March 19, 2024 • 45 mins
Spies aren't just relegated to the Cold War and James Bond -- in fact, spycraft played a crucial role in the Revolutionary War. One of the government's most effective spies was so accomplished that, even in the modern day, their identity remains a mystery. Join the guys as they unravel the strange story of the enigmatic Agent 355.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show, fellow conspiracy realists. We're diving
into a bit of hidden history. We've been on sort
of a George Washington kick. I think it's safe to
say by the time this comes out. Yeah, I you know,
it's weird when we think of spies, we think of
like James Bond, the World's worst spy, or we think
of the Cold War. But it's weird that growing up
(00:23):
we don't learn much about the colonial spies.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, and that was a major thing, go I think
we get into in the episode, just the fact that
everybody's speaking English. It was probably it probably made it
really both easy to spy but then also really difficult
to know who was a spy.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
There's also something that's just kind of interesting about colonial
spying or like the early days of spycraft, especially when
you're a buff for this kind of stuff like we are.
And you've probably heard of Benedict Arnold, one of history
only a few bad bends, But have you heard of
Agent three fifty five?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
No, Well, then listen up.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Our compatriot Nole is on the road, but we'll be
returning at some point in the future. They call me Ben.
We are joined with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decad.
Thanks for saving the show as always, Paul. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. Matt. Today we
(01:57):
are taking a journey back in time.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yes, time traveling again, that's one of my favorite things
to do.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's true. That's true. And of course there's that great
point that people make sometimes that we're all time travelers.
We're just moving in the toward the future. One second,
per I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Second, Yes, it's definitely at an even clip.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well, you know what, this might be an episode, This
might be for another episode better suited to a different
line of thinking. But time is you know.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
It's all relative.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, right, as doctor who said, what was it? Timey
whimy stuff? Are you a doctor who?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Fan?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I No, I totally thought you were going to say,
doctor Who's That's the first thing I did when someone
told me about it as a kid.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
It's a it's a great show, and I have seen
several episodes. I'm not like a you know who, a
Doctor Who had I don't know what the Whovianovian yeah
who who enthusiasts.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yep, oh right right in let us know what Doctor
Who fans are called, or what they self describe as
our time traveled today takes us back to the beginning
of the United States, back to a time when it
was the odds were looking pretty dicey for the colonists,
(03:23):
the would be Americans, right.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, they decided to buck the whole system and fight
their controllers. Yeah. They went to a bold move.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
They went rage against the machine. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So this this is a story that you and I
stumbled on a long, long time ago in a different episode,
and it's surprised. I don't know about you, Matt, but
it surprised the heck out of me.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Oh yeah. The the the fact that espionage dates back
this far and was as complicated as were this story
we're going to talk about today, that was astounding to me.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah. You hit it. You hit on the word of
the day or a word of the day, espionage, right,
Espionage is a tale as old as time or in
the case of this country, at least as old as
the state. Espionage actually predates the actually colonial espionage predates
the existence of the United States. This sort of stuff
(04:26):
occurred when the idea of what we now call the
US was nothing more than a weird twinkle in the
eyes of various founding fathers and would be rulers of
a new nation. Most of us associate the concept of
spies and spycraft with works of fiction, right, you know, like,
what are some of your favorites?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Oh gosh, well, I mean you have to go back
to Double O seven, I think the original at least
for me.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Which is weird because technically wouldn't he be the seventh one?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
But yeah James, right.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh yeah. And characters that you find in stories like
Mission Impossible, I remember were really cool, some of the
concepts in there. And then if you go There's There
were some Netflix shows back in the day that were
surrounding espionage around World War Two that I found the
most fascinating because of the technology they were dealing with
(05:21):
at the time and the stakes being so high as
they were. I think that's why I found that to
be the most fascinating, although I can't tell you the name.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Of the Steaks is it s T A. K Ees Right,
it wasn't just the spy show featuring like these amazing
ribbis and.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
T bone stacks of them, just stacks of.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Them, and then also spying. I would watch that show. Yeah,
I know what you're I kind of know what you're
thinking about, if not the specific episode the trope, because
I really enjoyed the television show The Americans. Oh yeah,
which have you seen that?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
So that that show gets a law of often for
being a I don't know about an entirely realistic depiction,
but a pretty good depiction of how deep cover sleep
agents would actually work. So we see spycraft and espionage
in all sorts of works of fiction. But we also
(06:20):
know that strange real life accusations of spine pop up
every so often in the news cycle, and usually when
they pop up, they disappear pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, Like a diplomat will get in trouble, but it's
just some unnamed diplomat and then it goes away.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Right right. Or three hikers will get caught crossing the
border into Iran, three American hikers and then they'll be
arrested as spies. The DPRK accuses people of being spies
fairly often.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Does it ever make you wonder if there are spies
caught internally within the United States, but we just never
hear anything about it. Oh, sure, they just disappear, basically.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Like there's the case of Jonathan Pollard, an American who
spied for Israel was and was caught. I think he
was sentenced to life in prison for violating the Espionage Act,
but later surprised he didn't have to do that. I
think it was after thirty years of incarceration he was
(07:25):
released on November twenty, twenty fifteen. So some spies have
been exposed and then serve their time, or somehow not
been killed and have been able to continue living their lives,
so it is possible to get away with it. Your
odds are not very good. They were especially not that
great in the Revolutionary War, because in the Revolutionary War
(07:50):
on the colonial side, your odds in general weren't spectacular.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
No, not at all.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So the Revolutionary War, we all kind of know what
that is. They call it, I think the War for
American Independence in other countries, but down here, this is
the Revolutionary war. We're very, very self important about it,
and I think we've earned the right to be. The
seeds of democracy had already been planted in the colonies.
(08:17):
People were already thinking about becoming an independent country well
before seventeen seventy six. The war went from seventeen seventy
six to seventeen eighty three and died by the Treaty
of Paris. And when we look back at this war
(08:38):
and the nation created, it's incredibly important to remember that
the government that was put into place, or I guess
that existed on paper, was see like it was seen
like a crazy thing. It seemed to be an insane notion.
(08:58):
How could you rule without a case? How close did
George Washington come to becoming the king? Right well?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And a lot has been said that the presidency itself,
the way it was created, was specifically to prevent any
one man from becoming king because of you know, the
way the way the country was set up, with dividing
powers up and not calling the president certain things, not
referring to them in that way. It was it was
(09:26):
an active move to move away from a monarchy.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Right right again, that's the that's the official narrative, and
We have an old episode on the Unofficial Narratives that
you can check out, but it's several years old now, right,
Oh yeah, it's back in the day. So they wanted
something different. They did not want to practice resource extraction
for the benefit of the kingdom across the pond. They
(09:54):
did not want to pay taxes. They were very much
against that. And they they knew that due to the
huge stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, even the world's most
powerful naval force wouldn't be able to win the war easily.
The problem was that even before the war actually broke out,
(10:17):
the US forces knew their odds of success were dangerously,
dangerously low. And the colonial leaders, even the really optimistic ones,
knew that if they were able to win independence, they
would be literally paying for it in blood.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah. And there's an historian, David McCullough who wrote a
book called seventeen seventy six which we would recommend. The
Americans suffered terrible, just horrendous losses, roughly twenty five thousand
casualties in all, or roughly about one percent of the
entire colonial population, which if you think about that in
(10:55):
like equivalent terms to today, that would be as though
if there was a modern war or within the United
States on American soil that cost three million United States citizens' lives.
That's an intense thought.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And as mccolla says, those who have been with Washington
and who knew what a close call it was at
the beginning thought the outcome, the ultimate outcome of the
Revolutionary War was a little short of a miracle, the
kind of thing that makes you say, for instance, hey,
I'm not exactly a spiritual person, but is this a
coincidence or is this destiny? Because so much stuff had
(11:33):
to go right. Modern historians have speculated that if the
colonists hadn't caught a number of key breaks, the rebellion
might have been crushed. American colonies would have remained under
the rule of King George, and the ringleaders would have
been executed in horrific ways. The people probably would have
been forced to pay a punitive tax.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
It would have made this situation increasingly unsustained able. But
the war occurred, and as you know in the Hamilton
musical that comes up whenever we do Reary War episode.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
The there was this huge perception that the US forces
were outmanned and outgunned.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I think it's outgunned, outmanned, and I don't remember the
next part. There's actually a lyric in there, right, I
don't which song is that? Right hand man, right hand man?
Oh man, I need to listen. It's been almost a
year since I think it's right in the soundtrack.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, we'll have to listen to it after this or Paul, Uh,
do you want to just play it low under the
entire Oh wait, we'll get sued.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, yeah, sorry, I heart So.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
It is true that the United Kingdom had certain advantages.
It's not so much the number of people they had,
but it's the experience those people had and the organization
or discipline that the British soul was possessed.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
But in the end it kind of was one of
the things that led to their downfall, not necessarily, but
because of the use of grilla tactics.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Oh that's right, Yes, so we've talked about before they
had Napoleonic warfare versus grilla tactics. Yeah, that's a good point, Matt.
At the height of the war on the US side,
around eighty thousand members of the Continental Army or militia
members were active in service oddly enough, on the British
(13:35):
side there were only about fifty six thousand British soldiers,
but they were joined by thirty thousand German mercenaries known
as Hessians. And in Sleepy Hollow, the Johnny Depp version
of it, that's the Christopher Walkin's character is a Hessian
at the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Oh wow, that's the headless horseman.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Huh wow.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
You're saying it's at the beginning of the movie, right,
you're saying it's an allegory of some sort.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I don't know, perhaps, or perhaps Hessians were just seen
as scary characters due to their the role they played
in this war. But the would be Americans, which I
guess we have to call the colonists at this time,
had some surprising advantages.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah. First, the main one is that they're fighting in
a place that they know, they know the terrain, they
know at advantageous spots and locations. They're on home turf,
and they didn't have to mess with any kind of
real logistical things with supply chains, especially ones that would
cross a major ocean like the Atlantic, the way the
(14:44):
British had to do in the Germans. But second, they
could easily in theory, replenish their ranks if soldiers died,
because they could just get some more people there. Now,
those people wouldn't be trained necessarily or even ready for
battle in any way, but you could put bodies on
the front lines or whatever lines you.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Required, something to put in front of the cannons. Right, Yes,
it is you're you're absolutely right. That supply chain problem
was huge, and supply chains are still a huge problem
in modern warfare today.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, logistics of warfare is probably I mean, the biggest
guns are important. But if you don't have a good
supply chain to not only feed people and get supplies
and other things that you need to your the human
beings that are there performing the work, you're screwed.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah. And then on the colonists side, at this time,
there's a big question of finance. How on earth do
we pay for this? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, and we just talked about that in our live show.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
That is true. That is true through the creation of
the first Central Bank.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Thanks Hamilton, what a creative name.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
So they there were people who said, should we abandon
all hope? Is this a not only horrific endeavor but
ultimately a fruitless one. It was clear that the war
would be a close thing, possibly a losing conflict for
the Americans, with brutal consequences for anyone, not just for
(16:17):
anyone active in the rebellion, but anyone who wasn't an
active British loyalist. They would the population would bear the punishment. Right,
This thing didn't succeed, but unbeknownst to most, the colonists
still had a few tricks up their sleeves.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Oh yeah. One of the most important aspects of the
colonial military was this extensive spy network that they had
been building and were continuing to build. It was this
huge apparatus that in its own way, became as important
as the weapons, the cannons that the colonists had to
fire at somebody, because they had people on the inside everywhere.
(17:03):
In fact, this intelligence network was so stinkin good that
even today, mysteries about this time and this network remain unsolved. Ooh,
you know what that sounds like.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Time for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
That's exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Here's where it gets crazy. So intelligence work is fundamentally American.
The creation of this nation is inseparable from the creation
of this nation's intelligence network, military and civilian leaders of
the American Revolution didn't just use espionage, covert action, counterintelligence, deception,
(17:52):
and cryptanalysis to offset the British Army's advantage. They used
it very well. They were very very good at it,
and the techniques they employed were pretty sophisticated even by
today's standards.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Oh yeah, and when the history books look back at
the things that the Americans did the heroes of the Revolution,
a lot of times they'll look over names like Agent
seven to eleven, which is hilarious when they're talking about
people like John Bolton or George Washington or perhaps Patrick Henry.
(18:28):
But they should because as we're gonna as you're gonna
learn here, as we learned, they were as important or
integral to the effort as any of those big.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Names that we just mentioned, right right, Agent as. It's
gonna crack me up. And John Bolton different John, not
the John who's currently serving in the US now. Correct,
He's not some ancient centuries old vampire.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
It was John Bolton.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Should be kind of cool. More vampires in office, That's
what I say.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Well, so these guys were part of something.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Oh yes, sorry, I was. I started daydreaming full out
of alter midte style about vampires in office. I am
pretty on board with it, but you're right, Matt. They
were part of something that a lot of people were
unaware of, a spy ring called the Culper Ring, and
(19:22):
these people's identities were kept secret until well after the
war ended. In seventeen seventy eight, a guy named Benjamin Talmadge,
a young American officer who was George Washington's new chief
of intelligence, organized this top secret network of spies. Several
(19:43):
of these people, it's important to note, were just otherwise
ordinary citizens, no military experience, no political ambitions per se.
Some of them, in fact, were probably just the idol
rich oh.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, who had meetings with specific people.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Right on the s surface were British loyalists, you know
what I mean, and probably had British representatives at their house,
and they talked about how best to keep down the
peasants in the filth.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Absolutely, and they were so secretive about this that even Washington,
the guy in charge of everybody, the entire military, the
country that is being born, he said, no, no, I
don't even want to know who these people are. Do
not tell me.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Oh yet it was a huge deal to him that
he not know, and that as few people know as possible,
because they didn't want there to be any way that
the ring might be compromise. So for recruits, Tomadge turns
to people that he already knows, people who he made
friends with in his hometown on Long Island.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Because how do you trust somebody enough to be a spy?
Like building trust to get someone to be a spy,
It's no short order. There's a lot of work you
got to put into.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That, You're absolutely right, and even today there the process
to just work at the FBI or work at the
CIA involves exhaustive vetting. Also, we should point out that
a lot of a lot of those images of a
quote CIA spy get romanticized in fiction. Oftentimes a spy
(21:19):
is going to be a resident of a country that
you know, they already live in this country and they
just got turned one way or another into an asset.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah, and then they're just years and ice.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
But there are real you know, there are real James
bonds out there that are just far fewer than you
might think.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Right, So this guy is looking to build some bonds,
to build some real spies, and he chooses a guy
named Abraham Woodhol to be his his agent, sort of
his man on the ground. But Woodhold, who was code
named Samuel Coulper Senior, soon fell a foul of British
(22:01):
counterintelligence because he kept traveling to Manhattan and they were like,
what are you doing here?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
What's your business?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And he's like, I just really love the park. What
are you talking about? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But he So Woodhall has has some moves, he's got
some moxie.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
What's he do well? He he actually recruited a relative
who happened to be living with his sister in their
in her Manhattan boarding house. This guy was a dry
goods merchant. He was also a society reporter, and his
name was Robert Townsend, but his real name was Samuel
Culper Junior, his real spy name, his real spy name
(22:43):
when he was walking around.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
So is Junior and Senior at this point.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So now they're a family.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
So now they're a family. So they need some technology
and they want to disguise their activities. They have a
couple of different methods and techniques. One of the strangest
is that they used a type of invisible ink that
was developed here in the States and could only be
(23:10):
read under certain circumstances. They developed a cipher so they
would write in code, and they were quite good at this.
They were quite accomplished. They were not perfect, and we'll
explore we'll explore the bumps in the road they encounter.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeh.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
But for today's episode, we have to focus on the
most mysterious member of the Culpa ring. This agent was
a person, yes, or persons, known only by the code
name Agent three fifty five.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So much better than seven eleven.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
It is. It is much better than seven to eleven.
And for comic book fans, if you've read Why the
Last Man, you will see there's there's an Agent three
point fifty five in this story and it comes from
this real historical person.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Here's what we know about Agent fifty five. Because you're like,
whoa Agent fifty five is such a badass and Why
the Last Man? I can't believe there's a person really
like this. There may have been, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
That's the thing. There's no real historical consensus about who
this person was, what they really did, even what happened
to them.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
We just know that they were alive in an active.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Spy Things got attributed to them Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
There we go. That's a more fair way to say it, Matt.
This person is so sketchy that two hundred years later
we have over two hundred years later, we have no
idea who they are, and maybe we never will, but
we do know the things that we're attributed to them
were stunning and spectacular acts of spycraft. Oh yeah, so
(24:58):
how do we know they're even real? That's square one, right.
We know that because there is one direct reference to
Agent three fifty five in any of the culpor Ring
letters or correspondencies. It is a letter from Abraham Woodhull,
remember that's Culper senior to George Washington, when several spies
(25:18):
have been exposed and arrested. And what a Woodhull describer has.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Met one who hath been ever serviceable to this correspondence?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
That's right her.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Not only was Agent three fifty five one of the
most accomplished the mysteries of the Culpur spies, but many
experts today believe Agent three fifty five may have been
a woman, or even a group of women.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And this is based on the fact that the culpor
Ring coding system of this this phrase or this number
three fifty five actually meant within their cipher, it meant lady.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
And there's not much other proof than that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
She.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Let's let's just assume that Agent three fifty five is
indeed a woman. She worked with the American Patriots during
the Revolutionary War. She would have been recruited by Woodhull
rather than Talmadge. They're guessing because of the way her
reports coincided with British visits to New York City.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Aha.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So the fact that they call three fifty five, the
fact that three fifty five means lady doesn't just imply,
you know, gender, it also implies social standing.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah, right, it means she probably had some kind of
I don't know, I don't know what you would call
this prominence.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Yeah, affluent maybe, ah, socially connected. So she was likely
living in New York City. We know at some point
Agent three fifty five had contact with Major John Andre
and Benedict Arnold, one of the only bad bends. Well
there's Benito moves Selini. Yeah, there's Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
There's Benjamin Bratt. I'll just show he's awesome. So I
don't know anything about it.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I don't either. I just like the alliteration. You know what, Matt,
What if this is how we find out he's a
terrible person?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I know, because I'm like, I really like this dude.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Oh okay, yeah, we we will.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
We are unsure about Benjamin Bratt.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
That is our official stance. Undecided, undecidedful, hang on, I'll
ask Paul, Paul, do you know anything about Benjamin Bratt.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
He's just shaking his head. Okay, he looked up. He's like,
what are they talking about?
Speaker 1 (27:40):
So away from Benjamin Bratt back to Benedict Arnold, Major
John Andre. There's pretty solid speculation that three point fifty
five passed along the information that exposed Benedict Arnold as
a trader and led to the arrest of Major John Andre,
who was captured with Matt of West Point and a
(28:02):
pass signed by Arnold in his possession. Oh man, So,
Benjamin Talmadge's memoirs revealed this struggle to prevent the news
of the major's capture from reaching Benedict Arnold, because as
soon as Benedict hears that someone's been exposed, he's gonna
high tail it. Andre confessed, and then he was hanged.
(28:25):
So around this time, Abraham Woodhol's correspondence that's Culper Senior
indicates that Robert Townsend and other Culper ring members fled
New York City. They went into hiding. Something went sour,
something went south, something was rotten in Denmark.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Somebody knew, somebody knew too much. Well, yeah, but then
then after about two weeks, they saw that there was
some kind of decline in whatever heat they were experiencing,
decline in Tempa's and they returned.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, which they probably shouldn't have done, because that's when,
you know, we said, there's that one direct reference to
three p. Fifty five. Yeah, that's when Woodhull had to
inform Talmage about and Washington about the arrest of quote
several of our dear friends, including one who hath ever
been serviceable to this correspondence, which was as close as
(29:21):
they would come to saying, Okay, the jig is up exactly.
Let's look at how that occurred and then see if
we can make any guesses toward Agent three fifty five's identity,
which remains again unknown in the modern day. And we'll
get right back to that after a word from our sponsor. So, Matt,
(29:48):
what do we know about the roundup of the suspected
American spies.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Well, let's go back to Major John Andre. When the
perubrial t closed on him, it triggered this whole other thing,
a round up of suspects who were living in British
occupied territory. And there was a pregnant female spy who
was arrested and questioned, but she refused to reveal any
(30:15):
information of her activities or even who the father of
her child was. So it's a double mystery wrapped in
a burrito mystery.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Floating in a nice enigma sauce. So this spy was
held aboard a prison ship called the HMS Jersey. The
HMS Jersey was famous for being squalid and just a terrible, terrible,
terrible place, even in the realm of ship prisons.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, one of the last places you want to end up, right, And.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
The life expectancy in these prison ships was you're not
staying there for years, Yeah, like several months. The good
news is you won't be that miserable for that long
because you'll die.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Such good news.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Infection, starvation, abuse, violence, terrible, terrible place.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
But she remember she was pregnant. She actually gave birth there.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, she, according to this story, gave birth to a boy.
But she died aboard the ship, and then the reports
from the culpa ring decay significantly even after Robert Townsend
goes back to Spye. There's a lot of speculation concerning
Robert Townsend and this expectant female spy because according to
(31:44):
letters from the Townshend family and the relatives and their
loved ones, he was never the same after this person
passed away. He lived out his days depressed, He never
got married, He drank like a thirsty fish. And this,
coupled with you know, the female spies pregnancy and his
activities leading up to enduring the arrest, caused some experts
(32:06):
to speculate that he was actually the father of this
child and that this spy, if she were Agent three
point fifty five, was his common law wife.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, and then there's a legend that when the boy
that was born ended up being named Robert Townsend junior.
But a lot of academics kind of poopoo this idea
or they debunk it.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
It's like it's just sort of conveniently romantic, right.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, it made it would make for a great book.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
We do know that once he had news of this
roundup or this search for spies, people were suspect Townshend
did attempt to steal a ton of money, Yeah, and
high tail it, skidaddle probably with this person if the
story is true.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
One and wonder if it was just out of fear.
But who knows.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
It's weird because you can go on the official CIA
website and you'll see arguments that imply they accept this claim.
So that's what we do know about Agent three point
fifty five. There is, however, a tantalizing bit of extra
information in terms of this this kid's story.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Oh yeah, this little boy who became a man, Robert
Townsend Junior. He was a son of James Townsend and
also a brother of Robert Sr. He became a lawyer.
He went into politics, and oddly enough, maybe not that oddly,
because we know who his mother is, right, One of
(33:44):
his pet projects as a lawyer was the prison Ship
Martyr's Memorial Fund, which eventually became the prison Ship Martyrs
Monument at Fort Green Park in New York. Coincidence, I mean,
I think it just has more to do with who
his mom was, right, Well, we.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Don't know that that was his mother.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Oh oh so okay, Yeah, so there's a mystery a
foot man a mystery that remains, and that leads us
to what we don't know about Agent three p.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Fifty five, which is literally anything else, any any stuff
other than the wild guesses that we've seen the speculation
from historians at one mention in one letter, one direct
reference rather other than that, absolutely nothing concrete is known
about her other than when the British leaders were in
(34:43):
New York. Information came to General Washington an incredibly quick
and prodigious rate. But when those British leaders left town,
the information slowed down to a trickle. So yeah, probably
lived in New York. But who is Agent three fifty
There are a couple of possibilities, and maybe we can
(35:04):
start with just some rough demographic stuff and work our
way up to specific names.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yes, say, one possibility is that she was a well
bred lady.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
What a weird term.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
It just it means probably from a wealthy family from
New York, within the upper crust of society, and she
was probably this family was probably a loyalist family to
the British, to the British government, and you just have
to imagine. One of the reasons this is a good
possibility is because such a position would have given her
access to visiting officials just by having a meeting, having
(35:39):
a dinner, or having officers over for any reason or another,
especially if they're living in a kind of lavishly in
New York.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
A social function.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, I'm gonna have a social function up here in
New York. Shity. This is not how people talk in
New York.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Shit it I hope it is. Uh, it would be
such a de Latin merriment. Well at the cast, wouldn't
it be.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Great if if everybody talked like or if the if
the early colonists had like New York accents, like real
like gritty New York accent's like full.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
On tell the British to get at it.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, exactly, that'd be wonderful.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, you know what, I would be into that. So
there's that. But that's a that's a really good guestimate,
isn't it. Oh, absolutely demographic guests. There's the other possibility
that maybe she was agent three fifty five. Again, if
we're assuming three fifty five a woman, Yeah, there's this
other possibility that three point fifty five was in one
(36:43):
of these great houses of note, she was with a
well bred family. To borrow that terrible term.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Having constant contact with these officers, but.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Not as an equal, perhaps as a servant, a maid
in a house where British soldiers slept or.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Were or bivouact.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yes, yes, exactly. And from these guesses we can go
to some specific names. You'll hear people such as Anna Strong,
proposed as Agent three p. Fifty five. She was a
known member of the Culper spy ring, and she was
Abraham Woodhole's neighbor. She she had a cool These people
(37:24):
all have her specialties, right, Yeah, Like her cool shtick
was that she would convey messages via the way she
hung laundry on her clothesline.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Oh that is so cool.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
It makes you paranoid when you when you learn about
how people signal things.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Just everything is a sign, now, you know.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I honestly, when I see somebody bendover to tie their shoelaces,
oh yes, I know, I know that that is way
too paranoid of me. But I try not to stand
around when they're doing that.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I get that sometimes I know I'm profiling.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I'm basically profiling people who have laces in their shoes.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Dude. I was driving by this dude the other day
and he just happened to bend like he like made
eye contact with me as I'm driving past. Then he
bent down to his backpack, and I did not like
it one bit because I was just like, Uh, what's happening?
What exchanges occurring here?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
What's the signal?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Also, I don't know about It would always seem like
it would be so much fun to perpetrate those sorts
of spy activities. Oh, just randomly, just like in a park,
walk by and have walk by and switch suitcases with someone, yes,
or do that thing where they're you know, back to
(38:39):
back benches and you sit on one one side of
the bench and the other person sits on the other
side facing away from you.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh that's great, and then just remark about the passers
by to the other person hmm quietly.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Oh man. It just seems it seems like it would
be It would be fun because personally, if I saw
somebody doing a suitcase and off, I would be I
would be mystified. It would make my day. These were
not suitcase handoff times though, These were messages and laundry
and disappearing inc times. But there are other candidates for
(39:12):
three fifty five correct.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Oh yeah, one would be Sarah Horton Townshend. This is
Robert Townsend's cousin. And there's also Elizabeth Brugan or Bruin,
who helped American prisoners on British prison ships. And it's
just trying these ideas are just looking at placement location,
like is this a possibility? I mean really, all of
these are just kind of not reaching out in the
(39:37):
dark because we've got these tiny little pieces, right.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
These breadcrumbs. Well, they're built on the assumption that three
point fifty five being lady meant either a female spy
or a specific female spy, And all you can extrapolate
from that is, hey, who were the female spies active
with the culper ring in the TV show Washington Spies?
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Is that the show?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
You? That's it?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
There we go, We got there. In turn, Agent three
fifty five is actually a former slave of Anna Strong
who mentioned earlier. And that's that's that's it, that's all
we got. At this point, the cover up seems to
have been successful. More than two hundred years after the
(40:25):
Revolutionary War, we have no way of discerning the true
identity of Agent three fifty five. Is it possible that
someone out there knows? Is it possible that one of
our fellow listeners has passed this family secret down the
line for generations.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Is there a reason why you would want to continue
to keep it secret.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Is it possible that somewhere in a long neglected attic
or dusty tome, future historians might discover a new clue
to three fifty five's identity. For now, it is difficult
to say. One thing is for sure. The identity of
Agent three point fifty five was and remains the stuff
they don't want you to know. And at least in
(41:10):
this case, America's forefathers proved more than capable of keeping
it that way.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Wow, so we have.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
To say they did a good job. I mean, I
know we knocked the government a little bit occasionally here
in this show.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Oh yeah, absolutely. By the way, I'm I'm so silly.
Turn is a whole different thing that I was also watching.
I keep watching all these spycraft shows. Turn is about
this kind of stuff back in the Revolutionary War, which
is a great show in my opinion. But this other
one was about World War two and I still can't remember.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I'm sorry World Wars. Sorry yeah, wait no, let's let's
let's figure this out. Let's let's guess some ex company. No,
I know, Hotter Culture.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
That's probably not it either. Hogan's Heroes. Oh, okay, that's
what it was called. He's right.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
It's a real hard hitting dark drama there.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I honestly cannot remember what it is. It was so
good too. Is a BBC show, I want to say,
I believe.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
How about this? How about we ask our fellow conspiracy
realists for some help. Let us know what some of
your favorite spy shows are. Let us know how you
think the If you want to practice some counterfactual history,
let us know what you think would have happened to
this continent had the United States not emerged independent from
(42:32):
the Revolutionary War. And yes, of course, if you think
the US is still under the control of the United Kingdom,
why and what is the evidence? We'd love to hear it.
We also have that episode about whether the UK still
controls the US, which is a surprisingly prominent belief.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, it really is. And when will British Royalty finally
bring about the Moonchild? I mean, we've been waiting for
a long time, and I don't just bring that moon
Child on it's time?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, yeah, I am very pro Moonchild do you know
what I mean?
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, I would totally bow down to the moon tild
kind of like the species has peaked, you know, I'm sorry,
we're both talking about the same thing, right.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Yeah, yeah, from the Invisibles particularly okay, cool, cool, the
half human half outer god hybrid. Yes, yeah, that comes
through a mirror or something. This sounds wild, but this
is not even spoiling the Invisibles at all. It's chock
full of that stuff and we want to thank you
so much for diving into this history here with what
(43:38):
could have been. Well, I guess it's probably not the
most successful spy in US history because we know they
existed and the most successful spies alright, ghosts, Yeah right,
they're just traveling salespeople or something like that. They're listening
to this episode, if they will, thank you, because you
could have listened to so many other spy podcasts.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
They have to listen to all. It's just kind of
it downloads.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Okay, yeah, okay, Well, still, we appreciate your time. We
hope that you enjoyed this episode, and we want to
hear from you. Those were not idle questions. You can
answer these questions on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
You can talk to us on Facebook. We're big fans
of our community page. Here's where it gets crazy, but
(44:25):
let's see.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome back to the show, fellow conspiracy realists. We're diving
into a bit of hidden history. We've been on sort
of a George Washington kick. I think it's safe to
say by the time this comes out. Yeah, I you know,
it's weird when we think of spies, we think of
like James Bond, the World's worst spy, or we think
of the Cold War. But it's weird that growing up
(00:23):
we don't learn much about the colonial spies.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, and that was a major thing, go I think
we get into in the episode, just the fact that
everybody's speaking English. It was probably it probably made it
really both easy to spy but then also really difficult
to know who was a spy.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
There's also something that's just kind of interesting about colonial
spying or like the early days of spycraft, especially when
you're a buff for this kind of stuff like we are.
And you've probably heard of Benedict Arnold, one of history
only a few bad bends, But have you heard of
Agent three fifty five?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
No, Well, then listen up.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Our compatriot Nole is on the road, but we'll be
returning at some point in the future. They call me Ben.
We are joined with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decad.
Thanks for saving the show as always, Paul. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. Matt. Today we
(01:57):
are taking a journey back in time.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yes, time traveling again, that's one of my favorite things
to do.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's true. That's true. And of course there's that great
point that people make sometimes that we're all time travelers.
We're just moving in the toward the future. One second,
per I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Second, Yes, it's definitely at an even clip.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well, you know what, this might be an episode, This
might be for another episode better suited to a different
line of thinking. But time is you know.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
It's all relative.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, right, as doctor who said, what was it? Timey
whimy stuff? Are you a doctor who?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Fan?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I No, I totally thought you were going to say,
doctor Who's That's the first thing I did when someone
told me about it as a kid.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
It's a it's a great show, and I have seen
several episodes. I'm not like a you know who, a
Doctor Who had I don't know what the Whovianovian yeah
who who enthusiasts.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yep, oh right right in let us know what Doctor
Who fans are called, or what they self describe as
our time traveled today takes us back to the beginning
of the United States, back to a time when it
was the odds were looking pretty dicey for the colonists,
(03:23):
the would be Americans, right.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, they decided to buck the whole system and fight
their controllers. Yeah. They went to a bold move.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
They went rage against the machine. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So this this is a story that you and I
stumbled on a long, long time ago in a different episode,
and it's surprised. I don't know about you, Matt, but
it surprised the heck out of me.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Oh yeah. The the the fact that espionage dates back
this far and was as complicated as were this story
we're going to talk about today, that was astounding to me.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah. You hit it. You hit on the word of
the day or a word of the day, espionage, right,
Espionage is a tale as old as time or in
the case of this country, at least as old as
the state. Espionage actually predates the actually colonial espionage predates
the existence of the United States. This sort of stuff
(04:26):
occurred when the idea of what we now call the
US was nothing more than a weird twinkle in the
eyes of various founding fathers and would be rulers of
a new nation. Most of us associate the concept of
spies and spycraft with works of fiction, right, you know, like,
what are some of your favorites?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Oh gosh, well, I mean you have to go back
to Double O seven, I think the original at least
for me.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Which is weird because technically wouldn't he be the seventh one?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
But yeah James, right.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh yeah. And characters that you find in stories like
Mission Impossible, I remember were really cool, some of the
concepts in there. And then if you go There's There
were some Netflix shows back in the day that were
surrounding espionage around World War Two that I found the
most fascinating because of the technology they were dealing with
(05:21):
at the time and the stakes being so high as
they were. I think that's why I found that to
be the most fascinating, although I can't tell you the name.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Of the Steaks is it s T A. K Ees Right,
it wasn't just the spy show featuring like these amazing
ribbis and.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
T bone stacks of them, just stacks of.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Them, and then also spying. I would watch that show. Yeah,
I know what you're I kind of know what you're
thinking about, if not the specific episode the trope, because
I really enjoyed the television show The Americans. Oh yeah,
which have you seen that?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
So that that show gets a law of often for
being a I don't know about an entirely realistic depiction,
but a pretty good depiction of how deep cover sleep
agents would actually work. So we see spycraft and espionage
in all sorts of works of fiction. But we also
(06:20):
know that strange real life accusations of spine pop up
every so often in the news cycle, and usually when
they pop up, they disappear pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, Like a diplomat will get in trouble, but it's
just some unnamed diplomat and then it goes away.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Right right. Or three hikers will get caught crossing the
border into Iran, three American hikers and then they'll be
arrested as spies. The DPRK accuses people of being spies
fairly often.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Does it ever make you wonder if there are spies
caught internally within the United States, but we just never
hear anything about it. Oh, sure, they just disappear, basically.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Like there's the case of Jonathan Pollard, an American who
spied for Israel was and was caught. I think he
was sentenced to life in prison for violating the Espionage Act,
but later surprised he didn't have to do that. I
think it was after thirty years of incarceration he was
(07:25):
released on November twenty, twenty fifteen. So some spies have
been exposed and then serve their time, or somehow not
been killed and have been able to continue living their lives,
so it is possible to get away with it. Your
odds are not very good. They were especially not that
great in the Revolutionary War, because in the Revolutionary War
(07:50):
on the colonial side, your odds in general weren't spectacular.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
No, not at all.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So the Revolutionary War, we all kind of know what
that is. They call it, I think the War for
American Independence in other countries, but down here, this is
the Revolutionary war. We're very, very self important about it,
and I think we've earned the right to be. The
seeds of democracy had already been planted in the colonies.
(08:17):
People were already thinking about becoming an independent country well
before seventeen seventy six. The war went from seventeen seventy
six to seventeen eighty three and died by the Treaty
of Paris. And when we look back at this war
(08:38):
and the nation created, it's incredibly important to remember that
the government that was put into place, or I guess
that existed on paper, was see like it was seen
like a crazy thing. It seemed to be an insane notion.
(08:58):
How could you rule without a case? How close did
George Washington come to becoming the king? Right well?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And a lot has been said that the presidency itself,
the way it was created, was specifically to prevent any
one man from becoming king because of you know, the
way the way the country was set up, with dividing
powers up and not calling the president certain things, not
referring to them in that way. It was it was
(09:26):
an active move to move away from a monarchy.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Right right again, that's the that's the official narrative, and
We have an old episode on the Unofficial Narratives that
you can check out, but it's several years old now, right,
Oh yeah, it's back in the day. So they wanted
something different. They did not want to practice resource extraction
for the benefit of the kingdom across the pond. They
(09:54):
did not want to pay taxes. They were very much
against that. And they they knew that due to the
huge stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, even the world's most
powerful naval force wouldn't be able to win the war easily.
The problem was that even before the war actually broke out,
(10:17):
the US forces knew their odds of success were dangerously,
dangerously low. And the colonial leaders, even the really optimistic ones,
knew that if they were able to win independence, they
would be literally paying for it in blood.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah. And there's an historian, David McCullough who wrote a
book called seventeen seventy six which we would recommend. The
Americans suffered terrible, just horrendous losses, roughly twenty five thousand
casualties in all, or roughly about one percent of the
entire colonial population, which if you think about that in
(10:55):
like equivalent terms to today, that would be as though
if there was a modern war or within the United
States on American soil that cost three million United States citizens' lives.
That's an intense thought.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And as mccolla says, those who have been with Washington
and who knew what a close call it was at
the beginning thought the outcome, the ultimate outcome of the
Revolutionary War was a little short of a miracle, the
kind of thing that makes you say, for instance, hey,
I'm not exactly a spiritual person, but is this a
coincidence or is this destiny? Because so much stuff had
(11:33):
to go right. Modern historians have speculated that if the
colonists hadn't caught a number of key breaks, the rebellion
might have been crushed. American colonies would have remained under
the rule of King George, and the ringleaders would have
been executed in horrific ways. The people probably would have
been forced to pay a punitive tax.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
It would have made this situation increasingly unsustained able. But
the war occurred, and as you know in the Hamilton
musical that comes up whenever we do Reary War episode.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
The there was this huge perception that the US forces
were outmanned and outgunned.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I think it's outgunned, outmanned, and I don't remember the
next part. There's actually a lyric in there, right, I
don't which song is that? Right hand man, right hand man?
Oh man, I need to listen. It's been almost a
year since I think it's right in the soundtrack.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, we'll have to listen to it after this or Paul, Uh,
do you want to just play it low under the
entire Oh wait, we'll get sued.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, yeah, sorry, I heart So.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
It is true that the United Kingdom had certain advantages.
It's not so much the number of people they had,
but it's the experience those people had and the organization
or discipline that the British soul was possessed.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
But in the end it kind of was one of
the things that led to their downfall, not necessarily, but
because of the use of grilla tactics.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Oh that's right, Yes, so we've talked about before they
had Napoleonic warfare versus grilla tactics. Yeah, that's a good point, Matt.
At the height of the war on the US side,
around eighty thousand members of the Continental Army or militia
members were active in service oddly enough, on the British
(13:35):
side there were only about fifty six thousand British soldiers,
but they were joined by thirty thousand German mercenaries known
as Hessians. And in Sleepy Hollow, the Johnny Depp version
of it, that's the Christopher Walkin's character is a Hessian
at the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Oh wow, that's the headless horseman.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Huh wow.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
You're saying it's at the beginning of the movie, right,
you're saying it's an allegory of some sort.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I don't know, perhaps, or perhaps Hessians were just seen
as scary characters due to their the role they played
in this war. But the would be Americans, which I
guess we have to call the colonists at this time,
had some surprising advantages.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah. First, the main one is that they're fighting in
a place that they know, they know the terrain, they
know at advantageous spots and locations. They're on home turf,
and they didn't have to mess with any kind of
real logistical things with supply chains, especially ones that would
cross a major ocean like the Atlantic, the way the
(14:44):
British had to do in the Germans. But second, they
could easily in theory, replenish their ranks if soldiers died,
because they could just get some more people there. Now,
those people wouldn't be trained necessarily or even ready for
battle in any way, but you could put bodies on
the front lines or whatever lines you.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Required, something to put in front of the cannons. Right, Yes,
it is you're you're absolutely right. That supply chain problem
was huge, and supply chains are still a huge problem
in modern warfare today.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, logistics of warfare is probably I mean, the biggest
guns are important. But if you don't have a good
supply chain to not only feed people and get supplies
and other things that you need to your the human
beings that are there performing the work, you're screwed.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah. And then on the colonists side, at this time,
there's a big question of finance. How on earth do
we pay for this? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, and we just talked about that in our live show.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
That is true. That is true through the creation of
the first Central Bank.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Thanks Hamilton, what a creative name.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
So they there were people who said, should we abandon
all hope? Is this a not only horrific endeavor but
ultimately a fruitless one. It was clear that the war
would be a close thing, possibly a losing conflict for
the Americans, with brutal consequences for anyone, not just for
(16:17):
anyone active in the rebellion, but anyone who wasn't an
active British loyalist. They would the population would bear the punishment. Right,
This thing didn't succeed, but unbeknownst to most, the colonists
still had a few tricks up their sleeves.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Oh yeah. One of the most important aspects of the
colonial military was this extensive spy network that they had
been building and were continuing to build. It was this
huge apparatus that in its own way, became as important
as the weapons, the cannons that the colonists had to
fire at somebody, because they had people on the inside everywhere.
(17:03):
In fact, this intelligence network was so stinkin good that
even today, mysteries about this time and this network remain unsolved. Ooh,
you know what that sounds like.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Time for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
That's exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Here's where it gets crazy. So intelligence work is fundamentally American.
The creation of this nation is inseparable from the creation
of this nation's intelligence network, military and civilian leaders of
the American Revolution didn't just use espionage, covert action, counterintelligence, deception,
(17:52):
and cryptanalysis to offset the British Army's advantage. They used
it very well. They were very very good at it,
and the techniques they employed were pretty sophisticated even by
today's standards.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Oh yeah, and when the history books look back at
the things that the Americans did the heroes of the Revolution,
a lot of times they'll look over names like Agent
seven to eleven, which is hilarious when they're talking about
people like John Bolton or George Washington or perhaps Patrick Henry.
(18:28):
But they should because as we're gonna as you're gonna
learn here, as we learned, they were as important or
integral to the effort as any of those big.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Names that we just mentioned, right right, Agent as. It's
gonna crack me up. And John Bolton different John, not
the John who's currently serving in the US now. Correct,
He's not some ancient centuries old vampire.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
It was John Bolton.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Should be kind of cool. More vampires in office, That's
what I say.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Well, so these guys were part of something.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Oh yes, sorry, I was. I started daydreaming full out
of alter midte style about vampires in office. I am
pretty on board with it, but you're right, Matt. They
were part of something that a lot of people were
unaware of, a spy ring called the Culper Ring, and
(19:22):
these people's identities were kept secret until well after the
war ended. In seventeen seventy eight, a guy named Benjamin Talmadge,
a young American officer who was George Washington's new chief
of intelligence, organized this top secret network of spies. Several
(19:43):
of these people, it's important to note, were just otherwise
ordinary citizens, no military experience, no political ambitions per se.
Some of them, in fact, were probably just the idol
rich oh.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, who had meetings with specific people.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Right on the s surface were British loyalists, you know
what I mean, and probably had British representatives at their house,
and they talked about how best to keep down the
peasants in the filth.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Absolutely, and they were so secretive about this that even Washington,
the guy in charge of everybody, the entire military, the
country that is being born, he said, no, no, I
don't even want to know who these people are. Do
not tell me.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Oh yet it was a huge deal to him that
he not know, and that as few people know as possible,
because they didn't want there to be any way that
the ring might be compromise. So for recruits, Tomadge turns
to people that he already knows, people who he made
friends with in his hometown on Long Island.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Because how do you trust somebody enough to be a spy?
Like building trust to get someone to be a spy,
It's no short order. There's a lot of work you
got to put into.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That, You're absolutely right, and even today there the process
to just work at the FBI or work at the
CIA involves exhaustive vetting. Also, we should point out that
a lot of a lot of those images of a
quote CIA spy get romanticized in fiction. Oftentimes a spy
(21:19):
is going to be a resident of a country that
you know, they already live in this country and they
just got turned one way or another into an asset.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah, and then they're just years and ice.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
But there are real you know, there are real James
bonds out there that are just far fewer than you
might think.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Right, So this guy is looking to build some bonds,
to build some real spies, and he chooses a guy
named Abraham Woodhol to be his his agent, sort of
his man on the ground. But Woodhold, who was code
named Samuel Coulper Senior, soon fell a foul of British
(22:01):
counterintelligence because he kept traveling to Manhattan and they were like,
what are you doing here?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
What's your business?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And he's like, I just really love the park. What
are you talking about? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But he So Woodhall has has some moves, he's got
some moxie.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
What's he do well? He he actually recruited a relative
who happened to be living with his sister in their
in her Manhattan boarding house. This guy was a dry
goods merchant. He was also a society reporter, and his
name was Robert Townsend, but his real name was Samuel
Culper Junior, his real spy name, his real spy name
(22:43):
when he was walking around.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
So is Junior and Senior at this point.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So now they're a family.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
So now they're a family. So they need some technology
and they want to disguise their activities. They have a
couple of different methods and techniques. One of the strangest
is that they used a type of invisible ink that
was developed here in the States and could only be
(23:10):
read under certain circumstances. They developed a cipher so they
would write in code, and they were quite good at this.
They were quite accomplished. They were not perfect, and we'll
explore we'll explore the bumps in the road they encounter.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeh.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
But for today's episode, we have to focus on the
most mysterious member of the Culpa ring. This agent was
a person, yes, or persons, known only by the code
name Agent three fifty five.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So much better than seven eleven.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
It is. It is much better than seven to eleven.
And for comic book fans, if you've read Why the
Last Man, you will see there's there's an Agent three
point fifty five in this story and it comes from
this real historical person.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Here's what we know about Agent fifty five. Because you're like,
whoa Agent fifty five is such a badass and Why
the Last Man? I can't believe there's a person really
like this. There may have been, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
That's the thing. There's no real historical consensus about who
this person was, what they really did, even what happened
to them.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
We just know that they were alive in an active.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Spy Things got attributed to them Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
There we go. That's a more fair way to say it, Matt.
This person is so sketchy that two hundred years later
we have over two hundred years later, we have no
idea who they are, and maybe we never will, but
we do know the things that we're attributed to them
were stunning and spectacular acts of spycraft. Oh yeah, so
(24:58):
how do we know they're even real? That's square one, right.
We know that because there is one direct reference to
Agent three fifty five in any of the culpor Ring
letters or correspondencies. It is a letter from Abraham Woodhull,
remember that's Culper senior to George Washington, when several spies
(25:18):
have been exposed and arrested. And what a Woodhull describer has.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Met one who hath been ever serviceable to this correspondence?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
That's right her.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Not only was Agent three fifty five one of the
most accomplished the mysteries of the Culpur spies, but many
experts today believe Agent three fifty five may have been
a woman, or even a group of women.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And this is based on the fact that the culpor
Ring coding system of this this phrase or this number
three fifty five actually meant within their cipher, it meant lady.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
And there's not much other proof than that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
She.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Let's let's just assume that Agent three fifty five is
indeed a woman. She worked with the American Patriots during
the Revolutionary War. She would have been recruited by Woodhull
rather than Talmadge. They're guessing because of the way her
reports coincided with British visits to New York City.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Aha.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So the fact that they call three fifty five, the
fact that three fifty five means lady doesn't just imply,
you know, gender, it also implies social standing.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah, right, it means she probably had some kind of
I don't know, I don't know what you would call
this prominence.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Yeah, affluent maybe, ah, socially connected. So she was likely
living in New York City. We know at some point
Agent three fifty five had contact with Major John Andre
and Benedict Arnold, one of the only bad bends. Well
there's Benito moves Selini. Yeah, there's Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
There's Benjamin Bratt. I'll just show he's awesome. So I
don't know anything about it.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I don't either. I just like the alliteration. You know what, Matt,
What if this is how we find out he's a
terrible person?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I know, because I'm like, I really like this dude.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Oh okay, yeah, we we will.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
We are unsure about Benjamin Bratt.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
That is our official stance. Undecided, undecidedful, hang on, I'll
ask Paul, Paul, do you know anything about Benjamin Bratt.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
He's just shaking his head. Okay, he looked up. He's like,
what are they talking about?
Speaker 1 (27:40):
So away from Benjamin Bratt back to Benedict Arnold, Major
John Andre. There's pretty solid speculation that three point fifty
five passed along the information that exposed Benedict Arnold as
a trader and led to the arrest of Major John Andre,
who was captured with Matt of West Point and a
(28:02):
pass signed by Arnold in his possession. Oh man, So,
Benjamin Talmadge's memoirs revealed this struggle to prevent the news
of the major's capture from reaching Benedict Arnold, because as
soon as Benedict hears that someone's been exposed, he's gonna
high tail it. Andre confessed, and then he was hanged.
(28:25):
So around this time, Abraham Woodhol's correspondence that's Culper Senior
indicates that Robert Townsend and other Culper ring members fled
New York City. They went into hiding. Something went sour,
something went south, something was rotten in Denmark.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Somebody knew, somebody knew too much. Well, yeah, but then
then after about two weeks, they saw that there was
some kind of decline in whatever heat they were experiencing,
decline in Tempa's and they returned.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, which they probably shouldn't have done, because that's when,
you know, we said, there's that one direct reference to
three p. Fifty five. Yeah, that's when Woodhull had to
inform Talmage about and Washington about the arrest of quote
several of our dear friends, including one who hath ever
been serviceable to this correspondence, which was as close as
(29:21):
they would come to saying, Okay, the jig is up exactly.
Let's look at how that occurred and then see if
we can make any guesses toward Agent three fifty five's identity,
which remains again unknown in the modern day. And we'll
get right back to that after a word from our sponsor. So, Matt,
(29:48):
what do we know about the roundup of the suspected
American spies.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Well, let's go back to Major John Andre. When the
perubrial t closed on him, it triggered this whole other thing,
a round up of suspects who were living in British
occupied territory. And there was a pregnant female spy who
was arrested and questioned, but she refused to reveal any
(30:15):
information of her activities or even who the father of
her child was. So it's a double mystery wrapped in
a burrito mystery.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Floating in a nice enigma sauce. So this spy was
held aboard a prison ship called the HMS Jersey. The
HMS Jersey was famous for being squalid and just a terrible, terrible,
terrible place, even in the realm of ship prisons.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, one of the last places you want to end up, right, And.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
The life expectancy in these prison ships was you're not
staying there for years, Yeah, like several months. The good
news is you won't be that miserable for that long
because you'll die.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Such good news.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Infection, starvation, abuse, violence, terrible, terrible place.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
But she remember she was pregnant. She actually gave birth there.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, she, according to this story, gave birth to a boy.
But she died aboard the ship, and then the reports
from the culpa ring decay significantly even after Robert Townsend
goes back to Spye. There's a lot of speculation concerning
Robert Townsend and this expectant female spy because according to
(31:44):
letters from the Townshend family and the relatives and their
loved ones, he was never the same after this person
passed away. He lived out his days depressed, He never
got married, He drank like a thirsty fish. And this,
coupled with you know, the female spies pregnancy and his
activities leading up to enduring the arrest, caused some experts
(32:06):
to speculate that he was actually the father of this
child and that this spy, if she were Agent three
point fifty five, was his common law wife.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, and then there's a legend that when the boy
that was born ended up being named Robert Townsend junior.
But a lot of academics kind of poopoo this idea
or they debunk it.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
It's like it's just sort of conveniently romantic, right.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, it made it would make for a great book.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
We do know that once he had news of this
roundup or this search for spies, people were suspect Townshend
did attempt to steal a ton of money, Yeah, and
high tail it, skidaddle probably with this person if the
story is true.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
One and wonder if it was just out of fear.
But who knows.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
It's weird because you can go on the official CIA
website and you'll see arguments that imply they accept this claim.
So that's what we do know about Agent three point
fifty five. There is, however, a tantalizing bit of extra
information in terms of this this kid's story.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Oh yeah, this little boy who became a man, Robert
Townsend Junior. He was a son of James Townsend and
also a brother of Robert Sr. He became a lawyer.
He went into politics, and oddly enough, maybe not that oddly,
because we know who his mother is, right, One of
(33:44):
his pet projects as a lawyer was the prison Ship
Martyr's Memorial Fund, which eventually became the prison Ship Martyrs
Monument at Fort Green Park in New York. Coincidence, I mean,
I think it just has more to do with who
his mom was, right, Well, we.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Don't know that that was his mother.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Oh oh so okay, Yeah, so there's a mystery a
foot man a mystery that remains, and that leads us
to what we don't know about Agent three p.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Fifty five, which is literally anything else, any any stuff
other than the wild guesses that we've seen the speculation
from historians at one mention in one letter, one direct
reference rather other than that, absolutely nothing concrete is known
about her other than when the British leaders were in
(34:43):
New York. Information came to General Washington an incredibly quick
and prodigious rate. But when those British leaders left town,
the information slowed down to a trickle. So yeah, probably
lived in New York. But who is Agent three fifty
There are a couple of possibilities, and maybe we can
(35:04):
start with just some rough demographic stuff and work our
way up to specific names.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yes, say, one possibility is that she was a well
bred lady.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
What a weird term.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
It just it means probably from a wealthy family from
New York, within the upper crust of society, and she
was probably this family was probably a loyalist family to
the British, to the British government, and you just have
to imagine. One of the reasons this is a good
possibility is because such a position would have given her
access to visiting officials just by having a meeting, having
(35:39):
a dinner, or having officers over for any reason or another,
especially if they're living in a kind of lavishly in
New York.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
A social function.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, I'm gonna have a social function up here in
New York. Shity. This is not how people talk in
New York.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Shit it I hope it is. Uh, it would be
such a de Latin merriment. Well at the cast, wouldn't
it be.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Great if if everybody talked like or if the if
the early colonists had like New York accents, like real
like gritty New York accent's like full.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
On tell the British to get at it.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, exactly, that'd be wonderful.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, you know what, I would be into that. So
there's that. But that's a that's a really good guestimate,
isn't it. Oh, absolutely demographic guests. There's the other possibility
that maybe she was agent three fifty five. Again, if
we're assuming three fifty five a woman, Yeah, there's this
other possibility that three point fifty five was in one
(36:43):
of these great houses of note, she was with a
well bred family. To borrow that terrible term.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Having constant contact with these officers, but.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Not as an equal, perhaps as a servant, a maid
in a house where British soldiers slept or.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Were or bivouact.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yes, yes, exactly. And from these guesses we can go
to some specific names. You'll hear people such as Anna Strong,
proposed as Agent three p. Fifty five. She was a
known member of the Culper spy ring, and she was
Abraham Woodhole's neighbor. She she had a cool These people
(37:24):
all have her specialties, right, Yeah, Like her cool shtick
was that she would convey messages via the way she
hung laundry on her clothesline.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Oh that is so cool.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
It makes you paranoid when you when you learn about
how people signal things.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Just everything is a sign, now, you know.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I honestly, when I see somebody bendover to tie their shoelaces,
oh yes, I know, I know that that is way
too paranoid of me. But I try not to stand
around when they're doing that.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I get that sometimes I know I'm profiling.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I'm basically profiling people who have laces in their shoes.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Dude. I was driving by this dude the other day
and he just happened to bend like he like made
eye contact with me as I'm driving past. Then he
bent down to his backpack, and I did not like
it one bit because I was just like, Uh, what's happening?
What exchanges occurring here?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
What's the signal?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Also, I don't know about It would always seem like
it would be so much fun to perpetrate those sorts
of spy activities. Oh, just randomly, just like in a park,
walk by and have walk by and switch suitcases with someone, yes,
or do that thing where they're you know, back to
(38:39):
back benches and you sit on one one side of
the bench and the other person sits on the other
side facing away from you.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh that's great, and then just remark about the passers
by to the other person hmm quietly.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Oh man. It just seems it seems like it would
be It would be fun because personally, if I saw
somebody doing a suitcase and off, I would be I
would be mystified. It would make my day. These were
not suitcase handoff times though, These were messages and laundry
and disappearing inc times. But there are other candidates for
(39:12):
three fifty five correct.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Oh yeah, one would be Sarah Horton Townshend. This is
Robert Townsend's cousin. And there's also Elizabeth Brugan or Bruin,
who helped American prisoners on British prison ships. And it's
just trying these ideas are just looking at placement location,
like is this a possibility? I mean really, all of
these are just kind of not reaching out in the
(39:37):
dark because we've got these tiny little pieces, right.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
These breadcrumbs. Well, they're built on the assumption that three
point fifty five being lady meant either a female spy
or a specific female spy, And all you can extrapolate
from that is, hey, who were the female spies active
with the culper ring in the TV show Washington Spies?
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Is that the show?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
You? That's it?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
There we go, We got there. In turn, Agent three
fifty five is actually a former slave of Anna Strong
who mentioned earlier. And that's that's that's it, that's all
we got. At this point, the cover up seems to
have been successful. More than two hundred years after the
(40:25):
Revolutionary War, we have no way of discerning the true
identity of Agent three fifty five. Is it possible that
someone out there knows? Is it possible that one of
our fellow listeners has passed this family secret down the
line for generations.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Is there a reason why you would want to continue
to keep it secret.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Is it possible that somewhere in a long neglected attic
or dusty tome, future historians might discover a new clue
to three fifty five's identity. For now, it is difficult
to say. One thing is for sure. The identity of
Agent three point fifty five was and remains the stuff
they don't want you to know. And at least in
(41:10):
this case, America's forefathers proved more than capable of keeping
it that way.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Wow, so we have.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
To say they did a good job. I mean, I
know we knocked the government a little bit occasionally here
in this show.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Oh yeah, absolutely. By the way, I'm I'm so silly.
Turn is a whole different thing that I was also watching.
I keep watching all these spycraft shows. Turn is about
this kind of stuff back in the Revolutionary War, which
is a great show in my opinion. But this other
one was about World War two and I still can't remember.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I'm sorry World Wars. Sorry yeah, wait no, let's let's
let's figure this out. Let's let's guess some ex company. No,
I know, Hotter Culture.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
That's probably not it either. Hogan's Heroes. Oh, okay, that's
what it was called. He's right.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
It's a real hard hitting dark drama there.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I honestly cannot remember what it is. It was so
good too. Is a BBC show, I want to say,
I believe.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
How about this? How about we ask our fellow conspiracy
realists for some help. Let us know what some of
your favorite spy shows are. Let us know how you
think the If you want to practice some counterfactual history,
let us know what you think would have happened to
this continent had the United States not emerged independent from
(42:32):
the Revolutionary War. And yes, of course, if you think
the US is still under the control of the United Kingdom,
why and what is the evidence? We'd love to hear it.
We also have that episode about whether the UK still
controls the US, which is a surprisingly prominent belief.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, it really is. And when will British Royalty finally
bring about the Moonchild? I mean, we've been waiting for
a long time, and I don't just bring that moon
Child on it's time?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, yeah, I am very pro Moonchild do you know
what I mean?
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, I would totally bow down to the moon tild
kind of like the species has peaked, you know, I'm sorry,
we're both talking about the same thing, right.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Yeah, yeah, from the Invisibles particularly okay, cool, cool, the
half human half outer god hybrid. Yes, yeah, that comes
through a mirror or something. This sounds wild, but this
is not even spoiling the Invisibles at all. It's chock
full of that stuff and we want to thank you
so much for diving into this history here with what
(43:38):
could have been. Well, I guess it's probably not the
most successful spy in US history because we know they
existed and the most successful spies alright, ghosts, Yeah right,
they're just traveling salespeople or something like that. They're listening
to this episode, if they will, thank you, because you
could have listened to so many other spy podcasts.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
They have to listen to all. It's just kind of
it downloads.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Okay, yeah, okay, Well, still, we appreciate your time. We
hope that you enjoyed this episode, and we want to
hear from you. Those were not idle questions. You can
answer these questions on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
You can talk to us on Facebook. We're big fans
of our community page. Here's where it gets crazy, but
(44:25):
let's see.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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