February 20, 2025 • 59 mins
The US Central Intelligence Agency gets a lot of criticism these days - historically, the institution has a number of missteps. The thing about unorthodox "outside-the-box" approaches is simply this: some ideas work, and some ideas are superb. A few decades back, the CIA hired a magician.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. It's that time again,
friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists. We are exploring one
of the largest subjects in all of US conspiracy lore,
(00:52):
the Central Intelligence Agency or the CIA. And let's be honest, guys,
they get a lot of guff.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Yeah, well, I can't imagine what kind of issues people
might have with the Central Intelligence Agency or a CIA.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, I yeah, I think a lot of it has
to do with how how much they employ trickery, right,
that idea of the CIA being so deceptive, which is
at the heart of this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
That's right, yeah, which may end up being a two
part episode a series, because we're diving into some deep water. Historically,
it is true the agency as it's sometimes called this
organization has met with a great deal of controversy over
the decades, But tonight we're exploring a story many people
(01:45):
may have missed. It's a bizarre and very true conspiracy.
I don't know. Catch up on our episodes on mk Ultra.
Catch up on the numerous times we roast the CIA
a little bit for their weird, cartoonish acme level plans
to kill Castro. And then after you do that, come
(02:07):
back here exploding cigar piping in LSD to a studio.
It's wild. Let's pause for a word from our sponsors,
and then maybe we begin by learning more about the history,
the fact and fiction surrounding Uncle Sam's most powerful known
intelligence agency. And there's a lot of fact and fiction there.
(02:35):
Here are the facts. All right, let's set this sage.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Just give me some fiction thrown in for good measure, right.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Oh, there has to be, Yeah, because a lot of
the sources we're pulling are from the CIA itself. So yeah,
maybe not an unbiased reporter, maybe a little bit of
an Well, critics would call it an unreliable narrative, but
that's that's what makes literature interesting. So where do we
(03:03):
start when we talk about the CIA, what's our ultimate genesis,
like our Garden of Eden moment.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
I guess I didn't realize comparatively, you know, as far
as other agencies are concerned, how relatively recently the CIA
was created. The United States has always been super invested
in gathering of intelligence, so much that the CIA's Layson
Conference Center named three of its meeting rooms after revolutionary
(03:32):
war heroes. The idea of those early spymasters, right, yeah, oh.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, absolutely, because you need to know what your enemy
might be doing, and you also sometimes need to let
your enemy think that you're gonna do something even when
you're not.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
M h.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
And that goes it. Yeah, that's revolutionary times. That's I
mean times are the Pharaohs. That's just go all the
way back, Master.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Of Whispers and the like and the George or an
extended universe.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Love of reference. Yeah, that's varus right. And then also
we could extend that reasoning further later. There's inevitable mission
creep in any intelligence operation, and you start to apply
the same things to people you call allies and friends. Right,
let me also just trust but verify what my friend, allies,
(04:24):
my all of friends are saying.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, friend and or foes. But I think the difference
here and why the CIA really stands out for history
and for you know, these types of organizations, is because
often that intelligence is dealing in war times, right, and
so you're you're gathering intelligence to make war, and the
(04:48):
CIA is really getting into almost prevention of war.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Well, think about the preprentish is coming you guys. I mean,
the first of all, they had to know that was happening.
Then they had to have a clandestine way for Paul
Revere to let people know, you know, to be prepared
with the candles in the window and all of that,
which is a banger Elton JOHNSNG that was not apparently
originally about Princess Diana.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
And check out also our episodes on Agent three point
fifty five, who has yet to be identified in the
modern day, and the culper Ring. If you go like
you were saying no to the Liaisahl in the center,
you'll see the CIA has I don't want to maybe
not deify, but lionized a triumvirate of founding fathers that
(05:35):
they consider emblematic and pioneers of three key aspects of intelligence.
We've got, you know, now, it's like.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
A heist film.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Right where everybody gets their little hero moment at the camera.
George Washington did a lot of stuff. He's also he's
also known as a pioneer in the acquisition of foreign intelligence.
Key one turns out this guy was a cracker jack
spymaster in addition to all this other stuff, including almost
(06:05):
being king. But he did not do the cherry tree thing.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
That was more Yeah, well, met or lore.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Why is it that I'm picturing all of these guys
like in like street fighter to style versus you know,
splash screen like it. We've got We've got John Jay
as well. In addition to George, he would later become
Chief Justice. He was also considered the founding father of
US counter intelligence.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And then we've got Ringo, my favorite.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
My favorite founder, Beetle just trucking.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It is weird. George John.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Let's call him by his prophib Christian name, Benjamin Franklin.
What do we know, was you know, quite the renaissance man.
And I'm sure with his you know, big brains, figured
out some very clever ways of gathering intelligence and was
a great collaborator in a lot of these schemes and.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
A very naughty boy on multiple levels.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, but as we're gonna learn throughout these episodes, and
as I guess as the CIA learned, those types of
activities where there's a lot of commingling going on, maybe
a little activity physical mental.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Where.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, that's where a lot of intelligence can be both
gathered and you know, given to somebody else quietly. It's
it's almost it's kind of creepy now that I really
think about it, because I know that's why he was
so good, That's why he was so good.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Well, not to mention flipping that the other way in
sort of a honeypot operation like a sting operation for entrapping,
you know, foreign agents, you know, or gathering information clandestinely
through a little little naughty time.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah, this guy, old old BINGI f he probably didn't
go by Benji Benny Franks to his friend. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know why. I don't care for Benny. I
don't know anyway, it's up to him. It's his name,
uh Frank.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Because of the Jets.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Sorry, then, in fact, are you the Jets?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Are you serious? Benny and the Jets a banker.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
This conversation, you have issues.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
I think you might be taking it a little personally,
Ben you.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Need to realize I'm too close. I got too close.
Somebody exfiltrate me from the ulti job mission.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
My dear friend day stayed Glass Artist.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
She hates the song It's a Beautiful Day by You
too because she got teased with that all the time,
and therefore she thinks she hates the band you two,
and I've tried to show her like the Joshua Tree
and turn her off from that way of thinking.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
I understand, Ben.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Where are you at with the first Noelle? I think
you at this in the past.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Okay, okay, this is not I would not be just
I don't I would be discounting an entire genre or era.
I'm not a huge fan of Christmas songs in general,
but the first no Wel, I just don't like you
when people think that they're the first one that's ever
thought of that, You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Hey, I have have you been bowling lately? Holy step
Aside Shakespeare a new wordsmith in town? Anyway? Regular over here?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Are you? Fred or Rick?
Speaker 5 (09:29):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Oh shit, that's terrible. Sorry, Andrew, thanks for bv B. God.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
Matt, Wow, I'm sorry that happened to you. But Matt,
now I know who hurt.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
You terrible, that's terrible for he won.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
So so, uh, we all have our burdens to bear.
Ben Franklin's was he was. He was wearing a lot
of hats. He's a the old Liberty is known for,
you know, being saucy and then allegedly being a serial
killer at some parts of history.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
More likely a resurrection man, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
He's doing some experiments in his creepy basement like you do.
But he like, like we were saying, though, I mean,
the dude had smarts and he was very forward thinking,
very clever, and Ben, like I was saying, I imagine
that he must have been super useful in the war room, right.
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Yeah, he was.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Actually he was actually more involved in the direct kind
of wetwork you might call it or covert action, because
he was masterminding strategizing propaganda operations, influence campaigns, and good
old fashioned paramilitary ops against the British. These guys, these
(10:53):
three guys we just named George Washington, Acquisition of Foreign Intel,
John Jay Founding, father of Intelligence, Benjamin Franklin covert action.
They had that startup mentality, you know, they were doing
other stuff. They were wearing a lot of hats, and
they had to wear a lot of hats at this
time because the course of the revolution was determined successfully
(11:19):
by this tendency to exercise and this appetite for unorthodox
asymmetric strategies. You know, forget Napoleonic warfare lining people up
in rows. First they didn't have enough resources in terms
of firepower and ammunition to do that, and then secondly
they had these This gave them a tremendous advantage. They
(11:42):
had these new, agile ways of thinking, and the somewhat
I want to be unfair, but the somewhat tradition bound
rigor of European enemies couldn't deal with it. They were
speaking different languages.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
In war.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Asymmetric just kind of meaning unorthodox or maybe not not
traditional like battlefield like you said, Ben, like the infantry
the front lines. This is like wars fought on multiple
fronts using kind of more secretive means of gathering information
about your enemy so that you can kind of head
them off at the past.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, the way I think about it is exactly what
you described it, Ben. Those two If you imagine two
armies in revolutionary times looking at each other with their muskets,
and everything just aiming. That is symmetric warfare. Yes, you've
got two identical, you know, forces that are like, I
will win, I will win in this way. You got
some flanking folks right from one of the sides, you
(12:41):
got somebody that sneaks up from behind, and then it
just becomes Now it's asymmetrical.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
But it also refers to the information gathering of it
all too, right.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Oh yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, And there were you know,
of course there were turncoats on, you know, working for
the British. The game goes both ways. A modern examsample
of asymmetric warfare, which we've talked about in the past,
is pretty scary. At some point, multiple countries, especially China,
(13:11):
looked at the massive US Navy, especially the carriers and
the battle groups, and they said, all right, we could
spend billions of dollars trying to make a carrier, or
we could spend far less money building a missile that
can definitely just blow up a carrier, and that's what
they went for. That's asymmetry. It's still a huge deal
(13:35):
because it works, and you know, we could make an
entire podcast series about the Revolutionary War and all the
crazy espionage occurring. Then a lot of people have there's
no shortage of scholarship on the matter. But in general,
if in general, in major general and brigadier general, if
(13:56):
we're talking about the road to modern intelligence are story
begins with something called the Office of Strategic Services in
nineteen forty two. Oh man, these guys have popped up
in previous episodes as well, right, that's right.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
During the Spanish American War, World War One, and other conflicts,
intelligence gathering was considered a bit more ad hoc. I guess,
sort of on a case by case basis, right, like,
sort of as a needed per project.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah. Like Matt was saying earlier, a lot of this
would depend upon person to person interactions, right, finding the
right time to pass the letter, Oh I know you
from the salon earlier, the viscounts since his regards.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Oh yeah, well, and also intelligence gathering on a specific location, right,
and then folks who were working in that location because
it's a strategic target or something like that.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah, ad hoc is a really good way to put it.
I sometimes don't even understand fully what it means. What
that means, but it's used in a couple of different ways.
In American English, it.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Doesn't just kind of mean as needed, like, yes, I
think that's what presents itself.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
That's how I think about it, but I honestly don't
know if that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
It's also kind of kind of jazz, like jazz can
be because it's on the spur of the moment. There's
a bit of improvisation.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
There's not.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Ad hoc means that there is not this clearly established,
ironclad rubric for a procedure.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
So like or an agency that like a centralized you know,
command structure, right.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
You know, yeah, call those guys. We need some intelligence, right, right, right, Yes,
it's only.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Right. So if you, for instance, if you are uh,
running down a flight of stairs and you stumble and
you catch yourself, you have done some ad hoc Parker, right,
So depending on how you stumble. I don't know anyway,
this like we're saying, this was all again case by case, right,
(16:16):
No big central, nervous system of espionage and intelligence gathering,
and a lot of times it depended upon individuals who
could travel to places. Right, you want to know what's
going on in Europe, then you have to talk to
Americans who can travel over there.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
The people who would be able to hide in plain
sight as well, Yeah, would be seen as being out
of place.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Think about how tough that is. Somebody who can gain
access to an adversary that's high enough to have the
intelligence you need and also not be on anyone's radar somehow. Right,
that's a tough.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
We love spy movies so much.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
The snakes are always so damn high, the idea of
getting your cover blown, right.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, And that's why. Also, I can't remember it, did
one of you guys at some point recommend the show
The Agency.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Well, there's an original French version that is apparently quite good,
and there's a new remake with Richard Gear that is
also apparently quite good. And I have seen neither, but
I've heard great things about both.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Okay, Yeah, this bringing this up because a great deal
of the books in the French series at least, is
all about the maintenance of a cover or a persona,
and it's possible psychological effects over the long term.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Right, nice dude. That's why I like The Recruit so much,
that show on Netflix. I think it's about a newbie
getting getting thrown into that world, you know, with the
like even his job as a cover and then you're
just like, oh my god, everything just becomes what is
my life? What is this thing?
Speaker 5 (18:02):
I'll tell you what else is go.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
We're recommending spy type shows, you know, there's been an
embarrassment of riches of those lately Black Doves, which is
also I want to say, a Netflix show with that
guy Ben Wishaw who's also known as the voice of
Paddington and one of my favorite films of all time.
It's it's not CI it's British intelligence, but it really
does tickle out of the boxes as we're talking about.
(18:24):
And of course Slow Horses, which we've talked about at
So Good love that.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Yeah, I read, I read, I think the first two books.
I want to say as well, too good, too good.
I stopped reading the books because I want to watch
the show. That's how I learned about it. And now
I'll watch The Recruit and then I'll watch Black Doves.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah, and spies everywhere.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah, lurking you know.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Yeah, we're not paranoid folks. So so this idea here,
this case by case basis, this lack of a centralized authority,
nervous system, the analogy we used earlier, This all changed
in World War Two because at the beginning, the United
(19:14):
States got their ass handed to them in Pearl Harbor.
You said, ass hand, it's an enormous tragedy. We're not
trying to be you know, We're being honest. And it
may sound glib, it may sound flip, but the reality
is there was a successful Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
(19:35):
It cost thousands of lives and war Nerds, war Nerds
knew there was precedent for this, didn't they.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Yeah, And just really quickly, speaking of war Nerds, do
check out a two part series Ben and I did
on Ridiculous History. It was almost like about a precursor
or sort of like an early attempt at the kind
of warfare that the Japanese would employ during Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Yeah, at that time it was against the Russian Empire
in the turn of the nineteenth century. This time, it
was the attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base that
galvanized the US public to support intervention in World War Two.
It also launched some pretty serious conspiracy theories that continue
(20:24):
in the modern day. How much did the US power
apparatus know about Pearl Harbor or the likelihood of it
occurring in advance, or did US trade policies push the
Japanese Empire towards something where from their perspective, Pearl Harbor
was inevitable.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, it's a tough question, and it's something we've explored
in a bunch of different episodes, like our one on
the Project for the New American Century and stuff like that,
where if you have an event and Pearl Harbor is
used as an example in that specific episode, and that's
set of circumstances, But if you have an event like that,
it will spur both the public mind right to want
(21:09):
a certain thing, but also it will open up dollars
in budgets to create a thing potentially that you want
to create even you know, and it doesn't mean that's
what happens when there's something like that. It just calls
in to question the motivations perhaps, right.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
One hundred percent. Yeah, well said there too, because that
shows us the system at play, right, the structural reckonings
that occur and to the US establishment at large. In
the wake of Pearl Harbor, while the events of World
War two are unfolding, everyone in the halls of Power
(21:47):
DC is looking at each other and say holy smokes,
if this happens again, it could end the nation.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
Like we.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Stop so bad. That's essentially what they're saying. I don't
mean to sound like we're characters on drunk History, which
is a great show, check it out, but that is
the like, that's the to your point all about high stakes.
That's the level of the stakes here. And that's why
President Roosevelt calls up a very highly decorated veteran of
(22:21):
World War One, a man named William J. Donovan.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Oh Billy Donovan, Oh Billy J.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
Billy J.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Is kind of a cowboy. He's not the soldier you
take home to your parents, Let's put it that way.
And he says, all right, Donovan, you're gonna head a
new organization. It's the first of its kind in the
United States. We've been kind of ad hoc for a while.
I'm gonna call it the Coordinator of Information. And then
(22:53):
apparently all the other generals went, eh, eh.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Doesn't really have a ring to it. Yeah, I know,
I know we have to go vague with these things,
but that's a little too much.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Right right, And it was like Secretary of Secrets and
they said no. The abbreviation is S o s that's
gonna screw up everything.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
No, one don't can use.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Secretary of secrets. Though it does sound fun. Yeah, I
like it when you say it out loud like that.
It's I love the alliteration as well.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah, yeah, agree, it's got a how would you say?
Speaker 5 (23:31):
A good feel?
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Yeah, but it's also maybe a little too fun. You know,
how do you introduce yourself and a serious I'm.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
Shouting into a cat right now?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
He really did, he did.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
It's not a figure of speech.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
I've been podcasting from upstairs lately just to kind of know,
have a little change of scenery in This cat is
obsessed with me like I never Oh my god, it's like,
I love this cat.
Speaker 5 (24:04):
I love Vanessa. I love you, but you're making me
go crazy right now. Sorry, guys, carry on, please.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Oh send her my way.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
I did she heard you?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
She knows I nominate you Vanessa for our Secretary of Secrets.
So there we go. It has to be a cat,
you know what I mean? That's a profile perfect.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Very cats would be very well suited for spying.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
We have an episode either on this show or Ridiculous
History about stuff that animals. That's right, Yeah, it was
exactly it's about animals being employed for these very kinds
of tasks.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Much like Ben Franklin cats are always rubbing cheeks with
everyone there.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
We go, well done, and so Coordinator of Information. It
just doesn't work as the original as as the ongoing name,
and so they go with something equally vague. Office of
Strategic Services or OSS. This is made official. It's June thirteenth,
nineteen forty two. And here we're going to pause for
(25:10):
a word from our sponsors. When we return, we'll tell
you why the OSS is a thing that happened. We're back,
all right. There's no denying the Office of Strategic Services.
(25:31):
Just like intelligence in the Revolutionary War, they are absolutely
instrumental in the Allied victory in World War Two. It's
actually difficult to list all the ways in which the
OSS contributed to the war effort because some of it
is still secret, like some of it died with people.
(25:51):
We will never know the full extent.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
We do know. Is this the organization that got into
code breaking and some of that stuff, or is that
specifically or is that something else.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
That would be you're talking about like Enigma and stuff
like that, crypto cryptography that would be more. Oh, gosh,
what was the what was the guy's name, Turing? Yes, yes,
thank you, Yeah, that would be Yes, the brilliant polymath
Alan Turing. Oss not as not as involved on the
(26:30):
cryptography side to the extent that other initiatives were. But
they had a lot of weird missions and they had
a lot of fun toys. They they did behind enemy
line stuff, right. They did a lot of training, surveillance, analysis,
(26:52):
and what we're called operational groups. Uh, these operational Yeah,
these operational groups did things like assassination and elimination programs. Uh.
They they did the wetwork.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It's a yeah. The CIA says often they were used
to demoralize the enemy, right, a lot of ops.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, yeah, compromising newspapers, spreading fake news, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
And the CIA also would probably argue that the OSS,
in its short lived a very important, you know life,
was sort of an incubator for the types of operations
and agents that would go on to make up the
CIA one hundred.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
The oh, oh dude, they did.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
They did things like creating the Free Time movement, yeah,
as as an operation, and they got a bunch of
students involved who had no idea they were working for
the oss basically high.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
Yeah, yeah, okay, I don't know about this movement.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
They dispatched, Okay, so they they tapped college students who
were either Thai American or studying in the US from Thailand,
and they found them wherever they could. It was not
a big population to choose from from what we understand.
And then they trained them up and they shipped them
(28:28):
secretly back to Thailand the submarine. Sometimes they walked over
the border, and I think they had a few on parachute, right,
which is a pretty pretty crazy gap year for a
grad student.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
It's crazy because they're they're using the university students, the
young minds. They're using the potentially capable fighters with young
minds that are very malleable to become a resistance force
against the force of Japanese military might there in Thailand.
Just it's creepy, smart, and I don't know it just
(29:06):
it's that yucky feeling of oh, none of this is
actually what I think it.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Is, right, Yeah, And we see this later reflected in
other student movements throughout especially Latin America. But you don't
have to throw a stone far across the globe to
find a country or regime that's been touched by something
(29:30):
like this, and not always from the Yankees. Sometimes it
occurs from the European side. And of course Soviet forces
got very good at this in their own way.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah they did. It makes you really understand why the
US really cracked down on a bunch of student movements,
you know, in the nineteen sixties specifically. It really makes
you understand their paranoia about that because it was their playbook.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
That's the thing. Yeah, it's you know what it's like.
This may be a deep reference now, but I bet,
I bet we're all on the same page. It reminds
me of the Key and Peel sketch about the Albanian
restaurant and the Macedonian restaurant that are directly across the
street from each other. One makes kapapi and one makes
chavapi and they're both. It's super Have you guys seen
(30:21):
this one.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
I don't think I've seen this one.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I don't remember it, dude.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Oh it's legend. It is s here. I'll send it
to you, but it's without spoiling it too much. The
owners of these restaurants are essentially creating the same dish,
and they're super pissed. That the restaurant across the street
is doing it because it's their thing. And that's exactly
(30:45):
what happens with student movements in the USS or made
by the ussr KGB and made by the us CIA.
It's true or OSS, Yes, oh good note OSS at
that time. Yes, because we're not adding to the CIA
just yet. The OSS has, as you were saying, no,
a very short lifespan. Operationally. They employ they full time
(31:11):
employ about thirteen thousand people. As in, we're not counting
the students, we're not counting the assets. We're not counting
you know, the newspaper printers who didn't know who they
were taking orders from. The actual facts employees thirteen thousand,
and they were only The OSS was only really popping
(31:31):
for about can I say that, all right? Fine, only
really popping from about nineteen forty two to nineteen forty five,
three years, very very short. The whole time this is happening,
our buddy Billy J. Donovan is still cooking with gas Man.
He's stirring that cauldron of intrigue and he's saying, oh, yeah,
(31:51):
we're doing you know, we're doing cool stuff in wartime.
And he may have overestimated the effectiveness of some of
these projects, and he starts talking to the people in
power above him, to the presidents and the presidential staff,
and he starts saying, what if we just kind of
kept the band going, you know, after the tour that
(32:12):
is World War Two? What if we had a peacetime
version of this to stop wars from ever happening again
through trickery. I feel like he paused a second, you know,
he was like, ever happening again through trickery? And President Truman,
(32:34):
you know, Roosevelt's not president at this point. Now it's
President Truman. And he says, you know what, Billy, you
make some good points.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
So that's when later on Truman decided to create the
CIA in nineteen forty seven. The organization pretty much took
all of its cues from Donovan, who had earlier pitched
the idea of a post war peace time spy operation
that would continue after World War One. Is more of
(33:05):
like a preparedness kind of thing rather than like being
in an active conflict.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Well, yeah, and I think you can probably understand why
this is such an what felt like a necessary move
at the time. You've got major military powers that all
rise up during World War two right to fight back
against a single enemy, but each one of those individual
nations that has a massive military now could potentially be
(33:33):
that in that frenemy zone. Right, that kind of developed
while everybody said, Hey, there's a real threat over there,
we need to eliminate that threat. Now that it's over,
we should probably keep our ears and our eyes to
our friends that we've just made.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah, pick and choose the parts of the relationships we
want to maintain and the avenues of communication. You're absolutely right,
You're absolutely right back, because proponents will argue this was
a necessary move, and there's validity to that claim because
away from the public eye, right away from all the shiny,
(34:12):
problematic support the troops propaganda, you know, with Donald Duck
and your favorite cartoon characters fighting racist caricatures of access powers,
away from all that jazz and the Hubblou, Uncle Sam's
finest minds have already predicted just what you were describing,
(34:32):
mat a new conflict on the horizon. The alliance with
the Soviets was always fragile. These were real strange bedfellows,
the US and the USSR. And it was only it
was only a friendship. It was not a friendship, it
was only a working relationship based on the enemy of
acxis power and without that mutual shared enemy, democracy and
(34:54):
communism were inevitably going to set on a collision course
for nothing less than control of the world. And on
the Soviet side, there Bo often saw this too, because
the nerds are often going to end up being friends
with each other outside of political ideologies because they're the
only ones who like are on the level of what
(35:15):
the other person is talking about. That's why nuclear technology
it has to be clamped down so hard, because you know,
in certain aspects, it's like there are fifty people who
know about it, and they want to hang out with
the other forty nine people because they're the only ones
who like get their dumb puns and stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
It's important.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Isn't it a little weird that both of these superpowers.
Well here's the thing, I don't know the Soviet view
of this from this time. I haven't read enough books
or about the history of it. Were the Soviets I'm
trying to understand if we're the Soviets also thinking, oh,
we have to become the world. Old's ideology of how
(36:02):
you know, governments are organized and how human beings get
their money and how the economics of the world work.
We have to be the ones or was it just
the US thinking they're going to try and take this
thing from us?
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Well, and I always wonder you guys, like what it
is that makes communism and capitalism just so like oil
and water, you know, like I mean, just on paper,
just the antithesis to one another. Like you know, when
you think about just what communism is, it doesn't seem
that alarmist or doesn't seem that, you know, like counterintuitive,
(36:37):
But I guess it is because it's like literally, you know,
making money versus like governing for the people or like
having everyone be on an equal playing field, and that
does not jive with capitalism.
Speaker 5 (36:50):
So therefore it's like a bigger ideological kind of conflict.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
I'm sorry if I'm oversimplifying, but I think that piggybacks
on Matt's question.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
It's weird because the oligarch thing can exist in both places,
which is what you imagine is that's who's being served ultimately.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Right, Yeah, so let's unpack that. I think it's worth
the time here because these are excellent points. So to
the original question, Yes, both sides had aspirations to control
the world order in a way that you could argue
they were both seeking to make a macrocosmic iteration of
(37:29):
their earlier revolutions, the American Revolution, democracy, right, the Communist revolution,
the Soviet Empire, and they did see ideologically, they did
see these as mutually exclusive, clashing ideas. And the important
point here, the takeaway for all the common John and
(37:54):
Ivan doze out in the crowd tonight, is that a
lot of these decisions were being made by what we
will call oligarchs to your point, in practice, like communism
in theory was often not communism in practice in the
Soviet Empire, right, there was a lot of corruption, just
(38:14):
the same way that democracy in theory is often not
democracy in practice. In the history of the United States.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, it is really strange to me.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Sorry, I know that's cynical, but that's the truth.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
No, no, no, you're right, because ultimately it's well, how
will I become wealthy? Right, and the minds of the
people who are really sitting at the top end deciding that, oh, well,
this ideology is the most important thing. So we need
to build ships that have the biggest weapons on them
and go kill the other guys that also have big
(38:50):
ships with weapons because they think different. It's just sorry,
I'm breaking it down to like stupidly general and simple
five parts.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
Which I think is key.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
But I mean speaking of you know, the the baked
in corruption, the you know, the difference between you know,
a concept on paper versus how it actually works and
operates in the real world. The same could be said
of the CIA and some of the sins of the
OSS that it kind of inherited, whether you could call
it corruption or just sort of circumventing the rule of law.
(39:25):
A lot of these things sort of carried over into
this new agency right on.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, and there is that also, that underlying thing of
everyone is a potential enemy, you know, at least an
organization that has to buy its very nature view everybody
as a potential enemy.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Yeah, it's true. It's true. It's brutal. I mean, riddle
be this. Do you guys know who the most surveilled
individuals associated with a lot of these agencies are, Because
it's the employees of those agencies. They're also not super trusted,
and they can't be because of the nature of their enterprise.
(40:10):
I do think it's important here to note that we're
not saying people in power during the Cold War were
bad faith actors. A lot of them clearly sincerely believed
and the ideology and the the ideology they were practicing,
the aims they were pursuing. Yet you have to ask
(40:33):
why they believe these things. And when you ask that,
what you will find is they believed in the thing
that was good for them in their social structure. They
liked it because they were successful within that milieu. Whatever
that miliu may be.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Well, yeah, and we can't discount the fact that politicians
are often in a lot of ways servicing the money,
which is the folks who you know, who can build
the bombs and the weapons and the things that are
necessary to hold on to power and to maintain those structures.
And that hasn't changed and I don't think that will
(41:11):
ever change. And those are the oligarchs.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
And it's sort of like a self fulfilling prophecy as well,
where it's like, in order to satiate those interests, those
economic interests, you almost kind of have to constantly exist
in various states of conflicts.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Oh yeah, and what if those guys need natural resources,
if you if some other empire controls where the resources are.
You can't get those resources, you know, you got to
pay them for the service of getting those resources. So
why not just control everything?
Speaker 3 (41:44):
I want a word of the day, salaqu word of
the evening slecu right now, perfect, perfect? I trust you,
Tilling and Andrew, because Noel, you settled out of the
word of the evening. Interest right. Oh gosh, we've done
so much for American interest. It's not the same thing
(42:05):
as security, it's not the same thing as humanitarian efforts.
But it is interesting, you know what I mean. Like,
intervening in Libya is interesting. A couple of explorations in
South and Central America super interesting.
Speaker 5 (42:26):
I'm intrigued.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, Invading Iraq again interesting interesting?
Speaker 3 (42:33):
And what do we mean by that? We'll tell you
after a word from our sponsors. We've returned. All right,
this is this is the point we're getting at. And
I you know, I think we're all being very fair
(42:53):
with the way we're exploring this. But we nailed something earlier.
The proponents have that validity to their claims that something
like the CIA needs to exist. The critics have validity
to their claims that the CIA carried along a lot
of the corruption and problematic behavior of the OSS. And
(43:15):
that's because this is still Donovan's baby. This is a
charismatic leader. He has built, he has built a kind
of church, really, and he has acolytes, he has followers,
he has disciples. Four of those guys end up being
directors of the New CIA. They cut their teeth or
(43:36):
made their bones, if you want to use some crime terms.
Under Donovan directly, they did the wet work, They did
the psyops, they did all of that, all the hits,
all the slow jazz, Alan Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby,
William Casey, and later when they took control of the CIA,
when they were directors, they themselves made decisions that in
(44:00):
hindsight clearly circumvented the rule of American law and international
law in pursuit of kind of a greater good that
they thought was very concrete, and that history proofs was
somewhat of a moving goalpost at times. You know, Beya
pigs Cuba, what else? Right?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Iran Contra was just a thing that happened. You don't
need to think about.
Speaker 5 (44:30):
That, Pay no attention.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
And this is an organization that has been to protect
and champion American democracy and of course interest and so
it's interesting that they also attempted to overthrow the Allende
government in Chile, which was democratically elected, which was very much,
(44:54):
on paper the thing the US should support to the
fullest and not burned out.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
What a weird thing to do.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, this doesn't count the ways the CIA repeatedly meddled
in the African theater up to and including being associated
with assassinations of government leaders. We're not talking about the
CIA now, we're talking about the history of this organization. Yeah,
(45:24):
so everybody be cool.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Yeah, should should we talk about the official mission of
the CIA, like what it stated at least yes when
it was created. So nineteen forty seven July CIA is born,
and its missions are there are two of them, and
then there's a bunch of submissions after that. But the
(45:49):
two primary ones are prevent surprise foreign attacks against the
United States, Right, that makes sense. Don't let another pearl
harbor happen, and you do that by gathering intelligence watching
your fre enemies. The second is to counter the advance
of Soviet Communism into Europe and other third world nations,
is how they called it. Yeah, but yeah, be an
(46:12):
ideological stop gap and then don't let another surprise happen.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Oh and this this, yeah, this gives us insight. Again,
we weren't just spinning tails or flipping pancakes when when
we were saying this was an ideological war. This very
heart and mind and soul. But it's also important to
note a common misconception that shows up in the United
States all the time. The idea of first, second, and
(46:40):
third world countries is inherently bs. It is a phrase
from the Cold War. It does not refer to economic
development originally, not the way to the way it was
supposed to be used. Originally, it referred to where people
we're on this ideological spectrum of democracy v. Communism?
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, are you one, two or other?
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Right? Right?
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Not yet stomped on? Basically not aligned?
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Yeah, and if you are, if you are a kid
growing up in the United States, then as now a
country purporting to be a democracy in a meritocracy so far,
then of course you're going to be taught that first
world is the best world. Of course, it's typocratic.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
You know, it's the right one. M's the same, with
a weird smile on his face.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Oh gosh, the beatings will continue until morale improves. Also
look into this very interesting folks. Look into when the
US public school system decided to make the morning Pledge
of Allegiance mandatory. Hint, it's way more recent than you
might assume.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Oh oh yeah, Oh my god, I'm gonna leave that there.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Just leave that breadcrumb there. That's a tasty one. Pick
it up.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
Uh oh hey.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
There's one other thing that we have to mention here.
One of the primary reasons why the CIA was so
important as a thing was because there's this term you
may have heard, the iron Dome like a long time ago,
or the iron curtain. The iron curtain is probably the
most widely used. That's the concept that information doesn't come
out of the Soviet Union. There's so many secrets, secret actions,
(48:31):
secret motivations, and all these other things that are somewhere
behind this curtain that you can't see through. It's iron.
Your signals can't even get through it, right, signals aren't
coming out. So you got to find a way to
get behind that thing and then get stuff out of it.
And that's that was one of the CIA's main things.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yes, yeah, And if you are a longtime listener, you've
heard and explored these stories with US episodes. If you
haven't heard these yet, we encourage you to check them out.
And if you are a fan of deep dive books
on these sorts of subjects, please also peruse Killing Hope,
(49:13):
US Military and CIA Intervention since World War Two by
William Blum and Legacy of Ashes by Tim Wiener. Anyway,
the key takeaway, and maybe this is episode one, the
key takeaway is this descended from an organization founded on
an existential need for subterfuge. The CIA has always had
(49:35):
an outside the box approach to problems, and we are
being very diplomatic with that description. Like any good intelligence apparatus,
this organization, for better or worse, leaves nose stone unturned
in its constant effort to protect American interest interest. And
(49:58):
you know, we could say that at times the objectivity
of these pursuits fell sway to ideology, right or not,
or paranoia. You know, there's a lot of Unfortunately, there
are examples of this kind of catch twenty two Heller
esque reasoning. We had to burn the village to save
(50:18):
the village, right, because otherwise the village would turn communists.
And then you know, you know it's yeah, it's like
a witch hunt. You know, Oh, we killed the person
to make sure she wasn't a witch. What happened, Well,
she drowned, so you know she's not a witch?
Speaker 5 (50:39):
Oh yeah? Is she a duck? Though? Is the question?
Speaker 3 (50:43):
That's the question. That's the question imposed by such great
philosophers as Monty Python. I believe for sure, Okay, good
best I know. It was either them or Plato, that's
the issue. Though, there's no denying the CIA's historical asymmetric,
(51:03):
unorthodox approach has led the organization to some very strange places,
you know, one of the strangest, of course, being MK Ultra.
Do we want to talk about MK Ultra for a second.
Speaker 5 (51:17):
Absolutely. I mean we teased it.
Speaker 4 (51:20):
I've been talking about some of the crazy ways that
the CIA went after Castro, like exposing him to psychedelics,
you know, in the hopes that it would make.
Speaker 5 (51:29):
Him lose his mind.
Speaker 4 (51:30):
Well, we also did that to just regular people, like
on subway trains in New York City, missing them with LSD.
Speaker 5 (51:39):
That was only one of the many.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
Bizarro operations that went by MK Ultra, also known as
Operation Midnight Climax.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Yeah, it started in nineteen fifty three, way back when.
And then it never stopped. No, I'm just joking, I.
Speaker 3 (51:56):
Will wet Okay. So the American public only knows about, well,
the global public only knows about mk Ultra because of
a filing mistake that is a true story. An activist
newspaper group broke into the wrong storage facility and they
(52:20):
found papers that had been misfiled that we're supposed to
be destroyed in entirety. So to this evening in twenty
twenty five, no one knows all of what mk ultra
was over or what it encapsulated encompassed, because it is
a group umbrella term for a lot of other projects
(52:44):
like Operation Midnight Climax, which you can hear a fantastic
podcast on hosted by none other than mister Noel Brown
and Nolan oh Man.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
Thanks, you know, that was super fun to be a
part of and it really does tell the whole story
in a really interesting and well sound design kind of
narrative way. And speaking of narrative, then another project that
you know talks about this type of thing is The
Control Group, written by Brett Wood and eped by you
Ben Bollen, which is a great piece about kind of
(53:14):
psychedelic experimentation, you know, in a government capacity.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
Dude, that's an intense one of them. It was one
of my favorite podcasts for a long time because it
was fictional, but it was based so much on actual stuff,
big time.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Brett Wood's a beast, yeah, and and an extraordinarily humble
guy that also was That also was sound design and
eped by our brother in arms, Paul Mission Control decad
So credit where it's due.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Anyway, Yeah, as far as we know, the MKAY Ultra
program did not create a Manchurian candidate as far as
we know, because again, most of the conclusions and paperwork
and documentation was destroyed and a lot of the researchers,
for one way, through one means or another, were prevented
(54:13):
from ever going public. And at this point, as you said,
back beginning in the fifties, at this point, a lot
of the original Avengers or Justice League crew of Mad
Science here, they're long dead.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
Oh yeah, but you know what didn't die.
Speaker 3 (54:31):
Uh, the funk.
Speaker 5 (54:35):
Never never let the fuck die.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
Well, another thing this is so we talked about how
MK Ultra we only know about because of those unshredded
documents that were supposed to die and go away forever.
We only know about the stuff we're going to be
talking about in part two of this series because of
another series of documents that didn't get shredded properly and
we're just sitting around place where they weren't supposed to
(55:01):
be And now we know.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
And I'm going to tell you honestly, guys, this is
something that the the espionage movies and the fiction and
the film, the novels and so on. That's what they
always miss, you know, what spies are really afraid of,
and spy masters more so than even a bullet. It's paperwork.
It's a paper trail, it's documentation, it's it's indisputable proof. Right,
(55:29):
So this stuff it may sound, you know, like a
like a funny bitty hill sketch. Oh, we've found the
papers that show the secret operations, but that's terrifying to
the ms of the world.
Speaker 5 (55:45):
Like I mean, yeah, they.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Thrive on plausible deniability or just straight up deniability. It's
sort of the whole point is not to be able
to be connected with any of these things.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Yeah, especially names, like actual names of that are involved.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Mike go yeah. Oh, And speaking of names, at the
center of this web of mk ultra, there is a
waving spider, a whispering voice, a varus of sorts, a singular,
fascinating and troubling man, doctor Sidney Gottlieb, who will play
a major role in our later explorations. Amid all these
(56:26):
chaotic scramblings for an edge, any advantage over enemies, seditionist movements,
even allies, the CIA explored surprising conspiratorial partnerships with the
most unlikely groups and individuals. This series question how far
did this go? Did the CIA actually hire magicians? That's right,
(56:53):
this is going to be a two part episode. Thank
you so much for tuning in. Please join us, fellow
conspiracy realist, for chapter two of the CIA Higher Magicians.
We left you with a cliffhanger because there was a
lot of context. We had to get to a lot
of explorations together in the dark. So while you're waiting
(57:17):
in the interim, if you're wondering, Hey, I'm already on
the internet. What am I going to do now? Just
keep waiting for chapter two. Never fear. You can join
the show yourself. Reach out to us. You can find
us on email, via telephone, and the internets.
Speaker 4 (57:34):
Indeed, you can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff
where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's.
Speaker 5 (57:39):
Where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (57:40):
On you Do, where we have video content for you
to enjoy, as well as on xfka, Twitter, on Instagram
and TikTok.
Speaker 5 (57:47):
We are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
If you want to give us a call, our number
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(58:13):
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Speaker 3 (58:14):
We are the entities that read every single piece of
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(58:35):
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Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. It's that time again,
friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists. We are exploring one
of the largest subjects in all of US conspiracy lore,
(00:52):
the Central Intelligence Agency or the CIA. And let's be honest, guys,
they get a lot of guff.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Yeah, well, I can't imagine what kind of issues people
might have with the Central Intelligence Agency or a CIA.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, I yeah, I think a lot of it has
to do with how how much they employ trickery, right,
that idea of the CIA being so deceptive, which is
at the heart of this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
That's right, yeah, which may end up being a two
part episode a series, because we're diving into some deep water. Historically,
it is true the agency as it's sometimes called this
organization has met with a great deal of controversy over
the decades, But tonight we're exploring a story many people
(01:45):
may have missed. It's a bizarre and very true conspiracy.
I don't know. Catch up on our episodes on mk Ultra.
Catch up on the numerous times we roast the CIA
a little bit for their weird, cartoonish acme level plans
to kill Castro. And then after you do that, come
(02:07):
back here exploding cigar piping in LSD to a studio.
It's wild. Let's pause for a word from our sponsors,
and then maybe we begin by learning more about the history,
the fact and fiction surrounding Uncle Sam's most powerful known
intelligence agency. And there's a lot of fact and fiction there.
(02:35):
Here are the facts. All right, let's set this sage.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Just give me some fiction thrown in for good measure, right.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Oh, there has to be, Yeah, because a lot of
the sources we're pulling are from the CIA itself. So yeah,
maybe not an unbiased reporter, maybe a little bit of
an Well, critics would call it an unreliable narrative, but
that's that's what makes literature interesting. So where do we
(03:03):
start when we talk about the CIA, what's our ultimate genesis,
like our Garden of Eden moment.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
I guess I didn't realize comparatively, you know, as far
as other agencies are concerned, how relatively recently the CIA
was created. The United States has always been super invested
in gathering of intelligence, so much that the CIA's Layson
Conference Center named three of its meeting rooms after revolutionary
(03:32):
war heroes. The idea of those early spymasters, right, yeah, oh.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, absolutely, because you need to know what your enemy
might be doing, and you also sometimes need to let
your enemy think that you're gonna do something even when
you're not.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
M h.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
And that goes it. Yeah, that's revolutionary times. That's I
mean times are the Pharaohs. That's just go all the
way back, Master.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Of Whispers and the like and the George or an
extended universe.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Love of reference. Yeah, that's varus right. And then also
we could extend that reasoning further later. There's inevitable mission
creep in any intelligence operation, and you start to apply
the same things to people you call allies and friends. Right,
let me also just trust but verify what my friend, allies,
(04:24):
my all of friends are saying.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, friend and or foes. But I think the difference
here and why the CIA really stands out for history
and for you know, these types of organizations, is because
often that intelligence is dealing in war times, right, and
so you're you're gathering intelligence to make war, and the
(04:48):
CIA is really getting into almost prevention of war.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Well, think about the preprentish is coming you guys. I mean,
the first of all, they had to know that was happening.
Then they had to have a clandestine way for Paul
Revere to let people know, you know, to be prepared
with the candles in the window and all of that,
which is a banger Elton JOHNSNG that was not apparently
originally about Princess Diana.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
And check out also our episodes on Agent three point
fifty five, who has yet to be identified in the
modern day, and the culper Ring. If you go like
you were saying no to the Liaisahl in the center,
you'll see the CIA has I don't want to maybe
not deify, but lionized a triumvirate of founding fathers that
(05:35):
they consider emblematic and pioneers of three key aspects of intelligence.
We've got, you know, now, it's like.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
A heist film.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Right where everybody gets their little hero moment at the camera.
George Washington did a lot of stuff. He's also he's
also known as a pioneer in the acquisition of foreign intelligence.
Key one turns out this guy was a cracker jack
spymaster in addition to all this other stuff, including almost
(06:05):
being king. But he did not do the cherry tree thing.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
That was more Yeah, well, met or lore.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Why is it that I'm picturing all of these guys
like in like street fighter to style versus you know,
splash screen like it. We've got We've got John Jay
as well. In addition to George, he would later become
Chief Justice. He was also considered the founding father of
US counter intelligence.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And then we've got Ringo, my favorite.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
My favorite founder, Beetle just trucking.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It is weird. George John.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Let's call him by his prophib Christian name, Benjamin Franklin.
What do we know, was you know, quite the renaissance man.
And I'm sure with his you know, big brains, figured
out some very clever ways of gathering intelligence and was
a great collaborator in a lot of these schemes and.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
A very naughty boy on multiple levels.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, but as we're gonna learn throughout these episodes, and
as I guess as the CIA learned, those types of
activities where there's a lot of commingling going on, maybe
a little activity physical mental.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Where.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, that's where a lot of intelligence can be both
gathered and you know, given to somebody else quietly. It's
it's almost it's kind of creepy now that I really
think about it, because I know that's why he was
so good, That's why he was so good.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Well, not to mention flipping that the other way in
sort of a honeypot operation like a sting operation for entrapping,
you know, foreign agents, you know, or gathering information clandestinely
through a little little naughty time.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah, this guy, old old BINGI f he probably didn't
go by Benji Benny Franks to his friend. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know why. I don't care for Benny. I
don't know anyway, it's up to him. It's his name,
uh Frank.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Because of the Jets.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Sorry, then, in fact, are you the Jets?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Are you serious? Benny and the Jets a banker.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
This conversation, you have issues.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
I think you might be taking it a little personally,
Ben you.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Need to realize I'm too close. I got too close.
Somebody exfiltrate me from the ulti job mission.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
My dear friend day stayed Glass Artist.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
She hates the song It's a Beautiful Day by You
too because she got teased with that all the time,
and therefore she thinks she hates the band you two,
and I've tried to show her like the Joshua Tree
and turn her off from that way of thinking.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
I understand, Ben.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Where are you at with the first Noelle? I think
you at this in the past.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Okay, okay, this is not I would not be just
I don't I would be discounting an entire genre or era.
I'm not a huge fan of Christmas songs in general,
but the first no Wel, I just don't like you
when people think that they're the first one that's ever
thought of that, You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Hey, I have have you been bowling lately? Holy step
Aside Shakespeare a new wordsmith in town? Anyway? Regular over here?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Are you? Fred or Rick?
Speaker 5 (09:29):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Oh shit, that's terrible. Sorry, Andrew, thanks for bv B. God.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
Matt, Wow, I'm sorry that happened to you. But Matt,
now I know who hurt.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
You terrible, that's terrible for he won.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
So so, uh, we all have our burdens to bear.
Ben Franklin's was he was. He was wearing a lot
of hats. He's a the old Liberty is known for,
you know, being saucy and then allegedly being a serial
killer at some parts of history.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
More likely a resurrection man, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
He's doing some experiments in his creepy basement like you do.
But he like, like we were saying, though, I mean,
the dude had smarts and he was very forward thinking,
very clever, and Ben, like I was saying, I imagine
that he must have been super useful in the war room, right.
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Yeah, he was.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Actually he was actually more involved in the direct kind
of wetwork you might call it or covert action, because
he was masterminding strategizing propaganda operations, influence campaigns, and good
old fashioned paramilitary ops against the British. These guys, these
(10:53):
three guys we just named George Washington, Acquisition of Foreign Intel,
John Jay Founding, father of Intelligence, Benjamin Franklin covert action.
They had that startup mentality, you know, they were doing
other stuff. They were wearing a lot of hats, and
they had to wear a lot of hats at this
time because the course of the revolution was determined successfully
(11:19):
by this tendency to exercise and this appetite for unorthodox
asymmetric strategies. You know, forget Napoleonic warfare lining people up
in rows. First they didn't have enough resources in terms
of firepower and ammunition to do that, and then secondly
they had these This gave them a tremendous advantage. They
(11:42):
had these new, agile ways of thinking, and the somewhat
I want to be unfair, but the somewhat tradition bound
rigor of European enemies couldn't deal with it. They were
speaking different languages.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
In war.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Asymmetric just kind of meaning unorthodox or maybe not not
traditional like battlefield like you said, Ben, like the infantry
the front lines. This is like wars fought on multiple
fronts using kind of more secretive means of gathering information
about your enemy so that you can kind of head
them off at the past.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, the way I think about it is exactly what
you described it, Ben. Those two If you imagine two
armies in revolutionary times looking at each other with their muskets,
and everything just aiming. That is symmetric warfare. Yes, you've
got two identical, you know, forces that are like, I
will win, I will win in this way. You got
some flanking folks right from one of the sides, you
(12:41):
got somebody that sneaks up from behind, and then it
just becomes Now it's asymmetrical.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
But it also refers to the information gathering of it
all too, right.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Oh yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, And there were you know,
of course there were turncoats on, you know, working for
the British. The game goes both ways. A modern examsample
of asymmetric warfare, which we've talked about in the past,
is pretty scary. At some point, multiple countries, especially China,
(13:11):
looked at the massive US Navy, especially the carriers and
the battle groups, and they said, all right, we could
spend billions of dollars trying to make a carrier, or
we could spend far less money building a missile that
can definitely just blow up a carrier, and that's what
they went for. That's asymmetry. It's still a huge deal
(13:35):
because it works, and you know, we could make an
entire podcast series about the Revolutionary War and all the
crazy espionage occurring. Then a lot of people have there's
no shortage of scholarship on the matter. But in general,
if in general, in major general and brigadier general, if
(13:56):
we're talking about the road to modern intelligence are story
begins with something called the Office of Strategic Services in
nineteen forty two. Oh man, these guys have popped up
in previous episodes as well, right, that's right.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
During the Spanish American War, World War One, and other conflicts,
intelligence gathering was considered a bit more ad hoc. I guess,
sort of on a case by case basis, right, like,
sort of as a needed per project.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah. Like Matt was saying earlier, a lot of this
would depend upon person to person interactions, right, finding the
right time to pass the letter, Oh I know you
from the salon earlier, the viscounts since his regards.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Oh yeah, well, and also intelligence gathering on a specific location, right,
and then folks who were working in that location because
it's a strategic target or something like that.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah, ad hoc is a really good way to put it.
I sometimes don't even understand fully what it means. What
that means, but it's used in a couple of different ways.
In American English, it.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Doesn't just kind of mean as needed, like, yes, I
think that's what presents itself.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
That's how I think about it, but I honestly don't
know if that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
It's also kind of kind of jazz, like jazz can
be because it's on the spur of the moment. There's
a bit of improvisation.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
There's not.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Ad hoc means that there is not this clearly established,
ironclad rubric for a procedure.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
So like or an agency that like a centralized you know,
command structure, right.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
You know, yeah, call those guys. We need some intelligence, right, right, right, Yes,
it's only.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Right. So if you, for instance, if you are uh,
running down a flight of stairs and you stumble and
you catch yourself, you have done some ad hoc Parker, right,
So depending on how you stumble. I don't know anyway,
this like we're saying, this was all again case by case, right,
(16:16):
No big central, nervous system of espionage and intelligence gathering,
and a lot of times it depended upon individuals who
could travel to places. Right, you want to know what's
going on in Europe, then you have to talk to
Americans who can travel over there.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
The people who would be able to hide in plain
sight as well, Yeah, would be seen as being out
of place.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Think about how tough that is. Somebody who can gain
access to an adversary that's high enough to have the
intelligence you need and also not be on anyone's radar somehow. Right,
that's a tough.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
We love spy movies so much.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
The snakes are always so damn high, the idea of
getting your cover blown, right.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, And that's why. Also, I can't remember it, did
one of you guys at some point recommend the show
The Agency.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Well, there's an original French version that is apparently quite good,
and there's a new remake with Richard Gear that is
also apparently quite good. And I have seen neither, but
I've heard great things about both.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Okay, Yeah, this bringing this up because a great deal
of the books in the French series at least, is
all about the maintenance of a cover or a persona,
and it's possible psychological effects over the long term.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Right, nice dude. That's why I like The Recruit so much,
that show on Netflix. I think it's about a newbie
getting getting thrown into that world, you know, with the
like even his job as a cover and then you're
just like, oh my god, everything just becomes what is
my life? What is this thing?
Speaker 5 (18:02):
I'll tell you what else is go.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
We're recommending spy type shows, you know, there's been an
embarrassment of riches of those lately Black Doves, which is
also I want to say, a Netflix show with that
guy Ben Wishaw who's also known as the voice of
Paddington and one of my favorite films of all time.
It's it's not CI it's British intelligence, but it really
does tickle out of the boxes as we're talking about.
(18:24):
And of course Slow Horses, which we've talked about at
So Good love that.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Yeah, I read, I read, I think the first two books.
I want to say as well, too good, too good.
I stopped reading the books because I want to watch
the show. That's how I learned about it. And now
I'll watch The Recruit and then I'll watch Black Doves.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah, and spies everywhere.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah, lurking you know.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Yeah, we're not paranoid folks. So so this idea here,
this case by case basis, this lack of a centralized authority,
nervous system, the analogy we used earlier, This all changed
in World War Two because at the beginning, the United
(19:14):
States got their ass handed to them in Pearl Harbor.
You said, ass hand, it's an enormous tragedy. We're not
trying to be you know, We're being honest. And it
may sound glib, it may sound flip, but the reality
is there was a successful Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
(19:35):
It cost thousands of lives and war Nerds, war Nerds
knew there was precedent for this, didn't they.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Yeah, And just really quickly, speaking of war Nerds, do
check out a two part series Ben and I did
on Ridiculous History. It was almost like about a precursor
or sort of like an early attempt at the kind
of warfare that the Japanese would employ during Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Yeah, at that time it was against the Russian Empire
in the turn of the nineteenth century. This time, it
was the attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base that
galvanized the US public to support intervention in World War Two.
It also launched some pretty serious conspiracy theories that continue
(20:24):
in the modern day. How much did the US power
apparatus know about Pearl Harbor or the likelihood of it
occurring in advance, or did US trade policies push the
Japanese Empire towards something where from their perspective, Pearl Harbor
was inevitable.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, it's a tough question, and it's something we've explored
in a bunch of different episodes, like our one on
the Project for the New American Century and stuff like that,
where if you have an event and Pearl Harbor is
used as an example in that specific episode, and that's
set of circumstances, But if you have an event like that,
it will spur both the public mind right to want
(21:09):
a certain thing, but also it will open up dollars
in budgets to create a thing potentially that you want
to create even you know, and it doesn't mean that's
what happens when there's something like that. It just calls
in to question the motivations perhaps, right.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
One hundred percent. Yeah, well said there too, because that
shows us the system at play, right, the structural reckonings
that occur and to the US establishment at large. In
the wake of Pearl Harbor, while the events of World
War two are unfolding, everyone in the halls of Power
(21:47):
DC is looking at each other and say holy smokes,
if this happens again, it could end the nation.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
Like we.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Stop so bad. That's essentially what they're saying. I don't
mean to sound like we're characters on drunk History, which
is a great show, check it out, but that is
the like, that's the to your point all about high stakes.
That's the level of the stakes here. And that's why
President Roosevelt calls up a very highly decorated veteran of
(22:21):
World War One, a man named William J. Donovan.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Oh Billy Donovan, Oh Billy J.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
Billy J.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Is kind of a cowboy. He's not the soldier you
take home to your parents, Let's put it that way.
And he says, all right, Donovan, you're gonna head a
new organization. It's the first of its kind in the
United States. We've been kind of ad hoc for a while.
I'm gonna call it the Coordinator of Information. And then
(22:53):
apparently all the other generals went, eh, eh.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Doesn't really have a ring to it. Yeah, I know,
I know we have to go vague with these things,
but that's a little too much.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Right right, And it was like Secretary of Secrets and
they said no. The abbreviation is S o s that's
gonna screw up everything.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
No, one don't can use.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Secretary of secrets. Though it does sound fun. Yeah, I
like it when you say it out loud like that.
It's I love the alliteration as well.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah, yeah, agree, it's got a how would you say?
Speaker 5 (23:31):
A good feel?
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Yeah, but it's also maybe a little too fun. You know,
how do you introduce yourself and a serious I'm.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
Shouting into a cat right now?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
He really did, he did.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
It's not a figure of speech.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
I've been podcasting from upstairs lately just to kind of know,
have a little change of scenery in This cat is
obsessed with me like I never Oh my god, it's like,
I love this cat.
Speaker 5 (24:04):
I love Vanessa. I love you, but you're making me
go crazy right now. Sorry, guys, carry on, please.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Oh send her my way.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
I did she heard you?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
She knows I nominate you Vanessa for our Secretary of Secrets.
So there we go. It has to be a cat,
you know what I mean? That's a profile perfect.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Very cats would be very well suited for spying.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
We have an episode either on this show or Ridiculous
History about stuff that animals. That's right, Yeah, it was
exactly it's about animals being employed for these very kinds
of tasks.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Much like Ben Franklin cats are always rubbing cheeks with
everyone there.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
We go, well done, and so Coordinator of Information. It
just doesn't work as the original as as the ongoing name,
and so they go with something equally vague. Office of
Strategic Services or OSS. This is made official. It's June thirteenth,
nineteen forty two. And here we're going to pause for
(25:10):
a word from our sponsors. When we return, we'll tell
you why the OSS is a thing that happened. We're back,
all right. There's no denying the Office of Strategic Services.
(25:31):
Just like intelligence in the Revolutionary War, they are absolutely
instrumental in the Allied victory in World War Two. It's
actually difficult to list all the ways in which the
OSS contributed to the war effort because some of it
is still secret, like some of it died with people.
(25:51):
We will never know the full extent.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
We do know. Is this the organization that got into
code breaking and some of that stuff, or is that
specifically or is that something else.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
That would be you're talking about like Enigma and stuff
like that, crypto cryptography that would be more. Oh, gosh,
what was the what was the guy's name, Turing? Yes, yes,
thank you, Yeah, that would be Yes, the brilliant polymath
Alan Turing. Oss not as not as involved on the
(26:30):
cryptography side to the extent that other initiatives were. But
they had a lot of weird missions and they had
a lot of fun toys. They they did behind enemy
line stuff, right. They did a lot of training, surveillance, analysis,
(26:52):
and what we're called operational groups. Uh, these operational Yeah,
these operational groups did things like assassination and elimination programs. Uh.
They they did the wetwork.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It's a yeah. The CIA says often they were used
to demoralize the enemy, right, a lot of ops.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, yeah, compromising newspapers, spreading fake news, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
And the CIA also would probably argue that the OSS,
in its short lived a very important, you know life,
was sort of an incubator for the types of operations
and agents that would go on to make up the
CIA one hundred.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
The oh, oh dude, they did.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
They did things like creating the Free Time movement, yeah,
as as an operation, and they got a bunch of
students involved who had no idea they were working for
the oss basically high.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
Yeah, yeah, okay, I don't know about this movement.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
They dispatched, Okay, so they they tapped college students who
were either Thai American or studying in the US from Thailand,
and they found them wherever they could. It was not
a big population to choose from from what we understand.
And then they trained them up and they shipped them
(28:28):
secretly back to Thailand the submarine. Sometimes they walked over
the border, and I think they had a few on parachute, right,
which is a pretty pretty crazy gap year for a
grad student.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
It's crazy because they're they're using the university students, the
young minds. They're using the potentially capable fighters with young
minds that are very malleable to become a resistance force
against the force of Japanese military might there in Thailand.
Just it's creepy, smart, and I don't know it just
(29:06):
it's that yucky feeling of oh, none of this is
actually what I think it.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Is, right, Yeah, And we see this later reflected in
other student movements throughout especially Latin America. But you don't
have to throw a stone far across the globe to
find a country or regime that's been touched by something
(29:30):
like this, and not always from the Yankees. Sometimes it
occurs from the European side. And of course Soviet forces
got very good at this in their own way.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah they did. It makes you really understand why the
US really cracked down on a bunch of student movements,
you know, in the nineteen sixties specifically. It really makes
you understand their paranoia about that because it was their playbook.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
That's the thing. Yeah, it's you know what it's like.
This may be a deep reference now, but I bet,
I bet we're all on the same page. It reminds
me of the Key and Peel sketch about the Albanian
restaurant and the Macedonian restaurant that are directly across the
street from each other. One makes kapapi and one makes
chavapi and they're both. It's super Have you guys seen
(30:21):
this one.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
I don't think I've seen this one.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I don't remember it, dude.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Oh it's legend. It is s here. I'll send it
to you, but it's without spoiling it too much. The
owners of these restaurants are essentially creating the same dish,
and they're super pissed. That the restaurant across the street
is doing it because it's their thing. And that's exactly
(30:45):
what happens with student movements in the USS or made
by the ussr KGB and made by the us CIA.
It's true or OSS, Yes, oh good note OSS at
that time. Yes, because we're not adding to the CIA
just yet. The OSS has, as you were saying, no,
a very short lifespan. Operationally. They employ they full time
(31:11):
employ about thirteen thousand people. As in, we're not counting
the students, we're not counting the assets. We're not counting
you know, the newspaper printers who didn't know who they
were taking orders from. The actual facts employees thirteen thousand,
and they were only The OSS was only really popping
(31:31):
for about can I say that, all right? Fine, only
really popping from about nineteen forty two to nineteen forty five,
three years, very very short. The whole time this is happening,
our buddy Billy J. Donovan is still cooking with gas Man.
He's stirring that cauldron of intrigue and he's saying, oh, yeah,
(31:51):
we're doing you know, we're doing cool stuff in wartime.
And he may have overestimated the effectiveness of some of
these projects, and he starts talking to the people in
power above him, to the presidents and the presidential staff,
and he starts saying, what if we just kind of
kept the band going, you know, after the tour that
(32:12):
is World War Two? What if we had a peacetime
version of this to stop wars from ever happening again
through trickery. I feel like he paused a second, you know,
he was like, ever happening again through trickery? And President Truman,
(32:34):
you know, Roosevelt's not president at this point. Now it's
President Truman. And he says, you know what, Billy, you
make some good points.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
So that's when later on Truman decided to create the
CIA in nineteen forty seven. The organization pretty much took
all of its cues from Donovan, who had earlier pitched
the idea of a post war peace time spy operation
that would continue after World War One. Is more of
(33:05):
like a preparedness kind of thing rather than like being
in an active conflict.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Well, yeah, and I think you can probably understand why
this is such an what felt like a necessary move
at the time. You've got major military powers that all
rise up during World War two right to fight back
against a single enemy, but each one of those individual
nations that has a massive military now could potentially be
(33:33):
that in that frenemy zone. Right, that kind of developed
while everybody said, Hey, there's a real threat over there,
we need to eliminate that threat. Now that it's over,
we should probably keep our ears and our eyes to
our friends that we've just made.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah, pick and choose the parts of the relationships we
want to maintain and the avenues of communication. You're absolutely right,
You're absolutely right back, because proponents will argue this was
a necessary move, and there's validity to that claim because
away from the public eye, right away from all the shiny,
(34:12):
problematic support the troops propaganda, you know, with Donald Duck
and your favorite cartoon characters fighting racist caricatures of access powers,
away from all that jazz and the Hubblou, Uncle Sam's
finest minds have already predicted just what you were describing,
(34:32):
mat a new conflict on the horizon. The alliance with
the Soviets was always fragile. These were real strange bedfellows,
the US and the USSR. And it was only it
was only a friendship. It was not a friendship, it
was only a working relationship based on the enemy of
acxis power and without that mutual shared enemy, democracy and
(34:54):
communism were inevitably going to set on a collision course
for nothing less than control of the world. And on
the Soviet side, there Bo often saw this too, because
the nerds are often going to end up being friends
with each other outside of political ideologies because they're the
only ones who like are on the level of what
(35:15):
the other person is talking about. That's why nuclear technology
it has to be clamped down so hard, because you know,
in certain aspects, it's like there are fifty people who
know about it, and they want to hang out with
the other forty nine people because they're the only ones
who like get their dumb puns and stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
It's important.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Isn't it a little weird that both of these superpowers.
Well here's the thing, I don't know the Soviet view
of this from this time. I haven't read enough books
or about the history of it. Were the Soviets I'm
trying to understand if we're the Soviets also thinking, oh,
we have to become the world. Old's ideology of how
(36:02):
you know, governments are organized and how human beings get
their money and how the economics of the world work.
We have to be the ones or was it just
the US thinking they're going to try and take this
thing from us?
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Well, and I always wonder you guys, like what it
is that makes communism and capitalism just so like oil
and water, you know, like I mean, just on paper,
just the antithesis to one another. Like you know, when
you think about just what communism is, it doesn't seem
that alarmist or doesn't seem that, you know, like counterintuitive,
(36:37):
But I guess it is because it's like literally, you know,
making money versus like governing for the people or like
having everyone be on an equal playing field, and that
does not jive with capitalism.
Speaker 5 (36:50):
So therefore it's like a bigger ideological kind of conflict.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
I'm sorry if I'm oversimplifying, but I think that piggybacks
on Matt's question.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
It's weird because the oligarch thing can exist in both places,
which is what you imagine is that's who's being served ultimately.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Right, Yeah, so let's unpack that. I think it's worth
the time here because these are excellent points. So to
the original question, Yes, both sides had aspirations to control
the world order in a way that you could argue
they were both seeking to make a macrocosmic iteration of
(37:29):
their earlier revolutions, the American Revolution, democracy, right, the Communist revolution,
the Soviet Empire, and they did see ideologically, they did
see these as mutually exclusive, clashing ideas. And the important
point here, the takeaway for all the common John and
(37:54):
Ivan doze out in the crowd tonight, is that a
lot of these decisions were being made by what we
will call oligarchs to your point, in practice, like communism
in theory was often not communism in practice in the
Soviet Empire, right, there was a lot of corruption, just
(38:14):
the same way that democracy in theory is often not
democracy in practice. In the history of the United States.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, it is really strange to me.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Sorry, I know that's cynical, but that's the truth.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
No, no, no, you're right, because ultimately it's well, how
will I become wealthy? Right, and the minds of the
people who are really sitting at the top end deciding that, oh, well,
this ideology is the most important thing. So we need
to build ships that have the biggest weapons on them
and go kill the other guys that also have big
(38:50):
ships with weapons because they think different. It's just sorry,
I'm breaking it down to like stupidly general and simple
five parts.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
Which I think is key.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
But I mean speaking of you know, the the baked
in corruption, the you know, the difference between you know,
a concept on paper versus how it actually works and
operates in the real world. The same could be said
of the CIA and some of the sins of the
OSS that it kind of inherited, whether you could call
it corruption or just sort of circumventing the rule of law.
(39:25):
A lot of these things sort of carried over into
this new agency right on.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, and there is that also, that underlying thing of
everyone is a potential enemy, you know, at least an
organization that has to buy its very nature view everybody
as a potential enemy.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Yeah, it's true. It's true. It's brutal. I mean, riddle
be this. Do you guys know who the most surveilled
individuals associated with a lot of these agencies are, Because
it's the employees of those agencies. They're also not super trusted,
and they can't be because of the nature of their enterprise.
(40:10):
I do think it's important here to note that we're
not saying people in power during the Cold War were
bad faith actors. A lot of them clearly sincerely believed
and the ideology and the the ideology they were practicing,
the aims they were pursuing. Yet you have to ask
(40:33):
why they believe these things. And when you ask that,
what you will find is they believed in the thing
that was good for them in their social structure. They
liked it because they were successful within that milieu. Whatever
that miliu may be.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Well, yeah, and we can't discount the fact that politicians
are often in a lot of ways servicing the money,
which is the folks who you know, who can build
the bombs and the weapons and the things that are
necessary to hold on to power and to maintain those structures.
And that hasn't changed and I don't think that will
(41:11):
ever change. And those are the oligarchs.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
And it's sort of like a self fulfilling prophecy as well,
where it's like, in order to satiate those interests, those
economic interests, you almost kind of have to constantly exist
in various states of conflicts.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Oh yeah, and what if those guys need natural resources,
if you if some other empire controls where the resources are.
You can't get those resources, you know, you got to
pay them for the service of getting those resources. So
why not just control everything?
Speaker 3 (41:44):
I want a word of the day, salaqu word of
the evening slecu right now, perfect, perfect? I trust you,
Tilling and Andrew, because Noel, you settled out of the
word of the evening. Interest right. Oh gosh, we've done
so much for American interest. It's not the same thing
(42:05):
as security, it's not the same thing as humanitarian efforts.
But it is interesting, you know what I mean. Like,
intervening in Libya is interesting. A couple of explorations in
South and Central America super interesting.
Speaker 5 (42:26):
I'm intrigued.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, Invading Iraq again interesting interesting?
Speaker 3 (42:33):
And what do we mean by that? We'll tell you
after a word from our sponsors. We've returned. All right,
this is this is the point we're getting at. And
I you know, I think we're all being very fair
(42:53):
with the way we're exploring this. But we nailed something earlier.
The proponents have that validity to their claims that something
like the CIA needs to exist. The critics have validity
to their claims that the CIA carried along a lot
of the corruption and problematic behavior of the OSS. And
(43:15):
that's because this is still Donovan's baby. This is a
charismatic leader. He has built, he has built a kind
of church, really, and he has acolytes, he has followers,
he has disciples. Four of those guys end up being
directors of the New CIA. They cut their teeth or
(43:36):
made their bones, if you want to use some crime terms.
Under Donovan directly, they did the wet work, They did
the psyops, they did all of that, all the hits,
all the slow jazz, Alan Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby,
William Casey, and later when they took control of the CIA,
when they were directors, they themselves made decisions that in
(44:00):
hindsight clearly circumvented the rule of American law and international
law in pursuit of kind of a greater good that
they thought was very concrete, and that history proofs was
somewhat of a moving goalpost at times. You know, Beya
pigs Cuba, what else? Right?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Iran Contra was just a thing that happened. You don't
need to think about.
Speaker 5 (44:30):
That, Pay no attention.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
And this is an organization that has been to protect
and champion American democracy and of course interest and so
it's interesting that they also attempted to overthrow the Allende
government in Chile, which was democratically elected, which was very much,
(44:54):
on paper the thing the US should support to the
fullest and not burned out.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
What a weird thing to do.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, this doesn't count the ways the CIA repeatedly meddled
in the African theater up to and including being associated
with assassinations of government leaders. We're not talking about the
CIA now, we're talking about the history of this organization. Yeah,
(45:24):
so everybody be cool.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Yeah, should should we talk about the official mission of
the CIA, like what it stated at least yes when
it was created. So nineteen forty seven July CIA is born,
and its missions are there are two of them, and
then there's a bunch of submissions after that. But the
(45:49):
two primary ones are prevent surprise foreign attacks against the
United States, Right, that makes sense. Don't let another pearl
harbor happen, and you do that by gathering intelligence watching
your fre enemies. The second is to counter the advance
of Soviet Communism into Europe and other third world nations,
is how they called it. Yeah, but yeah, be an
(46:12):
ideological stop gap and then don't let another surprise happen.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Oh and this this, yeah, this gives us insight. Again,
we weren't just spinning tails or flipping pancakes when when
we were saying this was an ideological war. This very
heart and mind and soul. But it's also important to
note a common misconception that shows up in the United
States all the time. The idea of first, second, and
(46:40):
third world countries is inherently bs. It is a phrase
from the Cold War. It does not refer to economic
development originally, not the way to the way it was
supposed to be used. Originally, it referred to where people
we're on this ideological spectrum of democracy v. Communism?
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, are you one, two or other?
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Right? Right?
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Not yet stomped on? Basically not aligned?
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Yeah, and if you are, if you are a kid
growing up in the United States, then as now a
country purporting to be a democracy in a meritocracy so far,
then of course you're going to be taught that first
world is the best world. Of course, it's typocratic.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
You know, it's the right one. M's the same, with
a weird smile on his face.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Oh gosh, the beatings will continue until morale improves. Also
look into this very interesting folks. Look into when the
US public school system decided to make the morning Pledge
of Allegiance mandatory. Hint, it's way more recent than you
might assume.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Oh oh yeah, Oh my god, I'm gonna leave that there.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Just leave that breadcrumb there. That's a tasty one. Pick
it up.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
Uh oh hey.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
There's one other thing that we have to mention here.
One of the primary reasons why the CIA was so
important as a thing was because there's this term you
may have heard, the iron Dome like a long time ago,
or the iron curtain. The iron curtain is probably the
most widely used. That's the concept that information doesn't come
out of the Soviet Union. There's so many secrets, secret actions,
(48:31):
secret motivations, and all these other things that are somewhere
behind this curtain that you can't see through. It's iron.
Your signals can't even get through it, right, signals aren't
coming out. So you got to find a way to
get behind that thing and then get stuff out of it.
And that's that was one of the CIA's main things.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yes, yeah, And if you are a longtime listener, you've
heard and explored these stories with US episodes. If you
haven't heard these yet, we encourage you to check them out.
And if you are a fan of deep dive books
on these sorts of subjects, please also peruse Killing Hope,
(49:13):
US Military and CIA Intervention since World War Two by
William Blum and Legacy of Ashes by Tim Wiener. Anyway,
the key takeaway, and maybe this is episode one, the
key takeaway is this descended from an organization founded on
an existential need for subterfuge. The CIA has always had
(49:35):
an outside the box approach to problems, and we are
being very diplomatic with that description. Like any good intelligence apparatus,
this organization, for better or worse, leaves nose stone unturned
in its constant effort to protect American interest interest. And
(49:58):
you know, we could say that at times the objectivity
of these pursuits fell sway to ideology, right or not,
or paranoia. You know, there's a lot of Unfortunately, there
are examples of this kind of catch twenty two Heller
esque reasoning. We had to burn the village to save
(50:18):
the village, right, because otherwise the village would turn communists.
And then you know, you know it's yeah, it's like
a witch hunt. You know, Oh, we killed the person
to make sure she wasn't a witch. What happened, Well,
she drowned, so you know she's not a witch?
Speaker 5 (50:39):
Oh yeah? Is she a duck? Though? Is the question?
Speaker 3 (50:43):
That's the question. That's the question imposed by such great
philosophers as Monty Python. I believe for sure, Okay, good
best I know. It was either them or Plato, that's
the issue. Though, there's no denying the CIA's historical asymmetric,
(51:03):
unorthodox approach has led the organization to some very strange places,
you know, one of the strangest, of course, being MK Ultra.
Do we want to talk about MK Ultra for a second.
Speaker 5 (51:17):
Absolutely. I mean we teased it.
Speaker 4 (51:20):
I've been talking about some of the crazy ways that
the CIA went after Castro, like exposing him to psychedelics,
you know, in the hopes that it would make.
Speaker 5 (51:29):
Him lose his mind.
Speaker 4 (51:30):
Well, we also did that to just regular people, like
on subway trains in New York City, missing them with LSD.
Speaker 5 (51:39):
That was only one of the many.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
Bizarro operations that went by MK Ultra, also known as
Operation Midnight Climax.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Yeah, it started in nineteen fifty three, way back when.
And then it never stopped. No, I'm just joking, I.
Speaker 3 (51:56):
Will wet Okay. So the American public only knows about, well,
the global public only knows about mk Ultra because of
a filing mistake that is a true story. An activist
newspaper group broke into the wrong storage facility and they
(52:20):
found papers that had been misfiled that we're supposed to
be destroyed in entirety. So to this evening in twenty
twenty five, no one knows all of what mk ultra
was over or what it encapsulated encompassed, because it is
a group umbrella term for a lot of other projects
(52:44):
like Operation Midnight Climax, which you can hear a fantastic
podcast on hosted by none other than mister Noel Brown
and Nolan oh Man.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
Thanks, you know, that was super fun to be a
part of and it really does tell the whole story
in a really interesting and well sound design kind of
narrative way. And speaking of narrative, then another project that
you know talks about this type of thing is The
Control Group, written by Brett Wood and eped by you
Ben Bollen, which is a great piece about kind of
(53:14):
psychedelic experimentation, you know, in a government capacity.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
Dude, that's an intense one of them. It was one
of my favorite podcasts for a long time because it
was fictional, but it was based so much on actual stuff,
big time.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Brett Wood's a beast, yeah, and and an extraordinarily humble
guy that also was That also was sound design and
eped by our brother in arms, Paul Mission Control decad
So credit where it's due.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Anyway, Yeah, as far as we know, the MKAY Ultra
program did not create a Manchurian candidate as far as
we know, because again, most of the conclusions and paperwork
and documentation was destroyed and a lot of the researchers,
for one way, through one means or another, were prevented
(54:13):
from ever going public. And at this point, as you said,
back beginning in the fifties, at this point, a lot
of the original Avengers or Justice League crew of Mad
Science here, they're long dead.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
Oh yeah, but you know what didn't die.
Speaker 3 (54:31):
Uh, the funk.
Speaker 5 (54:35):
Never never let the fuck die.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
Well, another thing this is so we talked about how
MK Ultra we only know about because of those unshredded
documents that were supposed to die and go away forever.
We only know about the stuff we're going to be
talking about in part two of this series because of
another series of documents that didn't get shredded properly and
we're just sitting around place where they weren't supposed to
(55:01):
be And now we know.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
And I'm going to tell you honestly, guys, this is
something that the the espionage movies and the fiction and
the film, the novels and so on. That's what they
always miss, you know, what spies are really afraid of,
and spy masters more so than even a bullet. It's paperwork.
It's a paper trail, it's documentation, it's it's indisputable proof. Right,
(55:29):
So this stuff it may sound, you know, like a
like a funny bitty hill sketch. Oh, we've found the
papers that show the secret operations, but that's terrifying to
the ms of the world.
Speaker 5 (55:45):
Like I mean, yeah, they.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Thrive on plausible deniability or just straight up deniability. It's
sort of the whole point is not to be able
to be connected with any of these things.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Yeah, especially names, like actual names of that are involved.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Mike go yeah. Oh, And speaking of names, at the
center of this web of mk ultra, there is a
waving spider, a whispering voice, a varus of sorts, a singular,
fascinating and troubling man, doctor Sidney Gottlieb, who will play
a major role in our later explorations. Amid all these
(56:26):
chaotic scramblings for an edge, any advantage over enemies, seditionist movements,
even allies, the CIA explored surprising conspiratorial partnerships with the
most unlikely groups and individuals. This series question how far
did this go? Did the CIA actually hire magicians? That's right,
(56:53):
this is going to be a two part episode. Thank
you so much for tuning in. Please join us, fellow
conspiracy realist, for chapter two of the CIA Higher Magicians.
We left you with a cliffhanger because there was a
lot of context. We had to get to a lot
of explorations together in the dark. So while you're waiting
(57:17):
in the interim, if you're wondering, Hey, I'm already on
the internet. What am I going to do now? Just
keep waiting for chapter two. Never fear. You can join
the show yourself. Reach out to us. You can find
us on email, via telephone, and the internets.
Speaker 4 (57:34):
Indeed, you can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff
where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's.
Speaker 5 (57:39):
Where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (57:40):
On you Do, where we have video content for you
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and TikTok.
Speaker 5 (57:47):
We are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
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(58:13):
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Speaker 3 (58:14):
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(58:35):
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We can all see if we can all respond, and
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Speaker 2 (59:05):
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