Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 2: Our colleague Noel is on an adventure, but will be
Speaker 2: back very soon.
Speaker 3: They call me Bed. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul, mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 2: You are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: This is thinking about this earlier, Matt. This is an
Speaker 3: episode about more than one conspiracy. In fact, I would
Speaker 3: argue we could call this a story of conflicting dual conspiracies,
Speaker 3: both true, both set against one another in a fundamental
Speaker 3: shadow war. And we were going to record this episode earlier.
Speaker 3: I'm glad we took some time on it because key
Speaker 3: to this tale is larger than life, immensely controversial figure
Speaker 3: to some folks. He's a hero to others, and we'll
Speaker 3: get to those others. In specific, he is a bungler
Speaker 3: who nearly risked the safety of America entire Now, question,
Speaker 3: had you heard of this guy before we started researching.
Speaker 2: Him only from film school in this movie that came
Speaker 2: out in nineteen thirty nine that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2: That's the only reason I knew anything about this story.
Speaker 2: It is a weird time in US history often, I think,
Speaker 2: at least in my personal experience, when we think about
Speaker 2: the United States and spying, there's a hyper focus on
Speaker 2: the United States versus the Soviet Union. This is a
Speaker 2: time before the Cold War spying days and games. It's
Speaker 2: interesting to take your mind to the nineteen twenties and
Speaker 2: thinking about spying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's also the interwar period is something that doesn't
Speaker 3: get a ton of examination in a lot of American
Speaker 3: public schools. And as we'll see, there's a reason you
Speaker 3: could argue some of this history is hidden. Tonight's episode
Speaker 3: is the story of a guy. We're gonna call it
Speaker 3: Leon G. Truro. We'll call him a Nazi hunter because
Speaker 3: he was. But maybe before we begin we make a
Speaker 3: little note about pronunciation, because it's sort of all over
Speaker 3: the place with his last name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you watch the trailer for the movie we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about in a moment, well, I
Speaker 2: guess should we just say what the movie is. It's
Speaker 2: titled Confessions of a Nazi Spy. It was released in
Speaker 2: May nineteen thirty nine. And in that movie they say
Speaker 2: this person's name, and they say Leon George ureau Turo. Oh.
Speaker 2: But then if you look online at other people who
Speaker 2: were talking about this person, you're often going to here.
Speaker 2: At least I heard Teru. I think it was maybe
Speaker 2: a Scottish gentleman who said it that way.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, and then we can't discount the presence
Speaker 3: of the Transatlantic accent. A lot of historians that I've
Speaker 3: been reading or hearing I have said terurou. The spelling
Speaker 3: is t u r r ou. We are going to
Speaker 3: possibly slide in and out of different pronunciations. But be assured,
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realist, we're talking about the same guy to
Speaker 3: some a hero again to others, A real Paul beat
Speaker 3: me here and I hate the curse so early in
Speaker 3: the show. But a real's.
Speaker 2: Super intense liar about all things.
Speaker 3: Right, So let's let's dive into Leon. And to tell
Speaker 3: the story of Leon, we have to learn the story
Speaker 3: of the Nazis. Here are the facts, all right. Luckily,
Speaker 3: today in the modern US, for most people, for the
Speaker 3: vast majority of people in the West as well. Calling
Speaker 3: someone a Nazi is a serious insult. It's it's such
Speaker 3: a it's so universally identified as a bad thing that
Speaker 3: it's a cliche. The Internet has rules about it too, right,
Speaker 3: there's that tendency. There's this argument that at some point
Speaker 3: in political discourse someone will call someone else inevitably a Nazi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the worst thing you can call somebody, because
Speaker 2: they are history's enemies, right, the enemy number one of
Speaker 2: history is the Nazis. But it really does go way
Speaker 2: way way back before the Nazi Party is ever established.
Speaker 2: You can you can trace it all the way back
Speaker 2: to eighteen forty one to a guy named Friedrich list As,
Speaker 2: a dude who just talked about expansionism basically and economic control,
Speaker 2: like the Germany basically should have a lot more of
Speaker 2: both of those things, blood and soil mm hmm. And
Speaker 2: go through criminal biology with Franz von Liszt and I mean,
Speaker 2: just you can keep you can go way back with
Speaker 2: basically the ideologies that formed into this thing called the
Speaker 2: German Workers Party or DAP.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the German Workers Party can be considered the demo
Speaker 3: mixtape of what we call the Nazi Party today and
Speaker 3: the Nazi Party today is most closely associated with Germany
Speaker 3: in World War Two for obvious and horrific reasons. But
Speaker 3: as you said, Matt, the roots of the party are
Speaker 3: much much older. You could look at the Nazi Party
Speaker 3: as understood today as more of a distillation of some
Speaker 3: ideology that was already well established in that part of
Speaker 3: the world for some time. Like at length, what we
Speaker 3: call the Nazi Party, or the demo tape of it was,
Speaker 3: as you said, the German Workers Party co founded by
Speaker 3: a locksmith who's a guy named Anton Drexler co founded
Speaker 3: this with three or four other guys on January fifth,
Speaker 3: nineteen nineteen. So this is just after the armistice that
Speaker 3: ended the First World War. Germany is in a very
Speaker 3: bad way as a result of the agreements that ended
Speaker 3: the war, and Drexler is what we will call a
Speaker 3: far right figure at this point, he's kind of no
Speaker 3: offense to us. In his early days, he's kind of
Speaker 3: podcaster level, and so he's holding these local media the
Speaker 3: salons you will call them in Europe, and he has
Speaker 3: people over to talk about ideas. They're all people who
Speaker 3: are kind of echoe chamber. He's not inviting dissenting views
Speaker 3: into this mix enters a guy named Adolf Hitler. It's
Speaker 3: on September twelfth, nineteen nineteen, and Adolf Hitler is there
Speaker 3: ostensibly as just an interested civilian to learn more from
Speaker 3: a self taught economist named Gottfried Fader, and Gottfried Fader's
Speaker 3: kind of a pill. The subject of his lecture is
Speaker 3: breaking the slavery of financial interest, which is kind of
Speaker 3: a dog whistle for a lot of anti Jewish sentiment. However,
Speaker 3: Hitler is already participating in a conspiracy at this point.
Speaker 3: He is there not really as a civilian, that's his cover. Instead,
Speaker 3: he has been assigned by the German Art Army to
Speaker 3: monitor potential political agitators, which I think is funny as
Speaker 3: we as we see how things go on. Anyway, Hitler
Speaker 3: does something you probably shouldn't do in his position with
Speaker 3: the army at that time. He sticks out well, yeah.
Speaker 2: He gives a big old public speech in October of
Speaker 2: nineteen nineteen, and a pre arranged public speaking engagement, let's say,
Speaker 2: immediately as a member of the DAP, just like right
Speaker 2: after going to the first one.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, And in that first meeting, the October speech,
Speaker 3: you're mentioning comes from this September twelfth meeting, because in
Speaker 3: there he starts arguing loudly with a professor in the
Speaker 3: crowd who is raising objections to some of the economic
Speaker 3: concepts of feder and Hitler super impresses the DAP audience
Speaker 3: because he's passionate, he's vehement, he's got this electric energy,
Speaker 3: and he impresses everybody so much that the guy we
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, Anton Drexler, comes to Hitler and says, Hey,
Speaker 3: I dig your vibe. I wrote this pamphlet it's called
Speaker 3: My Political Awakening. I think you should join up with us.
Speaker 3: You know, thanks for coming to the meeting. You should
Speaker 3: come to more, and you should talk about the things
Speaker 3: that you mentioned in this meeting. Hitler at this point
Speaker 3: feels he has found kindred spirits and the rest, as
Speaker 3: they say, is history. In this case, terrible, terrible history.
Speaker 2: Just for a little more historical context here, we have
Speaker 2: to mention what happened to the Weimar Republic's economy and
Speaker 2: post a World War One. Yeah, yeah, post World War One,
Speaker 2: post revolution, post everything going on in Germany. In nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty two, hyperil inflation hit. It's really hard, and then
Speaker 2: as it goes in towards nineteen. In nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 2: they had hyperinflation. And just to really understand that we're.
Speaker 3: Talking of the wheelbarrow story, maybe.
Speaker 2: Well it's not even the story. Just to give the numbers,
Speaker 2: Imagine that your US dollar come compared to what's another
Speaker 2: curzy a pound British pound. Imagine that six hundred dollars
Speaker 2: equals one pound, and then imagine within months that becomes
Speaker 2: two thousand US dollars equal one pound, then ten thousand,
Speaker 2: then forty thousand, then one hundred and fifty thousand, then
Speaker 2: three point five million, then ten million, then sixty million
Speaker 2: US dollars equals one pound. Imagine that internal existential political
Speaker 2: crisis that that would cause, right within a within a country,
Speaker 2: within an individual, within systems, within groups and parties. That
Speaker 2: is the kind of crisis that it creates real intense
Speaker 2: change because something's got to change right right. And you
Speaker 2: combine that with in nineteen thirty one, so like that's
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty two to twenty three, combine that in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty one, you've got five point six million unemployed
Speaker 2: people that should be working in Germany. And you put
Speaker 2: those things together and you can just really see where
Speaker 2: if there's a strong enough order that has some ideology
Speaker 2: backing the words that they're saying, you can create a
Speaker 2: movement pretty easily because you just need some way out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is it okay if I tell the Wilbarrow story. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: my favorite examples. So this is a a it is
Speaker 3: a bit embellished. But the way that one of the
Speaker 3: best ways to understand this from a human level is
Speaker 3: that people at this time hyperinflation is a thing that
Speaker 3: still happens in the modern age. Look at Zimbabwe, look
Speaker 3: at Venezuela when it hits Germany. Due to again the
Speaker 3: conclusion and the agreements of World War One, people would
Speaker 3: end up having to take wheelbarrows of their local currency
Speaker 3: to a place, and when they went to a store,
Speaker 3: they would try to purchase things as early as possible
Speaker 3: because by the conclusion of that business day the money
Speaker 3: would literally be worthless. So, you know, you hear horror
Speaker 3: stories about the Great Depression in the United States and
Speaker 3: runs on banks. There were runs on bakeries, there were
Speaker 3: runs on cobblers, there were runs on anyone doing business.
Speaker 3: People were trying to move the currency. Was a very
Speaker 3: desperate time and desperation has ever been fertile soil for fascism.
Speaker 3: So this, and I appreciate you mentioning this, This is
Speaker 3: context in which these horrific things can occur. You know.
Speaker 3: There is also the I wouldn't say revision is his,
Speaker 3: but there's a valid alternative history observation here which is
Speaker 3: quite common in academia, that says, if it weren't specifically
Speaker 3: an Adolph, it would have been someone else because the
Speaker 3: public was so ready for someone to say there is
Speaker 3: a better way. Also in a shameless plog, please check
Speaker 3: out Let's Start a coup. The Smedley Butler story is
Speaker 3: very similar to that, because the US comes a lot
Speaker 3: closer to fascism than any of us or any textbook
Speaker 3: editors would like you to think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if we're to know, to believe all of
Speaker 2: the information from Leon G. Tourou, then that fascism was
Speaker 2: moving throughout the United States even in this time in
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3: And we've explored Nazi conspiracies at length in stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want you to know. Thankfully, most folks today are
Speaker 3: aware of the atrocities wrought by Nazi nax's powers and
Speaker 3: to be fair also aware of other horrors committed by allies, right,
Speaker 3: like the invasion of Russian forces and of course the
Speaker 3: deployment of nuclear weaponry on the US part. However, there
Speaker 3: is a lot of hidden history out there, still conspiracies
Speaker 3: that aren't as well known even as we record tonight
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four. Enter Leon George Tourou original name
Speaker 3: Leon George Tuovoski born September fourteenth, eighteen ninety five in Cobram, Poland,
Speaker 3: which was then part of the Russian Empire. But his
Speaker 3: parents weren't Russian, right, they were French and Polish.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, Yeah. His father died before he was even born,
Speaker 2: and his mother then passed away early in his life,
Speaker 2: so he was well at least. Again, it's tough, so
Speaker 2: is this his official biography, because the guy told so
Speaker 2: many stories about his origins. There were there are all
Speaker 2: of these. There are all these tales that he would tell,
Speaker 2: and the first one that you would hear from him
Speaker 2: often was I'm an orphan, right, But I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's tough with this guy because I've read other stories
Speaker 2: where maybe he wasn't actually an orphan, and he did
Speaker 2: have family early on that we're not dead. But according
Speaker 2: to let's say, the official story, his dad died a
Speaker 2: story from the FBI. Yeah, even from the FBI. But
Speaker 2: he was telling everybody stories, even the FBI. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's a little weird, but his according to
Speaker 2: the official story, his dad died six months before his
Speaker 2: birth and his mother passed away early in his life. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And with with those caveats, which are nice foreshadowing, we'll
Speaker 3: say that again. The official accepted biography after this guy's
Speaker 3: death is that, because spoiler he's dead, is that he
Speaker 3: was adopted by a wealthy tradesman or merchants, basically a
Speaker 3: traveling guy who's doing well for himself, and as a result,
Speaker 3: young Leon spent most of his own childhood moving through
Speaker 3: different countries, and when he reaches the age of eighteen,
Speaker 3: he relocates to the United States and he gets a
Speaker 3: job as a translator for the New York Times because
Speaker 3: he has a command of multiple languages. Again with a
Speaker 3: lot of caveats. Tureau serves in the French Army from
Speaker 3: nineteen sixteen to nineteen twenty. He fights on the Eastern Front.
Speaker 3: He is engaged with German forces at some point and
Speaker 3: he does take an injury, we don't know the extent
Speaker 3: of the injury, and we do.
Speaker 2: Get in there. It's weird though, because their story. I
Speaker 2: just I don't want to poke holes in any of this. Man.
Speaker 2: It's just weird to know that he also told stories
Speaker 2: that he fought in a different area during the war,
Speaker 2: and that injury that we're talking about, that's a bit mysterious,
Speaker 2: was like it was refuted by several other people, like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's not actually what the injury was from. And then
Speaker 2: he told other people a story about getting injured in
Speaker 2: a different way.
Speaker 3: So the one thing we do know for sure is
Speaker 3: that he was hired by the FBI after an interview
Speaker 3: with j Edgar Hoover, and according again to most of
Speaker 3: the official sources, he got the co sign to be
Speaker 3: hired despite lacking the normal qualifications that would typically be
Speaker 3: required of most prospective FBI agents. You know what I mean,
Speaker 3: like college in addition to military service or things like that. Right,
Speaker 3: they have a checklist of stuff, their version of a
Speaker 3: background check. Right, And he works for the Bureau for
Speaker 3: about ten years. Matt, do you want to talk about
Speaker 3: the various claims of things he was involved in over
Speaker 3: that rough decade.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not really sure about that stuff. I just
Speaker 2: want to point out that I think this guy walking
Speaker 2: into JEdgar Hoover's office and having a conversation, I do
Speaker 2: think in there somewhere is the telling of Terureu to Hoover. Hey,
Speaker 2: I am a shadow. Nobody knows the actual facts about
Speaker 2: my life. Nobody knows who I am. Nobody knows anything
Speaker 2: about me. I can do things basically for you and
Speaker 2: for the Bureau that other people can't because I'm literally
Speaker 2: a shadow.
Speaker 3: And tabula ross a blank slate. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 3: we have to remember this is before the CIA is,
Speaker 3: So maybe that's why I went to the FBI instead.
Speaker 3: We know that he received an assignment, and well, like
Speaker 3: you can read about involvement with pretty Roy Floyd or Lindberg,
Speaker 3: baby kidnapping, investigation of the Kansas City Union Station, murders,
Speaker 3: and investigations into crashes and things like that. That's what
Speaker 3: occurred in this sort of montage period of that decade.
Speaker 3: But tonight's episode is not about that. Tonight's episode is
Speaker 3: about the assignment that would change his life and perhaps
Speaker 3: alter the course or actually provably in my opinion, at
Speaker 3: least alter the course of US history. Far before World
Speaker 3: War II, in the interwar period, the American forces, the
Speaker 3: American public, and government alike were contemplating a blanket neutrality policy,
Speaker 3: what we'll call isolationism. And during that time, the Nazi
Speaker 3: Party was conspiring to infiltrate US soil, to capture the
Speaker 3: heart's minds and ultimately, hopefully the military of the American public,
Speaker 3: and so agent Tourou was given an enormous, dangerous task.
Speaker 3: Everyone feared a new war was on the way, was
Speaker 3: all over the press. But his bosses and the FBI
Speaker 3: told him terrible secret. Leon They said, the Nazis are
Speaker 3: already here. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: Matt.
Speaker 3: I really appreciate what you pointed out about some of
Speaker 3: the missing context here, because a lot of modern Americans,
Speaker 3: and again textbooks don't like to admit this, but eugenics
Speaker 3: and Nazi like ideology and actual Nazi sympathizers existed in
Speaker 3: the US since the nineteen twenties, and when Hitler rose
Speaker 3: to power officially in nineteen thirty three, those groups just
Speaker 3: got larger, right, They just sort of gained momentum domino
Speaker 3: or snowball effect style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, back in eighteen fifty six when an essay on
Speaker 2: the inequity of the races was written. It wasn't just
Speaker 2: you know, in German and people in Germany reading that.
Speaker 2: There were Americans reading that book. There were people all
Speaker 2: of the planet reading that book and probably having thoughts
Speaker 2: altered and changed. And some of the viral thinking is
Speaker 2: seeping in all across the planet. And you know, concepts
Speaker 2: of fighting for again the working people, that's an old
Speaker 2: concept and it has really nothing to do with fascism.
Speaker 2: It really is like a puzzle getting put together with
Speaker 2: very specific pieces, right, that form this thing that becomes Nazism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, again, it's Nazism is combining a lot of pre
Speaker 3: existing prejudices, right, and one of the there are a
Speaker 3: couple of factors that we need to outline here for
Speaker 3: that context. Yes, the racism is not just based in Germany, obviously,
Speaker 3: it's not just based in the US. Obviously. It hacks
Speaker 3: a universal psychological desire, which is one I think I'm great?
Speaker 3: B Why am I not as great as I feel like?
Speaker 2: Right? See?
Speaker 3: What can tell me that I am somehow inherently better
Speaker 3: than other people? And this is something that you see
Speaker 3: leveraged all the time by bad faith actors. The country,
Speaker 3: the US had and has a large German American population,
Speaker 3: and at this time a lot of people are you know,
Speaker 3: first or second generation German Americans, and they still have
Speaker 3: family abroad, so they are not necessarily green with the
Speaker 3: current political powers of a Germany. But they're also saying, hey,
Speaker 3: don't dunk on these folks too hard, because I'm from there,
Speaker 3: or I know those folks, I'm related to them, and
Speaker 3: the US government in theory very much in theory protects
Speaker 3: free speech. Groups like the German American Bund b U
Speaker 3: and d RISE they openly support specific Nazi ideology along
Speaker 3: with you know, the symbols and the flags and the marching.
Speaker 3: And to be clear, a lot of these groups, especially
Speaker 3: the more militant ones, were similar to what we might
Speaker 3: call the QAnon movement of today, right minus the online presence.
Speaker 3: QAnon's largely started as nonline thing, similar to a tea
Speaker 3: party or whatever kind of extremist ideology you want to
Speaker 3: put in the overall German American community. At least again,
Speaker 3: to be sure, according to the historians I read, they
Speaker 3: didn't really vibe with this group. They were like, hey,
Speaker 3: we moved you know, we just want a good economy,
Speaker 3: We want our kids to have a better opportunity at life.
Speaker 3: And the Nazi American groups, for the most part, they
Speaker 3: add little actual connection to the Nazi Party in Germany
Speaker 3: what our pal laur and Vocobama would call the actual
Speaker 3: facts German Nazis. But still even with that, they were fanboys.
Speaker 3: They wanted to bend American politics closer to Nazi ideals,
Speaker 3: particularly fascism and anti semitism. And a lot of Americans,
Speaker 3: German American or not, we're kind of squigged out by
Speaker 3: this because they thought, what if there might be a
Speaker 3: German fifth column? And this was a fear that just
Speaker 3: translated from earlier fears about communism, right, a secret cabal
Speaker 3: of communists that were out to take over the hearts
Speaker 3: and minds of America. Even though, to be one hundred
Speaker 3: percent transparent, none of the Nazi American groups were down
Speaker 3: with communism. It was a big part of their speeches,
Speaker 3: like the best way to be anti communists. That's how
Speaker 3: they started, because you know, they try to normalize things.
Speaker 3: They're like, hey, you hate communists, right, America? And they say, yeah,
Speaker 3: we hate communists And they say, well, we hate them too,
Speaker 3: And the best way to fight communism is Nazi stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fascism strong strong people that come through and just
Speaker 2: tell you what is and what's good and what's bad exactly.
Speaker 3: And you know this is not the dunk on anybody's
Speaker 3: personal perspective or experience. It's an understandable thing if we
Speaker 3: exercise empathy. Plus, the US is a country where people
Speaker 3: are then, as now in theory, legally allowed to shoot
Speaker 3: their mouths off about all sorts of wacka do ideas, right,
Speaker 3: I personally like seeing some crazy guy with a megaphone
Speaker 3: on a street corner. The concept is, so long as
Speaker 3: you're not calling for violence nor harming people, you're theoretically
Speaker 3: good to go, as long as they're just homegrown dissonance
Speaker 3: and propagandists. But the question is, what if there were
Speaker 3: actual wolves operating amid the sympathizer sheep. In nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 3: Hoover and the FBI, their fears were confirmed. This is
Speaker 3: where we discover the first conspiracy, which is again adapted
Speaker 3: into a movie that you can easily view on either
Speaker 3: Archive dot Org or Amazon Today or Turner Classic Movies
Speaker 3: or TCO.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the information contained in that movie is based
Speaker 2: on a screenplay which is based on some articles that Touro.
Speaker 3: Was based on, a book based on the articles.
Speaker 2: Yes, based on a well, yes, well there. According to TCM,
Speaker 2: the screenplay itself is based on the articles themselves, rather
Speaker 2: than even the book. So it was it was articles
Speaker 2: that were told by Torow to this guy named David G. Whittles,
Speaker 2: who was working for the New York Post in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight, in nineteen thirty nine. So it's that, you know,
Speaker 2: this is a story that Leon told or mister Trureau
Speaker 2: told to somebody else and then it got turned into
Speaker 2: the story, right. I think that's just important to remember
Speaker 2: because it's I don't know, it's it's probably a lot
Speaker 2: of it is probably correct, but it is one person's viewpoint,
Speaker 2: and this person tends to, at least according to a
Speaker 2: lot of people that knew him, didn't always say the truth.
Speaker 2: So it's like, okay, so here is, as you said,
Speaker 2: how this whole thing begins. It's February nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 2: The police in New York City arrest this guy. His
Speaker 2: names Quinta Gustav Maria rumrick On behalf of the Army
Speaker 2: and the State Department they arrest this guy because the
Speaker 2: Army in the State Department are like, this guy's bad.
Speaker 2: The State Department received a tip from British intelligence claiming
Speaker 2: that this person was impersonating the Secretary of State in
Speaker 2: order to obtain thirty five blank US passport.
Speaker 3: Why what an interesting question. Let's bring him in and
Speaker 3: ask he's impersonating the Secretary at the State of at
Speaker 3: the time is a guy named Cordel Hole, and Cordell
Speaker 3: Hole obviously no longer the Secretary of State. However, it
Speaker 3: sounds crazy ambitious right now for anybody who's tried to
Speaker 3: get a passport with their own real identity in the
Speaker 3: modern day. Rumbrick knew enough about the processes and mechanisms
Speaker 3: of the US government to do some social engineering or
Speaker 3: attempt it. However, as we'll see, Rumrick had an ego disease.
Speaker 3: He was maybe a little bit well, let's say it
Speaker 3: this way. He's a crafty character, he's ambitious, he's more
Speaker 3: than a little taken with himself. He's a naturalized citizen.
Speaker 3: He was a US Army sergeant till he deserted, and
Speaker 3: he's a textbook example. I would just argue of a
Speaker 3: guy who fancied himself destined for greater things, As any
Speaker 3: investigator can tell you, small people with big egos or
Speaker 3: a gift when it comes to busting a crime ring.
Speaker 3: And so you can see this in the articles and
Speaker 3: the book and the film which we'll talk about all
Speaker 3: three of those towards the end where we get to
Speaker 3: the Leon question here. But in all of those depictions
Speaker 3: or descriptions or narratives, when common throat we see is
Speaker 3: that Rumrick or the characters based on Rumrick are easily
Speaker 3: manipulated by flattery. So the interrogators are saying, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: you're a mastermind, you know. I mean, look, I interview
Speaker 3: a lot of criminals, but you're different, So surely you'll
Speaker 3: have a better lie than that or something like this.
Speaker 3: And so Raman ultimately agrees to confess this part is true.
Speaker 3: This is not the smoking mirrors nor the adaptations. He says, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not actually just a regular Joe, a
Speaker 3: regular naturalized citizen and deserter. I am acting on behalf
Speaker 3: of Nazi agents the abver Germany's foreign intelligence service at
Speaker 3: the time. And he says further, you fools, German agents
Speaker 3: have worked since late nineteen twenties to penetrate, to infiltrate industry, government,
Speaker 3: and academia in the United States. And then he said, look,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you my story. Because he liked talking about himself.
Speaker 3: He said, I'll give you the names of ten to
Speaker 3: fifteen spies that are currently working for Nazi Germany as
Speaker 3: part of this infiltration operation. And I'll tell you some
Speaker 3: of the stuff we already found, which is interesting.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and there's a clip in the movie that
Speaker 2: I guess we could play. Yeah, why not? This is
Speaker 2: this is a movie from the thirties. Let's play this clip.
Speaker 4: I am one of thousand stationed in every part of
Speaker 4: the United States to steal the secrets of your national defense.
Speaker 4: There are spies stationed in all of the Navy yards
Speaker 4: in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Newport News. There are Nazi agents
Speaker 4: in the aeroplane and munition factories at Bristol.
Speaker 2: Question, they're everywhere, The spies are everywhere. Did he say.
Speaker 3: Newport News, Newport News, Virginia. Right, that's a place, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Newport News, Virginia.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I did not know. I thought I was
Speaker 2: looking at a publication or a paper when I when
Speaker 2: I heard Newport News.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's the adaptation. Going back to Rumrick in
Speaker 3: his interrogations, he does say they were able to already
Speaker 3: have stolen top secret US technology codes prototype of a
Speaker 3: code breaking machine, not Enigma, importantly, that's a different one,
Speaker 3: that's different realm of cryptography. And they also got data
Speaker 3: about communication structures and the latest US fighter planes. So
Speaker 3: they leave the interrogation room with US folks and go
Speaker 3: to a very intense series of meetings and community cayse.
Speaker 3: This is a classic bad news but not the worst
Speaker 3: news situation. The State Department, the FBI, and the War
Speaker 3: Department are in what corporate America would call a healthy
Speaker 3: discussion about the next steps, which for all us non
Speaker 3: corporate folks out there means that they were yelling over
Speaker 3: each other and they were super pissed. And one of
Speaker 3: the most pissed people is the legendarily non paranoid J
Speaker 3: Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well Hoover immediately looked at it and just said, guys,
Speaker 2: I don't have enough control over this. This thing is compromised,
Speaker 2: for sure. There's way too many in this pot. I
Speaker 2: don't want I don't even want to touch it.
Speaker 3: I wonder if it was even about control for him
Speaker 3: as much as as much as it might have been
Speaker 3: about just quality standards. I mean, you're probably right on both.
Speaker 3: But but he, as you said, he noted that the
Speaker 3: case was already compromised. Right, This guy by this time
Speaker 3: is already ah off his office top hat, you know
Speaker 3: what top hats. But he's off his top hat about
Speaker 3: communist infiltration. He's he's thinking, you know, if you don't
Speaker 3: work directly for me, I can't trust you. And to him,
Speaker 3: the State Department, in the War Department may all be
Speaker 3: already be riddled with foreign agents, but the War Department
Speaker 3: insists that this is the FBI's job. And the War
Speaker 3: Department at this time has a lot of juice because
Speaker 3: the world is increasingly starting to They've gone from worrying
Speaker 3: about a new World war to increasingly assuming that it's
Speaker 3: going to happen. The poop is on the way to
Speaker 3: the fan, the cars about the swerve and hit the tree.
Speaker 3: So despite all the objections and ardent objections they were
Speaker 3: the task of tackling the spy ring falls to the FBI.
Speaker 3: This is the beginning of our second conspiracy. It's a
Speaker 3: counter conspiracy, and from the jump, everybody in the FBI says, well,
Speaker 3: if you work for us, you understand, you're aware of
Speaker 3: our boss Hoover. You know that we have to keep
Speaker 3: this stuff super secret, no chasing publicity. And this is
Speaker 3: where we enter to Row at this point. He's an
Speaker 3: experienced special agent and he's the kind of guy who,
Speaker 3: on paper is a perfect fit for this operation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they said, hey, this is your assignment, dude,
Speaker 2: get out there, get it done. So they take all
Speaker 2: the information they got from Rumrick right. Then they go
Speaker 2: and interview other people who were apparently a part of
Speaker 2: this whole group. Who's this next person, doctor Iganskribbel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he had already been identified as the head of
Speaker 3: the US German intelligence ring. He's probably the smartest. He's
Speaker 3: one of the most fortunate of the German spies. He
Speaker 3: functions in a big way as a recruiter, so's it's
Speaker 3: like a multi level marketing scheme. He's recruiting people, they're
Speaker 3: recruiting other people, and he is. He is successfully arrested,
Speaker 3: the good doctor. Weirdly enough, he makes bail and surprise,
Speaker 3: as soon as he makes bail, he skips down. He's
Speaker 3: off to Europe. He's not coming back, you know, And
Speaker 3: it seems that Toro is realizing, despite Rumrick's claims, he
Speaker 3: himself is more a minor operator. He's a minor cog,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. He's not James Bond, this guy,
Speaker 3: but he is a lot like a jukebox in that
Speaker 3: once you put a quarter in him, the guy, I'll
Speaker 3: sing And he starts breaking down the operation as far
Speaker 3: as he knows it. He talks about folks like Johanna Hoffman,
Speaker 3: who serves as a go between for Rumrick's contacts in Germany,
Speaker 3: a guy named Carl Schluter, and he says, this Carl
Speaker 3: guy Schlooter is also contacting other spies in America. Our pal,
Speaker 3: Johanna Hoffmann gets a lot of mail, and that's something
Speaker 3: that Hoover and the boys can look into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, reading people's mail, listening to people's calls, dode all
Speaker 2: of it. What was the title. There's a Time magazine
Speaker 2: article on this and it is titled Snoop, Look and listen.
Speaker 2: They're all about that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, library records, postal records, and according to Rumrick,
Speaker 3: before he was captured, he was using the code name Crown.
Speaker 3: We can't even get into agent Sex, which is another
Speaker 3: alleged thing is so nuts. So Rumrick, under his operator
Speaker 3: named Crown, would email letters to a Scottish woman named
Speaker 3: Jesse Jordan, who was also a spy for German foreign intelligence,
Speaker 3: and he, in his correspondence mentions a plan for German
Speaker 3: secret service agents to overpower actually to mug an American
Speaker 3: Army colonel in Manhattan at the Hotel McAlpin, and they
Speaker 3: were going to mug him to steal East Coast defense
Speaker 3: plans for the US in the situation of war, because
Speaker 3: again a war has not started yet, and the agents
Speaker 3: will take the plans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the concept, right, But having the defense plans
Speaker 2: for an entire seaboard of a country, if maybe your
Speaker 2: navy was going to roll up, would be a nice
Speaker 2: thing to have. It makes a lot of sense strategically, right, right.
Speaker 3: And then afterwards, you know, you want to eliminate the hand, right.
Speaker 3: So the idea was, after they knock this guy out
Speaker 3: and steal his stuff, they'll try to do a stitch
Speaker 3: up job to blame vague communist forces or no communist affiliates,
Speaker 3: which you know it's happened before, and it does work
Speaker 3: when you pull it off. But these investigations that Touro
Speaker 3: is doing. They work as sort of a daisy chain
Speaker 3: and gaming connections. If this, then what so you find
Speaker 3: one snake in the grass, you wiggle it a little,
Speaker 3: you manipulate it to revealing others And to be fair
Speaker 3: Toerna's team were closing in on spies. But why did
Speaker 3: the FBI itself later refer to him as a bungler.
Speaker 3: You can go to the actual FBI archive and I
Speaker 3: know not all the writing is super compelling, but they
Speaker 3: have a lot of good articles to be like, they
Speaker 3: do have some really good stuff. And what article is
Speaker 3: called a bite out of history Spies Spies Lost, Lessons Learned,
Speaker 3: And the FBI writes the FBI has some serious beef
Speaker 3: with Leon because they say that he kind of screwed
Speaker 3: the pooch on the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Well, yeh. He would interview people who were telling him
Speaker 2: and everybody who's interviewing them, Hi, I'm a spy. How
Speaker 2: are you nice to meet you? I'm a spy, and
Speaker 2: then you know, and here are all my activities I
Speaker 2: was doing as a spy. And then Turo comes through
Speaker 2: at the end of every interview and says, okay, hey,
Speaker 2: thank you so much. For all that information. You've been
Speaker 2: extremely helpful. Now you're gonna have to say all of
Speaker 2: this again, and you're going to testify before a grand jury. Cool,
Speaker 2: and guess what most of those spies did.
Speaker 3: They left, yeah, post as soon as they were out
Speaker 3: of the room. They were booking a taxi to a port,
Speaker 3: and they were gone, and then they were alerting other
Speaker 3: people in their network. The FBI specifically says this quote
Speaker 3: is a verbatim quote. After each interview, Toro told the
Speaker 3: spies that they need to testify before a grand jury,
Speaker 3: and most fled the country to avoid prosecution. Makes soon ass,
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, soon as And they shouldn't have even
Speaker 3: let they shouldn't even let that doctor out on bail.
Speaker 3: I was crazy. He also, fun fact, was one of
Speaker 3: the first FBI investigations to employ polygraphs, which are you know,
Speaker 3: junk science. But that's important because most of the later
Speaker 3: cases in these conflicting conspiracies ultimately depended upon the statements
Speaker 3: of spies themselves without a ton of corroborating evidence, because again,
Speaker 3: the war hadn't happened yet, so it's tough to you know, like,
Speaker 3: if you have the plans for defense on the East Coast,
Speaker 3: and this is all over the press at the time.
Speaker 3: If you have the plans for defense on the East Coast,
Speaker 3: and a successful operation leverages those plans, then it's a
Speaker 3: lot easier to convict people because you know, something actionable occurred.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but now you're being invaded by another country, right,
Speaker 2: So you're in a whole other situation. And are you
Speaker 2: even going to be able to convict somebody if you
Speaker 2: can't stop an invasion? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So this is again bad news, but not the worst
Speaker 3: news situation untill you know, it does.
Speaker 2: Get worse, and it will right after this break.
Speaker 3: And we've returned. This became the FBI's for major international
Speaker 3: spy case right in there. There had been spies busted
Speaker 3: before the creation of the FBI. There have been other operations,
Speaker 3: but nothing of this magnitude. Eighteen people are indicted. The
Speaker 3: trial is going to be held in Manhattan Federal Court.
Speaker 3: The judge is John C. Knox. It's October fourteenth, nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty eight when they start selecting the jury. And I'm
Speaker 3: sure there was a lot of prejudice there, right, How
Speaker 3: many German Americans got to be those twelve lucky people,
Speaker 3: no wonder I'm going to say not many and October
Speaker 3: fourteenth is when Rumrick pleads guilty. Fast forward just a
Speaker 3: little bit December second, nineteen thirty eight, less than a
Speaker 3: year before the beginning of World War two. These cases
Speaker 3: go to trial. At least the case is for the
Speaker 3: people who were apprehended and didn't imediately flee down as
Speaker 3: soon as they were given the chance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are three individuals, Johanna Hoffmann, Otto Hermann, Voss
Speaker 2: and Eric Glasser GLA Sr. They were all found guilty
Speaker 2: of espionage through this trial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Gunther Rumrick is found guilty as well, but
Speaker 3: he gets a reduced sentence because he turns Stooley. So
Speaker 3: the spies all serve between two to six years each. Again,
Speaker 3: our buddy doctor Grebel has successfully fled the country in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty eight. As a funny story. In nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 3: depending on who you ask, Tureau is fired for breaking
Speaker 3: the FBI the FBI oath right or the understood the
Speaker 3: implicit assumption of secrecy because he's leaked stories to the press.
Speaker 3: He's publicized a lot of stuff. He's the one who
Speaker 3: pitched writing articles for the papers. And the one version
Speaker 3: I heard to that earlier point about multiple versions. One
Speaker 3: version I heard was that our buddy Leon resigned to
Speaker 3: write his book, so he sent his own resignation proactively
Speaker 3: to the FBI.
Speaker 2: But he didn't say, hey, I'm going to go write
Speaker 2: a book to like anybody official, right, he just.
Speaker 3: Put in his resignation, but word got around, And that's
Speaker 3: another version of this. The other if he's by fur
Speaker 3: Kate and formed back. Then the conclusion of the funny
Speaker 3: version of it is that j Agar Hoover finds out
Speaker 3: this guy's resigning and then finds out why, and Jay
Speaker 3: Edgar Hoover is furious, is consumed with wrath, and he says,
Speaker 3: I reject your resignation, jerk, You're fired. No resigning for
Speaker 3: you. You don't get it. It's like the opposite version of
Speaker 3: you can't fire me, I quit. And the problem was
Speaker 3: that there was serious damage here, and the damage reverberated. However,
Speaker 3: Touro still had to go to trial right of these suspects,
Speaker 3: and when he was on trial, he got accused of
Speaker 3: being a huge publicity hound, like, oh, you weren't really
Speaker 3: protecting America. You wanted to become famous, you wanted money, power, respect,
Speaker 3: You tampered with witnesses. They even said that he took
Speaker 3: a bribe from doctor Greebel, which we couldn't prove, but
Speaker 3: he was accused of it, and that goes to the
Speaker 3: court of public opinion. It is true though he did
Speaker 3: end up writing those newspaper articles he wrote Nazi Spies
Speaker 3: in America. According to some sources, those articles directly got
Speaker 3: adapted to a film. According to other sources, that book
Speaker 3: got adapted to a film, which is.
Speaker 2: Either way, it's money right right, He.
Speaker 3: Did get paid for it, which goes to ethical concerns.
Speaker 3: In Matt off Air, you were saying, the title of
Speaker 3: the film as it's known today is Confessions of a
Speaker 3: Nazi Spy, again freely available. It's very interesting look at
Speaker 3: society of the time. It is propagandistic itself because it's
Speaker 3: Hollywood's first explicitly anti Nazi kind of film of this caliber.
Speaker 3: But you also said you have the original working title.
Speaker 2: Oh, there are several working titles, but one of them
Speaker 2: that you can find on TCM if you check it out,
Speaker 2: is Storm Over America. Storm was coming back in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight. Then it's funny in the trailer they say
Speaker 2: it was our duty to make this film and it's
Speaker 2: your American privilege to see it. And then it was
Speaker 2: chosen as Best Picture of the Year by the National
Speaker 2: Board of Review in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew that part. This is I mean, this
Speaker 3: is it was successful.
Speaker 2: There's no way around it.
Speaker 3: It was very successful. But I think we could argue
Speaker 3: the film is more successful than the actual operation on
Speaker 3: the rum Rick spy ring because, due too, in big
Speaker 3: part to Ro's investigation methods, four times as many spies
Speaker 3: escaped as were captured. So it's kind of like trying
Speaker 3: to It's kind of like trying to pick up rice
Speaker 3: with a fork.
Speaker 2: Yeah that has not been cooked right, uncompressed?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes, And I mean the other thing is,
Speaker 3: you know, I was wondering if we mentioned this. This
Speaker 3: is not the end of Leon's professional or personal life.
Speaker 3: He was involved in a lot of other situations. You
Speaker 3: would think this would be such a black marker to
Speaker 3: merit on somebody's career that you're just out right you
Speaker 3: retire in exile or obscurity, you start an EMU farm
Speaker 3: or something. But he got hired by Eisenhower.
Speaker 2: Nice career move.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he rounded up thirty five thousand or he helped
Speaker 3: in an operation round up thirty five thousand suspected Nazi
Speaker 3: war criminals. He got a bronze star. He wrote another book,
Speaker 3: and I haven't read this one. It's called Where My
Speaker 3: Shadow Falls? In nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: I told you he's in the shadows.
Speaker 3: Where does his shadow fall? Oh? He works for a billionaire.
Speaker 3: He works for Jean Paul Getty. And then he just
Speaker 3: hangs around Paris for most of the rest of his life,
Speaker 3: and he becomes like a popular dude on the street.
Speaker 3: They call him the American Mayor, not an official title.
Speaker 2: Yes, a man of mystery, right there.
Speaker 3: An American Mayor, and he does. We do know that
Speaker 3: he passes away in December tenthnineteen eighty six. And that
Speaker 3: number is fascinating because these stories I don't know about you, man,
Speaker 3: These stories often feel so constrained to a distinct time
Speaker 3: in history. Nineteen eighty six. It's pretty nuts. A lot
Speaker 3: of people listening were around when that guy was alive.
Speaker 2: It's weird to think about, but it does make me.
Speaker 2: I don't know. When I think about his life overall,
Speaker 2: I think about the allegations of him making up a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff about himself. It does make me wonder,
Speaker 2: I don't know, back in the day, like the vetting
Speaker 2: process for an individual human and trying to check records,
Speaker 2: you really did have to go off of word of mouth,
Speaker 2: often like an employer if you're checking references or something,
Speaker 2: or I don't know, parents, family friends, teachers, professors like
Speaker 2: you just had to listen to what other people had
Speaker 2: to say about somebody and trust that that was true.
Speaker 3: A other Daisy chain investigation kept shaking the trees, I mean,
Speaker 3: and I love that point because then it also shows
Speaker 3: us why a lot of people had collegiate backgrounds, right,
Speaker 3: why a lot of State department and intelligence agencies pull
Speaker 3: from what we would consider upper Aeschlot or IVY IVY
Speaker 3: League schools. Right, there is a pre formed community.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and everybody can say, oh, yeah, I know that person.
Speaker 2: I remember they've told me this or that. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what they told me.
Speaker 3: His secret frat name is Finicky Jenkins. Oh dear, Oh okay,
Speaker 3: he checks out. I mean, but that's also a weakness
Speaker 3: in those organizations, you know. That's why the Cambridge spy
Speaker 3: ring was able to exist at all. I think it's
Speaker 3: because of that inherent class system, as well as, to
Speaker 3: your point, the very difficult task of vetting people. It's
Speaker 3: a little bit easier now, or depending on what side
Speaker 3: of the fence you're on, it's a lot more difficult
Speaker 3: to be a bit of a con artist. They the FBI,
Speaker 3: going back to the original article, they say that this
Speaker 3: guy's background just did not prepare him to do espionage,
Speaker 3: and that when he leaked information about the case, he
Speaker 3: violated everything an FBI agent is supposed to do. And
Speaker 3: we've talked about this before. You know, whenever you read
Speaker 3: an article, especially in high level US media, about an
Speaker 3: official speaking on condition of anonymity, that was that was
Speaker 3: greenlit like four ways the sundown, you know, before somebody
Speaker 3: said yeah, i'll speak anonymously.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's like tons of conversations they have to have with
Speaker 3: their bosses. Somebody probably checks with another agency and says, hey,
Speaker 3: are you cool with us talking trash about Taran? And
Speaker 3: they're like yeah, but don't don't use your real name.
Speaker 3: And they're like, oh, okay, I'm going to go as
Speaker 3: my frat name, Finicky Jenkins. And they're like, well, just okay,
Speaker 3: in that case, don't use a name at all.
Speaker 2: That's pretty honny. It is interesting how there's so much
Speaker 2: to be made about Roumrick getting coins put into him
Speaker 2: and then singing right, But that is pretty much what
Speaker 2: Turou did because he was so excited to tell people
Speaker 2: about what he had done. M all right, see some
Speaker 2: commonalities here, agreed.
Speaker 3: Sometimes people become the monsters they hunt right or acquire
Speaker 3: their attributes. And I think that's a fantastic point because
Speaker 3: we also see it was an earlier It was an
Speaker 3: earlier conversation we're having about the the professor or the
Speaker 3: academic who was in charge of Hannibal Lecter in Silence
Speaker 3: of the Lambs, both the novels and the film adaptations.
Speaker 3: His main concern was publicity, right, and success, And you
Speaker 3: could argue, I think you could argue with a lot
Speaker 3: of validity, that's Roe's at least partially doing this stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, when he leaks information, is he trying to
Speaker 3: shake the tree, rouse some more operatives, or as the
Speaker 3: FBI very very heavily implies, was he just trying to
Speaker 3: get attention and money and center himself as a hero.
Speaker 3: I don't know if those things are mutually exclusive, to
Speaker 3: be honest, because sometimes people believe their own bs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's quite often the case. But I wonder,
Speaker 2: I wonder how you would Okay, let's game it out.
Speaker 2: You do come out with this information, you leak it
Speaker 2: to the New York Post, and wait, how does that
Speaker 2: shake the tree? How would that not cause anybody who is,
Speaker 2: you know, engaging in spying behaviors? Why would they come forward?
Speaker 4: Ah?
Speaker 3: It would only work if you already have strong suspicion
Speaker 3: or understanding of them. So if you already know their
Speaker 3: established patterns and correspondence, and you leak something like that,
Speaker 3: and the next thing you do is watch them and
Speaker 3: see how, if and how they alter that behavior pattern.
Speaker 2: Because so if you suspect somebody of being a spy,
Speaker 2: you you give in this case, real information and just
Speaker 2: see how they react.
Speaker 3: Right, Like I hypothetically or just thought experiment way to
Speaker 3: do it. Let's say there were let's say you and
Speaker 3: Paul and I had pretty solid intel. We had arrested
Speaker 3: our Rumrick or whatever, and we had a pretty good
Speaker 3: understanding of five other spies in the Atlanta metro area, right,
Speaker 3: and we knew their names, we knew enough about them
Speaker 3: to monitor or them, and then we let slide in
Speaker 3: you know, the Atlanta Journal or Constitution under condition of
Speaker 3: anonymity or whatever, that we suspect there are more spies
Speaker 3: in the Atlanta area, and then we would just keep
Speaker 3: those five people on twenty four to seven surveillance to
Speaker 3: see who runs for the airport first, and we would
Speaker 3: meet them there.
Speaker 2: That's that's really interesting, and I think that theoretically you
Speaker 2: would work for those five particular people. The larger effect,
Speaker 2: and maybe that's what the FBI was criticizing. The larger
Speaker 2: effect is that the rest of the network, because you're
Speaker 2: you're going after a small nest, basically, the rest of
Speaker 2: the network just says, Okay, we're out couple.
Speaker 3: Of eyes ghosts. Yeah, and you got to let the
Speaker 3: you got to cauterize the wound, right, so burn those
Speaker 3: other five.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like, this is why I'm putting it
Speaker 3: in there to be fair. But this is why I
Speaker 3: remain suspicious of the purity of Thuro's motives, because it
Speaker 3: reminds me of the idea of leaking information for greater
Speaker 3: advantage or forward progress on an operation like this. It
Speaker 3: reminds me a lot of very specific moves in fighting
Speaker 3: games like Yoshimitsu. For anybody familiar with. Techan has a
Speaker 3: move where he can stab himself and it does a
Speaker 3: lot of damage to him. But if his opponent is
Speaker 3: in a position that doesn't often happen, where they're standing
Speaker 3: directly behind them, then it's a big win. But that
Speaker 3: position usually doesn't happen, is the issue. That's why it's
Speaker 3: a special move.
Speaker 2: Why did he get a sword? Baffled me when Yoshimitzu
Speaker 2: got a sword right?
Speaker 3: Oh, and everybody else is pretty much hand to hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go on, well what's up with that?
Speaker 3: In the new Tech? And they have oh, a guy
Speaker 3: who is I guess his background is a spy as well.
Speaker 3: He for some reason has a knife and a gun.
Speaker 2: Oh in a suit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't seem fair.
Speaker 2: And they got a bear in the mix.
Speaker 3: Come on, yeah, they had a bear in the mix.
Speaker 3: Do you think you could fight a panda bear? Like,
Speaker 3: not a bear bear, but a panda bear.
Speaker 2: Probably not.
Speaker 3: I don't feel like I would ever. They seem so
Speaker 3: non agro. I feel like if I was holding bamboo,
Speaker 3: a panda bear might get angry at me or like
Speaker 3: snatch for.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, I just want them, yeah, come on, man,
Speaker 2: give me some pamboo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's more like that Dave Chappelle character than
Speaker 3: it is like nagro thing. But yeah, you're right, I
Speaker 3: never thought about that. Yoshiminsu has a sword. Huh. Story
Speaker 3: for another day. What is the most overpowered fighting game
Speaker 3: character in your opinion, because I think we both played
Speaker 3: a lot of fighting games.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know, overpowered. Uh, probably saying Gief. I'm
Speaker 2: just playing.
Speaker 1: That's funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't know. You tell us, folks, conspiracy.
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio dot com. We do have to say. I guess
Speaker 3: there's there is silver lining. There's this history and I've
Speaker 3: been reading Rodrie Jeffrey Jones Jeffries Jones, who wrote a
Speaker 3: book called the FBI a History and several other articles,
Speaker 3: and Jeffries Jones argues that because of the flaws in
Speaker 3: this spy ring case do pretty much entirely to Row,
Speaker 3: the US embarked on a better counter espionage program like
Speaker 3: it went up to Franklin D. Roosevelt, president at the time,
Speaker 3: and he said, you know, his fancy version of holy smokes,
Speaker 3: this is terrible. We have to make sure this doesn't
Speaker 3: happen again. And so in a way this informs a
Speaker 3: lot of the co intel pro stuff. We see later
Speaker 3: a lot of the sweeping surveillance laws that come into
Speaker 3: play the s Stellar Wind, Stellar Wind, there we go,
Speaker 3: five eyes to watch them all? You know, I don't know, man.
Speaker 3: It seems like, perhaps, at least in part, because of
Speaker 3: these conflicting conspiracies, the US government has gone down gone
Speaker 3: down a potentially dark path, breaking or bending the laws
Speaker 3: of their own country multiple times, up to and including
Speaker 3: murder in service of a greater good. I mean, is
Speaker 3: there a balance to be struck? And if so, what
Speaker 3: is it?
Speaker 2: That's a great question. Why don't you let us know
Speaker 2: what you think about it? You can reach us all
Speaker 2: over the place on YouTube and on x on what
Speaker 2: was the other one? Facebook? We are conspiracy stuff. On
Speaker 2: Instagram and TikTok we are conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 3: Show and if you're not, if you're not sipping the
Speaker 3: social meds, never fear. You can always contact us on
Speaker 3: a telephonic device. The numbers say it along at home
Speaker 3: one eight, three three std WYTK. When you call the number,
Speaker 3: you'll hear a message and a beep like so so
Speaker 3: beep that gives you three minutes. Those three minutes are yours.
Speaker 3: Go nuts. We love New leads for shows. We love reactions.
Speaker 3: We also like just some nice things, like the anonymous
Speaker 3: person who wrote into us and said that we talk
Speaker 3: well and do things right. With eloquent emails as well.
Speaker 3: Most importantly, give yourself a cool name nickname moniker. Let
Speaker 3: us know if we can use your name and or
Speaker 3: message on air, and if that doesn't quite bag your badgers.
Speaker 3: If you have more than three minutes worth of stuff
Speaker 3: to say, send us the links, Send us the pictures.
Speaker 3: Take us to the edge of.
Speaker 2: The rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: We will do the rest. Drop us a line at
Speaker 3: our good old fashioned email address where we.
Speaker 2: Are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want
Speaker 2: you to Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.