What happens when Britain fights the Cold War with typewriters, fake pamphlets, covert publishers, and even pretend hippies?
On this episode of Spybrary, Shane Whaley talks with historian Rory Cormac about his book Fakers: A Top Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Line.and the extraordinary true story of the Information Research Department — Britain’s secret propaganda and forgery machine.
A fascinating dive into Cold War deception, disinformation, and ‘state-sanctioned skullduggery.' The conversation opens the file on Britain’s Cold War covert propaganda machine, especially the little-known Information Research Department — the IRD — a blandly named Foreign Office unit involved in unattributable propaganda, forgeries, fake groups, and intelligence laundering.
Watch this episode, Britain’s Secret Fakers on YouTube: The Cold War’s Hidden Propaganda War on YouTube with Rory Cormac and Shane Whaley
Professor Cormac explains how the IRD moved far beyond ordinary government messaging, creating forged pamphlets, fake political organisations, covert publishing operations, and disinformation campaigns designed to expose or disrupt Soviet influence worldwide. The episode is packed with strange-but-true stories, from British officials posing as hippies to disrupt a Soviet-backed youth festival in Bulgaria, to the painstaking forensic details of typewriters, staples, paper, and fonts used in Cold War forgery work.
The discussion also highlights the unusual people behind these operations: refugees, journalists, women, fixer-agents, propagandists, and oddball bureaucrats working in the shadows of British foreign policy. Rather than focusing on famous spies or prime ministers, Fakers reveals the human texture of covert influence work: the hustlers, handlers, writers, typists, and paper experts who helped wage Britain’s secret propaganda war.
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Key Topics and Themes Discussed
Britain’s Information Research Department and its role in Cold War covert propaganda
Black propaganda, grey propaganda, fake groups, and forged documents
The IRD as an “intelligence laundromat” for MI6 and GCHQ material
The 1968 World Youth Festival operation in Sofia, Bulgaria
Covert publishing through organizations such as Ampersand Press
Soviet propaganda, front organizations, and the wider global disinformation ecosystem
The role of refugees, journalists, women, typists, and outsiders in British covert operations
Cold War cultural warfare and anti-Soviet messaging
Typewriters, paper, staples, fonts, and the forensic science of forgery
The difficulty of proving whether propaganda operations succeeded
The bureaucratic downfall of the IRD
David Owen’s decision to close the department
The survival of black propaganda work after the IRD through the Special Producer Unit
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