Damian Lewis: Spy Wars

This is the story of Oleg Gordievsky, one of the West’s most valuable Cold War agents who risked everything to avert a third World War. Appearing to be an ambitious diplomat stationed at the Soviet embassy in Denmark. Gordievsky was actually a Russian spy and a rising star of the KGB. After a few years in Copenhagen, he was recruited by the British and posted to London by the KGB. Whilst in London, President Reagan authorised the largest NATO war game in its history: Able Archer.

This is the story of the biggest surveillance operation in British history, and how British intelligence agencies and their allies thwarted the deadliest terror plot ever devised on home soil. In June 2006, Abdullah Ahmed Ali flew back from Islamabad, Pakistan to return to his east London home. Ali had no idea he was being watched by the British security service, MI5. The airport discovery marked a critical moment, as they found a collection of batteries and a large bag of the soft drink powder.

This is the story of the biggest spy swap between Russia and the United States since the Cold War involving Sergei Skripal, the victim of the infamous 2018 Salisbury Novichok attack. From the United States ten Russian ‘illegals’, who have, for a decade or more in some cases, masqueraded as Americans and had operated undetected by their neighbours, but not by the FBI, who have had them under surveillance for years. In the other direction are four spies who have been released from Russian jails. One of which was Sergei Skripal. Another,Gennady Vassilenko, a long-standing CIA double agent, and the man some say was involved in giving up the infamous traitor, Robert Hanssen. But what the Russians don’t know is just how valuable Gennady is to the West.