying he was suspected of “participation in the activities of a foreign intelligence service.” A week after his arrest, Voice of America scrubbed González’s work from its website “out of an abundance of caution.” A 2024 article for The Guardian by Shaun Walker describes him as “a passionate and funny storyteller.” Walker first met González on a “training course for reporters who work in conflict zones” in 2011. In “Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War,” Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson write that González “appeared to be everywhere and know everyone” and would “charm everyone from activists to riot police.” He once “braved shell fire to save two gravely wounded French war journalists” in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to Hinshaw and Parkinson, González “began to file reports to the GRU” sometime in 2010. In the years that followed, he would send “his handlers detailed reports on the journalists he was befriending, their sources, and the officials from Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and army he was meeting over expensive dinners.” González spent years building connections with activists and journalists in Europe, from Bellingcat to the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom. Two years after his arrest in Poland, González was sent back to Moscow in what Walker describes as “the biggest prisoner exchange between Russia and the west since the end of the cold war.” On the tarmac, wearing a Star Wars T-shirt emblazoned with “Your Empire Needs You,” González firmly shook Putin’s hand. Russian TV footage, analyzed by prolific spy hunter Christo Grozev and his colleagues, later showed González hug three men “like they’re known colleagues or old friends or bosses.” Their investigation found that one of the men is on the FBI’s most wanted list for a number of international hacking and related influence and disinformation operations. In a video on YouTube, Grozev says he now feels “completely confident that Pablo González was an agent for the GRU, not the harmless Spanish journalist he had so many people convinced he was.” Though as Walker notes in his article, “without looking into the GRU archives, it is impossible to know just how useful González’s alleged spying on the Russian opposition may have been for Moscow.”

Bjørn Hallstrøm is a Norwegian marketing manager, TV producer, and self-proclaimed former CIA agent. In a 2025 documentary by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation called Agenten, Hallstrøm says that he worked for the agency in the 1980s and 1990s. He claims that the CIA tasked him with infiltrating networks in Afghanistan, Colombia, Cuba, Kuwait, and Libya – while using journalism as a cover. He also claims that the agency funded numerous documentaries and segments which he produced and sold to TV stations in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. An investigation by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation found around a dozen instances where Nordic channels aired Hallstrøm’s material between 1987 and 1993. In late 2024, the FBI released 11 pages about Hallstrøm in response to my records request earlier in the year. While the documents do not mention Hallstrøm’s work for the CIA, they confirm his story about being investigated by the FBI in 1996 for fraud against the U.S. government. The government declined to prosecute him, though Hallstrøm says the incident prompted the CIA to cut all ties with him. In Agenten, Hallstrøm says that he then worked for Mossad for a couple of years, before helping MI6 infiltrate networks in Iran and Iraq for over a decade. Hallstrøm shares a lot of material that he says shows he worked for the CIA – including email exchanges with his supposed handlers – but has little to show from Mossad and MI6. The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation interviewed a number of family members, journalists, and individuals that Hallstrøm featured in his own work, many of whom were unaware of his alleged spy connections. None of the agencies responded to requests for comment.

Aurel Neagu was a sports journalist for the Sportul newspaper, published by the Romanian Communist Party. Neagu frequently covered women’s gymnastics in the 1970s and 1980s, including Olympic star Nadia Comăneci and her longtime coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi. In “Nadia Comăneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape,” historian Stejărel Olaru details the relationship between sports and politics during the Communist regime in Romania–along with just how far the authorities were willing to go to ensure Olympic success. Olaru writes that “[t]he majority of the claims included in this book come from the Archives of the Securitate, the Romanian Secret Police.” And, according to the archives, Neague was an informant with the code name ‘Constantin.’ Olaru notes that “[t]argets of the State Police have raised concerns about the contents of the Securitate Archive. They say that some of the information gathered and collated there was biased, incomplete, one-sided or even untrue . . . In truth, many Secret Police informers were recruited through blackmail and threats. They were forced to work as informers against their will.” Olaru writes that Neagu helped put on a gymnastics event in Bologna; published articles critical of the judging at the World Championship in France; and traveled with Comăneci to London alongside other Securitate officers and informants. Neagu passed away a few years ago, and little information is available online. Without access to his file, it’s hard to know if his collaboration with the Securitate was voluntary. The Károlyis defected to the U.S. in 1981, Comăneci in 1989–right before the Romanian Revolution and the end of Communist rule in the country.

Denis Sefton Delmer, known to his friends as “Tom,” was a journalist turned propagandist for the British government during the Second World War. Delmer, the son of Australian parents living in Germany, was born in 1904. His father was placed in the Ruhleben internment camp at the start of the First World War, reportedly on suspicion of being a spy. The Delmer family was deported to England in 1917 in a prisoner exchange between the British and German governments. After leaving Oxford, Delmer worked as a freelance journalist until he was hired by the Daily Express to become head of its new Berlin Bureau. While in Germany, he became one of the first British journalists to interview Adolf Hitler. Delmer also covered the Spanish Civil War, the invasion of Poland, and the German western offensive in 1940. After returning to England, Delmer worked for a time as an announcer for the German service of the BBC. In 1940, he was recruited by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) to organize propaganda broadcasts to Nazi Germany as part of a psychological warfare campaign. An internal 1952 memo by J.C. Robertson, head of MI5’s division for counterespionage, describes Delmer as “a worldly, shrewd, suave individual with considerable charm.” According to Robertson, “it is not difficult to understand the success he has achieved as a journalist.” Delmer returned to the Daily Express after the war. I’m confident that Peter Pomerantsev’s upcoming book about Delmer, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, will shed more light on Delmer’s work as both a journalist and a spy when it’s published in March 2024.

Richard Gott is a British author, historian, and journalist. He studied at Oxford, worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the University of Chile where he authored a report on Guerrilla Movements in Latin America. Gott was a candidate in the 1966 Kingston upon Hull North by-election for the Radical Alliance, running on a platform that opposed the Vietnam War. He polled only 253 votes. As a journalist, Gott began working for The Guardian sometime in the early 1960s: first as a freelance journalist in Cuba, later as the Latin America correspondent and features editor in London. He resigned in December 1994 after an article alleged he’d been an “agent of influence” for the KGB, the main security agency for the Soviet Union. The source of the allegation was Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB spy turned double agent for British intelligence. In “The Spy and the Traitor,” Ben Macintyre writes that Gott “relished his brush with the spy world.” His handlers gave him the code name RON, and he accepted paid trips to Vienna, Nicosia, and Athens. Gott initially rejected Gordievsky’s claim, but admitted in his resignation letter: "I took red gold, even if it was only in the form of expenses for myself and my partner.” In the years since, Gott has authored numerous books, worked as an associate fellow at the University of London, and continued to contribute articles about Latin America to The Guardian.

Sylvia Rafael was a native of South Africa who, in her mid-20s, immigrated to Israel and began working for the Mossad, the country’s foreign intelligence service. Rafael underwent two years of tough training as an agent, including a course in photography with one of the leading press photographers in Israel. In “Sylvia Rafael: The Life and Death of a Mossad Spy,” Ram Oren and Moti Kfir write that Rafael’s cover story suited her well. “She had a sharp eye, an easy manner of approaching people, and good control of photographic techniques.” She spent six months in Vancouver establishing her cover as freelance photographer Patricia Roxenburg, then traveled to Paris on a Canadian passport to work for the Dalmas news agency. In 1973, Rafael and five other Mossad agents were arrested in Lillehammer, Norway for the murder of Ahmed Bouchikh, a Moroccan waiter. The Mossad had mistaken Bouchikh for Ali Hassan Salameh, a high-ranking member of a Palestinian militant organization called Black September. Rafael was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison, but was released and deported after 15 months. She married her defense attorney, Annæus Schjødt, and the couple moved to South Africa. Rafael passed away in 2005, aged 67, from cancer. In March, Ronen Bergman reported for The New York Times that Rafael’s work would be shown to the public for the first time “after being kept for decades in a locked suitcase in the Mossad archive.” The photographs included portraits of world leaders, scenes of flooding in Yemen and social unrest in Djibouti, as well as daily life in Lebanon and Jordan, two countries which would have been off limits for Israelis, let alone Mossad agents.

Robert Moore is a British TV producer turned private spy, and the subject of a new podcast from Tortoise Media called Into The Dirt. In 2012, K2 Intelligence hired Moore to spy on activists who were campaigning to ban the use of asbestos, the dangerous construction material. Posing as a journalist and documentary filmmaker, Moore spent four years secretly tape-recording activists, monitoring their strategy sessions, and sharing much of what he learned with K2 and its client. But in 2016, Moore decided he’d had enough. He approached Global Witness, an organization working to end environmental and human rights abuses worldwide, and set up a meeting with co-founder Simon Taylor. At a restaurant inside London’s St. Pancras train station, Moore then told Taylor what he’d really been doing all those years. And he proposed becoming a double agent. Global Witness rejected the proposal, urging Moore to alert the activists he’d spied on. When Moore balked, Global Witness contacted a law firm, which in turn sued K2 Intelligence, Moore, and his boss on behalf of several activists. Throughout the podcast, Moore insists he did not cause harm to anyone. In fact, he seems certain that the people he betrayed will come to see him differently if he has a chance to tell his story properly. Some activists have rejected Moore’s story–that he’s switched sides–arguing that you cannot trust a word of what he says. Others, while disliking his tactics, believe his intentions were genuine. K2 Intelligence settled the lawsuit in 2018, agreeing to pay “substantial damages” to a group of prominent anti-asbestos campaigners.

Hotsumi Ozaki was a Japanese journalist working for the Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun, an advisor to Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, and an informant for a Soviet intelligence officer named Richard Sorge. During World War II, Sorge established an espionage ring in Tokyo as a means of determining Japanese diplomatic and military intent towards the Soviet Union. Ozaki’s first editor allegedly called him “a near-total flop,” arguing that “his news sense and his writing style were completely hopeless.” Ozaki’s writing aside, he did successfully recruit a few fellow journalists to Sorge’s spy ring. In “An Impeccable Spy,” Owen Matthews writes that “Ozaki was the descendant of a samurai family. He became inspired by communism while studying law at Tokyo’s Imperial University, but never formally joined the party.” Sorge, Ozaki and their fellow spies were arrested by the Japanese in 1941. Sorge told his captors that Ozaki was his “first and most important associate.” Ozaki said he “had been working for the cause of international peace and had his nation’s best interests at heart.” In the end, the two men were executed on the same day in November 1944.

William F. Buckley Jr. was an American publisher, journalist, and political commentator who also worked closely with both the FBI and the CIA. Buckley, widely considered an important influence in conservative politics, served in the Army during World War II and attended Yale University in the years after the war. At Yale, he became an active member of the Conservative Party and the Skull and Bones society, and served as chairman of the Yale Daily News and informant for the FBI. Buckley spent two years with the CIA in the early 1950s, including working for Howard Hunt in Mexico City. Hunt later helped organize the Watergate break-in that led to the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency. After leaving the CIA, Buckley founded the National Review in 1955. The magazine, which focuses on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs, is said to have played a significant role in the development of conservatism in the U.S. According to public documents, Buckley was also on good terms with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover–at least for a few years. During his time at the FBI, Hoover had his aides leak selected information to reliable reporters, editors, and columnists in order to promote a positive image of the bureau. The documents show that in 1966, Buckley was on the list of reporters deemed friendly and reliable. They also show that he was removed a year later for an editorial in which he “attempted to be humorous at the expense of the Director.” A 1985 article in the Washington Post described Buckley as having “the eyes of a child who has just displayed a horrid use for the microwave oven and the family cat."

Edith Tudor-Hart was an Austrian-British photographer and spy for the Soviet Union prior to and following World War II. As a journalist, Tudor-Hart used her camera to document the hardships of the working class in Vienna, London, and Wales. When magazine commissions dried up, she took portraits of children. But Tudor-Hart, an early member of the communist youth movement, also acted as a courier for the Communist Party. According to records in the National Archives, Tudor-Hart even owned a high-end Leica camera used to photograph documents stolen from a British munitions factory. The same records show that she was instrumental in the recruiting of the Cambridge Five spy ring, including Kim Philby. Following Philby’s arrest in 1952, Tudor-Hart burned many of her negatives in order to protect herself and her sources. In the documentary Tracking Edith, Tudor-Hart’s great-nephew, Peter Stephan Jungk, says that she was never paid for her work as a Soviet agent and suffered tremendous financial hardships as a result. Despite this, Tudor-Hart remained a staunch communist until the end of her life.

Vicky Peláez is a Peruvian journalist, currently writing for The Moscow News and Sputnik. In “Russians Among Us,” Gordon Corera writes that Peláez was “one of the first female reporters in Peru” and “quickly built a reputation as a gritty journalist, unafraid to take risks.” Born in 1956, “her political views were left-wing. She saw herself as standing up to the powerful and speaking for the oppressed, and was a critic of American foreign policy, especially in Latin America.” In June 2010, Peláez, her husband Mikhail Vasenkov, and eight others were arrested by the FBI for allegedly carrying out long-term, deep-cover assignments in the U.S. on behalf of Russia. All ten pleaded guilty and were deported to Russia as part of a spy swap, but Peláez “has always maintained that she did not know her husband was a Russian illegal.” The arrests, part of an FBI investigation called Operation Ghost Stories, inspired the TV show “The Americans.” The FBI had monitored Peláez and Vasenkov for years, listening in as the couple discussed his reports to Moscow and her travel to Peru to collect money from Russian embassy employees. Vasenkov even told the FBI that “his wife had indeed gone to South America and delivered letters to the ‘Service’ on his behalf.” Various news reports suggest that Peláez and Vasenkov moved back to Peru following their arrest and deportation.

Richard Sorge was a German journalist and Soviet intelligence officer active before and during World War II. Sorge visited Scandinavia and the U.S. at various times in his career, though he’s perhaps most known for his work in China and Japan. While there, Sorge established himself as an expert on Chinese agriculture, recruiting other journalists and trading secrets along the way. In “An Impeccable Spy,” Owen Matthews writes that Sorge became “the best-informed foreign observer of Japan in the world.” He also describes Sorge as “a bad man who became a great spy,” and someone who “chose the world of action, women, restaurants, fast motorcycles and unrelenting risk.” His ability to build agent networks from nothing was incredibly valuable to the Soviet Union, which may explain why his contacts in the military so often denied his requests to come home. In the end, Sorge and his agents were arrested by the Japanese in 1941. He was tortured, forced to confess, tried, and hanged in November 1944. It would be another 20 years before the Soviet Union publicly acknowledged his work.

Donald A. Allan was a veteran, journalist, and CIA spy. During World War II, Allan served in the U.S. 15th Air Force based in Italy. He was shot down over Hungary and spent ten months as a prisoner of war in Germany, escaping twice according to his obituary. Allan began his journalism career writing for the Redwood City Tribune and San Francisco News, later joining the city staff at The New York Times. In 1952, Allan resigned from The Times saying “a job to his liking had become available in Spain.” In reality, he’d accepted an offer from the CIA and was headed to Italy. Last week, the FBI released 60 pages about Allan in response to my FOIA request in the fall of 2020. The documents detail background checks conducted the year before Allan joined the CIA, including journalism colleagues recommending him “for a position of trust.” While in Italy, Allan continued his work in journalism with assignments for CBS News and United Press. But decades later, in an interview with The New York Times, Allan admitted that “his career as reporter was nothing more than a cover for his intelligence activities.” Allan’s career in the CIA came to an abrupt halt in 1956 when he, following an argument with his wife, stabbed an Italian journalist. The Italian court later ruled the stabbing a crime of passion, and Allan was released after less than a year in prison. He divorced, remarried and returned to the United States where he found work with UNICEF and WWF.

Sam A. Jaffe was a journalist who covered the United Nations for CBS News and reported from Moscow, Hong Kong and Vietnam for ABC News. He opened ABC’s first bureau in Moscow and covered the trial of Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of the U-2 spy plane that was shot down over the Soviet Union. The Overseas Press Club gave him an award for his reporting on the Vietnam War. But Jaffe, described by many as a brilliant and prominent reporter, would later disclose that he for several years had reported to the FBI on his Soviet contacts. And, in a bizarre plot twist, he’d spend more than a decade working to clear his name of persistent suggestions by the FBI and the CIA that he was a Soviet agent. Newly released documents from the FBI and National Archives describe Jaffe as a “confidential informant,” but also detail surveillance of him and his contacts by the agency. One document also mentions that a CIA psychologist briefed Jaffe on ways to observe a person’s behavior and demeanor prior to his reporting on the Powers trial. Jaffe’s life is a fascinating tale of the gray area between spying and reporting, and the full story has yet to be told.

Arne Treholt is a former journalist and Norwegian diplomat who, in June 1985, was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and Iraq and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Treholt provided the Soviet Union with a wide range of classified or sensitive information as early as 1974, including insights into Norway’s civil and military defenses and its military cooperation with other NATO members. In 1979, Treholt moved to New York as an economic and social affairs officer for Norway's delegation to the United Nations. Norwegian authorities asked for and received help from the FBI in monitoring Treholt, including befriending his wife and searching their home in Manhattan. Treholt has always maintained that he never shared information that could harm the national security interests of Norway. He repeats this claim in his book “Gråsoner” and in NRK’s documentary “Rikets sikkerhet.” Treholt was released from prison after serving just over eight years. He is currently living in Moscow.

Erling Espeland was a journalist and member of XU, a clandestine intelligence organization in Norway opposing the German occupation during World War II. While XU was initially organized by individuals with a military background, the organization relied heavily on recruiting students from the University of Oslo. Over time, XU grew to 1500 agents from all professions and all walks of life. In XU-agenter, author Edda Espeland, Erling’s daughter, writes that her father also became a member of Nasjonal Samling, the far-right political party and only legal party at that time, so that he could gather even more information of value to XU. Espeland’s position enabled him to transcribe Norwegian radio broadcasts from London, document strife within the far-right party, and report on planned arrests by the Gestapo. Espeland would also contribute to the publishing of underground bulletins and newspapers, including Folkeviljen and London 1.20.

John Revelstoke Rathom was many things: a famous Australian-American journalist, managing editor of the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, member of the executive committee of the Associated Press, even a confidant of president Woodrow Wilson. He was also a government informant, a liar, and an imposter. In fact, “John Revelstoke Rathom” was almost entirely made up. In “The Imposter's War,” Mark Arsenault details this larger-than-life character who claimed to run an anti-German spy ring out of the Journal’s offices during the runup to World War I. The Journal quickly “became the go-to source for German plots and intrigue” with scoops “published simultaneously in other newspapers, most notably the New York Times.” In his determination to convince readers that Germany was already at war with the United States, Rathom exaggerated facts, invented details, and sold out sources. Arsenault writes that “in the 1970s two former Providence Journal editors fell into the Rathom vortex while working on a company history project. They concluded that much of Rathom’s biography was fake.” In his book, Arsenault reveals that Rathom’s real name was John Pulver Solomon and details his journey from Australia to Hong Kong to Vancouver, where Solomon adopted the name John Revelstoke Rathom.

Ernest Withers was an African-American journalist who documented black life in the segregated Southern United States. Dubbed the “original civil rights photographer,” he photographed Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, James Lawson, and many others. He was also a paid informant for the FBI. That news broke in 2010, after the Memphis Commercial Appeal published a report by Marc Perrusquia. Withers provided the FBI with more than 1,400 photos and written reports about civil rights workers and peace activists. In return, he was paid $20,088. In “Unfinished: Ernie’s Secret,” host and journalist Wesley Lowery details the life and work of Withers; how he earned the trust of civil rights leaders; and how a clerical error forced the FBI to confirm his status as an informant.

Virginia Hall was an American who worked in France for British intelligence during World War II. The publisher of the New York Post arranged for her to become an accredited correspondent, which enabled her to interview people, gather information, and file stories with details useful to military planners. The chief censor of the foreign press in France not only avoided censoring Hall’s articles, but helped her build a network of contacts across the country. In “A Woman of No Importance,” Sonia Purnell writes that what Hall could tell her British contacts “was limited to her published articles. Some contained pre-agreed words as coded messages.” “The more sensitive articles on political news were not published but merely sent straight to” British intelligence. Hall spent 13 months in France in 1941-42, organizing spy networks, running safehouses, and delivering intelligence to the British government. Hall joined the CIA in 1947 where she was given a desk-bound job as an intelligence analyst. A CIA report would later admit that her fellow officers "felt she had been sidelined-shunted into backwater accounts because she had so much experience that she overshadowed her male colleagues, who felt threatened by her" and that "her experience and abilities were never properly utilized." She later received a number of awards for her efforts in France.