Chapter 1: What is the significance of the CIA operative's death?
Just a heads up listeners, this episode contains some adult language.
Previously on the agency.
We then came up with a very elaborate scheme and it involved me being on an evaluation team in New Zealand to look to buy the F-16. So what happens is, you know, these people are recruited abroad and then the ones that we think have the temperament to come and work when they return to Moscow, they will work with us inside. I went back to my hotel and had a sit down and think about this.
And I thought, if they're coming for me, I won't even see it coming. I won't. It'll just happen. And I won't even know. The Americans had kind of said, you know, we're not going to leave you out there. But whether that's true or not, what could they do? What could they do?
And if I was taken out, you know, face down in the Pasig River in Manila or something, you know, yeah, I had this perhaps naive feeling that they wouldn't leave me out there. They'd come for Kit. They'd save me. I was probably very naive because what could they do?
As Kit Bennett moves towards the goal of his operation against Soviet military intelligence in the Philippines, he's been given the news that another CIA operative, this one in Europe, has been killed. And the similarities with what he's doing are alarming.
Same modus operandi, he's doing the same thing as me. With a GAU officer, same sort of point.
So his handler has given him the opportunity to press pause and take a step back.
I turned it over in my mind quite a lot. I didn't feel particularly brave then, you know. On balance, I should have said, no, I'll go home and wait till it calms down and come back. But, you know, and it didn't affect what I was doing. I had a couple of appointments and met Vladimir and things.
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Chapter 2: How does Kit Bennett assess the risks of his operation?
But when we spoke to him in November of 2025, he'd just come back from visiting Armenia, the country where he was born. Although, he says, it's a bit complicated.
The country that I was born in was called the USSR, Soviet Union, right? And Armenia was only part of that country.
Yeah, this is going to feel like a bit of a walk, but stick with us. It's important because Armenia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, has been on the wrong end of some brutal geopolitical calculations, and it continues to be the victim of realpolitik, even from our own government here in New Zealand.
Perhaps the best known is what's commonly referred to as the Armenian Genocide. Beginning in 1915, Armenia's neighbours, the declining Ottoman Empire, modern-day Turkey, they oversee the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians, three-quarters of the population.
While the US and Russia and Europe and dozens of other countries call this a genocide, Turkey denies it, pushing back very strongly against the word. The Turks say the death toll is exaggerated and that people die because of things like disease or bad weather and perhaps a few bad apples in far-flung outposts of a ramshackle administration.
Yeah, now if that feels a little bit thin as an explanation, the New Zealand government, and it's worth mentioning the Australian one too, have both gone along with some version of it for decades now.
We refuse to say it was a genocide, seemingly because to do so would annoy Turkey, which would mean we would be in danger of losing access to the commemorative sites at Gallipoli that have become so important to our national memory.
Yeah, and look, either way, you make these calls based on national interest. So you can't say that's wrong.
No, we're not saying it's right either.
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Chapter 3: What insights does former diplomat Rouben Azizian provide about modern Russia?
Ukrainian intelligence officials say that not only did the CIA give them warning of the imminent invasion, troops they had trained were on the front lines and able to push back against the invaders.
Following the invasion, many restrictions on CIA operations were lifted. Ukrainian officials say without the intelligence support, Ukraine could not have held off Russia.
While we understand that Ukraine and Russia have been in this hot war since 2022, what's less obvious is that Europe is now in conflict with Russia. This is driven largely by what are described as grey zone attacks from Russia.
Not direct attacks that kill people, but things like unidentified drones over airports, the destruction of undersea cables, sabotage of rail lines, that kind of crucial infrastructure.
Grey zone attacks are deliberately kept below the threshold of the kind of thing that would lead to a flat-out declaration of war and an escalation of conflict that could be hard to stop. Just to keep it hard to understand, Russia typically refuses to acknowledge responsibility.
But there has been a ramping up of grey zone warfare over the last few years that makes you wonder whether we haven't moved from a kind of cold war into a hot one.
And so we asked Professor Azizian if he thinks there is actually an unannounced hot war going on between Europe and Russia.
Yes, there is. I mean, we can always argue about definitions. And some people think that we are not in World War III, but it depends how you define World War III. We could very well define what's happening as a World War III.
Professor Zizin was then pointing to the way countries are lining up on either side of the Ukraine-Russia war as an indication of how the battle lines are drawn, as I say, back in November 2025.
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Chapter 4: How does Armenia's history impact its current geopolitical stance?
You know, if I make money in the business, what do you do with it? What did he do with it? Uncle Sam kept it.
So if Uncle Sam kept it, you can see why he wouldn't necessarily remember any money coming in 40 years later. Because for Kit Bennett, this relationship with Vladimir is built on trust and friendship. The money is just from one government to another.
And if you're quietly thinking he might have held on to the money and kept quiet about it for 40 years, that's highly unlikely for another reason that is also confirmed by the second source. All the meetings with Vladimir were recorded.
Yeah, I had a sophisticated system of recording. It was sophisticated for those days. It was very sexy for those days.
What sort of kit are you talking about? Like something hidden in a room?
No, hidden with me. On your person? Not actually on my person, just in my, you know, I had a briefcase. And I had a briefcase that I carried up through customs and I carried it back through customs, but it wasn't in that briefcase. It was in an identical briefcase that I picked up when I arrived.
So you weren't wearing a wire?
No, I wasn't wearing a wire, no.
OK, so you're thinking that it's more likely, Kit Bennett has told Vladimir, that he can get access to this weapons expert for money.
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