Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: One of the Nazi spies is hit by a car.
Speaker 2: The other spy walking with him, instead of attending to
Speaker 2: his colleague, picks up the statue of papers and he
Speaker 2: runs off.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. I love a good spy story.
Speaker 1: We've talked about spies embedded with the American government. We've
Speaker 1: discussed librarians and academics researching in the basement of the
Speaker 1: Library of Congress during World War Two, and now we're
Speaker 1: talking with Thomas Mayer about a very unlikely spy. A
Speaker 1: former football player turned spy for Winston Churchill. It's all
Speaker 1: in Mayer's book The Invisible Spy. With this story, what
Speaker 1: are the parallels do you think of what we're seeing today,
Speaker 1: not even necessarily in the United States, but around the world.
Speaker 1: You know, editors will want to know how does this
Speaker 1: book resonate with readers today. What do you say?
Speaker 2: I think this book is ripped right out of the
Speaker 2: headlines of today. We're talking about the impact and the
Speaker 2: importance of espionage, how it plays out. A big part
Speaker 2: of the book is also about the propaganda campaign that
Speaker 2: the British at Rockefeller Center were basically doing behind the
Speaker 2: scenes in order to get America into the war. That
Speaker 2: was the big hope of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. You know,
Speaker 2: at that time, in nineteen forty, Churchill had just become
Speaker 2: Prime Minister. He realized that it was very important for
Speaker 2: America to get in because at that time London was
Speaker 2: being bombed, people were living in the subways. It was
Speaker 2: a matter of life and death for the British, and
Speaker 2: it was essential in Churchill's eyes that America entered the war,
Speaker 2: and so at Rockefeller Center was set up a secret
Speaker 2: headquarters up on the thirty sixth floor of Rockefeller Center
Speaker 2: where a whole group of British spies, some Canadians and British.
Speaker 2: They ran a number of different things, but one of
Speaker 2: the major things was a propaganda arm meant to influence
Speaker 2: American media. And Ernest Cuneo, who's the subject of my book,
Speaker 2: The Invisible Spy. Ernest Cuneo was wearing several different hats,
Speaker 2: but you could say he was not only the first
Speaker 2: spy American spy of World War One, but he was also,
Speaker 2: by today's standards, a massive media influencer. This is really
Speaker 2: kind of a walk into the deep state. Today. We
Speaker 2: talk about deep state and some of it is just
Speaker 2: rhetorical nonsense, but there are people who do make things
Speaker 2: happen in the government, and people who are like Ernest Cuneo,
Speaker 2: who are familiar with a number of different agencies and
Speaker 2: they're the ones who make it happen. And even though
Speaker 2: Ernest Couneo wanted to remain anonymous, that was all part
Speaker 2: of his job description, if you will. He was very
Speaker 2: influential with a number of different agencies, including the first
Speaker 2: spy agency of the United Slate States.
Speaker 1: I mean, this sounds like an incredible story. We have
Speaker 1: spoken to a couple of different authors who have talked
Speaker 1: about spies, one in particular, who talked about World War
Speaker 1: two spies who were located in Europe and were sending
Speaker 1: back information to spies and the basement of the Library
Speaker 1: of Congress, And that is also a unlikely spy story.
Speaker 1: About archivists and librarians and researchers and basically academic geeks
Speaker 1: you know, who have done all this, you, I feel like,
Speaker 1: almost have the opposite kind of unlikely spy. So why
Speaker 1: don't we get started with you know, Ernest and what
Speaker 1: can you tell me about him, maybe from either childhood
Speaker 1: or when he was younger that will give us some
Speaker 1: context about how he ended up doing what he did.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm really intrigued with Ernest Kuneil because he went
Speaker 2: to Columbia and I went to Columbia journalism school, and
Speaker 2: that kind of caught my eye. But he was an
Speaker 2: Italian American kid who grew up in the New York area,
Speaker 2: in the suburbs of New Jersey, and he played football
Speaker 2: at Columbia when Columbia actually did have a good football team,
Speaker 2: and he went into the NFL and he was playing
Speaker 2: as an alignment in the NFL in the very early
Speaker 2: days of the league. He actually would play for those
Speaker 2: people who played football familiar with football. He played all
Speaker 2: sixty minutes. He would play offensive lineman and then he
Speaker 2: would play defensive lineman, and so he played for a
Speaker 2: couple of years. The name of the team that he
Speaker 2: played for was the Brooklyn Dodgers, not the baseball team,
Speaker 2: the famous baseball team, but there was actually an NFL
Speaker 2: franchise back in the early thirties by the name of
Speaker 2: Brooklyn Dodgers, and he played for that. And it's the
Speaker 2: same time he was going to law school. He got
Speaker 2: a law degree. He was working for a time period
Speaker 2: for the New York Daily News on the night shift,
Speaker 2: so at times he was a reporter. So he was
Speaker 2: a really bright guy. He had worked eventually with Walter Winchell,
Speaker 2: who was probably, without that the most famous media figure
Speaker 2: in America. He was he had a column that appeared
Speaker 2: literally in hundreds of newspapers around the country. But he
Speaker 2: also had a Sunday night radio broadcast, and that broadcast
Speaker 2: was heard by millions of Americans. This is before television,
Speaker 2: so on Sunday nights, you tune in and listened to
Speaker 2: Walter Winchell. If you've ever heard Winchell's voice, it was
Speaker 2: almost like a machine gun approach, or was very He
Speaker 2: actually did the narration for a show called The Untouchables
Speaker 2: for those people that may have that type of memory
Speaker 2: of an old TV show, The Untouchables. But Coonio was
Speaker 2: his lawyer h and also Coonia was a lawyer for
Speaker 2: another well known media figure named Drew Pearson. And so
Speaker 2: to me, Ernest Cooneo was fascinating because on one level,
Speaker 2: he wanted to be anonymous, and he felt that that
Speaker 2: was a key to his success. And he learned even
Speaker 2: though he started out wanting seeking fame as a football player,
Speaker 2: he really realized over time that in the world of politics,
Speaker 2: in the world of the media, and also particularly in
Speaker 2: the world of espionage, that it's really important to behind
Speaker 2: the scenes, to become invisible. And that's what Ernest Cuneo became.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the reasons why I was fascinated
Speaker 2: with this book. The other thing is the life and
Speaker 2: times of Ernest Cuneo. He's directly involved in a number
Speaker 2: of different very prominent spy cases from the beginning of
Speaker 2: World War two, even before America gets involved, from about
Speaker 2: nineteen forty all the way through the Cold War and
Speaker 2: all the way to the jfk assassination. That's the extent
Speaker 2: of my book. And so his life and times involves
Speaker 2: things where Ernest directly is involved or because he's working
Speaker 2: with agencies that they are involved in a number of
Speaker 2: spy cases that I play out in this book. So
Speaker 2: for me, it was an opportunity to kind of talk
Speaker 2: about the whole growth of American espionage and that's a
Speaker 2: remarkable story in and of itself.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the transition that he makes from
Speaker 1: NFL football player and you know, a law student, lawyer,
Speaker 1: and reporter for a newspaper, all of these different things
Speaker 1: to how you get from there to the thirty sixth
Speaker 1: floor of Rockefeller Center. What year are we in and
Speaker 1: put me into the context of where we are in America,
Speaker 1: like socioeconomic and everything, and then looking towards what's about
Speaker 1: to happen with World War two.
Speaker 2: This is the nineteen thirties, so America is suffering through
Speaker 2: the depression. Ernest Cuneo is a hard working kid. He's
Speaker 2: been able through a football scholarship to go to Columbia,
Speaker 2: but he gets a job eventually working for then Congressman
Speaker 2: Fiarello LaGuardia, who eventually becomes the very famous not the
Speaker 2: airport for the actual mayor for whom the airport is
Speaker 2: named here in New York. And Fiarella LaGuardia was a
Speaker 2: mentor for Ernest Cuneo, and that was a really important
Speaker 2: thing because he was introduced to a number of different
Speaker 2: essentially New York liberals, some of whom had connections with
Speaker 2: Columbia that he knew. But they were called the brain
Speaker 2: trust of President Franklin Roosevelt. And so when Roosevelt was
Speaker 2: elected in nineteen thirty three, eventually, by the mid thirties,
Speaker 2: Cuneo gets a job working he's a private attorney, but
Speaker 2: he's working with Walter Winchel, but he's also working for
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party, the National He's the Associate council for
Speaker 2: the National Democratic Party. He's also what is called an
Speaker 2: advance man, an advance man for the president and for
Speaker 2: other major Democratic candidates. An advance man is that that's
Speaker 2: a term of art in political campaigns. They are the
Speaker 2: people that go out and scout out locations and they
Speaker 2: set up everything. They make sure that the high school
Speaker 2: band is playing when the president arrives and all those
Speaker 2: type of things. But also because Ernest was working with
Speaker 2: Walter Winchell, he really impressed upon them the importance of
Speaker 2: being able to essentially manipulate the media, to work with
Speaker 2: the media, to cultivate them, to have sources. And he
Speaker 2: was a great source for Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson
Speaker 2: and the people that he worked with, both at the
Speaker 2: White House, eventually with the British spies at Rockefeller Center.
Speaker 2: They recognize that about Ernest. So his power was in
Speaker 2: his anonymity, if you will. It was. His power was
Speaker 2: the ability to get things done, to plant stories, and
Speaker 2: my book is replete with examples of that.
Speaker 1: I want to take a little bit of a side
Speaker 1: because I'm not sure how many people would know this,
Speaker 1: but when we talk about the Democratic Party FDR, he's
Speaker 1: elected in three to this Democratic Party, the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: has changed dramatically clearly from nineteen thirty three on. I mean,
Speaker 1: my first sort of history lesson with the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: was Boss Tweed. When this was happening. FDR knew, you know,
Speaker 1: on the horizon that word War two was coming or
Speaker 1: what was sort of the advance, noticed that things were
Speaker 1: going downhill where he starts thinking, and the brain trust
Speaker 1: starts thinking, we need a plan because maybe we didn't
Speaker 1: have a plan with World War One. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Basically, America has a long history of isolationist views. The
Speaker 2: view is that we have this big ocean, both in
Speaker 2: the Atlantic and the Pacific that kind of keeps us
Speaker 2: from the affairs. You know, in the thirties, it was
Speaker 2: only about ten fifteen years past World War One, where
Speaker 2: there were a number of young Americans who got killed
Speaker 2: in that war, so people were not looking necessarily to
Speaker 2: get involved. And yet in Europe particularly, but the rise
Speaker 2: of Hitler, the fact that Hitler marched through all of
Speaker 2: these countries, Frans Poll and all of these places. By
Speaker 2: the late thirties, it was pretty clear that this was
Speaker 2: a very serious situation that had to be dealt with.
Speaker 2: Roosevelt recognized that, and yet he was also saying in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty, when he ran for a third term, Roosevelt
Speaker 2: promised at the Boston Garden, it was his last appearance
Speaker 2: of that campaign. He said, I promise I wound send
Speaker 2: your sons and daughters to to war.
Speaker 1: That was a good impression, thank you.
Speaker 2: So that's October of forty. But already Ernest Couneil was
Speaker 2: at war, he was already working with the British spies
Speaker 2: at Rockefeller Center. So Roosevelt, who was a masterful politician,
Speaker 2: he was able to play three dimensional chess, as they say,
Speaker 2: what he was saying publicly was different than what he
Speaker 2: was the actions that he knew was necessary because war
Speaker 2: was coming in some manner of form, and of course
Speaker 2: did with the attack at Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 1: Did we have many American spies during World War One
Speaker 1: or any located in the United States or British spies.
Speaker 2: No, you know, it's part of this whole isolationist view
Speaker 2: of America. This history of isolationist view also has to
Speaker 2: do kind of with a disparagement of espionage, which is crazy.
Speaker 2: You know, the Germans, the Russians certainly believed in espionage.
Speaker 2: Winston Churchill from those earliest days was involved with spying
Speaker 2: and such, so they all understood the importance. The Nazis
Speaker 2: certainly understand they had spies here in the United States.
Speaker 2: But even during the Roosevelts administration, there was a Secretary
Speaker 2: of State Henry Stimpson who famously said that gentlemen do
Speaker 2: not read the mail of other gentlemen, which was really
Speaker 2: interesting for a variety of reasons, but it was crazy.
Speaker 2: You need intelligence. If you are a superpower of big power,
Speaker 2: or any nation of any size should be having some
Speaker 2: level of intelligence gathering. That doesn't mean necessarily a covert
Speaker 2: James Bond type of spy, but literally the gathering of intelligence,
Speaker 2: the developing of sources. That was really the first step,
Speaker 2: and that was impressed upon President Roosevelt, and he allowed
Speaker 2: Ernest Cuneo to deal directly with the British spies, and
Speaker 2: that kind of, in a way, starts the whole ball
Speaker 2: rolling of modern American espionage. You know, it gets more
Speaker 2: and more involved as the story goes on, but essentially
Speaker 2: when Churchill decides to put those spies in Rockefeller Center,
Speaker 2: up on the thirty sixth floor, right across the street
Speaker 2: from Saint Patrick's Cathedral, with all these smart alec New
Speaker 2: Yorkers walking past, thinking, oh, we know everything that's going on.
Speaker 2: I'm a smarter you know, I'm a smarty pant New Yorker,
Speaker 2: and they're all oblivious to the fact that up on
Speaker 2: the thirty sixth floor is this big foreign spy operation.
Speaker 2: And that operation was something that eventually Roosevelt realizes that
Speaker 2: we had to follow, we had to model our own
Speaker 2: espionage agency, and that began. That be really begins with
Speaker 2: Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 1: Well, before we get to Pearl Harbor, take Earnest out
Speaker 1: of it for a moment. The British spies, who are
Speaker 1: you know, in Rockefeller Center, which is I guess operating
Speaker 1: in plain sight? That's a smart thing to do. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: much like working in the basement of the Library of Congress.
Speaker 1: When you look at these spies in the simplest of
Speaker 1: simple terms, what are they doing that is considered you know,
Speaker 1: gathering intelligence? Are they receiving information from their spies in Europe?
Speaker 1: Or what's the purpose of that group in Rockefeller Center.
Speaker 2: Well, they're doing a couple of things. Initially, they get
Speaker 2: permission to keep the supply lines open. Spare in mind,
Speaker 2: Britain's at war is really important to have those supply
Speaker 2: lines coming from America. So that was the way that
Speaker 2: they got permission to set up this operation. But very
Speaker 2: quickly it expanded into other things. It expanded into keeping
Speaker 2: an eye on all the Nazi spies in the United States.
Speaker 2: And there were not only some Nazi spies in particularly
Speaker 2: in the New York area, but there was also a
Speaker 2: number of German born immigrants who were sympathetic to Germany
Speaker 2: in fact, and this isolationist group. There was a group
Speaker 2: called America First and they were very much pro German
Speaker 2: or certainly not anti German, and they had a big
Speaker 2: rally and a kind of a quasi Nazi rally at
Speaker 2: Madison Square Garden in nineteen thirty nine. About twenty thousand
Speaker 2: people were at Madison Square Garden. It was like the
Speaker 2: Nickgame here and it was something that was really amazing,
Speaker 2: but it was indicative of just how America felt at
Speaker 2: that time. There was not only isolations, but there was
Speaker 2: a number of peopeople who were for the Germans. So
Speaker 2: the British were keeping an eye on the Nazi spies there,
Speaker 2: but they also expanded it because the number one thing
Speaker 2: that Churchill wanted out of the spy operation was to
Speaker 2: convince America to get into the war, because without America's
Speaker 2: help they were going to everything was going to sink.
Speaker 2: There was very much feared in London that the Nazis
Speaker 2: were about to invade Great Britain and everything would be
Speaker 2: over by that point, and so they set up a
Speaker 2: propaganda arm at Rockefeller Center, and that was one of
Speaker 2: the biggest things that Ernest Cutio was involved with. He
Speaker 2: was involved with essentially taking various different aspects of the
Speaker 2: British views of everything from polling. At one point they
Speaker 2: had an astrologer who they imported from London and Ernest
Speaker 2: set up a press conference to have this astrologer who
Speaker 2: had been a vaudevillian over in England. But he was
Speaker 2: a phony astrologer, but he predicted the death of Hitler
Speaker 2: because they knew that Hitler followed the British believed that
Speaker 2: he was making military decisions. Hitler is making military decisions
Speaker 2: based upon the stars, based upon this astrological chart, and
Speaker 2: so they had this astrologer come over and it was
Speaker 2: Couneo who set up a press conference. This astrologer said
Speaker 2: Hitler's going to die, and that got headlines all around
Speaker 2: the world. So there were a lot of things like that.
Speaker 2: One last thing is that the British also got involved
Speaker 2: in elections, which is another factor that's very much we
Speaker 2: are concerned about. We hear about Russian interference, foreign interference
Speaker 2: with our elections, and indeed the British did get involved
Speaker 2: in the nineteen forty congressional campaigns. They went after a
Speaker 2: number of different isolationists candidates, both of whom were Republican
Speaker 2: and some Democrats. There was a Democrat in the area
Speaker 2: where Roosevelt was from, in the Poughkeepsie, New York area,
Speaker 2: they went after him, and by that they actually went
Speaker 2: to the scene. They actually helped with some rallies. But
Speaker 2: they also got involved in polling and surveying, and there
Speaker 2: was like a phony poll, a survey that the British
Speaker 2: set up that Cunio was very actively involved. I had
Speaker 2: all these documents from Cuneo's papers that explain this. But
Speaker 2: they did a survey in the nineteen forty Democratic and
Speaker 2: Republican national conventions, a survey of how many delegates favored
Speaker 2: intervention into the war. Now, most of those people that
Speaker 2: were attending congresspeople and such, their letters were saying, don't
Speaker 2: send my kids a war. We don't want to, we
Speaker 2: don't want to get involved in a foreign war. And
Speaker 2: yet the survey magically said that most delegates to both conventions,
Speaker 2: Republican Democrats, the favored getting involved in the war. And
Speaker 2: that serve that phony survey was reported by a number
Speaker 2: of different major newspapers, the New York Times, the Herald
Speaker 2: Tribune and such, and it's all laid out in my
Speaker 2: in my book. I have the documents that were part
Speaker 2: of that. They're up at the FDR library. Kunio's papers
Speaker 2: are there and they described a lot that you can
Speaker 2: see from the correspondence. How you know exactly what they did.
Speaker 1: This might be another slight deviation from what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But I have a question, because I've researched some about
Speaker 1: nativism in the eighteen hundreds, what do you think the
Speaker 1: difference was between somebody who is in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: or forties who I mean, I think FDR is looking
Speaker 1: at as the difference between somebody who is an isolationist
Speaker 1: and somebody who is a nativist in the United States.
Speaker 1: Is there a large difference between the two in the
Speaker 1: thirties or forties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there was a difference, although they did
Speaker 2: overlap certainly. But the Nativists, the No Nothing Party, they
Speaker 2: were fundamentally anti immigrant. You know, I've done books. I
Speaker 2: did a book about twenty five years ago about the
Speaker 2: Kennedys about their Irish Catholic immigrant experience and how it
Speaker 2: affected them. Public lives, and that's a big part of
Speaker 2: that story. So basically that native is was anti immigrant.
Speaker 2: That's fundamentally what that was about. The isolationists was to
Speaker 2: some extent had its roots in George Washington's farewell address
Speaker 2: that he warned about foreign entanglements, and there was a view.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was a conservative view or whatever,
Speaker 2: because I think a lot of liberals share this view
Speaker 2: as well, that why are we getting involved in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: for instance, or why are we getting involved in Iraq? Why?
Speaker 2: And we certainly see that these days now. Of course
Speaker 2: that comes back to bite us in the proverbial rear ends,
Speaker 2: and that certainly we saw that with Hitler that we
Speaker 2: just could not Hitler was not going to go away,
Speaker 2: and Roosevelt knew that, but he what he had to do,
Speaker 2: like any good politicianist kind of lead the populace to
Speaker 2: recognizing the reality. And so there was a distinction between
Speaker 2: the name of this view and this isolationist view.
Speaker 1: I mean, you bring up so many things for me
Speaker 1: I researched. I once wanted to do a book on
Speaker 1: Boss Tweed, who is you know, of course, a very
Speaker 1: corrupt politician, Damminy Hall in the late eighteen hundreds, but
Speaker 1: also on Thomas nast Sure, the cartoonist who was a
Speaker 1: just incredible nativist, and some of his you know, cartoons
Speaker 1: and sketch's political cartoons were of course very anti Irish. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I think we started talking about Pearl Harbor. You said,
Speaker 1: that's where something's changed. Was that maybe the view shifting
Speaker 1: of the public of whether we should be involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the blatancy of that attack, kind of
Speaker 2: nine to eleven like for today's audience. It was a
Speaker 2: shocking event. And so that was the turning point. That's
Speaker 2: where we immediately entered the war. And in fact, shortly thereafter,
Speaker 2: Churchill comes over to the United States. He spends Christmas,
Speaker 2: the Christmas holidays that year, this is in nineteen forty
Speaker 2: one with FDR, and they literally map out their plans
Speaker 2: for the how to prosecute the war in Europe. And
Speaker 2: so this was when Churchill heard about Pearl Harbor. He
Speaker 2: said to his son Randolph, essentially his prayers had been answered.
Speaker 2: Now the United States would get involved, and now we
Speaker 2: would be saved because Britain had been at warf by
Speaker 2: that point for about two and a half years.
Speaker 1: Now, you said, I think in the book that Ernest
Speaker 1: had acted as sort of this liaison between the British
Speaker 1: spies in Rockefeller Center and you know, the brain trust
Speaker 1: with FDR, and then there's Churchill. How does that exactly work?
Speaker 1: I hear that. You know, Ernest can do some pretty
Speaker 1: amazing things, as you said, like an influencer and has
Speaker 1: all of these great ideas, particularly with spinning the media
Speaker 1: and the public. But what were his actual sort of
Speaker 1: job duties.
Speaker 2: Well, to some extent, you know, it's funny because he'd
Speaker 2: definitely liked to keep it somewhat so that he couldn't
Speaker 2: necessarily be pinned down with In fact, at one point
Speaker 2: he decided not to accept a paycheck with the Office
Speaker 2: of Strategic Services, just so that he would be free
Speaker 2: to do what be on his own, to some extent
Speaker 2: that he was almost like a free agent. Specifically, he
Speaker 2: started by working with the British at Rockefeller Center. It
Speaker 2: was there that, for instance, that he met two very
Speaker 2: important people in his life. Subsequently, Ian Fleming, who created
Speaker 2: James Bond, who was also a British spy there, and
Speaker 2: he met a Canadian spy there by the name of
Speaker 2: Margaret Watson, who eventually becomes Cuneo's wife. There's kind of
Speaker 2: a romance there, and that was also one of the
Speaker 2: things that kind of like pulled me as a writer
Speaker 2: to the book, this kind of romance at Rockefeller Center.
Speaker 2: I actually I actually proposed to my wife at Rockefeller Center.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so it kind of grabbed my eye there.
Speaker 2: But his job was to deal at first with the Brits,
Speaker 2: and then as things moved along, he was planting stories.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Brits were a great source of stories
Speaker 2: for Walter Winchell, his boss. The main source of money
Speaker 2: for Ernest Cooney. It was not so much what he
Speaker 2: was getting from the government, but what he was getting
Speaker 2: as a fees, legal fees. He was a very good
Speaker 2: libel lawyer, for instance, and working for Walter Winchell paid
Speaker 2: him a lot of money in those days. And then
Speaker 2: also so did Drew Pearson. Pearson had been a if
Speaker 2: you're familiar with Jack Anderson, it's the same column. It's
Speaker 2: called the Washington Merry Go Round and it was a
Speaker 2: very famous investigative before Woodward and Bernstein. This was the
Speaker 2: column where people would look for the dirt in Washington.
Speaker 2: And it was Drew Pearson who started Drew Pearson as
Speaker 2: a young man was a Columbia teacher and one of
Speaker 2: his students was Ernest Cuneo. So they were like these
Speaker 2: very interesting personal connections that Cuneo had. But as time
Speaker 2: went on, Cuneo's portfit just got wider and wider, so
Speaker 2: that he is working with the Brits, he's working with
Speaker 2: the various different media people, but also he's working with
Speaker 2: the FBI because he knows and has actually gone out
Speaker 2: with Winchell and others. With the FBI head Jaya good Hoover.
Speaker 2: They would go to a place called the Store Club
Speaker 2: where Winchall had his own table there and it was
Speaker 2: very famous. All these Broadway and movie people were there,
Speaker 2: so he knew Hoover. Hoover became famous because of Winchell
Speaker 2: and Hoover running after gangsters, so he knew Hoover. You know,
Speaker 2: Cuneo knew Hoover, he knew The National Security Advisor from
Speaker 2: Roosevelt was a guy named Adolph Burle who was his
Speaker 2: title was Assistant Secretary of State, but he essentially was
Speaker 2: the national what we call now the National Security Advisor.
Speaker 2: And Burl had been Punio's teacher at Columbia, So you know,
Speaker 2: it was kind of an interesting world that he knew.
Speaker 2: He knew that people in the Justice Department, he knew
Speaker 2: a couple of Supreme Court in Washington. There was a
Speaker 2: building it was called the Armatage and it's where a
Speaker 2: number of top people with power had They had little
Speaker 2: apartments there when they were in Washington, and Cuneo had
Speaker 2: enough funds that he also had an apartment there. So
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of these things are done over drinks,
Speaker 2: over lunch. So that's how more and more Cuneo's portfolio expanded.
Speaker 1: Well, how tight of an operation is this? I mean,
Speaker 1: you've mentioned quite a few people who are involved, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure is normal. But you know, you've got some
Speaker 1: newspaper folks, and you know that it seems wide ranging,
Speaker 1: including a assuming attractive female Canadians. Buy was this considered
Speaker 1: a really good safe operation or you know, was this
Speaker 1: sort of not as tightly organized as it could have been.
Speaker 2: No, it's definitely dangerous. In fact, Margaret Watson was a
Speaker 2: young woman late twenties who was one of many women
Speaker 2: from the Winnipeg area in Canada who were recruited to
Speaker 2: work at Rockefeller Center by Churchill's top spy his name
Speaker 2: was William quote unquote Intrepid. That was kind of his
Speaker 2: code name, William Intrepid Stevenson, and Stevenson had been a
Speaker 2: war hero. He was trusted by Churchill. He recruited a
Speaker 2: number of young women from Canada to work there. In
Speaker 2: the case of Margaret Watson, she had this photographic memory.
Speaker 2: According to both I interviewed both Cuneo's children. They were
Speaker 2: adults when I interviewed them. She had a photographic memory.
Speaker 2: There were other women who, did you know, some very
Speaker 2: functionary type of job, secretary jobs and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But there were others who were real spies out there
Speaker 2: in the field spies. One of the more interesting characters
Speaker 2: was a woman whose code name was Cynthia Amy Pack
Speaker 2: was her real name, and she was a woman who
Speaker 2: basically used her her sexual attractiveness to compromise foreign dignitaries
Speaker 2: in Washington. And there's an older woman who worked out
Speaker 2: a Rockefeller Center for the Churchill spies who was her
Speaker 2: handler as they call it. But Cynthia, and I tell
Speaker 2: some of the stories of Cynthia in my book The
Speaker 2: Invisible Spy. But she is a fascinating character, needless to say,
Speaker 2: using her sexual wiles to get secrets out of foreign
Speaker 2: dignitaries and such. Conversely, there was actually some male spies
Speaker 2: that had a similar talent as well. One of them
Speaker 2: is Raul Dahl, the children's book author, who was a
Speaker 2: British spy. Oh I didn't know that, yes, And he
Speaker 2: was very attractive to women for that magical reason that
Speaker 2: that kis myth that happens between people, and he had
Speaker 2: a number of affairs that were aimed at helping elicit
Speaker 2: information from key people, one of whom was a congresswoman
Speaker 2: named Claire booth Loose that raw Dahl had an affair with.
Speaker 2: Claire booth Loose was married to Henry Loose, who owned
Speaker 2: Time magazine and Life magazine, and she was very prominent,
Speaker 2: as was her husband. But she had an affair with
Speaker 2: Raul Dall so much so and they were so active
Speaker 2: that a certain point Raudall complained to the British spies
Speaker 2: superiors saying I'm exhausted, I can't do this anymore. And
Speaker 2: he won it off. And as the story goes, the
Speaker 2: spymaster in charge of Doll said, well, did you ever
Speaker 2: see that movie The Henry the Eighth where he says
Speaker 2: the things I must do for England. Well, that's exactly
Speaker 2: your position, the things you must do for England. So
Speaker 2: you know, it was just an interesting time period. Of
Speaker 2: all these different characters. The female spies at Rockefeller Center
Speaker 2: were almost as interesting or just as interesting as the
Speaker 2: male spy. And I guess the one that was most
Speaker 2: important to Ernest Cuneo was Ian Fleming because they become
Speaker 2: lifelong friends. With the start of the war.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you had said with Pearl Harbor, the public
Speaker 1: sentiment starts to change towards the United States getting involved, right.
Speaker 2: Majorly, like nine to eleven, you know, the way it
Speaker 2: just catapults things.
Speaker 1: But Ernest had figured out some ways to sort of
Speaker 1: boost this, you know, kind of tricking around with Poles
Speaker 1: to say, you know that the congressional sentiment is more
Speaker 1: leaning towards getting involved, right and all of this, when
Speaker 1: do things heat up for them? I mean more than
Speaker 1: is there anything that happens that's more than sort of
Speaker 1: the you know, these placing of these stories things that
Speaker 1: feel like they're really making a huge shift or is
Speaker 1: it a tiny lots of little amounts of shifts that
Speaker 1: just end up having a big influence.
Speaker 2: There's really kind of like two periods. There's a period
Speaker 2: from the summer nineteen forty when Churchill comes to power
Speaker 2: and they set up things at Rockefeller Center, and then
Speaker 2: bear in mind it's almost so that's in the summer
Speaker 2: of forty about a year and a half almost until
Speaker 2: Pearl Harbor happens in December of nineteen forty one. So
Speaker 2: that's part of things. The British spies were very active.
Speaker 2: In fact, I begin my book with a circumstance where
Speaker 2: two Nazi spies are walking through Times Square, the heart
Speaker 2: of Manhattan in New York City, and with them is
Speaker 2: a satchel containing papers planning how they're going to blow
Speaker 2: up Manhattan in the event that America finally gets into
Speaker 2: the war. And so they're walking and one of the
Speaker 2: Nazi spies is hit by a car. What happens is
Speaker 2: the other spy walking with him, instead of attending to
Speaker 2: his colleague and these fatal injuries that he had, he's
Speaker 2: literally bleeding out is that ran over his head and such. Instead,
Speaker 2: he picks up the satchel of papers and he runs
Speaker 2: off good spy. So the cops show up at the scene,
Speaker 2: right the New York City cops and the dead man
Speaker 2: his papers say that he's a Spaniard and he's got
Speaker 2: these phony Spanish papers. So the cops check. The New
Speaker 2: York City cops check with the Spanish consulate and they say, no,
Speaker 2: there's no record of this guy. We don't know who
Speaker 2: this guy is. And so the cops go to the
Speaker 2: FBI Jague Hoover. Hoover doesn't know who it is. But
Speaker 2: eventually what happens is they are in contact with the
Speaker 2: British spies at Rockefeller Center and they know who this
Speaker 2: sky is and how do they know how this guy is. Well,
Speaker 2: one of the operations that they have is that in Bermuda,
Speaker 2: at the Princess Hotel in Hamilton in the basement. It's
Speaker 2: a very fancy hotel, but they had an operation where
Speaker 2: the mail that were being sent from America to Europe
Speaker 2: would go through Bermuda. Bear in mind, you know, they
Speaker 2: would fly it over and such, but they would go
Speaker 2: through the mail and they were able to and it
Speaker 2: was tons of people involved in this operation, but they
Speaker 2: were able to spot a letter by the guy who
Speaker 2: ran away from the scene. The other Nazi spy who survived,
Speaker 2: the one with the satchel. He wrote back to his
Speaker 2: superiors in Germany, but in a letter, and it detailed
Speaker 2: what happened, and so they were eventually able to find
Speaker 2: out where that Nazi spy was living. They traced the
Speaker 2: addresses and such, and so the FBI sets up this
Speaker 2: manhunt on this guy and for a while they just
Speaker 2: watch him, and he has all these other different spies
Speaker 2: that are related. So eventually the FBI comes up with
Speaker 2: I think they indicted something like fifteen people eventually as
Speaker 2: part of that spy ring. And so the Brits were
Speaker 2: way more advanced than either the FBI or the New
Speaker 2: York City Police at that time period. I start my
Speaker 2: book with that case because it also illustrates just how
Speaker 2: clueless we were about espionage at the beginning of World
Speaker 2: War Two and just how advanced the British war.
Speaker 1: Now, how does Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond,
Speaker 1: come into all of this, because I know they become
Speaker 1: very good friends, he and Ernest, and also what Ernest
Speaker 1: does inspires Fleming, you know for the James Bond series.
Speaker 1: So does this come in the middle of World War two?
Speaker 2: Is that what happened in the beginning actually before Pearl Harbor? Okay,
Speaker 2: So Ian Fleming is this very suave guy. You know,
Speaker 2: you'll see pictures of Ian Fleming with these cigarette holders,
Speaker 2: and he's a thin, very astude. He's a writer and
Speaker 2: Cutio is definitely a writer, but he's also a lawyer.
Speaker 2: But Cutio is a different that guy. He looks like
Speaker 2: a human refrigerator if you will. I mean, he's like
Speaker 2: five foot nine. He was a lineman in the NFL.
Speaker 2: So this is by nineteen forty he meets Ian Fleming,
Speaker 2: so they're very two different characters. Fleming is working for
Speaker 2: British intelligence and he's a very smart and creative guy.
Speaker 2: He's working for a very powerful admiral. Admiral Godfrey was
Speaker 2: his name, and so Fleming is involved with coming up
Speaker 2: with a number of different operations. There's a play of
Speaker 2: musical right now in Manhattan called Operation Mincemeat. It's a
Speaker 2: play the origins of Operation Minsweet, which was using a
Speaker 2: corpse to throw off the Nazis, and the corpse is
Speaker 2: found by the Nazis determine that the invasion is going
Speaker 2: to take place in one place and instead it's going
Speaker 2: to take place another place in Italy, and so that
Speaker 2: was Fleming's idea, but he was also very creative in
Speaker 2: other respects. And so he and Cuneo, even though there
Speaker 2: were very different men, ones of brit ones of American,
Speaker 2: different looking, they like to go out and party, they
Speaker 2: liked to have fun, they liked women, They like going
Speaker 2: out to nightclubs. Their scenes at the fellow who ran
Speaker 2: the Churchill Spies, his name was William Intrepid Stevenson. They
Speaker 2: would come up to his he had like this duplex
Speaker 2: in Manhattan with a big fireplace, and they'd be sharing drinks.
Speaker 2: And in Cuneo's memoirs there's some of the exchanges that
Speaker 2: he had with Fleming that I repeat in my book.
Speaker 2: But they become friends and so. And what's interesting is
Speaker 2: that after the war, you know, most people went their
Speaker 2: separate ways, they remained friends. In fact, they went into
Speaker 2: business together. They created they were involved in a newspaper
Speaker 2: syndicate company called NANA was short. It was North American
Speaker 2: Newspaper Alliance. But it was a company where they would
Speaker 2: have syndicated columnists and such. But it was also a
Speaker 2: way of keeping in contact with the intelligence world and such.
Speaker 2: So Fleming worked out of London for this company and
Speaker 2: Cutio ran it in New York. But they were Buddies.
Speaker 2: There was another friend, like a childhood friend of Ian
Speaker 2: Flemings's name was Iver Bryce, and Iver was a very
Speaker 2: wealthy man, and the three of them basically ran this
Speaker 2: company together. Eventually, somewhat on a lark. Finally Fleming he
Speaker 2: had talked for years about writing a novel, and so
Speaker 2: he finally writes the novel. It comes out, and the
Speaker 2: character's name is James Bond. It's name for an autobond expert,
Speaker 2: but in any event, he comes up and it's basically
Speaker 2: James Bond is patterned on William Stevenson, the guy who
Speaker 2: was running the Churchill Intrepid Intrepid exactly and actually there
Speaker 2: are scenes in the first James Bond novel that actually happened.
Speaker 2: They were kind of exaggerated versions of what happened at
Speaker 2: Rockefeller Center that's in Casino Royale. But then eventually, with
Speaker 2: that first James Bond novel, Fleming realizes that he needs
Speaker 2: to know more about America because he really only knows
Speaker 2: America through manhe Night Spots and such, and also with Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. But he doesn't know the rest of America.
Speaker 2: So he prevails on Coutio to go out and they
Speaker 2: go out to Chicago and they go out to Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: Cuneo has sources out in Las Vegas, the casinos, and
Speaker 2: eventually they go out to Hollywood. But some of those
Speaker 2: scenes are in James Bond books like Diamonds Are Forever.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the one where I guess Cuneo had
Speaker 2: the most impact was on Thunderball. It was a very
Speaker 2: popular novel and very popular movie with Sean Connery. The
Speaker 2: movie treatment for that was actually written by Cutio. In fact,
Speaker 2: Fletting wanted Cuneo to play the bad guy who was
Speaker 2: supposed to be a mobster, and as an Italian American,
Speaker 2: Cuneo didn't want to have anything to do with with
Speaker 2: that type of slur on the Italian people, and so
Speaker 2: of course they got other actors and such. But Fleming
Speaker 2: dedicated Thunderball the novel to Cuneo. He says, to Ernest
Speaker 2: Cuneo my muse, and he provided a lot of different ideas.
Speaker 2: I thought one of the most fun parts of my
Speaker 2: book is that trip, that cross country trip that Cuneo,
Speaker 2: the American and Ian Fleming, the creator of this British
Speaker 2: spy James Bond, just going out there and who they
Speaker 2: meet and how he learns about America.
Speaker 1: What were the things that you said were kind of
Speaker 1: exaggerated in James Bond, but that were inspired by Ernest
Speaker 1: and his work. Were there any kind of like direct
Speaker 1: correlations where you could say, oh, my gosh, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what's a good example.
Speaker 2: In Casino Royale, there was a scene that was based
Speaker 2: upon a real life circumstance in which Fleming. This is
Speaker 2: early before Pearl Harbor, but when the British are at
Speaker 2: Rockefeller Center, there were a number of other countries that
Speaker 2: had consulates in the Rockefeller Center area, including the Japanese.
Speaker 2: And one night, this is what happened in real life life,
Speaker 2: is that Stevenson decided in the middle of the night
Speaker 2: to break in to the Japanese consulate office, break into
Speaker 2: their Somehow they were able to get the codes for
Speaker 2: the safe there, and they were able to take out
Speaker 2: the code papers, the cipher papers and sets the codes,
Speaker 2: take them, go up to their offices up on the
Speaker 2: thirty sixth floor, make copies of these code papers and
Speaker 2: then put them back in the safe of the Japanese.
Speaker 2: And Flevty loved that idea. He just loved, you know,
Speaker 2: he just loved adventure and all that type of stuff,
Speaker 2: and Stevenson was the person who would do those type
Speaker 2: of things. He was he would push the envelope, as
Speaker 2: they say. So that was a real the real life experience.
Speaker 2: He took that and he exaggerated it in Casino Royale
Speaker 2: where James Bond actually assassinates a Japanese cipher expert through
Speaker 2: the window. He's up, he's up on one of the
Speaker 2: buildings Ackefeller Center, and he shoots through the window and
Speaker 2: kills this Japanese cipher expert in this envisioned version of
Speaker 2: what actually happened in real life, or it was kind
Speaker 2: of based upon real life. But Fleming, just with James Fond,
Speaker 2: he let's say, made into a more memorable violent episode.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that Ian Fleming has any I just
Speaker 1: thought he was an author. I guess I didn't know
Speaker 1: that he had some background in you know, espionage is
Speaker 1: his just briefly, what was Fleming's background before he decided
Speaker 1: to stop and do a novel, just your average British spy.
Speaker 2: No, quite the contrary. He was a writer. He saw
Speaker 2: this as a way of it's just a very interesting life.
Speaker 2: And you know, he was one of those things that
Speaker 2: in other words, getting involved. He was in naval intelligence,
Speaker 2: so he was an officer. There's pictures of Ian Fleming
Speaker 2: after the war. He has a couple of different jobs.
Speaker 2: He eventually one of the jobs is he winds up
Speaker 2: becoming the London representative for Cuneo's company that he Cunio
Speaker 2: was running in New York, this Nana company, the newspaper syndicate.
Speaker 2: But Fleming fundamentally was a writer, but he had not
Speaker 2: tried his hand with the James Bond novels, and they
Speaker 2: didn't come out until I think fifty three was the
Speaker 2: first one, and then over time they became more and
Speaker 2: more popular. The James Bond novels were particularly made popular
Speaker 2: when President Kennedy took office in nineteen sixty one, and
Speaker 2: there were interviews with people and they said, what are
Speaker 2: some of your favorite books, and he said the James
Speaker 2: Bond books. In fact, Jackie Kennedy was also a big
Speaker 2: proponent of She liked the James Bond books as well
Speaker 2: that her husband was reading. And she sent a copy
Speaker 2: of one of the James Bond books to Alan Dulles,
Speaker 2: who was then the head of the CIA, and said,
Speaker 2: you know, you should read this book. And then actually
Speaker 2: there was some pressure on the CIA to try to
Speaker 2: come up with the gadgets that you see in these
Speaker 2: James Bond movies, know, the exploding cigars, all these other
Speaker 2: different killing devices. They would see these movies in the
Speaker 2: Kennedy administration say well, well, CIA, can you think you
Speaker 2: can maybe come up with something like this? And so
Speaker 2: Leming had remarkable success. He really captured the time, and
Speaker 2: obviously it became a big franchise.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit before we kind of talk
Speaker 1: about post war stuff with Cunia. What is Ernest's relationship
Speaker 1: with Margaret Watson? Like, I know that they eventually get married.
Speaker 1: So these two spies decided to have children. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that seems like a great idea, but this
Speaker 1: must have been post spy for them. I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, you know a lot of people after
Speaker 2: World War Two, after depression, suffering through the depression, and
Speaker 2: then having five years four years of World War a
Speaker 2: lot of people dying, there were a lot of people
Speaker 2: eager to go back and go home and create families
Speaker 2: and such. Margaret Watson was a fascinating character. As I mentioned,
Speaker 2: she had a photographic memory. She was apparently involved in
Speaker 2: some of the financial aspects. And there's a story that
Speaker 2: her children, both her son and her daughter, both of
Speaker 2: them are very distinguished attorneys. In fact, the son, John Kutio,
Speaker 2: I dedicate my book to him. It's one of the
Speaker 2: people I dedicate my book The Invisible Spy to him,
Speaker 2: but he just recently died. But both of them told
Speaker 2: me a story about their mother. There was a point
Speaker 2: at which some type of Nazi spy broke into the
Speaker 2: dormitory where Watson and a number of other female spies
Speaker 2: working for that Churchill operation Rockefeller Center where they lived.
Speaker 2: It was nearby Rockefeller Center, and somehow they broke in.
Speaker 2: It's not really clear exactly why they keyed in on
Speaker 2: Margaret Watson, but the spy actually put a pillow over it.
Speaker 2: She was trying to go to sleep, and then he
Speaker 2: broke in, tried to smother her, and she broke free.
Speaker 2: She yelled for help, and they took care of the
Speaker 2: person that broke in. Clearly had a German accent, that
Speaker 2: was the one thing that was very clear, uh, And
Speaker 2: they took care of him, as they say. So that
Speaker 2: was kind of an interesting thing. The idea of this
Speaker 2: woman from like a lot of the Canadian women who
Speaker 2: were working as Churchill's spies of Rockefeller Center. You know,
Speaker 2: they had come from relatively rural areas, a relatively small
Speaker 2: populated areas, and to come to the big city that
Speaker 2: was a that was a big thing for them. With
Speaker 2: Ernest Cuneo, I think what she's what Margaret Watson saw
Speaker 2: in Earnest was and again she was. They were very
Speaker 2: different personalities, but Cooneo knew everybody, it seemed. She would
Speaker 2: go out to the nightclubs with Ernest, she would meet
Speaker 2: all these famous people like Walter Winchell. He really knew
Speaker 2: this whole new world, this fascinating world of Manhattan, and
Speaker 2: that was a big part of I think their romance.
Speaker 2: Uh there. And and so when the war ends, they
Speaker 2: decided to get married. For Ernest Cuneo, he had been
Speaker 2: married before he was on the rebound, as both his
Speaker 2: children told me, he had been married to somebody had
Speaker 2: met at Columbia and it just wasn't working out, and
Speaker 2: they divorced just before the war. But Margaret Watson was
Speaker 2: somebody that really became his lifelong partner. They formed a
Speaker 2: family together.
Speaker 1: He just died a couple of decades thirty years ago.
Speaker 2: Maybe, yeah, I'm sorry. As far as the chronology, Ernest
Speaker 2: graduated I believe like in twenty eight twenty nine somewhere
Speaker 2: in that ballpark, and his wife Zilda was her name.
Speaker 2: They were married for about eight years, so they get
Speaker 2: divorced in like thirty eight thirty nine, somewhere in that ballpark.
Speaker 2: There was apparently another woman that I mentioned briefly in
Speaker 2: the book. I couldn't get any more details about that,
Speaker 2: but there apparently was another woman. But fundamentally it just
Speaker 2: didn't work out. Cunea was working for the president. When
Speaker 2: you work for somebody like that, you're working all the time,
Speaker 2: you're away from the home. I don't know what other
Speaker 2: private problems that were between it, but they divorced, and
Speaker 2: so by the time that Ernest is meeting Margaret Watson,
Speaker 2: that would have been probably sometime in either late forty
Speaker 2: or more likely or sometime in nineteen forty one. What
Speaker 2: was interesting to me was Stevenson, who was the top
Speaker 2: spy for Churchill at Rockefeller Center. He had brought all
Speaker 2: these young women into the spy operation there, and so
Speaker 2: they were very careful about telling women not to get
Speaker 2: involved and not to disclose information about what was going on,
Speaker 2: and be very wary of who they were talking to,
Speaker 2: because you would never know if they were somehow going
Speaker 2: to be compromised by some other foreign agent or whatever.
Speaker 2: In the case of Margaret Watson, I interviewed both her
Speaker 2: children and I asked, was Stevenson kind of encouraging this
Speaker 2: relationship between Watson, Margaret and Ernie that in other words,
Speaker 2: it was really important for the Churchill Spies to have
Speaker 2: Ernest Cuneo as their friend, working on their behalf, talking
Speaker 2: to the White House on all these different things. He
Speaker 2: was making all these things happen for him. He was
Speaker 2: the go between between the British and the White House,
Speaker 2: and so to have a young woman who Ernest clearly likes.
Speaker 2: Did Stephenson kind of push this on? Did he encourage
Speaker 2: this relationship with beyond just romance? Was it somehow manipulating
Speaker 2: these two young people? And it's interesting because they weren't
Speaker 2: really sure. They didn't think so, But the daughter of
Speaker 2: Ernest Cuneo said, well, I know for a fact though
Speaker 2: my mother would not have done anything without the okay
Speaker 2: of Stevenson. So I think it was something that was
Speaker 2: just a fortuitous thing that happened, that this romance with
Speaker 2: this vital American connection Ernest Cuneo was taking place.
Speaker 1: Was helpful, apparently very helpful. Okay, what is post war
Speaker 1: like for them? Until you know they both die? We
Speaker 1: have these two kids, you know, everybody's coming home. Is
Speaker 1: this the end of spying? Do they go? Does he
Speaker 1: go back to lawyering? What happens?
Speaker 2: Well, he did go back to lawyering. He made a
Speaker 2: bundle working for Winchell and for Drew Pearson in the
Speaker 2: media as a libel lawyer and legal counsel, an advisor
Speaker 2: just in general made a lot of money. Winchell was
Speaker 2: the highest pay by far, the highest paid person in
Speaker 2: the media. But also he set up this company that
Speaker 2: he's working with, Ian Fleming. It was a way for
Speaker 2: getting together. In fact, Fleming and Iver Bryce. They would
Speaker 2: go up to a place that Iver Bryce had up
Speaker 2: in upstate New York and they would hang out and
Speaker 2: they had a high old time hanging out together. This
Speaker 2: is after World War Two. But Ernest never severs his
Speaker 2: ties to people like Alan Dulles. Alan Dulles was the
Speaker 2: head of the CIA, but he actually began at Rockefeller Center.
Speaker 2: He had been a lawyer. He began, and he was
Speaker 2: a very successful spy for the United States. They eventually
Speaker 2: sent him over to Switzerland, and that's where Dulles was
Speaker 2: a particularly effective spy for them. But he began at
Speaker 2: Rockefeller Center and he knew he actually was involved in
Speaker 2: an operation that Cuneo actually came up with the idea
Speaker 2: for it. So Cutio never severed those ties with Dulles,
Speaker 2: and so he would be what they call in the
Speaker 2: CIA terminology, he was an asset. He was somebody that
Speaker 2: always had his eyes and ears and whatever he saw.
Speaker 2: If he saw people that he thought might be Russian
Speaker 2: double agents and such, he would report that to Dulles,
Speaker 2: and so he kept that. One of the most extraordinary
Speaker 2: things in my book is a couple of FBI memos
Speaker 2: that had never been apparently has never been reported about before.
Speaker 2: But when John F. Kennedy is assassinated, President Kennedy is
Speaker 2: assassinated in nineteen sixty three, Alan Dulles has put on
Speaker 2: the Warren Commission. There were seven members of it, and
Speaker 2: Alan Dulles at some point during the deliberations while they're
Speaker 2: investigating the president's murder, he wants to make clear that
Speaker 2: somehow the CIA is not to blame for that, you know,
Speaker 2: somehow they didn't protect Kennedy from the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 2: And so there are apparently Dulles was leaking information to
Speaker 2: Ernest Cuneo, who planned to write almost a book like
Speaker 2: the twenty thousand word magazine article for a magazine called
Speaker 2: The Saturday Evening Post. And so he's leaking this information
Speaker 2: to Cuneo Dulles's and Cuneo then goes to Hoover, who
Speaker 2: he knows as well, and he's trying to see if
Speaker 2: he can get Hoover to cooperate in this. And Hoover
Speaker 2: is smart enough to realize, wait a minute, the President
Speaker 2: of the United States doesn't want anybody talking about this
Speaker 2: investigation of Kennedy's murder. This is the Warren Commission in
Speaker 2: the middle of this investigation, and so they write these memos.
Speaker 2: It's kind of what they call a cover your ass memo.
Speaker 2: And basically the memos and I quote these in my book,
Speaker 2: is by Hoover and his number two at the FBI.
Speaker 2: They say, Ernest Cuneo's come in and apparently Alan Dulles
Speaker 2: is leaking to him about what's going on at the
Speaker 2: Warren Commission, and we told him, you know, we like you, Ernest,
Speaker 2: but we can't tell you anything. We can't get involved
Speaker 2: in this, and we're very firm. And that's known in
Speaker 2: bureaucratic terms as covering your ass. That it's basically memorializing
Speaker 2: what happened, just so that they have a memory and
Speaker 2: that they all can say, oh no, now that article
Speaker 2: that Cuneo was preparing never ran. Who knows what happened.
Speaker 2: There was a federal judge that also had worked for
Speaker 2: the FBI, and Cuneo talked to him as well about
Speaker 2: it because he thought that he might be able to
Speaker 2: get information from the FBI through this judge. But it's
Speaker 2: extraordinary because this is the first known leak by the
Speaker 2: Warren Commission, and it comes back to Alan Dulles. And
Speaker 2: what we already know historically is Dulles was not telling
Speaker 2: the Warren Commission about the attempts to kill Cashtro by
Speaker 2: the CIA. He kept that top secret. So people who
Speaker 2: looked at the Warren who were on the Warren Commission,
Speaker 2: like future President Gerald Ford, they had no idea that
Speaker 2: the CIA was trying to kill Castro, and that Castro
Speaker 2: has said, if you're trying to kill me. I can
Speaker 2: go after you. He said that just shortly before the assassinations.
Speaker 2: So Dulles we know who was already keeping things, but
Speaker 2: these documents indicate he was also leaking to try to
Speaker 2: been the story and try to basically get the cias
Speaker 2: and his version of what was going on before the
Speaker 2: actual printing of the Warren Report to the public.
Speaker 1: Well, at the end of the day, what do you
Speaker 1: think was the meaning behind Ernest's work in all of this?
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the big takeaway for you on why
Speaker 1: his story was important enough for you to publish? You know,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly not just the first American spy in
Speaker 1: World War Two. There's a lot more to him. So
Speaker 1: what was that?
Speaker 2: Well, a couple of things. What is Yes, Virginia, there
Speaker 2: is a deep state. It's not as extensive or fictitious
Speaker 2: as we hear some of the modern politicians you know
Speaker 2: in our time period who are doing it mainly for
Speaker 2: political purposes. But there are people in the government who've
Speaker 2: been worked in key agencies who make things work. You
Speaker 2: can call them fixers, but they're the ones. You know.
Speaker 2: There will be people who make politicians and public officials
Speaker 2: to say things to the public at press conferences. But
Speaker 2: then there are people who really make it happen.
Speaker 1: Ray Cohen would be one of those people.
Speaker 2: You know, well, yeah, no, but even within government, I
Speaker 2: mean in in a spy agency. You know, if you
Speaker 2: ever watched the movie the TV show Homeland, Carrie the
Speaker 2: main character, she's making things happen and such, there are
Speaker 2: people in every agency that make things happen. So to
Speaker 2: some extent, that was part of Cuneo's the importance of
Speaker 2: people behind the scenes. So I've spent forty years as
Speaker 2: an investigative reporter. One of the things you learn is
Speaker 2: that sometimes it's the middle level people who know the
Speaker 2: most of what's really going on. But also it underlines
Speaker 2: the importance of espionage. Why it's so important that we
Speaker 2: have people of good character involved in our intelligence operations,
Speaker 2: not only in terms of gathering information, but to the
Speaker 2: extent that we get involved in covert opirations, kind of
Speaker 2: like the James Bond type of things. We're watching these
Speaker 2: things very carefully. It's a tough job, it can be
Speaker 2: a dirty job, but it's an essential job to keeping
Speaker 2: the peace and being a powerful country. Espionage is really important.
Speaker 2: Winston Churchill always knew that you didn't have to explain that.
Speaker 2: But for the Americans, with this isolationist history, that's something
Speaker 2: that keeps on coming back in our history. History gives
Speaker 2: us a lot of lessons and it's a big takeaway,
Speaker 2: you know. And I also thought it was interesting in
Speaker 2: terms of Ernest Kuneo's very aware of being an Italian
Speaker 2: American and one of the backdrops of my story is
Speaker 2: just what it's like to be a kid of immigrant parents.
Speaker 2: And you know, at times he was the kid with
Speaker 2: the nose up against the glass looking into the higher
Speaker 2: reaches of power, and he was not being invited. And
Speaker 2: there he got in there eventually, but he was never
Speaker 2: like a top player, always like the middle level player.
Speaker 2: And so in fact, there's a scene in World War
Speaker 2: Two in this book where they were talking about intering,
Speaker 2: putting into camps Italian Americans who were born in Italy
Speaker 2: but here in the United States because we were at
Speaker 2: war with Mazsolini and the Italian government, and so there
Speaker 2: was talk about it was about six hundred thousand Italian
Speaker 2: Americans who they were seriously thinking of putting into camps,
Speaker 2: just like we were interning Japanese Americans on the Pacific Coast,
Speaker 2: and Kutio got involved in that. He heard about it, he
Speaker 2: acted upon it. He was a real advocate for Italian
Speaker 2: Americans and argued against it, and he did so effectively.
Speaker 2: He was one of the people that helped steer our
Speaker 2: government's policy in that regard. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: parallels and we definitely can learn from history with a
Speaker 2: story like Ernest Kunios.
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