Citation Needed - Robert Maxwell

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Ian Robert Maxwell (born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch; 10 June 1923 – 5 November 1991) was a Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor and politician.[1][2] Of Jewish descent, he escaped the Nazi occupation of his native Czechoslovakia and joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile during World War II. He was decorated after active service in the British Army. In subsequent years he worked in publishing, building up Pergamon Press to a major academic publisher. After six years as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) during the 1960s, Maxwell again put all his energy into business, successively buying the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers and Macmillan Inc., among other publishing companies.

Hello and welcome. Citation Needed, podcast where we choose a 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 Heath, and for today's espionage story, I'll be our Dame Judy Dench, I guess. And I'm joined by our Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce, Prousden, and Daniel Craig in whatever order, Cecil, Noah, Tom, and

March. Okay, just because I have the exact same accent in every sketch I'm in, regardless of where I'm meant to be from, for example, this right now, this is me being a Spanish highlander. Yeah. Dib's on Roger Moore, right? He's the most forgettable despite doing the most Bond movies. And I feel like there's something comforting about being forgettable, right? I get it. In this timeline, it definitely feels like tomorrow never ends. In fact, today's, taking its fucking time, actually. If anyone is a guy getting his ball smacked by a bag of rocks like Daniel Craig and Casino

Royal, it is Tom, okay? It is Tom. All right, yep, yep. That leaves Pierce Brosnan for you, I guess. There we go. It's all settled at all tracks. Let's get into it. Marsh. What person, person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event? We're going to be talking about today.

Robert Maxwell. All right. Who? Who is Robert Maxwell? So Abraham Leibich. Not what we asked, man. Abraham Leibichok was born in June 1923 in the small town of Satinska Dole in Carpathian, Ruthenia. Now, that's a region that was part of Austria-Hungary until 1918, but it was in Czechoslovakia by the time that Abraham was born.

And these days, it's part of modern Ukraine. And the fact that two of those countries no longer exist, and the third has been invaded by Russia, gives you a flavor of the historical volatility of the region. And that uncertainty and instability was absolutely a theme of Abraham's entire life. So when he was three, thanks to the intervention of the newly minted Czech officials of his homeland, Abraham's family were persuaded to change his name to a more Czech-sounding Jan Ludwig Hyman bin Jamiamin Hock. That's too many names. I feel like the officials just had a bunch of leftover names that they had to get rid of

before they could clock out. And look, like, the name change. It wasn't exactly a hardship to them, given that it was only fairly recently that an Austrian official had changed their entirely family name too hock from whatever it had previously been because the original was Yiddish.

So, ew. I just need to point out that I resent Michael Marshall for pronouncing all of that properly. Like, it doesn't feel respectful to the spirit of our show. Thank you. Thank you. Especially when he's here to read.

replace Eli. Yes. Okay. Yeah, that's fair. That is fair. Well, the Hock family were Orthodox Jews. She sat or and spell something wrong. I don't know.

Are you sitting blood while you read this? It's not. Always at all times. I'm just more subtle about it because I'm British. I like to keep it all. Shit, blood and carry on. So the Huck family, they were Orthodox Jews in a part of Europe that was both incredibly poor and an incredibly.

poor place to be an Orthodox Jew. Case in point, their city was annexed by Hungary in 1939 and then occupied by the Nazis in 1944, at which point most of the Hock family, including four of Abraham slash Yan's six siblings, they were

killed in Auschwitz. Well, there is definitely a popular Twitter thread that explains why this is their fault. Yeah. And a Tucker Carlson episode, if you want to take a deep dive into that. Very friendly Tucker episode. But thankfully, our hero was not killed in Auschwitz.

He'd been sent to study at a yeshiva in the mid-1930s. So when the occupation happens in 1939, his Czech first name and his quasi-Austrian surname actually helped him evade the authorities. And so he joined the anti-Nazi resistance. That said, he was really quickly caught and he was sentenced to death as a spy. And things were looking incredibly bleak. But then he was able to escape his capture. And to hear him tell it as an older man, he was able to wrestle his wife.

way free because he was a pretty tall guy, a pretty strong guy. And also the guard who was escorting him only had one arm. Okay. He's just already hedging his life. He's like, I'm tall and strong. Well, also, it was a one. And so he knocked the guard out with a stick or possibly with his manacles, depending on the version of the story he's telling it the time that he's telling it. And so he hid under a bridge before then being rescued by a kind passing gypsy, his words. And he hid under a bridge. A bridge. Before then being rescued by a kind passing gypsy. His words, not mine to be clear.

How much that is true, you know, it's hard to say because these are stories that Jan would tell so much later in life. Sure, Jan. Yeah, beat up the guard with your dick or whatever it was. And bear in mind, he was already onto his second name by the point of this story. And neither of those names are the one that I introduced the essay with. We maybe shouldn't just take his word for it. Just the search party of seven Nazis with one leg,

jumping across the bridge he's under, you know? All right, so I feel like we let the Holocaust survivor who escaped Auschwitz embellish a little marsh. I feel like that's the polite thing to do. Okay, okay, fair. So 17-year-old Jan makes his way to Marseille. He arrives there in 1940 just in time for France to be invaded by those same Nazis. He grabs a stick in a man and go, don't worry, France, I know what to do.

Hey, some of these guys have two arms. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck! Unfair. So what does Jan do? Lay down your arms. He throws himself into a second... Nice.

Nice. So Jan throws himself into a second resistance movement enlisting in the Czechoslovak army, which is in exile in Marseille. That's an army that fares as badly against the Nazis as the rest of the French forces do,

and Jan was among the troops that were evacuated at Dunkirk to the UK. So, yeah, he's brought over to Britain, where despite being kept in less and ideal conditions, he decides to throw in with the British troops. And that is mainly due to the anti-Semitism he experienced within the Czech army's ranks. He actually took part in a protest against the leadership of the Czechoslav army, who apparently hated the Nazis, but also weren't that fond of the Jews either. So, Jan, instead, adopted Britain as his new home team

for the war. He taught himself an English accent, modelled on Winston Churchill, who he'd sound like for the rest of his life, and he gave himself a brand new name to fit his new British identity, and that name was Ivan Jones. Sounds very British. What? Hey, guys, I hate the Nazis, but maybe they're not wrong about everything. Is not a take that's going to check out. So at this point, Abraham slash Yan slash Ivan clearly had a taste for fighting Nazis.

And so in 1943, he joined the North Staffordshire Regiment. and he was recruited to the British intelligence services, mostly thanks to his ability to speak several different European languages, which comes in handy. He was barely 20 at this time, and this was the second time he'd been a spy, and it definitely wouldn't be the last time he'd be a spy. His regiment was sent to France as part of the Normandy landings,

where the Nazi killing goes so much better for him at the third time of asking. He quickly gets made Lance Corporal and then Sergeant, and then he gets a battlefield promotion to lieutenant, and at this point, he gives himself yet another name. This time, Ivan Dumoria, the surname taken from his favorite brand of cigarettes at the time. See, good thing you didn't smoke lucky strikes, I guess. So now this quasi-Hungarian Czech-Ukrainian spy

is spying for the British with a Russian forename and a French surname. Thank you all today for your brave and dedicated service. or medals of honor recipients today are Virginia Slim Winston Benson Coul Dunhill and Joe Camel So evidently

pretty happy playing fast and loose with the rules He developed a habit While at war of looting any killed or captured German soldiers That he came across And he'd also dress up in their Nazi uniforms in order to better infiltrate occupied villages. And these are actions that are generally frowned upon, even in the midst of war.

Yeah, hey, totally cool to set guys on fire with a flamethrower, but let's not check their pockets. We're men and not animals, okay? Well, that's it, you see? He was killing Nazis, so his commanding officers, they weren't about to call foul on any technicalities. Yeah, frowned upon by Nazis in war. Like, they frown upon costume stuff.

Like, I'm a spy. I'm not wearing a uniform. Regardless of whom I'm against. So, yeah, they weren't about to call foul, but what they were about to call him was yet another name. This time, this time they went with Leslie Smith, which they felt fit in a lot better with the British troops he was now among. Although, according to one Canadian radio broadcast that was praising his heroic deeds, he was actually Leslie D. Maria, names he's never gone by. That one guy who has to sew the names on the uniforms is so mad at him right now.

God. So, okay, so I really want the reveal in this story to be that these are all just different people whose deeds of grifter wanted to take credit for us. So I'm going to go to the name again. That would have been amazing. So January 9045, and whatever we want to call him,

he's leading a battalion into the town of Parlo in Germany. And suddenly they find themselves under heavy attack and they're penned in alongside another battalion that's led by his commanding officer. Oh, let me guess he disarms them all. So he takes a handful of his men. A farewell to arm. He's got hands so he can take a handful of his men, unlike the guys who's fighting.

He can take a handful of his men. And against extremely heavy gunfire, he raids the building that the Germans are holed up in. And he kills most of them and the rest of them flee. And for this, he was presented with the military cross, which is the second highest military honor at the time. And he was promoted to the rank of captain. Kind of makes you wonder what the fuck? holding out for with that highest honor, right? What's the guy got to do?

So from here, his Nazi killing gets so much more prolific, and his gray areas get more and more complicated. In one escapade, he single-handedly killed 15 SS soldiers and captured the 14 others who were surrendering. Except there's a really good reason to believe that some of the 15 were actually trying to surrender when he killed them. He wasn't really fussy about the morals of war. warfare particularly. He'd actually go on to write home about routinely killing prisoners,

even shooting some unarmed civilians, some of whom were in the middle of surrendering at the time. And he'd late to tell a story of how weird he thought it was that his men got really upset with him for encouraging a group of Germans to surrender, only to then machine gun them down as they emerged from a barn. Okay, okay. I know it's a war crime, blah, blah, blah, blah, war crime. But I find it hard to let Nazi do a surrender if I'm the soldier there, right? Like three seconds ago, you were firing a gun in service of the literal Adolf Hitler. And now I'm clearly winning and you're like, time out, time out, I'll stop if you stop.

You're a Nazi. Oh, no. Hey, guys, I know we've literally brainwashed and trained the humanity out of these guys so they'll kill strangers they've never met. But they're doing it like extra now. I think that's their fault, right? They're putting on costumes. It's just, it's ma'am. I like that we covered both our bases on that.

Good. Thanks, guys. Now we'll double the hate mail. We can just pair them off against each other. They can argue with each other. It's fine. That was Eli. I made that last joke. Hey, all the pro-Nazi people, send me the hate mail.

That's perfect. That's perfect. I want to hear from you. I want to know who you are. So that was 1945. And the war was soon over. And so too, therefore, were the war crimes. And given that our side won.

those things stopped counting as war crimes as America's big boy and little boy can readily attest. We thought they would be smaller. There was a military target in there somewhere. Yeah, the only crime was inaccuracy.

That's absolutely right. Well, and over-suberance, Marsh. Under the promise over-deliver. That's been the American model the entire time. Best way to describe that. The nuclei had a lot of gumption and we didn't account for it exactly

Big bootstraps So at this point It's time for Ivan to become officially British Which inevitably meant Yep Choosing a new name But this one he would actually stick with For the rest of his life

And so he chose Ian Robert Maxwell And so for the rest of his life He'd be known to all us Not the Ian bit Because fuck all of you So in March 1945 Robert Maxwell marries Elizabeth Betty Maynard, the wealthy French heiress of a silk mill, and over the course of the next 16 years, they'd gone to have nine children.

There's Michael, Philip, Anne, Christine, Isabel, Parine, Ian, Kevin, and Robert's favorite child until the day he died, Gailene Maxwell. That Gailene Maxwell. Okay, yeah, the new rule about the time machine, it's baby Hitler, and then quick stop after Maxwell Kid number. eight to snip Robert, Ian, whatever the fuck, yawn, and then Marty McFly, Kiss Mom, Clock, that's like, there you know. It's so weird that all the other siblings got normal people names and then there's...

They did. Yeah, yeah, it really is. So for the rest of the 1940s, Robert Maxwell is working for the British military in Berlin, ostensibly as an interrogator of German prisoners, given his approach to those gray areas around war crimes and stuff, but also probably just an outright spy. There's suggestions he even spent a... sometime monitoring his home country on behalf of MI6, and he was also, he was well-placed to cultivate links and sources behind the growing Iron Curtain, given his ability to speak Russian among just so many other languages. Robert Maxwell's ambition was soon starting to know at him, because the one thing this kid from an impoverished background in a country that no longer

existed, what he really wanted was the kind of money that could protect himself and his wife and his future kids from the hardships that his own family had endured. And he was really just perfectly positioned to create that wealth with all the connections he has as a probable spy in Allied Occupy, Germany, no less. And it's actually through one of those connections, a publisher named Ferdinand Springer, that Robert Maxwell spies the opportunity that would change the course of not just his life, but also irrevocably changed the process of scientific publishing as we know it. Huh. Cool. Better be some fucking amazing spreadsheets of science. or whatever. If you're going to not wear a condom after eight, here he's, bud.

We'll see how it goes after a quick break. Maxwell, get in here. Yes, Colonel, what's up? Maxwell, this is the fourth time this month that a prisoner has died in your care. What can I say, sir? I'm an unlucky guy. It's bad luck.

One of them was found with half his body stuck inside the toilet. I think he was hanging a picture and he slipped. Yeah, another got a hold of your gun. gun, and he shot himself. Yeah, that one was weird. He did say he was really depressed, though.

Another guy says here, killed himself by jumping on a pile of bear traps. I think those were improvised, like, prison bear shanks, you know what I mean? I look, Maxwell, I don't like these prisoners either. But I'm getting a lot of pressure from the higher-ups, and every time this happens, there is a ton of paperwork. So, can you just...

Not. Okay, all right. How about this, Colonel? I got an idea. Every time we find a dead prisoner from now on, I will make sure it definitely looks like they will have hanged themselves with bed sheets. I'll make sure the guard logs show that nobody went to their cell, too. I mean, that sounds fine, actually.

But can you also make sure their neck is broken in a certain way so it's not to arouse suspicion? I will do my best of that, yes. And disable the cameras. Disable the cameras, obviously, yes. They didn't have cameras in prisons And World War II It's a call forward Get out of a sketch

Tom is not cursed His computer literally blew up When he had on face recognition It sounds rare but possible That is his third computer blow up this week Oh Hey Marsh, how's it going? Oh yeah, great thanks

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Get delicious ready to eat meals delivered with Factor. Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. All right, guys. Yeah, thanks. Oh my God, what was that? Sorry, sorry. My computer exploded again. I should have warned you guys. I was unboxing it.

Yeah, you got to hit the claxons when you interact with technology. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. I know the rules. Right there on the board. And we're back. When we left off, Robert Maxwell, Ian, Jan, whatever the fuck, was an actual super spot. going around Europe after World War II,

exchanging briefcases on like opposite-facing park benches and carving up the world. Also, something about like science publishing or spreadsheets, whatever. What's next, Marsh? So yeah, bear in mind, this is the late 1940s, and the world has just seen how important science could really be. So the US, they've dropped the atomic bomb on Japan,

and then they've paper-clipped some rocket scientists out of Germany, and it's clear that whatever future is on the horizon, It's going to be built by nerds in labs. Yeah, you see nerds vaporize enough sand and you lose your urge to kick it in their faces, I think. And so the thing is, those lab nerds, they're going to need somewhere to publish all of their work. And so in meeting Ferdinand Springer of Springer Verlag,

the Science Journal publisher, Maxwell realizes he's talking to the owner of arguably the world's largest repository of scientific literature, but they're German, and a lot of countries want nothing to do with them. Springer had this vast wealth of 50,000 cutting-edge science books, but nobody was willing to buy from them. So Maxwell secures from Ferdinand a cut-price rate on distribution rights, and he goes into business as Springer's exclusive British and U.S. distributor. Oh, man. Remember when deals with Nazis were like a secret spy thing that you would have to hide in your business, sir?

Oh, man. So at the time, science journals were often operating at a loss. Well, as opposed to the money printing machines they are in. Well, Maxwell instinctively understands just how much money there is in the doing of science. There's grants, there's government contracts, philanthropy, equiements, all sorts of revenue streams there. Joe Rogan is getting so wet right now, just hearing this. And while all the science was well-funded, the publishers who make the findings available, they weren't getting a taste. And that is where Robert Maxwell comes in.

So he buys three-quarters of a small publisher called Bull, to Worth Springer, and he goes in a partnership with a professional science editor, and, not so coincidentally, an ex-spy for the British, a guy called Paul Rosbaud. Now, where he gets the £13,000 for that deal to happen, that's unclear because his heiress wife did not front him the cash. Decades later, a former British intelligence officer claimed that MI6 actually set Maxwell up with the cash, but that is unconfirmed. he had no idea where he got all that money.

I do remember he paid the deposit with a coin purse filled with gold Nazi teeth, though. Jesus Christ. They were Nazi teeth. So we could tell that they were Nazi teeth, but yeah. Maxwell and Rossburg changed the name of the company to purg. Of course he fucking changed the name. Yeah, okay. Right, exactly.

And it actually went on to become one of the biggest academic publishing houses in the world. And a large part of that was Maxwell's complete lack of scruples. So he turned up to academic conferences and offer bewildered scientists, fairly large financial incentives to sign exclusive publishing deals with him. Cool. He was like Shug Night with vanilla ice of his time. He'd also persuade scientists that what they were doing, the science they were doing was so unique. It just couldn't go in a regular journal.

What it really needed was a brand new journal all of its own, that they should be the editors of. And so Pergamon started with just six serials and two books in 1951, but by 1960, it had 59 regular journals. By 1991, they had more than 400. Okay, it is so very British of you, Mersh, to use the part where he's cutting Nazi throats as like a lead-in to talk about the ruthless scientific publishing houses

that you really wanted to tell. That's a weird one. It's a weird shift. I'm easing in before we get to the evil stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So that proliferation of science journals, that was a key cog in his money-making machine because he realized all that money that was sloshing around in science funding, he didn't have to give his journal away for free like they've been doing.

So he could actually charge universities and research institutions across the world a subscription to access all the latest science. And the more journals he created. And the more journals he created and published, the more those institutions would be forced to collect, and the more subscription fees, Pergamon, could therefore charge. And this would change the face of scientific publishing as we know it. There's an app to tell you all the scientific journals subscriptions that you don't use. It's called Nazi rocket scientists.

Okay, just to say this out loud, back to you, Marsha. He seems to have revolutionized the business model here by, let me check the notes, charging money for them. Yes, he did, yes. It was genius. That was what he came up with out loud. The tragedy of the comments was that nobody owned the damn thing. Don't worry, capitalism solved it. And then what's more, he had all those connections to the East, and that also boosted his value. Because during the Cold War, Pergamon became the sole publisher of Russian scientific information into the West. In 1964, Pergamon floated on the stock exchange for four million pounds then. That's over 70 million pounds in today.

money. Okay, so I know Russians were doing cutting-edge stuff back then, but having just watched their best robot face plant when it tried to wave, I feel like he was overcharging, right? Yeah, maybe, maybe. Still, by now it was the 1960s, and while Robert Maxwell now had all the money

he dreamed of, he didn't quite yet have the kind of power and influence that he'd come to crave by this point. So as an attempt to gate crash, the British upper classes, he bought himself a mansion in Oxford. The Heddington Hills Hall Estate. And living in a 200-year-old stately home is like a kind of cheat code for entering the establishment

and he parlayed all these new connections into actually becoming the MP for booking them in the 1964 and 1966 general elections. And this is despite the fact that he'd committed as many war crimes as he'd had different identities at this point in his life. Hold on, hold on. You're saying he had the cash. Do you need like a good resume to be rich in England? What are you talking about? Apparently, there's a names to war crimes ratio that's considered like proper and one that's considered going outside of that range.

Yeah, no, whoever heard of a person who committed war crimes excelling in British politics. We normally get rid of them after the war crimes, to be fair. Tell you, but I had a good run up until the war crimes. Unsurprisingly, this brash and quite burly foreigner who'd made millions disrupting the entire field of scientific publishing didn't mix well with the, establishment figures of British Parliament, not least because he self-defined as a socialist, albeit a billionaire socialist with a captain's rank and a two-neural race. So he wasn't a very good socialist. He really wasn't.

A lot of the Conservatives in the 1970 election. He failed to win it back in either of the two elections that we had in 1974. Yes, we had two elections in 1974. Despite the fact that Labour, his party won the latter of those elections, I know his a villain. I know, I know. But like, so far, he's also a Nazi-killing socialist, thumbing his nose at British aristocratic norms. And I'm not saying we need more of those guys, but I feel like so far having less of them hasn't worked out so great. Unwanted, sadly, in the world of politics, Maxwell turned to the next best refuge for the

power-hungry billionaire, the mainstream media. In 1969, he tried and failed to buy the tabloid newspaper, The News of the World, which is a newspaper which is also on my citation-needed essay list. Jesus Christ, guys have been here 15 fucking minutes. He's already calling dibsies. Like a snow-covered Chicago one with a shoveling a lawn chair in here. Right. Isn't that one of the topics you've done?

You want to tell us about the news the world, Tom, you're welcome. Yeah. So the family who owned. The family who owned the newspaper. just simply point-blank refused to sell it to a socialist Czechoslovakian immigrant. In fact, the Newsleworld's editor, Stafford Summerfield, published a front-page opinion piece opposing Maxwell's bid, writing, this is a British paper run by British people, as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Let us keep it that way.

And then later that same year, the newspaper was sold to Australian media mogul. When I was in Manchester, I called Yorkshire Pudding. a muffin and I thought the server was going to kill me. Okay. They've got pudding as the general term for all the desserts. Right? Also a specific dish called pudding. It's pandemonium.

It's impossible to follow. You know how we don't have a dessert called New York City dessert? That's also not even a dessert because that would be insane. It's like that. So despite some big acquisitions, cracks were starting to appear. in the Maxwell business world by this point. But unscrupulous as ever, Maxwell just papered over those cracks with his customary amoral attitude to the rules. So when he came to try and sell Pergamon press to Leasecold Data Processing Corporation in 1969, he just lied about the profitability

of one of the subsidiary businesses, which was a publisher of encyclopedias. Meanwhile, profits of Pergamon were on the decline, and so the company shares were suspended from the London stock market. Try changing the name. That usually works. And as a result of these various fiscal shenanigans, Maxwell was ousted from the Pergamon board, and a subsequent 1971 inquiry by the Department of Trade and Industry found fraudulent payments between departments within his company, which were designed to inflate share prices and downplay just how financially disastrous some of Maxwell's investments and new ventures had been. The inquiry concluded, quote, notwithstanding Mr. Maxwell's acknowledged abilities and energy,

he is not, in our opinion, a person who can be relied on to exercise proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company. Okay, I like that they lead with a compliment, though. Right? That's good millennial management energy. While Jim has an admirable ability to maintain boundaries and work-life balance, his pension for embezzlement is not compatible with our Q3 projections. Can we put a pin in embezzlement, Tom?

Because we will get that. So this, not the right person to exercise stewardship of a publicly owned company, that lasted all of three years because Leescoe managed Pergamon so badly that by 1974, their price had completely tanked and Maxwell was able to borrow enough money from people apparently willing to lend him money despite all of the financial shenanigans that he was able to buy his company back. And from there, he went on to buy the Daily Mirror, which is the leading left-wing tabloid, partly as a way to compete with Rupert Murdoch's News of the World and the Sun, and partly to undermine and destroy support for trade unions, which he saw as a barrier to profitability,

this socialist. And then he used his blood emerald money to buy plans for an electric car company, right? He tried to buy Clive Sinclair's failing home computer company, Sinclair, but the deal was aborted in August 1985. Lucky, 29 states in the US, he'd be forced to go through with it. I'm just kidding,

he's a man, he can do whatever he wants. Yeah, yeah. And hey, not for nothing, Marsh, but don't you dare try to call dibs

on Uncle Clive on it, okay? Maxwell also launched the London Daily News as a competitor to the London Evening Standard, but it closed within six months with losses of 25 million pounds. His up and down business career

by this point, his former Labor Prime Minister, his boss, Harold Wilson, to nickname him the bouncing cheque. That's excellent. It's pretty fucking good. It's so good. So, yeah, it turns out that having the, what if I took this thing that people are giving away out of the goodness of their hearts and I charged for it, like that, like, that idea

can make you a lot of money, but it can't make you a savvy business investor. Yeah, it really can't. It really can't. So the 1980s is when he decides to visit Israel, meeting with the Prime Minister, Yichak and promising to channel some of his fortune into supporting the country, which he actually does do. He used profits from the Daily Mirror to buy Israeli newspapers and to majorly invest in pharma and tech companies in Israel. And rumors emerge of Maxwell being a spy for Mossad. And you can kind of understand why he's been a spy before multiple times for multiple different

countries by this point. I'm 100% certain he's a spy for all these places at this point. And then also, when an Israeli physicist leaked details of the country's secret nuclear weapons program to the British press, which obviously Maxwell is part of, Maxwell is alleged to have passed those details onto Mossad, which led to the scientists being imprisoned for 18 years. Though it is worth pointing out, that isn't proven, and Mossad also had other contacts in Britain feeding them information too, so maybe it wasn't him. The British Foreign Office, they suspected Maxwell of being a secret agent of a foreign government, or even possibly a double agent. or even a triple agent. Awesome. One source called him a thoroughly bad character

and almost certainly financed by Russia. Maxwell denied all of this and he doggedly sued anyone who made those accusations. Marsh said after making those accusations on our show. Okay, here's the thing.

If you ever get caught being a spy, you just add one to your agent number. Like if I was a spy, I'd be announcing my like double triple cross at every moment to the people. Like, I'm going to go do the triple cross now, but saying everything in like, air quotes. Like, I'm going to, you know, triple cross us.

Uh-huh. Right? Yeah, just sarcastic tone the whole thing, plausible deviability. Yeah, you're absolutely right. What do you think the record is for like octuple agent? Like, what do you think the highest number that somebody landed on and got away with it? I feel it's got to be an odd number. I think it's got to be an odd number.

I feel you don't, you don't get into the high numbers and stay, because at that point, I think someone's going to, start being suspicious. Even it cancels, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Interesting. So, 1988, Maxwell was personally worth over three billion pounds. He owned Nimbus Records,

Maxwell directories, Prentice Hall Information Services, the Berlitz Language School, half of MTV in Europe, Oxford United Football Club, and McMillan publishers. The latter,

which was acquired for $2.6 billion, the latter which was acquired for $2.6 billion dollars, in 1988. This was a meteoric rise, but it was also a catastrophic fall. Because each one of those ambitious new ventures

only added to the financial strain that his entire empire was under. McMillan, for example, was actually worth less than $2 billion when he bought it, even then. And even to do that, Maxwell had to borrow extensively in order to afford the inflated price

that he was willing to pay. In 1991, he was forced to sell, Pergammon Press again, this time to publishing rivals Elsevier for £440 million in order to cover his debts. But then he used some of that income to buy the New York Daily News, which was a tabloid completely mired in debt, and it didn't end well for him at all. Yeah, you can't lay newspapers on the ground to soak up other newspapers. That's not how it works. And speaking of not ending well, on November the 4th, 1991, Maxwell was meant to be the meeting with the Bank of England to discuss his default on

50 million pounds worth of launch. But he missed that meeting, choosing instead to take his private yacht, the Lady Galane, named after his favourite and now extremely famous daughter, he took that yacht to the Canary Islands, just off the course of spin. And that was the last

that anybody heard of him. And a few days later, his body was found in the Atlantic Ocean. And the coroner who examined him ruled he likely suffered a heart attack and had fallen overboard, possibly while partaking in his unwise habit of pissing off the sign of the port. Just like eight different spies from eight different countries.

They see each other all swimming up to the yacht at the same time. He's going to do like rock paper scissors? What are we doing? The police investigating. So did the deceased have any known enemies? Yes, I'll wait. All eight of us over here, we had to do rock paper scissors. After his death, his empire.

just completely collapsed. The banks that he'd borrowed from desperately tried to recall their lawns, only to find the coffers were completely bare. And worse than that, subsequent investigations found that in his desperate need for funds to keep the walls from his company's door, Maxwell had stolen almost half a billion pounds from the pension fund of the Mirror Group. And even then, there was still a three-quarters of a billion pound financial black hole in his records.

In the ensuing financial meltdown, his sons Kevin and Ian were declared bankrupt with debts of 400 million pounds, and the family stability that he claims to spend his life trying to provide was comprehensively destroyed. Only his favorite daughter, Galane Maxwell, survived the collapse of his media empire unscathed. Don't Google. Didn't he get bailed out by the, you know, ethical and responsible Lehman brothers? That a kind of money. Cool, fun times. I will not Google the thing you said not to Google. If you had to summarize, what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? You can commit literal war crimes and still not be the worst member of your family.

Either that or never trust anybody who goes by a pseudonym, Heath. Okay. Yeah. And are you ready for the quiz? If I'm not, then I've defrauded all of those pensioners for nothing. All right. A lot of people in Jelaine's orbit end up dying in ways that are. A, obviously very chill and cool.

B, perfectly normal. Nothing to see here. C, actually, maybe we should be suspicious of you. D. Nah, I'm just taking the piss. Because he was peeing off the side of the bird. That's right. Okay, I'm going to go B because I spend my entire friendship with Heath

trying to dissuade him from believing one interesting conspiracy theory or another. And I'm going to be damned if that work was in vain. Come on. You don't think he got murdered by spies on that boat? I can't tell you how many times Heath has looked they'll wrap me across from with a glass of white and say and be like, come on, though. Come on. Come on. Come on. It's just us. Be honest. Pete. Is it the black spy versus spy or the white spy versus spy? That's the only

question that I have. You know, you know with Heath. It's the white spy. Oh, yikes. Okay. Let's move on. Plain over Pennsylvania 9-11 is the only time March was just like, yeah, all right, man. I don't no, just don't talk about it. It's probably that. It's like, don't say it. Nothing can be gained from asking those questions, if you're just pissing on heroes. Okay. All right, Marsh.

What was the name of the spy movie about Robert Maxwell? A, Dr. No, you need a subscription. B. Lowborn identity. C. C. Coture salt. D. Lancet, Link or E.

Publishing license to kill. not. Okay, well, according to a lot of dead Nazis, it's got to be E. Publishing license. Correct. Publishing license to kill. All right, I have an obvious question for you, Marsh. Why isn't Eli here today? A, all this talk about family fortunes built on corruption, bad investments, and mounting debt hits a little too close to home for him. B, we found out that we were going to spend the episode answering who's your daddy on behalf of Galane Maxwell. He assumed that this was going to be in poor taste or... C, he just doesn't like you.

Okay, right. Well, I'm going to go secret answer D. The last time I saw him, he was going for a piss off the side of the yacht and I have no idea what happens to him next. I read that Robert Maxwell enjoyed doing that specifically naked. Like he would be completely naked and then his hobby was to pee outside the boat. He's still. He was a lover. No, that is.

But, you know, I'm safer about. And he also was not a well man at all. He was under his heart with a lot of. and he was under a lot of stress. I think it was a heart attack. Yeah, I think it was that way. Yeah, he did. It was a massage heart attack.

Noah wins. All right, so I would like an essay from Tom next week then. All right. All right. Well, for Cecil, Noah, Tom and Marsh, I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us. We'll be back next week. And Tom will be an expert on something else.

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