Operation Sparrow: Three Americans Who Wanted to Be Captured by the Nazis (with Jason Bell)

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I'm John Seifer.
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And I'm Jerry O'Shea.
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We have over 60 years of experience as clandestine officers
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in the CIA, serving in high-risk areas all around the world.
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And part of our job was creating conspiracies to deceive
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our adversaries.
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Now, we're going to use that experience to investigate the
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conspiracy theories everyone's talking about, as well as some you
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may not have heard.
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Could they be true, or are we being manipulated?
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We'll find out now on Mission Implausible. Our guest today
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is historian and Fulbright professor Jason Bell of the University
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of New Brunswick, whose forthcoming book, Operation Sparrow, uncovers one
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of the strangest and least known intelligence operations of the
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Second World War. Jason is a professor of philosophy who
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has taught and conducted research in the United States. Canada, Belgium,
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and Germany, including as a Fulbright professor at the University
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of Gothenburg. In the spring of 1944, with the Allies
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preparing to invade Europe, three American officers parachuted into Hungary
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on a secret mission that soon took a traumatic and
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unexpected turn. What followed became part of a much larger
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Allied effort to keep Hitler guessing about where the real
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invasion would come. So Jason has reconstructed this previously classified story,
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but what makes it especially interesting for us is what
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it reveals about the broader art of deception. how intelligence
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services manipulate an adversary's expectations, and why the most effective
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lies are often built around truth. So it's great to
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have you here, Jason. Welcome.
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Thank you, Jerry. Pleasure to meet both of you.
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We do a lot about conspiracy theories, but this is
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about real conspiracies and how intelligence services engage in them successfully.
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So we'll eventually get into that, how governments use deception
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and conspiracy theories. But let's start out quickly with the
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subject of your recent book on Operation Sparrow. So three
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American OSS officers parachute into Hungary, March 1944, and incredibly
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part of the plan is to get themselves captured. Can
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you set the scene for us? What were they trying
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to accomplish?
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And why did they come up with such a crummy codename? Sparrow?
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I mean, you know, these guys should be like Warhawk
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or something like that.
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I'm sorry.
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The British did not do a good job with that one.
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Not like bodyguard 42.
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This was actually an American operation. They loved bird names,
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but I think it was appropriate. It was about singing.
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So they had to go into enemy custody and sing.
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And look innocuous at the same time. So yes, sparrows
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are clever little birds. So the mission was designed because
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it had two main purposes. So one of them was
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that Hungary, which was Hitler's ally, wanted to get out
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of the war. And Hungary was offering to... team up
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with the Allies to fight against Germany. So they were
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going to switch midstream. And for America, this was an
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attractive offer. And so part of the mission was about
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sending these three guys in to coordinate with Hungary. So
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when Hungary decided to make the shift, these three OSS
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guys would have been the ones who would have been
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coordinating airdrops, getting in more supplies. So the main plan
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was to open up a real invasion front on the cheap.
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It would have been led by the Hungarians with Allied help.
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But the secondary purpose was to be captured by the
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Germans and to feed the misleading D-Day intelligence. And the
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way this was going to work was the three OSS
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guys were going to go into Hungary. They were going
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to be arrested by the Hungarians. That was the plan.
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So it was going to be a fake arrest. And
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then the Hungarians were going to turn them over to
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the German intelligence officers. And during that period, These three
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Americans were going to let loose misleading information that D-Day
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was coming through the Balkans, through Yugoslavia. And then the
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Germans would, according to protocol, hand them back to the Hungarians,
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at which point the Americans were going to set up
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in an intelligence headquarters outside of Budapest. This was bought
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and paid for by the Hungarians. So this was going
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to be the first intelligence headquarters behind enemy lines. But
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for reasons I think we'll get into in a little bit,
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it did not all work exactly according to plan.
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I mean, the Germans... They were pretty brutal.
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So what were their, whenever you come up, when John
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and I in CIA, whenever you come up with a
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plan to something, to a deception plan or to fool
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your enemy, you always want to be in control of it.
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But once the Hungarians who were in on this plan.
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Once they hand them over to the Germans and, God
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help us, the cigarettes come out, things change.
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So why don't you take us through at least that part?
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So the Hungarian intelligence had a pretty good read about
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who the good guys were in German intelligence. So they
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could get a sense of who the anti-Nazis were. The Abwehr,
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the German intelligence service, was just absolutely riddled with these
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people who hated Adolf Hitler. And a month before this
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mission went to Hungary— This Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was in
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charge of the Abwehr. He hated Hitler and was really
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helping the Allies out a lot. And so initially this
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was meant to be controlled so that the Hungarians would
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get these Americans into the hands of one of these
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sympathetic German officers. He himself, the German, would not be
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in on the plan, but it would be somebody who
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was doing his job, who was serving German military intelligence,
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but not stiff arms saluting people.
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Jason, can I cut you off just for a second? Sure.
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Just because I studied history, and I studied history in Germany,
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there were two intelligence services in Nazi Germany. There was
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the Opwehr and then the Sicherheitsdienst, which was the Nazi
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party one.
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So who were they handed over to?
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It would have probably been to somebody working within... one
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of the branches intelligence. So probably, that's right.
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Not the SD, okay.
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That's right, or Luftwaffe intelligence. So this was the person
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that did initially interview them was from Luftwaffe intelligence. And again,
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these are people who were, they had old Prussian military ideals.
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They weren't Nazified. And that's not to say this was
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a clean distinction. There were Nazis within the Abwehr, within
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Luftwaffe intelligence, but there were also a lot of people
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who didn't like Hitler at all. So the initial plan
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was going to be that these anti-Nazi German officers within
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the Hungarian military intelligence were going to get the Sparrows
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to be interrogated by one of these anti-Nazi German officers.
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Can you tell us a little bit about the OSS
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guys themselves? Who were they?
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Sure. So these guys were the cream of the crop.
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So they were meant to look the part. And John
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and Jerry, I saw pictures of you guys when you
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were young. So it's like they're really fit guys and
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they're good looking and they can speak a lot of
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languages and they had high level contacts. So they were great.
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chosen to look reassuring to the Hungarians. So the Hungarians
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were looking for this marriage with the Allies. The Hungarians
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are living right next door to the Germans. They know
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that once this shift happens, that there's going to be
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a massive German invasion. So these three sparrows were meant
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to look the part. So the leader of the mission,
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Floremon Duke, he was, I think, of Duke from G.I.
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Joe.
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He's this big, solid guy. He'd been an NFL starter
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for the New York Giants. He flew fighter planes for
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America in World War I. He's a Dartmouth grad. And
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notably for the mission, he had spent about 15 years
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before the war running advertising for Time, Inc., so the Time, Inc. empire,
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so Fortune and Life and people like this. So he's
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constructing advertising campaigns. And of course, then he gets recruited
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into the OSS, and then he's doing advertising campaigns of
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a different type. So he's selling the enemy on these
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invasion plans that aren't happening. So Flora Monduke is the
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really key person who knew everything that was going on
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in the mission. The other two guys were very good,
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but I don't think they had access to all the secrets.
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Flora Monduke was the intelligence chief for all of Southeastern
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Europe during World War II. So he was involved in
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initial D-Day planning because Churchill had wanted the invasion to
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go through Southeastern Europe. So, of course, they had geographically
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plotted all this out. So he was the perfect guy
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who could come in to make that invasion look like
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it was really going to happen.
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If you're trying to create a deception, send people in
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to tell enemy a false story, do you, like, why
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would you not, you got, you have to worry if
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you're sending someone like that in that they could break
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him and he could tell them that true story and
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you don't want, you'd rather have them know the piece
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only that he needs to know. So that's interesting.
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What was that?
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Why was that decision made and how high did it go? Did,
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was Roosevelt involved? Was the head of the OSS involved?
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What, It was enormously controversial within OSS. So there were
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OSS officers who were screaming and hollering about this and
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desperately trying to get the mission canceled. And because of this,
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so the person who had put this mission together was
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Al Adolis, who was the station chief in Switzerland. And eventually,
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of course, he went on to found the CIA. And
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once there started to get blowback, this was about two
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weeks before the mission flew, there were OSS officers who
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were saying, this is just too great of a risk.
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There's just absolutely no way we can do this. And
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I frankly think in 2026, you could never pull this off.
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There would be too many people with veto power. But
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Dulles said, we're going to lose a huge chance if
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we don't do this. This is this way to open
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up a whole extra D-Day front with virtually nothing. And
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so it went straight to Roosevelt and Roosevelt personally approved
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it along with the U.S. State Department and the Joint
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Chiefs of Staff. So this was approved by everybody. And
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I think part of this was because of who the
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chief was of the OSS itself. So this was General
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William Donovan. And he was this guy who would show
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up to the front lines. And again, people thought that
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was reckless and crazy. And contemporary intelligence scholars are like,
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what is this guy thinking? Didn't he realize what would happen? Yeah,
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that's right.
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Exactly.
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But that was really the culture that OSS celebrated. So
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these were extremely courageous people. And many of them had
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battle experience. And of course, they knew each other from
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World War I and they trusted each other. And Donovan
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was a World War I guy and Duke was a
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World War I guy. And so they just, I think
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they really knew each other and they knew this is
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a kind of person who can be trusted under torture.
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Jason, can I just jump in here and go down
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a quick rabbit hole?
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So I think a lot of this explains.
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CIA conspiracy theories up until the Bay of Pigs and
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maybe beyond, because the same group of guys who did
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this crazy operation that makes, for John and I, no
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operational sense, these guys then later formed CIA and ran it.
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So when people ask MKUltra, why would they do this?
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And the they is a group of crazy cowboys who
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survived World War II and who pulled off all this shit.
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I mean, that did this.
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And so their philosophy towards getting stuff done was, A,
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there's an existential threat, either first the Nazis and later
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the Soviets, and B, flying by the seat of their
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pants was their culture.
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Which in John and I's mentality was not the case.
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So I didn't mean to go down a rabbit hole,
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but that really speaks to a larger piece to some
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CIA fuck-up's early on in CIA, and some of the
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successes too, was that culture of we can just get
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it done. So I don't mean to, I just wanted
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to touch on that before we go back to Operation Sparrow.
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Yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely right. And then
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of course, another part of the puzzle is that these
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guys had spent World War II fighting just some really
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nasty people, and they were realizing that you had to
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be really nasty to fight back. And this was a
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lesson that the Americans had to be taught by the British,
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by the SOE. At first, they thought we should fight fair,
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And this should all be done John Wayne style or
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high noon, guns at 12 paces or whatever. And the SOE,
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the British SOE said, you just can't do this. You're
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going to have to fight dirty. And then, of course,
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during the last year of the war, these two great allies,
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the Soviets and the Americans started fighting each other. And
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so it was just really dirty business all around. That's
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not to say that the three sparrows were part of
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any of this dirty business. They got out early after
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the war. But yeah.
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So what was the German mentality that allowed this? To happen.
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Some of it must have had to do with Hitler
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in general and his paranoia and his viewpoints that were
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able to be played upon.
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And this is one part of another part of it
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was strategic, that if the Allies captured these areas in
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the Balkans, Hitler was going to lose his oil supply.
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And then the Soviets and the Americans could meet up
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and cut his armies in two. And then a third
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part of it was the invasion happened in Italy, and
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these big invasion intentions were real. The SOE was playing
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with the idea of, oh, let's see, you can make
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it look like we're going to attack Greece next. Greece
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is not far from Italy. So there's enormous allied forces
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that are in place in 1943 in the south that
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Hitler's agents can see and Churchill was desperately pushing for
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an invasion there. So there was all kinds of things
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there that made this plausible to German intelligence that this
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is where an invasion would be. Then later in 1943,
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Churchill loses the argument. They start withdrawing forces from the
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Southern Theater, but the Western intelligence services concealed these withdrawals,
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and instead they made it look as if they kept
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on building up forces. So they had engineers out who
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were building ports there, These guys didn't know that they
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were part of a deception operation, but it looked as
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if the logistics were in place to be able to
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have an invasion there. And the United States Air Corps
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was playing along, so they had enormous air forces there
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that were launching heavy bombing campaigns in southeastern Europe while
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they're leaving Normandy 100% quiet. So Germany could have gotten suspicious,
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like where are the Allies not attacking? They were not
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attacking Normandy, but they were launching heavy attacks in southeastern Europe.
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They were making play at invading Norway. And the idea
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was just to get Hitler's forces, millions of them, just
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as far away from Normandy as possible.
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Jason, there's another element that also plays into what John
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and I saw at CIA, is that you want your
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enemy feel in control, feel that they know. And you
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want to know what their biases are. So if Hitler's
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bias was the South, that's what you get. And touching
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on a particularly difficult event in CIA history, the attack
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in coast where our officers was killed. From the media
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reports of it, the actual, the bomber, he promised us
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exactly what we wanted to hear. I'm going to get
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you bin Laden. And then he actually provided some like
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really good intelligence that I think that actually also got
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some minor Al Qaeda guys killed. And he basically led
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us along because we desperately wanted an easy win. We
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wanted to believe it. We wanted to believe we're in control.
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And when you do that, your vetting comes down just
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a little bit, right? You're not as strict with like,
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is this really true? And running it through analytical controls
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that are independent.
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And so that's part of deception.
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And I think part of any conspiracy, good conspiracies, you
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get the enemy, your opposition, you find out what they
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want to believe, and that's what you try to lead
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them towards. And I think it worked with Hitler. And unfortunately,
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00:15:21.129 --> 00:15:23.690
it works with all intelligence organs or all governments as well.
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Inside of CIA now, we try to build into the
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system baffles to make sure that doesn't happen, but we're
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not always successful.
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Absolutely. One of the things I've seen looking through these
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00:15:34.580 --> 00:15:38.539
OSS records is they were hiring academics to do personality
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00:15:38.580 --> 00:15:41.980
profiles of Adolf Hitler. In the beginning of the war,
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he was a mystery to them. They didn't understand a
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00:15:43.779 --> 00:15:45.679
lot about him, but by the end of the war,
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they really had his number. They knew how he would respond,
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that he was never going to retreat. He was always
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going to double down. And so the idea was just
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to provoke him. And it was a real Muhammad Ali
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rope-a-dope strategy that he didn't know how to save his punches.
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00:16:03.259 --> 00:16:05.820
Alan Dulles, again, he was the architect of the mission.
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He understood Hitler very well at this point. And the
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idea was just keep provoking him and making him really
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00:16:13.059 --> 00:16:16.210
just furious with these commando attacks. A lot of German
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00:16:16.250 --> 00:16:18.379
generals were saying, let's just back off of these areas.
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Let's hold troops in reserve. And Hitler had exactly the opposite.
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He overruled his generals and said, no, let's push more
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and more troops in there and really teach these bastards
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a lesson.
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00:16:27.720 --> 00:16:31.210
So what you're saying is that deception is ultimately less
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00:16:31.250 --> 00:16:34.789
about creating false information than about understanding the psychology of
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00:16:34.809 --> 00:16:38.490
the recipient, right? So you want to understand your adversary's
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mentality and conspiracies they may believe in or other kinds
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of things. I don't want to get too political here
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because you're a historian, but It seems to me right
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now that if it comes to an adversary selling a
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false narrative by focusing on something my target wants to believe,
329
00:16:52.240 --> 00:16:55.200
it seems to me like Russia, China and others might
330
00:16:55.320 --> 00:16:59.019
really have an opportunity here to sell to people like
331
00:16:59.039 --> 00:17:03.120
Donald Trump and others. And our elections are compromised. Donald
332
00:17:03.139 --> 00:17:06.269
Trump is one of the most open politicians we've ever seen.
333
00:17:06.450 --> 00:17:09.509
And his foibles and weird beliefs are for the world
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to see. And they seem like they would be easy
335
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to play on by a foreign adversary.
336
00:17:14.480 --> 00:17:17.799
You know, probably for decades, you know, probably for decades.
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I mean, they're doing, you know, psychological profiles on, you know,
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people who could be leaders. And I think this is what,
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00:17:24.119 --> 00:17:26.890
you know, you know, KGB is good at doing this
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00:17:26.930 --> 00:17:30.269
kind of thing. You know, who might be who's middle
341
00:17:30.309 --> 00:17:33.009
aged now, who might rise to political prominence in the future.
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And let's already think about creating a psychological bossy on
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this person. Most of us are pretty predictable. We're really
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subject to this. And I think one of the things
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00:17:40.089 --> 00:17:42.430
I encountered history is when you meet somebody like Alan Dulles,
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who really is mercurial and can turn on a pin. Like,
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people have found it very strange. And you can see
348
00:17:48.059 --> 00:17:50.079
why he became the early chief of the CIA. He
349
00:17:50.099 --> 00:17:52.819
was so hard to read. He was so intuitive. But
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I think most people, yeah, you can figure out how
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00:17:54.920 --> 00:17:57.099
they tick. And me, I think we're, you know, two
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00:17:57.119 --> 00:17:59.380
of these people who you can, you know, we're pretty predictable.
353
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We like the same things for breakfast.
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I'd love to know what the Ukrainian analysis of Putin
355
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is in their current conflict with Russia and how they're
356
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playing it out.
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What are they selling him?
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Yeah, I wonder what that is. But, you know.
359
00:18:26.750 --> 00:18:28.509
So back to the history part of it.
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00:18:28.549 --> 00:18:31.380
So there's a lot of Operation Sparrow is not that
361
00:18:31.420 --> 00:18:34.460
well known, but there's some big ones that are. Obviously,
362
00:18:34.640 --> 00:18:37.880
Operation Midsmeet, the dead body right off the Sea of Spain.
363
00:18:38.359 --> 00:18:40.960
And that one was to confuse the Germans that we
364
00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:44.599
were taking Sicily, which was fairly obvious. But they wanted
365
00:18:44.640 --> 00:18:46.900
them to think that we were taking either southern France
366
00:18:47.380 --> 00:18:50.589
through Vichy or Greece, which is, again, what happened here.
367
00:18:51.190 --> 00:18:53.289
And then I'll just throw out two more was the
368
00:18:53.329 --> 00:18:57.220
big ones is Operation Bodyguard. which was all about getting
369
00:18:57.259 --> 00:18:59.470
Hitler to believe that we were going to attack in
370
00:18:59.490 --> 00:19:03.450
the Pas de Calais, right, north of Normandy. And then
371
00:19:03.569 --> 00:19:07.450
my favorite, Operation Fortitude, where they created this entire frigging
372
00:19:07.650 --> 00:19:11.509
ghost army commanded by General Patton and the Nazis. Again,
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00:19:11.809 --> 00:19:14.279
what they think is like, well, if Patton's running this thing,
374
00:19:14.839 --> 00:19:16.930
this has got to be the shock troops. And of course,
375
00:19:17.299 --> 00:19:20.319
Patton was pissed off that he had 2,000 rubber tanks.
376
00:19:21.440 --> 00:19:24.799
No troops whatsoever, but the Germans were focusing on it.
377
00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:28.880
How does Operation Sparrow fit into these more well-known groups?
378
00:19:29.220 --> 00:19:33.109
Deception operations, intelligence deception operations, all run mostly by the
379
00:19:33.180 --> 00:19:35.650
British out of the … SOE.
380
00:19:36.130 --> 00:19:36.410
Yeah.
381
00:19:37.130 --> 00:19:41.250
Well, not just the SOE, the London Controlling Section, the LSC.
382
00:19:41.289 --> 00:19:42.950
That's right. Yeah, the LCS.
383
00:19:42.970 --> 00:19:45.609
That's right. So this was all the same thing. So
384
00:19:45.650 --> 00:19:49.289
this was a huge combined arms operation. The Allies came
385
00:19:49.329 --> 00:19:54.200
up with it together. late in 1943. And the idea was,
386
00:19:54.500 --> 00:19:56.720
at first, the Americans just thought, we're just going to
387
00:19:57.099 --> 00:19:58.900
barge our way in and we're going to knock them over.
388
00:19:59.789 --> 00:20:02.650
and they just didn't understand all this namby-pamby British stuff.
389
00:20:02.670 --> 00:20:04.529
They just thought it was really wimpy, and it was
390
00:20:04.549 --> 00:20:08.670
just playing around. And then, of course, there was the
391
00:20:08.670 --> 00:20:12.690
1942 Allied attack on Dieppe, which was just an absolute
392
00:20:12.710 --> 00:20:13.789
disaster for the West.
393
00:20:13.849 --> 00:20:15.609
For the Canadians, yeah.
394
00:20:15.630 --> 00:20:18.309
Yeah, the Canadians got it bad. Some U.S. Army Rangers
395
00:20:18.559 --> 00:20:21.019
get themselves shot up, and the British get themselves shot up.
396
00:20:21.230 --> 00:20:24.619
The Canadians got it the worst. But that was what
397
00:20:24.640 --> 00:20:26.819
they thought was going to be a surprise attack, and
398
00:20:27.339 --> 00:20:29.950
the Allies just got slaughtered. And so that's when the
399
00:20:29.990 --> 00:20:32.769
Americans signed up on the British idea that, yeah, we're
400
00:20:32.809 --> 00:20:34.809
simply going to have to move these troops out of
401
00:20:34.829 --> 00:20:38.329
the way. So late 1943, this comes together. It was
402
00:20:38.349 --> 00:20:43.819
a British-American operation. And the idea was the deception was
403
00:20:43.839 --> 00:20:46.200
going to happen in two stages. So stage one was
404
00:20:46.240 --> 00:20:49.920
spring 1944. That's when we're going to get the German
405
00:20:49.960 --> 00:20:52.140
forces to southeastern Europe by pretending there's going to be
406
00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:56.819
an invasion there. And then moving towards June of 1944,
407
00:20:56.799 --> 00:20:58.970
when D-Day was going to happen, That's when they were
408
00:20:58.990 --> 00:21:00.730
going to shift to the Pas de Calais. So this
409
00:21:00.769 --> 00:21:03.349
is all part of the same operation. One of them
410
00:21:03.390 --> 00:21:06.509
has become really well known and the other virtually unknown.
411
00:21:06.789 --> 00:21:09.660
The Sparrow side of it is unknown. And I think
412
00:21:09.779 --> 00:21:12.019
just the frank and easy explanation is because of Cold
413
00:21:12.059 --> 00:21:16.180
War politics. So the Soviets moved into that territory. They
414
00:21:16.240 --> 00:21:18.680
were killing allied agents when they moved in. This was
415
00:21:18.740 --> 00:21:21.059
after World War II. And there was a lot of
416
00:21:21.079 --> 00:21:23.460
he started it kind of moves going on. So the
417
00:21:23.500 --> 00:21:26.210
smartest play was to shut up about it. And so
418
00:21:26.230 --> 00:21:28.670
what ended up getting celebrated after World War II was
419
00:21:28.710 --> 00:21:33.079
what happened in the deceptions that happened in comfortably democratic territories.
420
00:21:33.720 --> 00:21:36.380
But this was the same spirit, the same operation, the
421
00:21:36.420 --> 00:21:39.420
same planners as what had happened at Patek L.A., as
422
00:21:39.720 --> 00:21:40.680
it happened at Midsmead.
423
00:21:41.630 --> 00:21:43.589
How did you find it? What is your story that
424
00:21:43.650 --> 00:21:44.990
got you to this point?
425
00:21:45.829 --> 00:21:49.329
I was actually researching my previous book called Cracking the
426
00:21:49.369 --> 00:21:52.190
Nazi Code about a British operative who was the first
427
00:21:52.210 --> 00:21:54.829
to discover the Nazis in 1919. He was the first
428
00:21:54.849 --> 00:21:58.490
to warn against their plans for the Holocaust in 1939.
429
00:21:58.490 --> 00:22:01.970
And in the spring of 1939, the Canadian spy named
430
00:22:02.069 --> 00:22:04.089
Winthrop Bell wrote to a friend of his who worked
431
00:22:04.109 --> 00:22:08.950
in American intelligence named Francis Dayock, who was a Hungarian-American journalist.
432
00:22:09.599 --> 00:22:12.869
who was involved in these high-level negotiations between America and
433
00:22:12.900 --> 00:22:15.029
Hungary during World War II to get them to switch sides.
434
00:22:15.109 --> 00:22:17.990
So it looks like what Francis Dayock did was set
435
00:22:18.029 --> 00:22:21.849
up an arrangement where Hungary was not shooting at Allied airplanes,
436
00:22:22.029 --> 00:22:25.150
and the Allied airplanes were not bombing Hungary. So I
437
00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:28.039
just was doing background research on this Francis Dayock, and
438
00:22:28.059 --> 00:22:32.420
I found the Sparrow mission and just got big eyes
439
00:22:32.460 --> 00:22:34.640
when I found out what it was, that they dropped
440
00:22:34.660 --> 00:22:36.940
these three guys in there to be captured by the Germans.
441
00:22:37.670 --> 00:22:39.150
And it was just, how did I not know about
442
00:22:39.190 --> 00:22:41.670
this kind of thing? And, you know, kind of the
443
00:22:41.710 --> 00:22:43.769
very first answer that I told myself, this was before
444
00:22:43.789 --> 00:22:45.509
I'd done much research on it, was this was the
445
00:22:45.529 --> 00:22:48.769
kind of operation that could only be undertaken if you
446
00:22:48.789 --> 00:22:50.569
know that the Holocaust is going on. It was just
447
00:22:50.799 --> 00:22:53.119
too high risk. And to the question you asked me earlier,
448
00:22:53.660 --> 00:22:57.299
why would you send Flora Monduk, OSS chief for Southeastern Intelligence,
449
00:22:57.400 --> 00:23:00.799
into Nazi hands? In ordinary times, this would be absolute madness.
450
00:23:00.839 --> 00:23:03.039
But the Allies knew that the Holocaust was going on.
451
00:23:03.079 --> 00:23:06.240
They knew that the Hungarian Jews were in danger. Hitler
452
00:23:06.279 --> 00:23:09.890
was demanding peace. that the Hungarian authorities began handing over
453
00:23:09.930 --> 00:23:11.890
the Jews. And so it was the kind of a
454
00:23:11.950 --> 00:23:15.250
desperate gamble that made sense given the stakes. So this
455
00:23:15.289 --> 00:23:17.089
was my very first kind of intuition about why that
456
00:23:17.109 --> 00:23:19.650
mission would have gone in and everything I've seen since
457
00:23:19.690 --> 00:23:22.859
then has confirmed. But yeah, I had went into the
458
00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:26.220
OSS files and the SOE files to really find out
459
00:23:26.279 --> 00:23:28.900
the details of it. But a lot of the preparation
460
00:23:28.940 --> 00:23:33.839
was just the OSS finding who are really top-notch, but
461
00:23:33.880 --> 00:23:36.339
not just A-plus people, but kind of the top one-tenths
462
00:23:36.940 --> 00:23:39.230
percent of the A-plus people who we can send into
463
00:23:39.250 --> 00:23:42.170
this situation and just trust that they're not going to
464
00:23:42.190 --> 00:23:42.910
break under pressure.
465
00:23:42.930 --> 00:23:45.789
I want to pull back just a little bit and
466
00:23:45.849 --> 00:23:49.710
talk about intelligence deception and what works and what doesn't.
467
00:23:50.410 --> 00:23:54.579
One is, if you have an authoritarian government, especially with
468
00:23:54.720 --> 00:23:59.240
one leader like Hitler or Stalin, neither the Opfer nor
469
00:23:59.279 --> 00:24:03.319
the SD on the Nazi side, nor really Russian intelligence,
470
00:24:03.420 --> 00:24:06.779
Soviet intelligence, Neither of them did a really good job, right?
471
00:24:06.799 --> 00:24:09.880
I mean, Stalin was being told that Hitler was going
472
00:24:09.920 --> 00:24:12.579
to invade Russia, and he refused to believe it. And
473
00:24:13.299 --> 00:24:16.039
Hitler was fooled over and over again, mostly because they
474
00:24:16.119 --> 00:24:20.670
didn't listen to their professional intelligence services, and their professional
475
00:24:20.690 --> 00:24:26.309
intelligence services also understood that. Intelligence really only works if
476
00:24:26.369 --> 00:24:29.369
people are willing to hear, think truths that they don't
477
00:24:29.410 --> 00:24:32.049
want to maybe embrace right away, if they're willing to
478
00:24:32.109 --> 00:24:32.890
take bad news.
479
00:24:33.539 --> 00:24:36.240
Hitler knew best. Stalin knew best.
480
00:24:36.819 --> 00:24:39.920
And I think most authoritarian governments, they believe they know
481
00:24:39.960 --> 00:24:41.970
best and they don't listen to their intelligence services.
482
00:24:41.990 --> 00:24:45.009
And I do worry about right now the U.S.
483
00:24:45.049 --> 00:24:49.269
Intelligence being unable to speak truth to power and intelligence
484
00:24:49.670 --> 00:24:53.450
that's well-informed not being taken seriously because the great leader
485
00:24:53.490 --> 00:24:54.029
knows better.
486
00:24:54.549 --> 00:24:56.410
Yeah, I think there's something to be said for that,
487
00:24:56.470 --> 00:25:00.529
that what OSS understood, what the British intelligence understood was
488
00:25:00.569 --> 00:25:03.839
that you only needed to figure out Hitler. that he
489
00:25:03.859 --> 00:25:05.559
was going to be the one making decisions at the
490
00:25:05.579 --> 00:25:09.819
end of the day and it made it an easy game. Yeah,
491
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:12.680
if the OSS had tried to figure out Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,
492
00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:14.779
that was going to be a lot trickier because Canaris
493
00:25:14.799 --> 00:25:16.500
knew how to operate in the shadows. He kept his
494
00:25:16.539 --> 00:25:19.980
own counsel and he had trusted advisors, etc. But that
495
00:25:20.039 --> 00:25:23.740
wasn't the OSS's target. Although the kind of the strange
496
00:25:23.789 --> 00:25:26.029
fact of World War II history is that the chief
497
00:25:26.069 --> 00:25:29.380
of German intelligence, the Abwehr, Again, he hated Hitler and
498
00:25:29.390 --> 00:25:31.599
he wanted to work for the allies. And he was
499
00:25:31.619 --> 00:25:34.519
so eager about it that Western intelligence was very suspicious.
500
00:25:35.289 --> 00:25:37.190
They thought this was another trick. And it took them
501
00:25:37.230 --> 00:25:39.289
a good couple of years to come around to this
502
00:25:39.390 --> 00:25:41.369
idea that, no, this guy really does want to help
503
00:25:41.450 --> 00:25:44.730
us out. And there are plenty of signs. There's no
504
00:25:44.789 --> 00:25:46.769
smoking gun proof, but there's a lot of things that
505
00:25:46.829 --> 00:25:49.809
point in the same direction, that the Abwehr desperately wanted
506
00:25:50.029 --> 00:25:53.549
the Western invasion to succeed, so to hold off the Soviets.
507
00:25:54.230 --> 00:25:57.869
And yeah, Hitler's self-confidence not only was blinding him to
508
00:25:57.970 --> 00:26:00.710
his foreign enemies, but it was also blinding him to
509
00:26:00.730 --> 00:26:01.670
being undercut from within.
510
00:26:01.700 --> 00:26:04.480
Yeah, or hearing truth other than his own.
511
00:26:05.160 --> 00:26:05.539
That's right.
512
00:26:05.819 --> 00:26:08.740
So intelligence is more than just spies, right? So it's
513
00:26:08.779 --> 00:26:13.089
a variety of different ways of collection and analysis. But
514
00:26:13.170 --> 00:26:16.450
Jerry and I worked in the espionage, the human spy
515
00:26:16.549 --> 00:26:19.109
part of intelligence, which is just one part of it.
516
00:26:19.119 --> 00:26:22.119
But this specific operation, do you think it was as
517
00:26:22.190 --> 00:26:25.700
successful as it was because it was human intelligence? I mean,
518
00:26:25.740 --> 00:26:29.359
a planted document may mean something. Radio traffic can be fabricated,
519
00:26:29.940 --> 00:26:32.980
all of these different things. And the Allies did use
520
00:26:33.019 --> 00:26:37.279
those various things. But a senior enemy officer apparently breaking
521
00:26:37.319 --> 00:26:40.789
under interrogation may feel different and be more successful. So
522
00:26:40.809 --> 00:26:43.289
what's your sense on the fact that it was a
523
00:26:43.349 --> 00:26:46.380
human intelligence that made it work or not work?
524
00:26:46.920 --> 00:26:50.980
So senior figures within German intelligence began doubting in the
525
00:26:51.019 --> 00:26:54.059
spring of 1944 that an invasion was going to come
526
00:26:54.079 --> 00:26:56.759
through the southeast. And they had a pretty good proof
527
00:26:56.799 --> 00:27:00.200
of it, which was Operation Sparrow flew in at the
528
00:27:00.259 --> 00:27:05.160
exact same moment that Tito, America's ally in Yugoslavia, launched
529
00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:09.769
a major offensive. And then no D-Day happened. And so
530
00:27:09.809 --> 00:27:12.079
German intelligence said, wait a minute, that would have been
531
00:27:12.099 --> 00:27:14.299
the moment that D-Day would have happened here if it
532
00:27:14.339 --> 00:27:16.279
had happened. So I don't think this is going to
533
00:27:16.299 --> 00:27:19.200
happen here. And this is right when the Sparrows are there.
534
00:27:19.920 --> 00:27:23.849
And they're delivering in this masterful way, the story that
535
00:27:23.869 --> 00:27:25.970
this is where the invasion is going to happen. And
536
00:27:26.049 --> 00:27:28.609
so Flora Monduke, so again, he knows how intelligence works.
537
00:27:28.650 --> 00:27:30.250
He was the one who was overseeing this for all
538
00:27:30.269 --> 00:27:33.170
of Southeastern Europe. But he doesn't just tell them, yeah,
539
00:27:33.190 --> 00:27:34.970
this is where the invasion is going to happen. Instead,
540
00:27:35.130 --> 00:27:38.339
he plays this game where he will start saying something,
541
00:27:38.359 --> 00:27:41.240
and then he pretends to censor himself so that his
542
00:27:41.279 --> 00:27:43.779
Nazi interrogators will then pick up that thread. And then
543
00:27:43.819 --> 00:27:46.099
he keeps on trying to move the conversation away from
544
00:27:46.119 --> 00:27:49.019
the Southeast. And so they're putting two and two together
545
00:27:49.079 --> 00:27:51.420
and saying, aha, this is what this guy is hiding,
546
00:27:51.900 --> 00:27:53.519
that this is where the invasion is going to happen.
547
00:27:54.220 --> 00:27:56.400
And then it's only much later in the interrogation where
548
00:27:56.440 --> 00:27:58.740
he can really pretend, okay, now I've really been broken.
549
00:27:58.769 --> 00:28:01.309
And I'm just going to tell you the full facts. Okay,
550
00:28:01.349 --> 00:28:03.730
this is where it's going to happen. So I think
551
00:28:03.769 --> 00:28:06.730
it was just absolutely crucial, because there are lots of
552
00:28:06.779 --> 00:28:09.799
things going on. There's diplomatic signals, there's this bombing going on,
553
00:28:09.819 --> 00:28:12.940
there's the commando missions going on. But despite all of this,
554
00:28:13.220 --> 00:28:16.880
intelligent services, they hire intelligent people. And there were people
555
00:28:16.920 --> 00:28:19.269
there in Germany who are reading the signs and saying, no,
556
00:28:19.329 --> 00:28:21.329
despite all this, I don't think this is where it's
557
00:28:21.349 --> 00:28:24.569
going to happen. And now you have suddenly these three buff,
558
00:28:24.769 --> 00:28:29.250
good looking guys show up. And Germany can say, no,
559
00:28:29.289 --> 00:28:32.440
there's just absolutely no way that the Allies are going
560
00:28:32.460 --> 00:28:35.890
to send we're the Nazis. They know what we'll do
561
00:28:35.930 --> 00:28:38.029
to these people. There's absolutely no way that they're going
562
00:28:38.049 --> 00:28:40.769
to send three people into a situation where they're going
563
00:28:40.789 --> 00:28:41.410
to be tortured.
564
00:28:41.950 --> 00:28:43.589
You just used the word. So let's go to this
565
00:28:43.630 --> 00:28:44.450
dark place, right?
566
00:28:44.869 --> 00:28:48.410
My understanding in CAA training and also for the SEALs
567
00:28:48.509 --> 00:28:52.049
is everybody breaks eventually, right? And so it depends on
568
00:28:52.069 --> 00:28:54.579
what you mean by break. Going in, if you think
569
00:28:54.619 --> 00:28:56.559
you may get captured, you need to be able to
570
00:28:56.599 --> 00:28:59.730
have different levels. Like On one level, it's like, okay,
571
00:28:59.750 --> 00:29:01.769
you can start to give some things and then you
572
00:29:01.789 --> 00:29:03.890
can give a little bit more, but you should really
573
00:29:03.970 --> 00:29:07.839
understand what is the absolute nub of what you don't
574
00:29:07.880 --> 00:29:08.450
want to give up.
575
00:29:08.480 --> 00:29:09.779
What is the most important thing?
576
00:29:10.119 --> 00:29:12.680
And you should pretend to break down and give everything else,
577
00:29:12.720 --> 00:29:15.380
but hold onto that for as long as possible. And
578
00:29:15.460 --> 00:29:18.019
by and large, I was in Iraq or Afghanistan, if
579
00:29:18.039 --> 00:29:20.220
you get caught by the other side or something like that,
580
00:29:20.740 --> 00:29:23.000
within a week or three or four days when they
581
00:29:23.019 --> 00:29:25.009
know you've been taken, depending on what it is, they're
582
00:29:25.029 --> 00:29:27.150
going to change everything anyway that you know, because you're
583
00:29:27.519 --> 00:29:31.720
They understand that you're probably going to give it up anyway.
584
00:29:32.019 --> 00:29:33.410
So what is it?
585
00:29:33.890 --> 00:29:36.950
What happened to them when they were interrogated? Were they tortured?
586
00:29:37.309 --> 00:29:39.670
Did they have rules of engagement that they were like, okay,
587
00:29:39.710 --> 00:29:42.180
this is did they role play this out? This is
588
00:29:42.220 --> 00:29:44.720
how we're going to do this. How did they put
589
00:29:44.759 --> 00:29:47.079
that together? What was the planning mechanism for it?
590
00:29:47.539 --> 00:29:52.089
Like one thing that these sparrows knew and that senior
591
00:29:52.109 --> 00:29:54.750
people in the SOE knew as well is that as
592
00:29:54.809 --> 00:29:57.490
soon as you revealed the information, you were dead. So
593
00:29:57.509 --> 00:30:00.069
the only way to stay alive was to keep the
594
00:30:00.109 --> 00:30:03.309
codes because the Nazis were just absolutely desperate to get
595
00:30:03.329 --> 00:30:06.039
these radio codes. Even if it was weeks that went on,
596
00:30:06.059 --> 00:30:09.339
you know, before they could break the operators, these codes
597
00:30:09.359 --> 00:30:11.059
would still be valuable. They would try to come up
598
00:30:11.099 --> 00:30:12.660
with some excuse. You know, I had to go to
599
00:30:12.700 --> 00:30:14.839
ground or whatever. So I just couldn't radio until now.
600
00:30:15.779 --> 00:30:18.880
But Forman Duke and these other Sparrows knew that the
601
00:30:19.019 --> 00:30:22.440
only way that we can survive is if we keep
602
00:30:22.460 --> 00:30:25.329
these secrets and we make ourselves look valuable. Otherwise, they're
603
00:30:25.349 --> 00:30:26.829
going to shoot us and we're dead. That's part of
604
00:30:26.849 --> 00:30:29.150
the story. The other part of the story was, again,
605
00:30:29.210 --> 00:30:32.309
it was unexpected what happened. Just to briefly say what happened,
606
00:30:32.849 --> 00:30:36.150
Hitler's intelligence services did sniff this out, and he sent
607
00:30:36.289 --> 00:30:42.009
in 100,000 troops into Hungary to stop this conspiracy. So
608
00:30:42.049 --> 00:30:45.019
the Sparrows ended up getting arrested, but now it was
609
00:30:45.039 --> 00:30:49.180
the Gestapo, the real bad guys, not the plate guys
610
00:30:49.480 --> 00:30:53.450
in the Abwehr. And yeah, they were tortured. It was
611
00:30:53.650 --> 00:30:55.359
maybe not the torture that most people would think about
612
00:30:55.420 --> 00:30:57.779
getting the cigarettes put out on them. It was starvation torture.
613
00:30:58.539 --> 00:31:01.380
So they were starved for months. People were executed in
614
00:31:01.420 --> 00:31:04.400
front of them. So mock executions, but not just mock executions.
615
00:31:04.420 --> 00:31:06.960
They would actually shoot people in the head to scare
616
00:31:07.000 --> 00:31:11.299
these Americans into telling what they knew. But Hungarian intelligence
617
00:31:11.420 --> 00:31:15.869
crucially had bought them time. So when this invasion happened,
618
00:31:15.910 --> 00:31:21.059
Hungarian intelligence hid the sparrows for about a week. And
619
00:31:21.180 --> 00:31:23.680
that's when these three guys got together and really rehearsed.
620
00:31:24.420 --> 00:31:26.420
They would take turns where two of them would pretend
621
00:31:26.440 --> 00:31:28.339
to be tough Gestapo guys, and the third would be
622
00:31:28.359 --> 00:31:32.170
the one being interrogated. And they hit upon a common story.
623
00:31:32.529 --> 00:31:35.029
So that was they could reveal anything they'd read from
624
00:31:35.049 --> 00:31:37.670
the New York Times or Time magazine. They knew that
625
00:31:37.730 --> 00:31:40.369
Germans did not get these newspapers right away. And the
626
00:31:40.410 --> 00:31:45.059
idea was that these sparrows could reveal these fresh military secrets.
627
00:31:45.660 --> 00:31:50.230
Days later, German intelligence would confirm them, and that would
628
00:31:50.289 --> 00:31:53.369
then increase their credibility. And that's when they would then
629
00:31:53.410 --> 00:31:56.609
let slip, well, we were on this mission to help Tito.
630
00:31:57.339 --> 00:31:59.140
And that was meant to then create this idea in
631
00:31:59.160 --> 00:32:01.660
their mind, okay, that something really big is doing in
632
00:32:01.680 --> 00:32:04.799
the Southeast. And that's as far as it had gotten
633
00:32:05.160 --> 00:32:09.210
when these Gestapo interrogations were coming along. And at this point,
634
00:32:09.349 --> 00:32:13.410
this German Abwehr, excuse me, Luftwaffe intelligence guy, an anti-Nazi,
635
00:32:14.089 --> 00:32:17.019
the one who the Hungarians initially had arranged for these
636
00:32:17.039 --> 00:32:20.579
sparrows to be interrogated by, he comes into Gestapo, into
637
00:32:20.619 --> 00:32:24.740
this Gestapo prison, starts shouting at Foreman Duke, screaming at him,
638
00:32:24.779 --> 00:32:27.859
you withheld information from me, takes him into a quiet
639
00:32:27.900 --> 00:32:31.740
spot and says, they're going to kill you tomorrow. You
640
00:32:31.759 --> 00:32:34.619
need to ramp this up. So you need to start saying,
641
00:32:35.200 --> 00:32:38.019
suggesting that you really know big things. about where the
642
00:32:38.039 --> 00:32:40.589
invasion is going to happen. So this guy, his name
643
00:32:40.619 --> 00:32:43.069
was Horst Kruger. He later became a major general within
644
00:32:43.089 --> 00:32:45.549
the German military because of Flora Monduk, giving him a
645
00:32:45.569 --> 00:32:48.990
letter of recommendation. But they basically occupied the same position.
646
00:32:49.069 --> 00:32:52.769
So Horst Kruger, the German anti-Nazi intelligence officer, was Luftwaffe
647
00:32:52.789 --> 00:32:56.000
intelligence chief for that region. Flora Monduk was his kind
648
00:32:56.019 --> 00:32:58.599
of other. So these are really smart guys. They know
649
00:32:58.619 --> 00:33:01.119
the region. Both of them hate the Nazis, strangely enough.
650
00:33:01.819 --> 00:33:05.700
And so this German intelligence major tells Flora Monduk that
651
00:33:05.720 --> 00:33:08.170
the only way to save their lives, is to wrap
652
00:33:08.210 --> 00:33:10.579
this up and to make it look like not only
653
00:33:10.599 --> 00:33:13.859
is it a submission to Tito, that would let German
654
00:33:13.880 --> 00:33:16.599
intelligence think, put two and two together and think D-Day
655
00:33:16.640 --> 00:33:18.460
might happen here. He's like, no, you need to be
656
00:33:18.519 --> 00:33:22.140
explicit about this, wrap it up. And then there was
657
00:33:22.160 --> 00:33:25.359
this kind of shocking security failure where the Gestapo let
658
00:33:25.420 --> 00:33:28.019
these three Americans see each other in the hallway as
659
00:33:28.039 --> 00:33:32.200
they were passing through the Gestapo prison. And then Flormann
660
00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:36.059
Dukes quickly told his two comrades, Alfred Suarez and Guy Nunn,
661
00:33:36.079 --> 00:33:37.960
the new plan. You need to make this look big,
662
00:33:38.609 --> 00:33:41.329
that something's really going to happen here. And don't mention
663
00:33:41.349 --> 00:33:44.890
the OSS, don't mention the president, don't mention the State Department.
664
00:33:44.990 --> 00:33:47.349
Make this look like a military mission, but with these
665
00:33:47.390 --> 00:33:50.470
huge stakes. And so then they turned it up to
666
00:33:50.470 --> 00:33:53.880
11 and started suggesting, absolutely, this is where the invasion
667
00:33:53.890 --> 00:33:54.450
was going to happen.
668
00:33:54.730 --> 00:33:59.579
So it wasn't necessarily a cunning plan by Washington necessarily.
669
00:33:59.789 --> 00:34:02.119
A lot of this was on the fly, these guys
670
00:34:02.369 --> 00:34:05.950
figuring out the situation and actually adapting and coming up
671
00:34:05.990 --> 00:34:09.369
with stuff. And so it wasn't a script that they
672
00:34:09.389 --> 00:34:11.889
just followed all the way through. It was essentially because
673
00:34:11.969 --> 00:34:14.449
they thought they understood their situation and they played it.
674
00:34:14.530 --> 00:34:16.250
I mean, one of the remarkable things that you see
675
00:34:16.289 --> 00:34:19.170
looking through these archives is you read these books by
676
00:34:19.190 --> 00:34:21.170
these people who went behind enemy lines and all these
677
00:34:21.190 --> 00:34:23.389
kind of drama and adventures. And then you go back
678
00:34:23.409 --> 00:34:27.699
to the original OSS conspiracy. It's like a paragraph. and
679
00:34:27.719 --> 00:34:29.820
like a really short description of what's going to happen.
680
00:34:30.360 --> 00:34:32.820
And then they expect these individuals to be the ones
681
00:34:32.840 --> 00:34:33.500
who carry it out.
682
00:34:33.860 --> 00:34:36.019
I wish they did that today, because for Christ's sake,
683
00:34:36.039 --> 00:34:38.079
the amount of crap we would get from headquarters.
684
00:34:40.380 --> 00:34:40.570
It is.
685
00:34:40.619 --> 00:34:42.780
I mean, it's a different story today than it was.
686
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:44.460
And I think part of it was OSS was a
687
00:34:44.500 --> 00:34:46.780
military operation. It was run by the U.S. Army. And
688
00:34:46.820 --> 00:34:50.190
of course, the CIA is a civilian operation. So I
689
00:34:50.230 --> 00:34:53.789
think Sometimes military outfits, you can, privates learn who they
690
00:34:53.829 --> 00:34:55.150
need to obey.
691
00:34:55.170 --> 00:34:57.800
CIA didn't come around until 47. There was no CIA until,
692
00:34:57.880 --> 00:35:01.179
I mean, shockingly, the U.S. didn't really have an intelligence organization.
693
00:35:01.199 --> 00:35:06.659
They had multiple military ones until 47. So famously, the
694
00:35:06.739 --> 00:35:10.829
British had almost every German agent, if not every German
695
00:35:10.929 --> 00:35:15.119
agent in the U.K., was turned, Operation Double Cross, right?
696
00:35:15.280 --> 00:35:15.760
XX.
697
00:35:16.260 --> 00:35:19.739
The Committee of 20 was in the UK, was deciding
698
00:35:20.090 --> 00:35:24.050
what basically all German agents were saying. They had, was
699
00:35:24.110 --> 00:35:28.250
it Agent Garbo, John, and Agent, like, Tricycle. But the
700
00:35:28.329 --> 00:35:33.869
British were feeding through German agents, all turned double agents.
701
00:35:34.260 --> 00:35:37.730
They were feeding them back information from the German stuff
702
00:35:37.750 --> 00:35:41.230
they were stealing. Was there any intelligence that the British
703
00:35:41.269 --> 00:35:43.869
were using, like double agents that the British were feeding
704
00:35:43.929 --> 00:35:46.650
back and saying, oh, I was at a cocktail party
705
00:35:46.690 --> 00:35:48.610
and I talked to this colonel and he said, oh,
706
00:35:48.690 --> 00:35:50.159
Operation Sparrow.
707
00:35:49.719 --> 00:35:50.320
Is a go.
708
00:35:50.639 --> 00:35:53.019
We're going in to help Tito. Did they have anything
709
00:35:53.099 --> 00:35:56.159
else that was coming in sideways to bolster? Yeah.
710
00:35:56.579 --> 00:35:59.639
So this is actually like a whole other can of worms.
711
00:35:59.699 --> 00:36:01.340
So the British actually were the ones who were going
712
00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:03.780
to do Sparrow. So this was, they'd set all this
713
00:36:03.860 --> 00:36:08.130
up in 1943. It was called Operation Sandy, and it
714
00:36:08.150 --> 00:36:09.969
was virtually the same mission. They were going to go
715
00:36:10.130 --> 00:36:13.449
in and make the side arrangement with Hungary. And then
716
00:36:13.610 --> 00:36:17.760
Stalin's foreign minister found out about it and confronted the
717
00:36:18.519 --> 00:36:21.920
British foreign minister, Anthony Eden, in late 1943 and just said,
718
00:36:21.960 --> 00:36:24.889
you need to call this off. That's when Alan Dola said, well,
719
00:36:25.050 --> 00:36:27.659
I'll do it then. Don't mind if I do. And
720
00:36:27.719 --> 00:36:32.380
so he went in and there was some interagency rivalry
721
00:36:32.639 --> 00:36:35.960
going on. So the British SOE, they were really pissed
722
00:36:36.059 --> 00:36:39.440
off that this political decision had undercut them. They thought
723
00:36:39.460 --> 00:36:43.130
the Americans were a bunch of cowboys and yokels and
724
00:36:43.349 --> 00:36:46.030
were really uncomfortable, I think, with the Americans doing this.
725
00:36:46.889 --> 00:36:49.269
So really, there were two parallel networks. So the British
726
00:36:49.309 --> 00:36:52.070
had their own sources within Hungary. The Americans had other
727
00:36:52.130 --> 00:36:57.389
sources within Hungary. Operationally, this gave the German spies a
728
00:36:57.429 --> 00:37:00.010
lot more, the pro-Nazi German spies, a lot more opportunities
729
00:37:00.030 --> 00:37:02.190
to find out about it. There were multiple leaks, but
730
00:37:02.369 --> 00:37:04.869
Alan Dulles, a clever guy if there ever was one,
731
00:37:05.730 --> 00:37:09.260
finds out that the Germans knew that this mission was
732
00:37:09.300 --> 00:37:12.599
going in and decided to work it to Allied advantage.
733
00:37:13.530 --> 00:37:17.760
And just a brilliant maneuver there. They started another Operation Sparrow.
734
00:37:17.780 --> 00:37:19.500
It was a fake Operation Sparrow that was being planned
735
00:37:19.519 --> 00:37:21.699
out of Istanbul, but they were dragging their feet. And
736
00:37:21.719 --> 00:37:23.079
the idea was it was going to take a while
737
00:37:23.099 --> 00:37:24.119
to set this up and that they were going to
738
00:37:24.139 --> 00:37:27.400
get the real Operation Sparrow in very quickly. But, yeah,
739
00:37:27.519 --> 00:37:32.800
it's just an extremely it's extremely convoluted. And as a historian,
740
00:37:32.840 --> 00:37:34.340
it was actually it was a kind of a blessing
741
00:37:34.400 --> 00:37:36.480
for me that the Hungarians just burned all the records
742
00:37:36.519 --> 00:37:39.099
when the Nazis came in. So when the Nazi invasion
743
00:37:39.139 --> 00:37:42.949
happened just three days after the Sparrows came in, the
744
00:37:42.969 --> 00:37:46.550
Hungarians just burned everything. So these multiple conspiracies on their ends,
745
00:37:47.369 --> 00:37:49.030
we're never going to know about them. It's dust and
746
00:37:49.110 --> 00:37:52.110
ashes at this point. But yeah, the British were certainly involved.
747
00:37:52.409 --> 00:37:54.639
They knew that the Americans were alive. These three Americans
748
00:37:54.659 --> 00:37:57.500
were alive before the Americans did. They learned that through
749
00:37:57.519 --> 00:37:58.360
their Hungarian sources.
750
00:38:12.010 --> 00:38:15.190
So do you think we could run an Operation Sparrow
751
00:38:15.230 --> 00:38:18.650
today like now with satellites and imagery and smartphones and
752
00:38:18.690 --> 00:38:21.489
AI and signals intelligence, cyber collection, all those kind of things,
753
00:38:21.800 --> 00:38:25.940
ubiquitous surveillance? It would seem to make strategic deception harder.
754
00:38:26.139 --> 00:38:28.579
Or does the overwhelming amount of information actually create more
755
00:38:28.639 --> 00:38:30.960
opportunities to see? Is it harder now or easier now?
756
00:38:31.800 --> 00:38:33.860
I think it's certain things are different. Certain things are
757
00:38:33.880 --> 00:38:36.920
the same. So I think intentions make a difference. Putin
758
00:38:36.940 --> 00:38:39.280
stacking up troops on the Ukrainian border. Is that because
759
00:38:39.320 --> 00:38:42.420
of military exercises or is there an intention to invade?
760
00:38:43.260 --> 00:38:45.760
And I think in 80 years or whenever, when all
761
00:38:45.780 --> 00:38:48.039
the records are open, I think we're probably going to
762
00:38:48.059 --> 00:38:51.570
find out there was human intelligence in Moscow talking to
763
00:38:51.590 --> 00:38:54.809
their CIA others or their MI6 others who are saying, no,
764
00:38:54.829 --> 00:38:57.570
this guy means it. There's a real invasion that's going
765
00:38:57.590 --> 00:39:00.710
to happen. And that's what pictures can't tell you what
766
00:39:00.750 --> 00:39:03.050
somebody is thinking. So I think that's going to be
767
00:39:03.079 --> 00:39:06.679
a permanent part of intelligence studies, no matter how advanced
768
00:39:06.739 --> 00:39:09.059
AI gets. What is the intention of Donald Trump? What's
769
00:39:09.079 --> 00:39:12.699
the intention of Vladimir Putin or of Adolf Hitler or whatever?
770
00:39:13.380 --> 00:39:16.119
What does this person really mean to do? And then trust,
771
00:39:16.159 --> 00:39:17.739
of course, is such an important part of it. And
772
00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:19.909
this is one of the objections to the people who
773
00:39:19.949 --> 00:39:23.250
are trying to cancel Sparrow was, this is a trap. Clearly,
774
00:39:23.289 --> 00:39:26.010
this is the Germans trying to get this valuable team
775
00:39:26.030 --> 00:39:29.489
in there so they can interrogate them. And Dulles is like, no, no, no,
776
00:39:29.630 --> 00:39:33.230
I know these Hungarians. I know them way back. I
777
00:39:33.250 --> 00:39:37.550
can really trust these people. And he was right. Those Hungarians,
778
00:39:37.989 --> 00:39:41.389
they were trustworthy. And, you know, what is this poker game?
779
00:39:41.429 --> 00:39:43.409
And I can say just like in real life poker,
780
00:39:43.429 --> 00:39:44.929
there's some people who are really good at playing it.
781
00:39:45.010 --> 00:39:47.110
And I think there's some people who are really good
782
00:39:47.210 --> 00:39:49.829
at picking up on human intentions and being able to
783
00:39:49.869 --> 00:39:52.469
read body language and the rest of it. And you
784
00:39:52.489 --> 00:39:55.510
can really trust their decisions. There's other people. This was
785
00:39:55.530 --> 00:40:00.139
the famous Dogwood Network that there was a Czechoslovakian American
786
00:40:00.179 --> 00:40:01.389
who was in charge of this, a lot of this
787
00:40:01.409 --> 00:40:04.639
Hungarian stuff. And he was extremely confident that he knew
788
00:40:04.739 --> 00:40:06.440
just who the players were. And in fact, he was
789
00:40:06.460 --> 00:40:09.960
being manipulated by enemy intelligences. And so it's one of
790
00:40:09.980 --> 00:40:12.119
these mysteries at the end of the day. And historically,
791
00:40:12.159 --> 00:40:13.480
I think we could figure out who the real good
792
00:40:13.599 --> 00:40:14.980
ones are and who the bullshitters are.
793
00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:17.260
This is just a basic human thing, right?
794
00:40:17.340 --> 00:40:19.320
If you go back to when I was young, right,
795
00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:23.500
there was the Trojan War. And the Trojans were like, yay,
796
00:40:23.539 --> 00:40:27.949
we won. Agamemnon is leaving, right? And he left us
797
00:40:28.010 --> 00:40:31.750
this gift for the gods. But then Cassandra comes along,
798
00:40:31.789 --> 00:40:35.010
the intelligence officer, and she says, Don't, you know, don't
799
00:40:35.090 --> 00:40:36.530
trust any gift of the Greeks.
800
00:40:36.630 --> 00:40:40.489
Burn the frigging horse. No, the horse is, we know, right?
801
00:40:40.780 --> 00:40:43.489
Agamemnon, he laughed. That's what we want to believe. and
802
00:40:43.530 --> 00:40:45.650
they bring the horse in, and then later they make
803
00:40:45.670 --> 00:40:46.610
a great movie about it.
804
00:40:47.260 --> 00:40:47.880
Decent movie.
805
00:40:48.139 --> 00:40:49.880
Yeah, my wife didn't like it. I liked it.
806
00:40:50.139 --> 00:40:52.519
But yeah, this sort of intelligence thing is a basic
807
00:40:52.559 --> 00:40:55.219
human thing, and I think John's question, unfortunately, is a
808
00:40:55.260 --> 00:40:57.460
good one. Like, how is it that this is going
809
00:40:57.480 --> 00:41:00.059
to go on in the future with AI and tech
810
00:41:00.099 --> 00:41:01.840
and all the rest of this? But I think it
811
00:41:01.900 --> 00:41:03.699
is simply a basic human trait.
812
00:41:04.239 --> 00:41:07.639
One of the really permanent things of enduring value and
813
00:41:07.659 --> 00:41:09.139
one of the things that made me so happy to
814
00:41:09.179 --> 00:41:11.969
read this book was to find out there were these
815
00:41:12.190 --> 00:41:16.170
good German intelligence agents who recognized Hitler as an evil
816
00:41:16.190 --> 00:41:19.199
guy who was leading Germany into ruin. And there was
817
00:41:19.219 --> 00:41:22.579
something about that just couldn't be faked, that over the years,
818
00:41:23.119 --> 00:41:25.440
this is what Hungarian intelligence was figuring out. No, this
819
00:41:25.500 --> 00:41:28.070
guy just really does not like Hitler. Then when they
820
00:41:28.110 --> 00:41:30.869
turned around to the SOE and OSS were saying, I
821
00:41:30.949 --> 00:41:33.730
think at the highest levels of intelligence, I think you're
822
00:41:33.750 --> 00:41:37.010
going to find people and intelligence officers in North Korea
823
00:41:37.030 --> 00:41:39.980
and Iran and Russia and all kinds of places who
824
00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.280
just don't want some bastard starving and killing people. And
825
00:41:44.340 --> 00:41:47.230
they really want what's best for the world. And I
826
00:41:47.269 --> 00:41:49.849
think that's what, like, this is this rare and unusual
827
00:41:49.889 --> 00:41:53.449
place that these top intelligence officers are engaged in where
828
00:41:53.469 --> 00:41:56.639
they can talk to the enemy and they recognize they're
829
00:41:56.659 --> 00:41:58.239
not all the way at the enemy, right? These are
830
00:41:58.280 --> 00:42:00.099
people who are ultimately on the same side as we are.
831
00:42:00.139 --> 00:42:02.420
We want peace and good governance. And I think that's
832
00:42:02.460 --> 00:42:04.280
a permanent resource. You don't want to get rid of
833
00:42:04.300 --> 00:42:04.780
these people.
834
00:42:05.280 --> 00:42:10.340
So having studied the Nazis and German university, I think
835
00:42:10.420 --> 00:42:13.519
most of the anti-Nazi people in the officer corps are
836
00:42:13.829 --> 00:42:16.920
came to that position when it was becoming clear they
837
00:42:16.960 --> 00:42:18.360
were going to lose the frigging war.
838
00:42:18.380 --> 00:42:19.690
In 1939, 1940, there were very few of these guys.
839
00:42:23.809 --> 00:42:26.090
I mean, Canaris was one of these people trying to
840
00:42:26.130 --> 00:42:27.889
warn the West before the war began.
841
00:42:27.929 --> 00:42:31.139
There's a few. There's a few. He was at the top, though.
842
00:42:31.280 --> 00:42:32.559
Yeah, yeah. He's the chief.
843
00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:35.900
We'll have a drink sometime and go through her view
844
00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:39.659
of Iraqi intelligence officers and North Korean intelligence officers.
845
00:42:40.639 --> 00:42:43.550
Believe me, there's bastards out there and there's evil people
846
00:42:43.570 --> 00:42:47.170
in the world. People just go along with it. Absolutely.
847
00:42:47.510 --> 00:42:49.690
But I think, and I see this at UNB teaching
848
00:42:49.769 --> 00:42:53.730
my students, like the very, very best students, they're humanitarians, right?
849
00:42:53.769 --> 00:42:57.030
These are really smart people. And these really smart people realize, no,
850
00:42:57.110 --> 00:42:59.429
we're linked together. And if I really harm that person
851
00:42:59.469 --> 00:43:00.969
over there, it's going to go back to harm me.
852
00:43:01.139 --> 00:43:04.579
Admiral Canaris, before the war started, he talked to his
853
00:43:04.599 --> 00:43:07.340
friends in Hungarian military intelligence. He just said, just sit
854
00:43:07.380 --> 00:43:11.309
this war out. Do not join Hitler. And the Hungarian
855
00:43:11.329 --> 00:43:14.389
leader ignored their advice and joined Hitler. So it was
856
00:43:14.429 --> 00:43:16.409
pretty clear that Canaris was on the right team from
857
00:43:16.429 --> 00:43:20.070
the beginning. Absolutely, you're right. There were some really nasty
858
00:43:20.110 --> 00:43:22.760
people within German intelligence who switched when they saw the
859
00:43:22.780 --> 00:43:25.119
Americans or the Soviet troops coming in. But there were
860
00:43:25.139 --> 00:43:28.019
also good people there. And the guy, the German officer
861
00:43:28.420 --> 00:43:32.320
who saved the Sparrows were dead. The Gestapo had the signature.
862
00:43:32.340 --> 00:43:35.110
They were dead tomorrow. and a German intelligence officer came
863
00:43:35.130 --> 00:43:36.789
in and saved their lives. I don't think you can
864
00:43:36.849 --> 00:43:39.039
count on meeting these people. Luck was part of it,
865
00:43:39.190 --> 00:43:42.590
but I still retain this faith that the very smartest
866
00:43:42.610 --> 00:43:44.889
and the very best people, they're also the ones who
867
00:43:45.090 --> 00:43:45.809
tend to have good hearts.
868
00:43:46.289 --> 00:43:49.610
So this operation was taking place towards the end of
869
00:43:49.659 --> 00:43:52.079
the war, right? And it was part of it. So
870
00:43:52.460 --> 00:43:55.519
in a sense, how much of this bleeds over into
871
00:43:55.559 --> 00:43:57.739
the Cold War? Because at the same time, there's another
872
00:43:57.800 --> 00:44:01.739
fascinating OSS story unfolding today. in a region right next
873
00:44:01.780 --> 00:44:05.739
door in Romania. So Frank Wisner arrives in Romania in
874
00:44:05.739 --> 00:44:09.300
1944 and becomes alarmed, not so much by the Germans,
875
00:44:09.320 --> 00:44:11.269
but what the Soviet Union is doing as the Red
876
00:44:11.329 --> 00:44:14.909
Army moves into Eastern Europe. So are Sparrow and what
877
00:44:14.949 --> 00:44:17.449
Wisner is doing in Romania two snapshots of a moment
878
00:44:17.469 --> 00:44:20.010
of World War II that's already starting to turn towards
879
00:44:20.050 --> 00:44:20.730
the Cold War?
880
00:44:20.909 --> 00:44:22.989
The Cold War was already on at this point. The
881
00:44:23.130 --> 00:44:25.969
Allies at this point, the Americans, after seeing what happened
882
00:44:25.989 --> 00:44:29.860
to Sandy, were not being forthcoming with the Soviets about
883
00:44:29.900 --> 00:44:32.519
what was happening. They were telling them what they needed
884
00:44:32.559 --> 00:44:36.139
to know. And Alan Dulles, the lawyer, very carefully set
885
00:44:36.179 --> 00:44:38.880
this up because he saw that the legalistic way that
886
00:44:38.920 --> 00:44:41.980
Moscow had gotten Sandy canceled was because there was a
887
00:44:42.019 --> 00:44:44.909
political dimension and all the great powers needed to sit
888
00:44:44.949 --> 00:44:47.989
together for political decisions. So Alan Dulles said, fine, this
889
00:44:48.030 --> 00:44:50.170
has nothing to do with politics. This is a pure
890
00:44:50.250 --> 00:44:54.469
military operation. Repeat after me, pure military operation. And Flora
891
00:44:54.489 --> 00:44:56.769
Maduk and the other guys again and again repeated it.
892
00:44:56.789 --> 00:44:58.730
You saw this in the documents before they left. This
893
00:44:58.789 --> 00:45:01.199
is a military operation. which means we don't have to
894
00:45:01.219 --> 00:45:03.940
tell the Soviets about it. There's some dark speculation out
895
00:45:03.980 --> 00:45:07.739
there that the Soviets were telling the Nazis about these
896
00:45:07.800 --> 00:45:10.099
American plots. I've never seen any evidence of this, but
897
00:45:10.179 --> 00:45:12.719
it just goes to show the kind of games that
898
00:45:12.760 --> 00:45:16.679
were being played. But really, the break came already in
899
00:45:16.679 --> 00:45:19.869
1943 when the Allies saw that the Soviets were cultivating
900
00:45:19.929 --> 00:45:22.769
communists in Italy, and they were saying, you broke the rules. Fine,
901
00:45:22.809 --> 00:45:23.909
if you're going to break the rules, I'm going to
902
00:45:23.949 --> 00:45:28.409
break the rules, et cetera. And then the Germans... were
903
00:45:28.449 --> 00:45:32.440
just desperate, both at the anti-Nazi, but also at the
904
00:45:32.460 --> 00:45:35.559
pro-Nazi levels, to be exploiting these splits between the Soviets
905
00:45:36.280 --> 00:45:40.739
and the Americans. And there was enormous paranoia in the
906
00:45:40.800 --> 00:45:44.699
OSS that the Soviets were going to join Hitler.
907
00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:48.610
Join them again, by the way. They started the war together,
908
00:45:48.730 --> 00:45:50.989
dividing Poland up, I'll just say. But I do want
909
00:45:51.010 --> 00:45:53.530
to come back to Hungary just for a second, because
910
00:45:53.550 --> 00:45:57.050
there's the famous case of Roald Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat,
911
00:45:57.610 --> 00:46:00.510
who was in Hungary at the same time, I assume,
912
00:46:00.530 --> 00:46:05.670
as the Sparrows, and he was liberating and saving Hungarian Jews,
913
00:46:05.969 --> 00:46:09.010
tens of thousands of them. And the Soviets rolled in,
914
00:46:09.030 --> 00:46:13.619
arrested him as a spy for saving, because saving Soviet Jews,
915
00:46:13.900 --> 00:46:16.559
working for the Swedish, I'm not sure, Raullenberg, whether he
916
00:46:16.599 --> 00:46:18.900
had any relationship with the British or the Americans, I
917
00:46:18.900 --> 00:46:20.849
don't think he did. But he may have through the
918
00:46:20.889 --> 00:46:24.480
Jewish community and providing money. But then the Soviets arrested
919
00:46:24.539 --> 00:46:27.480
him and then executed him. We're not even really sure.
920
00:46:27.659 --> 00:46:29.179
Years later in a gulag.
921
00:46:29.599 --> 00:46:33.719
So I think clearly espionage in the Cold War had
922
00:46:33.980 --> 00:46:36.869
already begun, certainly in Hungary before the end of the
923
00:46:36.929 --> 00:46:38.650
war in a really vicious kind of way.
924
00:46:38.949 --> 00:46:41.230
Did Sparrow bump into Roe Wallenberg and what he was
925
00:46:41.269 --> 00:46:41.829
doing at all?
926
00:46:42.510 --> 00:46:45.460
So they were arrested immediately. Before they made any contact.
927
00:46:45.500 --> 00:46:48.860
So they went in March 16th and then were arrested
928
00:46:48.900 --> 00:46:51.119
immediately according to this plan. But at this point, the
929
00:46:51.139 --> 00:46:54.320
Hungarians were in charge. So there were no deportations going on.
930
00:46:54.820 --> 00:46:57.900
And then the Germans come in and arrest them and
931
00:46:57.920 --> 00:47:00.739
then implement the Holocaust. So they did not have an
932
00:47:00.780 --> 00:47:05.280
immediate part in this. However, later SOE and OSS operations
933
00:47:05.320 --> 00:47:09.460
were going in with the manifest to save downed Allied
934
00:47:09.500 --> 00:47:13.150
airmen and Jews. There were a few, just a fascinating story.
935
00:47:13.170 --> 00:47:16.860
They're in Budapest, these guys fighting the Nazis while the
936
00:47:16.880 --> 00:47:19.199
Holocaust is going on and while these diplomatic things are
937
00:47:19.219 --> 00:47:21.739
going on. You know, the Soviets coming up, again, I've
938
00:47:21.760 --> 00:47:24.000
looked at these documents and this is as they're coming
939
00:47:24.019 --> 00:47:28.119
in from the east. And it's not clear that they're
940
00:47:28.320 --> 00:47:31.840
targeting these OSS and SOE agents. There are these OSS
941
00:47:31.860 --> 00:47:34.460
and SOE agents who turn themselves over to the Russians. Wow,
942
00:47:34.500 --> 00:47:36.960
we drank lots of vodka together. This is a great guy.
943
00:47:37.099 --> 00:47:39.679
This Ivan that I'm hanging out with. And other times,
944
00:47:40.099 --> 00:47:42.219
these Soviet officers come in and just kill them all.
945
00:47:42.449 --> 00:47:43.949
And I think it was just the luck of the
946
00:47:43.969 --> 00:47:45.829
draw of the officer that you got. I don't think
947
00:47:45.849 --> 00:47:48.170
this was necessarily coming from Stalin. So there were some
948
00:47:48.230 --> 00:47:51.550
OSS officers who, while these reports were coming in about
949
00:47:51.590 --> 00:47:53.670
other OSS officers getting killed, were like, no, the Russians
950
00:47:53.730 --> 00:47:55.840
are great. But I don't think that was a Russian conspiracy.
951
00:47:55.860 --> 00:47:57.710
I think it was just the local Russian officer who
952
00:47:57.730 --> 00:48:00.510
took the town, whether he was decent or not. But yeah,
953
00:48:01.050 --> 00:48:03.949
in the Russians' defense, they'd had just tremendous brutality. So
954
00:48:03.969 --> 00:48:06.409
the Nazis came in, were just slaughtering millions of Russians.
955
00:48:07.070 --> 00:48:08.659
And they went to Germany and they just, that was
956
00:48:08.679 --> 00:48:11.340
their idea, was revenge. They weren't thinking there might be
957
00:48:11.380 --> 00:48:13.079
some good guys in here. It was, we'll kill them
958
00:48:13.099 --> 00:48:14.679
all and let God sort it out kind of thing.
959
00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:16.699
So it does seem that there are some lessons to
960
00:48:16.719 --> 00:48:20.369
learn on deception and disinformation and these type of things.
961
00:48:21.039 --> 00:48:22.780
as we go forward, and one of them is to
962
00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:26.159
understand your own country. What is it that we strongly
963
00:48:26.239 --> 00:48:30.239
believe that the other side could play against? I go
964
00:48:30.280 --> 00:48:34.219
back to our government. If Donald Trump is convinced that
965
00:48:34.659 --> 00:48:37.940
our elections are rigged against him, if I'm a Chinese
966
00:48:37.980 --> 00:48:40.929
or a Russian or other intelligence officer, I'm like, I
967
00:48:40.969 --> 00:48:43.170
can play this game all day long. I can put
968
00:48:43.230 --> 00:48:46.230
little pieces of information in to appeal to him and
969
00:48:46.389 --> 00:48:50.059
against the other people I did. So disinformation, deception, is
970
00:48:50.119 --> 00:48:52.460
a game that was played well by, I think, the
971
00:48:52.599 --> 00:48:55.539
British and Americans in World War II, but is even
972
00:48:55.599 --> 00:48:58.320
better perhaps today. So it's something I think we've got
973
00:48:58.340 --> 00:49:02.719
to learn. And conspiracy theories and spinning conspiracy theories are
974
00:49:02.760 --> 00:49:03.679
very real things.
975
00:49:04.019 --> 00:49:06.719
One of the fascinating things I saw in Sparrow was,
976
00:49:06.760 --> 00:49:08.659
I mean, it's not just one or two or three
977
00:49:08.699 --> 00:49:11.920
conspiracy theories, but there were like dozens of conspiracy theories
978
00:49:11.980 --> 00:49:14.639
colliding at the same time. There's multiple factions of the
979
00:49:14.679 --> 00:49:17.539
Hungarians and the Germans or the Russians and the Americans
980
00:49:17.579 --> 00:49:20.199
and the British. There's conspiracies out there. And it turns
981
00:49:20.239 --> 00:49:21.820
out some of them are put together by the good
982
00:49:21.840 --> 00:49:23.219
guys and some of them are put together by the
983
00:49:23.260 --> 00:49:26.199
bad guys. And sometimes the good guys are cross purposes
984
00:49:26.219 --> 00:49:26.760
to each other.
985
00:49:26.780 --> 00:49:30.170
I tend not to believe in conspiracy theories, but I
986
00:49:30.369 --> 00:49:34.829
often believe in conspiracies, especially conspiracies to make conspiracy theories.
987
00:49:34.869 --> 00:49:38.269
And I think the Russians and malign influence campaign were
988
00:49:38.289 --> 00:49:39.030
target number one.
989
00:49:39.820 --> 00:49:43.019
In fact, if you pick up the newspapers, you would
990
00:49:43.039 --> 00:49:45.420
have thought, in spring 1944, you would have thought, reading
991
00:49:45.440 --> 00:49:47.610
in New York or Chicago or Hawaii, you'd be like, oh,
992
00:49:47.639 --> 00:49:50.829
we're about to attack through the Balkans. It's clear that's
993
00:49:50.849 --> 00:49:53.690
what we're gearing up to do. Where the troops are
994
00:49:53.710 --> 00:49:55.730
being built up, there are great big maps in the
995
00:49:55.769 --> 00:49:58.530
newspapers showing attack vectors through southeastern Europe.
996
00:49:59.570 --> 00:49:59.849
Why?
997
00:49:59.909 --> 00:50:02.179
Because, hey, German intelligence was going to be reading these
998
00:50:02.199 --> 00:50:04.579
same newspapers that we did. Anybody in America would have
999
00:50:04.619 --> 00:50:06.820
been like, I have a conspiracy theory that secretly, no,
1000
00:50:06.860 --> 00:50:07.960
it's not going to happen here. It's going to be
1001
00:50:07.980 --> 00:50:11.699
a Normandy inset. It blindsided everybody except for the central planners.
1002
00:50:11.980 --> 00:50:14.760
We are glad you did that research and people should
1003
00:50:14.840 --> 00:50:18.989
pick up Operation Sparrow. And read it. And are there
1004
00:50:19.050 --> 00:50:21.110
any other things that you're working on that people should
1005
00:50:21.150 --> 00:50:22.550
look for, or either articles or books?
1006
00:50:23.190 --> 00:50:26.409
If your readers like Operation Sparrow, I'd encourage them to
1007
00:50:26.449 --> 00:50:29.530
check out Cracking the Nazi Code. But I'd also encourage
1008
00:50:29.570 --> 00:50:31.989
them to keep watching your podcast. I've learned a lot
1009
00:50:32.030 --> 00:50:34.510
from it. So it's been really wonderful. And my wife
1010
00:50:34.570 --> 00:50:36.090
each evening says, hey, are we going to watch some
1011
00:50:36.139 --> 00:50:37.409
more of Mission Implausible?
1012
00:50:37.639 --> 00:50:39.340
I want to go out with a quote, if I can.
1013
00:50:39.619 --> 00:50:42.159
So it's from Churchill. Yeah. In wartime.
1014
00:50:42.599 --> 00:50:46.920
Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by.
1015
00:50:46.800 --> 00:50:48.460
A bodyguard of lies.
1016
00:50:48.679 --> 00:50:49.380
Classical.
1017
00:50:49.739 --> 00:50:52.519
I couldn't come up with anything like that, but Winston Churchill.
1018
00:50:53.000 --> 00:50:56.179
Would, so.
1019
00:50:56.320 --> 00:51:01.409
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Seifer,
1020
00:51:01.829 --> 00:51:03.050
and Jonathan Stern.
1021
00:51:03.170 --> 00:51:05.489
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
1022
00:51:05.769 --> 00:51:09.489
Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable
1023
00:51:09.550 --> 00:51:11.550
Pictures for iHeart Podcasts.