From 2004 to February 2022, she was the host of the author's program "Full Albats" on Echo of Moscow radio station.

[9] Albats started her professional work as a freelance reporter with Komsomolskaya Pravda, while she was still a senior at the Moscow State University's Department of Journalism.

From 1986 to 1992, she worked for The Moscow News as a special assignment correspondent, writing about the USSR's notorious political police, the KGB.

[10] She received the Golden Pen Award from the Russian Union of Journalists for exposing poor conditions in maternity wards in 1989.

[11] Albats was fired from Izvestia in 1997 after she had completed a major article exposing alleged illegal activities by the FSB.

[18] In 1992 Albats was appointed a consultant for a Russian Duma commission to examine KGB involvement in Soviet coup attempt of 1991.

She wrote that KGB directors Lavrenty Beria, Yuri Andropov and Vladimir Kryuchkov manipulated Communist Party leaders.

[22] She cited KGB notes describing transfers of money to communist parties of United States, Finland, France, Italy, as well as "commercial dealings" of Rajiv Gandhi's family with Soviet foreign trade.

[23][24] Albats learned that the KGB employed the future Russian Patriarch Alexius II as an agent under a nickname Drozdov.

Kryshtanovskaya said that FSB members and other "siloviks" took key positions in the Russian government, Parliament and business.

Albats was married to journalist, writer and science popularizer Yaroslav Golovanov and has a daughter, Olga (b.