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World War II – Espionage & the OSS – John Lisle
140 Plays1 year ago
Ep 013 - Nonfiction. Glowing foxes, bat bombs, explosive baking flour, and more. My fascinating interview with John Lisle on his new book, "The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare." We dive deep into the creative ways American intelligence sought to win World War II.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:02
Speaker
Hi, everyone. This is AJ Woodham's host of the War Books Podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today, I am really excited to have John Lyle on the show for his new book, The Dirty Tricks Department, Stanley Lavelle, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare.
Writing Process and Challenges
00:00:25
Speaker
John Lyle is a historian of science in the American intelligence community. He earned a PhD in history from the University of Texas in his top courses on US history, cyberspace, and information warfare. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, Skeptic, the Journal of Intelligence History, and Physics in Perspective. John, how are you today? I'm great. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about this book. Thanks for having me.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yeah. Well, um, yeah, me too. And, you know, thanks for coming on the show. I know this is your first book, so congratulations on that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I've been working on it while I was in grad school and kind of finishing up after I got my PhD. And so it, it really is not, not just a relief, but exciting to put it out there in the world because I feel like, man, I've been working on this for so long and now I'm getting to see people's reactions and see them enjoy it. So that's a lot of fun.
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, so I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a published author myself yet, but hopefully one day. Um, but you know, writing's like, it's a little bit different than, you know, like writing a novel or writing a book is different than like writing music. You don't get like that instant gratification, but when it's all done.
00:01:36
Speaker
And you're like, you know, you hold it in your hands. You know, I can see why that would be exciting to you now. So congratulations. I sympathize with that idea of the instant gratification because writing this, you know, I would write drafts of chapters and read over it. And, you know, this took many years and I've edited this dozens of times. And every time I would edit a chapter, I would think,
00:02:04
Speaker
There's not that instant gratification because I think, oh, I can do this section a little better. I can do this a little better. And every time I read through it, I thought, oh, this can be a little bit better. But it was gratifying at the very end because I thought, well, I have progressed so much in my writing ability just by going over this and learning. That was really fun to see my own personal progression through editing so much.
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that can be a real trap there too is like always saying, Oh, this can be better. This can be better. Uh, I've, I've found myself saying that probably too many times.
Inspiration and Stanley Lovell
00:02:35
Speaker
Um, well, what made you want to write this book, John?
00:02:39
Speaker
I had learned of some of the stories that are in this book from several different places, and I didn't realize that they were really connected. So some of the big stories in this book have to do with like bat bombs during World War II, strapping incendiary napalm devices to bat. Other stories have to do with glowing foxes released in Japan, or all kinds of these interesting schemes, forged documents, camouflage disguises, truth drugs, and I had heard of
00:03:06
Speaker
a lot of separate parts of this book from several different sources. And I never really connected them in my mind. I just thought, oh, that's an interesting scene that happened during World War II. But it was while I was writing my dissertation in grad school at UC that I came across this figure of Stanley Lovell. He was the head of this branch of the OSS that I kind of write about.
00:03:29
Speaker
And Stanley level was the character that connected all of these interesting stories. And so when I realized, Oh, these are all part of the story. It's all part of Stanley level story. That's when I thought, well, this is too good not to write about, you know, so I was writing my dissertation on a different topic.
00:03:44
Speaker
And I found this topic with Stanley Level, and I thought, well, in my spare time, I've got to write about this, because it's a hobby. I can't put it down at this point. So that's how I got into it. It's too good of a story not to want to write about it. And I can definitely see how the gears would start turning, because some of the stories are just wild. It's really just crazy. So Stanley Level, he's head of the R&D department at the OSS, which we'll get into.
00:04:14
Speaker
The dirty tricks that are described in your book I thought were wild and bananas and crazy. How did you get interested in intelligence history, specifically World War II intelligence history?
00:04:29
Speaker
I think that mostly does go to when I was in grad school and getting my PhD. I was writing my dissertation on a group of American scientists called the Science Attache. These are kind of diplomat scientists who were sent abroad by the State Department to different embassies.
00:04:44
Speaker
And I started realizing that they had really deep connections with the CIA and the intelligence community.
OSS Formation and William Donovan
00:04:50
Speaker
And so that understanding that connection is kind of what got me interested in scientists in the intelligence community. And from there, I kind of learned about these stories. So that's kind of the genesis of my interest in the topic. And then, yeah, I had further interest, I guess, in the specific individuals when I might do that.
00:05:09
Speaker
Well, uh, let's dive actually into, um, we'll start with the OSS, the office of strategic services. That's correct. Yeah. Okay. Um, so what was this office? Um, what were the circumstances around which it was created?
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, the OSS, it's easy to think of it as the precursor to the CIA. So during the World War II, there wasn't a CIA. Instead, there was the OSS. It was the United States' centralized intelligence organization. The purpose of it was to gather intelligence from abroad, either by sources or spies or something like that, have people back in the United States who would analyze that intelligence
00:05:50
Speaker
And the idea is to inform the president of everything that's going on. Before the OSS, there were still intelligence kind of agencies in the United States, most notably associated with the military branches. So there was Army intelligence, Naval intelligence, but William Donovan, who would become head of the OSS,
00:06:10
Speaker
He really advocated for President Franklin Roosevelt to create a centralized intelligence organization so that each of these independent organizations aren't duplicating each other's research, aren't spending kind of unnecessary funds. He wanted one place that would gather all of that intelligence together and analyze it and inform the president and have the most accurate, up-to-date information possible. So that's the idea behind VLO.
00:06:37
Speaker
And so this is 1940, 1940? Yeah. It really starts right after Pearl Harbor. So early 1940. 41. Yeah. But before Pearl Harbor, there was kind of an organization called the COI, the Coordinator of Information. And it's kind of the brief precursor to the OSS, but right in 1942, it becomes the OSS. So right in that time period.
00:07:05
Speaker
And so what was, so one of the things that, so the OSS is this, it's this very new branch. Obviously this is Pearl Harbor, America is at war. The OSS at first kind of has a, I don't know if bad reputation is the right word, but you put, you say in your book, it was mocked as oh so social.
00:07:29
Speaker
uh, for what OSS stood for. Why was that? And talk about the types of people in the OSS. Yeah, that was kind of a common derogatory name that people would associate with OSS instead of office of strategic services. Oh, so social or some variant of that. The idea being a lot of people, especially in the military kind of looked down on the OSS because
00:07:53
Speaker
If you join the OSS, you might not get deployed, you know, so you might not be deployed to Europe. And so this was kind of seen as a way to avoid the draft. And so it was commonly, sometimes it was called, said that the OSS handed out cellophane commissions, the idea being that they were transparent. So it's obvious you're trying to avoid the draft and then it kept the draft off like, you know, cellophane.
00:08:17
Speaker
So the idea with this oh-so-social moniker is that the OSS recruited a lot of people from really kind of highfalutin, aristocratic, you know, Ivy League background. So a typical thing about the people who work in the OSS, at least at the beginning, was that they were pale, male, and the Yale.
00:08:37
Speaker
So that's really some monikers about it. Well, let's actually, you mentioned William Donovan before we get into Stanley Lovell. Now, William Donovan also has the nickname of being Wild Bill Donovan. So you know, things will ensue in your book called The Dirty Tricks. Talk real quick about William Donovan.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, Donovan is a World War I war hero. He earned the Medal of Honor in World War I, one of the most decorated soldiers during the war for the United States. He was a lawyer afterward, and he actually ran to succeed Franklin Roosevelt as governor of New York. He lost, but he was fairly tight with Roosevelt, even though they were from different political parties. In the 1930s, Roosevelt sent
00:09:30
Speaker
Donovan abroad kind of as a special envoy to try to see what the situation was in Europe. So Donovan is traveling around Europe, trying to gauge what the tensions are like, and he comes back and informs President Roosevelt of what he sees. The main thing he informs him of is that he thinks there needs to be a dedicated organization that does just what Donovan did, that sends people abroad and understands the foreign situation. This is kind of the genesis of the OFS.
00:10:00
Speaker
But Donovan is a, well, his nickname, as he said, is Wild Bill Donovan. And he certainly has the character to match that nickname. He's very gung ho. You know, he wants to be in the action. He had been shot by a machine gun during World War I. He survived. And he can't help himself for wanting to be basically on the front lines again. He kind of had war in his blood. So, you know, there's a story in the book. I get to D-Day, Normandy, and the storming of these beaches.
00:10:28
Speaker
Donovan wants to be in it to the point where he actually does he you know He's the head of the OSS, but he can't stop himself from trying to get involved in the action somehow So he he storms the beaches on the second day of this Normandy invasion and he gets shot at by Germans He almost has to commit suicide by the suicide pill because he's afraid that they're gonna catch him and he doesn't want to have to divulge You know secret information so that is definitely his personality while Bill is a fitting name for him
Lovell's Role in the OSS
00:10:54
Speaker
Yeah, I remember reading that in the book. I believe he also is, like the image in my mind wasn't, it was, it was, so he also gets, when he gets off the boat, he gets like jabbed in the neck, right, by some guy who falls on him. So he's like bleeding. He doesn't acknowledge it. Yeah, he is, he's with a companion who's, you know, who accompanying it, kind of his right man, right hand man in the OSS, David Bruce.
00:11:18
Speaker
And as they're getting off the boat onto the beaches, Bruce flips and his helmet gashes Donovan right in the throat next to the jugular. So Donovan is like bleeding on this beach and he gets up and he tells David Bruce, if we're going to die, I want to be buried in Arlington National Center. That's all he says. And then they continue.
00:11:37
Speaker
I wonder too, I bet he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. And then when they're about to get caught too, I think this is in the chapter about poison pills. And one of the two was supposed to bring the pills with them, but they don't have them.
00:11:57
Speaker
And so Bill Donovan's like, well, I guess we'll just have, I'll just have to shoot you, uh, or something like that. And he's like, I'm your commanding officer, so I'll shoot you first. And then I'll shoot myself. That was an interesting case right there because he and David Bruce are being shot at by some German sentries and they had to duck under some bushes, you know, so they were trying to escape being shot up by these bullets.
00:12:20
Speaker
And Donovan is searching around his pocket for his L pill, a lethal pill, a finite kind of suicide pill that the R&D branch that I talk about in this book had manufactured. And he's searching and he can't find it. And, you know, he kind of makes a joke and, you know, as if this is the proper time to joke, but he says, well, if, you know, if we make it out of here, we got to tell the, you know, the kind of porter who's working in the hotel not to take any of those pills, because he's the worst poker ever. But anyways, Donovan says to David Bruce,
00:12:48
Speaker
I'll shoot first and at first David Bruce takes this as you know I'll shoot at the Germans first so that you can run away and then you give me cover you know I'll give you cover you give me cover and David Bruce says well we're gonna shoot at them with our pistols that's not gonna do much and Donovan says no you're mistaking me I'll shoot you first and then I'll kill myself you know as your commanding officer that's my duty
00:13:10
Speaker
But eventually, they were able to make it out and run away, so they didn't have to commit suicide. But it was on the menu. Yeah, and I really enjoyed the stories, the anecdotes like that, that are in your book. There's several of them. Let's pivot real quick to Stanley Lovell, who really takes center stage in your book. Obviously, his name is on the cover. Talk a little bit about Stanley Lovell. Who was he? What was his background, and what kind of person was he?
00:13:39
Speaker
Lovell is a chemist from New England. He is, before the war, just working in several different shoe and leather factories. So not kind of a profession that you would think would blend to this kind of creating of these dirty tricks. But he was fairly close with a man named Vannevar Bush. Vannevar Bush was an electrical engineer, but he was kind of the unofficial science advisor to President Roosevelt. So he had really high contacts and high places.
00:14:09
Speaker
Vannevar Bush is the man who kind of coordinated wartime scientific research for the United States during World War II. He was overall kind of the person that anyone would report to as the head of like the Manhattan Project or developing radar or proximity fuses or anything like that. So Stanley level knew Vannevar Bush. They were both from kind of around Boston.
00:14:32
Speaker
Vannevar Bush during the war kind of recruits Stanley level. Level becomes an aid for Bush and then Bush eventually recommends that level join the OSS. One of the reasons he did this was because Stanley level had a background in both business and science and he thought that he could kind of bring a level-headed perspective to the OSS. Remember this is at the time when the OSS has kind of that
00:14:58
Speaker
patina of being overly, I don't know, pale male in Yale and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Oh, so social. So Bush thought that Stanley level would really discipline the OSS. So Stanley level goes to meet with Donovan to potentially get a job there. And William Donovan says to Stanley level.
00:15:18
Speaker
I want you to become my professor Moriarty. This is being an allusion to, you know, the bad guy in the Sherlock Holmes novel, Professor Moriarty. And, you know, Donovan Tell's level, I want you to create all the dirty tricks that are going to be needed to win this war against the Germans and the Japanese.
00:15:34
Speaker
And so that's how a level gets recruited into the OSS. And particularly, he is assigned to head a specific branch of the OSS that deals with creating weapons, documents, and disguises for all of the OSS agents that are going to be sent abroad. This branch becomes called the Research and Development Branch, the R&D Branch, what the title of this book refers to, the Dirty Tricks Department. So this is really what the book is about. And that's how Stanley Lovell becomes the head of it.
00:16:01
Speaker
In Stanley Lovell, so kind of contrasting him to Bill Donovan, nobody calls Stanley wild Stanley. What was his personality? He seemed a little bit more tame.
Bizarre OSS Projects
00:16:14
Speaker
Talk a bit about the kind of person he was.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, so that's one of the major arcs of this book is watching Stanley level develop throughout the course of this war. At the beginning of the war, he's kind of a shy scientist. I mean, that's what he is. And he wants to use his scientists, his science before the war for good. He was he was basically an orphan. Both of his parents died when he was very young. The rest of his family wouldn't take him in. And his older sister, who was only older by a few years, she basically raised him. She was a steam thrift and she paid for schooling and all kinds of stuff.
00:16:47
Speaker
And so he was basically orphaned from a young age, but he got this great education and he felt indebted to his country. Like he owed a personal debt to it because it allowed this orphaned boy to get such a great education. And so he had this personal conflict. He wanted to use his scientific expertise to help people. He kind of had like a Hippocratic obligation, I need to help people and do something good.
00:17:09
Speaker
But at the same time, the way to help his country at this particular moment in time was to develop deadly weapons, or at least he's recruited to. So he has kind of this personal conflict of what to do.
00:17:19
Speaker
He actually meets with William Donovan, and he says, I don't know if I feel comfortable doing this. I don't know if I feel comfortable becoming the head of this RNG branch. And Donovan tells him to basically grow up. You know, you'll even do that. And that's basically what happens. Level becomes the head of this branch. And throughout the course of the war, you really see his moral, intellectual, personal development. By the end of the war, Stanley Level, this guy who is at first so reluctant to be involved in deadly weapons, is advocating.
00:17:50
Speaker
for the United States to use basically weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons, chemical weapons, the atomic bomb. So you really see his moral arc throughout the story. And that's one of the main things I wanted to try to draw out.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, and later on in the interview, I want to ask you about the moral dilemma. Specifically, I was struck by that with Stanley Lovell, particularly when you get to the part about biological weapons and chemical weapons. But before we explore the moral dimension,
00:18:24
Speaker
Let's actually talk about some of these tricks because, you know, there's just cool stories. So first, let's just talk about just like the crazy ones, just like some of the really wild ones. What were some of the craziest tricks that the OSS tried?
00:18:44
Speaker
The two that immediately spring to mind whenever we're talking about like outlandish kind of stuff that's going on in this R&D branch involve both involve animals and I kind of mentioned them before, bat bombs and glowing foxes.
00:18:58
Speaker
So I can briefly kind of describe what are bat bombs in glowing boxes. The idea with a bat bomb had actually sprang from a dentist who had taken a trip to Carlsbad Caverns right before Pearl Harbor. And then after Pearl Harbor, he was thinking how he can help his country, you know, the United States defeat the Japanese. Well, he had just been to Carlsbad Caverns, which are these caverns in New Mexico, home to millions of Mexican retail bats.
00:19:22
Speaker
And he realized, what if we, this guy's name is Little Adam. And he thought, what if we capture bats? We strap onto them incendiary devices that blow up and start fire, and we release the bats in Japan. The bats will then roost in buildings and warehouses and everything. And then if there's a time delay on the explosives,
00:19:42
Speaker
then the explosives will blow up after a predetermined time, and it will catch fire to all these buildings. So instead of sending a costly bomb array that drops bombs and probably isn't going to hit the target anyway, we can have these bats that are basically like, keep, keep seeking missiles. They'll go right to the houses to roost in them, and then it'll blow them up instead of fire. That's the genesis of this idea. Now, on the surface of it, it already seems outlandish.
00:20:05
Speaker
But the way that this actually got into production was that little atom happened to be a personal acquaintance of Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States.
00:20:14
Speaker
And she passed his proposal on to Franklin Roosevelt. He passed it on to William Donovan of the OSS. And there's a note appended to the proposal that FDR wrote to Donovan that says, this man is not a nut. Listen to what he has to say. And so Donovan, of course, he handed this proposal to the one branch of the OSS capable of actually carrying it out, the R&D branch. And so that's how it falls into Stanley level 10.
00:20:39
Speaker
And there are several experiments that go along with this bat bomb project. These bats are literally captured from their cave. They go and swing giant nests and capture a bunch of lots of bats. And to create an incendiary device for the bat, Stanley Level hires a chemist from Harvard named Louis Pfizer.
00:20:58
Speaker
He, Lewis Pfizer was the inventor of napalm right before the war. So his kind of reputation proceeded in and level hires him. He develops a really small incendiary device that he can attach them to these little bats. They do several tests with this. So in one test, they, they cool these bats kind of in a refrigerator. The idea being they're going to put them in an artificial hibernation state. And that's how they're going to transport them to Japan. So they put them in this kind of artificial hibernated state.
00:21:26
Speaker
They fly them up on a plane and they release them. The idea being, we'll see if they can wake up and, you know, fly off and see what happens. Well, it turns out they had cooled them down too much and the patch just kind of crashed into the desert ground. So that, that didn't work as plan. When things go wrong.
00:21:41
Speaker
When things go wrong, I found is some of the more interesting stories from your book. But anyway, go ahead. Yeah, this is the second experiment with this goes even more horribly wrong because in the second experiment, Lewis Pfizer attaches actual incendiary devices to be bad.
00:21:58
Speaker
Well, they ended up instead of waking up, they not waking up, they woke up too soon. So some of the bats flew off before they were ready. And they had these incendiary devices strapped to them. They flew into a nearby barracks, into a control tower, and they actually blew it up. So the bat bomb actually kind of worked. So, uh, yeah, it eventually wasn't deployed during the war. This was the research for it and the development of these, the bat bombs was happening toward the end of the war.
00:22:24
Speaker
By that time, the atomic bomb had already been developed, so these are deployed, but it was certainly worked out. Well, something that really struck me when I was reading this story in the book was that, and hindsight now is 2020, and so we can sit here and be like, oh my gosh, what were they thinking? That's so dumb.
00:22:42
Speaker
How could anybody ever possibly think that that could work? But something that really struck me that you write about is the bat bomb guys who are developing this. They were kind of thinking about all the crazy things that were being experimented with. And what they think is craziest of all
00:23:02
Speaker
are some scientists who have this bizarre notion that you could split an atom and create a bomb. And then they're like, no, no, no, no, no. That's nuts. We need to work on the bat bombs. That's going to win us the war. Most of these projects are happening in New Mexico, a large part of the testing. The atomic bomb, that's being developed at Los Alamos in New Mexico. And these bat bombs and bats are being captured from New Mexico. And some of these tests
00:23:29
Speaker
are happening there. And so that's exactly right. Little Adams, the guy who came up with the idea of the bat bomb, he was talking to some general trying to get funding. And the general was saying, you know, we're already funding so many scientific projects. I don't know if we can do it for the bat bomb. Little Adams comes back to New Mexico mad and he says basically,
00:23:52
Speaker
I can't understand why they're bothering, fundering, messing around with these little atoms when we have a really good thing like the bat bomb here. This is the thing that's going to win the war.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that was, again, you know, 2020's hindsight, because at the time, it would be ludicrous to think that... This is a good point that I try to bring out in the book that I want to use historical empathy. I want to be able to situate the reader within the mindset of these people and try to understand, I mean, from our perspective, it looks kind of outlandish, some of these projects.
00:24:25
Speaker
Some of them aren't outlandish. I mean, some of them are very practical and useful. But like the bath bomb, that seems kind of outlandish. But, you know, one of the goals I want to do is to try to get across that empathy and put the reader in the perspective of these people and why they're really just trying to find anything that might help advance or win this war. They're throwing anything against the wall and just seeing what sticks. So from their perspective,
00:24:49
Speaker
In the back of their heads, they know some of this is outlandish. But you know what? Desperate times call for desperate measures. So if we have to resort to something outlandish to help the war, then that's what we're going to do. At least that's their perspective. Yeah. And that's really, as you were talking about earlier with Stanley Lovell, his evolution is kind of that mindset. It's like, we got to do what we got to do to win this war. Let's talk about the glowing foxes. Yeah. This is called Operation Fantasia.
00:25:17
Speaker
This is the brainchild of a man named Ed Salinger in the OSS. He was a businessman who had before the war done business in Tokyo. So he knew Japanese culture. He understood a lot of practices and rituals and religious customs of the Japanese in the Shinto religion, especially. That's why he was useful to the OSS because they thought that he could help us plot psychological warfare against the Japanese. So he's recruited into the OSS. And Ed Salinger comes up with this idea to demoralize the Japanese.
00:25:47
Speaker
The idea being if they're demoralized, they'll be less willing to fight and maybe they'll give up the war sooner. And so his plan to do this involves glowing foxes. This relates to kind of a notion within the Shinto religion called Kitsuni. Kitsuni are these
00:26:03
Speaker
Animal shaped spirit beings. And apparently within Shinto, if you see one of these things, it can be a bad omen. It could be kind of a portent of doom. If I see one of these glowing animals, it represents that something bad is going to happen. And so Salinger wanted to capitalize on this by creating glowing boxes.
00:26:22
Speaker
You know these kids uni are typically glow so he wants to create glowing classes release them in Japan the idea being if the Japanese see them they're gonna mistake them for a real kid uni and they're gonna think this is a bad omen it must be referring to the fact that we're going to lose this war we might as well give up now while you know before we lose too many people
00:26:42
Speaker
And so this actually gets surprisingly far. The first Salinger, he suggests that they just create whistles that sound like foxes. And we'll get some people in Japan to blow these whistles, and they'll think it's these kitsune. Well, there's several problems with this. For one, do people really know what foxes sound like? Are they really going to understand? That doesn't go over well. He then suggests that they create fox odors, something that smells like a fox. So the Japanese will smell this and think, oh, these are the kitsune. It's a bad omen.
00:27:11
Speaker
But it's the same problem. Who knows what a fox smells like? Do people really know that? So that doesn't go anywhere. Then he realizes the way to go forward with this, as outlandish as it seems, is to capture live foxes, paint them with glowing radioactive paint from the American Radium Corporation, and then release them in Japan. And so that's what is basically done. They're not eventually released in Japan. But the experiments go surprisingly far. Several foxes are captured.
00:27:40
Speaker
And there are a couple of experiments done with them. One of the most interesting is to see whether the glowing paint actually stays on a fox. Because to get these foxes in Japan, they're probably going to have to be released close to shore and slim to shore. You can't just go to Japan and release them there at war.
00:27:56
Speaker
So can foxes even swim? Can they swim to shore? So to test this, several foxes were towed out into the Chesapeake Bay, painted with this glowing paint, and thrown overboard. And it turns out they actually did swim. They swam to shore. So foxes do swim. But by the time they had reached the shore, all the paint had washed off. So that didn't really work well. Another one of these experiments for Operation Fantasia was to get
00:28:21
Speaker
about 30 foxes and release them in Rock Creek Park. This is the one I thought was wild. Yeah, in Rock Creek Park. And the idea being, we've got these glowing foxes and if they scare Americans, well, it's certainly going to scare the Japanese. So we can get kind of a test run to see if they're actually spooky.
00:28:39
Speaker
So these boxes are released in Rock Creek Park, and there are reports afterwards by newspapers that it really did scare people. They saw these apparitions, ghostly-like apparitions in the forest, and then the paper said that these people had the screaming genies upon seeing these boxes. So apparently this was a success. Hey, if it scared these Americans, it's really going to get the Japanese.
00:28:58
Speaker
But again, Operation Fantasia doesn't end up going into production and youth in Japan, but there's another kind of the most, probably the most interesting document I came across when doing research for this book involves Operation Fantasia. Ed Salinger, when he's doing these experiments with the R&D branch, the OSF, and trying to think of how to really demoralize the Japanese,
00:29:21
Speaker
He remembers a tale from Shinto in Japan that talks about the worst fortunes of doom are fox-shaped beings that have what he called, you know, death's head upon them. And by this they mean like a human skull, a skull upon their head. And so he comes up with this idea to taxidermy a fox
00:29:44
Speaker
to paint it with his glowing paint, to get a human skull and attach it to the fox to make it seem as if it's got this, you know, death mark, and then to have a mechanical mechanism that raises and lowers the jaw of this human skull, and they're going to project audio to make it seem as if this fox with a human skull is talking to the Japanese, telling them to lay down their arms and, you know, give up this war. Then they're going to attach this whole thing to a balloon to make it seem as if it's floating around, so all the Japanese are going to be able to see it.
00:30:12
Speaker
So it's just completely crazy. I couldn't believe it when I saw the document explaining this. Oh my gosh, this is actually a real thing. Yeah. And you know, I found myself wondering, what was the fixation with everybody in animals? Because it wasn't just, frankly, it wasn't just the OSS. You write about how I think both the Soviets and the British
00:30:39
Speaker
were stuffing rats full of explosives and putting them in German coal mines and stuff like that. Why were animals always... Why did they get so much focus? Yeah, I don't know why animals specifically, but they certainly do. You mentioned these rat bonds. This is a British invention, the SOE, the Special Operations Executive. This is kind of the analog to the OSS for the British.
00:31:08
Speaker
And so, the idea behind the rat bombs is that you'll get a taxidermied rat, you'll stuff it full of explosives and throw it up, and you'll throw it into a coal reserve, like a German coal reserve. The idea being, the Germans, when they shovel this coal into their boiler of their locomotives, their trains, they're not really gonna, if they see a rat, they're not gonna pick it up and throw it out, they're just gonna shovel it in too, because it's already there.
00:31:31
Speaker
And so this explosive rat, if they shovel it in, it's going to blow up into flames and it's going to destroy this locomotive. So there were bat bombs that I talked about. There are rat bombs. There's also the idea of a cat bomb. So any variation of that bomb, it's not everything.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, in a cat bomb, I think that was like cats getting dropped from planes to like guide missiles, right? Wasn't that? So in defense of the R&D branch, Stanley level knew that this was not going to work. He knew that this was a stupid idea. But there was a senator in the United States who thought that it was a good idea. And when the senator is telling you to pursue something, Stanley level didn't really think that he could, you know, say no. I mean, if you want to keep your funding coming from Congress, well, you better please Congress.
00:32:14
Speaker
So he feels pressure to pursue, so at least he knows it's not going to work, but he at least does a quick test to prove that it doesn't. The idea of this cat bomb is that cats don't like water, and so they're naturally going to seek land. So if you drop a cat from the air, from like an airplane, it's naturally going to try to land on a ship because it doesn't want to hit the water. So what if you just attach a bomb to this cat and you drop it? Then it's like a seeking missile because it's going to avoid the water and hit the boat.
00:32:41
Speaker
That doesn't make any sense from a physics perspective, but this senator really insisted, this is going to help the war. So they had to do an experiment and obviously it didn't work. Yeah, and it should be noted too that came from, this was honestly, this is like the biggest mistake was this came from like a public appeal being like just out to everybody in the United States, send us your ideas for weapons that we could build to win this war.
OSS Inventions and Training
00:33:10
Speaker
And so they just get all these outlandish ideas. I think you talk about Stanley Lovell or maybe William Donovan just getting harassed with people wanting them to hear their ideas that they know are bad ideas. But they've just got this influx of people wanting to help out, I suppose.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, this is one of Donovan's projects during the war to try to recruit as many ideas as he can. I mean, why not tap into this inventive American spirit, he thinks. So he puts out a call to American inventors to send in your proposals for ideas. And if they're any good, then we'll try to pursue them. They'll be passed on to Stanley level, for instance, and he'll develop them.
00:33:55
Speaker
So a lot of these ideas are somewhat outlandish. Actually, the bat bomb actually comes from this kind of thing, too. Little Adams is a dentist, and he submits this proposal. He had the kind of connections to Eleanor Roosevelt, which is why it gets pursued a little bit more. But yeah, the cap bomb originates from that. There are several others. Not many of them are actually pursued. It was just kind of random people. There are several proposals for death rays and all kinds of stuff that, you know, obviously we're just
00:34:24
Speaker
Well, we've talked about something like these crazy ideas that obviously never were used. What were some of the dirty tricks that were actually used and did actually help the war effort?
00:34:37
Speaker
Yeah, so there are a couple things to keep in mind with the things that were really useful. The first one is that this R&D branch that I'm talking about of the OSS, it's really composed of three different divisions to make up this R&D branch. One division, its purpose is to create the weapons and devices like silenced pistols and explosives and all like a bat bomb and all that. That's the weapon kind of division.
00:35:03
Speaker
Another division is the documents division. Its purpose is to create all the forged passports and train tickets and ration tickets and all of that that an undercover agent might need when they're going abroad to spy or sabotage.
00:35:17
Speaker
And then the last division is the camouflage division. This division was in charge of providing the disguises for these undercover agents, making sure they had authentic clothing and cover stories and all that. So I would say these last two divisions, the documents division and the camouflage division, these were the most useful.
00:35:35
Speaker
These were the most useful because it allowed agents to go abroad and gather this intelligence that otherwise probably wouldn't have been gathered, and then that intelligence could be sent to the United States where it can be used to make informed decisions on the war. So I think that's probably the most useful part of this R&D branch. Another useful part of the documents in camouflage division, it allows these agents to go abroad where they train resistance forces. So they're undercover as just they're a civilian or something in France, let's say.
00:36:04
Speaker
and they train resistance forces who then sabotage the Germans. So I think those two divisions are probably the most useful. However, there are some very useful devices that the R&D branch creates. It's not just bat bombs and glowing boxes. Those are some of the exciting stories, but there are actually some useful things.
00:36:20
Speaker
One of the most useful, I think, is probably an invention called the mole. The mole is this light sensitive explosive device. The idea being that a saboteur could attach this little device to a train.
00:36:37
Speaker
And when the train moves into a tunnel, the device notices a sudden shift from light to dark, and that shift triggers the explosive, so it blows up. Now, the usefulness of this is that the train is derailed, and so it, you know, eliminates this, let's say, German train, but also it plugs up the tunnel, so no other trains can get through. Well, that's very useful.
00:37:00
Speaker
There are a lot of variations of this kind of thing. There are devices that can be dropped into like an oil intake pipe of a tank or a car, and it will destroy the engine. So those were used throughout France and Germany against the Germans. There's another explosive device or invention called Aunt Jemima. Aunt Jemima is a fairly well-known device that's created by this R&D branch, but it's basically flour. It looks like flour. You can bake it. You can eat it. You know, it can be made into cupcakes or cookies or muffins or whatever.
00:37:30
Speaker
But within this flower is some explosive material. And so you can bake it and do everything with it, but if you set a specific charge to it, it'll blow up. The thing about Aunt Jemima, which made it very useful, is that you can sneak it into enemy territory pretty much undetected. If anyone's bringing flowers somewhere, no one's really going to suspect that they're carrying explosives. So the fact that the flower itself is explosive is what made it really useful because it was disguised.
00:37:58
Speaker
Now, who are the people who are actually on the ground? Is the OSS sending people from Washington to carry out these operations? Are these people in the Army? Who's doing the sabotage?
00:38:10
Speaker
Yeah, so they are recruiting people. A lot of the people that the OSS recruits are foreigners. So people who are fluent in whatever language, wherever they're going, and who actually know the geography and maybe even have contact that they can help to train these resistance forces. So there are a lot of foreign recruits who are used as undercover agents for the OSS. There are Americans, though, that are trained and then sent abroad, especially to sabotage and spy on, let's say, the Germans.
00:38:38
Speaker
And in order to train these recruits from the US, the OSS set up a training school called Area F. This was on the grounds of the Congressional Country Club, this nice golf course and everything. The OSS kind of took over those grounds during World War II. And that's where it had a training school for all these agents. So they learned how to pick locks. They learned how to discreetly open and close letters. They learned how to set explosives and all kinds of stuff.
00:39:06
Speaker
And I tell one story at the beginning of the book. This is Roger Hall, who wrote this book on the OSS, a famous kind of memoir called You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger. It's very humorous.
00:39:18
Speaker
Um, but he, he talks about the last test that you have to take at training school for the OSS to become one of these agents is to break into an American defense plan and steal secret information to prove that you actually learned something. And if you get caught, well, you sell your test. So it's very simple. You either don't get caught or you get caught. So Roger Hall goes into one of these plans.
00:39:41
Speaker
And he has a cover story that he's this war hero who's just come back and he was injured in war and he's now a journalist and he's reporting on whatever. And he's seeking a job at this defense plant. Could you please give me a tour around so I can talk to some people? When really he wants the tour so he can see what they're making and get information and so he can show the OSS. Look, I did really good. I gathered all this information from what's supposed to be secret place.
00:40:04
Speaker
So he goes, the person who's interviewing him at the beginning is this young woman who's mitten by him because he tells her this war story. He's this war hero and blah, blah, blah. She ends up being the vice president's daughter of the company. So she gets Roger Hall and interview with the vice president the next day. Roger Hall goes, he makes a great impression with the vice president who invites him to lunch. At lunch, the vice president, it's in the plant cafeteria.
00:40:33
Speaker
The vice president walks up to the stage in front of the room and he says to everyone, unbeknownst to Roger Hall, we've got someone here from abroad who just came back and he wants to tell you his story. So, you know, come up here. Of course, Roger Hall is not ready for this. He's made all of it up. He doesn't know what's going on. So he starts limping to the stage because remember, he's supposed to have been injured in the war. So he develops his limp and so he goes to the stage.
00:40:56
Speaker
And he puts on the show of his life. He starts saying that, you know, I've been, uh, with these hardened men abroad. And when mail call comes around, they don't get any letters. So you need to write letters to these guys and you need to buy war bonds and all this stuff. He gets a standing ovation. He limps off the stage. The vice president is shaking his right hand. The, you know, his daughter is clinging to Roger Hall's left hand. Um, it's printed up in newspapers afterwards. That's great speech by this American war hero. And he's offered the job and he never returns because he had passed his office.
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that was, I remember reading that. And I think the thinking was that like, oh, this will just, this will be helpful for both the OSS, but also the FBI will help them, you know, learn how to, uh, to, to catch spies. But I remember the FBI did not like this, the fact that the OSS is telling its recruits in order to pass, you basically have to steal information because that made the FBI look really bad because you're not protecting these secretive places.
00:41:55
Speaker
But Donovan, the head of the OSS, basically said, well, it's good training for both of us, so I'm going to continue doing that. Yeah, that story made me chuckle a little bit. Also, the story that you write later on in the book about when we're talking about truth. I don't know if you want to call it serum or, you know, truth drugs.
00:42:21
Speaker
Um, where they, they put like this truth drug in, into cigarettes and, um, there's an interrogator and then like a German submarine captain who's being interrogated and he accidentally switches up the cigarette. So the, it's supposed to be the interrogator is smoking a normal cigarette, but the person
00:42:41
Speaker
who's being interrogated, the German, smokes this truth drug. Well, he flips it on accident, and he smokes the truth drug cigarette, and he starts going off about how much he hates his commander.
00:42:56
Speaker
Really just like, when I was reading it, I was imagining just like the scene in that room where like this guy who's being, this German who's being interrogated, it's like, what is going on right now? Yeah, the idea with these truth drugs, the idea is that this would be great for interrogations. If you could give someone that guarantee that, let's say the creative parts of their mind were somehow prevented from acting, then the only thing that they could say, they can't imagine anything because their creative parts have been tampered down.
00:43:26
Speaker
The only thing they can say is the truth, because they have no ability to create lies. That's at least the idea. It doesn't end up working in practice like that. That's the idea. But some of these truth drugs, they do actually lower inhibition. So one of the main truth drugs that the OSS Stanley level is experimenting with
00:43:43
Speaker
is THC acetate, which THC is the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. So it actually does lower inhibition, but this really isn't anything new. I mean, people have known for thousands of years that alcohol lowers inhibition. There's this phrase by Pliny the Elder thousands of years ago.
00:44:00
Speaker
in vino veritas, so in wine lies the truth. So if you can get someone drunk, well, their inhibitions are lowered and they're more likely to tell you stuff they wouldn't otherwise. So the truth drugs don't actually work out in practice and that they guarantee you'll get the truth, but there were experiments done by the OSS that showed it actually sometimes can get people to talk more, but you can't guarantee that what they say is true.
Preventing German Atomic Development
00:44:23
Speaker
So yeah, but there are a lot of truth drug experiments going on with the OSS.
00:44:27
Speaker
Let's talk about the atomic bomb because obviously that is like the dirty trick that, I mean, you know, for the purposes of your book, the dirty trick that wins the war or adds to winning the war. What was the OSS's involvement in advancing the atomic bomb?
00:44:47
Speaker
The OSS isn't involved too much in actually creating the bomb. The main thing that the OSS involved in related to a comic bomb is that there are several attempts to make sure that the Germans aren't creating an atomic bomb.
00:45:02
Speaker
Well, I guess there's one other thing. Speaking of these truth drugs, there are experiments on personnel that are working on the Manhattan Project with truth drugs. So the Manhattan Project is the American effort to build an atomic bomb. And when the OSS is developing these truth drugs,
00:45:20
Speaker
It wants to test it on people who have real secrets to hide. And so it gets people from the Manhattan Project and it gives them these truth drugs to try to see whether they'll actually reveal what they're working on. In most instances, it just causes them to get sick and throw up, you know, but that was the experiment.
00:45:39
Speaker
But with the German atomic bomb, the OSS, one of the main things it does is try to make sure that the Germans are not creating one. So pretty much everyone knew. If you were a physicist at this time and you knew about atomic bombs at least, you knew that out of anyone who's going to be creating a German atomic bomb or at least leading their program, it's going to be Werner Heisenberg. He's the main guy. He's the world famous renowned physicist. If anyone is leading a German atomic bomb project, it's going to be him.
00:46:09
Speaker
And so there were a few efforts within the OSS that Stanley level helps advise on to either kidnap or assassinate Werner Heisenberg. I go into these in some detail in the book. One is to recruit a guy, a former professional baseball player named Mo Berg. Mo Berg is assigned. Well, Mo Berg has recruited the OSS because he is a polyglot. He spoke several different languages, which is very useful for an organization like the OSS. So he's recruited.
00:46:37
Speaker
And he's basically told to attend a lecture by Werner Heisenberg in Switzerland, and if it seems like he's talking about nuclear fission or something related to atomic bombs, to literally pull out a pistol and shoot him and assassinate him right there. That's Berg's assignment. So he goes to Switzerland, he sits in on this lecture, and he kind of gets the impression that Werner Heisenberg isn't working on atomic bombs, so he doesn't assassinate him.
00:47:02
Speaker
But that's kind of the OSS's main connection to atomic bombs, is trying to prevent the atomic bombs from being created in Germany.
Stanley Lovell's Moral Journey
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah, and I think too, if I remember correctly, before the goal was to assassinate Heisenberg, they actually wanted to kidnap him and bring him to America, but the Manhattan Project had progressed, so they didn't see a need for him. Yeah, one of the guys who's tasked with this is someone named Carl Eisler. He was the head of what's called Detachment 101 in Burma. He's trying to destroy a Japanese airbase, but he has recalled to the United States
00:47:37
Speaker
and assigned basically this task of kidnapping Werner Heisenberg before Moberg is put on an assassination campaign.
00:47:44
Speaker
Um, the problem with Carl Eifler is that he was extremely loud and gregarious and rambunctious. And he was very similar to Donovan in a lot of ways, but with even less of a filter. Um, so when you want to kidnap someone like Werner Heisenberg, this is a, this should be a quiet, delicate affair where you kidnap him. And that's kind of the opposite of Carl Eifler. So he's eventually called out that. And that's when Moberg gets assigned to a faculty appointment.
00:48:13
Speaker
So let's talk about, I know we touched on this at the beginning of the show, but let's talk a little bit about the moral aspect to all of these dirty tricks. Give us kind of an overview. This becomes more of a question when you write about biological and chemical weapons, but throughout the book, the experimentation on animals, there are questions, and Stanley Lovell, as you mentioned, he does have kind of an arc
00:48:41
Speaker
Talk about the moral dilemma to the scientists working on these experiments and then specifically with Stanley Lovell. Stanley Lovell, like I said, at the beginning of the war, he's reluctant to work on any of this. By the end of the war, he's advocating for the use of chemical and biological weapons.
00:48:58
Speaker
And that arc can really be kind of explained in his familiarity with what war is. When he became more familiar with the gruesome nature of just conventional warfare, he decided the ethical thing is to end the war as soon as possible by whatever means necessary. To prolong the war, even if it means not using biological or chemical weapons, to prolong the war would be unethical to him.
00:49:26
Speaker
So he's advocating to end the war as soon as possible. If it means we have to resort to biological weapons, then so be it. It means that we're going to overall save lives.
00:49:36
Speaker
He doesn't really engage with the kind of arguments against that position, like the precedent that it's going to set for future wars or anything like that. In his mind, we are at war right now, and we want to end it as soon as possible. Now, he actually takes this even further by arguing that, say, biological weapons might be the ethical alternative to conventional warfare. And he gives kind of a thought experiment explaining why this might be the case. In conventional warfare, let's say you stab someone with a bayonet.
00:50:06
Speaker
Well, they're probably going to die by, they're going to get an infection and it's going to kill them and it's going to be gruesome the entire time.
00:50:14
Speaker
Stanley Level's argument is, what if we can just give them the infection without stabbing them with a bayonet? So they're gonna die of an infection either way through a biological weapon or through an infection. Well, if they're going to die by the infection either way, why not spare them the gruesome wound? Isn't this the ethical thing to do? This is at least the gears that are turning in Stanley Level's head. So what is it that sparks that change for him?
00:50:40
Speaker
One of the main things is that Stanley Level has a son. There's a real personal aspect to this. Stanley Level's son is on a boat midway across the Pacific, waiting to engage in an invasion of Japan. And the sooner the war ends, the better the chance that Stanley Level's son doesn't die. And so Stanley Level is saying, if we end this war as soon as possible, not only is it going to save his son, it's going to save all these people, but there's really a personal dimension to this.
00:51:07
Speaker
Yeah. Well, what's your assessment of Stanley Level's, well, I guess, what's Stanley Level's legacy and what's your assessment of that legacy?
Legacy and Future Research
00:51:17
Speaker
This is one of the most interesting things that I was trying to do at the end of this book.
00:51:22
Speaker
I knew of Stanley level and, you know, I had been researching his life and work during the OSS and I couldn't help but constantly make comparisons to the Cold War when the CIA is doing a lot of similar stuff.
00:51:38
Speaker
During the Cold War, in the 1950s especially, the CIA had launched a program called MKUltra. This is kind of an infamous program in CIA history. MKUltra is, the purpose was to see if mind control is possible. Is it possible to control people, to make them tell the truth, to potentially make them assassinate others? This is the idea, using drugs or hypnosis or some other means. The leader of this MKUltra program is a guy named Sidney Gottlieb, who is also a chemist.
00:52:08
Speaker
And as I was researching Stanley level, I couldn't help but draw connections between him and Sidney Gottlieb. They seemed very similar. Both had worked in the R&D branch basically of their intelligence organization. Both had been involved in developing weapons and disguises and documents and devices. Both had been involved in developing assassination plots on foreign leaders. Both had been involved in truth drug experiments.
00:52:34
Speaker
And so I think, I was thinking their careers are so similar and you know, that's not enough. That wasn't enough for me to want to talk about Sidney Gottlieb too much, but I found in the back of my head, maybe there's some connection between them. Maybe it's not a coincidence that their careers were so similar. And so I was constantly looking for any kind of connection there might be between family level and Sidney Gottlieb. And I'm pleased to say that I found connections between them.
00:53:02
Speaker
And for one, one of the people that Stanley level hired to do these truth drug tests for the OSS during World War II is a guy named George White. George White was a Bureau of Narcotics Officer, but he had connections to lots of criminals. And so that's why Stanley level hired him during World War II so that he could test these truth drugs on all these criminals. Well, during the Cold War, Sidney Gottlieb is working on truth drugs as well for the CIA, for the C.K. Ultra program.
00:53:29
Speaker
And who does he hire to test these drugs? Well, he's looking through the OSS files and he sees the name of George White. He hires the very same George White because his OSS files basically served as his resume.
00:53:42
Speaker
Now, there were a couple of other connections that I found. I had found these incredible depositions that Sidney Gottlieb was forced to give in the 1980s. After all, this is over several victims of MKUltra through the CIA, and Sidney Gottlieb was forced to give depositions. And I was going through these depositions in the archives. I was taking pictures really quickly. I didn't have time to read them in the archives. I just wanted to take pictures and get out of there so I could analyze them later.
00:54:08
Speaker
And the archive, I wanted to gather as much material as possible. So I'm there, I'm taking pictures of these depositions, and I thought, wouldn't it be great if he talks about Stanley Level in here, if he mentions the OSS, and then I could really make some concrete connection between Stanley Level and Sidney Gottlieb. So I'm taking pictures, I'm going through these, and then on one page, I see the name Stanley Level.
00:54:31
Speaker
Stanley Level is right there in the dialogue that Sidney Gottlieb is talking about. And again, I'm in the archive only for a short period of time, so I couldn't stop and read it. I just had to take a picture and move on. But I knew that it was in there somewhere. And so I'll kind of leave this as a teaser to the reader. If you want to know what Sidney Gottlieb and Stanley Level's connection is, you're going to have to read the book. But rest assured that I found some connection in those depositions.
00:54:55
Speaker
But I say all that to say, one of Stanley Lovell's lasting legacies, he has an important legacy during World War II for helping develop some of these documents and disguises and weapons.
00:55:07
Speaker
His real consequential legacy, not that he intended this to be the case, was inspiring a new generation of scientists in the CIA to do similar kinds of stuff that he was doing during World War II, and that led to some really, in many cases, unfortunate consequences, like with his M.K. Ultra program. He was kind of the direct inspiration for this to happen.
00:55:28
Speaker
Oh, well, you've teed it up. To find more, you got to pick up the book. You got to flip it open. By the way, I don't know if you're talking about doing your research in the National Archives, but I've also done research in the National Archives, and I've had a similar situation. They close, I think, at five.
00:55:52
Speaker
And I've got like this whole like, stack of stuff in front of me. And I've got this like image scanner. And I'm like, there's like 10 minutes to go. And I'm just like quickly like, all right, just scan all this stuff. When I get home, like, I'll take a look at it. But I'm kind of like sweating bullets. And then I see something that really jumps out at me. I'm like, Oh, I got to read this. And then like, it's a real problem for me, frankly, I've been to the National Archives a few times. I don't know if you similarly have had an issue.
00:56:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The National Archives is notoriously difficult because you have to go through so many steps in order to get that material, which I guess makes sense. It's like, you know, important material, but you've got to, you know, submit your thing. And then if it's classified or if it's been declassified, you have to go get a little number on each picture. It has to show the number showing that this is declassified. And you have to go through all kinds of stuff. It's so cumbersome. You know, there's a range of experiences in the archives.
00:56:47
Speaker
in the National Archives, it's like the most intensive I've experienced. There are other archives, I won't name them, but you go to and I, you know, you say something like, oh, I'm interested in the papers of, you know, ex-scientists, whoever it is, and they just bring you a box and they say, okay, how far do you need to be in this? And you have free reign to do all these documents.
00:57:04
Speaker
I mean, I prefer the latter because it gives me access and it's a little easier to get these documents. The National Archives is pretty intense though. Well, John, it's been a great interview. Like I said, I really enjoyed your book. I hope people read about all these very fascinating dirty tricks that were used during World War II. What are you working on next?
00:57:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm fortunate. I've got a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and it's going to help me write a project that pretty much takes off where this one ends. So this one, as I mentioned, ends talking about the connection between Stanley Level and Sidney Gottlieb. The next one is really going to focus on NK Ultra, describing these experiments. I found incredible documents, you know, of
00:57:57
Speaker
I'll leave it for that project. But it's an incredible document that I'm going to be using to describe what's happening under MKUltra. But then I'm going to carry that even further in this next project to talk about these victims that threw the CIA and how the CIA is kind of interacting and responding and challenging these victims. So it's about MKUltra, but it's also about this pursuit of justice. So that's what the next project is going to be.
00:58:21
Speaker
All right. Well, I hope you come back on the show and you write your next book and talk about it. I'd love to. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Well, where can people find you? Are you on social media? If somebody wants to follow you, where can people get in touch? Sure. The probably easiest place is Twitter. If you go to at John Lyle, J O H N L I S L E. That's my Twitter handle. I don't post too much, but you know, if you want to keep up with updates about me, that's where I'll post, you know, book updates or anything like that. And also kind of a plug for following me.
00:58:51
Speaker
is that I try to keep my feed very entertaining. So most of what I post is actually just pictures from the archives of documents, incredible documents that I found. So if you want to see firsthand what it's like to be a historian in the archives looking for documents and coming across kind of gems, then follow my Twitter feed and that's where I post interesting archival finds.
00:59:14
Speaker
Oh, great. I'll follow your Twitter feed. That sounds really cool. All right, thanks. All right. Well, John, thanks so much again. Check out John's book, The Dirty Tricks Department, Stanley Level, The OSS in the Masterminds of World War II, Secret Warfare. Go pick up a copy. Go check it out from the library. A lot of really fascinating stuff in it. And John, thanks again for your time.