Gary was previously a freelance producer on the Today in Focus podcast and the video newsdesk at the Guardian.
Gary Marshall
Producer

“The podcasts we produce at Tortoise allow us to go beyond the headlines and bring listeners along with us.”
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Wednesday 2 March 2022
Voices from the border
Paul Caruana Galizia and Gary Marshall report from Krościenko
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Thursday 23 November 2023
The confidence game
Things begin to fall apart. Only a few years after Rebellion Defense’s rapid rise, it appears to be in trouble. The rebellion has failed to take off. In the secretive world of the military and big tech, Basia is met with a wall of silence as she tries to see inside the company… until a few former staffers agree to speak to her, revealing what happened behind closed doors.
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Thursday 23 November 2023
The rebellion
Oliver’s company, Rebellion Defense, is on the rise. In 2019, it is full of promise and pumped with cash, trading on the hype around what’s possible with AI in war. It attracts influential backers and goes after big government contracts. And it becomes even harder to sort fact from fiction – where is the scrutiny, and who is checking that any of this stuff is… real? As Basia delves deeper into the world of artificial intelligence, she hears from another former girlfriend of Oliver’s who knows about the ‘tissue of lies’ – and why it matters now.
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Thursday 23 November 2023
The secret life of Walter Mitty
Basia begins unravelling the ‘tissue of lies’, but it becomes clear that some of Oliver’s claims exist in the grey area, and in the secretive world in which he works, it’s hard to sift fact from fiction. Did he serve in the military? Is he an aristocrat? And as she traces his rise in national security, she is pulled into a bigger story – about a company, and a threat that is facing us all.
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Monday 20 November 2023
An English gentleman
It’s London, 2012. Oliver is a dashing diplomat. Charlie is a young graduate trying to find her feet in the world. They meet online and she falls in love. A few months into the relationship, and with his encouragement, Charlie applies for a job in British intelligence. She’s feeling optimistic, the interview goes well. Then, she receives a text message that turns her life – and her relationship – upside down. 10 years later, a mystery is still hanging over her. Walter’s War is an investigation into what happened next – a journey through big tech and national security, hype and hucksterism, where anyone who can tell a good story can go far. But how much is true?
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Tuesday 18 July 2023
Confession
In episode 3, the primary suspect is interrogated by police until he confesses. But it’s not until 30 years later that the right man is put on trial
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Tuesday 18 July 2023
Rumours
Rumours choke the case and a vulnerable suspect is arrested. The first 48 hours after a crime are crucial: what did the police get so wrong in the days after Nikki went missing?
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Tuesday 18 July 2023
Missing
In 1992 on a council estate in Sunderland, a seven-year-old girl was murdered. It took the police 30 years to find the killer, a convicted child sex offender who lived three doors away from where Nikki Allan went missing. What happened on the night of her disappearance?
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Thursday 6 July 2023
The whole truth
In the final episode, Ceri travels to meet Rob in a peaceful garden in rural Wiltshire. What unfolds is a heated exchange about what Rob’s story really is and what adds up to the whole truth.
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Tuesday 4 July 2023
The verge
When Global Witness out Rob in 2015, things quickly fall apart. He loses everything that matters to him but to this day he believes that if his voice had been heard, it would have all worked out differently.
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Tuesday 4 July 2023
Chicken feed
Rob is adamant that in all the years he was undercover, he never sent information back to his spymasters that harmed the campaigners. But when you’re the only one in control of the decisions, can you always get it right?
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Tuesday 27 June 2023
Poison into medicine
Rob Moore says he can justify going undercover among anti-asbestos campaigners because he was following a Buddhist principle, turning poison into medicine. To this day he believes that if the people he infiltrated would really listen to his story they’d understand him differently. But does his story really stand up to scrutiny?
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Tuesday 27 June 2023
The truth
Three years ago a former private spy came to our newsroom at Tortoise. He told an incredible story about infiltrating a campaign group, deceiving people for years but all the while being a ‘double agent’, before his world fell apart. And it all played out in the opaque world of corporate intelligence. Since then, journalist Ceri Thomas has been asking who Rob Moore really is and what his motivations were.
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Tuesday 27 June 2023
Project spring
It’s 2012 and Rob Moore goes ‘into the dirt’, undercover, to infiltrate a group of campaigners fighting for a ban on deadly asbestos. None of them knew they had a private spy in the camp. But it’s hard to stay hidden forever.
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Monday 26 June 2023
Into The Dirt
Private spy. Double agent. Whistleblower. Just who was Rob Moore?
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Monday 6 February 2023
Wronged
What happens if the law gets it wrong? As two men found out in their fight for justice, it can move very slowly
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Tuesday 15 November 2022
Out there
In the last episode, the team finally hears from a man they’ve been chasing for months. And they return to Maine, to tell Christopher’s parents what they have discovered
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Tuesday 8 November 2022
The rope
In episode 6, the team tries to understand the connection between Chris’s trip to South Sudan, and one taken by a group of American fighters just weeks before. Could this explain why Chris was called a white rebel? And after months investigating, Basia finally speaks to the fighter who fascinated Chris, and she asks – how close really were you?
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Tuesday 1 November 2022
Kaya
Months after Jeremy first approached Basia, the team fly to Nairobi to sit down with the mysterious essay writer. And it turns out that he is not the only person ready to share what he knows about who killed Christopher Allen
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Tuesday 25 October 2022
The Kaleidoscope
There is a new layer of horror to Chris’s story – and in trying to understand it, Basia investigates the evidence that Chris was killed on purpose. The team figures out how to get to South Sudan – and how to finally meet the essay-writer
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Tuesday 18 October 2022
The lonely impulse
Basia traces Chris’s career as a young freelancer. By now, it’s clear his death is tied to his life as a reporter. But who was he trying to be? Just how close was he to a group of fighters? And after years in Ukraine, how did he end up in a remote corner of South Sudan?
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Tuesday 18 October 2022
Spring break
At just 22 years old, Chris travels to Ukraine for his spring break, keen to see war up close. For the first time, he experiences the thrill and horror of the frontline. He’s hooked. Five years later, Basia, along with Chris’s cousin, Jeremy, visit Chris’s parents in America to piece together who he really was. There they learn a troubling new detail about Chris’s time in Ukraine
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Tuesday 18 October 2022
White rebel
Five years after his death on a distant frontline in South Sudan, the truth about what happened to Christopher Allen is still a mystery. Was he a reckless freelancer? A mercenary? Or a young and ambitious reporter, caught in the crossfire? Approached by a family member looking for answers, journalist Basia Cummings begins investigating
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Monday 14 March 2022
Shadow whipping: The men who saved Boris
Political wisdom says Ukraine has saved Boris Johnson’s skin – a global crisis so grave that it looks self-indulgent to question his leadership. But the really successful operation to rescue the prime minister started long before Russia’s war, and much closer to home
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Monday 7 March 2022
Nato says no to Ukraine no-fly zone
Activist Daria Kaleniuk made an impassioned plea to Boris Johnson for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, but Nato doesn’t want to risk a direct confrontation with Russia. She tells Tortoise why she thinks it is the wrong decision