December 4, 2025 • 55 mins
During WWII, there were lots of ways to contribute to the war effort. One involved sitting at a radio station on Long Island, feeding lies to the Nazis to aid the Allies. Owen House was the secret center of Operation Ostrich, the most intense counterintelligence effort you've never heard of.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zaren Elizabeth, Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Zarn, Hello, Michel Lai. Listen pal, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm doing pretty well? How about you? Good?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Good? Do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Man do I? But I want to preface this. This
is ridiculously cool. Oh really yeah, not like ridiculous, like
what ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Like what?
Speaker 5 (00:26):
I like that?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
So we got this message right and the intern send
it to me. I thought this was I just wanted
to share it with you. So one of our rude
dude listeners is cat Josh Murphy from Down Under Down
to Aussie Rye.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Oh yes this guy, yeah right.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
So he's a He opened a cafe in Brunswick, Melbourne, Melbourne,
and he named it after somebody we mentioned in one
of our episodes, The Horse, the Beautiful jim Key. Now
I'm not sure if you remember Beautiful jim Key, but
it was in the episode Lady One of.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
This like a course, yes, yes, yes, okay.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
So as Josh Murphy noted that he was inspired by
Beautiful jim Key and was like, you know, we named
our spot after it. And I looked up like some
some write ups and stuff, and he and his partner.
They've got this really cool spot. If I recommend if
you're in Melbourne go check it out. It is apparently
(01:23):
in Brunswick on Wilson Avenue, Okay, and it's right by
Iris the Bakery if you're familiar with the area. It's
described as a light filled space. It's full of character
and uh yeah, he wanted to name it.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
After the horse fired by the show.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Yeah, which is just I thought ridiculously cool that that
this formerly enslaved man trains a horse. Way back in
the day. We cover him briefly in a story This
guy down in Australia names a cafe after this horse.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Well, you know, and it's such a great name, beautiful Jim.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
So he's the guy. Josh Murphy is the guy who
sent us that mustard that we love.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Oh, the one you want to try Russell and Son.
He sended from Australia. Yes, it is proper good. God,
you had some, did I?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Yeah, we made that sandwich.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Oh that's what that was.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
That's what that was. Oh.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I wish you would have let me know.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I told you never listening.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
No, it's really really good.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
And it was like we found out he sent us
this Mustard Russell and sons. Yes, phenomenal, kind of like
a small batch thing. And we're like, oh, that's so cool.
What a rad rude dude.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Totally and then.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
He's like, oh, ps I named a restaurant after something
you talked.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
About, Josh Murphy, you rock man.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
So yeah, if you're ever in the Melbourne area, please
go check out his restaurant and let us know how
it is.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, it's like cafe. I don't want to say take.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
It down there.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
We can get you on a plane that long. Yeah,
probably not, maybe someday, who knows. There you go, thank
you again for that one. That game was both here smile.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
That is wonderfully ridiculous. And do you want to know
what else is ridiculous but not wonderfully ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Please being a not see what.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
This is? Ridiculous? Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I know you hear that.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I done heard that. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said,
quote in Wartime, truth is so precious that she should
always be attended by a bodyguard.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Of lies. Yeah, it sounds like him, right, I'm not
a huge like.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I got like a secondhand gin buzz off of that anyway.
So I told you about old Velvelee Dickinson. Oh yeah
you did, and the codebreakers at the FBI during World
War Two, and that kind of led me down a
rabbit hole of other FBI efforts during World War Two.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
You love rabbit holes.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Oh my god, I just live in them. Espionage is
a crime, obviously.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Oh for the other side.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
However you slice it.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, know, if you're doing it for the right side,
it's actually like, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Can get busted for espionage. Yeah, violating the right And
that was a big problem and affair during World War two.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Oh, being like espionage spies, Oh just in general. Okay,
I think I like getting labeled as a spider.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
No, no, no, no. So we're going to start with this guy,
Leon Terreau.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
He was an FBI agent who investigated the first major
Nazi spy ring in the United States. Oh and he
was born in nineteen hundred in the Russian Empire modern
day Belarus. He immigrated to the United States as a
young man. He served in the army during World War One,
but in like a non combat capacity. He joined the FBI,
(05:06):
but it was the Bureau of Investigation back then in
the nineteen twenties. He was fluent in a bunch of
different languages, including German and Russian, and that made him
like super valuable in early foreign counterintelligence works. And so
that was an area that the FBI had like really
limited experience in before World War Two. So there we are,
(05:29):
early nineteen thirty eight, and that's when a former US
Army private named Gunter Gustav Rumrik, he was arrested for
attempting to fraudulently obtain passports, and so they interrogated him.
That interrogation reveals something even bigger. He spilled it all
about a German obverse spy network operating in the United States,
(05:53):
collecting military, aviation and naval secrets. So like that's the
interview of a lifetime in there, totally.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I've heard about this in the Green Hornet.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
So this is where Leon Terrell comes in. He became
the lead FBI agent on the case, and so he
conducted this like a drawn out interrogations of Rumrek what
with you know, he has all this language skills and stuff,
and he also ran surveillance on suspected German agents. He
tracked down all these couriers and safe houses and cutouts.
(06:24):
The FBI coordinated with the US Attorney's Office for indictments
in the matter eighteen of them. And it was the
first major espionage prosecution in the United States before World
War Two. And it exposed the presence of this like
organized Nazi intelligence apparatus in the United States. This was
a huge deal because it pushed the US to take
(06:47):
foreign espionage seriously for the first time. About it so well,
it seemed like a victory. Terrell kind of blew it
Wellll the case was still active. He leaked information to
the press.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Oh okay Germans.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah. But then he wrote newspaper serials for the New
York Post about the case.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
He collaborated on a book called Nazi Spies in.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
America That's Bad for Prosecution.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, assisted in the development of a Hollywood film called
Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Oh Yeah, nineteen thirty nine
Warner Brothers picture. He worked with the director as a
paid consultant. This is all while the investigations ongoing. Confessions
of a Nazi Spy was the first major studio picture
(07:36):
explicitly criticizing Hitler.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I was gonna say, that's why it's famous.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
And it was released before we even got into World
War two. So all of this goes down before the
remaining suspects had been apprehended. That court, no, no, So the
indictments go out, but they're like, we got a round
them all up. And meanwhile he's like, I want to
be in pictures. So before they be arrested and.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Charged, how do I meet May West.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
For the arrests? Before they're charged, all but four of
the spies fled the United States and made their way
safely to Europe.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Of course they did. First both they get hit. J
Edgar Hoover, Oh my god, he must have lost.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Livid, head of the FBI. Livid, so not only had
the case been blown, but he was highly sensitive to
publicity that was not controlled by him.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yes, he wanted to always be the one telling, always had.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
To be in charge, and so that was just like
on top of it. So Hoover made his move. He
accused Terreu of compromising ongoing investigations, which that's appropriate.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Oh, that's actually very accurate for what he did.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And obviously Terreu gets removed from the case, I hope.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, he then resigned under pressure, and it's like, was
he forced out? Did he resigned?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Is he a German spy? Oh? No, double agent?
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Start to wonder, I do so the FBI they publicly
distanced itself from him too, And Hoover had all these
internal memos that came out decades and decades later. Yeah,
of course it described him as quote a man who
permitted personal ambition to override bureau interests.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Hated that.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
He's like, that's my job, I do. Hoover made sure
that that round never worked for US intelligence again. But
here's the thing, though. After his resignation, Tarrell got gigs
as a journalist and a writer. He wrote about espionage topics.
He did serve in the US Army counter Intelligence Corps
(09:35):
during World War Two, but he didn't serve with FBI
or OSS. He later in his life moved to California.
He wrote sporadically about intelligence matters.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
I'm sure he tried to dabble in Hollywood for the
rest of his day.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Look a bunch of screenplays in the drawers. He never
regained his former standing in US counterintelligence, but like historians
now see him as this pivotal early figure whose missteps
helped define the FBI's strict secrecy culture. Yes, I got
to so it was kind of brewing, and he just
made it like, okay, now we actually have to really
(10:09):
do something about this.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
That's how we always say ongoing investigation. It's part of
an ongoing.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Investigation, right right, instead of like, well here, let me
tell you everything.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Do you want the dish.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Sit So, while it was this total cluster with Tourou,
it kicked off the FBI's involvement in counter espionage efforts
for World War Two. It was a wake up call.
So the US needed serious strengthening of security surrounding all
these like military and industrial secrets, and they also needed
to launch serious counter espionage efforts. So the military starts
(10:41):
working with the FBI to address this stuff as crime,
which brings us to Ultra, not MK Ultra.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I was just about to ask.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
As much later. Ultra was the code name used by
the British government beginning in June of nineteen forty one
to describe intelligence that it came from the Enigma decrypts
the German military Lushwaffe stuff they'd had it DECRYPTID then
naval Enigma crazy all these like high level German high
(11:11):
command traffic.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
So basically after the Battle of Britain, they get the
Enigma machine decryptied before we even get in the war.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I thought it was until like forty two of No.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Ultra wasn't really a single project, but it was like
a classification or a category.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I got you.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
So it basically meant so secret that it was beyond
top secret.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, like all the Queen can learn this.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yes, the work itself was conducted primarily at Bletchley Park,
which I mentioned before, under Government code and Cipher School,
and so the Ultra designation was created in nineteen forty one,
but that technical groundwork began way earlier. So what I
learned I didn't know. Between nineteen thirty two and nineteen
thirty nine, Polish cryptoanalysts broke early versions of Enigma really
(11:55):
all the way back then, and then in July of
thirty nine Poland shared their methods with Britain and France,
and after the war began, then England expanded operations at Bletchley, Okay,
so in nineteen forty initial breakthroughs came from Alan Turing
Gordon Welchman in the design of the bomb machine. So
(12:18):
lufwaff of traffic was like the first thing that they
were able to successfully and consistently read. By mid nineteen
forty one, there was enough high level German traffic being
read that they had to create this new Ultra classification
and so that was like mid forty one, that's the
formal creation of Ultra as this intelligence handling system. So
(12:42):
what did ULTRA produce, Seren?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
What did it produce, Elizabeth?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I'm glad I asked that question. Ultra intelligence that had
like the Air Force operations U.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Boat positions because they're killing the shipping leg.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Exactly, Army operational plans, logistics supply routes, and so the
decrypts were translated, analyzed, and distributed only to like this tiny,
tiny handful of commanders, and they were forbidden to reveal
the source, so super super secretive, and the value depended
on that secrecy. So that's something that the FBI was like, Oh,
(13:17):
we should try that. That looks like that's a really
good idea. So they get wind of Ultra around nineteen
forty two and they're like, I want that. That would
be fun. So they're like, we need counterintelligence. FBI is like,
you know what, We're ready. We were messing around before.
We're totally JK, just so totally ready. So the Brits
(13:37):
passed along intelligence that they gathered through Ultra. The FBI
took it, incorporated it into their criminal investigations, and that
they came up with something they called Operation Ostrich. What
is there going to stick their head in the sands?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I don't know, I don't I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
I guess Operation Ostrich wound up being part of this
larger effort by Ali forces to deceive the enemy called
Operation Bodyguard. And that comes from the quote that I
read you up top. In wartime, truth is so precious
that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
So all of these intercepted messages, some are decrypted by
(14:16):
the Brits, others by a US Army and Navy code
breakers or that crew of crazy kids led by Elizabeth
Smith Friedman in the new Cryptoanalyst team at the FBI laboratory.
They played a part in protecting the Allies, breaking down
the Germans. The Nazis the bad guys. Nazis are the
bad guys. So remember it was Elizabeth Smith Friedman who
(14:41):
took down that Nazi network in Argentina I talked about
in the Velvore. So she helped uncover the strong political
influence and intelligence activities of a German agent named Johannes Becker.
She and her FBI colleagues they mapped out his operation,
disrupted the works throughout the war, later shut it down completely,
(15:03):
and then without Ostrich, the FBI would not have been
as successful in pinning down the extent of Nazi espionage
in South America.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Right right, because also you sometimes want to keep the
network going so you can just exactly and then also
put out fake stuff for them to report on. See
how effective is what Ostrich was all about.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
November of nineteen forty one, right before the attack on
Pearl Harbor, FBI special agent William Gustav Friedman sat down
with a man named Jorge Mosquerra. Quick note, Elizabeth Smith
Friedman's husband was William F. Friedman, one end on the
last name. The FBI special agent was William Gustav Freeman.
(15:44):
Two ms. No relationship.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Okay, I'm going to ask for a huge loop.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
So anyway, who was Mouscara and why was a g
Man talking to him? Yeah, what's I would love to know?
You tell me.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Well.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Muscarra was a forty six year old businessman. He was
originally from Argentina and he'd spent the last twenty years
of his life living in Germany. So this made him
very interesting to the FBI for good reason. So let's
back up. Let me tell you about him. He had
a very successful import export business in Germany, always moving
(16:19):
stuff between Germany and Argentina. But during the thirties, I
don't know if you've heard about this, things in Germany changed.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I have.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I've read a little bit about this that I change
in leadership in the biz.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
We call that an understatement. So he wove this tale
of woe about how German militarism started to get out
of hand. Then there were all these like crazy new
finance laws that were sort of dooming his business. So
he sold everything and headed back to Argentina to start
from scratch. The problem was that the Nazi authorities wouldn't
(16:52):
let him leave the country with his money. Instead, the
other they put pressure on him to work for them
as an intelligence agent in America. So no buenos aires
for you, sir. You're going to the US of a
and in return for his spy work, he would get
his s growd funds with interest. But that was as
(17:13):
soon as Germany won the war.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Oh wow, So.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
He didn't really have a choice. He couldn't go back
to Argentina with nothing. He had nothing and no one there.
He couldn't stay in Europe because he saw how bad
it was about to get. So he agreed, but he
also had no intention of helping them.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
But he also has this light at the end of
the tunnel. If he does, if.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
He does the work and the Germans win, then he
gets his money plus interest. Well, so he tells the Nazis,
you know what, let's do this, and I don't want
I want to cover my trucks, so I'm going to
take this circuitous route to the United States. And they're like, great,
I love that perfect and action. And so August nineteen
forty one, he leaves Nazi occupied France, goes over the
(17:55):
Pyrenees and across Spain to Portugal. Then there he gets
on a ship South America. He gets to Montevideo, Uruguay,
goes straight to the American embassy and spills the beat. Yeah,
tells them everything, and he's like plus ps I want
to help Allied forces. I want nothing. I am at
(18:16):
your service.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
I can win this war.
Speaker 5 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
So days later he's on his way to New York
on the FBI dime to begin life as a double agent.
So the Germans, they gave him instructions, Okay, this is
what you do. You go to America, you spy on them.
You build a secret radio station. Here are your broadcast times,
Here are the frequencies, the call letters like emergency keys
(18:40):
and transposition codes. You have to be somewhere in the
New York area. We're going to be sending you messages,
and you're going to send messages back to Hamburg. So
he's like, you know what, that's great, I'm all in.
Then he goes and he tells the FBI exactly what
he's been told.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I'm wondering how they're capturing it. I wonder if they're
coming from like you know, U boats, like where there,
because you can't be broadcasting that far at the time,
he doesn't like me.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah, So the FBI is like, thank you for for
your input. I love this. You're going to be a
double agent. We're going to code name you n D
ninety eight. Okay, and this is it showtime?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, lights, camera action.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Let's take a break. When we get back, we're going
to follow along with ND ninety eight. Zaren, I want
(19:45):
to tell you about a place called Owen House.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Owen House.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yes, it was a beautiful estate on seventy one acres
in Wading River, New York. That's on Long Island, across
Long Island Sound from New Haven, Connecticut.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
This is Owen like O I owe you money.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Owen Wilson ow E m so. The US Department of
the Interior describes this place as such, quote. Located eighty
miles east of New York on Long Island's North Fork.
The spacious three story building sat on a cliff bordered
on one side by Long Island Sound and acres of
dense trees on the other three sides, and the only
(20:24):
approach to the station was a bumpy, rutted quarter mile path.
Even by today's standards, the house is not easy to find.
In nineteen forty two, it would have been nearly impossible.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
So.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
The place was originally built as a summer home for
doctor Gabriel s Owen and his descendant. Sarah Owen was
the last occupant of the house. She was unmarried, no kids.
She died in nineteen forty She was almost ninety years
old at this point. So she has a niece, missus
Helen Owen Howell. Helen Owen Howell inherits the house in
(20:59):
nineteen forty one, something curious happened. Now keep in mind
that Owen house, like you said, super isolated, seventy one acres,
borders the sound, just a dirt path driveway. It's mid
December nineteen forty one. Helen was in the house. There's
a knock at the door. A guy is standing there,
dressed in a suit, very polite. He told her he
was interested in renting the house and the property. Now
(21:22):
Helen was in the process of trying to figure out
what to do with this place.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
And we're like a week past Pearl Harbor. So like
everybody's thinking about the war. The only thought you have
her about the war.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
She didn't need the house, she didn't intend to live there,
but this was strange. The distribution of the estate was
noted in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper in November of forty one,
So maybe she's thinking like he heard about it. But
still Helen told him, like place isn't for rent, he
goes on his way. Everything seems hinky. And like you said,
this is right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which
(21:54):
was December seventh, nineteen forty one, a day that will
live in infamy, as FDR said, the day afterwards, which
is the day that the US entered World War two.
So tensions are high, fears are building. Helen's trying to
imagine why someone would be looking to live at Owen
House at that time. Yeah, specifically, yeah, And she couldn't
(22:15):
think of anything that made sense, so she called the FBI.
See something, say something. So she told him all about
the visit from the man, that the home is on
the water and isolated, and she feared that it could
be like spies or soldiers or something nefarious. They took
all her information. They thanked her for sharing it. A
few days later, knock at the door. It's the same guy.
(22:39):
He pulls out his identification FBI. He explained to her
that it was the US government that wanted to us.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
The FBI.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
First test, so we need this her top secret activities.
In fact, the whole family would be sworn to secrecy.
They'd have to sign all these document They couldn't tell
anyone about this. So they renamed the place the Wading
River Station. And remember when we left off, the Nazis
had asked Jorge Moscerra to set up the.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Spy radio pirate radio station in or around New York.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
So he immediately tells the FBI about a situation made
a double agent. They're like, let's set up our radio station. Guys,
let's start a station. And so an FBI technical agent
from Washington, d C. Named Richard Millan, he began searching
for a site somewhere on eastern Long Island. And according
(23:36):
to Ray bat Venice, a former FBI agent writing for
the Former Agents of the FBI Foundation, quote it's a
wow for the news site, Millan had two essential requirements. First,
atmospheric conditions had to be optimal for uninterrupted transatlantic high
(23:57):
frequency radio communication. Second, but equally important, it had to
be isolated and remote.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
So they're trying to get across the Atlantic. Yes, how
how much watted are they running through this stage? And
they're doing AM radio which travels far. But even like
that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
So Owen House is perfect though, I mean, yeah, it
sounds like the box.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
There's no mountains between them and the European.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
And isolated and not in use everything. So at the
start of nineteen forty two, Millan got the house totally outfitted.
He had a team of engineers install all this like
crazy modern radio equipment. Keep in mind, this all had
to be self sustaining, so they had to have multiple
backup parts for everything. Yes, you couldn't just like pop
(24:43):
out and get stuff, so they that went for like
like spare parts, vacuum tubes, radios, dials, wiring paper, and pencils.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Ratchets, so many ratchets.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
They had like a whole room of just ratchets, and
the place was crammed with stuff. So they had had
high frequency radios running twenty four hours a day and
that pulls a lot of electricity. Yeah, and they didn't
want the electric company to come sniffing around because as
far as they knew, a young family had moved into
the house. Okay, see, the agent sent to oversee operations
(25:15):
was this guy named Don Worth Johnson.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Wait what I'm near You need to hear that name again.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Don Worth Johnson.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
So it's Don Johnson with an extra worth.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah, more worth than Don Johnson. Not only was he
savvy with the technology, he also looked sickly.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Oh, and that was a selling point.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Okay, So the department picked him, yeah, to be the
face of Owen House to the public because he had
what they described as a quote tubercular appearance.
Speaker 5 (25:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
So the FBI was like this, this check's two boxes. One,
if the locals thought he was diseased, they wouldn't come calling, sure,
And two this explains why he doesn't get drafted.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So they're looking for a doc holiday looking guy to.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
As far as everyone in town knew, part of the
war after he's just like this sickly, very rich lawyer
with a wife named Betty and an infant daughter named
Vicky Jean Jean and that was his real family. So
he brings his real family with him, plus their seventy
pound German shepherd dog named Clifford. Yeah, Clifford was a
(26:22):
piece of work. He like snarled at everyone all the time.
It was not one to be messed with.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Oh okay, so you know his snarl was like a
like a predicet to his bike.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yeah, he was just nasty. So back to the power supply.
They needed a lot and a sick attorney and his
small family aren't going to need that much. So the
agents they had to set up a way to generate
their own power. And so Millan he put a diesel
engine in the basement that would boost the power supply
coming in from outside.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
They made a generator.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Yeah, and so we got this big diesel engine. The
place is on seventy one acres. But they still had
to disguise the noise in case anyone rolled up.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
That's a noise, So they.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Put a Buick karmuffler on it and a hose to
send the fumes out through the basement window. Oh right, yeah,
and then big engines like that also shimmy shake.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
So the agents poured this huge concrete block into the
floor of the basement and bolted the engine to it.
So like problem solved. Everything's running smoothly, okay. And this
is how an FBI memo described the setup quote, we
have a highly confidential station at Wading River, Long Island,
where we have several radio operators assigned who are impersonating
(27:34):
enemy agents. And these operators have practiced and perfected this
impersonation almost to the ultimate point. They must live in
an isolated cottage under difficult conditions, and that they must
remain at the station twenty four hours a day, six
and seven days a week, it being impossible for them
to go to the next town for meals. They must
(27:54):
keep absolutely undercover in order that no suspicion as to
the activities being carried on at this station will leak
out to unauthorized persons in the vicinity.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
So they're like creating a little Antarctic station. You got
to be with these people all the time.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
It's a big house. So there we got Owen house.
We got the Johnson family, which you know they see
seem to be living a normal life to for everyone
on the outside. And then they've got like two or
three other radio operators at a time working non stop
on the second and third floors of the house, and
they would have to like change shifts at night under
cover of darkness. Missus Johnson cooked all the meals really yeah,
(28:34):
and just like ran a house, and then Clifford provided security,
including for the family. Zarin, close your eyes. I want
you to picture it. You are Vicky Jean Johnson. You
are two years old. It's one year into the US
(28:56):
involvement in World War two. Your house is always buzzing
with activity and radio waves. But this is not unusual
for you. It's all you've ever known. You're currently sitting
on the back porch of the house where you live.
The sun is out, the bird's chirp in the thick
cops of trees around you. Clifford, the family dog, sleeps
at the other end of the porch, waking every now
(29:18):
and then to growl and cuff, then go back to
sleep in the sun. Your mother's in the kitchen, baking
a pie, rinsing berries for the filling, checking the blind
bake on the crust. She's busy, otherwise occupied on this
warm day. You're wearing nothing but your diaper, the liberating
wardrobe afforded toddlers in the insane. You look out across
(29:40):
the lawn behind the house and spot something a butterfly.
It's beautiful. You scoot your rear down the few backsteps
and stand on the grass. The butterfly flits and skips
on the air. You can hear the static of radio
transmissions coming from the window above you. You begin to
follow the butterfly form the sober drunkard's walk of a
(30:02):
young child, knees stiff and gate rocking across the lawn.
You go following the big yellow butterfly. You make it
to the edge of the lawn and into the trees,
the butterfly still in the air above and just ahead
of you. You hear more birds now and a frog
somewhere far off. The trees block the midday sun, and
you're cast into shade. The yellow butterfly a beacon, a
(30:25):
spot of sun that you simply must follow. You reach
your chubby arms into the air, trying to grab it.
It slits on. You've now toddled almost three hundred feet
from the back steps. You emerge from the woods, still
tailing the butterfly. It's a erratic path, so tempting to chase.
As you come through the trees, you can hear the
water below Long Island sound. You hear waves, The wind
(30:49):
is up and the chop is out on the water.
The butterfly buffets against the breeze, coming over the cliff
before you. It lands on a flower of a small
weed living defiantly in the sand on the bluff. You
click in your chunky steps, eager to grab the butterfly
to grab the sun. You reach the plant and look down.
The steep cliff heads straight down to the now rough
(31:11):
waters below. You hear your mother calling your name in
the distance. It's Fate, but she sounds terrified urgent. You
look down and see the sand starting to slide from
under your feet. You're now slowly beginning to lean forward,
gravity pulling you to the water below. Then there's a jerk.
Your diaper tightens around your belly and your yank backward,
(31:35):
back over the sand spun and then back toward the woods.
You look behind you, hoping to see the butterfly. Instead
you see Clifford's smooth coat and caramel eyes. He's got
you by the diaper and is trotting you back to
the house. Your mother emerges from the trees, shouting your name.
She sees you and breathes a sigh of relief. She
reaches out to pluck you from Clifford's jaw, but he
(31:57):
does not release. He lets out a low ground and
continues back toward the house, intent on putting you back
where you were on the porch. He mutters to you, sheesh,
I gotta do everything around here. But that really happened,
by the way, not Clifford talking, but everything else, everything else.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
So I love those I get videos, I think because
of I follow you on Instagram, and I think I
just get bleed over from things you watch because it's
like recommended by Elizabeth or right, I ever liked it,
and so my huh. But I've noticed that all these
animal videos keep showing up that I think you like. Anyway,
There's been ones that I've seen recently of dogs doing
exactly this, saving people, mostly saving children and the elderly,
(32:39):
and I'm always astounded. I mean, I'm sure you like
the fact people get saved. I'm astounded by how the
dogs read the behavior so well and assess the danger
and then know when to act, and they wait till
the very last moment.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
That stood out to me about this whole like little vignette. Right,
So they're in this top secret space and there are
all these people and everyone's focused on their intense stuff,
and they all are irritated with Clifford because he's a
nasty dog and he prowls at everybody. But at the
same time, you're thinking, well, it's good to have this
security dog. Like if someone rolls up on the house
(33:13):
with Clifford and you think, well, but you know, is
Clifford okay around a kid and all this stuff, And
while all of this you know, high level work to
keep everybody safe is going on. You have a two
year old who's not being kept safe or watched or watched,
who toddles out and literally almost goes over the side
of the cliff until the dog grabs her by the
(33:35):
diaper and walks her back to the house.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
At the very last moment.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Was just and that's like this, this this you know,
analog for what's going on up in the second and
third floors of the house. Really like they're they're pulling
us right back from the cliff and people don't even
know about it. So people don't know that these a
dog like Clifford is doing it. Anyway, I just thought
it was an interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
So that was a great moment.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I said, go back to Wading River Station. Let's get
back to it. So January nineteen forty two until the
end of the war in Europe in forty five, the
station just like cooked along. They weren't intercepting messages though
they were generating them. So remember we have Muscerra and
D ninety eight. The agents are sending out coded messages
(34:20):
to the Nazis from him, and the Nazis were like, ooh,
we are getting the goods. They're like, girl, come listen.
And so he's giving details about US forces, munitions, war preparations,
and everything is highly orchestrated to play them like fiddles.
So the Nazis think like, Okay, Muscarra, we sent him out.
(34:41):
He's doing what we asked. He has highly placed informants
and that's where he's getting all this intel. So, according
to that former agent bat Venice quote, one was Wash,
a senior civilian official working for the War Department in Washington,
who occasionally became infuriated when the Germans questioned his information. Nevy,
(35:01):
a secretary working for a Navy admiral, routinely supplied juicy
gossip hints of emergency high level meetings, together with extracts
from confidential documents. The other two were rep an employee
of the Republic Aviation Corporation in Farmingdale, New York, and Officer,
a worker at the vitally important Brooklyn Navy Yard, the
(35:22):
world's most important ship repair facility and the largest supplier
of convoys for every Allied battlefront. Of course, these informants
did not exist.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
So they're peppering in some real stuff that's not too
dangerous than mostly fake.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah, and they but he creates like these characters. I
was talking's like, you know, the juicy gum.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
It's a good spread.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah, it's.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
So.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Muscara and another FBI double agent code named Kohler. They
used separate radio circuits at the property, so they had
each been asked in dependently to do this, and.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
They're running out of the one.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
They're running out of the same one, and the Germans
have no idea.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
So the Germans don't have like Boondis they're checking in
with like in New York that occasionally they're just like,
it's good.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
I think that that's him, right, Yeah. So they spit
out supposed intelligence detailing everything from like what was said
in a dust up between soldiers and sailors at a
bar like to troop movements and assignments and mosquera. He
bolstered his credibility with the other by telling them some truths. Yes,
(36:31):
one of them was he talked about a senior British
commander who was going to be replaced. And then the
news of that actually broke weeks later, and the Germans like, oh,
he is good. He is getting that stuff way ahead
of time. So a spoiler alert Moscira. So let's break
for some ads and we can pretend they're intercepted transmissions.
(36:52):
When we come back, things escalate at Wading River.
Speaker 6 (37:16):
Muscerae, the fly mosquera.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Okay. So he would have these long interview sessions with
the Germans over the radio.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Oh really, Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
They would just.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Interesting, So he wasn't just like broadcasting like Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
For the Germans, he'd.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Be like, hey, Rudolph, oh what's up. So they would
press him for information. He'd supply it. But one day
he had a really strange conversation with his other handler
and he told Agent Friedman about it. But it's likely
that Friedman didn't understand the significance of the time. So
(37:55):
a German officer named Hans Bloom asked scra to sniff
out information about a new weapons system, one that involved
quote the shattering of atoms.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Oh so not like one of Tethla's death rays. They
actually wanted a real stuff. They're like, hey, what's up
with these atoms?
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Blooms screwed up though, because he told Musketta that German
military planners were like all worked up and they wanted
to create these massive explosives from atoms sources, and they
were calculating that they would weigh no more than like
a pound or a pound and a half too, total devastation.
(38:35):
This is like foreign to to everybody at this point,
to the you know, the general, which almost anybody, even
in the military. True. So Blum said that, quote, the
victorious nation in this war will be the one which
has accomplished the task of shattering atoms and applying the
results thereof shattering atoms.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Such a great phrase. Yeah, do we think of splitting
the shattering.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Shattering of them? It's the violence, said that. So Agent
Friedman he makes a note of this, and he includes
it in his next report out to Washington. Three months later.
That intel gets added into other chatter picked up by
the US and the Brits, solidifying the understanding that the
Germans they want to build an atomic weapon.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
And so it was this information, born of Bloom's overly
confident chatter into the equipment at Owen House that pushed
President Franklin Roosevelt to decide in May of nineteen forty
two to start development of the atomic bomb.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
So that's why we get the Manhattan Project is because of.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
This chatty A chatty German, so like, hey, y'all, let's
become dumb.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
I thought it was always like yeah, like the whole
German physicists being like, you know what, we're hearing about
it in the conferences.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
It kicks off.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
That's crazy, that's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
So meanwhile, the FBI they keep feeding bogus and confusing
information to the Germans from the upper floors of Owen House.
In the summer of nineteen forty three, they like befuddled
the Germans into freezing their forces in northwest Europe, which
prevented their redeployment to strengthen the Italian and Eastern Front. Yes,
(40:12):
so nineteen forty four and forty five, the agents at
Owen House they fed Germans a whole slew of truthful
and false information aimed at confusing their military about the
size and position of Allied forces in Great Britain. This
included the time and place of the D Day invasion.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Okay, so d wondering if this was going to come
into it.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
As you well know, D Day was the successful Allied
invasion of Europe June sixth, nineteen forty four, along a
very narrow stretch of beach at Normandy France. Yes, and
so this surprise attack caught the German army completely off guard.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Oh, completely, Yeah, they were so fixated on this. I mean,
it was like a really big deal. But they were like,
you know, chess game playing in the head.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yes. So Operation Bodyguard and then the US version, Operation Ostrich,
generated an incredible number in the lead up of phony
radio broadcasts, and then there were all these artfully created
like rubber tanks to make the broadcast look legit.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yes, oh that's great. They're coordinating with that exactly.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
So the closer they got to D Day, the more
the Allies amped up their counterintelligence moves. On May second,
nineteen forty four, the Wading River station at Owen House
sent out messages talking about how pissed off General Dwight D. Eisenhower,
who's the supreme Allied commander of the invasion forces, how
pissed off he was when he learned that essential landing craft,
(41:42):
which was already hard to come by, was being diverted
to the Pacific. So all those things you see in newsreels,
band of brothers and everything like that, And where my
great uncles were great great uncle, I don't know anyway,
So they're like, oh, this is going to delay a
British operation in the Balkans, and that's our most important thing.
(42:04):
So like they're just scattering everything, according to the Department
of the Interior. Quote. Just four days before the invasion,
the Wading River radio station again sent a message, this
time calculated to ease German anxieties about an imminent attack.
Quote WASH just reported information appearing of highest importance and
(42:25):
possibly indicating a change of plan. It appears that a
force consisting of a number of infantry and armored divisions
originally scheduled for the United Kingdom are being diverted for
special operations. And so it went. In the days, weeks
and months that followed, the agents in Wading River kept
up the deception pressure.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
I love this.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
All the misinformation is so good.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
So that also the believability of it.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Yeah, the fact you've got to do it and then
give them like, you know, like a little taste, and
then you got to have the inflatable tanks. Yeah, and
in the personal drama of like you know, of course
I could exactly.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
And so that other double agent Cohler, he also had
fake contacts. He had holtz Auto and Herman and they
were all employees at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, so again
largest ship yard facility in the world at the time.
There were more than one hundred thousand employees there.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Oh, totally, it's massive.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Massive, And so these three contacts were said to be
government workers in like sensitive posts, and Kohler told the
Germans that there was a build up of forces in
Iceland that he got from them, and that would mean
there was going to be an attack against Norway or
Denmark carried out by Allied forces based in Scotland. So
(43:43):
they're like, look up there. And it wasn't just European
intel that got spread out of owen House. They also
spread information about Allied actions in the Pacific, so the
Germans would pass that stuff along to the Japanese that
were based in Berlin. The owen House crew made up
all sorts of troop movements in the Pacific that they
would like nonchalantly mention in passing to the Germans. It's
(44:07):
just gossip. It's like, no big deal.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Just hot gossy.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
They wound up pulling away major parts of Japanese naval
forces from what they thought was an impending attack in
the Central Pacific. And then meanwhile Allied forces like descend
on the Marshall Islands.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Oh, go down to Australia and work their way up right.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
And so essentially per the Department of the Interior. Quote.
Until the last days of the war, as British forces
closed in on Hamburg, the Germans were still radioing the
agents and wading river with offers of thousands of dollars
to end ninety eight for information. In the words of
one historian, German faith in Moscera never wavered. They never
(44:48):
gave up on this do They never thought, you know what,
like he's not always right, Like they fully believed it. So,
I mean it's sort of a testament too, to the
skill of the FBI agents. They yes, in crafting all
this stuff. We never really associate the FBI with spy
stuff in World War Two. You think of it as
like higher You never think of it as a domestic thing.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
I think about them like trying to get like saboteurs
at the Brooklyn Naval Yard exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
So, what happened to the place after the war, after
Operation Ostrich wrapped up.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
What happened to Elizabeth after Operation Austrie wrapped.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Up Sarah, That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
Nineteen forty five a movie came out. Of course, it
was called The House on ninety second Street. It was
the spy film very of the moment, and it was
made with the full cooperation of the FBI, and it
was Hollywood's first semi documentary spy film, interesting dramatizing the
real nineteen thirty eight to forty one German spy investigations.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
In the US House on ninety second Street.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
House on ninety second Street. So the story follows this
young American with German roots who gets recruited by the Nazis,
but instead of joining the obver, he secretly contacts the
FBI and becomes a double agent. Sound familiar, totally movie.
The guy's mission was to join a Nazi spy ring
operating out of a boarding house on East ninety second
(46:06):
Street in Manhattan, and he was supposed to identify its
leadership and prevent the theft of atomic research secrets from
US laboratories. And he also had to help the FBI
roll up this entire espionage network. And so the climax
of the movie recreates an FBI raid using actual agents
and real procedures. So the AFI catalog American film Institute,
(46:29):
not the band notes quote. After the opening credits, a
written prologue reads, this story is adapted from cases in
the espionage files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Produced
with the FBI's complete cooperation. It could not be made
public until the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan.
(46:50):
The scenes in this picture were photographed in the localities
of the incidents depicted, Washington, New York, and their vicinities,
wherever possible, in the actual place the original incident occurred.
With the exception of the leading players, all FBI personnel
in the picture are members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
(47:12):
The like celebrity worship of Jangarl.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Oh my god, he, oh my god, have you got
a movie camera? Lord?
Speaker 3 (47:23):
So some of the filming for the movie took place
at Owen House aka Wading River Station. And so then
you compare this to how the UK, like, how over
there anyone with the slightest involvement in intelligence activities during
World War two had to sign a State Secret Act
thing like an agreement seventies right, Yeah, it was everything
(47:43):
stayed classified to the seventies. You couldn't even say that
you worked at a certain place like you just couldn't
talk about it. But we're the home a Hollywood baby.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Yeah, story must be told.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
June nineteen forty.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Five from the headlines we love that not a new thing.
You watched the like I was a Communist for the FBI.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Yeah, yeah, So June nineteen forty five, Waiting River Station
was dismantled. They went took all the stuff out. The
FBI lease was up. The house and its seventy one
acres got transferred to the Episcopal Diocese.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Of New York. They didn't give it to the family, No.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
The family was like here you were donated and they
to be used as a youth camp eventually called campd Wolf,
and the house became known as Benson House in honor
of Mary E. Benson, a Brooklyn Episcopalian who's fifty thousand
dollars bequest to the diocese funded the purchase of the property.
(48:39):
So in the subsequent years, like they built all these
other like outbuildings in a chapel and all this other stuff,
Benson House stayed the camp's administrative and residential corps. The
diocese shifted Camp to Wolf from like just a summer
youth camp to this like retreat, a conference ministry. Yeah.
By the nine they also were doing like family reunions, weddings, retreats. Yeah,
(49:05):
and they had like a swimming pool. They actually paved
the drivewood. But this whole time, no one really knew
much about the FBI presence there, really.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
So then retired FBI agent Raymond bat Nivis, who liked
to write for the Society of Former Special Agents. He
was a history professor at George Washington University at the time,
and he was researching a book that he wanted to
write about wartime counterintelligence in the US and he uncovered
all this information about Owen House. So on the seventieth
(49:37):
anniversary of the D Day invasion June sixth, twenty fourteen,
there was a ceremony to honor the efforts of FBI
agents during World War Two, and they held it at
Owen House. The Society of Former Special Agents, the Episcopal
Diocese in New York, Suffolk County Historical Society, and the
FBI's New York Division installed a plaque there to you know,
(50:00):
recognize what had happened. And that's the first time that
the house's significance was made public. Everyone kept mum so
now it's The house is now officially referred to as
the Wading River Radio Station. In twenty eighteen, it was
put onto the National Register of Historic Places. Camp de
(50:20):
Wolfe's executive directors said there were quote not too many
artifacts that have survived. Besides the odd piece of physical evidence,
our basement was running a radio antenna. They actually put
a car engine in the basement in the floor to
make their own electricity. So we still have the block
where the car engine was actually mounted down there, but
(50:41):
there's actually very little evidence that anything happened there. So
they were pretty you know, FBI was pretty good and clear.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
They just like, we couldn't get the cement block up,
so we left.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Well, okay, this is going to sound wild. Maybe not.
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
You know me pretty well, the like, you know, the
the Djibuki tweet about the FBI and MLKA day being like,
just because we killed assassinated MLK doesn't mean we can't
miss them. I always feel very conflicted about the FBI
because of co intel, pro mk ultra a lot of
bad stuff, But I am able to like somehow compartmentalize
(51:23):
and be able to follow stories about well meaning things
like the FBI trying to fight fascism, so I can
love certain things and then hate other things without having
to have to have only one simple view of the FBI.
So I can marvel at an FBI agent doing their
really you know, their best work, all this like spycraft stuff,
and really be into it, be like, wait to go, FBI,
(51:43):
And then part of me is like, what are you
talking about?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
So like I don't.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
I'm always like thrilled at like stories of FBI agents,
especially of this period of time, and and I marvel
at and then I find my reaction to myself ridiculous
because I'm like, oh, so that's how it is now,
and I'm like, no, no, I'm just talking about this
in one individual FBI agent.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
I don't mean the whole program.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
So I find that these stories really like I love
the FBI of this period, which I find ridiculous that
I can even say that with that with this trade face.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
So there you go. That's Mine's the I'm.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
They're with you. I'm always I hear these stories. I'm
so impressed with the network that they had and how
quickly pre Internet they were getting information out there. And
acting on things, and the level of intelligence gathering.
Speaker 4 (52:30):
Yes, the intelligence gathering and remarkable their work with the underworld.
I mean, let's not lie.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
That was crazy, and we always say you don't lie
to the FBI because they're just like the alternate. And
that's why I think, like the things that diminish it,
the dark moments, and also like the disintegration of parts
of it these days is disappointing because there are really
incredible elements to to what they've done, what they.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Do, especially individually.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
Yes, yeah, but anyway, I just I'm with you on that.
Let's get a talk back.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
Yeah, oh.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
My god, do illed g.
Speaker 5 (53:15):
Hi Elizabeth and the man host. That's for you, Elizabeth.
My name is Katie. I am from Albuquerque. I'm a
longtime listener, but my husband is not. He's a new listener,
and I introduced the podcast to him because he recently
fell off the latter and broke his back. And while
he's being sad, I'm being like, here, listen to this podcast.
It will give you a joy. When he fell up
the ladder, he's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
I let everybody down, and I was like, no, the
(53:37):
only person you let down is yourself when you fell
off that ladder.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
I thought you would enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Hey, Katie, my sense of humors darking up. I love
that incredible. I feel.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
I'm so sorry for your for your husband, that's terrible,
and I wish him the quickest of recuperations. But Katie,
he is one lucky duck to have you for You're amazing,
You're so funny. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (54:03):
Anyway, as the man host, I really appreciated that.
Speaker 3 (54:09):
That's it for today. You can find us online at
ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on
both Blue Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous
Crime Pod. You can email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com,
or you can be like Katie and leave us a
talk back on the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime
(54:34):
is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and
edited by special agent in charge of Mixed Berry Pies
Dave Kusten, starring Annale Rutger as Judith. Research is by
expert radio operator MRSA Brown and German accent coach Jabari Davis.
The theme song is by our Man and Argentina Thomas
Lee and Chief Petty Officer Travis Dutt. Host wardrobe is
(54:57):
provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by
Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are FBI handlers Ben
Bowen and Noel Brown.
Speaker 5 (55:11):
Ridicous Crime Say It One More Time Piquious Crime.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zaren Elizabeth, Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Zarn, Hello, Michel Lai. Listen pal, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm doing pretty well? How about you? Good?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Good? Do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Man do I? But I want to preface this. This
is ridiculously cool. Oh really yeah, not like ridiculous, like
what ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Like what?
Speaker 5 (00:26):
I like that?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
So we got this message right and the intern send
it to me. I thought this was I just wanted
to share it with you. So one of our rude
dude listeners is cat Josh Murphy from Down Under Down
to Aussie Rye.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Oh yes this guy, yeah right.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
So he's a He opened a cafe in Brunswick, Melbourne, Melbourne,
and he named it after somebody we mentioned in one
of our episodes, The Horse, the Beautiful jim Key. Now
I'm not sure if you remember Beautiful jim Key, but
it was in the episode Lady One of.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
This like a course, yes, yes, yes, okay.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
So as Josh Murphy noted that he was inspired by
Beautiful jim Key and was like, you know, we named
our spot after it. And I looked up like some
some write ups and stuff, and he and his partner.
They've got this really cool spot. If I recommend if
you're in Melbourne go check it out. It is apparently
(01:23):
in Brunswick on Wilson Avenue, Okay, and it's right by
Iris the Bakery if you're familiar with the area. It's
described as a light filled space. It's full of character
and uh yeah, he wanted to name it.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
After the horse fired by the show.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Yeah, which is just I thought ridiculously cool that that
this formerly enslaved man trains a horse. Way back in
the day. We cover him briefly in a story This
guy down in Australia names a cafe after this horse.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Well, you know, and it's such a great name, beautiful Jim.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
So he's the guy. Josh Murphy is the guy who
sent us that mustard that we love.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Oh, the one you want to try Russell and Son.
He sended from Australia. Yes, it is proper good. God,
you had some, did I?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Yeah, we made that sandwich.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Oh that's what that was.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
That's what that was. Oh.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I wish you would have let me know.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I told you never listening.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
No, it's really really good.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
And it was like we found out he sent us
this Mustard Russell and sons. Yes, phenomenal, kind of like
a small batch thing. And we're like, oh, that's so cool.
What a rad rude dude.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Totally and then.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
He's like, oh, ps I named a restaurant after something
you talked.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
About, Josh Murphy, you rock man.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
So yeah, if you're ever in the Melbourne area, please
go check out his restaurant and let us know how
it is.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, it's like cafe. I don't want to say take.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
It down there.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
We can get you on a plane that long. Yeah,
probably not, maybe someday, who knows. There you go, thank
you again for that one. That game was both here smile.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
That is wonderfully ridiculous. And do you want to know
what else is ridiculous but not wonderfully ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Please being a not see what.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
This is? Ridiculous? Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I know you hear that.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I done heard that. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said,
quote in Wartime, truth is so precious that she should
always be attended by a bodyguard.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Of lies. Yeah, it sounds like him, right, I'm not
a huge like.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I got like a secondhand gin buzz off of that anyway.
So I told you about old Velvelee Dickinson. Oh yeah
you did, and the codebreakers at the FBI during World
War Two, and that kind of led me down a
rabbit hole of other FBI efforts during World War Two.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
You love rabbit holes.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Oh my god, I just live in them. Espionage is
a crime, obviously.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Oh for the other side.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
However you slice it.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, know, if you're doing it for the right side,
it's actually like, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Can get busted for espionage. Yeah, violating the right And
that was a big problem and affair during World War two.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Oh, being like espionage spies, Oh just in general. Okay,
I think I like getting labeled as a spider.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
No, no, no, no. So we're going to start with this guy,
Leon Terreau.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
He was an FBI agent who investigated the first major
Nazi spy ring in the United States. Oh and he
was born in nineteen hundred in the Russian Empire modern
day Belarus. He immigrated to the United States as a
young man. He served in the army during World War One,
but in like a non combat capacity. He joined the FBI,
(05:06):
but it was the Bureau of Investigation back then in
the nineteen twenties. He was fluent in a bunch of
different languages, including German and Russian, and that made him
like super valuable in early foreign counterintelligence works. And so
that was an area that the FBI had like really
limited experience in before World War Two. So there we are,
(05:29):
early nineteen thirty eight, and that's when a former US
Army private named Gunter Gustav Rumrik, he was arrested for
attempting to fraudulently obtain passports, and so they interrogated him.
That interrogation reveals something even bigger. He spilled it all
about a German obverse spy network operating in the United States,
(05:53):
collecting military, aviation and naval secrets. So like that's the
interview of a lifetime in there, totally.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I've heard about this in the Green Hornet.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
So this is where Leon Terrell comes in. He became
the lead FBI agent on the case, and so he
conducted this like a drawn out interrogations of Rumrek what
with you know, he has all this language skills and stuff,
and he also ran surveillance on suspected German agents. He
tracked down all these couriers and safe houses and cutouts.
(06:24):
The FBI coordinated with the US Attorney's Office for indictments
in the matter eighteen of them. And it was the
first major espionage prosecution in the United States before World
War Two. And it exposed the presence of this like
organized Nazi intelligence apparatus in the United States. This was
a huge deal because it pushed the US to take
(06:47):
foreign espionage seriously for the first time. About it so well,
it seemed like a victory. Terrell kind of blew it
Wellll the case was still active. He leaked information to
the press.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Oh okay Germans.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah. But then he wrote newspaper serials for the New
York Post about the case.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
He collaborated on a book called Nazi Spies in.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
America That's Bad for Prosecution.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, assisted in the development of a Hollywood film called
Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Oh Yeah, nineteen thirty nine
Warner Brothers picture. He worked with the director as a
paid consultant. This is all while the investigations ongoing. Confessions
of a Nazi Spy was the first major studio picture
(07:36):
explicitly criticizing Hitler.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I was gonna say, that's why it's famous.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
And it was released before we even got into World
War two. So all of this goes down before the
remaining suspects had been apprehended. That court, no, no, So the
indictments go out, but they're like, we got a round
them all up. And meanwhile he's like, I want to
be in pictures. So before they be arrested and.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Charged, how do I meet May West.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
For the arrests? Before they're charged, all but four of
the spies fled the United States and made their way
safely to Europe.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Of course they did. First both they get hit. J
Edgar Hoover, Oh my god, he must have lost.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Livid, head of the FBI. Livid, so not only had
the case been blown, but he was highly sensitive to
publicity that was not controlled by him.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yes, he wanted to always be the one telling, always had.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
To be in charge, and so that was just like
on top of it. So Hoover made his move. He
accused Terreu of compromising ongoing investigations, which that's appropriate.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Oh, that's actually very accurate for what he did.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And obviously Terreu gets removed from the case, I hope.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, he then resigned under pressure, and it's like, was
he forced out? Did he resigned?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Is he a German spy? Oh? No, double agent?
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Start to wonder, I do so the FBI they publicly
distanced itself from him too, And Hoover had all these
internal memos that came out decades and decades later. Yeah,
of course it described him as quote a man who
permitted personal ambition to override bureau interests.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Hated that.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
He's like, that's my job, I do. Hoover made sure
that that round never worked for US intelligence again. But
here's the thing, though. After his resignation, Tarrell got gigs
as a journalist and a writer. He wrote about espionage topics.
He did serve in the US Army counter Intelligence Corps
(09:35):
during World War Two, but he didn't serve with FBI
or OSS. He later in his life moved to California.
He wrote sporadically about intelligence matters.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
I'm sure he tried to dabble in Hollywood for the
rest of his day.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Look a bunch of screenplays in the drawers. He never
regained his former standing in US counterintelligence, but like historians
now see him as this pivotal early figure whose missteps
helped define the FBI's strict secrecy culture. Yes, I got
to so it was kind of brewing, and he just
made it like, okay, now we actually have to really
(10:09):
do something about this.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
That's how we always say ongoing investigation. It's part of
an ongoing.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Investigation, right right, instead of like, well here, let me
tell you everything.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Do you want the dish.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Sit So, while it was this total cluster with Tourou,
it kicked off the FBI's involvement in counter espionage efforts
for World War Two. It was a wake up call.
So the US needed serious strengthening of security surrounding all
these like military and industrial secrets, and they also needed
to launch serious counter espionage efforts. So the military starts
(10:41):
working with the FBI to address this stuff as crime,
which brings us to Ultra, not MK Ultra.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I was just about to ask.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
As much later. Ultra was the code name used by
the British government beginning in June of nineteen forty one
to describe intelligence that it came from the Enigma decrypts
the German military Lushwaffe stuff they'd had it DECRYPTID then
naval Enigma crazy all these like high level German high
(11:11):
command traffic.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
So basically after the Battle of Britain, they get the
Enigma machine decryptied before we even get in the war.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I thought it was until like forty two of No.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Ultra wasn't really a single project, but it was like
a classification or a category.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I got you.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
So it basically meant so secret that it was beyond
top secret.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, like all the Queen can learn this.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yes, the work itself was conducted primarily at Bletchley Park,
which I mentioned before, under Government code and Cipher School,
and so the Ultra designation was created in nineteen forty one,
but that technical groundwork began way earlier. So what I
learned I didn't know. Between nineteen thirty two and nineteen
thirty nine, Polish cryptoanalysts broke early versions of Enigma really
(11:55):
all the way back then, and then in July of
thirty nine Poland shared their methods with Britain and France,
and after the war began, then England expanded operations at Bletchley, Okay,
so in nineteen forty initial breakthroughs came from Alan Turing
Gordon Welchman in the design of the bomb machine. So
(12:18):
lufwaff of traffic was like the first thing that they
were able to successfully and consistently read. By mid nineteen
forty one, there was enough high level German traffic being
read that they had to create this new Ultra classification
and so that was like mid forty one, that's the
formal creation of Ultra as this intelligence handling system. So
(12:42):
what did ULTRA produce, Seren?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
What did it produce, Elizabeth?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I'm glad I asked that question. Ultra intelligence that had
like the Air Force operations U.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Boat positions because they're killing the shipping leg.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Exactly, Army operational plans, logistics supply routes, and so the
decrypts were translated, analyzed, and distributed only to like this tiny,
tiny handful of commanders, and they were forbidden to reveal
the source, so super super secretive, and the value depended
on that secrecy. So that's something that the FBI was like, Oh,
(13:17):
we should try that. That looks like that's a really
good idea. So they get wind of Ultra around nineteen
forty two and they're like, I want that. That would
be fun. So they're like, we need counterintelligence. FBI is like,
you know what, We're ready. We were messing around before.
We're totally JK, just so totally ready. So the Brits
(13:37):
passed along intelligence that they gathered through Ultra. The FBI
took it, incorporated it into their criminal investigations, and that
they came up with something they called Operation Ostrich. What
is there going to stick their head in the sands?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I don't know, I don't I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
I guess Operation Ostrich wound up being part of this
larger effort by Ali forces to deceive the enemy called
Operation Bodyguard. And that comes from the quote that I
read you up top. In wartime, truth is so precious
that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
So all of these intercepted messages, some are decrypted by
(14:16):
the Brits, others by a US Army and Navy code
breakers or that crew of crazy kids led by Elizabeth
Smith Friedman in the new Cryptoanalyst team at the FBI laboratory.
They played a part in protecting the Allies, breaking down
the Germans. The Nazis the bad guys. Nazis are the
bad guys. So remember it was Elizabeth Smith Friedman who
(14:41):
took down that Nazi network in Argentina I talked about
in the Velvore. So she helped uncover the strong political
influence and intelligence activities of a German agent named Johannes Becker.
She and her FBI colleagues they mapped out his operation,
disrupted the works throughout the war, later shut it down completely,
(15:03):
and then without Ostrich, the FBI would not have been
as successful in pinning down the extent of Nazi espionage
in South America.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Right right, because also you sometimes want to keep the
network going so you can just exactly and then also
put out fake stuff for them to report on. See
how effective is what Ostrich was all about.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
November of nineteen forty one, right before the attack on
Pearl Harbor, FBI special agent William Gustav Friedman sat down
with a man named Jorge Mosquerra. Quick note, Elizabeth Smith
Friedman's husband was William F. Friedman, one end on the
last name. The FBI special agent was William Gustav Freeman.
(15:44):
Two ms. No relationship.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Okay, I'm going to ask for a huge loop.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
So anyway, who was Mouscara and why was a g
Man talking to him? Yeah, what's I would love to know?
You tell me.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Well.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Muscarra was a forty six year old businessman. He was
originally from Argentina and he'd spent the last twenty years
of his life living in Germany. So this made him
very interesting to the FBI for good reason. So let's
back up. Let me tell you about him. He had
a very successful import export business in Germany, always moving
(16:19):
stuff between Germany and Argentina. But during the thirties, I
don't know if you've heard about this, things in Germany changed.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I have.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I've read a little bit about this that I change
in leadership in the biz.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
We call that an understatement. So he wove this tale
of woe about how German militarism started to get out
of hand. Then there were all these like crazy new
finance laws that were sort of dooming his business. So
he sold everything and headed back to Argentina to start
from scratch. The problem was that the Nazi authorities wouldn't
(16:52):
let him leave the country with his money. Instead, the
other they put pressure on him to work for them
as an intelligence agent in America. So no buenos aires
for you, sir. You're going to the US of a
and in return for his spy work, he would get
his s growd funds with interest. But that was as
(17:13):
soon as Germany won the war.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Oh wow, So.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
He didn't really have a choice. He couldn't go back
to Argentina with nothing. He had nothing and no one there.
He couldn't stay in Europe because he saw how bad
it was about to get. So he agreed, but he
also had no intention of helping them.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
But he also has this light at the end of
the tunnel. If he does, if.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
He does the work and the Germans win, then he
gets his money plus interest. Well, so he tells the Nazis,
you know what, let's do this, and I don't want
I want to cover my trucks, so I'm going to
take this circuitous route to the United States. And they're like, great,
I love that perfect and action. And so August nineteen
forty one, he leaves Nazi occupied France, goes over the
(17:55):
Pyrenees and across Spain to Portugal. Then there he gets
on a ship South America. He gets to Montevideo, Uruguay,
goes straight to the American embassy and spills the beat. Yeah,
tells them everything, and he's like plus ps I want
to help Allied forces. I want nothing. I am at
(18:16):
your service.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
I can win this war.
Speaker 5 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
So days later he's on his way to New York
on the FBI dime to begin life as a double agent.
So the Germans, they gave him instructions, Okay, this is
what you do. You go to America, you spy on them.
You build a secret radio station. Here are your broadcast times,
Here are the frequencies, the call letters like emergency keys
(18:40):
and transposition codes. You have to be somewhere in the
New York area. We're going to be sending you messages,
and you're going to send messages back to Hamburg. So
he's like, you know what, that's great, I'm all in.
Then he goes and he tells the FBI exactly what
he's been told.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I'm wondering how they're capturing it. I wonder if they're
coming from like you know, U boats, like where there,
because you can't be broadcasting that far at the time,
he doesn't like me.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah, So the FBI is like, thank you for for
your input. I love this. You're going to be a
double agent. We're going to code name you n D
ninety eight. Okay, and this is it showtime?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, lights, camera action.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Let's take a break. When we get back, we're going
to follow along with ND ninety eight. Zaren, I want
(19:45):
to tell you about a place called Owen House.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Owen House.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yes, it was a beautiful estate on seventy one acres
in Wading River, New York. That's on Long Island, across
Long Island Sound from New Haven, Connecticut.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
This is Owen like O I owe you money.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Owen Wilson ow E m so. The US Department of
the Interior describes this place as such, quote. Located eighty
miles east of New York on Long Island's North Fork.
The spacious three story building sat on a cliff bordered
on one side by Long Island Sound and acres of
dense trees on the other three sides, and the only
(20:24):
approach to the station was a bumpy, rutted quarter mile path.
Even by today's standards, the house is not easy to find.
In nineteen forty two, it would have been nearly impossible.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
So.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
The place was originally built as a summer home for
doctor Gabriel s Owen and his descendant. Sarah Owen was
the last occupant of the house. She was unmarried, no kids.
She died in nineteen forty She was almost ninety years
old at this point. So she has a niece, missus
Helen Owen Howell. Helen Owen Howell inherits the house in
(20:59):
nineteen forty one, something curious happened. Now keep in mind
that Owen house, like you said, super isolated, seventy one acres,
borders the sound, just a dirt path driveway. It's mid
December nineteen forty one. Helen was in the house. There's
a knock at the door. A guy is standing there,
dressed in a suit, very polite. He told her he
was interested in renting the house and the property. Now
(21:22):
Helen was in the process of trying to figure out
what to do with this place.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
And we're like a week past Pearl Harbor. So like
everybody's thinking about the war. The only thought you have
her about the war.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
She didn't need the house, she didn't intend to live there,
but this was strange. The distribution of the estate was
noted in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper in November of forty one,
So maybe she's thinking like he heard about it. But
still Helen told him, like place isn't for rent, he
goes on his way. Everything seems hinky. And like you said,
this is right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which
(21:54):
was December seventh, nineteen forty one, a day that will
live in infamy, as FDR said, the day afterwards, which
is the day that the US entered World War two.
So tensions are high, fears are building. Helen's trying to
imagine why someone would be looking to live at Owen
House at that time. Yeah, specifically, yeah, And she couldn't
(22:15):
think of anything that made sense, so she called the FBI.
See something, say something. So she told him all about
the visit from the man, that the home is on
the water and isolated, and she feared that it could
be like spies or soldiers or something nefarious. They took
all her information. They thanked her for sharing it. A
few days later, knock at the door. It's the same guy.
(22:39):
He pulls out his identification FBI. He explained to her
that it was the US government that wanted to us.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
The FBI.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
First test, so we need this her top secret activities.
In fact, the whole family would be sworn to secrecy.
They'd have to sign all these document They couldn't tell
anyone about this. So they renamed the place the Wading
River Station. And remember when we left off, the Nazis
had asked Jorge Moscerra to set up the.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Spy radio pirate radio station in or around New York.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
So he immediately tells the FBI about a situation made
a double agent. They're like, let's set up our radio station. Guys,
let's start a station. And so an FBI technical agent
from Washington, d C. Named Richard Millan, he began searching
for a site somewhere on eastern Long Island. And according
(23:36):
to Ray bat Venice, a former FBI agent writing for
the Former Agents of the FBI Foundation, quote it's a
wow for the news site, Millan had two essential requirements. First,
atmospheric conditions had to be optimal for uninterrupted transatlantic high
(23:57):
frequency radio communication. Second, but equally important, it had to
be isolated and remote.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
So they're trying to get across the Atlantic. Yes, how
how much watted are they running through this stage? And
they're doing AM radio which travels far. But even like
that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
So Owen House is perfect though, I mean, yeah, it
sounds like the box.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
There's no mountains between them and the European.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
And isolated and not in use everything. So at the
start of nineteen forty two, Millan got the house totally outfitted.
He had a team of engineers install all this like
crazy modern radio equipment. Keep in mind, this all had
to be self sustaining, so they had to have multiple
backup parts for everything. Yes, you couldn't just like pop
(24:43):
out and get stuff, so they that went for like
like spare parts, vacuum tubes, radios, dials, wiring paper, and pencils.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Ratchets, so many ratchets.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
They had like a whole room of just ratchets, and
the place was crammed with stuff. So they had had
high frequency radios running twenty four hours a day and
that pulls a lot of electricity. Yeah, and they didn't
want the electric company to come sniffing around because as
far as they knew, a young family had moved into
the house. Okay, see, the agent sent to oversee operations
(25:15):
was this guy named Don Worth Johnson.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Wait what I'm near You need to hear that name again.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Don Worth Johnson.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
So it's Don Johnson with an extra worth.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah, more worth than Don Johnson. Not only was he
savvy with the technology, he also looked sickly.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Oh, and that was a selling point.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Okay, So the department picked him, yeah, to be the
face of Owen House to the public because he had
what they described as a quote tubercular appearance.
Speaker 5 (25:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
So the FBI was like this, this check's two boxes. One,
if the locals thought he was diseased, they wouldn't come calling, sure,
And two this explains why he doesn't get drafted.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So they're looking for a doc holiday looking guy to.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
As far as everyone in town knew, part of the
war after he's just like this sickly, very rich lawyer
with a wife named Betty and an infant daughter named
Vicky Jean Jean and that was his real family. So
he brings his real family with him, plus their seventy
pound German shepherd dog named Clifford. Yeah, Clifford was a
(26:22):
piece of work. He like snarled at everyone all the time.
It was not one to be messed with.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Oh okay, so you know his snarl was like a
like a predicet to his bike.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yeah, he was just nasty. So back to the power supply.
They needed a lot and a sick attorney and his
small family aren't going to need that much. So the
agents they had to set up a way to generate
their own power. And so Millan he put a diesel
engine in the basement that would boost the power supply
coming in from outside.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
They made a generator.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Yeah, and so we got this big diesel engine. The
place is on seventy one acres. But they still had
to disguise the noise in case anyone rolled up.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
That's a noise, So they.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Put a Buick karmuffler on it and a hose to
send the fumes out through the basement window. Oh right, yeah,
and then big engines like that also shimmy shake.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
So the agents poured this huge concrete block into the
floor of the basement and bolted the engine to it.
So like problem solved. Everything's running smoothly, okay. And this
is how an FBI memo described the setup quote, we
have a highly confidential station at Wading River, Long Island,
where we have several radio operators assigned who are impersonating
(27:34):
enemy agents. And these operators have practiced and perfected this
impersonation almost to the ultimate point. They must live in
an isolated cottage under difficult conditions, and that they must
remain at the station twenty four hours a day, six
and seven days a week, it being impossible for them
to go to the next town for meals. They must
(27:54):
keep absolutely undercover in order that no suspicion as to
the activities being carried on at this station will leak
out to unauthorized persons in the vicinity.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
So they're like creating a little Antarctic station. You got
to be with these people all the time.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
It's a big house. So there we got Owen house.
We got the Johnson family, which you know they see
seem to be living a normal life to for everyone
on the outside. And then they've got like two or
three other radio operators at a time working non stop
on the second and third floors of the house, and
they would have to like change shifts at night under
cover of darkness. Missus Johnson cooked all the meals really yeah,
(28:34):
and just like ran a house, and then Clifford provided security,
including for the family. Zarin, close your eyes. I want
you to picture it. You are Vicky Jean Johnson. You
are two years old. It's one year into the US
(28:56):
involvement in World War two. Your house is always buzzing
with activity and radio waves. But this is not unusual
for you. It's all you've ever known. You're currently sitting
on the back porch of the house where you live.
The sun is out, the bird's chirp in the thick
cops of trees around you. Clifford, the family dog, sleeps
at the other end of the porch, waking every now
(29:18):
and then to growl and cuff, then go back to
sleep in the sun. Your mother's in the kitchen, baking
a pie, rinsing berries for the filling, checking the blind
bake on the crust. She's busy, otherwise occupied on this
warm day. You're wearing nothing but your diaper, the liberating
wardrobe afforded toddlers in the insane. You look out across
(29:40):
the lawn behind the house and spot something a butterfly.
It's beautiful. You scoot your rear down the few backsteps
and stand on the grass. The butterfly flits and skips
on the air. You can hear the static of radio
transmissions coming from the window above you. You begin to
follow the butterfly form the sober drunkard's walk of a
(30:02):
young child, knees stiff and gate rocking across the lawn.
You go following the big yellow butterfly. You make it
to the edge of the lawn and into the trees,
the butterfly still in the air above and just ahead
of you. You hear more birds now and a frog
somewhere far off. The trees block the midday sun, and
you're cast into shade. The yellow butterfly a beacon, a
(30:25):
spot of sun that you simply must follow. You reach
your chubby arms into the air, trying to grab it.
It slits on. You've now toddled almost three hundred feet
from the back steps. You emerge from the woods, still
tailing the butterfly. It's a erratic path, so tempting to chase.
As you come through the trees, you can hear the
water below Long Island sound. You hear waves, The wind
(30:49):
is up and the chop is out on the water.
The butterfly buffets against the breeze, coming over the cliff
before you. It lands on a flower of a small
weed living defiantly in the sand on the bluff. You
click in your chunky steps, eager to grab the butterfly
to grab the sun. You reach the plant and look down.
The steep cliff heads straight down to the now rough
(31:11):
waters below. You hear your mother calling your name in
the distance. It's Fate, but she sounds terrified urgent. You
look down and see the sand starting to slide from
under your feet. You're now slowly beginning to lean forward,
gravity pulling you to the water below. Then there's a jerk.
Your diaper tightens around your belly and your yank backward,
(31:35):
back over the sand spun and then back toward the woods.
You look behind you, hoping to see the butterfly. Instead
you see Clifford's smooth coat and caramel eyes. He's got
you by the diaper and is trotting you back to
the house. Your mother emerges from the trees, shouting your name.
She sees you and breathes a sigh of relief. She
reaches out to pluck you from Clifford's jaw, but he
(31:57):
does not release. He lets out a low ground and
continues back toward the house, intent on putting you back
where you were on the porch. He mutters to you, sheesh,
I gotta do everything around here. But that really happened,
by the way, not Clifford talking, but everything else, everything else.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
So I love those I get videos, I think because
of I follow you on Instagram, and I think I
just get bleed over from things you watch because it's
like recommended by Elizabeth or right, I ever liked it,
and so my huh. But I've noticed that all these
animal videos keep showing up that I think you like. Anyway,
There's been ones that I've seen recently of dogs doing
exactly this, saving people, mostly saving children and the elderly,
(32:39):
and I'm always astounded. I mean, I'm sure you like
the fact people get saved. I'm astounded by how the
dogs read the behavior so well and assess the danger
and then know when to act, and they wait till
the very last moment.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
That stood out to me about this whole like little vignette. Right,
So they're in this top secret space and there are
all these people and everyone's focused on their intense stuff,
and they all are irritated with Clifford because he's a
nasty dog and he prowls at everybody. But at the
same time, you're thinking, well, it's good to have this
security dog. Like if someone rolls up on the house
(33:13):
with Clifford and you think, well, but you know, is
Clifford okay around a kid and all this stuff, And
while all of this you know, high level work to
keep everybody safe is going on. You have a two
year old who's not being kept safe or watched or watched,
who toddles out and literally almost goes over the side
of the cliff until the dog grabs her by the
(33:35):
diaper and walks her back to the house.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
At the very last moment.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Was just and that's like this, this this you know,
analog for what's going on up in the second and
third floors of the house. Really like they're they're pulling
us right back from the cliff and people don't even
know about it. So people don't know that these a
dog like Clifford is doing it. Anyway, I just thought
it was an interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
So that was a great moment.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I said, go back to Wading River Station. Let's get
back to it. So January nineteen forty two until the
end of the war in Europe in forty five, the
station just like cooked along. They weren't intercepting messages though
they were generating them. So remember we have Muscerra and
D ninety eight. The agents are sending out coded messages
(34:20):
to the Nazis from him, and the Nazis were like, ooh,
we are getting the goods. They're like, girl, come listen.
And so he's giving details about US forces, munitions, war preparations,
and everything is highly orchestrated to play them like fiddles.
So the Nazis think like, Okay, Muscarra, we sent him out.
(34:41):
He's doing what we asked. He has highly placed informants
and that's where he's getting all this intel. So, according
to that former agent bat Venice quote, one was Wash,
a senior civilian official working for the War Department in Washington,
who occasionally became infuriated when the Germans questioned his information. Nevy,
(35:01):
a secretary working for a Navy admiral, routinely supplied juicy
gossip hints of emergency high level meetings, together with extracts
from confidential documents. The other two were rep an employee
of the Republic Aviation Corporation in Farmingdale, New York, and Officer,
a worker at the vitally important Brooklyn Navy Yard, the
(35:22):
world's most important ship repair facility and the largest supplier
of convoys for every Allied battlefront. Of course, these informants
did not exist.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
So they're peppering in some real stuff that's not too
dangerous than mostly fake.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah, and they but he creates like these characters. I
was talking's like, you know, the juicy gum.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
It's a good spread.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah, it's.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
So.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Muscara and another FBI double agent code named Kohler. They
used separate radio circuits at the property, so they had
each been asked in dependently to do this, and.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
They're running out of the one.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
They're running out of the same one, and the Germans
have no idea.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
So the Germans don't have like Boondis they're checking in
with like in New York that occasionally they're just like,
it's good.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
I think that that's him, right, Yeah. So they spit
out supposed intelligence detailing everything from like what was said
in a dust up between soldiers and sailors at a
bar like to troop movements and assignments and mosquera. He
bolstered his credibility with the other by telling them some truths. Yes,
(36:31):
one of them was he talked about a senior British
commander who was going to be replaced. And then the
news of that actually broke weeks later, and the Germans like, oh,
he is good. He is getting that stuff way ahead
of time. So a spoiler alert Moscira. So let's break
for some ads and we can pretend they're intercepted transmissions.
(36:52):
When we come back, things escalate at Wading River.
Speaker 6 (37:16):
Muscerae, the fly mosquera.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Okay. So he would have these long interview sessions with
the Germans over the radio.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Oh really, Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
They would just.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Interesting, So he wasn't just like broadcasting like Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
For the Germans, he'd.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Be like, hey, Rudolph, oh what's up. So they would
press him for information. He'd supply it. But one day
he had a really strange conversation with his other handler
and he told Agent Friedman about it. But it's likely
that Friedman didn't understand the significance of the time. So
(37:55):
a German officer named Hans Bloom asked scra to sniff
out information about a new weapons system, one that involved
quote the shattering of atoms.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Oh so not like one of Tethla's death rays. They
actually wanted a real stuff. They're like, hey, what's up
with these atoms?
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Blooms screwed up though, because he told Musketta that German
military planners were like all worked up and they wanted
to create these massive explosives from atoms sources, and they
were calculating that they would weigh no more than like
a pound or a pound and a half too, total devastation.
(38:35):
This is like foreign to to everybody at this point,
to the you know, the general, which almost anybody, even
in the military. True. So Blum said that, quote, the
victorious nation in this war will be the one which
has accomplished the task of shattering atoms and applying the
results thereof shattering atoms.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Such a great phrase. Yeah, do we think of splitting
the shattering.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Shattering of them? It's the violence, said that. So Agent
Friedman he makes a note of this, and he includes
it in his next report out to Washington. Three months later.
That intel gets added into other chatter picked up by
the US and the Brits, solidifying the understanding that the
Germans they want to build an atomic weapon.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
And so it was this information, born of Bloom's overly
confident chatter into the equipment at Owen House that pushed
President Franklin Roosevelt to decide in May of nineteen forty
two to start development of the atomic bomb.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
So that's why we get the Manhattan Project is because of.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
This chatty A chatty German, so like, hey, y'all, let's
become dumb.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
I thought it was always like yeah, like the whole
German physicists being like, you know what, we're hearing about
it in the conferences.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
It kicks off.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
That's crazy, that's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
So meanwhile, the FBI they keep feeding bogus and confusing
information to the Germans from the upper floors of Owen House.
In the summer of nineteen forty three, they like befuddled
the Germans into freezing their forces in northwest Europe, which
prevented their redeployment to strengthen the Italian and Eastern Front. Yes,
(40:12):
so nineteen forty four and forty five, the agents at
Owen House they fed Germans a whole slew of truthful
and false information aimed at confusing their military about the
size and position of Allied forces in Great Britain. This
included the time and place of the D Day invasion.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Okay, so d wondering if this was going to come
into it.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
As you well know, D Day was the successful Allied
invasion of Europe June sixth, nineteen forty four, along a
very narrow stretch of beach at Normandy France. Yes, and
so this surprise attack caught the German army completely off guard.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Oh, completely, Yeah, they were so fixated on this. I mean,
it was like a really big deal. But they were like,
you know, chess game playing in the head.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yes. So Operation Bodyguard and then the US version, Operation Ostrich,
generated an incredible number in the lead up of phony
radio broadcasts, and then there were all these artfully created
like rubber tanks to make the broadcast look legit.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yes, oh that's great. They're coordinating with that exactly.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
So the closer they got to D Day, the more
the Allies amped up their counterintelligence moves. On May second,
nineteen forty four, the Wading River station at Owen House
sent out messages talking about how pissed off General Dwight D. Eisenhower,
who's the supreme Allied commander of the invasion forces, how
pissed off he was when he learned that essential landing craft,
(41:42):
which was already hard to come by, was being diverted
to the Pacific. So all those things you see in newsreels,
band of brothers and everything like that, And where my
great uncles were great great uncle, I don't know anyway,
So they're like, oh, this is going to delay a
British operation in the Balkans, and that's our most important thing.
(42:04):
So like they're just scattering everything, according to the Department
of the Interior. Quote. Just four days before the invasion,
the Wading River radio station again sent a message, this
time calculated to ease German anxieties about an imminent attack.
Quote WASH just reported information appearing of highest importance and
(42:25):
possibly indicating a change of plan. It appears that a
force consisting of a number of infantry and armored divisions
originally scheduled for the United Kingdom are being diverted for
special operations. And so it went. In the days, weeks
and months that followed, the agents in Wading River kept
up the deception pressure.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
I love this.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
All the misinformation is so good.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
So that also the believability of it.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Yeah, the fact you've got to do it and then
give them like, you know, like a little taste, and
then you got to have the inflatable tanks. Yeah, and
in the personal drama of like you know, of course
I could exactly.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
And so that other double agent Cohler, he also had
fake contacts. He had holtz Auto and Herman and they
were all employees at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, so again
largest ship yard facility in the world at the time.
There were more than one hundred thousand employees there.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Oh, totally, it's massive.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Massive, And so these three contacts were said to be
government workers in like sensitive posts, and Kohler told the
Germans that there was a build up of forces in
Iceland that he got from them, and that would mean
there was going to be an attack against Norway or
Denmark carried out by Allied forces based in Scotland. So
(43:43):
they're like, look up there. And it wasn't just European
intel that got spread out of owen House. They also
spread information about Allied actions in the Pacific, so the
Germans would pass that stuff along to the Japanese that
were based in Berlin. The owen House crew made up
all sorts of troop movements in the Pacific that they
would like nonchalantly mention in passing to the Germans. It's
(44:07):
just gossip. It's like, no big deal.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Just hot gossy.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
They wound up pulling away major parts of Japanese naval
forces from what they thought was an impending attack in
the Central Pacific. And then meanwhile Allied forces like descend
on the Marshall Islands.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Oh, go down to Australia and work their way up right.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
And so essentially per the Department of the Interior. Quote.
Until the last days of the war, as British forces
closed in on Hamburg, the Germans were still radioing the
agents and wading river with offers of thousands of dollars
to end ninety eight for information. In the words of
one historian, German faith in Moscera never wavered. They never
(44:48):
gave up on this do They never thought, you know what,
like he's not always right, Like they fully believed it. So,
I mean it's sort of a testament too, to the
skill of the FBI agents. They yes, in crafting all
this stuff. We never really associate the FBI with spy
stuff in World War Two. You think of it as
like higher You never think of it as a domestic thing.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
I think about them like trying to get like saboteurs
at the Brooklyn Naval Yard exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
So, what happened to the place after the war, after
Operation Ostrich wrapped up.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
What happened to Elizabeth after Operation Austrie wrapped.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Up Sarah, That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
Nineteen forty five a movie came out. Of course, it
was called The House on ninety second Street. It was
the spy film very of the moment, and it was
made with the full cooperation of the FBI, and it
was Hollywood's first semi documentary spy film, interesting dramatizing the
real nineteen thirty eight to forty one German spy investigations.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
In the US House on ninety second Street.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
House on ninety second Street. So the story follows this
young American with German roots who gets recruited by the Nazis,
but instead of joining the obver, he secretly contacts the
FBI and becomes a double agent. Sound familiar, totally movie.
The guy's mission was to join a Nazi spy ring
operating out of a boarding house on East ninety second
(46:06):
Street in Manhattan, and he was supposed to identify its
leadership and prevent the theft of atomic research secrets from
US laboratories. And he also had to help the FBI
roll up this entire espionage network. And so the climax
of the movie recreates an FBI raid using actual agents
and real procedures. So the AFI catalog American film Institute,
(46:29):
not the band notes quote. After the opening credits, a
written prologue reads, this story is adapted from cases in
the espionage files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Produced
with the FBI's complete cooperation. It could not be made
public until the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan.
(46:50):
The scenes in this picture were photographed in the localities
of the incidents depicted, Washington, New York, and their vicinities,
wherever possible, in the actual place the original incident occurred.
With the exception of the leading players, all FBI personnel
in the picture are members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
(47:12):
The like celebrity worship of Jangarl.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Oh my god, he, oh my god, have you got
a movie camera? Lord?
Speaker 3 (47:23):
So some of the filming for the movie took place
at Owen House aka Wading River Station. And so then
you compare this to how the UK, like, how over
there anyone with the slightest involvement in intelligence activities during
World War two had to sign a State Secret Act
thing like an agreement seventies right, Yeah, it was everything
(47:43):
stayed classified to the seventies. You couldn't even say that
you worked at a certain place like you just couldn't
talk about it. But we're the home a Hollywood baby.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Yeah, story must be told.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
June nineteen forty.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Five from the headlines we love that not a new thing.
You watched the like I was a Communist for the FBI.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Yeah, yeah, So June nineteen forty five, Waiting River Station
was dismantled. They went took all the stuff out. The
FBI lease was up. The house and its seventy one
acres got transferred to the Episcopal Diocese.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Of New York. They didn't give it to the family, No.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
The family was like here you were donated and they
to be used as a youth camp eventually called campd Wolf,
and the house became known as Benson House in honor
of Mary E. Benson, a Brooklyn Episcopalian who's fifty thousand
dollars bequest to the diocese funded the purchase of the property.
(48:39):
So in the subsequent years, like they built all these
other like outbuildings in a chapel and all this other stuff,
Benson House stayed the camp's administrative and residential corps. The
diocese shifted Camp to Wolf from like just a summer
youth camp to this like retreat, a conference ministry. Yeah.
By the nine they also were doing like family reunions, weddings, retreats. Yeah,
(49:05):
and they had like a swimming pool. They actually paved
the drivewood. But this whole time, no one really knew
much about the FBI presence there, really.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
So then retired FBI agent Raymond bat Nivis, who liked
to write for the Society of Former Special Agents. He
was a history professor at George Washington University at the time,
and he was researching a book that he wanted to
write about wartime counterintelligence in the US and he uncovered
all this information about Owen House. So on the seventieth
(49:37):
anniversary of the D Day invasion June sixth, twenty fourteen,
there was a ceremony to honor the efforts of FBI
agents during World War Two, and they held it at
Owen House. The Society of Former Special Agents, the Episcopal
Diocese in New York, Suffolk County Historical Society, and the
FBI's New York Division installed a plaque there to you know,
(50:00):
recognize what had happened. And that's the first time that
the house's significance was made public. Everyone kept mum so
now it's The house is now officially referred to as
the Wading River Radio Station. In twenty eighteen, it was
put onto the National Register of Historic Places. Camp de
(50:20):
Wolfe's executive directors said there were quote not too many
artifacts that have survived. Besides the odd piece of physical evidence,
our basement was running a radio antenna. They actually put
a car engine in the basement in the floor to
make their own electricity. So we still have the block
where the car engine was actually mounted down there, but
(50:41):
there's actually very little evidence that anything happened there. So
they were pretty you know, FBI was pretty good and clear.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
They just like, we couldn't get the cement block up,
so we left.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Well, okay, this is going to sound wild. Maybe not.
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
You know me pretty well, the like, you know, the
the Djibuki tweet about the FBI and MLKA day being like,
just because we killed assassinated MLK doesn't mean we can't
miss them. I always feel very conflicted about the FBI
because of co intel, pro mk ultra a lot of
bad stuff, But I am able to like somehow compartmentalize
(51:23):
and be able to follow stories about well meaning things
like the FBI trying to fight fascism, so I can
love certain things and then hate other things without having
to have to have only one simple view of the FBI.
So I can marvel at an FBI agent doing their
really you know, their best work, all this like spycraft stuff,
and really be into it, be like, wait to go, FBI,
(51:43):
And then part of me is like, what are you
talking about?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
So like I don't.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
I'm always like thrilled at like stories of FBI agents,
especially of this period of time, and and I marvel
at and then I find my reaction to myself ridiculous
because I'm like, oh, so that's how it is now,
and I'm like, no, no, I'm just talking about this
in one individual FBI agent.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
I don't mean the whole program.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
So I find that these stories really like I love
the FBI of this period, which I find ridiculous that
I can even say that with that with this trade face.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
So there you go. That's Mine's the I'm.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
They're with you. I'm always I hear these stories. I'm
so impressed with the network that they had and how
quickly pre Internet they were getting information out there. And
acting on things, and the level of intelligence gathering.
Speaker 4 (52:30):
Yes, the intelligence gathering and remarkable their work with the underworld.
I mean, let's not lie.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
That was crazy, and we always say you don't lie
to the FBI because they're just like the alternate. And
that's why I think, like the things that diminish it,
the dark moments, and also like the disintegration of parts
of it these days is disappointing because there are really
incredible elements to to what they've done, what they.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Do, especially individually.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
Yes, yeah, but anyway, I just I'm with you on that.
Let's get a talk back.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
Yeah, oh.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
My god, do illed g.
Speaker 5 (53:15):
Hi Elizabeth and the man host. That's for you, Elizabeth.
My name is Katie. I am from Albuquerque. I'm a
longtime listener, but my husband is not. He's a new listener,
and I introduced the podcast to him because he recently
fell off the latter and broke his back. And while
he's being sad, I'm being like, here, listen to this podcast.
It will give you a joy. When he fell up
the ladder, he's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
I let everybody down, and I was like, no, the
(53:37):
only person you let down is yourself when you fell
off that ladder.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
I thought you would enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Hey, Katie, my sense of humors darking up. I love
that incredible. I feel.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
I'm so sorry for your for your husband, that's terrible,
and I wish him the quickest of recuperations. But Katie,
he is one lucky duck to have you for You're amazing,
You're so funny. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (54:03):
Anyway, as the man host, I really appreciated that.
Speaker 3 (54:09):
That's it for today. You can find us online at
ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on
both Blue Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous
Crime Pod. You can email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com,
or you can be like Katie and leave us a
talk back on the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime
(54:34):
is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and
edited by special agent in charge of Mixed Berry Pies
Dave Kusten, starring Annale Rutger as Judith. Research is by
expert radio operator MRSA Brown and German accent coach Jabari Davis.
The theme song is by our Man and Argentina Thomas
Lee and Chief Petty Officer Travis Dutt. Host wardrobe is
(54:57):
provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by
Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are FBI handlers Ben
Bowen and Noel Brown.
Speaker 5 (55:11):
Ridicous Crime Say It One More Time Piquious Crime.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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