Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant in fast motion. Yeah. Um, and that makes us
Speaker 1: the super fast episode of Stuff you Should Know on
Speaker 1: spots super fast. It's going to be, um, not short.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna be talking really fast like this pretty
Speaker 1: much the whole time. I can pick up will you
Speaker 1: all right? Uh? Yeah, spies like us? Yeah? Did you
Speaker 1: like that movie? I did. I was raised too, just
Speaker 1: like Chevy Chase really by whom my dad really yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and I don't think my mom liked him either, but
Speaker 1: my dad definitely thought he was a jerk. His word
Speaker 1: was kind of a jerk and um yeah, apparently I
Speaker 1: read um this Saturday Night Live biography about like the show.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting. Um and they talked about how he
Speaker 1: was the first one to um be able to develop
Speaker 1: a cocaine habit because he was the first one to
Speaker 1: start getting paid and apparently he didn't share really, so
Speaker 1: that made him a jerk. I guess I don't think
Speaker 1: that's one. My dad thought he was a jerk anyway.
Speaker 1: I all apologies to Mr Chase if you listen to this.
Speaker 1: I was I have always been a big man, have you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was very saddened when he his career kind
Speaker 1: of faltered and I missed Chevy Chase. Well, okay, he's
Speaker 1: on TV now though he's he's on the TV the community, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that it? He was on it. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he still is, but he wants Yeah. I don't either. Um,
Speaker 1: but no, I hated Fletch. I'm just gonna come out
Speaker 1: and say, I hate that movie Fletch. I hate Fletch two,
Speaker 1: I hate Fletch eight, I hate all the Fletches. I
Speaker 1: think it's a stupid movie. And I hate Fletch. But
Speaker 1: I did like funny far a lot. That's weird that
Speaker 1: you hated Fledg. I hated Fletch. I still hate Fletch.
Speaker 1: You can show me Fletch right now. I'd be like,
Speaker 1: this is stupid, turn it off, so funny, so chuck. Yes, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know a little bit about spies. I believe you
Speaker 1: had a bit of a story to share with everyone.
Speaker 1: A little bit. I mean, I was obviously spy. Stories
Speaker 1: of real life spies are kind of fun and Um,
Speaker 1: to me, the best all time story spy, real true
Speaker 1: life spy story was the story of Christopher Boyce and
Speaker 1: Dalton Lee The Falcon and the Snowman. Oh yeah, I've
Speaker 1: never seen that movie of you. Yeah, it's a good yeah,
Speaker 1: really good Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn right, and um,
Speaker 1: that is the story of these two guys who two
Speaker 1: youngsters living in southern California, and Boyce was hired by
Speaker 1: his father I think as a guard at an aerospace
Speaker 1: firm called t RW Incorporated, and may um that gave
Speaker 1: him access to a lot of U c. I A.
Speaker 1: Documents that that we're working with the aerospace firm, they
Speaker 1: were drug dudes. So he was like, hey, we can
Speaker 1: raise like make a lot of money selling these secrets
Speaker 1: to the Soviets down in Mexico City at their embassy,
Speaker 1: make money for drugs to run a drug operation. And
Speaker 1: they did so for like a year successfully a year
Speaker 1: from seventy six to seventy seven. And we're caught, of course,
Speaker 1: and jailed for espionage. And I had a little trouble
Speaker 1: for some reason finding out the current status of Lee.
Speaker 1: I did find out that boys actually escaped from prison
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty from Lompoc was picked up again in
Speaker 1: eight one, I think, and then was released in two
Speaker 1: thousand three and lives I think in the San Francisco area.
Speaker 1: I've got this awesome l A Times article that I'm
Speaker 1: going to read tonight for fun because it didn't have
Speaker 1: a chance to read it read. Yeah, it's one of
Speaker 1: those like fifteen page articles. His big interview he did
Speaker 1: after he got released. But I can't find out what
Speaker 1: happened to Lee aside from a room that he was
Speaker 1: eventually released and Sean Penn hired him as his personal assistant,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if that's true. Weird, I can't
Speaker 1: verify that. I understand Sean Penn's like the real deal
Speaker 1: when it comes to like um combating poverty in Haiti.
Speaker 1: He's like in there in the trenches every day. He
Speaker 1: is crazy. Some people think he's a jerk. I happen
Speaker 1: to like the guy. I like the guy a lot.
Speaker 1: Um So, Chuck, how did the Falcon and the Snowman
Speaker 1: become spies? They were working or or Voice was working
Speaker 1: at a at an aerospace firm as a night guard
Speaker 1: and had access to sensitive documents. So why did he
Speaker 1: start to make money. Okay, so that's actually one of
Speaker 1: the main ways that a spy is recruited. Yeah, there's, um,
Speaker 1: there's several nice intro by the way, dude, thank you.
Speaker 1: That makes two times they are changing. Give me you're
Speaker 1: a punch card. Okay, Um, the the There are a
Speaker 1: few ways for a person become a spy. Probably the
Speaker 1: most um straightforward way is to maybe join the army,
Speaker 1: Army intelligence, joined the CIA right out of college, and
Speaker 1: basically just join your country's intelligence agency, be trained and
Speaker 1: then sent into the field, maybe posing as a diplomat
Speaker 1: or being a diplomat. Yeah, apparently the line is very
Speaker 1: um fuzzy between a person who's actually a diplomat and
Speaker 1: a diplomat who's a spy. Really yeah, it's like one
Speaker 1: and the same. I mean, they're still performing the same functions.
Speaker 1: They have a job as a diplomat, but they're also
Speaker 1: just spying too. Um and what are they I guess
Speaker 1: what's the basis of spying? Well, they're what they're after obviously,
Speaker 1: and this is the no brainer stuff, But we always
Speaker 1: have to point it out there after any valuable information
Speaker 1: to give to the country that they're working for, any
Speaker 1: kind of it's it's obviously usually military secrets, although we
Speaker 1: will talk a little bit later about corporate spine, which
Speaker 1: is huge yeah these days. Oh um, but you know,
Speaker 1: typically people with access to these uh, either offices or
Speaker 1: high ranking officials. Um, they do have recruiters that go out,
Speaker 1: like you said, they'll then go a little money in
Speaker 1: front of your face if they think that a person
Speaker 1: is someone they can turn right, like, hey, you're not
Speaker 1: happy with your own country. We know this, you want
Speaker 1: to sell him out? Or we know you really like
Speaker 1: money and you're kind of unscrupulous. Do you want to
Speaker 1: sell him out? Right? Or we know your mother needs
Speaker 1: surgery and your government insurance although the gold standard of
Speaker 1: healthcare is American healthcare. It's part of the American system.
Speaker 1: Therefore it's not going to really cover the surgery. So
Speaker 1: here's some money, or hey, mom, the surgery. You want
Speaker 1: a movie made after you about you, after you're executed.
Speaker 1: You want to be famous, You want to feel important
Speaker 1: because you're nobody. You want to be somebody once you
Speaker 1: dig up some secrets for us, right, And that's actually
Speaker 1: like a really good um recruiting tool or recruiting method
Speaker 1: is to identify somebody who has a menial job, some
Speaker 1: sort of file clerk, but has access to really sensitive information. Exactly,
Speaker 1: go in and, like you said, pump them up. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think you would actually say you're a nobody.
Speaker 1: You would maybe promise the um making them a somebody.
Speaker 1: You have to break him down before you build them
Speaker 1: back up, you know, it depends, It depends on what
Speaker 1: you're trying to do. UM. So those are the Oh
Speaker 1: did you touch on ideological um disillusionment with your home country? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit, just you know, like communism obviously was
Speaker 1: a big thing. Uh, yeah, we covered in McCarthyism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the Rosenberg's they were at the very least communist
Speaker 1: sympathizers who supposedly allegedly spied for the for the Communists.
Speaker 1: By the way, did you see that email we got
Speaker 1: about that. No, we got an email from a guy
Speaker 1: in the Air Force that said there was a great
Speaker 1: interview with I can't remember who it was that basically
Speaker 1: said the Rosenberg's did have a lot more to do
Speaker 1: with it than like at first it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're guilty, guilty. Then later on, as we pointed out,
Speaker 1: they're like, you know, they didn't exactly sell the deepest
Speaker 1: dark kits of secrets and maybe they were made an
Speaker 1: example of but then apparently more recent enew does implicate
Speaker 1: them a little bit more to the extent that their
Speaker 1: family even was like, oh, it's so weird for McCarthy
Speaker 1: to be vindicated. Yeah, um, so you've got blackmail too.
Speaker 1: Is a way of getting people to do what you want, Like,
Speaker 1: we have these photos of you that you don't want published,
Speaker 1: Like you clearly have a lampshade on your head, right,
Speaker 1: and now you have to be a spy for US. Um.
Speaker 1: And then once you once you have the person agreeing
Speaker 1: to spy. Oh there's also walk ins too, and I
Speaker 1: think that might have been voices. Deal was an opportunist
Speaker 1: who was like, Hey, I want to be a spy.
Speaker 1: Who do I call about that? Exactly? And usually if
Speaker 1: you're going to be a spy, um, you identify a
Speaker 1: country who's probably got the most money or the most
Speaker 1: desire for the information you have, and then you go
Speaker 1: to their local embassy. I guess i'd be a good
Speaker 1: way to do it. Yeah, you just walk right in.
Speaker 1: But if you are that country's diplomat slash spies working
Speaker 1: at the embassy, you're going to be immediately suspicious of
Speaker 1: someone like that. Apparently the US had a Russian defector.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. It may have been yeah, it may
Speaker 1: have been the guy who's mentioned um no, oh like Penkovsky. Penkovsky. Um,
Speaker 1: he was a Russian general. I believe Soviet general was
Speaker 1: with the KGB, and I think he he was a
Speaker 1: walk in. Wow, he made a secret trip to the
Speaker 1: US and over years and years and years, like he
Speaker 1: finally gained the trust of the Americans. He's like, look,
Speaker 1: this is legitimate information stuff. Yeah. Ok yeah, well that
Speaker 1: was like the height of spied them not quite so okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that later. I read a recent article
Speaker 1: that I can't wait. Yeah, there's like a lot more
Speaker 1: going on now then you might believe. All right, so
Speaker 1: you have a paid, blackmailed um or ideologically disenchanted spy.
Speaker 1: Sure who you trust and you assign them a person
Speaker 1: name a Controller Harvey Kitel probably yeah, yeah, yeah, Controller
Speaker 1: is the person who I think they're They're just like
Speaker 1: your only contact basically, right, who you're going to be
Speaker 1: given the information to, yeah, or getting information or instructions from.
Speaker 1: There's going to be one person you meet. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't want a large You don't want your spy to
Speaker 1: know a lot of people because they'll be compromised. There's
Speaker 1: not a Christmas party, you know they should though, no
Speaker 1: they shouldn't. They'd all to sit around and like look
Speaker 1: at each other very wearily. There they don't make eye contact. Um.
Speaker 1: The the the reason why they do this is called compartmentalization. Um,
Speaker 1: because if the spy is caught, there's only so much
Speaker 1: information they can give. Like, well, I was meeting a
Speaker 1: Mr Orange that may or may not be his real name.
Speaker 1: I never really saw his face and actually I never
Speaker 1: met him. It was all handoff stuff park bench. Well
Speaker 1: you're talking about, we might as well go ahead and
Speaker 1: cover that. The drop, the dead drop, the dead drop
Speaker 1: you see it in movies. Apparently it's real. You'll you'll
Speaker 1: drop something in a public place very uh, nonchalantly, and
Speaker 1: then send the signal that it's you know, been dropped
Speaker 1: to your controller. Then they will go to the little
Speaker 1: hidden loose brick in the public park wall and fish
Speaker 1: out the micro film. Yeah, the micro film, the micro
Speaker 1: dot maybe. Uh? What what has always struck me about
Speaker 1: spy work or articles on spies and especially the gadgets
Speaker 1: and technology they use. I always just assumed it's like
Speaker 1: twenty years out of date. Yeah, me too. I was
Speaker 1: reading this book called Veil by Robert Woodward, an excellent
Speaker 1: book about like Reagan's Secret Wars, really good book. And
Speaker 1: they're talking about this this light beam, I guess, a
Speaker 1: laser that you can point at a window and it
Speaker 1: measures the vibrations from a conversation um and translates them
Speaker 1: into audio. So it's an eavesdropping device that they were
Speaker 1: using in the early sixties. You're talking about the laser emacs.
Speaker 1: I am, well, they have these now. I'm sure when
Speaker 1: that there are different ones. But yeah, it's an invisible
Speaker 1: infrared beam hits the window that and records the vibrations,
Speaker 1: filters out all the gobbledygook, and then amplifies it and
Speaker 1: records it. It's amazing and it's been around since the sixties.
Speaker 1: What do you think they're doing now, Well, this is
Speaker 1: the one that's available now, so it's probably just this slicker,
Speaker 1: better version. Well, in the article I read too on
Speaker 1: modern spy equipment, basically said just that is it's a
Speaker 1: lot of the same stuff. It's just faster and smaller,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, digital, what's that one called this
Speaker 1: is called the laser or EMACS. And the cool thing
Speaker 1: is when you go to their website it said as
Speaker 1: used by David Letterman and Jay Leno and Fox five Undercover. Weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they I don't know. I guess they've done
Speaker 1: little bits where they spy on people. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Jay Leno spied on an NBC board meeting when they
Speaker 1: were trying to figure out whether they we go with
Speaker 1: Letterman or him to release Carson. Yeah, you got to
Speaker 1: see that movie. I've seen it. I don't remember that though. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well he was just sitting in another room, like taking notes,
Speaker 1: like in a closet right now, exactly. Okay, let's get
Speaker 1: back to it. Man. You you have a controller, Your
Speaker 1: spy is compartmentalized very much. Before you start doing dead
Speaker 1: drops and everything, you don't want to get ahead of
Speaker 1: yourself because your spy is gonna get greased. You have
Speaker 1: to first create a cover and support it with the legend, right,
Speaker 1: so it covers just like your secret identity or your
Speaker 1: false identity, and then the legend is the backstory around it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's to be detailed and thorough right. So for example, um,
Speaker 1: you are a UH. If you're into fishing, I think
Speaker 1: the article uses it's a good good example. Um, or
Speaker 1: you let your character is your cover is right, Um,
Speaker 1: you're going to have fishing gear. And if you have
Speaker 1: a that's part of the legend. You're gonna have fishing.
Speaker 1: The part the legend is that you are into fishing,
Speaker 1: your fly fisherman big time. So then at your house,
Speaker 1: your apartment, whatever that's set up for you, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have fishing equipment. And if you're good, it's going to
Speaker 1: be used fishing equipment and it's going to be of
Speaker 1: a certain um quality depending on whether your cover is
Speaker 1: frugal or you know, kind of spendy or likes you know,
Speaker 1: the best of the best. That's a good point about us.
Speaker 1: Didn't even think about that. Oh yeah, that'd be like
Speaker 1: a movie thing is the guy sees the apply fishing
Speaker 1: gear and it's got a tag on it or something
Speaker 1: or boom or both. Yeah. Yeah. Um. The if you are,
Speaker 1: say a Russian accountant posing as a Russian accountant, you
Speaker 1: probably should know the ins and outs of Russian tax law. Sure. Um.
Speaker 1: You should also probably speak Russian with a Russian accent.
Speaker 1: From the UH from the region that you're supposedly from
Speaker 1: that your covers from. Yeah, you saw No Way Out? Right?
Speaker 1: Is that the one with Kevin? Uh? What's his face? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: I didn't. Oh that's a good one. I've heard that
Speaker 1: was like a couple of years ahead of my I
Speaker 1: think I was watching Disorderlies while my family went and
Speaker 1: saw No Way Out. Uh, I'm not gonna ruin that one. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm a spoiler guy, usually for movies that are like
Speaker 1: fifteen years old. But um, I'm gonna leave that one
Speaker 1: to the to the people to go see it, to
Speaker 1: rent it or whatever, because it's got a nice little twist.
Speaker 1: Um what else, chuck um. Oh, this is not a
Speaker 1: quick thing. No, no, no. If you establish a cover,
Speaker 1: it takes years to establish a cover. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: waltz into the Russian uh, the Russian embassy and say hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just a Russian accountant and where are your documents?
Speaker 1: This is not a small camera in my tie. It
Speaker 1: takes a long time, and people go it's like being
Speaker 1: an undercover cop. You have to establish his trust over
Speaker 1: a period of months and years. Even yeah, um, and
Speaker 1: you're going to in the meantime be performing accounting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for as part of your business an you better be
Speaker 1: good ahead, yeah, or the toast yeah. Or you could
Speaker 1: go to jail for tax fraud. Wouldn't that be surprising?
Speaker 1: That would definitely help your cover though, wouldn't you to
Speaker 1: go to prison for the for the state? Yeah? Sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: You are not going to be memorizing things, although in
Speaker 1: a pinch, I'm sure they're probably trained to memorize a
Speaker 1: certain amount of information. But what you really want to do,
Speaker 1: and it is like in the movies, is to make
Speaker 1: tiny little copies photo copies or photographs of sensitive documents
Speaker 1: and relay those to your controller and then that ends
Speaker 1: up on the micro film, the micro dot um or
Speaker 1: it could even just you could make copies if you
Speaker 1: are like that file clerk who has regular routine access
Speaker 1: to that information, just make copies of it and take
Speaker 1: it out of there. Yeah. And they had the little
Speaker 1: handheld copiers. I've seeing those. Those are cool. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: are pretty cool. What you don't want to do is
Speaker 1: take anything, no, because then somebody might notice that exactly
Speaker 1: the documents are missing, right, But you don't have to
Speaker 1: listen to us. Your controller is going to tell you
Speaker 1: how he or she wants that the information. Sure, and
Speaker 1: there are plenty of female spies, so we definitely. UM
Speaker 1: don't mean to say he a lot, but we're dudes.
Speaker 1: I said here she yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean Valerie Plain she was a spy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very true. Um, it's not just on the ground either,
Speaker 1: It's not just human spies. We've been using satellites for years,
Speaker 1: since the nineteen sixty I believe. And the fact of
Speaker 1: the show for me is that before the digital age,
Speaker 1: the satellite would take photographs and I guess dropped them,
Speaker 1: have developed them and drop them in a bucket in
Speaker 1: the ocean. I think it was. It was undeveloped, the
Speaker 1: film develop it. Yeah, it's like a photo mat up there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like some stoner up there inside developing pictures. Remember
Speaker 1: the photo mat. What a bygone era that is. And
Speaker 1: those stoners where are they working now? Not a video stores,
Speaker 1: I think, so that's where I always see them they are. Um,
Speaker 1: so they don't obviously have to drop them in the
Speaker 1: ocean any longer. They can just relay them digitally and
Speaker 1: they've actually been doing that since nine Yeah that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So long before we were taking digital photos the government
Speaker 1: and sending them wirelessly. Yeah, over radio. I think they
Speaker 1: did it. Well, that's what wireless is. Radio. It's pretty
Speaker 1: amazing it is. Um. So again that kind of proves
Speaker 1: my point though, Chuck, I mean, like, what are we
Speaker 1: on too? Now? I know it's faster, smaller, better, there's
Speaker 1: got to be some cool stuff that like wasn't around
Speaker 1: before though. Well, spy planes back in the day, um
Speaker 1: were large, like the U two spy plane and it
Speaker 1: would have to fly right over the enemy. These days,
Speaker 1: of course, we have drones flying them while I'm not
Speaker 1: flying themselves, but unmanned drones doing the dirty work, all
Speaker 1: sorts of very dirty dirty work. That's right. Um. All
Speaker 1: of this, Chuck is called technological intelligence or tech int.
Speaker 1: I'll bet everybody at your work thinks you're a jackass
Speaker 1: if you call it tech int. The CIA, they're like,
Speaker 1: it's t I dude, right exactly, um, Or if you
Speaker 1: want to just really be in on this link, just
Speaker 1: t just t um. So you've got spy planes technically
Speaker 1: at one point where t um satellites which now apparently
Speaker 1: can read a headline on a newspaper. That's yeah, Well
Speaker 1: you see Google earth. Yeah, I mean my car and
Speaker 1: my driveway was on it, and that was a little creepy.
Speaker 1: I know, I had bird poop on the roof. Um,
Speaker 1: there's like wire taps that whole laser listening listening device.
Speaker 1: Do you do you want to talk about some more. Uh.
Speaker 1: They have seismic equipment to detect nuclear testing. They have
Speaker 1: underwater sensors to find things like submarines. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: a big deal. Again in Veil, which by the way,
Speaker 1: I recommend um, they were talking about how back in
Speaker 1: the day to eavesdrop on Russian cables, like the Soviets
Speaker 1: didn't encrypt all of their stuff on certain cables that
Speaker 1: were transmitted underwater, especially once that were close to the motherland, right,
Speaker 1: So the US would send subs um to go and
Speaker 1: clamp onto these um cables and listen for a few days,
Speaker 1: and they were like right off the coast of the
Speaker 1: USS are really dangerous work. And then they finally made
Speaker 1: a recorder that they could go clamp on, drop off
Speaker 1: and then leave for like a month or six months
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then come back and get it. So
Speaker 1: there's only like two windows where it was really scary,
Speaker 1: rather than several days just having to sit there quietly
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. Uh, this isn't
Speaker 1: new stuff. Um, that evolution of spy tools article I
Speaker 1: read was like, have you ever read the Art of War?
Speaker 1: What was it? Sun sues? So, Sun sue and uh
Speaker 1: there are more than a hundred references to spies an
Speaker 1: espionage intelligence gathering in the Art of War. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: That is very old. And Uh. In the Revolutionary War
Speaker 1: they would use invisible inc called Jay's Sympathetic stain was
Speaker 1: apparently the best one to use, and they still uh
Speaker 1: use or until recently, they still used invisible ink to
Speaker 1: transmit messages. It's crazy. You heat up certain things and
Speaker 1: it will appear, or hold it under certain light. Lemon juice.
Speaker 1: That's the old little crafty trick. How kind of this
Speaker 1: ugly burnt sienna color doesn't But also if you look
Speaker 1: at it, you can be like, oh, it's written in
Speaker 1: lemon juice. I can see without even just by moving
Speaker 1: the paper a little bit. I don't think it's real
Speaker 1: bona fide spy stuff. Apparently the Spartans would spy and
Speaker 1: they had a device called the skytail, and uh it
Speaker 1: was a long slender rod which was wrapped with a
Speaker 1: thin strip of papyrus, and the message was written on
Speaker 1: the wrapping uh, and it was passed on to a
Speaker 1: messenger and apparently it would could only be read if
Speaker 1: it was rewound around a rod of the same diameter,
Speaker 1: So it was sort of like an Enigma machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. Let's talk about that. Okay, have you
Speaker 1: have you read Enigma? There's a book about this whole thing,
Speaker 1: about the people who are cracking the code. But the
Speaker 1: Nazis had this very very clever system of coding, encoding
Speaker 1: UM or encrypting messages UM, where they would have what's
Speaker 1: called an Enigma machine, which is kind of like a
Speaker 1: random typewriter, that would assign him a code to a
Speaker 1: message and it could only be decoded by a the
Speaker 1: same machine, like a twin machine UM, that would get
Speaker 1: this message and then turn it back into UM uh
Speaker 1: whatever it was originally supposed to say and UM. The
Speaker 1: British apparently got in on breaking this a place called
Speaker 1: Benchley or Blenchley I think park where um they had
Speaker 1: a few of these captured Enigma machines and where secretly
Speaker 1: had secretly cracked the code. I think the Polish even
Speaker 1: before that discovered it and then you and then shared
Speaker 1: it with the Brits who was you know, probably a
Speaker 1: little further along. Well maybe not. Well. I think Alan
Speaker 1: turing Um, who invented the computer essentially was one of
Speaker 1: these Enigma codebreakers. Yeah, oh interesting. Yeah. Uh the information
Speaker 1: it was codenamed Ultra and it was obviously, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: something they kept on the very down low because you
Speaker 1: don't want Hitler to know you've got an Enigma machine
Speaker 1: because Senn Hitler kills the guy who invented the Enigma machine.
Speaker 1: And I think they got one from a sunken sub
Speaker 1: that the Germans were like, well, it's on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean, we'll just leave it there, it'll be okay,
Speaker 1: and um somebody somebody in the Allies went and got it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty cool book Enigma not to check that out.
Speaker 1: Um what about the number stations? Did you see that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. So we remember we talked about the
Speaker 1: Yosemite SAM transmission, a data burst and then you know
Speaker 1: the whole I'm gonna blow you to smith En environment.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um, I I imagine that that has to
Speaker 1: be from some sort of numbers station. But what is
Speaker 1: it well, it's a it's a radio station that the
Speaker 1: government operates, and it broadcasts UM on short band frequencies
Speaker 1: just intermittently, so they'll have a clue, like a song
Speaker 1: or an announcement that will mark the beginning or the
Speaker 1: end of the secret broadcast. And obviously they won't say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, and now we will play the secret broadcast
Speaker 1: some sort of hidden message, and then it'll be UM,
Speaker 1: just a bunch of a series of numbers that is
Speaker 1: obviously a coded message. Right. What's awesome is it's not secret.
Speaker 1: Like any schmo with who's tuned into the right frequency
Speaker 1: you can hear this broadcast, but he won't be able
Speaker 1: to make heads or tails of it. And apparently like
Speaker 1: this stuff happens all over the world. Yeah, so codes
Speaker 1: are huge. Though, secret code the US isn't like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're doing this, but it's I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like here's your brain. Yes, that's exactly what. Well, the
Speaker 1: the article I read on the Modern Spy says basically,
Speaker 1: the Americans and the Russians, while getting along, just have
Speaker 1: this sort of implied understanding that we're both still spine
Speaker 1: like let's not get each other. Oh yeah, everybody's spine
Speaker 1: on everybody is those Wiki leaks cables revealed. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just you just want to gather intelligence or information
Speaker 1: on whatever is the case, you know, from trade policy
Speaker 1: to you know, defense, any any information that you can
Speaker 1: get gives you an upper hand, and I think everybody
Speaker 1: does it. Well, since we're there, UM these days, you're
Speaker 1: gonna find um a lot of spine going on. I
Speaker 1: think that it was. The Washington Post said last year
Speaker 1: that there are more than twelve hundred government organizations and
Speaker 1: close to two thousand private companies that work on programs
Speaker 1: related to counter terrorism. That's a huge way that they're
Speaker 1: spying these days, obviously is terrorist cells, homeland security and
Speaker 1: intelligence UH in about ten thousand locations all across the US.
Speaker 1: So these days we're spying mainly on terror cells Iran,
Speaker 1: North Korea, and China obviously, and UM it says that
Speaker 1: the US is the recipient of US of thousands of
Speaker 1: cyber attacks every day from Beijing. Basically they're trying to
Speaker 1: penetrate our firewalls and seeing what they can get and well,
Speaker 1: I hope not. Uh. We are also UM spying on Israel.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you spy on your buddies because in two thousand
Speaker 1: eight those in Israeli report that said that we have
Speaker 1: a long history of spying on Israel in regards to
Speaker 1: their uh secret nuclear program. So even if you're friends
Speaker 1: with the country, doesn't mean you're not keeping tabs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that was one of the things about the Wiki
Speaker 1: leaks cables is they were a lot of them were
Speaker 1: about are very close allies and friends, and um, that
Speaker 1: was just very embarrassing. And now Bradley Man he's going
Speaker 1: to spend the rest of his life in prison because
Speaker 1: the State Department was embarrassed. And then corporate spying is
Speaker 1: huge these days, um, private sector spy firms. Basically, they
Speaker 1: said that there is nary a large merger, acquisition and
Speaker 1: deal that goes down these days without a lot of
Speaker 1: spying going on, a lot of corporate spying. And the
Speaker 1: CIA even lets people uh spies moonlight for corporations to
Speaker 1: make a little extra scratch. Is that right? That's what
Speaker 1: they said. And they said there's even entire network of
Speaker 1: people who do nothing but track corporate jets and their
Speaker 1: flight patterns. Wow. That crazy, but makes sense. It does
Speaker 1: make sense because you know, you go to where the
Speaker 1: money is right, yeah, or you know, I think was
Speaker 1: it Coke that had the girl that worked there? The
Speaker 1: lady sell out yeah, or almost sell out to Pepsi
Speaker 1: there the secret formula. Um, you approached she was a
Speaker 1: walk in right here, approached Pepsi with the secret formula
Speaker 1: for Coke and PEPSI told Coke about it. That lady
Speaker 1: gotten big trouble. Oh, PEPSI came out. Yeah, they said,
Speaker 1: we got her own formula. We don't mind being second tier.
Speaker 1: They like it. There's less pressure. So what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do with all this stuff? When you got all
Speaker 1: this information, who's gonna be looking at it? It's obviously
Speaker 1: not the spy. Well that's the thing like if you
Speaker 1: you know, you're not just you don't have one controller
Speaker 1: with one spy. And that's what all of your information is.
Speaker 1: You have all of this information coming and from all
Speaker 1: these different sources, whether it's you know, satellite photos or um,
Speaker 1: you know, human intel, and you have people called data
Speaker 1: analysts who are putting it all together, and they write
Speaker 1: daily briefs or papers or profiles on say like um,
Speaker 1: the newest leader of North Korea Kim Jong un? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And they it's basically just like, here's this threat. Here's
Speaker 1: what you want to know about this person. Uh, there
Speaker 1: may be an attack from this group, and it's it's
Speaker 1: basically this picture that's cobbled together like a mosaic of
Speaker 1: creative of data and information. Yeah. Stalin apparently received information
Speaker 1: that the Germans were gonna turn on so be it's
Speaker 1: in World War two and he said, yet I don't believe.
Speaker 1: So he ignored the data and look at what happened,
Speaker 1: like a million people died in St. Petersburg or Stalin grod.
Speaker 1: So he did not analyze the data to his advantage.
Speaker 1: Uh no, Um, apparently also we you you can use
Speaker 1: this these data analysts to say, we've got a gap
Speaker 1: here that we need to fill in, so go do this.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a um, it's a two
Speaker 1: way street as far as data collection and data analysis goes. Right.
Speaker 1: A pretty good example was the Purple Code of Japan
Speaker 1: in World War Two, where wait, well, we we had
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea that um, Midway Island was going
Speaker 1: to be attacked, but we didn't know if we were
Speaker 1: reading the code for Midway Island correctly, which is a
Speaker 1: f we thought it was, but we weren't sure, so, um,
Speaker 1: the UH I guess army intelligence or somebody said, hey,
Speaker 1: get Midway to to issue a plea for fresh water
Speaker 1: saying that they're low on fresh water, and they did,
Speaker 1: and then we intercepted a Japanese transmission saying that a
Speaker 1: F was low on fresh water. So we knew that
Speaker 1: a F was Midway, and we knew then that Midway
Speaker 1: was definitely going to be attacked and we won the
Speaker 1: Battle of Midway as a result. USA. Right. Let's say,
Speaker 1: misinformation is is just as important as the real information.
Speaker 1: Spies spend you know, from the sounds of this article,
Speaker 1: just as much time uh doling out misinformation as they
Speaker 1: do collecting the real stuff. The very important part of it, um.
Speaker 1: And one good way to do that is to get
Speaker 1: caught spying. Double agent. Yeah, what's a double agent? Well,
Speaker 1: a double agent is somebody who say, is spying an
Speaker 1: American who's spying for the Russians, And then the Americans say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, this guy is spying for the Russians.
Speaker 1: Let's make sure that all of this information that is
Speaker 1: access to is altered and wrong and flawed, and then
Speaker 1: he'll pass it along to the Russians and he'll be
Speaker 1: what's called an unwaiting double agent, right, or we can
Speaker 1: go to him directly and be like, we're gonna fry
Speaker 1: you pal unless you start giving fake information to the Russians,
Speaker 1: and then that person is a wedding double agent in
Speaker 1: that case and he'll say, you're no pal of mine.
Speaker 1: Or Josh, you can be a triple agent or even
Speaker 1: I guess the quadruple or quintuple agent. It happens to
Speaker 1: where the Russians, uh, the Americans nebu and then they
Speaker 1: turn you into a double agents, but the Russians know
Speaker 1: about that, and you're still secretly working for the Russians
Speaker 1: and uh it was this the grabster that wrote this.
Speaker 1: He points out that it's gotten so convoluted with the
Speaker 1: quadruple and up that sometimes in the end his history
Speaker 1: can't even tell what they were. Yeah, like who who
Speaker 1: the person was? Actually whose side they were on? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would imagine that person is probably on their own
Speaker 1: side after a while. Yeah. Just look, just trying to
Speaker 1: not get thrown in the gun. Yeah. I guess we
Speaker 1: can talk about Operation Fortitude because that's kinda cool. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: this was a really big misinformation campaign about the invasion
Speaker 1: of Normandy. On D Day, a very like elaborate one.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, it included, um, creating fake troops, fake um
Speaker 1: tanks and troop transports, fake fuel depots built out of wood,
Speaker 1: yeah um, and amassing them on the southern coast of
Speaker 1: England to make the Nazis think that the invasion of
Speaker 1: France was going to come from no, I'm sorry, the
Speaker 1: northern coast of England, to make them think it was
Speaker 1: going to come from the north exactly, um and instead
Speaker 1: of the south where Normandy was. And part of this was, um,
Speaker 1: a big part of it was feeding double agents false information.
Speaker 1: And there was one guy named Garbo who was a
Speaker 1: big player in this whole thing, code named Garbo. Like that,
Speaker 1: this is like blazing saddles. How so, well, they built
Speaker 1: a fake rock ridge at the end with fake townspeople
Speaker 1: in a fake uh. And when they came a riding
Speaker 1: into town and whopping in a womping that was, they
Speaker 1: found out it was not real. And then uh, Cleveland
Speaker 1: Little was able to prevail. Nice. Well in this case,
Speaker 1: the Allies prevailed. Yeah, I'm sort of like Cleveland Little. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They even went further than you know, painting a bunch
Speaker 1: of fuel depots to to look like the real thing. Um,
Speaker 1: they created a completely fake battalion, the first U. S.
Speaker 1: Army Group. It was led by General Patton. Even though
Speaker 1: it's totally fake, they had fake radio chatter about this
Speaker 1: group and the invasion, and on the day of the invasion,
Speaker 1: they dropped UM all sorts of aluminum from planes to
Speaker 1: reflect radar to make it look like there's a big
Speaker 1: movement of an air force across the English Channel. Uh.
Speaker 1: They did the same thing with submarine means UM and
Speaker 1: it looked like there was an invasion coming from the
Speaker 1: north while there was really one coming from the south.
Speaker 1: And it worked right well. Yeah, I mean we took Normandy.
Speaker 1: That was the first like fifteen minutes of UM saving
Speaker 1: Private Ryan. Yeah, so I don't know worked. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it worked well, not the first fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: I think you're forgetting about the the book ends of
Speaker 1: that movie, what with the old Matt Damon in the
Speaker 1: cemetery and then they went to the awesome part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you're right. It's like the first five minutes
Speaker 1: kind of sucked. And then that was that Matt Damon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was him grown up. I just thought it was.
Speaker 1: It was uncanny he hit the Uncanny Valley. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: it was an actor playing him, or was it Matt
Speaker 1: Damon and makeup? No, no no, no, it was an actor
Speaker 1: who looked a lot like an old Matamon. Well he
Speaker 1: was in the young Canny Valley. I'm not sure he exists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, here's my advice to filmmakers, to people like
Speaker 1: the Steven Spielberg's of the world. Don't don't book into
Speaker 1: your movie like that. That's always a bad idea, do
Speaker 1: you think so? Yeah, man, that movie would have kicked
Speaker 1: so much more. But if it was just started with
Speaker 1: the D Day invasion and ended how it ended, like
Speaker 1: everything from that too. Uh? What was the Clint Swould
Speaker 1: Uh Bridges of Madison County? Terrible book ends on that one.
Speaker 1: Whenever you show like the modern day book ends, just
Speaker 1: don't do it. Just stick to the story. We're clever,
Speaker 1: we we don't need Matt Damon, old Matt Damon in
Speaker 1: a cemetery breaking down. No, that was a little, uh, little,
Speaker 1: that was a little off putting, a little heavy handed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was kind of like, suck it up, pal, But
Speaker 1: who am I? I'm just a podcaster, Steven Spielder, You're
Speaker 1: definitely not part of the Greatest Generation. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: that not. UM. Do you want to hear a pretty
Speaker 1: cool story about the D D invasion? UM? The day
Speaker 1: before No, I'm sorry, the month before the invasion of Normandy,
Speaker 1: the D Day invasion, the turning point of the war.
Speaker 1: One of the UH M I five guys was doing
Speaker 1: the daily telegraph puzzle UH and he started noticing that
Speaker 1: a lot of the answers were kind of curious, like,
Speaker 1: for example, UM, one of the answers was Utah, another
Speaker 1: was Omaha. These were code names for the beaches at
Speaker 1: Normandy where landing points were going to be for the invasion. UM.
Speaker 1: Another answer was Mulberry, which was the name of a
Speaker 1: floating harbor that was going to be towed across the
Speaker 1: channel to accommodate the supply ships. Another was Neptune, which
Speaker 1: was the code name for the naval support for the operation.
Speaker 1: And then the They also had the answer Overlord, which
Speaker 1: was the name for the whole operation for the D
Speaker 1: Day invasion. So M I five's like, what's going on, Like,
Speaker 1: clearly somebody's feeding information one of the one of the
Speaker 1: ways of disseminating, like you were saying, getting in trust
Speaker 1: with your controller or letting him know that you've done
Speaker 1: a dead drop is through the newspaper, like a classified
Speaker 1: ad or something, right, And um, so they went m
Speaker 1: I five sent some some guys to go rough off
Speaker 1: the person who wrote this cross rod and find out
Speaker 1: what the deal was a fifty four year old school teacher.
Speaker 1: And uh, he had no idea. The whole thing was
Speaker 1: total coincidence. The m I five finally they were convinced, like,
Speaker 1: this guy has no clue what's going on. He is
Speaker 1: not an agent. They looked into his background and it
Speaker 1: was total coincidence. How many words total? It was like six?
Speaker 1: I think interesting. Isn't that weird? That is really weird?
Speaker 1: Month before the invasion. Huh. I bet he was. I
Speaker 1: bet he was. I bet that guy was nervous until
Speaker 1: they believed him that he was pooping his pants. Um, well,
Speaker 1: I guess that does it for pooping or pants on
Speaker 1: this one. Um, if you want to know more about spies,
Speaker 1: you can type spies s p I E S into
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And
Speaker 1: that's gonna bring up listener May all that right, Josh,
Speaker 1: And before we read listener mail, we want to announce
Speaker 1: that our email address has officially changed. UM from Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at how Stuff works dot com right to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at Discovery dot com. Oh yeah, we Discovery has
Speaker 1: finally said, all right, I guess you guys are really
Speaker 1: working for us. We'll give you addresses with our with
Speaker 1: our name on it here your official Yes. So that's
Speaker 1: how you can reach us now. And we're gonna point
Speaker 1: this out quite a few times over the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, plus at the same at the same time
Speaker 1: when we say it at the end of the podcast
Speaker 1: every time. UM. What else? Oh, we have a newsletter. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: to the newest episode. UM. It has a bunch of
Speaker 1: articles that we wrote or like on your site. It's
Speaker 1: just cool. It's fun and south by Southwest people of Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: We're coming back and we will be podcasting live on Sunday,
Speaker 1: March eleven, not quite sure exactly what time. This will
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Speaker 1: pretty cool. We've got some fun stuff cooking here. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? Yeah, just a listener mail. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just a regular listener that. Uh this is a correction.
Speaker 1: And while we're correct thing, I want to point out,
Speaker 1: as I have many, many, many times, that polar bears
Speaker 1: do not live in Antarctica. I was very ill that
Speaker 1: day and shouldn't have probably even been podcasting, but I misspoke.
Speaker 1: Josh technically was talking about Emperor Penguin's No I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I was talking about. You know how you
Speaker 1: were saying polar bears only live in Antarctica, and they
Speaker 1: only live in the Arctic. Well I didn't say that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, sure, isn't that the gist of what you're saying? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I was saying that penguins don't live in the Arctic,
Speaker 1: they live in Antarctica. Yes, they are also found in
Speaker 1: places like Australia to Africa. Um, I'm sure Argentina has
Speaker 1: shared Chile Um places not too far away from Antarctica.
Speaker 1: But what I was saying is that they're not found
Speaker 1: in the Arctic. And and emperor penguins, though, are only
Speaker 1: found in Antarctica. So originally that's what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So I'm depending either. Okay, So let's let's hear yet
Speaker 1: another correct, yet another correction, and and we messed up
Speaker 1: Edmonton to the Canadian very happy with this, no, I know,
Speaker 1: So let me clear this up. Calgary, Alberta is a
Speaker 1: city in Canada. Edmonton, Alberta is also a city in Canada.
Speaker 1: Alberta is a province in Canada. So it's like Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: New York, New York. And here's the thing. I love Canada.
Speaker 1: I hate I hate that we mess Canadian things up
Speaker 1: because we got a lot of fans there and they,
Speaker 1: I know, the only problem with Canada is it's so
Speaker 1: close to Detroit. Boy, we love Detroit due by the way,
Speaker 1: So I think that's good. We don't need a listener
Speaker 1: mail because all those corrections were enough. Cool. So thank
Speaker 1: you to all the Canadian fans who wrote in and
Speaker 1: all the polar bear and penguin defenders of the earth.
Speaker 1: We are sorry, we argument, and we coop. We did
Speaker 1: Hopefully we will do better. Let's make it a stuff
Speaker 1: you should Know resolution to do better in two thousands. Well,
Speaker 1: well that's supposed to be done before, so let's just
Speaker 1: make it and let's just keep scrowing up. All right,
Speaker 1: Let's do better. Okay, um oh, I want to hear
Speaker 1: spy stories. Okay, me too. We want to hear him
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