Historical Honey Traps: Sex, lies and spying.

A British clerk blackmailed in Moscow. An FBI handler sleeping with his source. A nuclear whistleblower lured to Rome. What makes a honey trap work?

Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse crack open Henry R. Schlesinger’s Honey Trapped to find out what spies want from a honey trap: control, secrets, a chance to grab someone, or a scandal. Along the way, they revisit the KGB’s blackmail of John Vassall, the Stasi’s Romeo spies and the woman known as ‘Cindy’ who persuaded Mordechai Vanunu to fly to Rome.

Books mentioned

• Honey Trapped: Sex, Betrayal and Weaponized Love by Henry R. Schlesinger

• Sex, Spies and Scandal: The John Vassall Affair by Alex Grant

• Stalin’s Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire by Antonia Senior

• The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939–1941 by Roger Moorhouse