
Foreign Office with Michael Weiss
By Free Russia Foundation
Foreign Office is a weekly interview podcast hosted by Michael Weiss and dedicated to those ever-relevant subjects of Russian intelligence operations and active measures. Featured guests include prominent historians and scholars, journalists, diplomats, and ex-spies.

Foreign Office #15. What the Borrell Was He Thinking?
Foreign Office with Michael Weiss • By Free Russia Foundation • Feb 15
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Foreign Office #44. The State of Iraq
Newlines Institute senior analyst Rasha Al Qeedi dissects the results of the last election and how the country has changed since America's invasion.
45:25
October 31, 2021

Foreign Office #43. Once Bitten, Twice Bold
Ambassador Daniels Fried on why the US keeps making the same mistakes with Russia.
58:58
October 28, 2021

Foreign Office #42. How the Kremlin Manipulates the Anti-Money Laundering System
Attorney Jonathan Reich explains how financial safeguards against criminality are being used to target Russian dissidents and exiles from Putin's regime.
01:00:07
October 18, 2021

Foreign Office #41. Why the American Right Loves Orban
Hungarian writer Peter Kreko explains how a Central European country of ten million became the lodestar for a new breed of North American conservative.
44:45
October 1, 2021

Foreign Office #40. Our Own Worst Enemy
Atlantic contributor and USA Today columnist Tom Nichols discusses America's political and cultural dysfunction, and why there may not be a cure.
50:31
August 31, 2021

Foreign Office #39. The Geopolitics of the New Afghanistan
A scholar and expert on Afghanistan Kamran Bokhari explains how various countries will respond to the Taliban takeover, and what to do about ISIS-K.
29:27
August 30, 2021

Foreign Office #38. ISIS-K and the Taliban: It's Complicated
Former US Army intelligence officer Michael Pregent on the terrorist threat from Afghanistan in the wake of two horrific suicide bombings.
40:54
August 28, 2021

Foreign Office #37. Crisis and Credibility
Mike Nelson, a U.S. war veteran and visiting fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University, discusses the pullout from Afghanistan. And America's place in the world.
31:26
August 20, 2021

Foreign Office #36. America's Abandoned Allies
Journalist and author Wesley Morgan explains how Afghans integral to the U.S. war effort have been left to a grim fate in a Taliban-run country.
35:20
August 18, 2021

Foreign Office #35. Afghanistan, Before and After the Americans
Afghanistan scholar and professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School Thomas Johnson explains how America bungled its longest war.
51:03
August 17, 2021

Foreign Office #34. Why Vladimir Milov Is Optimistic
Russia's former deputy energy minister discusses the political situation in Russia, and why Putin isn't as strong as he looks.
46:28
August 13, 2021

Foreign Office #33. Tales from Odessa
Author Vladislav Davidzon on a decade of writing about (and for) Ukraine.
31:14
August 11, 2021

Foreign Office #32. The Biden-Russia Conundrum
Veteran Russia expert James Sherr discusses the recent policy pivot on Nord Stream 2, and what the West doesn't understand when dealing with Moscow.
41:12
August 4, 2021

Foreign Office #31. Sorge's Way
Historian and biographer Owen Mathews on how Soviet master spy Richard Sorge infiltrated the Third Reich.
48:43
July 21, 2021

Foreign Office #30. The Silent Weapon
Former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos on being a victim of directed energy attacks, U.S. Russian relations, and his new book.
36:53
June 21, 2021

Foreign Office #29. The View from Vilnius
Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicious discusses Belarus's hijacking of a commercial plane, and what the West needs to do about Minsk (and Moscow).
30:48
May 26, 2021

Foreign Office #28. A KGB Kidnapping
Andrei Sannikov, a former Belarusian presidential candidate, explains Alexander Lukashenko's crazy plot to arrest a journalist by hijacking a RyanAir plane.
27:43
May 24, 2021

Foreign Office #27. Microwaves and Bounties
National security reporter Tom Rogan on why the CIA isn't giving up on the GRU 'bounties' claim, and on alleged directed energy attacks against Americans.
39:16
May 19, 2021

Foreign Office #26. Explosions and Expulsions
Czech analyst Jakub Janda on how Russian state terrorism on NATO soil has upended Prague's relationship with Moscow.
35:04
May 5, 2021

Foreign Office #25. A 21st Century SMERSH
Bellingcat's Christo Grozev on what the latest disclosures out of Bulgaria and Czechia tell us about GRU Unit 29155.
25:47
May 4, 2021

Foreign Office #24. The Professor and “Ivan”
Nerma Jelacic, director of External Relations and Communications at Commission for International Justice and Accountability, explains how her NGO unmasked a Russian-back disinformation network on Syria — by pretending to be a Russian spy.
44:24
April 26, 2021

Foreign Office #23. Of “Kostya” and Collusion
RFE/RL’s Mike Eckel explains how the latest US sanctions on Russia advance what Mueller alleged about the Trump campaign’s ties to Moscow.
38:45
April 19, 2021

Foreign Office #22. Will Russia Invade Ukraine (Again)?
USIP Russia Director Don Jensen weighs the possible reason for Russia’s military buildup.
40:15
April 12, 2021

Foreign Office #21. Strategic Miscommunication
Analyst Monika Richter explains how Chinese government threats got an EU report on COVID-19 disinformation censored.
40:27
March 29, 2021

Foreign Office #20. Disinformation and Its Discontents
Johns Hopkins scholar and “Active Measures” author Thomas Rid on the DNI report on Russian meddling and how 2020 is different from 2016.
49:23
March 22, 2021

Foreign Office #19. When a Hack is not an Attack
Wired journalist Andy Greenberg on the SolarWinds hack and why cyberespionage is not cyber warfare.
46:54
March 15, 2021

Foreign Office #18. The Pipeline from Hell
Benjamin Schmitt, an energy security expert, argues Nord Stream 2 can and should be cancelled.
44:28
March 8, 2021

Foreign Office #17. Canceling Navalny
Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats — on Amnesty International’s decision to revoke Navalny’s prisoner of conscious status.
32:17
February 25, 2021

Foreign Office #16. Mr. Jones and Me
Andrea Chalupa, screenwriter of "Mr. Jones," on what inspired her to memorialize the journalist who uncovered Ukraine's terror-famine.
40:36
February 23, 2021

Foreign Office #15. What the Borrell Was He Thinking?
Senior Fellow at the European Values Center for Security Policy Nathalie Vogel on why the EU let the Kremlin humiliate it — again.
34:14
February 15, 2021

Foreign Office #14. Beirut Blues
The deputy editor of Newlines magazine Faysal Itani on the murder of Lebanese activist Lokman Slim and what America can and cannot do in the Middle East.
36:19
February 8, 2021

Foreign Office #13. The KGB's "Confidential Contacts"
Former CIA Officer John Sipher discusses the grey area between Russian informant and Russian agent.
40:11
February 4, 2021

Foreign Office #12. The People v. Julian Assange
Journalist Marcy Wheeler explains the U.S. government's charges against the Wikileaks founder, and why Britain refused to extradite him to America to face them.
37:28
January 14, 2021

Foreign Office #11. How to Catch a Russian Assassin
Christo Grozev, the Bellingcat journalist who unmasked Alexey Navalny’s hit squad, explains how he did it, and what it says about Putin’s security state.
51:24
December 19, 2020

Foreign Office #10. America in a Post-Trump World
Foreign policy analyst Damir Marusic on why a Biden presidency won't necessarily change much.
47:18
December 17, 2020

Foreign Office #9. Resets, Be Gone!
Former Biden adviser and Russia expert Michael Carpenter discusses his coauthored articles with President-Elect Joe Biden and what to expect from the new administration.
27:13
December 8, 2020

Foreign Office #8. Unfrozen Conflict
Award-winning journalist Simon Ostrovsky reports from Nagorno-Karabakh
27:14
December 1, 2020

Foreign Office #7. The View from Europe
As Joe Biden crept to victory, Estonia's former President Toomas Henrik Ilves explained how much of Europe saw this election -- and what it expects and (doesn't expect) from America going forward
44:53
November 11, 2020

Foreign Office #6. Thumping Out Sandworm
FireEye's John Hultquist explains the U.S. government's newly unsealed indictment about the GRU's devastating hacking operations.
31:37
October 26, 2020

Foreign Office #5. CIA v KGB: How American and Russian political warfare differs -- and how it doesn't
Tim Weiner, the acclaimed historian of the CIA, discusses his new book on American-Russian political warfare, from the Cold War till now.
21:27
October 19, 2020

Foreign Office #4. Second Time As Farce: How a Russian-Backed Operation in Ukraine to Sway the 2020 U.S. Election Came Undone
Time magazine's Simon Shuster discusses the ongoing Kremlin disinformation campaign involving individuals sanctioned by the U.S. Government
27:11
October 12, 2020

Foreign Office #3. Double Trouble: Who and What Poisoned Vladimir Kara-Murza?
In this episode, Vladimir Kara-Murza, vice president of Free Russia Foundation, recounts his own poisoning (twice) while traveling in Russia and what the FBI will has and hasn't told him about what it knows.
26:16
October 1, 2020

Foreign Office #2. Russia's history of poisonings
Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan discuss Russia's history of poisonings in light of the Navalny case and why the use of a signature toxin such as Novichok implicates Vladimir Putin.
29:25
September 28, 2020

Foreign Office #1. How Austria became Europe’s spy capital
In our pilot episode, Michael interviews Anton Shekhovtsov, an expert on the European far-right and the Russian government's ties to it. They discuss their jointly written essay for The Daily Beast, drawn from a still-classified KGB training manual, about the false-flag recruitment of an adviser to the Austrian chancellery in the late 1950s and early 1960s by a particularly resourceful Soviet double agent "Safo." Also, the stunning revelations about a Wirecard executive, Austria's first expulsion of a Russian intelligence officer, and why Vienna has the well-earned reputation of being the spy capital of Europe.
22:25
September 21, 2020