February 23, 2013 • 43 mins
Psst. You want to know how governments and corporations get the drop on one another? The frontline of intelligence is populated by spies. Learn about how spies get and transfer information (and why they do it) in this episode of Stuff You Should Know.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck
Bryant in fast motion. Yeah. Um, and that makes us
(00:21):
the super fast episode of Stuff you Should Know on
spots super fast. It's going to be, um, not short.
We're just gonna be talking really fast like this pretty
much the whole time. I can pick up will you
all right? Uh? Yeah, spies like us? Yeah? Did you
like that movie? I did. I was raised too, just
(00:45):
like Chevy Chase really by whom my dad really yeah. Um,
and I don't think my mom liked him either, but
my dad definitely thought he was a jerk. His word
was kind of a jerk and um yeah, apparently I
read um this Saturday Night Live biography about like the show.
(01:06):
It's pretty interesting. Um and they talked about how he
was the first one to um be able to develop
a cocaine habit because he was the first one to
start getting paid and apparently he didn't share really, so
that made him a jerk. I guess I don't think
that's one. My dad thought he was a jerk anyway.
I all apologies to Mr Chase if you listen to this.
(01:27):
I was I have always been a big man, have you. Yeah,
and I was very saddened when he his career kind
of faltered and I missed Chevy Chase. Well, okay, he's
on TV now though he's he's on the TV the community, right, Yeah,
is that it? He was on it. I don't know
if he still is, but he wants Yeah. I don't either. Um,
but no, I hated Fletch. I'm just gonna come out
(01:48):
and say, I hate that movie Fletch. I hate Fletch two,
I hate Fletch eight, I hate all the Fletches. I
think it's a stupid movie. And I hate Fletch. But
I did like funny far a lot. That's weird that
you hated Fledg. I hated Fletch. I still hate Fletch.
You can show me Fletch right now. I'd be like,
this is stupid, turn it off, so funny, so chuck. Yes, Uh,
(02:12):
you know a little bit about spies. I believe you
had a bit of a story to share with everyone.
A little bit. I mean, I was obviously spy. Stories
of real life spies are kind of fun and Um,
to me, the best all time story spy, real true
life spy story was the story of Christopher Boyce and
Dalton Lee The Falcon and the Snowman. Oh yeah, I've
(02:34):
never seen that movie of you. Yeah, it's a good yeah,
really good Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn right, and um,
that is the story of these two guys who two
youngsters living in southern California, and Boyce was hired by
his father I think as a guard at an aerospace
firm called t RW Incorporated, and may um that gave
(02:55):
him access to a lot of U c. I A.
Documents that that we're working with the aerospace firm, they
were drug dudes. So he was like, hey, we can
raise like make a lot of money selling these secrets
to the Soviets down in Mexico City at their embassy,
make money for drugs to run a drug operation. And
(03:15):
they did so for like a year successfully a year
from seventy six to seventy seven. And we're caught, of course,
and jailed for espionage. And I had a little trouble
for some reason finding out the current status of Lee.
I did find out that boys actually escaped from prison
in nineteen eighty from Lompoc was picked up again in
(03:37):
eight one, I think, and then was released in two
thousand three and lives I think in the San Francisco area.
I've got this awesome l A Times article that I'm
going to read tonight for fun because it didn't have
a chance to read it read. Yeah, it's one of
those like fifteen page articles. His big interview he did
after he got released. But I can't find out what
(03:57):
happened to Lee aside from a room that he was
eventually released and Sean Penn hired him as his personal assistant,
and I don't know if that's true. Weird, I can't
verify that. I understand Sean Penn's like the real deal
when it comes to like um combating poverty in Haiti.
He's like in there in the trenches every day. He
(04:19):
is crazy. Some people think he's a jerk. I happen
to like the guy. I like the guy a lot.
Um So, Chuck, how did the Falcon and the Snowman
become spies? They were working or or Voice was working
at a at an aerospace firm as a night guard
and had access to sensitive documents. So why did he
start to make money. Okay, so that's actually one of
(04:43):
the main ways that a spy is recruited. Yeah, there's, um,
there's several nice intro by the way, dude, thank you.
That makes two times they are changing. Give me you're
a punch card. Okay, Um, the the There are a
few ways for a person become a spy. Probably the
most um straightforward way is to maybe join the army,
(05:05):
Army intelligence, joined the CIA right out of college, and
basically just join your country's intelligence agency, be trained and
then sent into the field, maybe posing as a diplomat
or being a diplomat. Yeah, apparently the line is very
um fuzzy between a person who's actually a diplomat and
a diplomat who's a spy. Really yeah, it's like one
(05:27):
and the same. I mean, they're still performing the same functions.
They have a job as a diplomat, but they're also
just spying too. Um and what are they I guess
what's the basis of spying? Well, they're what they're after obviously,
and this is the no brainer stuff, But we always
have to point it out there after any valuable information
(05:48):
to give to the country that they're working for, any
kind of it's it's obviously usually military secrets, although we
will talk a little bit later about corporate spine, which
is huge yeah these days. Oh um, but you know,
typically people with access to these uh, either offices or
high ranking officials. Um, they do have recruiters that go out,
(06:11):
like you said, they'll then go a little money in
front of your face if they think that a person
is someone they can turn right, like, hey, you're not
happy with your own country. We know this, you want
to sell him out? Or we know you really like
money and you're kind of unscrupulous. Do you want to
sell him out? Right? Or we know your mother needs
(06:32):
surgery and your government insurance although the gold standard of
healthcare is American healthcare. It's part of the American system.
Therefore it's not going to really cover the surgery. So
here's some money, or hey, mom, the surgery. You want
a movie made after you about you, after you're executed.
You want to be famous, You want to feel important
(06:53):
because you're nobody. You want to be somebody once you
dig up some secrets for us, right, And that's actually
like a really good um recruiting tool or recruiting method
is to identify somebody who has a menial job, some
sort of file clerk, but has access to really sensitive information. Exactly,
go in and, like you said, pump them up. I mean,
I don't think you would actually say you're a nobody.
(07:15):
You would maybe promise the um making them a somebody.
You have to break him down before you build them
back up, you know, it depends, It depends on what
you're trying to do. UM. So those are the Oh
did you touch on ideological um disillusionment with your home country? Yeah,
a little bit, just you know, like communism obviously was
(07:35):
a big thing. Uh, yeah, we covered in McCarthyism. Yeah,
like the Rosenberg's they were at the very least communist
sympathizers who supposedly allegedly spied for the for the Communists.
By the way, did you see that email we got
about that. No, we got an email from a guy
in the Air Force that said there was a great
interview with I can't remember who it was that basically
(07:57):
said the Rosenberg's did have a lot more to do
with it than like at first it was like, oh,
they're guilty, guilty. Then later on, as we pointed out,
they're like, you know, they didn't exactly sell the deepest
dark kits of secrets and maybe they were made an
example of but then apparently more recent enew does implicate
them a little bit more to the extent that their
family even was like, oh, it's so weird for McCarthy
(08:19):
to be vindicated. Yeah, um, so you've got blackmail too.
Is a way of getting people to do what you want, Like,
we have these photos of you that you don't want published,
Like you clearly have a lampshade on your head, right,
and now you have to be a spy for US. Um.
And then once you once you have the person agreeing
(08:40):
to spy. Oh there's also walk ins too, and I
think that might have been voices. Deal was an opportunist
who was like, Hey, I want to be a spy.
Who do I call about that? Exactly? And usually if
you're going to be a spy, um, you identify a
country who's probably got the most money or the most
desire for the information you have, and then you go
to their local embassy. I guess i'd be a good
(09:02):
way to do it. Yeah, you just walk right in.
But if you are that country's diplomat slash spies working
at the embassy, you're going to be immediately suspicious of
someone like that. Apparently the US had a Russian defector.
I can't remember. It may have been yeah, it may
have been the guy who's mentioned um no, oh like Penkovsky. Penkovsky. Um,
(09:29):
he was a Russian general. I believe Soviet general was
with the KGB, and I think he he was a
walk in. Wow, he made a secret trip to the
US and over years and years and years, like he
finally gained the trust of the Americans. He's like, look,
this is legitimate information stuff. Yeah. Ok yeah, well that
(09:49):
was like the height of spied them not quite so okay, yeah,
we'll get to that later. I read a recent article
that I can't wait. Yeah, there's like a lot more
going on now then you might believe. All right, so
you have a paid, blackmailed um or ideologically disenchanted spy.
Sure who you trust and you assign them a person
(10:12):
name a Controller Harvey Kitel probably yeah, yeah, yeah, Controller
is the person who I think they're They're just like
your only contact basically, right, who you're going to be
given the information to, yeah, or getting information or instructions from.
There's going to be one person you meet. Yeah, you
don't want a large You don't want your spy to
(10:34):
know a lot of people because they'll be compromised. There's
not a Christmas party, you know they should though, no
they shouldn't. They'd all to sit around and like look
at each other very wearily. There they don't make eye contact. Um.
The the the reason why they do this is called compartmentalization. Um,
because if the spy is caught, there's only so much
(10:54):
information they can give. Like, well, I was meeting a
Mr Orange that may or may not be his real name.
I never really saw his face and actually I never
met him. It was all handoff stuff park bench. Well
you're talking about, we might as well go ahead and
cover that. The drop, the dead drop, the dead drop
you see it in movies. Apparently it's real. You'll you'll
(11:17):
drop something in a public place very uh, nonchalantly, and
then send the signal that it's you know, been dropped
to your controller. Then they will go to the little
hidden loose brick in the public park wall and fish
out the micro film. Yeah, the micro film, the micro
dot maybe. Uh? What what has always struck me about
(11:41):
spy work or articles on spies and especially the gadgets
and technology they use. I always just assumed it's like
twenty years out of date. Yeah, me too. I was
reading this book called Veil by Robert Woodward, an excellent
book about like Reagan's Secret Wars, really good book. And
they're talking about this this light beam, I guess, a
(12:04):
laser that you can point at a window and it
measures the vibrations from a conversation um and translates them
into audio. So it's an eavesdropping device that they were
using in the early sixties. You're talking about the laser emacs.
I am, well, they have these now. I'm sure when
that there are different ones. But yeah, it's an invisible
(12:27):
infrared beam hits the window that and records the vibrations,
filters out all the gobbledygook, and then amplifies it and
records it. It's amazing and it's been around since the sixties.
What do you think they're doing now, Well, this is
the one that's available now, so it's probably just this slicker,
better version. Well, in the article I read too on
(12:47):
modern spy equipment, basically said just that is it's a
lot of the same stuff. It's just faster and smaller,
and uh, you know, digital, what's that one called this
is called the laser or EMACS. And the cool thing
is when you go to their website it said as
used by David Letterman and Jay Leno and Fox five Undercover. Weird. Yeah,
(13:12):
I guess they I don't know. I guess they've done
little bits where they spy on people. Well, I don't know.
Jay Leno spied on an NBC board meeting when they
were trying to figure out whether they we go with
Letterman or him to release Carson. Yeah, you got to
see that movie. I've seen it. I don't remember that though. Yeah.
Well he was just sitting in another room, like taking notes,
like in a closet right now, exactly. Okay, let's get
(13:34):
back to it. Man. You you have a controller, Your
spy is compartmentalized very much. Before you start doing dead
drops and everything, you don't want to get ahead of
yourself because your spy is gonna get greased. You have
to first create a cover and support it with the legend, right,
so it covers just like your secret identity or your
false identity, and then the legend is the backstory around it. Yeah,
(13:56):
and he's to be detailed and thorough right. So for example, um,
you are a UH. If you're into fishing, I think
the article uses it's a good good example. Um, or
you let your character is your cover is right, Um,
you're going to have fishing gear. And if you have
a that's part of the legend. You're gonna have fishing.
The part the legend is that you are into fishing,
(14:19):
your fly fisherman big time. So then at your house,
your apartment, whatever that's set up for you, you're gonna
have fishing equipment. And if you're good, it's going to
be used fishing equipment and it's going to be of
a certain um quality depending on whether your cover is
frugal or you know, kind of spendy or likes you know,
the best of the best. That's a good point about us.
(14:40):
Didn't even think about that. Oh yeah, that'd be like
a movie thing is the guy sees the apply fishing
gear and it's got a tag on it or something
or boom or both. Yeah. Yeah. Um. The if you are,
say a Russian accountant posing as a Russian accountant, you
probably should know the ins and outs of Russian tax law. Sure. Um.
(15:04):
You should also probably speak Russian with a Russian accent.
From the UH from the region that you're supposedly from
that your covers from. Yeah, you saw No Way Out? Right?
Is that the one with Kevin? Uh? What's his face? Yeah? No,
I didn't. Oh that's a good one. I've heard that
was like a couple of years ahead of my I
(15:24):
think I was watching Disorderlies while my family went and
saw No Way Out. Uh, I'm not gonna ruin that one. Actually,
I'm a spoiler guy, usually for movies that are like
fifteen years old. But um, I'm gonna leave that one
to the to the people to go see it, to
rent it or whatever, because it's got a nice little twist.
Um what else, chuck um. Oh, this is not a
(15:47):
quick thing. No, no, no. If you establish a cover,
it takes years to establish a cover. You're not gonna
waltz into the Russian uh, the Russian embassy and say hey,
I'm just a Russian accountant and where are your documents?
This is not a small camera in my tie. It
takes a long time, and people go it's like being
(16:08):
an undercover cop. You have to establish his trust over
a period of months and years. Even yeah, um, and
you're going to in the meantime be performing accounting. Yeah,
for as part of your business an you better be
good ahead, yeah, or the toast yeah. Or you could
go to jail for tax fraud. Wouldn't that be surprising?
That would definitely help your cover though, wouldn't you to
(16:30):
go to prison for the for the state? Yeah? Sure. Uh.
You are not going to be memorizing things, although in
a pinch, I'm sure they're probably trained to memorize a
certain amount of information. But what you really want to do,
and it is like in the movies, is to make
tiny little copies photo copies or photographs of sensitive documents
(16:53):
and relay those to your controller and then that ends
up on the micro film, the micro dot um or
it could even just you could make copies if you
are like that file clerk who has regular routine access
to that information, just make copies of it and take
it out of there. Yeah. And they had the little
handheld copiers. I've seeing those. Those are cool. Yeah, those
(17:14):
are pretty cool. What you don't want to do is
take anything, no, because then somebody might notice that exactly
the documents are missing, right, But you don't have to
listen to us. Your controller is going to tell you
how he or she wants that the information. Sure, and
there are plenty of female spies, so we definitely. UM
don't mean to say he a lot, but we're dudes.
(17:36):
I said here she yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Um,
I mean Valerie Plain she was a spy. Yeah, yeah,
very true. Um, it's not just on the ground either,
It's not just human spies. We've been using satellites for years,
since the nineteen sixty I believe. And the fact of
the show for me is that before the digital age,
(17:56):
the satellite would take photographs and I guess dropped them,
have developed them and drop them in a bucket in
the ocean. I think it was. It was undeveloped, the
film develop it. Yeah, it's like a photo mat up there. Yeah,
there's like some stoner up there inside developing pictures. Remember
the photo mat. What a bygone era that is. And
(18:19):
those stoners where are they working now? Not a video stores,
I think, so that's where I always see them they are. Um,
so they don't obviously have to drop them in the
ocean any longer. They can just relay them digitally and
they've actually been doing that since nine Yeah that's pretty cool.
(18:41):
So long before we were taking digital photos the government
and sending them wirelessly. Yeah, over radio. I think they
did it. Well, that's what wireless is. Radio. It's pretty
amazing it is. Um. So again that kind of proves
my point though, Chuck, I mean, like, what are we
on too? Now? I know it's faster, smaller, better, there's
got to be some cool stuff that like wasn't around
(19:02):
before though. Well, spy planes back in the day, um
were large, like the U two spy plane and it
would have to fly right over the enemy. These days,
of course, we have drones flying them while I'm not
flying themselves, but unmanned drones doing the dirty work, all
sorts of very dirty dirty work. That's right. Um. All
(19:24):
of this, Chuck is called technological intelligence or tech int.
I'll bet everybody at your work thinks you're a jackass
if you call it tech int. The CIA, they're like,
it's t I dude, right exactly, um, Or if you
want to just really be in on this link, just
t just t um. So you've got spy planes technically
(19:47):
at one point where t um satellites which now apparently
can read a headline on a newspaper. That's yeah, Well
you see Google earth. Yeah, I mean my car and
my driveway was on it, and that was a little creepy.
I know, I had bird poop on the roof. Um,
there's like wire taps that whole laser listening listening device.
(20:11):
Do you do you want to talk about some more. Uh.
They have seismic equipment to detect nuclear testing. They have
underwater sensors to find things like submarines. Yeah, which is
a big deal. Again in Veil, which by the way,
I recommend um, they were talking about how back in
the day to eavesdrop on Russian cables, like the Soviets
(20:34):
didn't encrypt all of their stuff on certain cables that
were transmitted underwater, especially once that were close to the motherland, right,
So the US would send subs um to go and
clamp onto these um cables and listen for a few days,
(20:54):
and they were like right off the coast of the
USS are really dangerous work. And then they finally made
a recorder that they could go clamp on, drop off
and then leave for like a month or six months
or whatever, and then come back and get it. So
there's only like two windows where it was really scary,
rather than several days just having to sit there quietly
on the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. Uh, this isn't
(21:16):
new stuff. Um, that evolution of spy tools article I
read was like, have you ever read the Art of War?
What was it? Sun sues? So, Sun sue and uh
there are more than a hundred references to spies an
espionage intelligence gathering in the Art of War. I didn't know.
(21:36):
That is very old. And Uh. In the Revolutionary War
they would use invisible inc called Jay's Sympathetic stain was
apparently the best one to use, and they still uh
use or until recently, they still used invisible ink to
transmit messages. It's crazy. You heat up certain things and
(22:00):
it will appear, or hold it under certain light. Lemon juice.
That's the old little crafty trick. How kind of this
ugly burnt sienna color doesn't But also if you look
at it, you can be like, oh, it's written in
lemon juice. I can see without even just by moving
the paper a little bit. I don't think it's real
bona fide spy stuff. Apparently the Spartans would spy and
(22:24):
they had a device called the skytail, and uh it
was a long slender rod which was wrapped with a
thin strip of papyrus, and the message was written on
the wrapping uh, and it was passed on to a
messenger and apparently it would could only be read if
it was rewound around a rod of the same diameter,
(22:46):
So it was sort of like an Enigma machine. Yeah,
there you go. Let's talk about that. Okay, have you
have you read Enigma? There's a book about this whole thing,
about the people who are cracking the code. But the
Nazis had this very very clever system of coding, encoding
UM or encrypting messages UM, where they would have what's
(23:09):
called an Enigma machine, which is kind of like a
random typewriter, that would assign him a code to a
message and it could only be decoded by a the
same machine, like a twin machine UM, that would get
this message and then turn it back into UM uh
whatever it was originally supposed to say and UM. The
(23:32):
British apparently got in on breaking this a place called
Benchley or Blenchley I think park where um they had
a few of these captured Enigma machines and where secretly
had secretly cracked the code. I think the Polish even
before that discovered it and then you and then shared
it with the Brits who was you know, probably a
(23:52):
little further along. Well maybe not. Well. I think Alan
turing Um, who invented the computer essentially was one of
these Enigma codebreakers. Yeah, oh interesting. Yeah. Uh the information
it was codenamed Ultra and it was obviously, uh, you know,
something they kept on the very down low because you
don't want Hitler to know you've got an Enigma machine
(24:13):
because Senn Hitler kills the guy who invented the Enigma machine.
And I think they got one from a sunken sub
that the Germans were like, well, it's on the bottom
of the ocean, we'll just leave it there, it'll be okay,
and um somebody somebody in the Allies went and got it. Yeah,
it's a pretty cool book Enigma not to check that out.
(24:35):
Um what about the number stations? Did you see that? Yeah,
that's pretty cool. So we remember we talked about the
Yosemite SAM transmission, a data burst and then you know
the whole I'm gonna blow you to smith En environment.
Yeah yeah, um, I I imagine that that has to
be from some sort of numbers station. But what is
it well, it's a it's a radio station that the
(24:57):
government operates, and it broadcasts UM on short band frequencies
just intermittently, so they'll have a clue, like a song
or an announcement that will mark the beginning or the
end of the secret broadcast. And obviously they won't say, like,
you know, and now we will play the secret broadcast
some sort of hidden message, and then it'll be UM,
(25:20):
just a bunch of a series of numbers that is
obviously a coded message. Right. What's awesome is it's not secret.
Like any schmo with who's tuned into the right frequency
you can hear this broadcast, but he won't be able
to make heads or tails of it. And apparently like
this stuff happens all over the world. Yeah, so codes
are huge. Though, secret code the US isn't like, well, yeah,
(25:41):
we're doing this, but it's I mean, it's kind of
like here's your brain. Yes, that's exactly what. Well, the
the article I read on the Modern Spy says basically,
the Americans and the Russians, while getting along, just have
this sort of implied understanding that we're both still spine
like let's not get each other. Oh yeah, everybody's spine
on everybody is those Wiki leaks cables revealed. I mean,
(26:04):
it's just you just want to gather intelligence or information
on whatever is the case, you know, from trade policy
to you know, defense, any any information that you can
get gives you an upper hand, and I think everybody
does it. Well, since we're there, UM these days, you're
gonna find um a lot of spine going on. I
think that it was. The Washington Post said last year
(26:27):
that there are more than twelve hundred government organizations and
close to two thousand private companies that work on programs
related to counter terrorism. That's a huge way that they're
spying these days, obviously is terrorist cells, homeland security and
intelligence UH in about ten thousand locations all across the US.
(26:48):
So these days we're spying mainly on terror cells Iran,
North Korea, and China obviously, and UM it says that
the US is the recipient of US of thousands of
cyber attacks every day from Beijing. Basically they're trying to
penetrate our firewalls and seeing what they can get and well,
(27:11):
I hope not. Uh. We are also UM spying on Israel.
Sometimes you spy on your buddies because in two thousand
eight those in Israeli report that said that we have
a long history of spying on Israel in regards to
their uh secret nuclear program. So even if you're friends
with the country, doesn't mean you're not keeping tabs. Yeah.
(27:32):
Well that was one of the things about the Wiki
leaks cables is they were a lot of them were
about are very close allies and friends, and um, that
was just very embarrassing. And now Bradley Man he's going
to spend the rest of his life in prison because
the State Department was embarrassed. And then corporate spying is
huge these days, um, private sector spy firms. Basically, they
(27:55):
said that there is nary a large merger, acquisition and
deal that goes down these days without a lot of
spying going on, a lot of corporate spying. And the
CIA even lets people uh spies moonlight for corporations to
make a little extra scratch. Is that right? That's what
they said. And they said there's even entire network of
people who do nothing but track corporate jets and their
(28:18):
flight patterns. Wow. That crazy, but makes sense. It does
make sense because you know, you go to where the
money is right, yeah, or you know, I think was
it Coke that had the girl that worked there? The
lady sell out yeah, or almost sell out to Pepsi
there the secret formula. Um, you approached she was a
(28:41):
walk in right here, approached Pepsi with the secret formula
for Coke and PEPSI told Coke about it. That lady
gotten big trouble. Oh, PEPSI came out. Yeah, they said,
we got her own formula. We don't mind being second tier.
They like it. There's less pressure. So what are you
gonna do with all this stuff? When you got all
(29:02):
this information, who's gonna be looking at it? It's obviously
not the spy. Well that's the thing like if you
you know, you're not just you don't have one controller
with one spy. And that's what all of your information is.
You have all of this information coming and from all
these different sources, whether it's you know, satellite photos or um,
you know, human intel, and you have people called data
(29:24):
analysts who are putting it all together, and they write
daily briefs or papers or profiles on say like um,
the newest leader of North Korea Kim Jong un? Yeah, um,
And they it's basically just like, here's this threat. Here's
what you want to know about this person. Uh, there
(29:45):
may be an attack from this group, and it's it's
basically this picture that's cobbled together like a mosaic of
creative of data and information. Yeah. Stalin apparently received information
that the Germans were gonna turn on so be it's
in World War two and he said, yet I don't believe.
(30:05):
So he ignored the data and look at what happened,
like a million people died in St. Petersburg or Stalin grod.
So he did not analyze the data to his advantage.
Uh no, Um, apparently also we you you can use
this these data analysts to say, we've got a gap
here that we need to fill in, so go do this.
(30:27):
So it's kind of like a um, it's a two
way street as far as data collection and data analysis goes. Right.
A pretty good example was the Purple Code of Japan
in World War Two, where wait, well, we we had
a pretty good idea that um, Midway Island was going
to be attacked, but we didn't know if we were
(30:48):
reading the code for Midway Island correctly, which is a
f we thought it was, but we weren't sure, so, um,
the UH I guess army intelligence or somebody said, hey,
get Midway to to issue a plea for fresh water
saying that they're low on fresh water, and they did,
and then we intercepted a Japanese transmission saying that a
(31:08):
F was low on fresh water. So we knew that
a F was Midway, and we knew then that Midway
was definitely going to be attacked and we won the
Battle of Midway as a result. USA. Right. Let's say,
misinformation is is just as important as the real information.
Spies spend you know, from the sounds of this article,
just as much time uh doling out misinformation as they
(31:32):
do collecting the real stuff. The very important part of it, um.
And one good way to do that is to get
caught spying. Double agent. Yeah, what's a double agent? Well,
a double agent is somebody who say, is spying an
American who's spying for the Russians, And then the Americans say,
wait a minute, this guy is spying for the Russians.
(31:52):
Let's make sure that all of this information that is
access to is altered and wrong and flawed, and then
he'll pass it along to the Russians and he'll be
what's called an unwaiting double agent, right, or we can
go to him directly and be like, we're gonna fry
you pal unless you start giving fake information to the Russians,
and then that person is a wedding double agent in
(32:13):
that case and he'll say, you're no pal of mine.
Or Josh, you can be a triple agent or even
I guess the quadruple or quintuple agent. It happens to
where the Russians, uh, the Americans nebu and then they
turn you into a double agents, but the Russians know
(32:33):
about that, and you're still secretly working for the Russians
and uh it was this the grabster that wrote this.
He points out that it's gotten so convoluted with the
quadruple and up that sometimes in the end his history
can't even tell what they were. Yeah, like who who
the person was? Actually whose side they were on? Yeah,
I would imagine that person is probably on their own
(32:54):
side after a while. Yeah. Just look, just trying to
not get thrown in the gun. Yeah. I guess we
can talk about Operation Fortitude because that's kinda cool. Yeah. Um,
this was a really big misinformation campaign about the invasion
of Normandy. On D Day, a very like elaborate one.
(33:16):
Well yeah, it included, um, creating fake troops, fake um
tanks and troop transports, fake fuel depots built out of wood,
yeah um, and amassing them on the southern coast of
England to make the Nazis think that the invasion of
France was going to come from no, I'm sorry, the
(33:36):
northern coast of England, to make them think it was
going to come from the north exactly, um and instead
of the south where Normandy was. And part of this was, um,
a big part of it was feeding double agents false information.
And there was one guy named Garbo who was a
big player in this whole thing, code named Garbo. Like that,
(34:00):
this is like blazing saddles. How so, well, they built
a fake rock ridge at the end with fake townspeople
in a fake uh. And when they came a riding
into town and whopping in a womping that was, they
found out it was not real. And then uh, Cleveland
Little was able to prevail. Nice. Well in this case,
the Allies prevailed. Yeah, I'm sort of like Cleveland Little. Yeah.
(34:24):
They even went further than you know, painting a bunch
of fuel depots to to look like the real thing. Um,
they created a completely fake battalion, the first U. S.
Army Group. It was led by General Patton. Even though
it's totally fake, they had fake radio chatter about this
group and the invasion, and on the day of the invasion,
(34:46):
they dropped UM all sorts of aluminum from planes to
reflect radar to make it look like there's a big
movement of an air force across the English Channel. Uh.
They did the same thing with submarine means UM and
it looked like there was an invasion coming from the
north while there was really one coming from the south.
And it worked right well. Yeah, I mean we took Normandy.
(35:10):
That was the first like fifteen minutes of UM saving
Private Ryan. Yeah, so I don't know worked. I mean,
I guess it worked well, not the first fifteen minutes.
I think you're forgetting about the the book ends of
that movie, what with the old Matt Damon in the
cemetery and then they went to the awesome part. Yeah,
(35:30):
oh yeah, you're right. It's like the first five minutes
kind of sucked. And then that was that Matt Damon. Yeah,
it was him grown up. I just thought it was.
It was uncanny he hit the Uncanny Valley. Yeah, if
it was an actor playing him, or was it Matt
Damon and makeup? No, no no, no, it was an actor
who looked a lot like an old Matamon. Well he
(35:50):
was in the young Canny Valley. I'm not sure he exists. Yeah,
you know, here's my advice to filmmakers, to people like
the Steven Spielberg's of the world. Don't don't book into
your movie like that. That's always a bad idea, do
you think so? Yeah, man, that movie would have kicked
so much more. But if it was just started with
the D Day invasion and ended how it ended, like
(36:10):
everything from that too. Uh? What was the Clint Swould
Uh Bridges of Madison County? Terrible book ends on that one.
Whenever you show like the modern day book ends, just
don't do it. Just stick to the story. We're clever,
we we don't need Matt Damon, old Matt Damon in
a cemetery breaking down. No, that was a little, uh, little,
(36:33):
that was a little off putting, a little heavy handed. Yeah,
it was kind of like, suck it up, pal, But
who am I? I'm just a podcaster, Steven Spielder, You're
definitely not part of the Greatest Generation. I'll tell you
that not. UM. Do you want to hear a pretty
cool story about the D D invasion? UM? The day
before No, I'm sorry, the month before the invasion of Normandy,
(36:55):
the D Day invasion, the turning point of the war.
One of the UH M I five guys was doing
the daily telegraph puzzle UH and he started noticing that
a lot of the answers were kind of curious, like,
for example, UM, one of the answers was Utah, another
(37:16):
was Omaha. These were code names for the beaches at
Normandy where landing points were going to be for the invasion. UM.
Another answer was Mulberry, which was the name of a
floating harbor that was going to be towed across the
channel to accommodate the supply ships. Another was Neptune, which
was the code name for the naval support for the operation.
(37:38):
And then the They also had the answer Overlord, which
was the name for the whole operation for the D
Day invasion. So M I five's like, what's going on, Like,
clearly somebody's feeding information one of the one of the
ways of disseminating, like you were saying, getting in trust
with your controller or letting him know that you've done
a dead drop is through the newspaper, like a classified
(38:00):
ad or something, right, And um, so they went m
I five sent some some guys to go rough off
the person who wrote this cross rod and find out
what the deal was a fifty four year old school teacher.
And uh, he had no idea. The whole thing was
total coincidence. The m I five finally they were convinced, like,
this guy has no clue what's going on. He is
(38:23):
not an agent. They looked into his background and it
was total coincidence. How many words total? It was like six?
I think interesting. Isn't that weird? That is really weird?
Month before the invasion. Huh. I bet he was. I
bet he was. I bet that guy was nervous until
they believed him that he was pooping his pants. Um, well,
(38:45):
I guess that does it for pooping or pants on
this one. Um, if you want to know more about spies,
you can type spies s p I E S into
the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And
that's gonna bring up listener May all that right, Josh,
And before we read listener mail, we want to announce
that our email address has officially changed. UM from Stuff
(39:08):
podcast at how Stuff works dot com right to Stuff
Podcast at Discovery dot com. Oh yeah, we Discovery has
finally said, all right, I guess you guys are really
working for us. We'll give you addresses with our with
our name on it here your official Yes. So that's
how you can reach us now. And we're gonna point
(39:29):
this out quite a few times over the next few weeks.
Well yeah, plus at the same at the same time
when we say it at the end of the podcast
every time. UM. What else? Oh, we have a newsletter. Yeah,
go ahead, and let's spill it. We have a stuff
you Should Know newsletter that you can subscribe to. Uh.
There's a little link to it on the left rail
of our Facebook page at Facebook dot com slash stuff
(39:50):
you should Know. It's free, it's not spam. It's bacon
because you have to opt in for it. UM and
you'll probably like it it. UM sends out a link
to the newest episode. UM. It has a bunch of
articles that we wrote or like on your site. It's
just cool. It's fun and south by Southwest people of Austin, Texas.
(40:13):
We're coming back and we will be podcasting live on Sunday,
March eleven, not quite sure exactly what time. This will
be a badge event. If you have a badge, please
come out and see us. But if you're not, we
are also trying trying to get a non badge event
together at a local watering hole for regular old bands
(40:35):
to come out, So stay tuned for information on that.
We're working on it. Um. Hey, if you've got a place,
hit us up. Yeah, we're looking. Yeah, please do. But um,
hopefully we'll have a non badge event that will be
pretty cool. We've got some fun stuff cooking here. Uh yeah,
you got anything else? Yeah, just a listener mail. Oh yeah,
(40:55):
that's just a regular listener that. Uh this is a correction.
And while we're correct thing, I want to point out,
as I have many, many, many times, that polar bears
do not live in Antarctica. I was very ill that
day and shouldn't have probably even been podcasting, but I misspoke.
Josh technically was talking about Emperor Penguin's No I'll tell
(41:16):
you what I was talking about. You know how you
were saying polar bears only live in Antarctica, and they
only live in the Arctic. Well I didn't say that,
but yeah, sure, isn't that the gist of what you're saying? Yeah, okay,
I was saying that penguins don't live in the Arctic,
they live in Antarctica. Yes, they are also found in
places like Australia to Africa. Um, I'm sure Argentina has
(41:36):
shared Chile Um places not too far away from Antarctica.
But what I was saying is that they're not found
in the Arctic. And and emperor penguins, though, are only
found in Antarctica. So originally that's what you're talking about.
So I'm depending either. Okay, So let's let's hear yet
another correct, yet another correction, and and we messed up
Edmonton to the Canadian very happy with this, no, I know,
(41:58):
So let me clear this up. Calgary, Alberta is a
city in Canada. Edmonton, Alberta is also a city in Canada.
Alberta is a province in Canada. So it's like Atlanta, Georgia,
New York, New York. And here's the thing. I love Canada.
I hate I hate that we mess Canadian things up
because we got a lot of fans there and they,
(42:19):
I know, the only problem with Canada is it's so
close to Detroit. Boy, we love Detroit due by the way,
So I think that's good. We don't need a listener
mail because all those corrections were enough. Cool. So thank
you to all the Canadian fans who wrote in and
all the polar bear and penguin defenders of the earth.
We are sorry, we argument, and we coop. We did
Hopefully we will do better. Let's make it a stuff
(42:43):
you should Know resolution to do better in two thousands. Well,
well that's supposed to be done before, so let's just
make it and let's just keep scrowing up. All right,
Let's do better. Okay, um oh, I want to hear
spy stories. Okay, me too. We want to hear him
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(43:04):
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(43:24):
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Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck
Bryant in fast motion. Yeah. Um, and that makes us
(00:21):
the super fast episode of Stuff you Should Know on
spots super fast. It's going to be, um, not short.
We're just gonna be talking really fast like this pretty
much the whole time. I can pick up will you
all right? Uh? Yeah, spies like us? Yeah? Did you
like that movie? I did. I was raised too, just
(00:45):
like Chevy Chase really by whom my dad really yeah. Um,
and I don't think my mom liked him either, but
my dad definitely thought he was a jerk. His word
was kind of a jerk and um yeah, apparently I
read um this Saturday Night Live biography about like the show.
(01:06):
It's pretty interesting. Um and they talked about how he
was the first one to um be able to develop
a cocaine habit because he was the first one to
start getting paid and apparently he didn't share really, so
that made him a jerk. I guess I don't think
that's one. My dad thought he was a jerk anyway.
I all apologies to Mr Chase if you listen to this.
(01:27):
I was I have always been a big man, have you. Yeah,
and I was very saddened when he his career kind
of faltered and I missed Chevy Chase. Well, okay, he's
on TV now though he's he's on the TV the community, right, Yeah,
is that it? He was on it. I don't know
if he still is, but he wants Yeah. I don't either. Um,
but no, I hated Fletch. I'm just gonna come out
(01:48):
and say, I hate that movie Fletch. I hate Fletch two,
I hate Fletch eight, I hate all the Fletches. I
think it's a stupid movie. And I hate Fletch. But
I did like funny far a lot. That's weird that
you hated Fledg. I hated Fletch. I still hate Fletch.
You can show me Fletch right now. I'd be like,
this is stupid, turn it off, so funny, so chuck. Yes, Uh,
(02:12):
you know a little bit about spies. I believe you
had a bit of a story to share with everyone.
A little bit. I mean, I was obviously spy. Stories
of real life spies are kind of fun and Um,
to me, the best all time story spy, real true
life spy story was the story of Christopher Boyce and
Dalton Lee The Falcon and the Snowman. Oh yeah, I've
(02:34):
never seen that movie of you. Yeah, it's a good yeah,
really good Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn right, and um,
that is the story of these two guys who two
youngsters living in southern California, and Boyce was hired by
his father I think as a guard at an aerospace
firm called t RW Incorporated, and may um that gave
(02:55):
him access to a lot of U c. I A.
Documents that that we're working with the aerospace firm, they
were drug dudes. So he was like, hey, we can
raise like make a lot of money selling these secrets
to the Soviets down in Mexico City at their embassy,
make money for drugs to run a drug operation. And
(03:15):
they did so for like a year successfully a year
from seventy six to seventy seven. And we're caught, of course,
and jailed for espionage. And I had a little trouble
for some reason finding out the current status of Lee.
I did find out that boys actually escaped from prison
in nineteen eighty from Lompoc was picked up again in
(03:37):
eight one, I think, and then was released in two
thousand three and lives I think in the San Francisco area.
I've got this awesome l A Times article that I'm
going to read tonight for fun because it didn't have
a chance to read it read. Yeah, it's one of
those like fifteen page articles. His big interview he did
after he got released. But I can't find out what
(03:57):
happened to Lee aside from a room that he was
eventually released and Sean Penn hired him as his personal assistant,
and I don't know if that's true. Weird, I can't
verify that. I understand Sean Penn's like the real deal
when it comes to like um combating poverty in Haiti.
He's like in there in the trenches every day. He
(04:19):
is crazy. Some people think he's a jerk. I happen
to like the guy. I like the guy a lot.
Um So, Chuck, how did the Falcon and the Snowman
become spies? They were working or or Voice was working
at a at an aerospace firm as a night guard
and had access to sensitive documents. So why did he
start to make money. Okay, so that's actually one of
(04:43):
the main ways that a spy is recruited. Yeah, there's, um,
there's several nice intro by the way, dude, thank you.
That makes two times they are changing. Give me you're
a punch card. Okay, Um, the the There are a
few ways for a person become a spy. Probably the
most um straightforward way is to maybe join the army,
(05:05):
Army intelligence, joined the CIA right out of college, and
basically just join your country's intelligence agency, be trained and
then sent into the field, maybe posing as a diplomat
or being a diplomat. Yeah, apparently the line is very
um fuzzy between a person who's actually a diplomat and
a diplomat who's a spy. Really yeah, it's like one
(05:27):
and the same. I mean, they're still performing the same functions.
They have a job as a diplomat, but they're also
just spying too. Um and what are they I guess
what's the basis of spying? Well, they're what they're after obviously,
and this is the no brainer stuff, But we always
have to point it out there after any valuable information
(05:48):
to give to the country that they're working for, any
kind of it's it's obviously usually military secrets, although we
will talk a little bit later about corporate spine, which
is huge yeah these days. Oh um, but you know,
typically people with access to these uh, either offices or
high ranking officials. Um, they do have recruiters that go out,
(06:11):
like you said, they'll then go a little money in
front of your face if they think that a person
is someone they can turn right, like, hey, you're not
happy with your own country. We know this, you want
to sell him out? Or we know you really like
money and you're kind of unscrupulous. Do you want to
sell him out? Right? Or we know your mother needs
(06:32):
surgery and your government insurance although the gold standard of
healthcare is American healthcare. It's part of the American system.
Therefore it's not going to really cover the surgery. So
here's some money, or hey, mom, the surgery. You want
a movie made after you about you, after you're executed.
You want to be famous, You want to feel important
(06:53):
because you're nobody. You want to be somebody once you
dig up some secrets for us, right, And that's actually
like a really good um recruiting tool or recruiting method
is to identify somebody who has a menial job, some
sort of file clerk, but has access to really sensitive information. Exactly,
go in and, like you said, pump them up. I mean,
I don't think you would actually say you're a nobody.
(07:15):
You would maybe promise the um making them a somebody.
You have to break him down before you build them
back up, you know, it depends, It depends on what
you're trying to do. UM. So those are the Oh
did you touch on ideological um disillusionment with your home country? Yeah,
a little bit, just you know, like communism obviously was
(07:35):
a big thing. Uh, yeah, we covered in McCarthyism. Yeah,
like the Rosenberg's they were at the very least communist
sympathizers who supposedly allegedly spied for the for the Communists.
By the way, did you see that email we got
about that. No, we got an email from a guy
in the Air Force that said there was a great
interview with I can't remember who it was that basically
(07:57):
said the Rosenberg's did have a lot more to do
with it than like at first it was like, oh,
they're guilty, guilty. Then later on, as we pointed out,
they're like, you know, they didn't exactly sell the deepest
dark kits of secrets and maybe they were made an
example of but then apparently more recent enew does implicate
them a little bit more to the extent that their
family even was like, oh, it's so weird for McCarthy
(08:19):
to be vindicated. Yeah, um, so you've got blackmail too.
Is a way of getting people to do what you want, Like,
we have these photos of you that you don't want published,
Like you clearly have a lampshade on your head, right,
and now you have to be a spy for US. Um.
And then once you once you have the person agreeing
(08:40):
to spy. Oh there's also walk ins too, and I
think that might have been voices. Deal was an opportunist
who was like, Hey, I want to be a spy.
Who do I call about that? Exactly? And usually if
you're going to be a spy, um, you identify a
country who's probably got the most money or the most
desire for the information you have, and then you go
to their local embassy. I guess i'd be a good
(09:02):
way to do it. Yeah, you just walk right in.
But if you are that country's diplomat slash spies working
at the embassy, you're going to be immediately suspicious of
someone like that. Apparently the US had a Russian defector.
I can't remember. It may have been yeah, it may
have been the guy who's mentioned um no, oh like Penkovsky. Penkovsky. Um,
(09:29):
he was a Russian general. I believe Soviet general was
with the KGB, and I think he he was a
walk in. Wow, he made a secret trip to the
US and over years and years and years, like he
finally gained the trust of the Americans. He's like, look,
this is legitimate information stuff. Yeah. Ok yeah, well that
(09:49):
was like the height of spied them not quite so okay, yeah,
we'll get to that later. I read a recent article
that I can't wait. Yeah, there's like a lot more
going on now then you might believe. All right, so
you have a paid, blackmailed um or ideologically disenchanted spy.
Sure who you trust and you assign them a person
(10:12):
name a Controller Harvey Kitel probably yeah, yeah, yeah, Controller
is the person who I think they're They're just like
your only contact basically, right, who you're going to be
given the information to, yeah, or getting information or instructions from.
There's going to be one person you meet. Yeah, you
don't want a large You don't want your spy to
(10:34):
know a lot of people because they'll be compromised. There's
not a Christmas party, you know they should though, no
they shouldn't. They'd all to sit around and like look
at each other very wearily. There they don't make eye contact. Um.
The the the reason why they do this is called compartmentalization. Um,
because if the spy is caught, there's only so much
(10:54):
information they can give. Like, well, I was meeting a
Mr Orange that may or may not be his real name.
I never really saw his face and actually I never
met him. It was all handoff stuff park bench. Well
you're talking about, we might as well go ahead and
cover that. The drop, the dead drop, the dead drop
you see it in movies. Apparently it's real. You'll you'll
(11:17):
drop something in a public place very uh, nonchalantly, and
then send the signal that it's you know, been dropped
to your controller. Then they will go to the little
hidden loose brick in the public park wall and fish
out the micro film. Yeah, the micro film, the micro
dot maybe. Uh? What what has always struck me about
(11:41):
spy work or articles on spies and especially the gadgets
and technology they use. I always just assumed it's like
twenty years out of date. Yeah, me too. I was
reading this book called Veil by Robert Woodward, an excellent
book about like Reagan's Secret Wars, really good book. And
they're talking about this this light beam, I guess, a
(12:04):
laser that you can point at a window and it
measures the vibrations from a conversation um and translates them
into audio. So it's an eavesdropping device that they were
using in the early sixties. You're talking about the laser emacs.
I am, well, they have these now. I'm sure when
that there are different ones. But yeah, it's an invisible
(12:27):
infrared beam hits the window that and records the vibrations,
filters out all the gobbledygook, and then amplifies it and
records it. It's amazing and it's been around since the sixties.
What do you think they're doing now, Well, this is
the one that's available now, so it's probably just this slicker,
better version. Well, in the article I read too on
(12:47):
modern spy equipment, basically said just that is it's a
lot of the same stuff. It's just faster and smaller,
and uh, you know, digital, what's that one called this
is called the laser or EMACS. And the cool thing
is when you go to their website it said as
used by David Letterman and Jay Leno and Fox five Undercover. Weird. Yeah,
(13:12):
I guess they I don't know. I guess they've done
little bits where they spy on people. Well, I don't know.
Jay Leno spied on an NBC board meeting when they
were trying to figure out whether they we go with
Letterman or him to release Carson. Yeah, you got to
see that movie. I've seen it. I don't remember that though. Yeah.
Well he was just sitting in another room, like taking notes,
like in a closet right now, exactly. Okay, let's get
(13:34):
back to it. Man. You you have a controller, Your
spy is compartmentalized very much. Before you start doing dead
drops and everything, you don't want to get ahead of
yourself because your spy is gonna get greased. You have
to first create a cover and support it with the legend, right,
so it covers just like your secret identity or your
false identity, and then the legend is the backstory around it. Yeah,
(13:56):
and he's to be detailed and thorough right. So for example, um,
you are a UH. If you're into fishing, I think
the article uses it's a good good example. Um, or
you let your character is your cover is right, Um,
you're going to have fishing gear. And if you have
a that's part of the legend. You're gonna have fishing.
The part the legend is that you are into fishing,
(14:19):
your fly fisherman big time. So then at your house,
your apartment, whatever that's set up for you, you're gonna
have fishing equipment. And if you're good, it's going to
be used fishing equipment and it's going to be of
a certain um quality depending on whether your cover is
frugal or you know, kind of spendy or likes you know,
the best of the best. That's a good point about us.
(14:40):
Didn't even think about that. Oh yeah, that'd be like
a movie thing is the guy sees the apply fishing
gear and it's got a tag on it or something
or boom or both. Yeah. Yeah. Um. The if you are,
say a Russian accountant posing as a Russian accountant, you
probably should know the ins and outs of Russian tax law. Sure. Um.
(15:04):
You should also probably speak Russian with a Russian accent.
From the UH from the region that you're supposedly from
that your covers from. Yeah, you saw No Way Out? Right?
Is that the one with Kevin? Uh? What's his face? Yeah? No,
I didn't. Oh that's a good one. I've heard that
was like a couple of years ahead of my I
(15:24):
think I was watching Disorderlies while my family went and
saw No Way Out. Uh, I'm not gonna ruin that one. Actually,
I'm a spoiler guy, usually for movies that are like
fifteen years old. But um, I'm gonna leave that one
to the to the people to go see it, to
rent it or whatever, because it's got a nice little twist.
Um what else, chuck um. Oh, this is not a
(15:47):
quick thing. No, no, no. If you establish a cover,
it takes years to establish a cover. You're not gonna
waltz into the Russian uh, the Russian embassy and say hey,
I'm just a Russian accountant and where are your documents?
This is not a small camera in my tie. It
takes a long time, and people go it's like being
(16:08):
an undercover cop. You have to establish his trust over
a period of months and years. Even yeah, um, and
you're going to in the meantime be performing accounting. Yeah,
for as part of your business an you better be
good ahead, yeah, or the toast yeah. Or you could
go to jail for tax fraud. Wouldn't that be surprising?
That would definitely help your cover though, wouldn't you to
(16:30):
go to prison for the for the state? Yeah? Sure. Uh.
You are not going to be memorizing things, although in
a pinch, I'm sure they're probably trained to memorize a
certain amount of information. But what you really want to do,
and it is like in the movies, is to make
tiny little copies photo copies or photographs of sensitive documents
(16:53):
and relay those to your controller and then that ends
up on the micro film, the micro dot um or
it could even just you could make copies if you
are like that file clerk who has regular routine access
to that information, just make copies of it and take
it out of there. Yeah. And they had the little
handheld copiers. I've seeing those. Those are cool. Yeah, those
(17:14):
are pretty cool. What you don't want to do is
take anything, no, because then somebody might notice that exactly
the documents are missing, right, But you don't have to
listen to us. Your controller is going to tell you
how he or she wants that the information. Sure, and
there are plenty of female spies, so we definitely. UM
don't mean to say he a lot, but we're dudes.
(17:36):
I said here she yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Um,
I mean Valerie Plain she was a spy. Yeah, yeah,
very true. Um, it's not just on the ground either,
It's not just human spies. We've been using satellites for years,
since the nineteen sixty I believe. And the fact of
the show for me is that before the digital age,
(17:56):
the satellite would take photographs and I guess dropped them,
have developed them and drop them in a bucket in
the ocean. I think it was. It was undeveloped, the
film develop it. Yeah, it's like a photo mat up there. Yeah,
there's like some stoner up there inside developing pictures. Remember
the photo mat. What a bygone era that is. And
(18:19):
those stoners where are they working now? Not a video stores,
I think, so that's where I always see them they are. Um,
so they don't obviously have to drop them in the
ocean any longer. They can just relay them digitally and
they've actually been doing that since nine Yeah that's pretty cool.
(18:41):
So long before we were taking digital photos the government
and sending them wirelessly. Yeah, over radio. I think they
did it. Well, that's what wireless is. Radio. It's pretty
amazing it is. Um. So again that kind of proves
my point though, Chuck, I mean, like, what are we
on too? Now? I know it's faster, smaller, better, there's
got to be some cool stuff that like wasn't around
(19:02):
before though. Well, spy planes back in the day, um
were large, like the U two spy plane and it
would have to fly right over the enemy. These days,
of course, we have drones flying them while I'm not
flying themselves, but unmanned drones doing the dirty work, all
sorts of very dirty dirty work. That's right. Um. All
(19:24):
of this, Chuck is called technological intelligence or tech int.
I'll bet everybody at your work thinks you're a jackass
if you call it tech int. The CIA, they're like,
it's t I dude, right exactly, um, Or if you
want to just really be in on this link, just
t just t um. So you've got spy planes technically
(19:47):
at one point where t um satellites which now apparently
can read a headline on a newspaper. That's yeah, Well
you see Google earth. Yeah, I mean my car and
my driveway was on it, and that was a little creepy.
I know, I had bird poop on the roof. Um,
there's like wire taps that whole laser listening listening device.
(20:11):
Do you do you want to talk about some more. Uh.
They have seismic equipment to detect nuclear testing. They have
underwater sensors to find things like submarines. Yeah, which is
a big deal. Again in Veil, which by the way,
I recommend um, they were talking about how back in
the day to eavesdrop on Russian cables, like the Soviets
(20:34):
didn't encrypt all of their stuff on certain cables that
were transmitted underwater, especially once that were close to the motherland, right,
So the US would send subs um to go and
clamp onto these um cables and listen for a few days,
(20:54):
and they were like right off the coast of the
USS are really dangerous work. And then they finally made
a recorder that they could go clamp on, drop off
and then leave for like a month or six months
or whatever, and then come back and get it. So
there's only like two windows where it was really scary,
rather than several days just having to sit there quietly
on the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. Uh, this isn't
(21:16):
new stuff. Um, that evolution of spy tools article I
read was like, have you ever read the Art of War?
What was it? Sun sues? So, Sun sue and uh
there are more than a hundred references to spies an
espionage intelligence gathering in the Art of War. I didn't know.
(21:36):
That is very old. And Uh. In the Revolutionary War
they would use invisible inc called Jay's Sympathetic stain was
apparently the best one to use, and they still uh
use or until recently, they still used invisible ink to
transmit messages. It's crazy. You heat up certain things and
(22:00):
it will appear, or hold it under certain light. Lemon juice.
That's the old little crafty trick. How kind of this
ugly burnt sienna color doesn't But also if you look
at it, you can be like, oh, it's written in
lemon juice. I can see without even just by moving
the paper a little bit. I don't think it's real
bona fide spy stuff. Apparently the Spartans would spy and
(22:24):
they had a device called the skytail, and uh it
was a long slender rod which was wrapped with a
thin strip of papyrus, and the message was written on
the wrapping uh, and it was passed on to a
messenger and apparently it would could only be read if
it was rewound around a rod of the same diameter,
(22:46):
So it was sort of like an Enigma machine. Yeah,
there you go. Let's talk about that. Okay, have you
have you read Enigma? There's a book about this whole thing,
about the people who are cracking the code. But the
Nazis had this very very clever system of coding, encoding
UM or encrypting messages UM, where they would have what's
(23:09):
called an Enigma machine, which is kind of like a
random typewriter, that would assign him a code to a
message and it could only be decoded by a the
same machine, like a twin machine UM, that would get
this message and then turn it back into UM uh
whatever it was originally supposed to say and UM. The
(23:32):
British apparently got in on breaking this a place called
Benchley or Blenchley I think park where um they had
a few of these captured Enigma machines and where secretly
had secretly cracked the code. I think the Polish even
before that discovered it and then you and then shared
it with the Brits who was you know, probably a
(23:52):
little further along. Well maybe not. Well. I think Alan
turing Um, who invented the computer essentially was one of
these Enigma codebreakers. Yeah, oh interesting. Yeah. Uh the information
it was codenamed Ultra and it was obviously, uh, you know,
something they kept on the very down low because you
don't want Hitler to know you've got an Enigma machine
(24:13):
because Senn Hitler kills the guy who invented the Enigma machine.
And I think they got one from a sunken sub
that the Germans were like, well, it's on the bottom
of the ocean, we'll just leave it there, it'll be okay,
and um somebody somebody in the Allies went and got it. Yeah,
it's a pretty cool book Enigma not to check that out.
(24:35):
Um what about the number stations? Did you see that? Yeah,
that's pretty cool. So we remember we talked about the
Yosemite SAM transmission, a data burst and then you know
the whole I'm gonna blow you to smith En environment.
Yeah yeah, um, I I imagine that that has to
be from some sort of numbers station. But what is
it well, it's a it's a radio station that the
(24:57):
government operates, and it broadcasts UM on short band frequencies
just intermittently, so they'll have a clue, like a song
or an announcement that will mark the beginning or the
end of the secret broadcast. And obviously they won't say, like,
you know, and now we will play the secret broadcast
some sort of hidden message, and then it'll be UM,
(25:20):
just a bunch of a series of numbers that is
obviously a coded message. Right. What's awesome is it's not secret.
Like any schmo with who's tuned into the right frequency
you can hear this broadcast, but he won't be able
to make heads or tails of it. And apparently like
this stuff happens all over the world. Yeah, so codes
are huge. Though, secret code the US isn't like, well, yeah,
(25:41):
we're doing this, but it's I mean, it's kind of
like here's your brain. Yes, that's exactly what. Well, the
the article I read on the Modern Spy says basically,
the Americans and the Russians, while getting along, just have
this sort of implied understanding that we're both still spine
like let's not get each other. Oh yeah, everybody's spine
on everybody is those Wiki leaks cables revealed. I mean,
(26:04):
it's just you just want to gather intelligence or information
on whatever is the case, you know, from trade policy
to you know, defense, any any information that you can
get gives you an upper hand, and I think everybody
does it. Well, since we're there, UM these days, you're
gonna find um a lot of spine going on. I
think that it was. The Washington Post said last year
(26:27):
that there are more than twelve hundred government organizations and
close to two thousand private companies that work on programs
related to counter terrorism. That's a huge way that they're
spying these days, obviously is terrorist cells, homeland security and
intelligence UH in about ten thousand locations all across the US.
(26:48):
So these days we're spying mainly on terror cells Iran,
North Korea, and China obviously, and UM it says that
the US is the recipient of US of thousands of
cyber attacks every day from Beijing. Basically they're trying to
penetrate our firewalls and seeing what they can get and well,
(27:11):
I hope not. Uh. We are also UM spying on Israel.
Sometimes you spy on your buddies because in two thousand
eight those in Israeli report that said that we have
a long history of spying on Israel in regards to
their uh secret nuclear program. So even if you're friends
with the country, doesn't mean you're not keeping tabs. Yeah.
(27:32):
Well that was one of the things about the Wiki
leaks cables is they were a lot of them were
about are very close allies and friends, and um, that
was just very embarrassing. And now Bradley Man he's going
to spend the rest of his life in prison because
the State Department was embarrassed. And then corporate spying is
huge these days, um, private sector spy firms. Basically, they
(27:55):
said that there is nary a large merger, acquisition and
deal that goes down these days without a lot of
spying going on, a lot of corporate spying. And the
CIA even lets people uh spies moonlight for corporations to
make a little extra scratch. Is that right? That's what
they said. And they said there's even entire network of
people who do nothing but track corporate jets and their
(28:18):
flight patterns. Wow. That crazy, but makes sense. It does
make sense because you know, you go to where the
money is right, yeah, or you know, I think was
it Coke that had the girl that worked there? The
lady sell out yeah, or almost sell out to Pepsi
there the secret formula. Um, you approached she was a
(28:41):
walk in right here, approached Pepsi with the secret formula
for Coke and PEPSI told Coke about it. That lady
gotten big trouble. Oh, PEPSI came out. Yeah, they said,
we got her own formula. We don't mind being second tier.
They like it. There's less pressure. So what are you
gonna do with all this stuff? When you got all
(29:02):
this information, who's gonna be looking at it? It's obviously
not the spy. Well that's the thing like if you
you know, you're not just you don't have one controller
with one spy. And that's what all of your information is.
You have all of this information coming and from all
these different sources, whether it's you know, satellite photos or um,
you know, human intel, and you have people called data
(29:24):
analysts who are putting it all together, and they write
daily briefs or papers or profiles on say like um,
the newest leader of North Korea Kim Jong un? Yeah, um,
And they it's basically just like, here's this threat. Here's
what you want to know about this person. Uh, there
(29:45):
may be an attack from this group, and it's it's
basically this picture that's cobbled together like a mosaic of
creative of data and information. Yeah. Stalin apparently received information
that the Germans were gonna turn on so be it's
in World War two and he said, yet I don't believe.
(30:05):
So he ignored the data and look at what happened,
like a million people died in St. Petersburg or Stalin grod.
So he did not analyze the data to his advantage.
Uh no, Um, apparently also we you you can use
this these data analysts to say, we've got a gap
here that we need to fill in, so go do this.
(30:27):
So it's kind of like a um, it's a two
way street as far as data collection and data analysis goes. Right.
A pretty good example was the Purple Code of Japan
in World War Two, where wait, well, we we had
a pretty good idea that um, Midway Island was going
to be attacked, but we didn't know if we were
(30:48):
reading the code for Midway Island correctly, which is a
f we thought it was, but we weren't sure, so, um,
the UH I guess army intelligence or somebody said, hey,
get Midway to to issue a plea for fresh water
saying that they're low on fresh water, and they did,
and then we intercepted a Japanese transmission saying that a
(31:08):
F was low on fresh water. So we knew that
a F was Midway, and we knew then that Midway
was definitely going to be attacked and we won the
Battle of Midway as a result. USA. Right. Let's say,
misinformation is is just as important as the real information.
Spies spend you know, from the sounds of this article,
just as much time uh doling out misinformation as they
(31:32):
do collecting the real stuff. The very important part of it, um.
And one good way to do that is to get
caught spying. Double agent. Yeah, what's a double agent? Well,
a double agent is somebody who say, is spying an
American who's spying for the Russians, And then the Americans say,
wait a minute, this guy is spying for the Russians.
(31:52):
Let's make sure that all of this information that is
access to is altered and wrong and flawed, and then
he'll pass it along to the Russians and he'll be
what's called an unwaiting double agent, right, or we can
go to him directly and be like, we're gonna fry
you pal unless you start giving fake information to the Russians,
and then that person is a wedding double agent in
(32:13):
that case and he'll say, you're no pal of mine.
Or Josh, you can be a triple agent or even
I guess the quadruple or quintuple agent. It happens to
where the Russians, uh, the Americans nebu and then they
turn you into a double agents, but the Russians know
(32:33):
about that, and you're still secretly working for the Russians
and uh it was this the grabster that wrote this.
He points out that it's gotten so convoluted with the
quadruple and up that sometimes in the end his history
can't even tell what they were. Yeah, like who who
the person was? Actually whose side they were on? Yeah,
I would imagine that person is probably on their own
(32:54):
side after a while. Yeah. Just look, just trying to
not get thrown in the gun. Yeah. I guess we
can talk about Operation Fortitude because that's kinda cool. Yeah. Um,
this was a really big misinformation campaign about the invasion
of Normandy. On D Day, a very like elaborate one.
(33:16):
Well yeah, it included, um, creating fake troops, fake um
tanks and troop transports, fake fuel depots built out of wood,
yeah um, and amassing them on the southern coast of
England to make the Nazis think that the invasion of
France was going to come from no, I'm sorry, the
(33:36):
northern coast of England, to make them think it was
going to come from the north exactly, um and instead
of the south where Normandy was. And part of this was, um,
a big part of it was feeding double agents false information.
And there was one guy named Garbo who was a
big player in this whole thing, code named Garbo. Like that,
(34:00):
this is like blazing saddles. How so, well, they built
a fake rock ridge at the end with fake townspeople
in a fake uh. And when they came a riding
into town and whopping in a womping that was, they
found out it was not real. And then uh, Cleveland
Little was able to prevail. Nice. Well in this case,
the Allies prevailed. Yeah, I'm sort of like Cleveland Little. Yeah.
(34:24):
They even went further than you know, painting a bunch
of fuel depots to to look like the real thing. Um,
they created a completely fake battalion, the first U. S.
Army Group. It was led by General Patton. Even though
it's totally fake, they had fake radio chatter about this
group and the invasion, and on the day of the invasion,
(34:46):
they dropped UM all sorts of aluminum from planes to
reflect radar to make it look like there's a big
movement of an air force across the English Channel. Uh.
They did the same thing with submarine means UM and
it looked like there was an invasion coming from the
north while there was really one coming from the south.
And it worked right well. Yeah, I mean we took Normandy.
(35:10):
That was the first like fifteen minutes of UM saving
Private Ryan. Yeah, so I don't know worked. I mean,
I guess it worked well, not the first fifteen minutes.
I think you're forgetting about the the book ends of
that movie, what with the old Matt Damon in the
cemetery and then they went to the awesome part. Yeah,
(35:30):
oh yeah, you're right. It's like the first five minutes
kind of sucked. And then that was that Matt Damon. Yeah,
it was him grown up. I just thought it was.
It was uncanny he hit the Uncanny Valley. Yeah, if
it was an actor playing him, or was it Matt
Damon and makeup? No, no no, no, it was an actor
who looked a lot like an old Matamon. Well he
(35:50):
was in the young Canny Valley. I'm not sure he exists. Yeah,
you know, here's my advice to filmmakers, to people like
the Steven Spielberg's of the world. Don't don't book into
your movie like that. That's always a bad idea, do
you think so? Yeah, man, that movie would have kicked
so much more. But if it was just started with
the D Day invasion and ended how it ended, like
(36:10):
everything from that too. Uh? What was the Clint Swould
Uh Bridges of Madison County? Terrible book ends on that one.
Whenever you show like the modern day book ends, just
don't do it. Just stick to the story. We're clever,
we we don't need Matt Damon, old Matt Damon in
a cemetery breaking down. No, that was a little, uh, little,
(36:33):
that was a little off putting, a little heavy handed. Yeah,
it was kind of like, suck it up, pal, But
who am I? I'm just a podcaster, Steven Spielder, You're
definitely not part of the Greatest Generation. I'll tell you
that not. UM. Do you want to hear a pretty
cool story about the D D invasion? UM? The day
before No, I'm sorry, the month before the invasion of Normandy,
(36:55):
the D Day invasion, the turning point of the war.
One of the UH M I five guys was doing
the daily telegraph puzzle UH and he started noticing that
a lot of the answers were kind of curious, like,
for example, UM, one of the answers was Utah, another
(37:16):
was Omaha. These were code names for the beaches at
Normandy where landing points were going to be for the invasion. UM.
Another answer was Mulberry, which was the name of a
floating harbor that was going to be towed across the
channel to accommodate the supply ships. Another was Neptune, which
was the code name for the naval support for the operation.
(37:38):
And then the They also had the answer Overlord, which
was the name for the whole operation for the D
Day invasion. So M I five's like, what's going on, Like,
clearly somebody's feeding information one of the one of the
ways of disseminating, like you were saying, getting in trust
with your controller or letting him know that you've done
a dead drop is through the newspaper, like a classified
(38:00):
ad or something, right, And um, so they went m
I five sent some some guys to go rough off
the person who wrote this cross rod and find out
what the deal was a fifty four year old school teacher.
And uh, he had no idea. The whole thing was
total coincidence. The m I five finally they were convinced, like,
this guy has no clue what's going on. He is
(38:23):
not an agent. They looked into his background and it
was total coincidence. How many words total? It was like six?
I think interesting. Isn't that weird? That is really weird?
Month before the invasion. Huh. I bet he was. I
bet he was. I bet that guy was nervous until
they believed him that he was pooping his pants. Um, well,
(38:45):
I guess that does it for pooping or pants on
this one. Um, if you want to know more about spies,
you can type spies s p I E S into
the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And
that's gonna bring up listener May all that right, Josh,
And before we read listener mail, we want to announce
that our email address has officially changed. UM from Stuff
(39:08):
podcast at how Stuff works dot com right to Stuff
Podcast at Discovery dot com. Oh yeah, we Discovery has
finally said, all right, I guess you guys are really
working for us. We'll give you addresses with our with
our name on it here your official Yes. So that's
how you can reach us now. And we're gonna point
(39:29):
this out quite a few times over the next few weeks.
Well yeah, plus at the same at the same time
when we say it at the end of the podcast
every time. UM. What else? Oh, we have a newsletter. Yeah,
go ahead, and let's spill it. We have a stuff
you Should Know newsletter that you can subscribe to. Uh.
There's a little link to it on the left rail
of our Facebook page at Facebook dot com slash stuff
(39:50):
you should Know. It's free, it's not spam. It's bacon
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you'll probably like it it. UM sends out a link
to the newest episode. UM. It has a bunch of
articles that we wrote or like on your site. It's
just cool. It's fun and south by Southwest people of Austin, Texas.
(40:13):
We're coming back and we will be podcasting live on Sunday,
March eleven, not quite sure exactly what time. This will
be a badge event. If you have a badge, please
come out and see us. But if you're not, we
are also trying trying to get a non badge event
together at a local watering hole for regular old bands
(40:35):
to come out, So stay tuned for information on that.
We're working on it. Um. Hey, if you've got a place,
hit us up. Yeah, we're looking. Yeah, please do. But um,
hopefully we'll have a non badge event that will be
pretty cool. We've got some fun stuff cooking here. Uh yeah,
you got anything else? Yeah, just a listener mail. Oh yeah,
(40:55):
that's just a regular listener that. Uh this is a correction.
And while we're correct thing, I want to point out,
as I have many, many, many times, that polar bears
do not live in Antarctica. I was very ill that
day and shouldn't have probably even been podcasting, but I misspoke.
Josh technically was talking about Emperor Penguin's No I'll tell
(41:16):
you what I was talking about. You know how you
were saying polar bears only live in Antarctica, and they
only live in the Arctic. Well I didn't say that,
but yeah, sure, isn't that the gist of what you're saying? Yeah, okay,
I was saying that penguins don't live in the Arctic,
they live in Antarctica. Yes, they are also found in
places like Australia to Africa. Um, I'm sure Argentina has
(41:36):
shared Chile Um places not too far away from Antarctica.
But what I was saying is that they're not found
in the Arctic. And and emperor penguins, though, are only
found in Antarctica. So originally that's what you're talking about.
So I'm depending either. Okay, So let's let's hear yet
another correct, yet another correction, and and we messed up
Edmonton to the Canadian very happy with this, no, I know,
(41:58):
So let me clear this up. Calgary, Alberta is a
city in Canada. Edmonton, Alberta is also a city in Canada.
Alberta is a province in Canada. So it's like Atlanta, Georgia,
New York, New York. And here's the thing. I love Canada.
I hate I hate that we mess Canadian things up
because we got a lot of fans there and they,
(42:19):
I know, the only problem with Canada is it's so
close to Detroit. Boy, we love Detroit due by the way,
So I think that's good. We don't need a listener
mail because all those corrections were enough. Cool. So thank
you to all the Canadian fans who wrote in and
all the polar bear and penguin defenders of the earth.
We are sorry, we argument, and we coop. We did
Hopefully we will do better. Let's make it a stuff
(42:43):
you should Know resolution to do better in two thousands. Well,
well that's supposed to be done before, so let's just
make it and let's just keep scrowing up. All right,
Let's do better. Okay, um oh, I want to hear
spy stories. Okay, me too. We want to hear him
in a hundred and forty characters are less on Twitter
(43:04):
at s Y s K podcast that's all one word, um,
and you can also reach us on Facebook at Facebook
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send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com.
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(43:24):
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