The Great Illegals, Part Two: The Ambassador | NKVD

True Spies: Espionage | Investigation | Crime | Murder | Detective | Politics

SPYSCAPE

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary, History

4.6 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this two-part True Spies story, author and journalist Shaun Walker unmasks the greatest generation of Russian spies - the Great Illegals. In Part Two, Shaun tells the story of Iosif Grigulevich - the Lithuanian Illegal who rose to the upper echelons of Italy's diplomatic community. From SPYSCAPE, the home of secrets. A Cup And Nuzzle production. Series producer: Joe Foley. Produced by Frank Palmer. Shaun Walker is the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Guardian newspaper. He is the author of The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is true spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time.
0:09.6	Week by week, you'll hear the true stories behind the operations that have shaped the world we live in.
0:16.6	You'll meet the people who live life undercover.
0:20.7	What do they know?
0:22.2	What are their skills?
0:23.9	And what would you do in their position?
0:27.3	I'm Rihanna Needs, and this is True Spies from Spyscape Studios.
0:34.8	The Great Illegals Part 2, The Ambassador.
0:41.7	It's the morning of April the 27th, 1953, and the communist leader of Yugoslavia,
0:50.5	Yossit Tito, is receiving a diplomat at his white palace in Belgrade.
0:57.2	In a simply furnished room, in the depths of a grand palace,
1:02.0	two politicians greet one another with firm handshakes before sitting down.
1:07.3	Though the room may be humble, our host is anything but. Tito is Yugoslavia's president, prime minister,
1:16.8	army marshal and godfather to every ninth child born in the country. And he has grand ambitions for his country.
1:25.3	That's what today is about. The meeting is with Teodoro Castro. He's the
1:30.5	ambassador of Costa Rica. And it's one more small meeting in Tito's plan to create a bridge between the
1:41.0	communist and the capitalist worlds.
1:49.4	At this moment, the relationship between East and West has never been so fraught.
1:52.5	A bitter proxy war rages in Korea.
1:56.6	The lines of the Cold War have been drawn.
1:59.4	An iron curtain already descended.
2:05.7	And yet here is Tito, making overtures to foreign diplomats.
	...

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