In 1964, a senior intelligence officer defected from the Soviet Union to what he believed was the CIA. He had, through a sequence of errors unlikely enough to seem fictional, made contact with Finnish intelligence instead.

The 20th Century Spy Who Defected to the Wrong Country

9 April 2026

The defector at the centre of this episode spent several months being debriefed by Finnish intelligence officers who were simultaneously trying to work out what to do with him and attempting to contact the Americans without alerting the Soviets.

This episode examines Cold War intelligence — the communication failures, the institutional jealousies, the genuine difficulty of verifying a defector's claims, and the way that the grand narrative of superpower competition played out through a series of improvised, confused, and frequently absurd human interactions.

What we discuss

How the contact with Finnish intelligence happened. The debriefing process. The diplomatic problem the Finns faced. How the Americans were eventually brought in. The assessment of the defector's intelligence value. The long-term fate of the defector.