The DC Traveler

A little French bistro in the heart of Georgetown was once the site of a terrible and infamous spy double-cross.
While James Bond may dine on caviar and 1955 Dom Perignon, a KGB agent met his CIA handler for a casual French dinner one evening in 1985.
The agent, Vitaly Yurchenko, had defected to the U.S. five years earlier and was providing Soviet secrets to the CIA. During the course of their meal, he either changed his mind about working for the Americans or suspected that the CIA knew that he may have been working both sides of the street.
At one point …read more

3 Comments

Throughout the Cold War, the old Russian Embassy in Washington, DC served as a center for spying and espionage.  While James Bond never attended a black-tie party at the embassy in any of his movies, his real-life contemporaries may have. 
Some of the more noteworthy traitors that provided top-secret information to the Soviets included John Anthony Walker, a communications specialist for the U.S. Navy.  He sold a highly-classified radio cipher card to the Soviets for just a few thousand dollars. The decoding card allow the Soviets to decipher over one million classified U.S. documents causing Walker to be considered one of …read more

1 Comment