1 00:00:00,440 --> 00:00:05,039 Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. 2 00:00:12,760 --> 00:00:16,079 Speaker 1: She was very good at her job, and she refused 3 00:00:16,120 --> 00:00:18,800 Speaker 1: to tell her superiors her methods, even though they sent 4 00:00:18,920 --> 00:00:21,480 Speaker 1: her letters begging, like, just tell me how you're doing this, 5 00:00:21,520 --> 00:00:28,479 Speaker 1: tell me how you're finding this, and she never told them. 6 00:00:28,760 --> 00:00:32,639 Speaker 2: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor 7 00:00:32,680 --> 00:00:35,400 Speaker 2: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the 8 00:00:35,440 --> 00:00:39,280 Speaker 2: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, 9 00:00:39,560 --> 00:00:43,280 Speaker 2: research for my many audio and book projects has taken 10 00:00:43,360 --> 00:00:46,600 Speaker 2: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down 11 00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:51,320 Speaker 2: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, 12 00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:55,800 Speaker 2: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true 13 00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:59,560 Speaker 2: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both 14 00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:02,520 Speaker 2: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the 15 00:01:02,680 --> 00:01:07,759 Speaker 2: unpublished details behind their stories. Did you know that some 16 00:01:07,840 --> 00:01:11,280 Speaker 2: of the most effective American spies during World War II 17 00:01:11,760 --> 00:01:16,440 Speaker 2: were librarians and archivists and history professors. Some were locked 18 00:01:16,480 --> 00:01:20,320 Speaker 2: in the basement of the Library of Congress analyzing documents. 19 00:01:20,480 --> 00:01:24,760 Speaker 2: Those documents were being gathered by academics sneaking around Europe 20 00:01:24,959 --> 00:01:28,720 Speaker 2: under the Noses of the Nazis. Author Elise Graham tells 21 00:01:28,760 --> 00:01:31,360 Speaker 2: me the story at the center of her book, Book 22 00:01:31,480 --> 00:01:36,319 Speaker 2: and Dagger, how scholars and librarians became the unlikely spies of. 23 00:01:36,319 --> 00:01:37,080 Speaker 1: World War II. 24 00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:42,520 Speaker 2: When you are at at dinner party, are meeting new 25 00:01:42,520 --> 00:01:44,840 Speaker 2: people and they say, we're an author. What kind of 26 00:01:44,840 --> 00:01:47,480 Speaker 2: book was this? What do you say, Because it's certainly 27 00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:50,240 Speaker 2: not a quick summary. It's what are the themes and 28 00:01:50,400 --> 00:01:53,560 Speaker 2: what makes the book important you think and relevant to 29 00:01:53,880 --> 00:01:54,480 Speaker 2: an audience. 30 00:01:54,520 --> 00:01:57,600 Speaker 1: Now, so what would you say the book is about? Say, 31 00:01:57,800 --> 00:02:00,160 Speaker 1: this is a history of the OSS, which we as 32 00:02:00,160 --> 00:02:03,200 Speaker 1: a precursor to the CIA, which came together very quickly 33 00:02:03,240 --> 00:02:05,960 Speaker 1: in the wake of Pearl Harbor. At this time, the 34 00:02:06,400 --> 00:02:10,040 Speaker 1: United States didn't have a standing intelligence agency, and so 35 00:02:10,360 --> 00:02:13,320 Speaker 1: William Donovan, who was the head of the OSS, had 36 00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:17,560 Speaker 1: to pull together a working spy agency very quickly. And 37 00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:22,000 Speaker 1: an intelligence agency, as the name might suggest, requires a 38 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:25,200 Speaker 1: lot of intelligence, a lot of information people who understand 39 00:02:25,240 --> 00:02:28,959 Speaker 1: how to find facts and collect them and turn them 40 00:02:28,960 --> 00:02:32,920 Speaker 1: into something that's usable strategically or tactically. In short, he 41 00:02:33,280 --> 00:02:36,400 Speaker 1: needed to become an instant expert on every subject to 42 00:02:36,440 --> 00:02:38,840 Speaker 1: the library, and the best way for him to do that, 43 00:02:38,960 --> 00:02:41,680 Speaker 1: it turned out, was to simply raid the library for recruits. 44 00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:44,560 Speaker 1: So he pulled all of these librarians out of their 45 00:02:44,560 --> 00:02:47,680 Speaker 1: libraries and professors out of their classrooms, and they became 46 00:02:48,160 --> 00:02:51,560 Speaker 1: the spies who worked during World War Two. And the 47 00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:54,200 Speaker 1: innovations that they brought to the field of spycraft were 48 00:02:54,240 --> 00:02:57,640 Speaker 1: so profound that they laid down the basis for modern intelligence. 49 00:02:58,040 --> 00:03:00,840 Speaker 2: I've not done a book on spies. I had researched 50 00:03:00,960 --> 00:03:04,400 Speaker 2: pretty heavily a book on female spies during the Civil War, 51 00:03:04,760 --> 00:03:07,160 Speaker 2: and they were the most unlikely. Of course, we always 52 00:03:07,160 --> 00:03:10,440 Speaker 2: say that the most unlikely people who you would never suspect, 53 00:03:10,440 --> 00:03:13,560 Speaker 2: And you know, these were women that were transporting secrets 54 00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:16,800 Speaker 2: in their boots as they're riding across the country. And 55 00:03:16,880 --> 00:03:19,880 Speaker 2: I've always wondered what the background of a spy is, 56 00:03:20,520 --> 00:03:22,640 Speaker 2: So what is it now? Do you know what a 57 00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:25,000 Speaker 2: typical background for a CIA agent would be? 58 00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:27,880 Speaker 1: Is it law enforcement or what is it? You know, 59 00:03:28,040 --> 00:03:30,560 Speaker 1: I don't know what the typical background for a CIA 60 00:03:30,680 --> 00:03:33,480 Speaker 1: agent would be today, although rumor has it that the 61 00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:38,000 Speaker 1: CIA still does recruiting at the annual American Library Association conference. 62 00:03:38,640 --> 00:03:40,440 Speaker 1: I think you were right when you said that when 63 00:03:40,440 --> 00:03:42,880 Speaker 1: we hear about a spy, we always wind up saying, Oh, 64 00:03:42,960 --> 00:03:45,680 Speaker 1: that's the last person that I would expect, because that's 65 00:03:45,720 --> 00:03:48,880 Speaker 1: exactly who's demanded of a spy. In the movies, you know, 66 00:03:48,960 --> 00:03:51,520 Speaker 1: spies are these ripped hunks who are always carrying around 67 00:03:51,560 --> 00:03:54,760 Speaker 1: lots of gadgets and wearing tuxedos. But in real life 68 00:03:55,160 --> 00:03:57,840 Speaker 1: a gadget or a weapon would blow somebody's cover. A 69 00:03:57,920 --> 00:04:00,440 Speaker 1: tuxedo or having everybody in the western HEMMI sphear know 70 00:04:00,520 --> 00:04:03,200 Speaker 1: your drink order would make you a really ineffective spy. 71 00:04:03,800 --> 00:04:07,520 Speaker 1: These spies, librarians and professors were chosen precisely because they 72 00:04:07,560 --> 00:04:11,000 Speaker 1: would be overlooked. They were the world's least glamorous people 73 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:14,280 Speaker 1: for the world's most glamorous profession, and somehow they made 74 00:04:14,320 --> 00:04:16,640 Speaker 1: it work really well. Now, what makes a good spy? 75 00:04:17,120 --> 00:04:19,400 Speaker 1: Back then, if you think about the sort of person 76 00:04:19,400 --> 00:04:22,520 Speaker 1: who succeeded in the OSS after being pulled out of 77 00:04:22,560 --> 00:04:26,520 Speaker 1: their library, Carol, we might think of somebody like adel Kiber. 78 00:04:26,880 --> 00:04:30,360 Speaker 1: She got her PhD at the University of Chicago. She 79 00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:33,200 Speaker 1: was studying classics so she could speak different languages and 80 00:04:33,240 --> 00:04:37,120 Speaker 1: work in the archives. Back then, women couldn't become professors 81 00:04:37,200 --> 00:04:40,640 Speaker 1: very easily, so she got a job sort of self employed, 82 00:04:40,680 --> 00:04:44,240 Speaker 1: going from archive to archive across Europe taking pictures of 83 00:04:44,520 --> 00:04:48,080 Speaker 1: rare texts to send back home to professors in the States. 84 00:04:48,480 --> 00:04:50,600 Speaker 1: There are still people who will do that for you 85 00:04:50,640 --> 00:04:53,240 Speaker 1: at various archives. They'll take pictures of the material and 86 00:04:53,279 --> 00:04:55,560 Speaker 1: send them to you for a fee. They could usually 87 00:04:55,600 --> 00:04:58,000 Speaker 1: make about seventy dollars an hour. It's a pretty good job. 88 00:04:58,160 --> 00:05:01,200 Speaker 1: But she became along the way O Way really really 89 00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:04,479 Speaker 1: good at getting, you know, documents that were hard to get. 90 00:05:04,839 --> 00:05:07,320 Speaker 1: Once she went to the Vatican Archives, where in order 91 00:05:07,360 --> 00:05:10,000 Speaker 1: to look at anything you need permission from a church official. 92 00:05:10,120 --> 00:05:12,320 Speaker 1: She asked to find this one hard to find document. 93 00:05:12,760 --> 00:05:14,919 Speaker 1: The attendant said, well, no, you can't get that. You 94 00:05:14,920 --> 00:05:17,320 Speaker 1: would need permission from a cardinal to get that. And 95 00:05:17,360 --> 00:05:19,800 Speaker 1: she said, then send me to the nearest cardinal. And 96 00:05:19,880 --> 00:05:23,000 Speaker 1: he was appalled. But then she took out a card, 97 00:05:23,040 --> 00:05:25,719 Speaker 1: an introduction card that you might stand up to someone, 98 00:05:25,960 --> 00:05:29,760 Speaker 1: and it said adel Kaiber, Hollywood, California, because she had 99 00:05:29,760 --> 00:05:32,159 Speaker 1: grown up in Los Angeles, and she sent up that 100 00:05:32,279 --> 00:05:35,080 Speaker 1: card of introduction to his eminence and he immediately sent 101 00:05:35,120 --> 00:05:38,920 Speaker 1: the attendant back down with the message, oh you're from Hollywood, Come, come, 102 00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:41,760 Speaker 1: let's talk. She went up there and she amused the 103 00:05:41,760 --> 00:05:45,080 Speaker 1: cardinal with an hour and a half of conversation about Hollywood. 104 00:05:45,279 --> 00:05:47,240 Speaker 1: I don't know everything that was in the conversation, but 105 00:05:47,279 --> 00:05:49,479 Speaker 1: I do know that he asked her whether it was 106 00:05:49,520 --> 00:05:52,680 Speaker 1: true that Los Angeles, like the Vatican, is surrounded by 107 00:05:52,680 --> 00:05:54,880 Speaker 1: a high wall. And I don't know her answer, but 108 00:05:54,920 --> 00:05:56,760 Speaker 1: I like to think she said something like yes, that's 109 00:05:56,760 --> 00:05:58,800 Speaker 1: why it's so hard to break into the film industry. 110 00:05:59,240 --> 00:06:02,560 Speaker 1: But my point is afterward she got permission to see 111 00:06:02,600 --> 00:06:04,760 Speaker 1: the text. You know, a lot of the time we're 112 00:06:04,800 --> 00:06:08,200 Speaker 1: working in the archives, it's not as simple as just 113 00:06:08,360 --> 00:06:11,359 Speaker 1: looking up something in the library catalog. You need to 114 00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:14,480 Speaker 1: work people, or you need to be aware of ways 115 00:06:14,480 --> 00:06:17,520 Speaker 1: to get at an item that aren't as simple as 116 00:06:17,680 --> 00:06:19,880 Speaker 1: just walking through the door and asking for it. And 117 00:06:19,960 --> 00:06:22,280 Speaker 1: she was extremely good at that, which was why after 118 00:06:22,360 --> 00:06:26,080 Speaker 1: World War Two started, someone who had previously employed her 119 00:06:26,760 --> 00:06:29,200 Speaker 1: in this job, who is now working for the OSS 120 00:06:29,360 --> 00:06:31,920 Speaker 1: called her up and said, have I got a job 121 00:06:31,960 --> 00:06:35,479 Speaker 1: for you? And she jumped at the chance. It was 122 00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:37,159 Speaker 1: like she had been waiting all of her life to 123 00:06:37,240 --> 00:06:39,280 Speaker 1: do this. And it says she had, or at least 124 00:06:39,320 --> 00:06:41,280 Speaker 1: she had been training all of her life to do this. 125 00:06:41,440 --> 00:06:43,560 Speaker 1: She was learning how to be a spy without knowing it. 126 00:06:44,240 --> 00:06:49,400 Speaker 1: She became the most productive document acquisitions expert working for 127 00:06:49,480 --> 00:06:53,320 Speaker 1: the OSS. She sent home mountains of material, a lot 128 00:06:53,360 --> 00:06:55,719 Speaker 1: of it, stuff that she really should not have gotten 129 00:06:55,760 --> 00:06:59,600 Speaker 1: access to, underground newspapers, books that the Germans had designated 130 00:06:59,640 --> 00:07:04,280 Speaker 1: SEQ books and pulled from circulation, German periodicals that only 131 00:07:04,320 --> 00:07:07,800 Speaker 1: went to people on vetted subscriber lists. We don't know 132 00:07:08,360 --> 00:07:10,840 Speaker 1: her methods, but we know that she got all of 133 00:07:10,880 --> 00:07:13,560 Speaker 1: this incredible stuff and she sent it back to the 134 00:07:13,640 --> 00:07:16,880 Speaker 1: United States, and you know, it wound up in all 135 00:07:16,920 --> 00:07:19,720 Speaker 1: sorts of places. It wound up in Washington helping people 136 00:07:19,800 --> 00:07:23,360 Speaker 1: to make strategic wartime plans. It wound up in the 137 00:07:23,520 --> 00:07:26,480 Speaker 1: library at a little place in Los Alamos. 138 00:07:29,840 --> 00:07:34,680 Speaker 2: So for Adele, just to simplify from my own mind, here, 139 00:07:34,960 --> 00:07:38,560 Speaker 2: she is looking for documents that are either housed in 140 00:07:38,680 --> 00:07:43,200 Speaker 2: Germany or documents that are German based documents but they're 141 00:07:43,280 --> 00:07:44,280 Speaker 2: held other places. 142 00:07:44,360 --> 00:07:47,080 Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, she was working as an undercover 143 00:07:47,160 --> 00:07:51,680 Speaker 1: agent in Stockholm. Stockholm was neutral, but it wasn't impartial. 144 00:07:51,920 --> 00:07:55,160 Speaker 1: That is, Stockholm had an agreement with the warring countries 145 00:07:55,160 --> 00:07:58,080 Speaker 1: that it could remain neutral only if no spies operated 146 00:07:58,080 --> 00:08:00,280 Speaker 1: in Stockholm, so it was very important for her to 147 00:08:00,320 --> 00:08:03,920 Speaker 1: remain undercover. Besides which, the Swedish police had trained with 148 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:06,800 Speaker 1: the Gestappos, so if she had been captured, she would 149 00:08:06,840 --> 00:08:10,840 Speaker 1: have been open to possibly Gestoppo style beatings and interrogations. 150 00:08:11,280 --> 00:08:13,720 Speaker 1: You know, all kinds of things like that. She got 151 00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:17,680 Speaker 1: and secretly sent home on microfilm, All kinds of documents 152 00:08:17,680 --> 00:08:21,200 Speaker 1: that she really shouldn't have gotten. Access to. Railway schedules, 153 00:08:21,240 --> 00:08:25,760 Speaker 1: German newspapers, atlases, maps, technical journals, German newsletters that were 154 00:08:25,760 --> 00:08:28,560 Speaker 1: on a restricted list and only went to certain vetted subscribers, 155 00:08:28,840 --> 00:08:32,440 Speaker 1: underground resistance literature, privately printed books, books that have been 156 00:08:32,440 --> 00:08:35,600 Speaker 1: printed by underground presses, books that the German government had 157 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:39,760 Speaker 1: designated secret books and pulled from circulation. She got current newspapers, 158 00:08:39,800 --> 00:08:44,040 Speaker 1: back copies dating to nineteen forty, industry directories, trade magazines, 159 00:08:44,120 --> 00:08:48,679 Speaker 1: railway schedules, publications on aeronautics and banking, and bibliography and 160 00:08:49,040 --> 00:08:54,400 Speaker 1: metallurgy and mining, basically scientific publications of every description, and 161 00:08:54,480 --> 00:08:57,520 Speaker 1: a lot of this was much more useful from an 162 00:08:57,600 --> 00:09:00,559 Speaker 1: espionage perspective than you would think when you first heard 163 00:09:00,640 --> 00:09:03,720 Speaker 1: what it was like, take one of those industry directories. 164 00:09:03,760 --> 00:09:06,240 Speaker 1: What would be the value of getting a Berlin industry 165 00:09:06,240 --> 00:09:09,960 Speaker 1: directory for nineteen forty two. Well, one of its uses 166 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:13,160 Speaker 1: would be to find out the addresses of factories that 167 00:09:13,240 --> 00:09:16,199 Speaker 1: produced ball bearings. And if you're asking what's the point 168 00:09:16,200 --> 00:09:19,520 Speaker 1: of getting factories that produce ball bearings getting their addresses, 169 00:09:19,640 --> 00:09:22,040 Speaker 1: the answer is that ball bearings were used to manufacture 170 00:09:22,120 --> 00:09:24,800 Speaker 1: fighter planes and tanks and gun carriages and all the 171 00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:27,800 Speaker 1: other moving parts of Hitler's war machine. If you bomb 172 00:09:27,840 --> 00:09:31,000 Speaker 1: a factory that produces fighter planes, you've just bombed a 173 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:33,679 Speaker 1: factory that produces fighter planes. But if you bomb a 174 00:09:33,720 --> 00:09:37,120 Speaker 1: factory that produces ball bearings, you've potentially disabled all of 175 00:09:37,160 --> 00:09:40,200 Speaker 1: the factories that produce ball bearings and that produced tanks 176 00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:42,880 Speaker 1: and that produce things like that. There's a huge subplot 177 00:09:42,920 --> 00:09:45,000 Speaker 1: of World War two that just consists of trying to 178 00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:47,360 Speaker 1: get control of ball bearings. But what I'm trying to 179 00:09:47,360 --> 00:09:51,120 Speaker 1: say is Kuyber was acquiring, at the request of the OSS, 180 00:09:51,240 --> 00:09:54,840 Speaker 1: all of these documents, all of these books that not 181 00:09:54,880 --> 00:09:59,079 Speaker 1: only were hard to get, but also the value of 182 00:09:59,200 --> 00:10:03,120 Speaker 1: which wasn't immediately obvious. And the reason she was being 183 00:10:03,160 --> 00:10:05,880 Speaker 1: asked for them was because of professors back home in 184 00:10:05,920 --> 00:10:08,160 Speaker 1: the States who were working, for instance, in the basement 185 00:10:08,200 --> 00:10:11,280 Speaker 1: of the Library of Congress, who were using their knowledge 186 00:10:11,280 --> 00:10:14,720 Speaker 1: as humanists or social sciences, as economists and so forth 187 00:10:14,960 --> 00:10:17,200 Speaker 1: to say, hey, hang on a second, I think that 188 00:10:17,280 --> 00:10:19,840 Speaker 1: if we bomb the ball bearing factories, we can have 189 00:10:19,880 --> 00:10:22,480 Speaker 1: a much bigger effect than if we simply bomb the 190 00:10:22,520 --> 00:10:25,360 Speaker 1: airplane factories. Well, that was going to be my next question. 191 00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:27,360 Speaker 1: How did she know what to even look for? Did 192 00:10:27,400 --> 00:10:30,320 Speaker 1: the OSS give her guidance? But it sounds like the 193 00:10:30,559 --> 00:10:33,440 Speaker 1: people in America were giving her guidance who had background 194 00:10:33,440 --> 00:10:36,040 Speaker 1: in this sort of thing. Yes, they sent her requests, 195 00:10:36,400 --> 00:10:39,880 Speaker 1: although she also found items on her own that she 196 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:43,040 Speaker 1: sent over. So she made friends with the Norwegian underground, 197 00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:45,960 Speaker 1: for example, and she would send photographs in secret publications 198 00:10:45,960 --> 00:10:46,439 Speaker 1: from them. 199 00:10:46,840 --> 00:10:49,760 Speaker 2: When we talk about the personal life of these folks, 200 00:10:49,800 --> 00:10:52,120 Speaker 2: and we're starting with Adele, did she have a husband 201 00:10:52,240 --> 00:10:54,559 Speaker 2: or kids or you know, family that I'm just wondering 202 00:10:54,600 --> 00:10:56,520 Speaker 2: if she if she was able to tell anybody what 203 00:10:56,600 --> 00:10:57,160 Speaker 2: she's doing. 204 00:10:57,559 --> 00:10:59,920 Speaker 1: So she didn't have a husband, she didn't have kids. 205 00:11:00,040 --> 00:11:03,439 Speaker 1: Seems to value her freedom, which maybe we can understand. 206 00:11:03,600 --> 00:11:07,120 Speaker 1: But also when other women who did have a husband, kids, 207 00:11:07,200 --> 00:11:09,079 Speaker 1: so forth, came home from the war and they had 208 00:11:09,080 --> 00:11:11,920 Speaker 1: been working in espionage, they were very very good at 209 00:11:11,920 --> 00:11:13,960 Speaker 1: not telling their families what they had been up to. 210 00:11:14,360 --> 00:11:16,199 Speaker 1: You know, they would have cover stories. There was one 211 00:11:16,200 --> 00:11:19,400 Speaker 1: woman who much later wrote a memoir. She had been 212 00:11:19,440 --> 00:11:24,200 Speaker 1: working at the spy training school near London. It was 213 00:11:24,240 --> 00:11:27,559 Speaker 1: called Beauley, and she told her family that she was 214 00:11:27,640 --> 00:11:30,760 Speaker 1: working for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fish, and they 215 00:11:30,760 --> 00:11:33,440 Speaker 1: believed that for many, many decades after she went home. 216 00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:37,720 Speaker 1: One of the people in the Soe, the British equivalent 217 00:11:37,760 --> 00:11:42,319 Speaker 1: of the OSS, who did recruiting, actually preferred to recruit 218 00:11:42,320 --> 00:11:45,319 Speaker 1: women because he thought that women are capable of a 219 00:11:45,440 --> 00:11:48,400 Speaker 1: kind of He used the phrase lonely courage that he 220 00:11:48,440 --> 00:11:51,760 Speaker 1: thought men were less capable of, because men have wives, 221 00:11:51,800 --> 00:11:54,160 Speaker 1: they have secretaries, they have a friend at the pub 222 00:11:54,240 --> 00:11:57,920 Speaker 1: that that they want to gossip to, whereas women are 223 00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:01,080 Speaker 1: kind of accustomed to having their labor be invisible yea, 224 00:12:01,160 --> 00:12:04,520 Speaker 1: you know, sort of unthanked, and they can when necessary 225 00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:05,720 Speaker 1: turn that into a strength. 226 00:12:06,040 --> 00:12:07,319 Speaker 2: Well, I thought you were going to say that he 227 00:12:07,360 --> 00:12:10,960 Speaker 2: would insinuate that women are more duplicitous than men, a 228 00:12:11,000 --> 00:12:11,839 Speaker 2: little sneakier. 229 00:12:11,920 --> 00:12:14,920 Speaker 1: Maybe we're sneakier. I would definitely say that academics are 230 00:12:14,960 --> 00:12:19,079 Speaker 1: sneakier than other people. They're very accustomed to subterfuge, to 231 00:12:19,160 --> 00:12:21,480 Speaker 1: gathering gossip, to that sort of thing. I think that 232 00:12:21,520 --> 00:12:23,320 Speaker 1: it's not much of a stretch to say that a 233 00:12:23,320 --> 00:12:26,080 Speaker 1: lot of these guys found themselves very much at home 234 00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:29,000 Speaker 1: in the world of spycraft after they were sent to 235 00:12:29,040 --> 00:12:31,120 Speaker 1: the training camps and taught how to kill people with 236 00:12:31,160 --> 00:12:32,160 Speaker 1: folded newspapers. 237 00:12:32,559 --> 00:12:35,480 Speaker 2: I will say, you cannot pin this comment on me, 238 00:12:35,840 --> 00:12:39,760 Speaker 2: but I have spoken to many male investigators who say 239 00:12:40,360 --> 00:12:44,840 Speaker 2: how many times the male criminal has been fouled by 240 00:12:45,080 --> 00:12:48,079 Speaker 2: his interest in sex. Yes, that's a whole other level 241 00:12:48,120 --> 00:12:51,320 Speaker 2: of influence that women can have over men. So yes, 242 00:12:51,400 --> 00:12:54,200 Speaker 2: I absolutely I think that's in the Civil War time 243 00:12:54,280 --> 00:12:58,480 Speaker 2: another reason why both sides Union and the Confederates were 244 00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:02,520 Speaker 2: able to utilize women. So Adela doesn't have a family 245 00:13:02,720 --> 00:13:05,400 Speaker 2: or she doesn't feel pressure to disclose anything, and she's 246 00:13:05,440 --> 00:13:07,360 Speaker 2: able to kind of move along on her own. Tell 247 00:13:07,360 --> 00:13:09,880 Speaker 2: me your source for her. Did she write letters or 248 00:13:09,920 --> 00:13:12,319 Speaker 2: was it a book or what happened? So she was 249 00:13:12,360 --> 00:13:17,040 Speaker 2: exchanging letters constantly with her superiors, and also there were 250 00:13:17,160 --> 00:13:20,959 Speaker 2: lists of texts that she was sending home for record keeping. 251 00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:24,960 Speaker 2: A war produces a tremendous amount of documentation, so it 252 00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:28,520 Speaker 2: was possible to find in the archives, in the National 253 00:13:28,600 --> 00:13:34,360 Speaker 2: Archives in Maryland a tremendous amount of paperwork describing her adventures. 254 00:13:35,120 --> 00:13:38,880 Speaker 2: I will mention parenthetically that getting at her papers the 255 00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:42,920 Speaker 2: National Archives in Maryland is more difficult because the Finding 256 00:13:42,960 --> 00:13:47,360 Speaker 2: Aid Forss documents was put together by OSS veterans after 257 00:13:47,400 --> 00:13:49,840 Speaker 2: the war, and even though they did a good service 258 00:13:49,880 --> 00:13:53,320 Speaker 2: to history, but they forgot to record the names of 259 00:13:53,360 --> 00:13:55,839 Speaker 2: women along with the names of men in a lot 260 00:13:55,840 --> 00:13:58,400 Speaker 2: of cases. So the documents are there, but you will 261 00:13:58,400 --> 00:14:01,160 Speaker 2: not find her name in the find Aid. You have 262 00:14:01,240 --> 00:14:03,000 Speaker 2: to kind of know that it's there and get the 263 00:14:03,040 --> 00:14:05,480 Speaker 2: help of librarians to get you to it. I know 264 00:14:05,760 --> 00:14:08,120 Speaker 2: the irony is not lost on you that you were 265 00:14:08,160 --> 00:14:10,679 Speaker 2: writing about a woman whose job was to dig up 266 00:14:10,679 --> 00:14:12,960 Speaker 2: every piece of information she could and now you are 267 00:14:13,280 --> 00:14:16,800 Speaker 2: struggling to find documentation on this woman whose job was to, 268 00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:18,520 Speaker 2: you know, find all of this information. 269 00:14:18,800 --> 00:14:22,040 Speaker 1: So was she your most not interesting character? 270 00:14:22,160 --> 00:14:24,800 Speaker 2: But is Adele the one that you connected with the 271 00:14:24,840 --> 00:14:26,760 Speaker 2: most or is there someone else that we're going to 272 00:14:26,760 --> 00:14:29,080 Speaker 2: talk about that you felt even kind of closer to. 273 00:14:29,520 --> 00:14:33,520 Speaker 1: I really appreciated Adele, and for me she represented partly, 274 00:14:33,920 --> 00:14:35,920 Speaker 1: you know, it was a serious war, It was it 275 00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:39,040 Speaker 1: important war. It was also the case that for Adele 276 00:14:39,080 --> 00:14:41,680 Speaker 1: and women like her, and my grandmother, who worked in 277 00:14:41,680 --> 00:14:46,160 Speaker 1: intelligence was one of them, the war was an opportunity 278 00:14:46,200 --> 00:14:48,600 Speaker 1: to have more power and more freedom than would have 279 00:14:48,640 --> 00:14:51,560 Speaker 1: been available under any other circumstances at that time. 280 00:14:51,880 --> 00:14:55,200 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we often hear about when menly for war, 281 00:14:55,840 --> 00:14:58,400 Speaker 2: you know, the women are at home and they're acquiring 282 00:14:58,520 --> 00:15:00,840 Speaker 2: new skills and you know, arning new things. And of 283 00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:03,080 Speaker 2: course we know about the baseball leagues, you know that 284 00:15:03,240 --> 00:15:05,840 Speaker 2: started popping up, and then when they come back, it's 285 00:15:05,840 --> 00:15:08,360 Speaker 2: hard to realize that things will go back to normal. 286 00:15:08,680 --> 00:15:11,360 Speaker 2: I know that this is for a spy story. Some 287 00:15:11,520 --> 00:15:13,400 Speaker 2: of your information would have been limited. Do we have 288 00:15:13,440 --> 00:15:16,560 Speaker 2: any idea how many female spies were out there? 289 00:15:16,640 --> 00:15:18,440 Speaker 1: You thought it was just maybe more women than men. 290 00:15:18,800 --> 00:15:22,720 Speaker 1: So the OSS itself was thirty five percent women. I 291 00:15:22,760 --> 00:15:25,080 Speaker 1: couldn't say off of the top of my head how 292 00:15:25,080 --> 00:15:28,120 Speaker 1: many of them were active undercover agents. But it was 293 00:15:28,200 --> 00:15:31,440 Speaker 1: the case that undercover agents were often preferred to be 294 00:15:31,560 --> 00:15:35,720 Speaker 1: women because if you had someone who was in occupied France, 295 00:15:35,840 --> 00:15:38,480 Speaker 1: let's say, if they were a man, then they might 296 00:15:38,520 --> 00:15:40,680 Speaker 1: get swept up by one of the raids that the 297 00:15:40,720 --> 00:15:43,840 Speaker 1: Germans sometimes performed, where they would take all of kind 298 00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:45,440 Speaker 1: of all of the men who are on the streets 299 00:15:45,480 --> 00:15:47,760 Speaker 1: and you know, get them over to Germany to work 300 00:15:47,760 --> 00:15:50,000 Speaker 1: in the factories or something like that. They wouldn't do 301 00:15:50,040 --> 00:15:52,440 Speaker 1: that to the women. Or these were often kind of 302 00:15:52,520 --> 00:15:55,520 Speaker 1: cities of widows. The men had all been taken away 303 00:15:55,520 --> 00:15:58,440 Speaker 1: to work in the factories or to fight or that 304 00:15:58,480 --> 00:16:02,080 Speaker 1: sort of thing, and the people holding the fort were women. 305 00:16:02,280 --> 00:16:05,120 Speaker 1: So who would notice another woman walking around, especially one 306 00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:09,320 Speaker 1: who had say a basket on her bicycle that you know, 307 00:16:09,560 --> 00:16:12,160 Speaker 1: had vegetables poking out of it, even though it was 308 00:16:12,200 --> 00:16:15,080 Speaker 1: actually carrying a radio that sort of thing. Yeah, women 309 00:16:15,160 --> 00:16:19,240 Speaker 1: had sort of a better cover given the circumstances during 310 00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:20,760 Speaker 1: World War Two a lot of the time. 311 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:23,240 Speaker 2: Now you know, now we have the Internet, she could 312 00:16:23,240 --> 00:16:25,720 Speaker 2: scan stuff in and send it and it could be encrypted, 313 00:16:25,720 --> 00:16:29,280 Speaker 2: and you know, there's I think ways to safely send documents. 314 00:16:29,520 --> 00:16:31,760 Speaker 2: But this would have been snail mail, right, How would 315 00:16:31,800 --> 00:16:33,760 Speaker 2: she have gotten these documents back? To the United States 316 00:16:33,840 --> 00:16:37,760 Speaker 2: or wherever they were going safely. I know she's in Sweden, 317 00:16:37,840 --> 00:16:40,320 Speaker 2: but still there must have been some kind of monitoring 318 00:16:40,360 --> 00:16:41,920 Speaker 2: from the Germans about stuff like this. 319 00:16:42,400 --> 00:16:44,840 Speaker 1: All sorts of different methods, a big one with something 320 00:16:44,880 --> 00:16:47,600 Speaker 1: called the diplomatic pouch. That is, it was possible for 321 00:16:47,680 --> 00:16:53,120 Speaker 1: embassies to safely send documents or microfilm back home, and 322 00:16:53,160 --> 00:16:56,120 Speaker 1: that was sort of a privilege that everybody gave everybody 323 00:16:56,120 --> 00:16:59,440 Speaker 1: else's embassies. That isn't to say that embassies were completely 324 00:16:59,480 --> 00:17:02,560 Speaker 1: safe this whole mission during World War Two in I 325 00:17:02,560 --> 00:17:06,840 Speaker 1: think Washington, where the OSS secretly broke into the Spanish 326 00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:09,959 Speaker 1: embassy and took photographs of the documents inside of its 327 00:17:10,040 --> 00:17:12,800 Speaker 1: safes using the help of some criminals. Back home in 328 00:17:12,840 --> 00:17:14,720 Speaker 1: the States, they found a guy in New York who 329 00:17:15,359 --> 00:17:17,639 Speaker 1: was sort of kept out of jail because he always 330 00:17:17,640 --> 00:17:20,560 Speaker 1: helped the FBI to break into whatever safe the FBI 331 00:17:20,640 --> 00:17:23,600 Speaker 1: needed to break into. But that's a whole other story. Yeah, 332 00:17:23,680 --> 00:17:27,399 Speaker 1: diplomatic pouch was a big one, but people used all 333 00:17:27,440 --> 00:17:31,480 Speaker 1: sorts of sneaky methods to get documents across borders. During 334 00:17:31,480 --> 00:17:35,320 Speaker 1: the war, there was a case where documents were secretly 335 00:17:35,480 --> 00:17:41,440 Speaker 1: being ferried out of an occupied country in a Nazi plane, 336 00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:44,920 Speaker 1: and they kept the papers sort of in the plane's breaks, 337 00:17:45,240 --> 00:17:47,840 Speaker 1: so the Nazis would actually fly it over the border. Wow. 338 00:17:48,119 --> 00:17:49,600 Speaker 1: Necessity is the mother of invention. 339 00:17:52,840 --> 00:17:55,480 Speaker 2: Did you get a sense from any of the letters 340 00:17:55,760 --> 00:17:58,720 Speaker 2: from Adele to her supervisors or whoever that she was 341 00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:01,280 Speaker 2: in danger at any point she scared or felt like 342 00:18:01,280 --> 00:18:02,879 Speaker 2: she was going to get caught at some point. 343 00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:05,600 Speaker 1: I'm sure that she must have felt that way. I mean, 344 00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:09,360 Speaker 1: the place where she worked, which was the American legation, 345 00:18:10,080 --> 00:18:12,879 Speaker 1: was being observed. It was right next door to the 346 00:18:12,920 --> 00:18:16,879 Speaker 1: German legation to begin with, but also there were people 347 00:18:17,280 --> 00:18:20,480 Speaker 1: wearing plain clothes constantly standing on the other side of 348 00:18:20,520 --> 00:18:22,720 Speaker 1: the road and taking pictures of the building. I mean, 349 00:18:22,720 --> 00:18:26,720 Speaker 1: it was very obviously being surveilled, which makes it all 350 00:18:26,760 --> 00:18:29,359 Speaker 1: the more remarkable that she managed not to come under 351 00:18:29,359 --> 00:18:32,240 Speaker 1: suspicion of being a spy. She did have what was 352 00:18:32,280 --> 00:18:35,959 Speaker 1: known as cutaways, which is people who would meet someone 353 00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:38,439 Speaker 1: on her behalf so that she never met the other person, 354 00:18:38,560 --> 00:18:41,399 Speaker 1: or boys who would pick up deliveries at bookstores, that 355 00:18:41,480 --> 00:18:45,199 Speaker 1: sort of thing. But I get the sense that she 356 00:18:45,400 --> 00:18:50,080 Speaker 1: was actually very good at controlling her fear and getting 357 00:18:50,119 --> 00:18:52,720 Speaker 1: things done. You know, like one of those I don't 358 00:18:52,760 --> 00:18:57,400 Speaker 1: know lady detectives in a BBC show who goes into 359 00:18:57,440 --> 00:19:00,560 Speaker 1: the village and, you know, figures out that the vicar 360 00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:03,679 Speaker 1: murdered everyone and sets things right and then adjusts her 361 00:19:03,720 --> 00:19:05,520 Speaker 1: hat and gets on the train to the next village. 362 00:19:05,560 --> 00:19:08,480 Speaker 1: She really does give me that give you that impression. 363 00:19:08,119 --> 00:19:11,040 Speaker 2: Little Jessica Fletcher from Murder She wrote vous. 364 00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:15,520 Speaker 1: Exactly, Yes, I'm getting Jessica Fletcher vibes. Okay, cozy mysteries. Okay. 365 00:19:15,680 --> 00:19:18,480 Speaker 2: So do we get the sense that the Germans did 366 00:19:18,480 --> 00:19:20,680 Speaker 2: the exact same thing that we did, or other countries 367 00:19:20,720 --> 00:19:21,520 Speaker 2: that our allies did. 368 00:19:22,080 --> 00:19:25,960 Speaker 1: No, Actually, the United States was inventing something new when 369 00:19:25,960 --> 00:19:29,080 Speaker 1: it recruited all of those professors and librarians to the OSS. 370 00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:31,879 Speaker 1: The professors and librarians they worked in a branch of 371 00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:35,919 Speaker 1: the OSS called Research and Analysis, also known as the 372 00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:39,159 Speaker 1: Chairborn Division. Now there was another branch of the OSS 373 00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:42,840 Speaker 1: called Research and Development, and those guys were it was 374 00:19:42,880 --> 00:19:45,639 Speaker 1: a well known kind of branch in any spy agency. 375 00:19:45,680 --> 00:19:49,199 Speaker 1: It was the people who made bombs, who made you know, poisons, 376 00:19:49,280 --> 00:19:52,280 Speaker 1: that sort of thing, spy gear, weapons, That was a 377 00:19:52,359 --> 00:19:55,600 Speaker 1: well known type of branch in a spy agency. But 378 00:19:55,680 --> 00:20:00,640 Speaker 1: research and analysis, bringing in humanists, bringing in social science, right, 379 00:20:01,160 --> 00:20:03,840 Speaker 1: getting them to do their thing in the service of spycraft. 380 00:20:04,119 --> 00:20:06,440 Speaker 1: That was something new, and it wound up being so 381 00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:10,080 Speaker 1: successful that it changed the course of espionage. I mean, 382 00:20:10,160 --> 00:20:12,920 Speaker 1: we've been talking about ways of secretly, you know, bringing 383 00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:15,200 Speaker 1: messages from one place to another. I know that during 384 00:20:15,200 --> 00:20:16,960 Speaker 1: World War Two there was also a group of women 385 00:20:16,960 --> 00:20:19,520 Speaker 1: who would carry secret message. They would dress like nuns 386 00:20:19,800 --> 00:20:23,440 Speaker 1: and carry secret messages in their rosaries. But the great 387 00:20:23,480 --> 00:20:27,240 Speaker 1: innovation of research and analysis was something that Sherman Kent. 388 00:20:27,760 --> 00:20:30,600 Speaker 1: Another character in the book says, which is that ninety 389 00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:33,360 Speaker 1: percent of what a spy agency needs to know they 390 00:20:33,359 --> 00:20:35,760 Speaker 1: can get from public sources. They don't need to consult 391 00:20:35,800 --> 00:20:38,359 Speaker 1: secret sources at all. It's just that And this is 392 00:20:38,400 --> 00:20:41,280 Speaker 1: the big secret of life. Nobody does the reading. So 393 00:20:41,640 --> 00:20:44,000 Speaker 1: if you do the reading, every professor knows this. They 394 00:20:44,040 --> 00:20:46,239 Speaker 1: go into class. The students haven't done the reading. They 395 00:20:46,240 --> 00:20:48,560 Speaker 1: could tell who has. If you do the reading, you're 396 00:20:48,600 --> 00:20:52,280 Speaker 1: already ahead of everybody else. So there was one instance 397 00:20:52,359 --> 00:20:54,800 Speaker 1: during World War two. This is a story that William 398 00:20:54,800 --> 00:20:58,239 Speaker 1: donnovan liked to tell, and it's apparently true. There was 399 00:20:58,480 --> 00:21:02,679 Speaker 1: a woman, a countess, American by birth, very lucky by marriage, 400 00:21:02,720 --> 00:21:04,959 Speaker 1: and she was traveling by train from you know, an 401 00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:09,360 Speaker 1: occupied country to an unoccupied one. The gestoppo pull everybody 402 00:21:09,359 --> 00:21:11,360 Speaker 1: off of the train to search them to make sure 403 00:21:11,359 --> 00:21:15,040 Speaker 1: that they're not spies, and the Countess when she went 404 00:21:15,080 --> 00:21:17,240 Speaker 1: to the restroom in the train, she had taken a 405 00:21:17,320 --> 00:21:19,959 Speaker 1: newspaper and sort of you know, pulled off the pages 406 00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:22,199 Speaker 1: and set them down on the seat so that, you know, 407 00:21:22,240 --> 00:21:26,160 Speaker 1: in order to keep her dignified bottom from being contaminated. 408 00:21:26,440 --> 00:21:29,639 Speaker 1: But that means that when the gestappo were searching everybody, 409 00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:33,480 Speaker 1: she had, unbeknownst to her newsprint on her bottom. And 410 00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:36,320 Speaker 1: so the Germans got very excited because they thought that 411 00:21:36,359 --> 00:21:39,560 Speaker 1: they had discovered this new way, you know, for Allied 412 00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:42,919 Speaker 1: spies to transmit information. And she was finally able to 413 00:21:42,960 --> 00:21:45,320 Speaker 1: prove to them that it was just newsprint from a newspaper. 414 00:21:45,480 --> 00:21:47,960 Speaker 1: They were very upset and put her back on the train. 415 00:21:48,480 --> 00:21:51,080 Speaker 1: And Donovan would always finish the story by saying they 416 00:21:51,119 --> 00:21:53,159 Speaker 1: were so excited about the newsprint on her bottom that 417 00:21:53,200 --> 00:21:55,200 Speaker 1: they forgot to check the lining of her purse, which 418 00:21:55,320 --> 00:21:58,919 Speaker 1: was filled with documents for the oss. But the actual 419 00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:03,240 Speaker 1: punchline to the story is the newspaper itself. The professors 420 00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:05,199 Speaker 1: who were working in the basement of the Library of 421 00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:09,240 Speaker 1: Congress figured out all kinds of ways to read newspapers 422 00:22:09,680 --> 00:22:13,640 Speaker 1: from occupied Europe, newspapers from neutral countries, things like that 423 00:22:13,840 --> 00:22:17,240 Speaker 1: to get information on troop movements. They were able to 424 00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:21,440 Speaker 1: figure out whether the Germans were amassing troops somewhere or 425 00:22:21,680 --> 00:22:25,240 Speaker 1: whether they were planning to make a strike somewhere, using 426 00:22:25,280 --> 00:22:29,040 Speaker 1: things like you know, frothy little mentions of military men 427 00:22:29,080 --> 00:22:32,159 Speaker 1: in town in the society pages. They were able to 428 00:22:32,560 --> 00:22:36,840 Speaker 1: use tables of railroad rates and study the changes in 429 00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:39,360 Speaker 1: railroad rates in order to find out where the Germans 430 00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:43,160 Speaker 1: were moving. Various kinds of materials, which is to say, 431 00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:47,280 Speaker 1: you know, they actually they read the newspaper, They read 432 00:22:47,600 --> 00:22:51,320 Speaker 1: industry directories, they read novels, they looked at you know, 433 00:22:51,560 --> 00:22:53,200 Speaker 1: they looked at all kinds of things that you would 434 00:22:53,200 --> 00:22:56,360 Speaker 1: normally not consider to be texts that would have any 435 00:22:56,440 --> 00:23:00,719 Speaker 1: relevance for espionage, and they found them to have incredible 436 00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:02,840 Speaker 1: value in planning the war effort. 437 00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:07,199 Speaker 2: Now, was there a way to connect Adele to some 438 00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:12,919 Speaker 2: event that helped us in the war, like you know, 439 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:15,880 Speaker 2: from the Civil war times, I read about a woman 440 00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:18,119 Speaker 2: who was able to sneak out a message that essentially 441 00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:21,760 Speaker 2: gave the Union a heads up of when the Confederacy 442 00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:23,880 Speaker 2: was going to attack. It gave them like a two day, 443 00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:27,320 Speaker 2: you know, warning, which was invaluable. They were able to 444 00:23:27,359 --> 00:23:30,320 Speaker 2: directly connect it to the woman. Is there a way 445 00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:32,160 Speaker 2: to do that with Adele or was it just sort 446 00:23:32,160 --> 00:23:34,879 Speaker 2: of all of this context that helped overall that she 447 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:35,479 Speaker 2: was sending. 448 00:23:35,800 --> 00:23:38,520 Speaker 1: I can give you a pretty good one. The Germans 449 00:23:38,600 --> 00:23:41,440 Speaker 1: wanted the neutral countries like Sweden to believe that it 450 00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:43,760 Speaker 1: would be a terrible thing if the Americans won the war. 451 00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:46,560 Speaker 1: They very badly wanted Swedes, for instance, to believe that 452 00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:49,800 Speaker 1: Americans were ruffians who had no concept of culture, that 453 00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:51,800 Speaker 1: if they won, they would tear down the libraries and 454 00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:54,639 Speaker 1: concert halls of Europe, And so they sent all of 455 00:23:54,640 --> 00:23:58,680 Speaker 1: these cultural ambassadors to Sweden. They believed in soft power, 456 00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:00,800 Speaker 1: which is an important thing to be able to flex 457 00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:04,840 Speaker 1: professors and little round glasses to give lectures, and conductors 458 00:24:04,840 --> 00:24:07,800 Speaker 1: to wave their batons over performances of the magic flute. 459 00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:10,520 Speaker 1: But they also made sure that their scientific and technical 460 00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:15,840 Speaker 1: journals flowed into Stockholm's libraries and universities without interruption. Now, 461 00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:20,280 Speaker 1: German technical journals, German scientific journals, these were not getting 462 00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:23,160 Speaker 1: to the United States, right. You do not send your 463 00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:27,399 Speaker 1: scientific work to a country that you're warring with, particularly 464 00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:31,159 Speaker 1: if both you and they are racing to get the 465 00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:34,560 Speaker 1: proper recipe for an atomic bomb. The things that Adele 466 00:24:34,800 --> 00:24:38,520 Speaker 1: sent home included tons and tons and tons of German 467 00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:44,119 Speaker 1: scientific periodicals, particularly German scientific periodicals in the fields of 468 00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:48,760 Speaker 1: sort of engineering and metallurgy and atomic physics, which are 469 00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:52,359 Speaker 1: the fields that are necessary for building an atomic bomb. 470 00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:55,880 Speaker 1: Many of the journals and articles that she sent home 471 00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:59,879 Speaker 1: found their way into the library at a little place 472 00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:03,359 Speaker 1: New Mexico called Los Alamos. That seems to be to 473 00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:07,160 Speaker 1: be a very valuable contribution and something that not many 474 00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:08,320 Speaker 1: people would have been able to do. 475 00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:11,600 Speaker 2: Personality wise, what kind of person do you think Adele was? 476 00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:14,280 Speaker 2: Obviously she was very bold, and she was aware of 477 00:25:14,320 --> 00:25:17,320 Speaker 2: what the consequences would be. Actually, before you get to 478 00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:21,199 Speaker 2: her personality, what would the consequences have been if she 479 00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:24,760 Speaker 2: had been caught, you know, smuggling out something or accessing 480 00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:25,920 Speaker 2: something she shouldn't have. 481 00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:29,080 Speaker 1: Is this a death penalty? Thing depends on who caught 482 00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:31,280 Speaker 1: her to be perfectly honest. I mean there were German 483 00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:34,800 Speaker 1: spies operating in Stockholm as well. You know, the Swedish 484 00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:40,119 Speaker 1: police might have simply interrogated her very harshly Gestapo style. 485 00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:42,280 Speaker 1: One hopes that they wouldn't have passed her along to 486 00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:45,199 Speaker 1: the Gestapo, But the Swedish police were aligned with the 487 00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:48,479 Speaker 1: Gestapo and had trained with the Gestapo, so that's not certain. 488 00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:51,040 Speaker 1: The best outcome that she would have had would have 489 00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:54,600 Speaker 1: been to be confined in a kind of camp in Sweden, 490 00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:58,119 Speaker 1: along with sort of air force personnel who had downed 491 00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:01,480 Speaker 1: in Sweden. They were kept in the country and not 492 00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:05,040 Speaker 1: sent home to their respective militaries. That would have been 493 00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,760 Speaker 1: the gentlest possible outcome for her, But a lot of 494 00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:12,600 Speaker 1: spies died in terrible ways during World War Two. They 495 00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:17,040 Speaker 1: were poisoned, they were brought to German camps and had 496 00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:20,240 Speaker 1: the most terrible possible fates. It was not a safe 497 00:26:20,280 --> 00:26:21,639 Speaker 1: occupation by any means. 498 00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,720 Speaker 2: Were these camps in Sweden where you're talking about, you know, 499 00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:27,600 Speaker 2: air force pilots or whoever going down and being kept 500 00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:30,960 Speaker 2: there where she might have gone, I'm sure not humane, 501 00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,280 Speaker 2: more humane than obviously the German concentration camps. What were 502 00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:36,240 Speaker 2: those like, do you have any idea, I mean, was 503 00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:39,560 Speaker 2: it like being in solitary confinement in the United States 504 00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:40,760 Speaker 2: or what would it be like. 505 00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:42,879 Speaker 1: I think it would be along the lines of a 506 00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:45,400 Speaker 1: sort of Japanese and tournament camp in the United States. 507 00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:48,560 Speaker 1: So nothing close to what the Germans had come up with, 508 00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:50,480 Speaker 1: but also not happy lodgings. 509 00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:53,280 Speaker 2: Okay, personality wise, what's the sense that you got from 510 00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:55,879 Speaker 2: her you reading her letters or did she talk about 511 00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:56,720 Speaker 2: anything personal? 512 00:26:57,119 --> 00:27:00,400 Speaker 1: So Eugene Power, who's the guy who wound up working 513 00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:03,679 Speaker 1: for the OSS giving her the call? Right? She was 514 00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:05,960 Speaker 1: at the University of Chicago at the time. Maybe he 515 00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:08,320 Speaker 1: found her in the University of Chicago library where you 516 00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:11,200 Speaker 1: could call a scholar who was working. He said that 517 00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:14,800 Speaker 1: she jumped at the chance to be a spy. He 518 00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:17,960 Speaker 1: said that she had enjoyed reading spy stories when he 519 00:27:18,040 --> 00:27:20,919 Speaker 1: knew her before the war, that she always seemed to 520 00:27:21,040 --> 00:27:25,760 Speaker 1: him to be a fem fatale sort. I hate that price. Look, 521 00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:28,160 Speaker 1: I took that to be in a non sexual way 522 00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:31,680 Speaker 1: and just as a kind of dangerous woman. A dangerous woman. Yes, 523 00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:34,640 Speaker 1: I think the best word for her is resourceful. I mean, 524 00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:38,560 Speaker 1: she had a job hopping from archive to archive across Europe, 525 00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:42,400 Speaker 1: finding rare texts and taking photographs of them for scholars 526 00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:44,840 Speaker 1: who didn't want to make the trip and might not 527 00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:47,840 Speaker 1: be able to get those items. She was very good 528 00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:51,480 Speaker 1: at using what was available to her to get access 529 00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:56,160 Speaker 1: to texts. And also I think that she knew that 530 00:27:56,520 --> 00:27:58,440 Speaker 1: she was the sort of woman who appealed to men 531 00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:02,040 Speaker 1: who think, one that they're attracted to smart women and 532 00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:04,800 Speaker 1: two that they're smarter than the women they're attracted to, 533 00:28:05,080 --> 00:28:07,679 Speaker 1: which is a dangerous combination in a man. Yeah. I 534 00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:10,760 Speaker 1: think that she had been waiting by the phone, you know, 535 00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:14,800 Speaker 1: so to speak, waiting for something, anything, and when she 536 00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:17,680 Speaker 1: got that call, she jumped at the assignment. As he said, 537 00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:20,280 Speaker 1: I think it was grand for her that she was 538 00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:22,760 Speaker 1: going to be a terrible danger at any moment. She 539 00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:26,520 Speaker 1: was very good at her job, and she refused to 540 00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:29,320 Speaker 1: tell her superiors her methods, even though they sent her 541 00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:31,760 Speaker 1: letters begging like just tell me how you're doing this, 542 00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:33,920 Speaker 1: tell me how you're finding this, and she never told them. 543 00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:37,680 Speaker 2: As we wrap up Adele's story, where does her career end? 544 00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:40,400 Speaker 2: Does it end with the end of World War two? 545 00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:42,960 Speaker 2: And she goes back to Chicago and goes back to 546 00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:44,600 Speaker 2: work or what happens to her. 547 00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:47,160 Speaker 1: The end of World War Two. She doesn't get married. 548 00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:49,760 Speaker 1: She goes back to the life that she loved, which 549 00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:53,360 Speaker 1: is traveling around and now free Europe taking photographs of 550 00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:57,080 Speaker 1: rare texts wow, acting as a bibliographic detective. She goes 551 00:28:57,120 --> 00:28:58,560 Speaker 1: back to the life that she loved. 552 00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:01,400 Speaker 2: And she just lives to a ripe old age and 553 00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:03,800 Speaker 2: becomes obscure in history because she was a spy. 554 00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:06,640 Speaker 1: And that's what happens with spies. That's about right now. 555 00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:10,440 Speaker 1: The guy who probably helps to train her in England, 556 00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:13,360 Speaker 1: if she did her training in England, which I think 557 00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:18,040 Speaker 1: she did. Selwyn Jepson. He wrote detective stories after the 558 00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:23,360 Speaker 1: war about female detectives who had trained to be spies 559 00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:25,760 Speaker 1: during the war. You know, I think there's a lot 560 00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:28,440 Speaker 1: of the personalities of the women that he trained in 561 00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:32,480 Speaker 1: his detective stories. I highly recommend reading them as just 562 00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:36,240 Speaker 1: a document of how the women he interacted with sort 563 00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:40,720 Speaker 1: of thought through problems and reasoned morally with things, which 564 00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:43,360 Speaker 1: is much more in the way that a villain who 565 00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:46,560 Speaker 1: is doing good would reason through things than you know, 566 00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:49,600 Speaker 1: some shrinking violet damsel to be rescued. 567 00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:53,120 Speaker 2: Tell me about one of your other main characters Sherman Kent, 568 00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:56,960 Speaker 2: so the description I think is hilarious. A smart mouth 569 00:29:57,240 --> 00:29:59,880 Speaker 2: history professor who rose to become the head of analysis 570 00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:03,280 Speaker 2: all of Europe and Africa, smartmouthed I like that already. 571 00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,720 Speaker 1: I like Sherman. I think Sherman Kent was kind of 572 00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:10,120 Speaker 1: a knife too sharp for his sheath. He was a 573 00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:13,080 Speaker 1: history professor at Yale. He could have been a good 574 00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:15,640 Speaker 1: drill sergeant, but he wound up in an Ivy League 575 00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:18,160 Speaker 1: school and maybe he was a little restless there. Right, 576 00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:21,320 Speaker 1: He would throw chalk past the heads of his students 577 00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:23,800 Speaker 1: if they weren't paying attention, which they don't let us 578 00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:27,040 Speaker 1: do anymore. He gets recruited by the OSS at the 579 00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:30,160 Speaker 1: start of the war. He's sent to a spy training school. 580 00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:31,880 Speaker 1: The book has a lot of information about the things 581 00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:35,000 Speaker 1: you learn in spy training schools, and he learns how 582 00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:37,840 Speaker 1: to throw knives, among other things, and he's delighted with this, 583 00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,000 Speaker 1: and he learns how to throw daggers better than a 584 00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:43,360 Speaker 1: Sicilian is the phrase that follows him around for the 585 00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:45,440 Speaker 1: rest of his life. He also learned how to fold 586 00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:47,800 Speaker 1: a newspaper to make it into a deadly weapon, which 587 00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:50,440 Speaker 1: later in life he would stop mid conversation and show 588 00:30:50,480 --> 00:30:53,400 Speaker 1: people how to do this. You know, just a man 589 00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:56,800 Speaker 1: who had knives as comfort objects. That's who Sherman Kent was. 590 00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:01,360 Speaker 1: Now Sherman Kent stayed in Washington rather than going abroad. 591 00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:05,280 Speaker 1: He became one of the leaders of research and analysis. 592 00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:08,600 Speaker 1: This group of librarians and professors who are working, as 593 00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:10,720 Speaker 1: I said, in the basement of the Library of Congress, 594 00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:14,280 Speaker 1: among other places, and reading all of these novels, and 595 00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:17,920 Speaker 1: reading these newspapers and reading these industry directories and coming 596 00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:21,760 Speaker 1: up with intelligence guidance for the war effort. I mean, 597 00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:26,040 Speaker 1: like real strategic analysis to tell the war's leaders what 598 00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:28,520 Speaker 1: they should do next, where they should strike, what conditions 599 00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:30,840 Speaker 1: the military will find if it goes ashore in some 600 00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:35,320 Speaker 1: town in North Africa, etc. Et cetera, et cetera. Calculating 601 00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:38,600 Speaker 1: the amount of armor that needs to be put on 602 00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:40,720 Speaker 1: the sides of planes to make sure that they come 603 00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:43,400 Speaker 1: back safely, but don't weigh too much, that sort of thing. 604 00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:47,840 Speaker 1: All of that is within RNA's purview. Sherman Kent comes 605 00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:50,360 Speaker 1: up with as saying that ninety percent of what an 606 00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:53,640 Speaker 1: intelligence agency needs to know it can get from public sources, 607 00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:57,480 Speaker 1: not secret sources, which I think remains true to this day. 608 00:31:57,800 --> 00:32:01,320 Speaker 1: He becomes the head of intelligence analysis all of Europe 609 00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:04,360 Speaker 1: and Africa. But more than that, like I said, RNA, 610 00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:08,120 Speaker 1: the Chairborn Division was something new in the world of intelligence. 611 00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:10,880 Speaker 1: It wasn't normal for military types to be listening to 612 00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:13,640 Speaker 1: tweety professors who were telling them what to do. Part 613 00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:16,320 Speaker 1: of Sherman Kent's job was to speak on behalf of 614 00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:19,760 Speaker 1: those tweety professors to the military, to speak to generals 615 00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:22,480 Speaker 1: in their own language. And this is something that Sherman 616 00:32:22,560 --> 00:32:25,920 Speaker 1: Kent could do better than anybody else, because among his 617 00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:29,600 Speaker 1: other attributes, he was a man of superb and outrageous 618 00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:33,480 Speaker 1: profanity who was prepared to go sort of toe to 619 00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:37,560 Speaker 1: toe in terms of inventiveness of speech with any general 620 00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:40,800 Speaker 1: that he might talk to. All of the insights of 621 00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:43,320 Speaker 1: the professors would have been nothing if Sherman Kent hadn't 622 00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:45,520 Speaker 1: been there to talk on their behalf, and he did. 623 00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:46,760 Speaker 1: That's amazing, you know. 624 00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:48,920 Speaker 2: I think about one of my books, American Sherlock, which 625 00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:52,120 Speaker 2: was about a forensic scientist who could not figure out 626 00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:54,880 Speaker 2: how to talk to juries who oftentimes you know, had 627 00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:58,800 Speaker 2: very little, no education, and he for a very long time, 628 00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:02,120 Speaker 2: tried to use three syllable words and was very scientific, 629 00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:04,440 Speaker 2: and he kept losing cases because people didn't understand what 630 00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:07,160 Speaker 2: he was talking about. Sherman reminds me of maybe the 631 00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:11,200 Speaker 2: interpreter that Oscar Heinrich needed to really simplify it, and 632 00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:15,240 Speaker 2: finally Heinrich got it. But Sherman, it sounds like it 633 00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:17,800 Speaker 2: was just tailor made to be the person to disseminate 634 00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:20,440 Speaker 2: this information. And that was my question is maybe this 635 00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,600 Speaker 2: sounds silly, but did all of the military leaders take 636 00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,160 Speaker 2: this seriously? I mean, did they really make big decisions, 637 00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:30,680 Speaker 2: life changing decisions based on what these geeks in the 638 00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:33,479 Speaker 2: basement of the Library of Congress were really saying. Did 639 00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:35,880 Speaker 2: they ever question their logic that kind of thing. 640 00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:38,480 Speaker 1: Yeah, there was. It took time for them to come 641 00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:42,040 Speaker 1: around to it. But the you know, the outcomes of 642 00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:45,480 Speaker 1: the research of ur and A turned out to be undeniable. 643 00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:49,360 Speaker 1: So RNA's first sort of big test was the invasion 644 00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:53,800 Speaker 1: of North Africa. You know, their insights, their data, their 645 00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:57,960 Speaker 1: strategic guidance was used to plan the invasion, which went 646 00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:01,960 Speaker 1: way way better than the best projects of anybody who 647 00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:04,600 Speaker 1: was helping with that. And so you know, they passed 648 00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:06,520 Speaker 1: that test. Now, it was a big test, and it 649 00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:08,960 Speaker 1: had all of the elements of kind of a test 650 00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,440 Speaker 1: in school in the sense that they were you know, 651 00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:13,560 Speaker 1: you had people who were doing the reading. You had 652 00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:16,120 Speaker 1: all night study sessions where these you know, sort of 653 00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:19,040 Speaker 1: binders of material were being put together by people who 654 00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:21,640 Speaker 1: I'll say it again, they were locked in the basement 655 00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:25,080 Speaker 1: of the Library of Congress, not allowed out until they 656 00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:28,560 Speaker 1: had successfully invaded North Africa because the military was afraid 657 00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:31,440 Speaker 1: that they might give away some detail of the invasion 658 00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:33,400 Speaker 1: if they were allowed to go home. I don't know 659 00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:35,680 Speaker 1: if you've been in the basement of the Library of Congress, 660 00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:40,920 Speaker 1: but nope, it's this huge labyrinth. It's this extraordinary place. 661 00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:43,080 Speaker 1: I think there might be people from World War two 662 00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:45,719 Speaker 1: still wandering around in there, you know, they just haven't 663 00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:48,040 Speaker 1: found their way to the doors back out. But anyway, 664 00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:50,960 Speaker 1: so there were all night study sessions and then there 665 00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:54,200 Speaker 1: was the final exam and they aced this thing. Right. 666 00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:57,160 Speaker 1: That was really the turning points not just for the war, 667 00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:00,480 Speaker 1: but a turning point for R and A as well, 668 00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:04,640 Speaker 1: because they had proven how effective they were. After that, 669 00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:07,239 Speaker 1: they were taken much more seriously by the military. 670 00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:10,560 Speaker 2: If I understand sort of the way that this works, 671 00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:14,480 Speaker 2: and I barely do. It is that the Shermans of 672 00:35:14,520 --> 00:35:17,960 Speaker 2: the world were requesting documents from the Adeles of the world. 673 00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:21,240 Speaker 1: Is that the simplified way this goes. That's about right, yes. 674 00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:24,319 Speaker 1: And Sherman was doing some detective work of his own 675 00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:28,000 Speaker 1: back in Washington, like he knew the kind of information 676 00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:30,680 Speaker 1: that they would need in order to do strategic planning, 677 00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:32,560 Speaker 1: and the question was where am I going to get 678 00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:36,360 Speaker 1: that information? Not always from Adele. There was one instance where, 679 00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:39,719 Speaker 1: you know, the smallest things could make a difference. They 680 00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:43,200 Speaker 1: needed to know something about railroads in North Africa. They 681 00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:45,239 Speaker 1: needed to know about railroads in North Africa in the 682 00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:48,239 Speaker 1: most detailed possible way. And the best way for me 683 00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:50,600 Speaker 1: to explain why this sort of thing should be important 684 00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:55,440 Speaker 1: is to point out that during the Normandy invasion, the 685 00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:59,320 Speaker 1: Germans could very easily have come over to the Normandy 686 00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:02,320 Speaker 1: coast and wiped out the Allies and what was already 687 00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:05,279 Speaker 1: a very difficult landing. And one of the reasons that 688 00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:09,000 Speaker 1: they didn't was because, in the hours after the Normandy 689 00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:12,240 Speaker 1: invasion had started, a code phrase went out over French 690 00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:17,080 Speaker 1: radio and French members of the resistance civilians went out 691 00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:19,520 Speaker 1: and over the next few hours destroyed more than nine 692 00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:24,040 Speaker 1: hundred sections of railroad personally so that the German reinforcements 693 00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:28,080 Speaker 1: couldn't derive. Knowing where railroad sidings are what you can 694 00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:31,640 Speaker 1: do in order to damage them permanently or temporarily, where 695 00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:34,280 Speaker 1: the different railroads lead, you know, in order to stop 696 00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:37,000 Speaker 1: a division from coming from this direction or another direction. 697 00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:39,839 Speaker 1: That can be really important in wartime or if you're 698 00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:43,800 Speaker 1: making a landing. Knowing which railroads you need to destroy 699 00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:47,360 Speaker 1: in order to prevent German reinforcements from finding you or 700 00:36:47,480 --> 00:36:49,920 Speaker 1: protect so that you can go to another city. This 701 00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:52,759 Speaker 1: is all very important, but especially in the era before 702 00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:56,480 Speaker 1: the Internet. Knowing in really good detail about every railroad 703 00:36:56,520 --> 00:36:58,719 Speaker 1: siding in North Africa, you can understand how that would 704 00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:02,400 Speaker 1: be difficult. It happened that Sherman Kent's a friend of 705 00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:06,000 Speaker 1: his told him that a Moroccan railway engineer was visiting 706 00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:08,160 Speaker 1: him and would he like to come and talk to him. 707 00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:10,200 Speaker 1: So Kent, you know, he got dressed up in his 708 00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:12,520 Speaker 1: tweed and his bow tie, and you know he came over, 709 00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,080 Speaker 1: puffing his pipe and said, oh, I'm beguale professor, I'm 710 00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:18,280 Speaker 1: kind of interested in North Africa for non intelligence reasons. 711 00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:20,600 Speaker 1: Can I ask you a few questions about the railroad 712 00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:23,799 Speaker 1: sidings in Morocco just to clarify, just to clarify if 713 00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:25,840 Speaker 1: it's not intelligence. 714 00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:27,840 Speaker 2: At all, Yes, it's not spycraft at all, I promise, okay. 715 00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:31,280 Speaker 1: And as Kent said at his memoir, instead of dropping 716 00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:33,680 Speaker 1: dead at the mention of so sensitive a subject, the 717 00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:36,280 Speaker 1: guy actually gave not only gave him all the information 718 00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:38,880 Speaker 1: that he needed, but Kent became so bold as to 719 00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:41,120 Speaker 1: bring out like this questionnaire that he had put in 720 00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:44,000 Speaker 1: his bag, and the guy just filled out, you know, 721 00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:48,520 Speaker 1: kind of this comprehensive information on Moroccan railroads. And Kent 722 00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:51,799 Speaker 1: immediately immediately went to his office it was about ten 723 00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:54,680 Speaker 1: PM by then, and called a general and said, I 724 00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:57,880 Speaker 1: have this information about Moroccan railroads. And the general said, 725 00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:01,640 Speaker 1: I expect for you to get that information desk before sunrise. 726 00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:04,040 Speaker 1: So no sleep for Sherman Ken that night. But that 727 00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:06,799 Speaker 1: was how vital the information turned out to be. So 728 00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:08,759 Speaker 1: there were people who were kind of or you had 729 00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:11,560 Speaker 1: members of R and A who were kind of taking 730 00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:15,200 Speaker 1: measurements at railway stations around Washington in the middle of 731 00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:17,200 Speaker 1: the winter because they were trying to figure something out 732 00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:19,280 Speaker 1: about the way that the metal would expand or contract 733 00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:21,480 Speaker 1: in the Russian winter. I bore you with all of 734 00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:24,920 Speaker 1: this stuff, but nothing is insignificant in the end, no 735 00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,000 Speaker 1: detail is unimportant. You're not just dropping these bombs on 736 00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:30,600 Speaker 1: top of people. There are so many other ways to 737 00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:33,760 Speaker 1: win a war, and better ways. I mean, look, bombing 738 00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:36,279 Speaker 1: is one thing, but the real you know, the real 739 00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:38,280 Speaker 1: coup is if you can get people on the ground 740 00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,359 Speaker 1: to do sabotage. Because if you bomb a factory, you've 741 00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:43,719 Speaker 1: just damaged the roof. Most of the time. You want 742 00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:46,640 Speaker 1: to damage the machines, and furthermore, you want to damage 743 00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:49,480 Speaker 1: the most important machines, and furthermore, you want to damage 744 00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:52,040 Speaker 1: them in a specific way that makes them hard to repair. 745 00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:56,800 Speaker 1: So the real trick was getting people who were factory 746 00:38:56,840 --> 00:39:01,759 Speaker 1: workers in Norway to carry pocketfuls of sand into factories 747 00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:04,440 Speaker 1: and destroy them in a very specific way that was 748 00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:07,680 Speaker 1: laid out by engineers working for the Allies, and in 749 00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:10,759 Speaker 1: a way that they had plausible deniability. I didn't do 750 00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:13,239 Speaker 1: that to the machine. It works, just got gunked up. 751 00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:17,480 Speaker 1: Don't know what to do, mister, mister Haraguy in charge. 752 00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:19,239 Speaker 2: Now you mentioned a memoir, and that was going to 753 00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:20,960 Speaker 2: be a question, how do we know so much about 754 00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:23,560 Speaker 2: Sherman because we know Adele didn't have a memoir, she 755 00:39:23,560 --> 00:39:26,600 Speaker 2: had letters and stuff. So was this a braggert on 756 00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:29,520 Speaker 2: the page? Essentially? Was this a vanity project for him? 757 00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:32,160 Speaker 1: Well, he did write a memoir. It didn't get published, 758 00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:35,320 Speaker 1: although the unpublished memoirs are in his papers at the 759 00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:39,359 Speaker 1: Yale University Library, and it's a thrilling read. Okay. He 760 00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:42,560 Speaker 1: wound up going into the CIA after the war, and 761 00:39:42,640 --> 00:39:45,760 Speaker 1: he became actually a very important person in the history 762 00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:48,959 Speaker 1: of what we call sort of intelligence studies. He set 763 00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:52,600 Speaker 1: it up as something like an academic subject, the same 764 00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:54,800 Speaker 1: way that art history is a subject or the history 765 00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:57,880 Speaker 1: of the book. He really wanted to make the CIA 766 00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:02,600 Speaker 1: to make sure that its methods, the comprehensiveness, the objectivity 767 00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:07,160 Speaker 1: of methods of academic analysis. He set up the CIA's 768 00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:10,880 Speaker 1: in house journal, Studies in Intelligence. All of which is 769 00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:13,000 Speaker 1: to say that when you are at academic and you 770 00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:16,200 Speaker 1: reach the end of your career, you have what's known 771 00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:21,400 Speaker 1: as fest shrifts written about you. People write papers in praise, 772 00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:23,920 Speaker 1: you know, in praise of you or in your honor, 773 00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:25,719 Speaker 1: and put them together in a book that's not really 774 00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:27,799 Speaker 1: done anymore. I'm just trying to describe the flavor of 775 00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:30,200 Speaker 1: the time. I was wondering if you and I were 776 00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:32,279 Speaker 1: going to be up for that. I guess not. You're 777 00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:33,960 Speaker 1: not going to be in fest shrifts now, But that 778 00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:35,959 Speaker 1: used to be a thing, and you would, you would 779 00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:39,040 Speaker 1: write a memoir, you know, And he wrote a memoir. 780 00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:41,719 Speaker 1: It is, as I said, very interesting reading. But he 781 00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:44,359 Speaker 1: was such a character that lots of people wrote about him, 782 00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:48,919 Speaker 1: you know, his eternal quid of chewing tobacco, his red suspenders, 783 00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:54,600 Speaker 1: his outrageous language, his facility with throwing knives. I mean, 784 00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:57,520 Speaker 1: he really was kind of a one of a kind 785 00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:00,920 Speaker 1: character who fit absolutely perfectly into the of the OSS 786 00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:03,680 Speaker 1: during the war and helped to guide the CIA in 787 00:41:03,719 --> 00:41:04,680 Speaker 1: the decades afterward. 788 00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,359 Speaker 2: And like Adele, I'm assuming lived a ripe old age 789 00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:10,120 Speaker 2: and was not poisoned by cyanide and his coffee at 790 00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:10,600 Speaker 2: some point. 791 00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:12,960 Speaker 1: That's right, he wasn't poisoned by cyanide. He lived to 792 00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:15,080 Speaker 1: a ripe old age. You know. He was one of 793 00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:17,319 Speaker 1: the editors I think of studies at Intelligence, and he 794 00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:19,919 Speaker 1: loves to gore the subpar work of people who sent 795 00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:22,840 Speaker 1: in bad articles. He tried to go back to He 796 00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:24,840 Speaker 1: tried to go back to Yale after the war, and 797 00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:26,680 Speaker 1: I think that it just bored him. You know, he 798 00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:28,839 Speaker 1: had just been helping to run a war. He had 799 00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:31,400 Speaker 1: been helping to run a spy you know agency, he 800 00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:33,520 Speaker 1: had been a spy master. And then he goes back 801 00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:35,840 Speaker 1: to Yale and the kids still aren't doing the reading, 802 00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:38,319 Speaker 1: but they're not even in positions of enough authority to 803 00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:41,160 Speaker 1: make the fact that they're ignorant interesting. So he turns 804 00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:43,680 Speaker 1: around and goes to the CIA. But he does one 805 00:41:43,719 --> 00:41:46,200 Speaker 1: thing after the war that was kind of a mistake 806 00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:50,279 Speaker 1: that's interesting, which is he wanted to prove what he'd 807 00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:52,239 Speaker 1: always been saying, which is that ninety percent of what 808 00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:54,719 Speaker 1: an intelligence agency needs to know it can get from 809 00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:57,360 Speaker 1: public sources, not secret sources, as long as you do 810 00:41:57,400 --> 00:41:59,680 Speaker 1: what nobody else does and do the reading. So he 811 00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:02,080 Speaker 1: got a group of history professors at Yale to spend 812 00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:05,880 Speaker 1: the summer in Yale's library reading through public documents like 813 00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:08,799 Speaker 1: newspapers and coming up with the answers to all of 814 00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:12,359 Speaker 1: these US military secrets. And they succeeded, and they put 815 00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:15,879 Speaker 1: together a report and they gave it to the OSS 816 00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:18,200 Speaker 1: and it somehow got into the hands of Congress and 817 00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:20,480 Speaker 1: then into the hands of the President, and everybody was 818 00:42:20,560 --> 00:42:23,400 Speaker 1: very upset because they thought that it proved the Yale professors. 819 00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:25,759 Speaker 1: He told the Yale professors to pretend they were working 820 00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:28,319 Speaker 1: for Russia. So when they put together this report, it 821 00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:32,000 Speaker 1: looked like they were putting it together for Russia. Oh gosh, yeah, exactly. 822 00:42:32,120 --> 00:42:35,279 Speaker 1: That wasn't You're right, that is underline not smart. So 823 00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:38,240 Speaker 1: you know, so, oh, Yale professors are working for the Russians, 824 00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:41,320 Speaker 1: and you know, there was a big scandal, and everybody 825 00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:44,480 Speaker 1: got in a lot of trouble, and a CIA operative 826 00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:47,160 Speaker 1: showed up at the Yale Library and tried to confiscate 827 00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:48,800 Speaker 1: the library's entire contents. 828 00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:51,920 Speaker 2: Was this the Red Scare like McCarthy era? I hope not, 829 00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:53,760 Speaker 2: for his sake. That's not when this happened. 830 00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:55,839 Speaker 1: I think it was a little before then. But they 831 00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:59,160 Speaker 1: tried to confiscate the library's entire contents. He was persuaded 832 00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:02,040 Speaker 1: to only take the papers of the historians involved, but 833 00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:03,560 Speaker 1: Kent did prove that he was right. 834 00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:07,879 Speaker 2: The historians did succeed, So well, there you go. He's 835 00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:10,840 Speaker 2: luck he didn't get thrown in jail or worse. Yeah, okay, 836 00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:12,400 Speaker 2: do we want to tell me a little bit about 837 00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:15,680 Speaker 2: Joseph Curtis, you know, just like the short notes on him, 838 00:43:15,719 --> 00:43:17,640 Speaker 2: because I know he was a significant character for you. 839 00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:21,759 Speaker 1: Also, Joseph Curtis a Yale professor. Again, look, Yale is 840 00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:24,080 Speaker 1: a very sneaky and secretive place, and it produces a 841 00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:27,000 Speaker 1: lot of spies. Apparently, I can't change that. That's just 842 00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:31,200 Speaker 1: a historical fact. So he was studying early modern literature 843 00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:33,719 Speaker 1: at Yale. He was a professor. He'd gone to Yale undergrad, 844 00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:36,160 Speaker 1: then Yale for grad school, then become a professor there. 845 00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:38,600 Speaker 1: Very much a hot house flower, you know what I mean. 846 00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:41,320 Speaker 1: He had a very safe, very cozy, little life of letters. 847 00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:45,000 Speaker 2: I've never heard that analogy before. A hot house flower. 848 00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:47,600 Speaker 1: A hothouse flower. He had grown up in a greenhouse, 849 00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:50,319 Speaker 1: you know, he had always been protected and oh got it. 850 00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:52,840 Speaker 1: And then he was pulled out of that world, trained 851 00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:56,200 Speaker 1: as a spy and thrown into wartime Istanbul where he 852 00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:59,040 Speaker 1: was given the job of tracking down German spies and 853 00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:02,160 Speaker 1: turning them into double agents. So it was very much 854 00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:05,040 Speaker 1: a sink or swim situation for him, and remarkably he 855 00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:06,839 Speaker 1: turned out to be good at his job. He turned 856 00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:08,320 Speaker 1: out to be so good at his job that he 857 00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:10,239 Speaker 1: had a non trivial effect on the outcome of the 858 00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:13,680 Speaker 1: Norman dy invasion. And he was a literature professor right well. 859 00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:16,680 Speaker 1: So one of the conceits of the book is something 860 00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:21,000 Speaker 1: that that advisors do tell to PhD students, which is, 861 00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:25,120 Speaker 1: your dissertation is an autobiography. There's something about what you 862 00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:28,000 Speaker 1: choose as the subject for your dissertation that says something 863 00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:30,000 Speaker 1: about you, or it's a question that you're trying to 864 00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:33,879 Speaker 1: figure out the answer to a as a person, because 865 00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:36,080 Speaker 1: it has something to do with your own nature, your 866 00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:41,560 Speaker 1: own character. Joseph Curtis wrote his dissertation about astrologers in 867 00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:44,640 Speaker 1: the early modern period, and his conceit, and I think 868 00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:48,160 Speaker 1: he was correct, is that astrologers were really detectives. That 869 00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:51,080 Speaker 1: was the role that they performed in society. They found 870 00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:54,480 Speaker 1: out the answers to questions, they found missing objects. People 871 00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:58,160 Speaker 1: came in and said, you know, is my wife plotting 872 00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:00,719 Speaker 1: to kill me? You know? Or am I going to 873 00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:03,960 Speaker 1: become a widow anytime soon? Those are not suspicious questions 874 00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:06,960 Speaker 1: at all. If somebody had blackmail information about someone else, 875 00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:09,360 Speaker 1: you'd go to the astrologer to kind of get the 876 00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:13,640 Speaker 1: black mail documents back. So he was talking about, you know, 877 00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:16,759 Speaker 1: the life of a bibliographic detective, of a kind of 878 00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:20,920 Speaker 1: scholar who solved mysteries but also was in touch with 879 00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:24,439 Speaker 1: something like real magic. Not that he thought that astrologers 880 00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:26,880 Speaker 1: were working with real magic, but they surrounded themselves with 881 00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:29,200 Speaker 1: the symbols of magic. They had brazen heads that were 882 00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:32,520 Speaker 1: said to talk to you know, to give oracular advice, 883 00:45:32,840 --> 00:45:36,160 Speaker 1: and they wore velvet caps and you know capes, and 884 00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:39,880 Speaker 1: you know, we're said to summon angels or devils. You know, 885 00:45:40,239 --> 00:45:42,200 Speaker 1: I think this was kind of the perfect life of 886 00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:45,759 Speaker 1: a scholar to have this kind of drama together with 887 00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:48,760 Speaker 1: all of your books. And he got to live that life. 888 00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:53,759 Speaker 1: He went to wartime Istanbul. He worked in what was 889 00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:59,000 Speaker 1: called Double Cross, which was the counter espionage section of 890 00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:03,920 Speaker 1: the OSS. He was tracking down German spies, turning them 891 00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:08,040 Speaker 1: into double agents. He was involved look in Sweden. Sweden 892 00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:11,040 Speaker 1: could stay neutral because it had made an agreement with 893 00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:14,440 Speaker 1: the warring countries that no spies would operate in Sweden. 894 00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:18,000 Speaker 1: That's why Kaiber had to operate undercover. But Istanbul was 895 00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:20,800 Speaker 1: neutral because Turkey had made a deal with the warring 896 00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:24,360 Speaker 1: countries that it could remain neutral if everybody's spies operated 897 00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:29,200 Speaker 1: in Turkey openly. There were seventeen different intelligence agencies operating 898 00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:32,640 Speaker 1: in Istanbul. Everybody in that world was presumed to be 899 00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:37,080 Speaker 1: a spy. You had hundreds of people working as professional whisperers. 900 00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:39,520 Speaker 1: There's a section on whispering in the book, which is 901 00:46:40,560 --> 00:46:43,759 Speaker 1: a very specific way that you spread rumors. Right, you 902 00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:45,360 Speaker 1: have to be trained to do it. You were not 903 00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:47,640 Speaker 1: allowed to spread rumors or whisper unless you had been 904 00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:49,920 Speaker 1: trained to do it, and the rules for whispering are 905 00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:53,920 Speaker 1: in the book. But in this world he was so 906 00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:58,480 Speaker 1: successful as kind of one of the leading figures in 907 00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:01,759 Speaker 1: the oss branch, nobody suspected him of being a spy, 908 00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:04,840 Speaker 1: despite the fact that everybody was presumed to be a spy. 909 00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:07,440 Speaker 1: He had a cover story as a professor. He was 910 00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:10,880 Speaker 1: also supposedly a book collector, just innocently collecting books for 911 00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:14,280 Speaker 1: Yale's library, but in fact he was doing something totally different. 912 00:47:14,640 --> 00:47:17,520 Speaker 1: And even though his students would you know, the student 913 00:47:17,840 --> 00:47:20,080 Speaker 1: at the university that he taught classes at, would make 914 00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:22,480 Speaker 1: jokes about which of their professors had put another body 915 00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:24,879 Speaker 1: in the Bosphorus this week. You know that they said, oh, 916 00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:27,160 Speaker 1: all of our professors are spies too. They not only 917 00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:29,120 Speaker 1: didn't think he was a spy, but they didn't remember 918 00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:32,880 Speaker 1: him afterward. There was a CIA head once who said 919 00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:35,080 Speaker 1: a spy is the sort of person who can't get 920 00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:38,600 Speaker 1: a waiter's attention in a restaurant. And that was Joseph Curtis. 921 00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:41,960 Speaker 1: You know, he was just unmemorable, even though he had 922 00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:44,960 Speaker 1: very secretly, you know, a very adventurous heart. You know, 923 00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:46,799 Speaker 1: I find serial killers to be the same way. 924 00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:49,120 Speaker 2: Every serial killer I've ever written about is sort of 925 00:47:49,160 --> 00:47:51,640 Speaker 2: like kind of disappears into the wallpaper, is the way 926 00:47:51,680 --> 00:47:55,440 Speaker 2: they're described, that sort of a seemingly innocuous, you know, 927 00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:58,760 Speaker 2: anonymous person who you would never suspect of anything. 928 00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:01,239 Speaker 1: Maybe that's the success ones. Maybe the ones who don't 929 00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:03,680 Speaker 1: disappear into the wallpaper are caught after just one murder 930 00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:06,040 Speaker 1: and they don't get to be a serial killer. Yeah, yeah, 931 00:48:06,200 --> 00:48:06,600 Speaker 1: it could be. 932 00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:11,880 Speaker 2: How does one turn a German spy into a double agent? 933 00:48:12,040 --> 00:48:14,520 Speaker 2: That can't be easy. He must have been very persuasive 934 00:48:14,760 --> 00:48:17,279 Speaker 2: or what. There are all kinds of methods that you 935 00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:19,880 Speaker 2: could use. I don't have any of them to hand. 936 00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:22,480 Speaker 1: Half of the trouble is tracking them down, and then 937 00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:25,000 Speaker 1: you figure out whether you want to turn them into 938 00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:27,400 Speaker 1: a double agent, whether it would be better to convince 939 00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:31,360 Speaker 1: them to defect, because defections can have an effect on morale. 940 00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:34,960 Speaker 1: It's a very dangerous and very necessary area of spycraft. 941 00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:38,080 Speaker 1: But the real trick with double cross is this, to 942 00:48:38,160 --> 00:48:40,759 Speaker 1: the extent possible, you do not want to destroy the 943 00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:44,640 Speaker 1: enemy's intelligence service. You want to keep the enemy's intelligence 944 00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:47,680 Speaker 1: service and their intelligence networks in place and get them 945 00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:51,759 Speaker 1: all working for you. So you convince them that you 946 00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:53,680 Speaker 1: guys are going to win and that you will give 947 00:48:53,719 --> 00:48:57,319 Speaker 1: them a break after you win. You convince them that 948 00:48:57,560 --> 00:49:00,759 Speaker 1: they're going to get a little bit more money, you know, 949 00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:01,920 Speaker 1: if they work for you. 950 00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:04,640 Speaker 2: Timing is probably very important too. I mean, the closer 951 00:49:04,680 --> 00:49:05,759 Speaker 2: you get to the end of the war and it 952 00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:07,520 Speaker 2: looks like the Germans are not going to do well, 953 00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:10,560 Speaker 2: it's probably easier to convince people to switch sides. 954 00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:14,640 Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, people were positively, you know, jumping at the 955 00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:16,760 Speaker 1: chance to not be seen to be a Nazi toward 956 00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:19,480 Speaker 1: the end of the war. And people were so ashamed 957 00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:22,000 Speaker 1: after the war in Germany of what they had done 958 00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:26,120 Speaker 1: that there was a huge, huge wave of suicides by 959 00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:28,160 Speaker 1: Germans at the end of the war, just all kinds 960 00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:31,840 Speaker 1: of suicide. It was tragic because parents would do it 961 00:49:31,880 --> 00:49:35,160 Speaker 1: to their children, they would have families died together. So, 962 00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:39,680 Speaker 1: you know, the Nazis wound up being their own victims. Yeah. 963 00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:42,680 Speaker 2: Kind of to wrap this up, when we go back 964 00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:45,120 Speaker 2: to the geeky academics, and I say that freely because 965 00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:47,439 Speaker 2: I am one of those, and so are you, why 966 00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:51,000 Speaker 2: do you think they didn't get their due? Why aren't 967 00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:54,120 Speaker 2: there just one thousands of books written about them, like 968 00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:57,799 Speaker 2: the books of you know, the spies that worked all 969 00:49:57,840 --> 00:49:59,680 Speaker 2: the way back. I mean, there's a wonderful book Alexander 970 00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:03,799 Speaker 2: Rose wrote about Washington spies. You know, we know all 971 00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,960 Speaker 2: TV series, we know things that have happened. Is it 972 00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:09,320 Speaker 2: because they are locked away in the Library of Congress 973 00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:12,360 Speaker 2: and they don't have like exploding bombs in their back pockets? 974 00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:14,960 Speaker 1: Or you know, why don't we know more about these people? 975 00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:18,640 Speaker 1: I think that one of the elements is this that 976 00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:21,400 Speaker 1: we're accustomed to a kind of spy story that has, 977 00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:25,400 Speaker 1: you know, a guy wearing a tuxedo looks amazing Henry 978 00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:29,400 Speaker 1: Cavill type running across rooftops with a gun in one hand. 979 00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:34,080 Speaker 1: And that's not really how most spycraft takes place. Now 980 00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:36,640 Speaker 1: for you and me, there's a real romance to the 981 00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:40,920 Speaker 1: world of books, right. We understand that scholars love gossips. 982 00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:43,399 Speaker 1: They love to read old letters for a reason because 983 00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:45,600 Speaker 1: the old letters are full of secrets. We love stabbing 984 00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:48,160 Speaker 1: each other in the back, we love subterfuge. I don't 985 00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:51,120 Speaker 1: do that just for the record listeners, but we can 986 00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:54,080 Speaker 1: understand very easily how the things that these professors and 987 00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:58,040 Speaker 1: librarians did could fit very easily into the world of spycraft. 988 00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:00,520 Speaker 1: But that might not, you know, but you need to 989 00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:04,920 Speaker 1: sort of love books first and understand that librarians are 990 00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:07,920 Speaker 1: real information workers and how easily that fits into the 991 00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:10,720 Speaker 1: world of intelligence to be able to spin up, maybe 992 00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:13,200 Speaker 1: in your head, a kind of plot that fits with 993 00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:15,640 Speaker 1: the real life plots that these guys were living out. 994 00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:18,840 Speaker 1: One way that I've thought about how the librarians and 995 00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:22,120 Speaker 1: professors fit into the war is this, when a crisis comes, 996 00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:24,840 Speaker 1: then you fall back on your training. What you have 997 00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:27,120 Speaker 1: is what you bring to the war. So the English 998 00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:29,839 Speaker 1: had these spy training schools that were incredibly posh. They 999 00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:32,759 Speaker 1: were these country manners and at housemasters and servants and 1000 00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:35,080 Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Because they were English, that's what 1001 00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:37,040 Speaker 1: they knew, so that's what they fell back on. The 1002 00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:41,360 Speaker 1: Americans trained their spies in these muddy camps with tents 1003 00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:43,600 Speaker 1: in national parks where they were teaching people how to 1004 00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:46,360 Speaker 1: do quick draws like cowboys because they were Americans, so 1005 00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:49,160 Speaker 1: of course they trained like cowboys. The Norwegians were out 1006 00:51:49,160 --> 00:51:52,480 Speaker 1: there on skis. The French resistance robed liquor stores, drank 1007 00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:54,560 Speaker 1: the wine and then turned the empty wine bottles into 1008 00:51:54,600 --> 00:51:57,560 Speaker 1: moloktov cocktails. Because they're French. They fought as the French 1009 00:51:57,640 --> 00:52:00,879 Speaker 1: do now. The librarians, when the war came, also fell 1010 00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:03,000 Speaker 1: back on their training, and it turned out to be 1011 00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:07,279 Speaker 1: unexpectedly exactly what modern intelligence needed. These guys have been 1012 00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:09,960 Speaker 1: training to be spies to work in intelligence for all 1013 00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:12,640 Speaker 1: of their lives, and they never knew. Then the war came. 1014 00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:15,960 Speaker 1: They were recruited into spycraft and it was like, my god, 1015 00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:18,319 Speaker 1: I can swim, like I can do this. I've been 1016 00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:21,000 Speaker 1: practicing my whole life. That's incredible. It would be great 1017 00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:24,440 Speaker 1: to see more more spy stories about that element. Partly 1018 00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:26,960 Speaker 1: because I'm a great lover of dark academia and love 1019 00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:30,600 Speaker 1: to see it wherever I can. But also because this 1020 00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:35,200 Speaker 1: is a story that teaches us that libraries themselves are important, 1021 00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:37,600 Speaker 1: you know, not just as centers of education, not just 1022 00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:40,239 Speaker 1: as centers of community, but as places that train the 1023 00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:43,920 Speaker 1: very readers who become valuable intelligence agents later on, and 1024 00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:47,040 Speaker 1: as centers that are essential to national security. The value 1025 00:52:47,080 --> 00:52:50,560 Speaker 1: of the humanities, the value of the social sciences, that's 1026 00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:54,319 Speaker 1: something that is back under debate, and it's a shame 1027 00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:58,040 Speaker 1: that it is because the humanities teach us, among other things, 1028 00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:00,480 Speaker 1: to work with data that has a lot of holes 1029 00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:03,840 Speaker 1: in it, data that is ambiguous, and that's kind of 1030 00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:05,640 Speaker 1: the data that you have to work with, for example, 1031 00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:08,759 Speaker 1: in a wartime situation. Wars aren't controlled experiments. That's why 1032 00:53:08,800 --> 00:53:11,320 Speaker 1: the humanists turned out to be so good at wartime analysis. 1033 00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:13,240 Speaker 1: They were used to working with the kinds of data 1034 00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:25,200 Speaker 1: that you find yourself dealing with in warfare. 1035 00:53:26,680 --> 00:53:29,600 Speaker 2: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the 1036 00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:32,480 Speaker 2: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That 1037 00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:35,839 Speaker 2: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget There are 1038 00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:39,719 Speaker 2: twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast Tenfold More 1039 00:53:39,719 --> 00:53:43,400 Speaker 2: Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and 1040 00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:46,200 Speaker 2: give them a listen if you haven't already. This has 1041 00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:50,719 Speaker 2: been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi. 1042 00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:55,560 Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed 1043 00:53:55,560 --> 00:53:59,400 Speaker 2: by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by 1044 00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:04,000 Speaker 2: Nick Tooga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff, and 1045 00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:08,880 Speaker 2: Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold more Wicked, 1046 00:54:09,239 --> 00:54:11,800 Speaker 2: and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod