Citation Needed - Moe Berg

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Morris Berg (May 3, 1902 – May 29, 1972) was an American professional baseball catcher and coach in Major League Baseball who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, though he was never more than an average player and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball."[1] Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball."[2]

Oh, and welcome to Citation Needed. The podcast where we choose the subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet? And that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnick and I'll be calling the fares and the fowls tonight, but I'll need to load up the bases. Joining me tonight are a strike, a ball, and a miserable bunt. Noah, Cecil, and E. Thinking outside the box is overrated, damn it.

Noah always comes first in bunt rotation. Come on. You know, it's cool. In the UK, you can save Bunt. bunt and it's not offensive actually. It's not offensive. It's just sort of a thing. It's required. Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons. Patrons, with your funding, we can start a reality show.

Who wants to eat Tom's corpse? Jesus. Oh, God. Joe Chesnott may be interested, but he is not cheap. So please hit us up. And if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. Can he suck the infection out like a snake bite? Can you know you can? You know

sure the fuck can. It's called clearing. Exactly. And with that out of the way, tell us Heath, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today? We're going to be talking about Moberg. So tell us,

he was Moberg. He was a mediocre professional baseball player and a great secret agent. Or maybe a mediocre secret agent. He lied a lot and historians are in messy fights about it. But you know, what? Maybe the lying makes him kind of like circle back to great because that's like a spy hit, like lying is a good side. Yeah. Either way, he's got an interesting story that's going to wind

its way through Ann Arbor, where I live, Chicago, where Tom and Cecil live, Belleville, New Jersey, where Eli lives, NYU, where Eli claims he got a degree. And there's, there's science for Noah. Dean, that's what you get for not living anywhere, Noah. Well, yeah, it looks like you finally identified a downside to living in a South Georgia swamp, Eli. Well met. Well met. Okay, so you'll remember when the United States assassinated German physicist Werner Heisenberg to prevent the Nazis from getting an atomic bomb? No, you don't, because that never happened. But Moberg was heavily involved in it not happening in the time that didn't quite happen. Yeah. It killed it. But the war ended up being a win for the good guys. And any story. about Nazis losing. He looks like a story I want to talk about right now.

So, Eli, what's going to happen? We're going to talk about it. Nice. What's happening? Eli made his laziness as a writer into a bit again. Oh, he does that sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah, pretty good. Sweet callback. Moberg was born in 1902 in New York City, and he was a precocious nerd who begged his mom to let him start school when he was three and a half years old.

Around the same time, the family moved to the Roseville section of Newark, New Jersey. In the article from Wikipedia, the next thing I saw was a pretty weird sentence from a biography about Moberg called The Catcher was a Spot. Yeah, it sounds like Catcher in the Rye. Both of those are books.

It sounds like something I would put at the end. According to that book about Moberg, quote, Roseville offered Mo's father everything he wanted in a neighborhood, good schools, middle class residents, and few Jews. And quote, now, okay, keep in mind the whole family, the whole Berg family is Jewish, so whatever that means for this topic. But like, it's still, it's a weird sentence either way.

Oh, Heath, let me explain. You know how you feel when someone else tells you they're a podcaster? That's how Jews feel. about each other. Just so you know. Fair enough. So Moe's baseball career

started at age seven when he started playing for the team at the nearby Episcopal Church. They take kindly to Jewish people over there in 1909,

I guess. So to keep his family's religion a secret, Mo went by the pseudonym Runt Wolf. So fake it has to be real. My God, he's the real life

Bobson Doug nut. So he eventually became one of the best young players in the area. And after high school, he went to NYU and played on the baseball team. After two semesters, he got into Princeton. So he left the safety school and pretended he never went there. And, okay, it might sound like I made that up. I did not.

That's actually mentioned in the biography. Mo never spoke of NYU again, especially at Princeton. While at Princeton, he studied Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Sanskrit. That'll help him with being a spy later and also help a bit with baseball. As the shortstop on the Princeton team, when the other team had a player on second base, he'd communicate in Latin with his second baseman and fellow Latin scholar. And nowadays, almost all the baseball players are Latin, so, you know, set a trend. All right.

So after Princeton, he started his career in the big leagues in 1923, eventually playing for five teams, including the White Sox and one other stocks, I think, mostly as a backup catcher. Keith, you can't damnatio memori, the Boston Red So they talked about. So Moe was fully aware that he wasn't going to be a star in the big leagues, and mediocre major league players didn't make much money at the time. so he managed to get a law degree from Columbia and worked at a New York law firm during the same time as being a player.

The most Jewish backup career ever. But then in 1934, the baseball career gave him a weird opportunity to do some light espionage. A group of MLB players, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Mo Berg got selected to play an exhibition game in Tokyo.

Mo went to Japan, with the team, but he never went to the exhibition game. Instead, he was across town wearing a kimono and sneaking into a hospital with his old-time video camera hidden under the rope. Yeah, Mission Impossible, or whatever that was. At the front desk, he made up a lie about visiting an ambassador's daughter, and then he went to the roof with his camera. The hospital was one of the tallest buildings in the city, and he captured 20,000.

three seconds of footage that showed the skyline and railways factories and Tokyo Harbor. According to Moe, he was thinking ahead about the possibility of war. He got the footage, quote, just in case the U.S. needed it. But according to a few other sources,

he was already a spy for the U.S. government at this point. And I guess that might explain why Team USA had Babe Ruth Lou Gehrig and a third street. Yeah, right. Circle, the one that doesn't belong. And also, there's not a lot of recreational espionage out there, to be honest, right?

There's not really, isn't it? Examples of freelancers in that business. No, it's true. So following Moe's retirement from baseball in 1939, he tried being a lawyer for a bit longer, but it wasn't doing it for him. And he wanted to travel the world. So he decided to charm his way into a job in the field of, you know, International Man of Mystery stuff.

This eventually worked when he became friends with Nelson Rockefeller. In 1942, Rockefeller gave Berg a job at the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. Not exactly a spy job, but part of the FDR administration and its wartime efforts. So Berg decided to show off the amazing spy cam footage that he got in Japan. And according to some of the sources I found, the U.S. military used the 23 seconds of 8-year-old video to plan a critical bombing raid on Tokyo. Do little straight. But according to probably better sources, no, that's fucking dumb.

That's done. That's not how it would work. No. More realistically, Mo played the video of his sweet recon and whatever boss was like, yeah, that's nothing, man, that's nothing. So it seems like Mo heard about the bombing raid, and he told a bunch of people, yeah, that was me. Just now, that was me.

I did recon like eight years ago. You're all welcome, nailed it. We beat up the Japanese. And that rumor seems to have made it into some books. Man, without that one guy's vacation photos, we'd have never found the important, easily documented buildings in Japan's biggest city.

Thank you. Okay, so you laugh, but like the CIA invaded Cuba using basically place mat maps, right? For tourists in 19-16. That's true. This is not impossible. a jumble on it.

That's very true. We are idiots sometimes. Well, regardless of the tactical importance of his video, it showed that Moberg had moxie and grit. And that's how you get a job as a spy, especially with a guy we've talked about before named William Wild Bill Donovan. Wild Bill was the head of the OSS, which eventually became the CIA. And when Mo applied for the job of Europe spy, I guess, in 1943,

Wild Bill hired him because, you know, Bill liked the cut of his jib. Wild Bill was a ridiculous crazy person and the OSS was a bit disorganized. So Mo's job was kind of vague. His directive was to just go around Europe, wherever, and get intel about Hitler's nuclear program and maybe woo some nerds some nerds. into working for America. Yeah, they handed me a self-destructing envelope and they said, take a look around.

That's what they said. It's my job, no. So Bose got the spy job, but they don't just send you straight to the war. The OSS ran some training tests to make sure all their new hires were good at the job. You want me to take a second video? No, no, we got to pass some tests.

So Berg passed a few rounds of tests, and then for his final test, he had to infiltrate an American aircraft factory. And apparently Mo decided you just like walk in and do normal whistling and find stuff or whatever he had to do. And right away, somebody was like, hey, stop, you're clearly a spy. That's just really obvious what you're doing. And Berg immediately confessed that that was in fact true. And that led to a big scandal in Washington about the OSS hiring and training guidelines.

Okay, fine. We'll build the tutorial boat where you can actually kill people from the start of Hitman, too. Are you going to be happy? We're going to go through so many guys. Maybe just don't whistle the star spangled banner when you're walking through. That's right. Avoid that one. You guys don't whistle that.

It's a patriotic. I got caught. Well, despite failing that final test, Moberg becomes a full spy for the OSS here. A homework and extra credit really pulled up that final score, man. What was the point of it? Yeah. They're going to make up a spy any of them. They really graded those pictures.

They were like, man, those pictures, that put you over the edge. That's going to be worth some points, right? I guess it was. So they put him on a plane to Europe. Mo walks down the aisle to his seat, and as he's sitting down, his gun flies out of his pocket like a fucking infomercial. What? Shut the fuck.

I guess you could just carry a gun on planes. Maybe if you were a spy. I don't know. Cool. And the gun lands in the lap of the woman sitting next to him. At which point, I'm assuming everyone in the row is like, fuck, we're going to lose to the Nazis so hard. This is probably a spy for us.

But Mo smooths it over somehow. And everyone, I guess, pinky swears to forget about the clumsy cartoon spy they all saw. And he's on the way to the war. That is dog gun. Right? All right. But from what we already know about this guy, there's at least a chance that this was on purpose.

purpose, right? That was like his flirtation. Like, oh, what, this gun? I, you know, I'm actually a spy, but don't tell anybody now. Okay, that's almost certainly how that happened now that I think about it based on what we're going to learn about him. Yeah, that makes sense. So, Mo lands in Europe, and he gets paired up with another American spy named Boris Pash. And this turned into like a buddy cop scenario. Pash was super uptight and by the book. He'd follow all the guidelines about how to act and what to wear while Berg was clearly doing a spy character from the movies. Berg would just go around drinking with people, but it worked.

He'd eventually find a scientist and you'd make friends at the bar and get some drunken intel and sometimes talk to scientists into moving to the U.S. Based on a photo from an article in Smithsonian, it's honestly not clear why this worked very well for Berg or any of his his spying worked very well. so very obviously a spy in this photo. The photo shows a group of soldiers in uniform, and they're all talking to each other, and a few feet behind them is Moberg

in a trench coat and fedora, just very clearly spying. There's a caption that labels the soldiers as in uniform, and next to Berg, the caption says, spy. As if we needed it, like a political cartoon. Yeah, podcast listener, he has included this photo in our notes, and one of the soldiers is very clearly leaning over to the others to say,

don't look now, but there's a guy behind us trying to be a spy. And Joe Berg is very clearly saying, no, I'm not you out. You're just spy. So until I saw this photo, I did not realize one could put one in his hands in one's pocket, spyishly. Holy shit. I didn't even know. He is like,

it's true. Suspiciously just having hands. Oh, yes. Yeah. Wow. Impressive. Well, as we all know, learning the ropes of international espionage, it does take a little time. Lots of wrinkles to figure out, like, for example, what's the move if you run into somebody you know while you're spying?

And that happened to Moe in Paris when he bumped into a sports writer on the Jean-Selise. And Mo blurted out, don't ask me what I'm doing here. Okay, here's the play. I take photos, but I develop them backwards, and I sell them to the Nazis, so they bomb the wrong side of the street. Genius. Okay.

And, you know, another example of a wrinkle. What's the move when a friend asks what you're doing, or like how your job is going, if you're a spy? Mo went with an interesting answer that. He'd put a finger up to his lips and say, Sh! What? What?

he found an answer worse than it well I'm not a spy whatever it is is definitely not spy to be fair he missed that day at OSS training because he was failing that other OSS training he might have might have missed don't do shh at Moberg he's still working out the bugs when he got made as a spy again on another flight the passenger saw he was wearing his

OSS issued wristwatch. Oh, what? Yeah, it seems like the OSS wouldn't put the name of their spy agency on their stuff, but apparently they did. I guess Wild Bill wanted to, you know, like get the brand out there too. So like it was competing interests between that and,

you know, being a spy agency. Either way, Moe managed to smooth it over again like he did with the fumbled gun. It's your vodka. It's your vodka. So, you're a lot. So the OSS, they're feeling good about their guy. And Mo is about to get assigned a big deal mission.

All right. Well, I just learned that past lives are real and that I was a spy. That's a lot to take in. So while I figure out some, you know, spiritualism stuff, we're going to take a quick break for some apropos of nothing. Hey, Mr. Donovan. Mr. Berg, come in. You can call me.

Bill. Sure, Bill. Here, have a cigar. How many? I'm sorry? How many can I have? I don't... I'm taking four.

Okay. So listen, I'm offering you an opportunity to work for our organization. Ah, because you used my video. Sorry, what? My video of Japan. You saw it, didn't you? And you used it for the bombing. I knew it.

I knew you used it. No, no. We usually take those videos ourselves. But look, right now... You used the video. Right now, there are a lot of scientists looking to get out of Germany, and we think you might just be the man to recruit him. Right.

Well, you know, it can be tough to be a certain kind of person. Sorry, I'm going to let you finish. Can I turn up the heat a little bit in the office here? Yeah, it's freezing in here. Sure. Anyway, we think that some of those people Oh, you got one of those that doesn't do half degrees. I'm going to be hot now.

Some of those people might appreciate hearing from one of their own that things are better for them here in America. Sorry, I wasn't listening. What do you mean by one of your own? I mean. Ah, an international main of mystery. Yeah, exactly that. what you just said. You guys do it,

per diem? Yes. Cover travel? Uh, yes. I'll do it. Great. I'm taking two more cigars. That's too many cigars. And say how many. And we're back. When we left off, Moe was doing a little schmoozing, little comitzing, you know, spy stuff. Yeah, he was. So that brings us to the U.S. mission to assassinate Werner Heisenberg. And we're going to do a quick rewind for the backstory. It's the summer of 1939.

before Germany invades Poland, and we're in the beautiful city of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Oh no, what happened since then? They continued being way better than Belleville, New Jersey. So the brightest scientific minds from Europe and America are gathered at the University of Michigan for a big symposium on theoretical physics. That includes Heisenberg, fresh off his Nobel Prize for the Uncertainty Principle, about five years before this, and the head of the German nuclear program. at this point too. Also, UM physics professor Samuel Goodsmith is there, who would end up as the

scientific head of the ALSOS mission for U.S. military. The job there would be tracking any progress that Heisenberg was making. And also Enrico Fermi is there, who's already doing your research for the U.S. at this point and ends up being a lead scientist on the Manhattan Project. So, Wow, that's such a more prestigious group of people than have ever been assembled in Belleville, New Jersey. It sure is. Wow. It sure the fuck is. that you guys put your fires out right away. You don't even know. You don't even know.

You got Aaron Rodgers there. That's fun. Yeah. He's close. He's not there there, but he's like close. Yeah, I got Supreme Court. That's too. It's great.

It's great. It's fucking rocks. MCR. Maybe you heard of them. They left really fast because it sucks here. Okay. We're making jokes, but it's kind of nice there. So during a cocktail party, after one of the days of the symposium,

everyone's talking about how any scientist who works for Hitler is an evil piece of shit and Gootsmith, a long-time friend of Heisenberg, is telling Heisenberg to defect and stay in the U.S. But Heisenberg claims he's going to guide the Nazis to a more ethical place and Heisenberg goes back to Germany after the symposium.

Well, but in his defense, like pretty much all the places were more ethical, so it seems like odds were in his favor. Sure, right, right. So about a week later, a prominent scientist writes a letter to FDR. The letter explains how the Nazis are clearly working on a new type of bomb using nuclear fission. Germany had just halted any exports of uranium, and they happened to control the only uranium mine in Europe. And the writer of that letter?

Albert Einstein. But like, for real, it was Einstein. But for real, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the idea of Hitler having an atomic bomb led FDR to start up the Manhattan Project. Well, I mean, so did the idea of FDR having an atomic bomb. But yes, let's lean into the altruistic justification. It was a self-defense nuke, you hippie.

Yeah, right, right. So moving ahead to 1942. That's why we use that on Japan. So now that UM professor, Samuel Goodsmith, hears that Heisenberg is giving a talk in Switzerland. Goodsmith, now working with the U.S. military and fully aware that Heisenberg is an evil, mortal enemy now, wants to kidnap Heisenberg in Switzerland, and Goodsmith sends it up the chain of command. The idea gets rejected at first, but General Leslie Groves, who's running the Manhattan Project, likes the plan. He's Matt Damon in the movie. Around the same time, German scientists... He's crazy if he was Matt Damon in real life. He's the actor Matthew Damon. Around the same time, German scientists completely stopped publishing anything about nuclear fission in professional journals. Suspect.

Or inept. But maybe the first thing I said. So, while Bill Donovan gets the task of taking out Heisenberg. We didn't have any evidence that Heisenberg had made a big breakthrough, but the Nazis were putting out press releases about their nuclear program with phrases like uranium torpedo and wonder weapon. even if they were lying, we decided to kill Heisenberg. You know, like worst case scenario, that's just fun to do. Well, sure, but it would be tough, though, because it's always hard to pin down exactly where Heisenberg is.

Right? You know there was one nerd that was a part of the assassination who was just waiting for the moment when they weren't sure if the mission had happened yet. Right. Just shaking with it. Hey, are you trying to set up a joke? No.

No, just let me know when they leave and but when we maybe don't know if they're back in. But before they check in. I swear to God, if you just tell me they're back, I'm gonna kill my fucking self. I'll kill myself right here. So Wild Bill didn't immediately go to Mo Berg,

fucking gun dropper for the mission. And Berg had recently got another negative mark on his record. Berg was doing spy stuff in Rome and he found an article about Neutron diffusion in a German physics journal. This was a bit before they had stopped publishing. Well, Mo is pretty sure he's got something big.

So he takes that article, he flies to Chicago with the article, and he hand delivers it to Phil Morrison, an American scientist at the University of Chicago. Morrison looks at the article and he says, yeah, man, we know. That's a published journal. We have a subscription. There it is right there on the table. So having wasted a bunch of time and money, Mo flies back to Europe for more spying. But he got the negative mark on the record.

Yes, you did a great job spying, honey. And we're going to hang this right on the fridge next to your vacation pictures right here. Hey, hey, sorry about the article. But while I'm here, peak wards is like right on the street. Have you had lunch? I haven't had any lunch. And I feel like I'm a little bitch. Do you fly back just for that?

No. It was the article. Yeah, you did. Okay, back to the OSS murder plot. While Bill Donovan picked an officer named Carl Eifler be in charge, and Eifler came up with, well, a sweet movie plot and the real plan, apparently. He put together a special ops team, and he hatched this plan. They'd fly into Switzerland, parachute out, sneak into Germany on foot,

abducted Heisenberg, and possibly Heisenberg's mom, as extra leverage, I guess. Then they'd sneak back out of Germany on foot, doing, obviously, stealth the whole time. Then they get picked up by another plane. They fly over the Mediterranean, ditch the plane, parachute into the sea, and everyone gets picked up by an American submarine.

That airport lounge at the last stop definitely had stuff floating in the water. That plane is way too close to just go in and get him. It's basically it is. It's like going and get him, but like fucking, but like, we're a lot of vehicles. Like we're leaving Barbie land or whatever.

Can somebody sing like a sweet, like song that was like, you know, a suspenseful like a yank. But yeah, just go get him. So clearly, clearly a great plan from Eiffler. Awesome would make a great movie. But the project got shut down at the last minute. when a high-ranking U.S. official decided that Switzerland would renege on their neutrality if they caught us doing the mission.

Like, they'd get mad about American spies in their shitty neutral airspace, and they joined the Nazis for spite at that point. It seems like a weird thing to do, but, you know, so is being neutral about literally Hitler, which is what's happening. They were focusing on chocolate triangle. And that took a lot of time. Those are really good. Delicious.

But I always hurt the roof of my mouth because I get stabbed. Yeah. I never have the patience to go in too quick. It's because you're Jewish. The war rages on. And our intel was saying the German nuclear program wasn't really getting anywhere. And British Intel was paying the same thing, even more emphatically. But somebody at the OSS probably just kept yelling like, guys, Nazi wonder weapon, though, at me.

And I get it. So the new plan is to just kill Heisenberg whenever we get a chance. It's like when you forget that one thing, food shopping, and you don't want to go all the way back to the grocery store, so you just tell yourself, I'm going to stop and get it some other time, right? But with murder. But with murder, yeah. So eventually the OSS identifies an opportunity to kill Heisenberg. They're going to get him at an upcoming lecture in December of 1944. The lecture was in Zurich, Switzerland.

so apparently we finally decided that fuck Switzerland we're just doing what we want and Mo Berg gets the job but it's not a great assignment Heisenberg was being guarded by a big security team at all times so Moe was being sent on a suicide mission almost for sure his job was to attend the lecture

while secretly carrying a gun and a cyanide capsule he'd try to figure out if Heisenberg was on the brink of building an atomic bomb and if yes he'd shoot Heisenberg. And if he was about to get captured, he'd swallow the cyanide pill. Yeah, Mo, you cannot carry that flow chart around with me. You have to just memorize it.

Sorry, sure, I was about to shoot him. But then he said, I'm walking exactly 2.87 miles per hour and just a fucking beard. Can't believe I got two. Amazing. It's amazing. All right, well, here's another moment where we get some conflicting stories

from historians and Moe. According to some sources, Mo Berg got the assignment because he was known for speaking 27 languages, including German and Italian, and that helped him on the mission. But according to other sources,

Mo knew a bit of Italian and German at most. Well, and baseball Latin. Yeah, no, and he knew baseball Latin. You don't know. That could come in there. But also, just, crucially, it doesn't fucking matter because he didn't know about

cutting-edge nuclear physics. So like, even if he was fluent in German, the physics lecture from Heisenberg wasn't going to give him any subtle clues about the science. Yeah, just checking out the charts to see if anything is bomb-shaped. It could be. So not a perfect plan, but it was a plan, and we felt like doing it. Moe was going to have three chances to make the kill if needed. He'd have a chance at the lecture, a chance at a dim.

party after the lecture and a chance while Eisenberg was walking home at the end of the night. And Berg actually helped with one component of the plan. He proposed a honeypot, but not a sex one, like an actual, like a little, like a food one, a food honey pot of schnaps, cheese, and chocolate. Oh my God, it's so Jewish. Those items. The Jewish spy ever. Those items were in short supply during the war,

and Berg was convinced that we could use them as bait in order to make sure that Heisenberg would attend the dinner party after lecture and maybe like afterwards too to be used as bait. And apparently it was the chocolate that did it. That being said, I couldn't find a description of the moment. This happened, like the moment when Heisenberg was going to bail from wherever and then somebody waved a chocolate bar and got him to hang out more. Seems like a weird thing to have actually happened.

So that might have been another Moberg embellishment that made its way into a book. Okay, so just me or does Heath go in? Well, I can't imagine somebody would walk into their own death for something as inconsequential as cheese. Seems damn defensive to you guys. That is true. Neither here nor there. Much like an electron. So Moberg heads to Zurich.

Three beat. Nicely done. repeated the fucking absurd. This is the nerdyest fucking thing that's ever happened to me. I was reading this trying to make a meth joke the whole time because that was a different Eisenberg.

So Moberg heads to Zurich and he goes to the lecture secretly carrying the gun and the cyanide. He pretended to be a student, a 42-year-old student, I guess, and he sat in the front row of the auditorium taking notes. The notes must have been just like

physics, physics, Adam, nucleus mitochondria powerhouse of the cell. Like, whatever. He doesn't know he's talking about. He's doing like fake taking notes. And then after the lecture was done, he wanted to get close to Heisenberg. So he walked up near the blackboard and pretended to be looking at the sweet equations. And that's when Moe got an important clue.

According to the version of the story where Mo can speak some German, he overheard Heisenberg say, we are losing the war, but how nice it would have been if Germany had won. According to other sources, Moe was just kind of reading the vibes of the room because he doesn't speak German. He's looking around to see if other scientists were making aces that indicated the atomic bomb just got invented as a face, I guess. And according to Robert Rodot, who made a biopic about Moberg, it was the old baseball catcher spidey sense. is a play here. Just like a great catcher and just sense

when a runner is about to steal. Moe could sense that Heisenberg was feeling sad that he had an infant the atomic bomb. Okay, let me look at the flowchard. Hey, if sad, give chocolate.

Okay. Here we go. Yeah. So, Moe's feeling good about not having to shoot Heisenberg and kill himself with cyanide. And also the fate of the world

or whatever. But he doesn't know, for certain, so Mo heads to the dinner party to get more extremely vague intel. He's milling around, getting close to Heisenberg, and getting ready to pull the hidden gun if he

senses a steal. But once again, the vibes are saying atomic bomb, not invented. And then at the end of the party, Mo tails Heisenberg through the streets of Zurich, you know, ducking into shadows and alleys like a spy does, looking for one final

clue if you can find it. But nothing happens and Berg calls it a day. It's so crazy that he decided the suicide mission wasn't necessary in the end. Weird. Yeah. So here's my theory on that. I'm just speculating, but it feels like this all tracks. Berg went to the lecture with no gun and no cyanide. He understood absolutely nothing. And then he ate some cheese and chocolate and drank some shnops and went home and reported, mission accomplished, didn't have to do anything. We're all good. He was in bed that night.

Look, if I'm wrong, I have a feeling it's not going to be my problem. You know what I'm saying? So following the war, the OSS got officially absorbed into the CIA, but the new management team did not keep Moberg on the payroll. He spent some time traveling around the world, but eventually he ran out of money. So in 1952, he used some old contacts and talked the CIA into sending him on a mission to spy on Russia's, nuclear program. He got paid pretty nicely, including all his expenses, but he came back with absolutely nothing. It's not even 100% clear he stayed in Russia the whole time, and that was

pretty much the last job he ever had. He got lots of requests from publishers to write his memoirs, but he turned them all down. Except in 1960, he did finally agree to one offer, and he met with a co-writer from a publishing house, but that co-writer guy confused Mo Berg. with Mo Howard from the three stoogers Shut on So Moberg got all mad and the deal was off

Oh I wonder how long it took Moberg to realize When did you meet Larry and Curley Wasn't a joke Yeah right

All right So Moberg Finally passed away In finally Yeah Yeah It's See what you're doing

Seems judgmental Okay Fucking McElmore over here In 1970 He was 70 years old. He passed away in Belleville, New Jersey. Great place to die.

A wonderful place, indeed. And according to a nurse who was there at the time, his final words were, how did the Mets do today? And against all odds, they actually won that day. So, Mo is gone, but his legacy lives on. Harry Truman awarded him with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to civilians. in wartime.

Strangely enough, Mo declined it with no explanation. But after his death, his sister accepted the award and gave it to the Baseball Hall of Fame. So he's enshrined in Cooperstown, the second highest honor for civilians in the United States of America. He also lives on as the only player with a baseball card on display at CIA headquarters in Langley. And there's a movie about him. It was okay.

It was okay. It was fine. It was fine. but Moberg is portrayed by Paul Rudd, which now that I think about it, is the actual highest award for civilians. It's being betrayed by Paul Rudd in something. Absolutely.

And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? Paul Rudd is a delight. Yes. And it's true. All right, are you ready for the quiz? And he's got that. Oh, yeah.

So disarming. All right, I got a question for you, Heath. What's the best candy bar to use if you're luring someone to their own assassination. A. Rees' peacemakers. B. A slayed A bar. C. Cadburyed. D. D. D. D. Dirty twicks.

Amazing. Amazing. Mr. Badbar. Okay. There's a lot of competition, but dirty twicks. Dirty twigs. It's a fucking genius. The thing. They like, OSS was all about their dirty tricks. Yeah.

That is correct. It is the dirty twins. All right, Heath. Well, it sounds to me like Moberg was actually the heart and soul of the CIA. Sure was. So how would he actually have known if Heisenberg had invented a nuclear bomb? A, he would have heard some yik-dak about it. Okay, so for everybody except like three people, that's a callback to 12.

12 years ago. That was good. I got to tell you, I'm one of those three people. Eli nailed it. He nailed that call back. It's A. He used my footage.

All right. Keith, what's the spy thriller movie about Moberg? A. Sinker, Taylor Soldier, spy. B, from Russia with gloves. C. Fish and Impossible.

Or D. The man who knew too little. Okay. Again, a lot of competition, but from Russia with glove is fucking... That's really. That's pretty great, yeah.

Correct, I think. Yes, no. I'm sorry, it was fishing impossible. Oh, I'm sorry, I was close. They didn't do it. Cecil, failed. You fooled him, which means you are this week's winner. Eli is on here as a essayist, I guess.

That's right. That's right. That's somebody floundered in. It's right. All right. Well, for Cecil, Noah, um, and Heath. Jesus, don't say it like that.

Don't say it like that. This episode's not coming out for a while. I'm trying to hedge my bets. Anyways, thank you for Hay. out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then I will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can listen to our podcasts in the podcast places. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com forward slash citation pod or if it's a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us,

check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citation pond.com. Hey, Mo, you're back. How was St. Petersburg? Beautiful. I love Florida this time of year. You mean Russia? Yep. What did I say? Florida? No, no, no. I went to Prussia. Russia. That's what I said.