WEBVTT - Thomas Maier: The Invisible Spy 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:05.359 This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:16.439 One of the Nazi spies is hit by a car. 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:20.240 The other spy walking with him, instead of attending to 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:23.080 his colleague, picks up the statue of papers and he 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:23.880 runs off. 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.919 I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:36.680 in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:40.560 podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.560 research for my many audio and book projects has taken 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:47.880 me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:52.600 with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:57.080 and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:00.880 crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:03.840 good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:09.759 unpublished details behind their stories. I love a good spy story. 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:13.640 We've talked about spies embedded with the American government. We've 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:17.360 discussed librarians and academics researching in the basement of the 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:20.760 Library of Congress during World War Two, and now we're 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:25.480 talking with Thomas Mayer about a very unlikely spy. A 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:29.840 former football player turned spy for Winston Churchill. It's all 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:36.520 in Mayer's book The Invisible Spy. With this story, what 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:40.560 are the parallels do you think of what we're seeing today, 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:43.120 not even necessarily in the United States, but around the world. 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:45.640 You know, editors will want to know how does this 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:48.960 book resonate with readers today. What do you say? 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:52.240 I think this book is ripped right out of the 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:55.800 headlines of today. We're talking about the impact and the 0:01:55.840 --> 0:02:00.880 importance of espionage, how it plays out. A big part 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:04.560 of the book is also about the propaganda campaign that 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.400 the British at Rockefeller Center were basically doing behind the 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:12.040 scenes in order to get America into the war. That 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:16.240 was the big hope of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. You know, 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:20.560 at that time, in nineteen forty, Churchill had just become 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.640 Prime Minister. He realized that it was very important for 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.920 America to get in because at that time London was 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:31.640 being bombed, people were living in the subways. It was 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.880 a matter of life and death for the British, and 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:40.960 it was essential in Churchill's eyes that America entered the war, 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:45.800 and so at Rockefeller Center was set up a secret 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.120 headquarters up on the thirty sixth floor of Rockefeller Center 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:54.919 where a whole group of British spies, some Canadians and British. 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:56.639 They ran a number of different things, but one of 0:02:56.720 --> 0:03:01.040 the major things was a propaganda arm meant to influence 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:05.360 American media. And Ernest Cuneo, who's the subject of my book, 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:10.040 The Invisible Spy. Ernest Cuneo was wearing several different hats, 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:12.480 but you could say he was not only the first 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:16.679 spy American spy of World War One, but he was also, 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:22.400 by today's standards, a massive media influencer. This is really 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:26.600 kind of a walk into the deep state. Today. We 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:28.520 talk about deep state and some of it is just 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:34.520 rhetorical nonsense, but there are people who do make things 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:39.440 happen in the government, and people who are like Ernest Cuneo, 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.120 who are familiar with a number of different agencies and 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:46.080 they're the ones who make it happen. And even though 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:50.600 Ernest Couneo wanted to remain anonymous, that was all part 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:54.440 of his job description, if you will. He was very 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:58.600 influential with a number of different agencies, including the first 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:00.520 spy agency of the United Slate States. 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:03.920 I mean, this sounds like an incredible story. We have 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:07.040 spoken to a couple of different authors who have talked 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:10.560 about spies, one in particular, who talked about World War 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:15.880 two spies who were located in Europe and were sending 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:20.000 back information to spies and the basement of the Library 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:23.599 of Congress, And that is also a unlikely spy story. 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:28.600 About archivists and librarians and researchers and basically academic geeks 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:31.600 you know, who have done all this, you, I feel like, 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:35.479 almost have the opposite kind of unlikely spy. So why 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.360 don't we get started with you know, Ernest and what 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.479 can you tell me about him, maybe from either childhood 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:43.400 or when he was younger that will give us some 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.200 context about how he ended up doing what he did. 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.520 Well, I'm really intrigued with Ernest Kuneil because he went 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.279 to Columbia and I went to Columbia journalism school, and 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:54.880 that kind of caught my eye. But he was an 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.680 Italian American kid who grew up in the New York area, 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.599 in the suburbs of New Jersey, and he played football 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:05.400 at Columbia when Columbia actually did have a good football team, 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.960 and he went into the NFL and he was playing 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:13.440 as an alignment in the NFL in the very early 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.440 days of the league. He actually would play for those 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.839 people who played football familiar with football. He played all 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:23.280 sixty minutes. He would play offensive lineman and then he 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:26.479 would play defensive lineman, and so he played for a 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.359 couple of years. The name of the team that he 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.360 played for was the Brooklyn Dodgers, not the baseball team, 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.080 the famous baseball team, but there was actually an NFL 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:38.640 franchise back in the early thirties by the name of 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:41.200 Brooklyn Dodgers, and he played for that. And it's the 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:44.440 same time he was going to law school. He got 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:47.960 a law degree. He was working for a time period 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:50.440 for the New York Daily News on the night shift, 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:52.800 so at times he was a reporter. So he was 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:58.040 a really bright guy. He had worked eventually with Walter Winchell, 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:02.960 who was probably, without that the most famous media figure 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:05.800 in America. He was he had a column that appeared 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:09.719 literally in hundreds of newspapers around the country. But he 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:14.840 also had a Sunday night radio broadcast, and that broadcast 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:19.279 was heard by millions of Americans. This is before television, 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.640 so on Sunday nights, you tune in and listened to 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:25.640 Walter Winchell. If you've ever heard Winchell's voice, it was 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:29.560 almost like a machine gun approach, or was very He 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.720 actually did the narration for a show called The Untouchables 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:36.599 for those people that may have that type of memory 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:40.200 of an old TV show, The Untouchables. But Coonio was 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.479 his lawyer h and also Coonia was a lawyer for 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.360 another well known media figure named Drew Pearson. And so 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:52.960 to me, Ernest Cooneo was fascinating because on one level, 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.599 he wanted to be anonymous, and he felt that that 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:58.640 was a key to his success. And he learned even 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:02.440 though he started out wanting seeking fame as a football player, 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:08.400 he really realized over time that in the world of politics, 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:12.280 in the world of the media, and also particularly in 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:15.400 the world of espionage, that it's really important to behind 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:20.200 the scenes, to become invisible. And that's what Ernest Cuneo became. 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:23.080 And that's one of the reasons why I was fascinated 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:25.360 with this book. The other thing is the life and 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:30.000 times of Ernest Cuneo. He's directly involved in a number 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:34.160 of different very prominent spy cases from the beginning of 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.400 World War two, even before America gets involved, from about 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.800 nineteen forty all the way through the Cold War and 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.720 all the way to the jfk assassination. That's the extent 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:48.280 of my book. And so his life and times involves 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:52.240 things where Ernest directly is involved or because he's working 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:55.200 with agencies that they are involved in a number of 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.600 spy cases that I play out in this book. So 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:01.760 for me, it was an opportunity to kind of talk 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:06.120 about the whole growth of American espionage and that's a 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:08.240 remarkable story in and of itself. 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:11.800 Well, let's talk about the transition that he makes from 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:15.920 NFL football player and you know, a law student, lawyer, 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:19.960 and reporter for a newspaper, all of these different things 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:24.360 to how you get from there to the thirty sixth 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:27.560 floor of Rockefeller Center. What year are we in and 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:31.960 put me into the context of where we are in America, 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:36.199 like socioeconomic and everything, and then looking towards what's about 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:37.440 to happen with World War two. 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.960 This is the nineteen thirties, so America is suffering through 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:45.240 the depression. Ernest Cuneo is a hard working kid. He's 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:49.119 been able through a football scholarship to go to Columbia, 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:54.440 but he gets a job eventually working for then Congressman 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:59.360 Fiarello LaGuardia, who eventually becomes the very famous not the 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.560 airport for the actual mayor for whom the airport is 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:06.360 named here in New York. And Fiarella LaGuardia was a 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:11.280 mentor for Ernest Cuneo, and that was a really important 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:14.880 thing because he was introduced to a number of different 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:18.640 essentially New York liberals, some of whom had connections with 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:21.680 Columbia that he knew. But they were called the brain 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:25.920 trust of President Franklin Roosevelt. And so when Roosevelt was 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:30.000 elected in nineteen thirty three, eventually, by the mid thirties, 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.880 Cuneo gets a job working he's a private attorney, but 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:37.680 he's working with Walter Winchel, but he's also working for 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:41.720 the Democratic Party, the National He's the Associate council for 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:45.199 the National Democratic Party. He's also what is called an 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.600 advance man, an advance man for the president and for 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:52.880 other major Democratic candidates. An advance man is that that's 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:55.880 a term of art in political campaigns. They are the 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:59.040 people that go out and scout out locations and they 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:01.640 set up everything. They make sure that the high school 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:04.640 band is playing when the president arrives and all those 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.280 type of things. But also because Ernest was working with 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:12.160 Walter Winchell, he really impressed upon them the importance of 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:16.200 being able to essentially manipulate the media, to work with 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:19.600 the media, to cultivate them, to have sources. And he 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:24.400 was a great source for Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:27.320 and the people that he worked with, both at the 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:31.240 White House, eventually with the British spies at Rockefeller Center. 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:36.600 They recognize that about Ernest. So his power was in 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:40.200 his anonymity, if you will. It was. His power was 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:44.720 the ability to get things done, to plant stories, and 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:48.640 my book is replete with examples of that. 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:53.040 I want to take a little bit of a side 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:56.400 because I'm not sure how many people would know this, 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.280 but when we talk about the Democratic Party FDR, he's 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:03.200 elected in three to this Democratic Party, the Democratic Party 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:07.559 has changed dramatically clearly from nineteen thirty three on. I mean, 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:10.800 my first sort of history lesson with the Democratic Party 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:16.320 was Boss Tweed. When this was happening. FDR knew, you know, 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.600 on the horizon that word War two was coming or 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:22.160 what was sort of the advance, noticed that things were 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:24.680 going downhill where he starts thinking, and the brain trust 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.520 starts thinking, we need a plan because maybe we didn't 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:29.319 have a plan with World War One. I don't know. 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:34.320 Basically, America has a long history of isolationist views. The 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.080 view is that we have this big ocean, both in 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:39.640 the Atlantic and the Pacific that kind of keeps us 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:42.840 from the affairs. You know, in the thirties, it was 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:47.760 only about ten fifteen years past World War One, where 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.400 there were a number of young Americans who got killed 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:54.080 in that war, so people were not looking necessarily to 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:57.640 get involved. And yet in Europe particularly, but the rise 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:00.920 of Hitler, the fact that Hitler marched through all of 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:05.199 these countries, Frans Poll and all of these places. By 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:07.680 the late thirties, it was pretty clear that this was 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:10.440 a very serious situation that had to be dealt with. 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:14.679 Roosevelt recognized that, and yet he was also saying in 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:17.800 nineteen forty, when he ran for a third term, Roosevelt 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:21.199 promised at the Boston Garden, it was his last appearance 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:24.680 of that campaign. He said, I promise I wound send 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:27.920 your sons and daughters to to war. 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:30.320 That was a good impression, thank you. 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:36.240 So that's October of forty. But already Ernest Couneil was 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.920 at war, he was already working with the British spies 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:44.720 at Rockefeller Center. So Roosevelt, who was a masterful politician, 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:48.400 he was able to play three dimensional chess, as they say, 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.720 what he was saying publicly was different than what he 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:55.959 was the actions that he knew was necessary because war 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.640 was coming in some manner of form, and of course 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:02.320 did with the attack at Pearl Harbor. 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:07.160 Did we have many American spies during World War One 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.240 or any located in the United States or British spies. 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.200 No, you know, it's part of this whole isolationist view 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.800 of America. This history of isolationist view also has to 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:22.640 do kind of with a disparagement of espionage, which is crazy. 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:26.160 You know, the Germans, the Russians certainly believed in espionage. 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:30.560 Winston Churchill from those earliest days was involved with spying 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:33.600 and such, so they all understood the importance. The Nazis 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:36.959 certainly understand they had spies here in the United States. 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:41.199 But even during the Roosevelts administration, there was a Secretary 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:46.920 of State Henry Stimpson who famously said that gentlemen do 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:52.199 not read the mail of other gentlemen, which was really 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:54.840 interesting for a variety of reasons, but it was crazy. 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:59.679 You need intelligence. If you are a superpower of big power, 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:03.680 or any nation of any size should be having some 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:08.800 level of intelligence gathering. That doesn't mean necessarily a covert 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:14.200 James Bond type of spy, but literally the gathering of intelligence, 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.440 the developing of sources. That was really the first step, 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:23.120 and that was impressed upon President Roosevelt, and he allowed 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:27.840 Ernest Cuneo to deal directly with the British spies, and 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.520 that kind of, in a way, starts the whole ball 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:35.640 rolling of modern American espionage. You know, it gets more 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.000 and more involved as the story goes on, but essentially 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:43.480 when Churchill decides to put those spies in Rockefeller Center, 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:46.240 up on the thirty sixth floor, right across the street 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:49.520 from Saint Patrick's Cathedral, with all these smart alec New 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:53.080 Yorkers walking past, thinking, oh, we know everything that's going on. 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:55.800 I'm a smarter you know, I'm a smarty pant New Yorker, 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.480 and they're all oblivious to the fact that up on 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:02.560 the thirty sixth floor is this big foreign spy operation. 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:07.800 And that operation was something that eventually Roosevelt realizes that 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:10.440 we had to follow, we had to model our own 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:14.320 espionage agency, and that began. That be really begins with 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:15.200 Pearl Harbor. 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:19.800 Well, before we get to Pearl Harbor, take Earnest out 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:22.600 of it for a moment. The British spies, who are 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:25.480 you know, in Rockefeller Center, which is I guess operating 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:28.480 in plain sight? That's a smart thing to do. Yeah, exactly, 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:31.400 much like working in the basement of the Library of Congress. 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.040 When you look at these spies in the simplest of 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:38.440 simple terms, what are they doing that is considered you know, 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:42.960 gathering intelligence? Are they receiving information from their spies in Europe? 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:46.840 Or what's the purpose of that group in Rockefeller Center. 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:49.520 Well, they're doing a couple of things. Initially, they get 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:54.640 permission to keep the supply lines open. Spare in mind, 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.200 Britain's at war is really important to have those supply 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:02.120 lines coming from America. So that was the way that 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.640 they got permission to set up this operation. But very 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:10.600 quickly it expanded into other things. It expanded into keeping 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:14.840 an eye on all the Nazi spies in the United States. 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:18.200 And there were not only some Nazi spies in particularly 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.760 in the New York area, but there was also a 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:25.480 number of German born immigrants who were sympathetic to Germany 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:29.600 in fact, and this isolationist group. There was a group 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:34.480 called America First and they were very much pro German 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:38.600 or certainly not anti German, and they had a big 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:41.720 rally and a kind of a quasi Nazi rally at 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:45.680 Madison Square Garden in nineteen thirty nine. About twenty thousand 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.520 people were at Madison Square Garden. It was like the 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:52.720 Nickgame here and it was something that was really amazing, 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:56.240 but it was indicative of just how America felt at 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.440 that time. There was not only isolations, but there was 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.000 a number of peopeople who were for the Germans. So 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.560 the British were keeping an eye on the Nazi spies there, 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:10.360 but they also expanded it because the number one thing 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:13.399 that Churchill wanted out of the spy operation was to 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:17.679 convince America to get into the war, because without America's 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.160 help they were going to everything was going to sink. 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.400 There was very much feared in London that the Nazis 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:26.720 were about to invade Great Britain and everything would be 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:29.760 over by that point, and so they set up a 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:33.280 propaganda arm at Rockefeller Center, and that was one of 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.960 the biggest things that Ernest Cutio was involved with. He 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:42.240 was involved with essentially taking various different aspects of the 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:46.120 British views of everything from polling. At one point they 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:50.760 had an astrologer who they imported from London and Ernest 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.960 set up a press conference to have this astrologer who 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:57.000 had been a vaudevillian over in England. But he was 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.840 a phony astrologer, but he predicted the death of Hitler 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:04.960 because they knew that Hitler followed the British believed that 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:09.120 he was making military decisions. Hitler is making military decisions 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:13.640 based upon the stars, based upon this astrological chart, and 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:16.040 so they had this astrologer come over and it was 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:19.440 Couneo who set up a press conference. This astrologer said 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:23.080 Hitler's going to die, and that got headlines all around 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:25.960 the world. So there were a lot of things like that. 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.040 One last thing is that the British also got involved 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.800 in elections, which is another factor that's very much we 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.600 are concerned about. We hear about Russian interference, foreign interference 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:41.000 with our elections, and indeed the British did get involved 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:45.119 in the nineteen forty congressional campaigns. They went after a 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:49.119 number of different isolationists candidates, both of whom were Republican 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:52.600 and some Democrats. There was a Democrat in the area 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:55.680 where Roosevelt was from, in the Poughkeepsie, New York area, 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:59.160 they went after him, and by that they actually went 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:01.879 to the scene. They actually helped with some rallies. But 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:06.159 they also got involved in polling and surveying, and there 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.720 was like a phony poll, a survey that the British 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:13.000 set up that Cunio was very actively involved. I had 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:17.600 all these documents from Cuneo's papers that explain this. But 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:21.159 they did a survey in the nineteen forty Democratic and 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:26.400 Republican national conventions, a survey of how many delegates favored 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:30.280 intervention into the war. Now, most of those people that 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:34.160 were attending congresspeople and such, their letters were saying, don't 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:36.439 send my kids a war. We don't want to, we 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:39.400 don't want to get involved in a foreign war. And 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:44.760 yet the survey magically said that most delegates to both conventions, 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:49.200 Republican Democrats, the favored getting involved in the war. And 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:52.880 that serve that phony survey was reported by a number 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.000 of different major newspapers, the New York Times, the Herald 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:58.399 Tribune and such, and it's all laid out in my 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:01.600 in my book. I have the documents that were part 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:04.480 of that. They're up at the FDR library. Kunio's papers 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:07.320 are there and they described a lot that you can 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.680 see from the correspondence. How you know exactly what they did. 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:18.000 This might be another slight deviation from what we're talking about. 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:21.760 But I have a question, because I've researched some about 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:25.280 nativism in the eighteen hundreds, what do you think the 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:28.919 difference was between somebody who is in the nineteen thirties 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:31.879 or forties who I mean, I think FDR is looking 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:35.000 at as the difference between somebody who is an isolationist 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:38.040 and somebody who is a nativist in the United States. 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:40.639 Is there a large difference between the two in the 0:20:40.680 --> 0:20:41.720 thirties or forties. 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:44.560 Yeah, I think there was a difference, although they did 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:49.680 overlap certainly. But the Nativists, the No Nothing Party, they 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:53.439 were fundamentally anti immigrant. You know, I've done books. I 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:55.440 did a book about twenty five years ago about the 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:59.439 Kennedys about their Irish Catholic immigrant experience and how it 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:02.600 affected them. Public lives, and that's a big part of 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:07.440 that story. So basically that native is was anti immigrant. 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:12.800 That's fundamentally what that was about. The isolationists was to 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:17.360 some extent had its roots in George Washington's farewell address 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:23.120 that he warned about foreign entanglements, and there was a view. 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:25.640 I don't know if it was a conservative view or whatever, 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:27.640 because I think a lot of liberals share this view 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.400 as well, that why are we getting involved in Vietnam, 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.520 for instance, or why are we getting involved in Iraq? Why? 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:36.760 And we certainly see that these days now. Of course 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:40.840 that comes back to bite us in the proverbial rear ends, 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:43.359 and that certainly we saw that with Hitler that we 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.719 just could not Hitler was not going to go away, 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.200 and Roosevelt knew that, but he what he had to do, 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:54.760 like any good politicianist kind of lead the populace to 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:59.600 recognizing the reality. And so there was a distinction between 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:03.360 the name of this view and this isolationist view. 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:05.280 I mean, you bring up so many things for me 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:07.439 I researched. I once wanted to do a book on 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:09.800 Boss Tweed, who is you know, of course, a very 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:13.359 corrupt politician, Damminy Hall in the late eighteen hundreds, but 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:17.800 also on Thomas nast Sure, the cartoonist who was a 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.560 just incredible nativist, and some of his you know, cartoons 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:25.640 and sketch's political cartoons were of course very anti Irish. Okay, 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:28.520 So I think we started talking about Pearl Harbor. You said, 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:32.920 that's where something's changed. Was that maybe the view shifting 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:34.880 of the public of whether we should be involved. 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:40.680 Yeah, it was the blatancy of that attack, kind of 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:44.680 nine to eleven like for today's audience. It was a 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:49.680 shocking event. And so that was the turning point. That's 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:54.159 where we immediately entered the war. And in fact, shortly thereafter, 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:58.080 Churchill comes over to the United States. He spends Christmas, 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:02.040 the Christmas holidays that year, this is in nineteen forty 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:06.200 one with FDR, and they literally map out their plans 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:10.000 for the how to prosecute the war in Europe. And 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:13.840 so this was when Churchill heard about Pearl Harbor. He 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:18.200 said to his son Randolph, essentially his prayers had been answered. 0:23:18.720 --> 0:23:21.000 Now the United States would get involved, and now we 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:24.360 would be saved because Britain had been at warf by 0:23:24.359 --> 0:23:26.280 that point for about two and a half years. 0:23:27.160 --> 0:23:30.240 Now, you said, I think in the book that Ernest 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:33.680 had acted as sort of this liaison between the British 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:37.119 spies in Rockefeller Center and you know, the brain trust 0:23:37.280 --> 0:23:41.800 with FDR, and then there's Churchill. How does that exactly work? 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:44.080 I hear that. You know, Ernest can do some pretty 0:23:44.119 --> 0:23:47.360 amazing things, as you said, like an influencer and has 0:23:47.400 --> 0:23:49.760 all of these great ideas, particularly with spinning the media 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:52.879 and the public. But what were his actual sort of 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:53.800 job duties. 0:23:54.320 --> 0:23:57.639 Well, to some extent, you know, it's funny because he'd 0:23:57.680 --> 0:24:01.560 definitely liked to keep it somewhat so that he couldn't 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:05.200 necessarily be pinned down with In fact, at one point 0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:09.160 he decided not to accept a paycheck with the Office 0:24:09.200 --> 0:24:12.240 of Strategic Services, just so that he would be free 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:14.760 to do what be on his own, to some extent 0:24:14.800 --> 0:24:17.840 that he was almost like a free agent. Specifically, he 0:24:18.040 --> 0:24:21.960 started by working with the British at Rockefeller Center. It 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:24.600 was there that, for instance, that he met two very 0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:29.200 important people in his life. Subsequently, Ian Fleming, who created 0:24:29.320 --> 0:24:32.760 James Bond, who was also a British spy there, and 0:24:32.800 --> 0:24:36.080 he met a Canadian spy there by the name of 0:24:36.240 --> 0:24:39.960 Margaret Watson, who eventually becomes Cuneo's wife. There's kind of 0:24:40.000 --> 0:24:42.280 a romance there, and that was also one of the 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:44.760