The History of Spies with Andrew Hammond

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Welcome to AMSEcast, coming to you from Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

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a global leader in science, technology, and innovation.

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My name is Alan Lowe, director of the American Museum

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of Science and Energy, and the K-25 History Center.

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Each episode of AMSEcast presents world-renowned authors,

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scientists, historians, policymakers, and everyone in between,

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sharing their insights on a variety of fascinating topics.

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Welcome to a special edition of AMSEcast as

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we celebrate 250 years of American innovation.

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With much appreciated support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services,

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or IMLS, we’re undertaking a series of AMSEcast interviews focusing on American

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innovations as part of our commemoration of the nation’s semi-quincentennial.

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On this episode, I’m honored to be joined in person at

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the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, by Dr.

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Andrew Hammond, the museum’s historian and curator.

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Andrew has held many teaching positions and fellowships in institutions like

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the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and

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he currently is a fellow at the Global National Security Institute, a veteran

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of the Royal Air Force with assignments to the British Army and Royal Navy.

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Andrew is also the author of the upcoming book, Struggles

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for Freedom: Afghanistan and US Foreign Policy Since 1979.

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Andrew, it’s an honor to speak with you today.

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Welcome to AMSEcast.

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Thanks for having me.

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It’s a pleasure to be here.

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You have an amazing museum.

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I toured it this morning.

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It’s terrific.

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Thank you very much.

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I encourage everyone to come and to spend many hours.

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I admittedly… I always run through museums.

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I shouldn’t admit that.

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I love museums, but I’m a—I start and go around, then I go back around.

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You can spend many, many hours in this facility, that’s for sure.

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Can you tell our listeners, before we get into the meat of the topic today,

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tell us a bit about the museum, where it’s located, what its mission is?

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So, the museum’s located in Washington, DC right off the National Mall.

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So, we’re in a great location.

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We’re between all of the Smithsonians on the Mall, and the river has

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been developed then the past 10, 20 years, so we’re in a very nice spot.

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We have the world’s largest collection of

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intelligence and espionage-related artifacts.

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You don’t have to trust me.

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It’s on the Guinness records [laugh] book.

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[laugh]

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.
And our mission is basically to try to help the public understand the very

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thorny, and difficult, and sometimes opaque world of intelligence and espionage.

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As a historian, I would say that there’s probably no other topic, no other

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museum in the country that probably [laugh] has as difficult job as we do

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because by its very nature, it’s a topic that you’re not meant to know about.

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And even still, some of the records are still—well, you worked in the National

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Archives and the presidential libraries—some of the stuff is still classified—

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Very much.

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—so we don’t know the full picture.

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So, I think it’s a difficult topic matter.

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I think it’s a very important topic matter, especially in the modern world.

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So, it’s really important that the public understands

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and gets their head around what’s going on.

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Let’s be honest, what most people know about intelligence

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and espionage comes from watching movies or TV shows.

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It’s like, what most people know about my homeland,

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Scotland, comes from watching Braveheart or Outlander, or—

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Which is horribly incorrect, historically, I will

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say to everyone watching, Braveheart, please [laugh]

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.
So, I think you meet people where they are, and then you take them on a journey.

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There is a connection between fact and fiction.

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Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels,

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worked in British intelligence during World War II.

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John le Carre worked in British intelligence.

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Graham Greene.

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There’s so many different links between fact and fiction.

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But we basically take people on a journey, try to help them understand

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the breadth of this topic, why it’s so important, and some of those

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relationships between fact and fiction, really so that they can

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feel more informed and educated about the world in which they live.

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And you do it in a great way, where you show the technology, you

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use a lot of those great artifacts, but you humanize it as well with

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people’s stories, and also you assume an identity as you go through.

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I didn’t use my identity like I should have.

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I’m going to go back and do that.

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But really, you make a topic very approachable.

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Though I will say, you know, I saw one of the exhibits said, “Who’s listening?”

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And the answer was, “The better question is, who isn’t listening,” right [laugh]

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—
[laugh]

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.
—so it makes you feel uneasy.

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But it’s really an important topic and

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extraordinarily well presented, so congratulations.

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I told you before the interview officially started, I’ve been to

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the previous incarnation of this museum, and it was well done,

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too, but this is this spectacular, and a perfect location for it.

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So, all right, let’s dive in a bit to this whole idea of innovation,

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and spycraft, and what we’ve been focusing on in AMSEcast.

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So, part of the spycraft world is collecting information.

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God knows, there’s a lot of information these days.

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There’s always been information that’s important.

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What are some of the innovative ways that the US in particular has

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collected, or stolen, or found information on adversaries over the years?

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Really great, great question.

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So, I think that the first thing that I would say would be, let’s take

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a step back and think about the flow of information for our species.

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So… small question [laugh]

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.
Ah that’s al—let’s see, Matt, we have…

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[laugh]

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.
So, let’s just look at three touch points: the ancient world: Papyrus.

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Not many people could read, not many people could

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afford Papyrus, Papyrus was very time consuming.

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By sheer necessity, the flow of information is very restricted.

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Let’s jump forward to the Middle Ages.

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Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, game changer.

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Much more copies of a book, for example,

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can be distributed, drives down the cost.

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Then, if we think about that logically, if there’s all of this

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supply of books, this feeds into the Protestant Reformation.

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If you want to read scripture in the original, you need

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to be able to read, so it has effects on education.

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Then if we jump forward to say, the digital age,

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the flow of information now is exponentially larger.

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So, if we think about those three touch points through the history of

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our species, the volume and flow of information has increased massively.

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And then if we map the history of the United States, 250 years onto

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that evolution, we see just absolutely incredible, radical change.

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So, for most of human history, the technology is relatively static.

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The past 250 years, it’s just taken off.

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If you think about, say, George Washington—so let’s go back

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to the very earliest days—George Washington handwriting

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a letter, there’d be one copy, it would do the rounds.

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Then, if we think about where we are now.

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The Library of Congress, which you mentioned in your kind introduction

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to me, this is the largest library in the entire world, and I think it’s

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something like 30 Library of Congresses are created every single day.

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So, the volume of information is staggering.

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So, if we think about the United States, map it onto that history, one

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thing we know about the United States as, like, every country you know, the

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United States has things that it’s stronger on than others, and one thing

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that it is very strong on is technology and innovation, which you mentioned.

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So, if we think about this innovation, the computer,

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United States, you think about satellites, we can think

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about the telephone, although as a Scotsman, I would say—

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[laugh] . I was going to say—

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—Alexander Graham Bell, let’s agree to share him.

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Right.

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We’ll do that today.

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We’ll make that official today.

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We’re sharing him.

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And just to bring that all back to your question, for every one of those

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technologies, that is a new opportunity to both betray or unwillingly

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distribute information, and it’s also an opportunity to capture information.

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So, the internet means that there’s much more information that can be captured.

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Phone calls, there’s much more information that can be captured.

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Whereas before, you would have to track a letter, or you would have

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to—before you had a recording device, someone would have to be at the

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door with a glass to their ear or whatever, or be hiding in the room.

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Now, you can just leave a bug in there, walk away, or

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you can listen in on a phone call, rather than have to

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find the letter, steam it open, try to glue it back shut.

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All of those various inflection points you see America and American intelligence

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getting involved to use each one of them to try to gather more information.

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We can talk about some of the specific examples, if you

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want, but I just wanted to take it out of the broadest

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possible level there before we zoom all the way back in.

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Well, I think that’s important to do.

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And there’s two things that come to mind immediately.

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One is our home of Oak Ridge, Tennessee was created during the

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Manhattan Project, a secret city totaling eventually about 75,000

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people working to process uranium for the atomic bomb, kept very secret.

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And we often wonder, in this day and age, with the flow of

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information as it is now, how that would ever be possible

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again, with that number of people to keep that big of a secret.

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That’s one thing.

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The other thing I will say, when I was director of the George

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W. Bush Library, that was the first presidential library

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that saw the impact of the information revolution, really.

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So, it went from about, I think, 4 million—and don’t quote me if

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I’m wrong, presidential library people, please forgive me if I’m

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forgetting this now—but I think the Clinton Library had about 4 million

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pages of electronic records, of emails, I should say, of emails.

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We had about a billion pages of emails at George

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W. I’m sure it was much more for President Obama.

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That just shows, right there, just in one

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subset of information, the amazing growth.

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So, with that, yes, if we can just jump into American intelligence, things

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you talk about how we are able now to intercept and utilize information.

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One other thought that I had when you were talking there,

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if I think about Oak Ridge, think about the Manhattan

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Project, I mean, this is an industrial scale operation.

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I mean, that’s very different from Benjamin Franklin.

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If we think about that era of science where it was gentlemen tinkerers,

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people that were, you know, self-taught, doing experiments on their own.

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And then we get to Oak Ridge that is just one constituent part of this whole

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enterprise that involves so many people, so much money, and then it becomes,

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of course, more difficult to control the flow of information, as you say.

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Yeah, big science.

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Big science.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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[crosstalk] . Yeah.

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So, as our agents in this age and in the past have gone out trying to find

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that information, whether it is a piece of paper or an email, what are

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some of the tools that you talk about in the museum, of how they do that?

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If we think again—just taking it back another step—so if we

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think about the electromagnetic spectrum, as scientists began

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to understand that in greater detail, that afforded all kinds of

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opportunities: infrared, X-ray, ultraviolet, all of those things.

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So, in each one of those different parts of the

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electromagnetic spectrum, American intelligence has been

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involved, innovating, developing new equipment and so forth.

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So, let’s just talk about one example: a suitcase radio.

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So, it’s basically a way to have a covert communication

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device that you can carry around with you.

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So, it’s shaped like a suitcase, you open it up, you send your message.

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For devices like that, there’s also ways that you

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can try to capture what that’s emitting as well.

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So, we have some examples of that as well: receivers,

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antenna, radios, transponders, shortwave radios, one-time

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pads, which are one of the most fascinating things ever.

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Tell me about those.

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So, a one-time pad is the only form of covert communication that is unbreakable.

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Most people haven’t heard of it.

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So essentially, the idea is that we have a sheet of paper called

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a one-time pad, and on that, there’s banks of five digit numbers.

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So, we’ve got five digits, a space, five digits,

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all the way left to right, top to bottom.

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You have the exact same sheet.

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So, it may be a booklet of, say, 100 sheets, but we both operate from

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this very same sheet, and as long as those numbers are randomly chosen and

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randomly distributed, if we then encipher our conversation—let’s just say

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the conversation we’re having now—if we encipher that using the one-time

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pad, then it’s literally unbreakable, as long as you use it one time.

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That’s why it’s called a one-time pad.

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So, with a shortwave radio that you could pick up for

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20 bucks and a one-time pad, you could communicate,

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let’s just say, God forbid you were a North Korean spy—

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[laugh] . Right.

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You could communicate with your handler in North Korea because shortwave

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radio, the radio waves bounce off of the ionosphere, they would travel all

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the way to North Korea, and your handler could basically communicate with you.

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They could send a message back to you.

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As long as you keep using a fresh sheet from

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that one-time pad, it’s literally unbreakable.

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So, that’s the combination of the modern and the old.

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That’s fascinating.

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I feel like, though it’s a challenge to our very smart listeners on AMSEcast.

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[laugh]

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.
[laugh] . So,

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that’s really interesting.

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Now, of course, as our agent—and tell me, the Spy Museum

247
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has a really good website, again, great, great job on

248
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that, where you have a kind of a glossary of terms.

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I want to make sure I use the terms correct.

250
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So ‘agent,’ ‘spy,’ what’s the difference between these types of individuals?

251
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This is a really good question, and it’s one that can be quite contentious.

252
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So, if you think about the surface level, Central Intelligence

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Agency, well, surely, if it’s an agency, it has agents.

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If you call a CIA Case Officer—that’s the intelligence officer

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00:14:28,650 --> 00:14:33,479
who goes overseas to steal secrets and recruit spies—if you

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call them an agent, they’re probably not going to be too happy.

257
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Okay [laugh] . Duly noted.

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For them an agent is the person that they recruit to steal

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the secrets; they’re professional intelligence officers.

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Officers.

261
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Okay.

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So, it can be very confusing for the average person.

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Think about the FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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So Bureau, okay well, we’re not going to call them

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bureaucrats, but nevertheless, they’re called agents—

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They’re called agents, yeah.

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—so, like, why Central Intelligence Agency doesn’t have

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agents, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation does.

269
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So, some of these things are just, like, happenstance.

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There doesn’t necessarily always have to be some kind of

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logic, but this is just the evolution of language, right?

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So, we’ve got a spy.

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So, a spy can be—it depends on what level you want to think about that.

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So, very strictly speaking, for some people, a spy would

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just be the person that you recruit to steal your secrets.

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For other people, a spy is a broader term.

277
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So, we have the Spy Museum—this is much broader than

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just that narrower definition I just gave—or a spy

279
00:15:45,030 --> 00:15:47,429
satellite, that’s a much broader understanding of it.

280
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So, it’s anything that’s involved in

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capturing information, stealing information.

282
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So, we’ve got a spy, we’ve got intelligence.

283
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So, that’s much broader.

284
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So, that’s how do we use information to make sense of

285
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the world for some kind of decision-making advantage.

286
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So, if we think about, say, you worked at the George W. Bush Museum, we

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think about 9/11, gathering intelligence, trying to make sense of it to

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give George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld some kind of decision-making advantage.

289
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Then we have the—we spoke about agents.

290
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We spoke about the FBI and the CIA.

291
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If you think about espionage, that’s a little bit narrower.

292
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So, that’s what people think of, probably, when they think about spies.

293
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So, that’s the back streets of Budapest where you’re meeting someone

294
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with a top hat and a copy of the Financial Times, that’s espionage.

295
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Intelligence is broader.

296
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That could be satellites, that could be big technology-capturing information.

297
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So, this could easily be an entire, sort of, essay, but those

298
00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:57,029
are some of the broad ways that you can break this down.

299
00:16:57,110 --> 00:16:57,439
Very good.

300
00:16:57,460 --> 00:16:58,110
Very interesting.

301
00:16:58,110 --> 00:16:59,680
I’m sure I’ll use some of those incorrectly

302
00:16:59,680 --> 00:17:01,459
today, but please forgive me, as I’m—

303
00:17:01,459 --> 00:17:02,319
I’m sure I still do [laugh]

304
00:17:02,319 --> 00:17:02,820
.
[laugh] . All right.

305
00:17:04,170 --> 00:17:07,330
So, let’s talk a bit about the ways we, over the years,

306
00:17:07,330 --> 00:17:10,659
have produced and concealed weapons for those would

307
00:17:10,680 --> 00:17:13,060
be officers going into the field, if I’m correct.

308
00:17:13,079 --> 00:17:15,049
What are some of the favorite examples you’ve seen of how

309
00:17:15,050 --> 00:17:18,089
that’s been done and how that’s documented here at the museum?

310
00:17:18,339 --> 00:17:21,599
So, some of the favorite ways that I’ve seen it done is just

311
00:17:21,599 --> 00:17:26,250
incorporating some kind of offensive capability, some kind

312
00:17:26,250 --> 00:17:30,610
of information-capturing capability, in everyday objects.

313
00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:34,650
So, it could be an umbrella that’s secretly a weapon,

314
00:17:34,820 --> 00:17:39,659
it could be a letter opener, it could be a tie.

315
00:17:39,679 --> 00:17:45,440
It could be, you name it, it’s probably being used for espionage in some way.

316
00:17:45,820 --> 00:17:48,830
So, if we just think about, you know, both of us, the heel of

317
00:17:48,830 --> 00:17:52,940
our shoes, yes, and some bodily cavity—we don’t need to, really—

318
00:17:52,940 --> 00:17:55,379
We don’t need—and those are actually spies using those problems.

319
00:17:55,400 --> 00:17:56,720
That would be the term for that, right?

320
00:17:56,720 --> 00:17:58,269
Yeah, yeah.

321
00:17:58,279 --> 00:17:58,309
Okay.

322
00:17:58,309 --> 00:17:58,501
Yeah, I’m getting there.

323
00:17:58,549 --> 00:18:04,660
Or we have artifacts that are captured from North Korean assassins,

324
00:18:04,810 --> 00:18:08,759
and it’s like a Parker Pen that was used to assassinate someone,

325
00:18:09,190 --> 00:18:12,290
a lipstick that was used to commit suicide if you were captured.

326
00:18:12,590 --> 00:18:16,600
You would put suicide on before, you know… before you

327
00:18:16,600 --> 00:18:19,850
were brought up to speak, and commit suicide and so forth.

328
00:18:20,260 --> 00:18:22,760
But in terms of the United States specifically,

329
00:18:22,810 --> 00:18:24,990
there’s some really interesting examples.

330
00:18:24,990 --> 00:18:29,379
Because during the Second World War, the Office of Strategic Services—so

331
00:18:29,389 --> 00:18:33,979
that’s one of the forerunners of the CIA, they are involved in all kinds of

332
00:18:34,039 --> 00:18:40,520
gadgets, all kinds of improvisations, all kinds of technological developments.

333
00:18:40,520 --> 00:18:42,720
And then you see this continue during the Cold War

334
00:18:43,130 --> 00:18:45,450
with the CIA’s Office of Science and Technology.

335
00:18:45,770 --> 00:18:46,480
Really interesting.

336
00:18:46,480 --> 00:18:48,149
I know you mentioned the umbrella.

337
00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:51,059
Wasn’t there a famous Soviet example of that in London, right?

338
00:18:51,080 --> 00:18:52,190
Georgi Markov, yeah.

339
00:18:52,190 --> 00:18:53,489
That was poison.

340
00:18:53,699 --> 00:18:54,149
Poison.

341
00:18:54,190 --> 00:18:54,649
I see.

342
00:18:54,670 --> 00:18:57,980
Some of the other ones I’m thinking of are more like, it’s like a gun that fires

343
00:18:57,980 --> 00:19:02,120
a bullet, but yeah, they can definitely be used for delivering poison, too.

344
00:19:03,090 --> 00:19:05,020
Donovan in OSS is interesting fellow.

345
00:19:05,020 --> 00:19:08,251
I see he was in your exhibit, and Bill vanden Heuvel.

346
00:19:08,251 --> 00:19:10,949
When I was director at Roosevelt, he was head of the

347
00:19:10,949 --> 00:19:12,199
Roosevelt Institute, and had worked with Donovan at one point.

348
00:19:12,199 --> 00:19:14,510
So, interesting stories and really fascinating

349
00:19:14,510 --> 00:19:17,220
guy, important in our history, for sure.

350
00:19:17,430 --> 00:19:20,040
So, kind of related to the weapons, tools of sabotage.

351
00:19:20,040 --> 00:19:22,069
What are some of the tools of sabotage we’ve

352
00:19:22,260 --> 00:19:25,090
developed here in the US, for use by spies.

353
00:19:25,440 --> 00:19:28,120
So, some of the tools of sabotage, one which

354
00:19:28,120 --> 00:19:31,320
I particularly like is a piece of coal.

355
00:19:31,470 --> 00:19:34,820
So, it’s essentially, it’s like, if you want to think of it, like, a

356
00:19:34,950 --> 00:19:39,300
container that has explosives in it, and then you get this kit that

357
00:19:39,300 --> 00:19:44,329
comes along with it, so that no matter where you are, you can fashion

358
00:19:44,330 --> 00:19:48,739
it to be the right color or the right shape, so that it fits in with

359
00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:51,690
the natural environment, then it just looks like a piece of coal.

360
00:19:51,740 --> 00:19:55,149
You leave it there and you blow something up.

361
00:19:56,050 --> 00:20:00,869
Or there’s other examples that look like an old-fashioned Second World War

362
00:20:00,939 --> 00:20:05,560
mine, but essentially this mine that was developed by the CIA, it would sit

363
00:20:05,690 --> 00:20:10,820
in the water, and it would detect how many ships had went past, how long ago.

364
00:20:11,060 --> 00:20:15,730
It would try to essentially work out the optimum time to go off,

365
00:20:16,139 --> 00:20:20,490
which would be not when the first ship hit it, but when it was in

366
00:20:20,490 --> 00:20:23,530
the middle of a whole bunch of ships, and then it would blow up.

367
00:20:23,949 --> 00:20:27,360
So, that’s a great example of a technology being developed.

368
00:20:27,380 --> 00:20:32,240
Or yet another one is a picture book that shows

369
00:20:32,240 --> 00:20:35,250
you how to, for example, blow up a railway line.

370
00:20:36,130 --> 00:20:39,540
So, if you think about your IKEA book, those were distributed

371
00:20:39,540 --> 00:20:42,900
during the Cold War as part of the conflict with the Soviet

372
00:20:42,920 --> 00:20:46,400
Union around the world, and proxy conflicts in other places.

373
00:20:46,400 --> 00:20:49,980
So, it would essentially be a booklet on sabotage.

374
00:20:50,380 --> 00:20:52,070
Endlessly fascinating, I will say.

375
00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:55,800
We talked earlier about information, and let’s talk a bit

376
00:20:55,800 --> 00:21:01,169
about how we are able to share information among officers,

377
00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:05,700
spies, there and headquarters, secretly and safely.

378
00:21:05,880 --> 00:21:06,770
How can we do that?

379
00:21:06,790 --> 00:21:08,710
And particularly today, where there’s so many

380
00:21:08,710 --> 00:21:10,670
ways, it seems like, to intercept that information?

381
00:21:11,580 --> 00:21:15,840
Yeah, that’s a great question, and I think that it’s so central

382
00:21:15,870 --> 00:21:19,350
to everything that we do here at the Spy Museum, and also

383
00:21:19,460 --> 00:21:22,090
in the world of intelligence and espionage because what’s

384
00:21:22,090 --> 00:21:25,370
the point in stealing secrets if you just bleed them away?

385
00:21:25,550 --> 00:21:28,759
What’s the point and getting some kind of advantage over the

386
00:21:28,780 --> 00:21:33,169
adversary if you tap your hand and say, “Here’s my poker card.

387
00:21:33,170 --> 00:21:36,449
Feel free to readjust yours on that basis.” So, this is, like, such

388
00:21:36,450 --> 00:21:39,960
an important part of it, but it’s one that’s fraught with danger.

389
00:21:40,300 --> 00:21:46,510
It’s one that’s fraught—we’ve seen this historically—with all kinds of danger.

390
00:21:46,860 --> 00:21:49,330
So, if we think about the First World War,

391
00:21:49,700 --> 00:21:51,949
how did America get into the First World War?

392
00:21:52,570 --> 00:21:55,470
Well, there’s several ways that we could answer that, but one of the important

393
00:21:55,470 --> 00:22:00,510
factors for sure is the interception by the British of the Zimmerman Telegram.

394
00:22:00,730 --> 00:22:05,170
And this is encrypted, but there’s ways to attack ciphers.

395
00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:10,339
The British used this to gradually bring America into the war.

396
00:22:10,339 --> 00:22:11,469
And there’s other reasons.

397
00:22:11,480 --> 00:22:14,199
That’s not the only reason, but nevertheless it’s an important one.

398
00:22:14,909 --> 00:22:16,140
That’s an example there.

399
00:22:16,450 --> 00:22:20,360
If we look at the history of cryptography, which is just making

400
00:22:20,360 --> 00:22:24,049
codes and breaking codes, if you want to put it simply, up until

401
00:22:24,050 --> 00:22:28,200
the 20th century, most of that was done paper and pencil means.

402
00:22:28,359 --> 00:22:31,040
It’d be something that, if you sat down, and you had the right

403
00:22:31,050 --> 00:22:33,960
training, and you spent long enough, you could probably break it.

404
00:22:34,150 --> 00:22:37,010
Then we get to electromechanical machines like the

405
00:22:37,010 --> 00:22:39,350
Enigma device that some people will have heard of.

406
00:22:39,679 --> 00:22:44,450
So, that’s 157 million, million, million possible permutations.

407
00:22:45,280 --> 00:22:47,339
So, it’s getting more complicated.

408
00:22:47,469 --> 00:22:49,689
Then we get to where we are now, and we’re

409
00:22:49,690 --> 00:22:52,590
talking, you know, just infinitely more numbers.

410
00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:57,370
But for each one of them, there’s opportunities to try to break them still.

411
00:22:57,610 --> 00:23:01,090
The only one, like I say, that cannot be broken is the one-time pad.

412
00:23:01,790 --> 00:23:05,799
So, in the history of the United States, we’ve seen this

413
00:23:05,830 --> 00:23:11,230
where you send a radio message, and somehow one part of the

414
00:23:11,230 --> 00:23:15,010
chain in compromised, people listening into conversations.

415
00:23:15,080 --> 00:23:19,179
So, we have a bug that was placed inside a Great Seal of the

416
00:23:19,179 --> 00:23:24,120
United States that sat in the study of the US ambassador in Moscow.

417
00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:29,710
We have other things along these lines that are used to steal information.

418
00:23:29,710 --> 00:23:32,260
So, just to bring that all together, this is actually one of the most

419
00:23:32,260 --> 00:23:35,930
critical points in the whole enterprise, trying to communicate securely.

420
00:23:35,940 --> 00:23:36,829
How do you do that?

421
00:23:37,450 --> 00:23:40,830
This is something that people are constantly working on.

422
00:23:41,139 --> 00:23:44,420
There’s no foolproof, completely safe way of doing it.

423
00:23:44,750 --> 00:23:46,750
The one-time pad, I mean, that sounds great,

424
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:48,850
but there’s a lot of problems with that as well.

425
00:23:49,490 --> 00:23:51,040
How do you distribute these pads?

426
00:23:51,550 --> 00:23:53,790
How do we make sure we’re both on the same page?

427
00:23:53,929 --> 00:23:55,350
It’s very time consuming.

428
00:23:55,500 --> 00:23:57,629
It can be done much faster in other ways.

429
00:23:57,849 --> 00:24:01,240
So, there’s no real perfect way of doing it, and I guess one of the

430
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:06,340
challenges is, how do different sides respond to technological developments?

431
00:24:06,370 --> 00:24:10,320
But one thing that is quite interesting being here in the

432
00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:13,479
United States, is the United States is quite often at the

433
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:16,250
forefront of a lot of these technological developments.

434
00:24:16,559 --> 00:24:18,770
I’m glad you mentioned the Zimmerman Telegram.

435
00:24:18,770 --> 00:24:22,280
As someone who studied that quite a bit in my early life, I always thought

436
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:26,520
that was part of the build-up to the war that wasn’t really focused on

437
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:30,609
enough, in terms of the offer by Germany to essentially join in with

438
00:24:30,610 --> 00:24:33,889
Mexico, and give back a large part of what had been taken from Mexico.

439
00:24:33,889 --> 00:24:36,449
[unintelligible] were really a horrible misstep by Germany.

440
00:24:36,449 --> 00:24:38,630
But that’s another podcast altogether.

441
00:24:38,750 --> 00:24:41,610
I will say one interesting thing I keep thinking about is when

442
00:24:41,610 --> 00:24:45,290
we finally do get to an age of quantum computing, of what that’s

443
00:24:45,290 --> 00:24:50,450
going to do to our ability to encrypt and to steal information.

444
00:24:50,839 --> 00:24:54,250
It’s going to be, I assume, a much harder challenge at that point.

445
00:24:54,299 --> 00:24:55,030
Yeah, yeah.

446
00:24:55,030 --> 00:24:57,020
It should be [laugh] much, much harder.

447
00:24:58,120 --> 00:24:59,950
[laugh] . So, we’ll see that’s a little bit

448
00:24:59,950 --> 00:25:02,149
down the road, but I think on the horizon.

449
00:25:02,210 --> 00:25:04,800
Just very briefly, I think you make a good point, though, because the

450
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:08,320
Zimmerman Telegram, if you think about it in the context of American

451
00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:12,720
history, America’s entry into World War I. Think about World War II, Pearl

452
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:16,830
Harbor: an intelligence failure that brings America into World War II.

453
00:25:17,300 --> 00:25:20,000
If we think about Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin incident,

454
00:25:20,620 --> 00:25:24,539
if we think about the Iraq War in 2003, if you think about

455
00:25:24,540 --> 00:25:28,379
9/11, intelligence is, like, part of all of these stories.

456
00:25:28,730 --> 00:25:32,333
So, every single chapter of American history, intelligence is there.

457
00:25:32,333 --> 00:25:36,700
It just might not be as prominent, or it might be silently

458
00:25:36,700 --> 00:25:39,380
working away in the background, but it definitely is there.

459
00:25:39,719 --> 00:25:42,629
And even though we’ve often been at the forefront of innovation in

460
00:25:42,630 --> 00:25:46,180
those areas, some of those are defined by failures in intelligence,

461
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,330
which you talk about here in the museum, and then have to learn

462
00:25:49,340 --> 00:25:52,980
from those and hopefully innovate and not have that happen again.

463
00:25:53,190 --> 00:25:54,500
You talk about the Enigma too.

464
00:25:54,500 --> 00:25:56,010
Let’s mention that really quickly.

465
00:25:56,010 --> 00:25:59,539
I think that’s such a fascinating story of how we were able to,

466
00:25:59,540 --> 00:26:04,129
during World War II, to decipher both German and Japanese codes.

467
00:26:04,129 --> 00:26:06,639
Can you tell us a bit about how you talk about that in the museum?

468
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:10,540
So, we talk about the Enigma machine because it’s a fascinating machine,

469
00:26:10,540 --> 00:26:15,310
and it helps you understand so much about the history of cryptography.

470
00:26:15,310 --> 00:26:17,550
So again, just the making and breaking of codes.

471
00:26:18,460 --> 00:26:23,470
But here at the museum, we focus, in particular, on Purple, so

472
00:26:26,270 --> 00:26:29,580
a Japanese device for encoding information used

473
00:26:29,580 --> 00:26:33,440
during World War II, cracked by American codebreakers.

474
00:26:33,610 --> 00:26:38,509
We also talk about the Enigma code, which gets called Ultra when it’s decrypted.

475
00:26:38,980 --> 00:26:43,830
So, Ultra because the British at the time, it was higher than the

476
00:26:43,830 --> 00:26:47,900
highest level of classification they had, so it was Ultra intelligence.

477
00:26:48,420 --> 00:26:50,760
Now, another one that’s my particular favorite that most

478
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:56,250
people haven’t heard of, is a Japanese code called JN-25.

479
00:26:56,490 --> 00:27:03,700
So JN-25, Japanese Navy Code 25, essentially, if you imagine a code book

480
00:27:03,990 --> 00:27:10,520
where every word has another word that substitutes for it—so let’s say for

481
00:27:12,740 --> 00:27:14,360
‘Andrew,’ it’s ‘dopehead,’ or something like this, you know—

482
00:27:15,439 --> 00:27:15,469
[laugh]

483
00:27:16,139 --> 00:27:21,340
.
For ‘tank,’ it says ‘Cuthbert.’ For ‘plane,’ it

484
00:27:21,340 --> 00:27:25,700
says ‘camera.’ So just, you know, random things.

485
00:27:25,940 --> 00:27:26,770
So, that’s one.

486
00:27:26,780 --> 00:27:27,970
That’s the first part of it.

487
00:27:28,330 --> 00:27:34,709
But then what they do on top of that is they turn all of those words into a

488
00:27:34,709 --> 00:27:40,170
number, and then with the number, they add another series of random five digits

489
00:27:40,170 --> 00:27:45,899
on top, so it’s what’s called double enciphered, so it’s doubly protected.

490
00:27:46,150 --> 00:27:47,010
Then they transmit it.

491
00:27:47,580 --> 00:27:50,650
And this is done by the Japanese Navy.

492
00:27:50,759 --> 00:27:52,829
Of course, the Japanese war in the Pacific, the

493
00:27:52,830 --> 00:27:55,970
Japanese Navy is central to the whole enterprise.

494
00:27:56,530 --> 00:28:01,110
So, JN-25 is absolutely central to the Japanese ability to

495
00:28:01,110 --> 00:28:02,770
prosecute the war, but American codebreakers, diligently,

496
00:28:02,770 --> 00:28:02,772
quietly, over a period of time, managed to break the code.

497
00:28:02,772 --> 00:28:02,773
And one great example that we discuss here

498
00:28:02,773 --> 00:28:02,774
about why that matters is the Battle of Midway.

499
00:28:02,774 --> 00:28:02,777
So, this allows a smaller and less experienced American Navy to

500
00:28:02,777 --> 00:28:02,781
defeat the Japanese Navy, and of course, as we all know, the Battle

501
00:28:02,781 --> 00:28:02,792
of Midway is the turning point and the battle of the Pacific.

502
00:28:02,792 --> 00:28:06,100
But without American code breakers breaking JN-25,

503
00:28:15,950 --> 00:28:16,090
that’s

504
00:28:22,060 --> 00:28:22,260
not going

505
00:28:31,830 --> 00:28:32,710
to be possible.

506
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:35,870
It doesn’t mean that they’re guaranteed success, but

507
00:28:37,110 --> 00:28:39,220
without it, they’re not set up to win that engagement.

508
00:28:39,610 --> 00:28:41,859
We speak about JN-25 here, we speak about

509
00:28:41,870 --> 00:28:44,360
the Enigma machine, or speak about Purple.

510
00:28:44,650 --> 00:28:46,889
All really, really fascinating examples.

511
00:28:47,559 --> 00:28:50,250
Without Midway, not only we’ve not had the

512
00:28:50,260 --> 00:28:52,320
turning point, but who knows what was next.

513
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:55,980
I mean, the proximity to Hawaii and the West Coast, that a very

514
00:28:55,980 --> 00:28:59,169
different outcome, perhaps, to that war, all thanks to breaking

515
00:28:59,170 --> 00:29:02,250
that what sounds like an extraordinarily complicated code.

516
00:29:02,599 --> 00:29:04,900
I mean, I’m even more impressed now than I was before.

517
00:29:06,370 --> 00:29:08,830
I want to note that we can never forget that behind

518
00:29:08,830 --> 00:29:10,800
all these tools and innovations are men and women,

519
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:14,120
kind of, utilizing these tools, either here or abroad.

520
00:29:14,630 --> 00:29:17,100
How do you represent their work in the museum?

521
00:29:17,530 --> 00:29:20,730
I think that if we just stick to the example of codemaking and

522
00:29:21,130 --> 00:29:24,930
codebreaking, there’s a really fascinating couple called the Friedman’s.

523
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:26,730
So, William and Elizebeth Friedman.

524
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:30,400
They’re there around World War I. America at the time doesn’t

525
00:29:30,410 --> 00:29:33,530
have an intelligence enterprise in the way that we think of

526
00:29:33,530 --> 00:29:36,520
it today, but the two of them get involved in codebreaking.

527
00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:38,220
They fall in love.

528
00:29:38,309 --> 00:29:40,140
They’re there in the interwar period.

529
00:29:41,750 --> 00:29:46,010
Elizebeth Friedman brings codebreaking capabilities to the Coast Guard.

530
00:29:46,410 --> 00:29:49,480
William Friedman is one of the main players

531
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:52,350
on American codebreaking during World War II.

532
00:29:52,980 --> 00:29:56,299
And they’re just this really sweet, sort of dorky,

533
00:29:56,299 --> 00:29:59,970
nerdy couple who send their friends Christmas cards that

534
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:04,229
are, like, encoded, and secret messages, and so forth.

535
00:30:04,230 --> 00:30:07,580
And William Friedman, very, very stressful codebreaking

536
00:30:07,590 --> 00:30:10,810
during a time of war, he has a nervous breakdown.

537
00:30:11,020 --> 00:30:14,589
There’s another famous American codebreaker has a nervous breakdown.

538
00:30:14,599 --> 00:30:17,089
It can be monumentally stressful.

539
00:30:17,129 --> 00:30:19,190
But I think that’s the way to humanize it.

540
00:30:19,190 --> 00:30:23,390
Okay, so we’ve got Midway, we’ve got the Battle of the Atlantic and

541
00:30:23,390 --> 00:30:27,880
Enigma, but here’s just this couple that met, fell in love, developed

542
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:32,720
a shared passion, were involved in American Intelligence and National

543
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:36,280
Security from World War I through to the end of World War II.

544
00:30:36,289 --> 00:30:42,010
Very human love, mental health problems, trying to do their bit for the country.

545
00:30:42,270 --> 00:30:45,569
I believe that their families were relatively recent in

546
00:30:45,570 --> 00:30:48,230
the country and they felt a sense of gratitude towards

547
00:30:48,250 --> 00:30:51,229
America, and it meant a lot to them to put something back.

548
00:30:51,230 --> 00:30:56,930
So, I think that’s one example of just a nice human story, and almost like it’s

549
00:30:56,930 --> 00:31:01,210
like a thing, yeah, of just the we’re coming up in the semi-quincentennial—if I

550
00:31:01,210 --> 00:31:04,939
got it right—but over those 250 years, think about all the Americans that have

551
00:31:04,940 --> 00:31:10,183
ever lived, every shape, size, from almost every part of the world, and it’s

552
00:31:10,420 --> 00:31:14,840
important that we don’t lose a sense of their contribution to the story as well.

553
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:19,310
And sure, it’s about Lincoln, and Roosevelt, and all the biggies, but

554
00:31:19,310 --> 00:31:23,409
it’s also just about the Friedman’s, and many other people like them.

555
00:31:23,540 --> 00:31:24,349
Yeah wonderful.

556
00:31:24,490 --> 00:31:28,549
So, the Friedman’s, and codebreakers, the spies, the officers, how

557
00:31:28,549 --> 00:31:32,540
do they get the training to do what they do, and specifically to use

558
00:31:32,540 --> 00:31:36,190
some of these devices and so forth that you highlight in the museum?

559
00:31:36,730 --> 00:31:38,220
Yeah, that’s a really good question, and

560
00:31:38,710 --> 00:31:40,659
it’s obviously changed with the technology.

561
00:31:41,290 --> 00:31:45,830
So, around the time of the Friedman’s, Elizebeth Friedman was very

562
00:31:45,830 --> 00:31:51,870
interested in Shakespeare, and she’d been hired to try to prove the theory

563
00:31:51,900 --> 00:31:56,610
that Sir Francis Bacon was actually the author of Shakespeare novels.

564
00:31:56,740 --> 00:31:59,210
So, it’s looking for patterns, it’s trying

565
00:31:59,210 --> 00:32:01,300
to look for inconsistencies and so forth.

566
00:32:01,889 --> 00:32:03,219
William Friedman comes there.

567
00:32:03,270 --> 00:32:06,350
It’s actually her that introduces him to codebreaking.

568
00:32:06,490 --> 00:32:10,060
So, they get into codebreaking together, and then eventually, when the

569
00:32:10,060 --> 00:32:14,649
war breaks out, they get, I guess, contracted to work on some codes.

570
00:32:14,809 --> 00:32:19,620
But there’s no real, institutionalized, professionalized codebreaking

571
00:32:19,620 --> 00:32:23,159
enterprise, and what is there is, like, pretty small-scale.

572
00:32:23,289 --> 00:32:26,459
So, during that period, that’s more you learn on the job.

573
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:31,760
It’s like being an apprentice, or for them, there’s not even a tutor for them.

574
00:32:32,099 --> 00:32:34,710
It’s more trial and error; you just feel your

575
00:32:34,719 --> 00:32:36,790
way into it, and eventually get better at it.

576
00:32:37,570 --> 00:32:39,759
But a faster way to do it is to stand on

577
00:32:39,759 --> 00:32:41,670
the shoulders of other people’s mistakes.

578
00:32:41,859 --> 00:32:45,760
So eventually, between the wars, and then especially with World

579
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:50,510
War II—this is when America becomes a superpower—has realized

580
00:32:50,510 --> 00:32:53,529
that, listen, we need something that’s more institutionalized, more

581
00:32:53,530 --> 00:32:58,427
professionalized, and eventually, we need to codify this, we need

582
00:32:58,427 --> 00:33:01,330
to bank the lessons that we’ve learned, we need to pass them on.

583
00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:03,879
The technology is getting more complicated.

584
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:08,590
This is not just paper and pencil ciphers; it’s machines,

585
00:33:08,679 --> 00:33:12,020
it’s the electromagnetic spectrum, it’s satellites.

586
00:33:12,100 --> 00:33:16,750
It’s detecting radioactive isotopes in the air.

587
00:33:17,340 --> 00:33:20,160
Then it all gets very complex very quickly.

588
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:24,610
And then that’s when the gentlemen spies of yesteryear,

589
00:33:25,260 --> 00:33:27,440
there’s always going to be a place for them, but you

590
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:30,880
know, you need people that have been to Caltech and MIT.

591
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:35,919
You need people that are engineers, mathematicians, scientists.

592
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:38,290
You need all of them, and with all of that comes training.

593
00:33:38,290 --> 00:33:41,429
So, it depends on the job you have, it depends on what part of the

594
00:33:41,430 --> 00:33:45,780
enterprise you’re in, but I think it’s just a case of now making sure

595
00:33:45,780 --> 00:33:49,900
that we learn the lessons from the past and try to pass them on to new

596
00:33:49,929 --> 00:33:53,079
people, so that they don’t have to start from scratch all over again.

597
00:33:53,410 --> 00:33:57,409
So, is that structure we’ve set up post-war—because we were kind of

598
00:33:57,410 --> 00:34:01,470
late to the intelligence game, right, in terms of setting up what

599
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:06,479
became the CIA—we’ve been a leader in that, in innovation in that.

600
00:34:06,710 --> 00:34:10,420
Does that system explain why we able to do that as a latecomer to it?

601
00:34:11,330 --> 00:34:12,750
I think that that’s part of it.

602
00:34:12,950 --> 00:34:16,880
I think that during the Second World War, a very close

603
00:34:16,929 --> 00:34:20,620
relationship developed within British and American intelligence.

604
00:34:21,529 --> 00:34:25,989
So, there’s a good example of this where, for example, the OSS, their

605
00:34:26,020 --> 00:34:31,000
counterintelligence arm and their official report after the war, they say,

606
00:34:31,120 --> 00:34:36,630
“To do effective counterintelligence, you probably need three decades of

607
00:34:36,639 --> 00:34:41,940
building up a registry of relationships, of patterns, of people.” There’s a

608
00:34:41,940 --> 00:34:46,740
very particular skill set that you need for counterintelligence. Again, the

609
00:34:46,740 --> 00:34:50,370
British have been doing it a bit longer. They’d learned through trial and error.

610
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:52,210
They had more opportunities to do it.

611
00:34:52,210 --> 00:34:52,284
So—

612
00:34:52,284 --> 00:34:53,240
They’ve been around a while.

613
00:34:53,469 --> 00:34:54,429
They’ve been around a while.

614
00:34:54,449 --> 00:34:59,460
So essentially, the United States gets, I guess,

615
00:34:59,550 --> 00:35:02,085
access to the goodies, if you want to put it like that.

616
00:35:02,085 --> 00:35:02,860
[laugh] . Right, right.

617
00:35:02,870 --> 00:35:06,469
But they’re able to—and this is what you do like in innovation, right?

618
00:35:06,490 --> 00:35:09,320
If you join a new field, you learn from the people that are already

619
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:12,200
in the field, you learn from the people that are at the forefront

620
00:35:12,210 --> 00:35:15,470
of the field, and then you try to take it off in a new direction.

621
00:35:15,470 --> 00:35:17,199
And that’s what happened here.

622
00:35:17,580 --> 00:35:18,929
They learned from the British.

623
00:35:19,030 --> 00:35:21,830
Not that the British were perfect, of course, by any manner of

624
00:35:21,830 --> 00:35:24,620
means, but they had the experience, they had the registry, they

625
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:28,220
had the skill set, that gets passed on to the Americans, and then

626
00:35:28,870 --> 00:35:33,890
America has its own je ne sais quoi to the whole enterprise, and one

627
00:35:33,890 --> 00:35:37,720
of them is the appliance of science and technological innovation.

628
00:35:37,720 --> 00:35:43,560
And we think about this period—so ’47, the foundation of the CIA, up until the

629
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:49,030
present, so we’re talking about for most of that period, the Cold War—probably

630
00:35:49,030 --> 00:35:53,050
as much as anything, the Cold War, to me, is just a huge R&D competition.

631
00:35:53,530 --> 00:35:55,030
And part of the reason why America is so

632
00:35:55,030 --> 00:35:57,920
successful is because America is so good at R&D.

633
00:35:58,230 --> 00:36:02,040
If we think about Silicon Valley, if we think about all of the emerging

634
00:36:02,100 --> 00:36:06,390
and disruptive technology, it’s all coming out of this one place, one

635
00:36:06,390 --> 00:36:10,650
thing America has always been good at, just that restless, innovative

636
00:36:10,820 --> 00:36:16,219
model of capitalistic development, and that has big effects on the

637
00:36:16,219 --> 00:36:19,170
world of intelligence, when we’re talking about the modern age.

638
00:36:19,190 --> 00:36:22,330
And how we keep that up in the next 250 is a big question.

639
00:36:22,660 --> 00:36:26,950
So, let’s talk, as we near our close here, about innovations

640
00:36:26,950 --> 00:36:30,339
that you’ve seen in the world of spycraft that made

641
00:36:30,340 --> 00:36:32,560
their way into the public life, in the public sphere.

642
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:33,670
What are some of those?

643
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:37,480
So again, if we just go back to earlier, when I was discussing

644
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:40,500
the difference between, like, the spy world and intelligence

645
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:44,060
broadly conceived, so the intelligence broadly conceived,

646
00:36:44,060 --> 00:36:47,620
that overlaps much more with the Department of Defense.

647
00:36:47,820 --> 00:36:52,010
So, if we think about DARPA and IARPA, think about the DARPANET,

648
00:36:52,570 --> 00:36:56,829
so the internet, a lot of that is related to this world.

649
00:36:56,980 --> 00:37:01,000
It may not be espionage in the very narrowest sense of

650
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:04,040
the term, but it’s still intelligence, broadly conceived.

651
00:37:04,190 --> 00:37:08,920
There’s a great book from 1986 called The Cuckoo’s Egg about cyber espionage.

652
00:37:08,929 --> 00:37:11,339
So, it’s possible to do it in that realm as

653
00:37:11,340 --> 00:37:13,810
well, but the internet would be a good example.

654
00:37:14,060 --> 00:37:15,190
Satellites.

655
00:37:15,430 --> 00:37:18,370
Think about Google Maps, all of those types of things,

656
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:22,480
a lot of those innovations come from satellites.

657
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:24,350
Well, why are the first satellites sent up?

658
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:27,579
Well, I mean, partly, we’re in the Cold War era.

659
00:37:28,109 --> 00:37:29,850
The other side has nuclear weapons.

660
00:37:30,029 --> 00:37:32,360
They say that they’re not going to aim them towards us,

661
00:37:32,660 --> 00:37:35,180
and they’re not a threat, but we definitely want to be

662
00:37:35,180 --> 00:37:38,320
sure because this could wipe out our whole civilization.

663
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:40,290
So, let’s send up satellites.

664
00:37:40,290 --> 00:37:41,370
Let’s keep an eye on them.

665
00:37:41,370 --> 00:37:42,420
Let’s see what they’re up to.

666
00:37:42,450 --> 00:37:44,009
Let’s see where they’re moving their troops.

667
00:37:44,009 --> 00:37:48,249
Let’s see where the Northern Fleet is with all of the nuclear submarines.

668
00:37:48,639 --> 00:37:52,140
Let’s see where their intercontinental ballistic missiles are.

669
00:37:52,490 --> 00:37:56,560
Sometimes it’s very direct, other times it’s a bit more indirect.

670
00:37:56,580 --> 00:38:01,809
So, satellite technologies developed, then eventually we have, like, all

671
00:38:01,809 --> 00:38:05,839
of the, like, wonderful things that we have just now because of satellite.

672
00:38:05,850 --> 00:38:10,650
So, there’s so many ways that it feeds into modern American life.

673
00:38:10,690 --> 00:38:14,490
Again, it’s always there in the background, even if you don’t see it explicitly.

674
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:18,960
Just one example that I’ll share with you that has recent

675
00:38:19,420 --> 00:38:24,359
topical connections is the story of the Glomar Explorer.

676
00:38:24,839 --> 00:38:29,729
So, the Glomar Explorer, essentially in the year 1968—now, this is a wonderful

677
00:38:29,750 --> 00:38:35,780
story—the year 1968, four submarines go missing: an Israeli submarine, a French

678
00:38:35,780 --> 00:38:40,740
submarine, an American submarine—the USS scorpion—and a Soviet submarine.

679
00:38:40,740 --> 00:38:44,169
So, the Soviet submarine goes down northwest of

680
00:38:44,189 --> 00:38:47,040
Hawaii, about 1500 miles northwest of Hawaii.

681
00:38:47,790 --> 00:38:49,920
So, if you recall the last time you looked

682
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:52,490
at a map of that region, it’s just blank.

683
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:56,269
So, this submarine is seventeen-and-a-half-thousand feet under the ocean.

684
00:38:56,660 --> 00:39:00,019
So, the idea is, well, what if we can get a submarine,

685
00:39:00,289 --> 00:39:03,420
and raise it to the surface, and get intelligence from it?

686
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:07,410
So, one of the reasons why submarines are so important during the Cold

687
00:39:07,410 --> 00:39:12,860
War is because they’re potential platforms to launch nuclear weapons.

688
00:39:13,630 --> 00:39:17,510
So sure, if a nuclear weapon gets launched from Russia

689
00:39:17,570 --> 00:39:21,240
to New York, then we’ve got, like, a little bit of time.

690
00:39:21,970 --> 00:39:25,730
But if you’ve got a submarine a couple of hundred miles off of New York

691
00:39:25,770 --> 00:39:30,180
and the Atlantic Ocean that fires nuclear weapons to New York, I mean,

692
00:39:30,450 --> 00:39:33,940
the window of opportunity to do anything about it is incredibly small.

693
00:39:34,580 --> 00:39:37,350
So, it’s really important to understand where these submarines

694
00:39:37,350 --> 00:39:41,670
are, what they’re doing, all of those types of questions.

695
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:45,640
So, the thought is, if we can get this submarine and bring it to the surface,

696
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:50,644
we can find out what the Soviets are up to, what kind of engine technology they

697
00:39:50,799 --> 00:39:55,870
have, what kind of sonar technology they have, what about their weapon systems.

698
00:39:56,140 --> 00:40:00,709
The only problem is, no one’s ever got a ship or a submarine

699
00:40:00,710 --> 00:40:03,470
from seventeen-and-a-half-thousand feet underneath—

700
00:40:03,490 --> 00:40:04,930
A bit of a challenge [laugh]

701
00:40:04,930 --> 00:40:04,990
.
A

702
00:40:07,549 --> 00:40:09,299
bit of a challenge [laugh] . So, they came up with this operation—so

703
00:40:09,399 --> 00:40:12,419
remember, this is 1968—they came up with this operation.

704
00:40:12,790 --> 00:40:15,730
They purpose-built a ship called the Glomar Explorer.

705
00:40:16,380 --> 00:40:20,210
The famous Hollywood producer Howard Hughes gets involved.

706
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:25,189
So, there’s a cover story that Howard Hughes is looking for manganese on the

707
00:40:25,190 --> 00:40:30,520
ocean floor, which is a thing, but it’s still, you know, one of the beauties

708
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:35,660
about having Howard Hughes is, he’s famously wackadoodle, for want of a better

709
00:40:35,810 --> 00:40:39,300
term, and if you’ve got somebody that’s a bit nuts involved in your cover

710
00:40:39,300 --> 00:40:44,569
story… everything makes sense because crazy people do things that don’t make

711
00:40:46,850 --> 00:40:46,980
any [laugh] sense.

712
00:40:46,980 --> 00:40:47,050
[laugh]

713
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:51,950
.
So, to cut a long story short, eventually, the ship is built in 1974,

714
00:40:51,950 --> 00:40:55,310
it eventually finds its way out to where the Glomar Explorer went down.

715
00:40:55,310 --> 00:40:57,500
It picks it up.

716
00:40:57,500 --> 00:41:00,790
It’s got these huge claws, if you want to think of it like that, it picks it up.

717
00:41:00,870 --> 00:41:03,920
It gets it two-thirds of the way up, and it’s almost like when you go to the

718
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:08,740
fairgrounds and you try to win a teddy for your kids or your niece or something

719
00:41:08,740 --> 00:41:13,870
like this, two-thirds of the submarine plummets back to the floor of the ocean.

720
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:15,400
But they bring up the one-third.

721
00:41:15,770 --> 00:41:20,170
It’s got an internal pool, so it’s not like you’re hoisting

722
00:41:20,170 --> 00:41:22,770
it up over the side; it just comes up inside the ship.

723
00:41:23,779 --> 00:41:26,985
Comes up inside the ship, they do what they’re

724
00:41:26,985 --> 00:41:29,320
going to do with it, try to gather the intelligence.

725
00:41:29,700 --> 00:41:33,450
They find some Soviet submariners on board, lay them to rest in a ceremony.

726
00:41:33,450 --> 00:41:37,810
A video of this is given to the Soviets after the Cold War ends.

727
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:38,993
So, that’s what happens.

728
00:41:39,190 --> 00:41:42,630
Then people in the press get wind of this.

729
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:47,400
Eventually they approach the CIA and say, you know, “What’s going on here?

730
00:41:47,420 --> 00:41:49,840
Like, what’s happening?” The CIA came up

731
00:41:49,850 --> 00:41:51,730
with what’s known as the Glomar response.

732
00:41:51,730 --> 00:41:54,929
This is something most of your listeners will have heard of

733
00:41:54,940 --> 00:41:59,270
before, but they probably won’t know of it by this term, and it’s,

734
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:03,769
“We can either confirm nor deny that this operation took place.”

735
00:42:03,769 --> 00:42:04,536
[laugh] . I like it.

736
00:42:04,536 --> 00:42:05,450
The Glomar response.

737
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:06,520
The Glomar response.

738
00:42:07,259 --> 00:42:07,330
Very good.

739
00:42:07,350 --> 00:42:09,210
So, the perfect answer, non-answer.

740
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:13,920
So, they give the Glomar response, and then to bring the story up to the present

741
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:18,710
day, the CIA’s very first tweet when they set up a Twitter account is, “We can

742
00:42:18,710 --> 00:42:24,360
neither confirm nor deny this is our first tweet.” And then to bring it even

743
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:30,149
more up to the present day, was it this year or last year when the—there was

744
00:42:30,150 --> 00:42:35,610
the huge catastrophe in Baltimore Harbor with the ship, so the largest crane on

745
00:42:35,610 --> 00:42:41,500
the east coast was a crane that was used to build the Glomar Explorer, and that

746
00:42:41,500 --> 00:42:46,180
crane was used for the recovery effort for this recent catastrophe in Baltimore.

747
00:42:46,309 --> 00:42:48,279
Do we know, did they get actionable intelligence

748
00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:49,910
from what they were able to bring up?

749
00:42:49,910 --> 00:42:50,429
Do we know?

750
00:42:50,589 --> 00:42:54,859
There’s a declassified report that still has some redactions, online.

751
00:42:54,940 --> 00:42:59,240
We don’t know everything about what they found out, but you know, knowing

752
00:42:59,250 --> 00:43:04,920
that intelligence analysts can infer information or intelligence from the mere

753
00:43:04,940 --> 00:43:09,980
shred of data, undoubtedly there’s intelligence that they gathered from it.

754
00:43:10,150 --> 00:43:13,710
The scope and all the details and how significant it was, are

755
00:43:13,710 --> 00:43:16,779
still things that we don’t know, but if you’re able to pull

756
00:43:16,870 --> 00:43:19,200
some strings with your colleagues in the National Archives—

757
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:19,415
[laugh]

758
00:43:19,629 --> 00:43:21,170
.
— [laugh] get it declassified.

759
00:43:21,200 --> 00:43:21,350
Yeah.

760
00:43:21,350 --> 00:43:22,510
They’ll tell me where to go.

761
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:24,140
But that’s all right [laugh]

762
00:43:24,140 --> 00:43:24,524
.
[laugh]

763
00:43:24,910 --> 00:43:28,129
.
That’s really such an interesting story, and so many

764
00:43:28,129 --> 00:43:30,550
of those stories you have here in the Spy Museum.

765
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:34,630
I know you also host SpyCast, a fellow podcaster.

766
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:36,340
Can you tell us about SpyCast?

767
00:43:36,890 --> 00:43:42,750
So, SpyCast has been going since 2006, so it’s been around a while.

768
00:43:43,020 --> 00:43:47,979
I guess in podcasting terms, it’s like 2006 is like the Jurassic period.

769
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:49,720
So, it’s been around for a while.

770
00:43:49,770 --> 00:43:51,749
It’s grown and evolved over the years.

771
00:43:51,870 --> 00:43:56,500
We’ve managed to take it up to last year, we got shortlisted

772
00:43:56,510 --> 00:44:00,569
for the People’s Choice Podcast awards in the history category.

773
00:44:00,690 --> 00:44:04,400
We had about 2.2 million downloads.

774
00:44:04,660 --> 00:44:08,190
We are listened to pretty much all over the world.

775
00:44:08,200 --> 00:44:13,090
50% of the listeners are inside the states, 50% of them overseas.

776
00:44:13,240 --> 00:44:17,880
I’m the fourth host, I think, of the podcast, so I started in 2020.

777
00:44:18,940 --> 00:44:23,549
When I took over, I think I was the first non-American host.

778
00:44:23,809 --> 00:44:27,580
You know, everybody brings something different to the table, but I just

779
00:44:27,580 --> 00:44:31,500
thought, we’re the International Spy Museum; we should internationalize it.

780
00:44:31,720 --> 00:44:36,859
Since then, I’m quite proud to say that we’ve had on a former head of

781
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:41,539
Kenyan intelligence, a former head of Indian intelligence, we’ve had on

782
00:44:41,559 --> 00:44:46,330
serving heads of Australian intelligence and New Zealand intelligence.

783
00:44:47,250 --> 00:44:49,390
So, we’ve tried to broaden out in that sense.

784
00:44:49,700 --> 00:44:51,350
We’ve tried to cover new topics.

785
00:44:51,350 --> 00:44:54,939
We’ve tried to cover new ground that we’ve never covered before.

786
00:44:54,940 --> 00:44:58,220
So, I’m actually going to step away from the podcast at the

787
00:44:58,220 --> 00:45:01,379
end of this calendar year because it’s sort of outgrown the

788
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:05,760
role of the historian curator, which is my other job here.

789
00:45:05,930 --> 00:45:08,990
But it’s been a real pleasure to do, and I’m sure you feel the same.

790
00:45:08,990 --> 00:45:10,450
One of the things that I love about it is

791
00:45:10,490 --> 00:45:12,960
that I just get to constantly learn stuff—

792
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:13,220
Oh yeah.

793
00:45:13,220 --> 00:45:15,149
—speak to interesting people.

794
00:45:15,679 --> 00:45:16,670
Very much the case.

795
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:18,509
I certainly have learned a lot here, Andrew.

796
00:45:18,510 --> 00:45:20,660
Thank you so much for joining us on AMSEcast.

797
00:45:20,940 --> 00:45:21,360
Thank you.

798
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:28,420
Thank you for joining us on this episode of AMSEcast.

799
00:45:29,410 --> 00:45:33,729
For more information on this topic or any others, you can always visit us at

800
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:40,663
AMSE.org or find, like, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

801
00:45:40,870 --> 00:45:43,190
I invite you to visit the American Museum of Science

802
00:45:43,190 --> 00:45:46,000
and Energy and the K-25 History Center in person.

803
00:45:46,309 --> 00:45:50,450
You can also shop at our online store and become a member at AMSE.org.

804
00:45:50,929 --> 00:45:54,379
Thanks to our production team with Matt Mullins, plus our supportive colleagues

805
00:45:54,379 --> 00:45:58,220
at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Environmental

806
00:45:58,220 --> 00:46:02,210
Management, and Office of Legacy Management, as well as Oak Ridge National

807
00:46:02,210 --> 00:46:08,069
Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex, NNSA, and the AMSE Foundation.

808
00:46:08,559 --> 00:46:10,280
And of course, thanks to our wonderful guests

809
00:46:10,280 --> 00:46:12,120
today, and to all of you for listening.

810
00:46:12,600 --> 00:46:15,380
I hope you’ll join us for the next episode of AMSEcast.

811
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:20,969
If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, I would like to ask that you consider

812
00:46:20,970 --> 00:46:25,549
becoming a member of the 117 Society, the newest membership opportunity

813
00:46:25,599 --> 00:46:29,059
offered by the American Museum of Science and Energy Foundation.

814
00:46:29,830 --> 00:46:33,009
By joining the 117 Society, you will help us continue

815
00:46:33,010 --> 00:46:35,820
this podcast and our other innovative programming.

816
00:46:36,210 --> 00:46:39,130
You will support the expansion of our vitally important educational

817
00:46:39,130 --> 00:46:42,999
outreach, including virtual classes, and you will help ensure that both

818
00:46:43,009 --> 00:46:47,629
the American Museum of Science and Energy and the K-25 History Center can

819
00:46:47,629 --> 00:46:51,670
continue to provide world-class exhibits to our community and to the world.

820
00:46:52,550 --> 00:46:55,410
Benefits of membership includes special access to video

821
00:46:55,410 --> 00:46:59,630
and audio content, and 117 Society merchandise, as well

822
00:46:59,630 --> 00:47:02,550
as all the benefits of our Atom Splitter Membership Level.

823
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:05,440
To learn more, go to AMSE.org.

824
00:47:06,529 --> 00:47:11,310
The 117 Society is vital to the future of AMSE and the K-25 History Center.

825
00:47:11,720 --> 00:47:14,360
I hope you will consider joining, and thank you very much.