Citation Needed - The OSS (Office of Strategic Services)

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was an intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)[3] to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the 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 Noah and I'm going to be this week's Codemaster. April probably cheats somehow, but I won't be able to do this without the help of a few Cryptonomicon artists. Nice. First up, possibly the only two people who are going to get that Chokey, then Seesoul.

Okay. the only two people who are going to get that jokey then see so okay Neil Stevenson invented the fucking blockchain and I still love him like really good books I'd corner him at a party and talk about crypto I would definitely do a line of snow crash with him not not Neil Gaiman but him yeah for sure that's fair yeah and also joining us tonight two men who are still pissed the army wouldn't hire them as pig Latin windtalkers Tom and Eli That's right. It turns out more of a windbreaker than wind talker And I love all those pig farts for nothing As to what the requirements were

And before we get going I want to take a minute to thank our patrons patrons without you I wouldn't be able to afford to thank you I want to take a minute to thank our patrons patrons without you. I wouldn't be able to afford to thank you If you like to learn how to join their ranks be sure to stick around to the end of the show and with that Out of the way tell us Heath what person plays think concept phenomenon or event. We'll be talking about today sabotaging Nazis Noah In particular the department of I thought we could talk about that. I don't know. In particular, the Department of Sabotaging Nazis that we had during World War II called the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS.

That was in the past when the Nazis were the bad guys, right? I just want to clarify. It was confusing and tricky. So what was the OSS? It was the intelligence agency officially started in 1942 to sabotage the Axis powers by conducting espionage and various forms of trickery. This was the precursor to the CIA. Before the creation of the OSS, different branches of the military and the government were doing the intelligence work independently without a single coordinated group.

We had intelligence work happening with the FBI, the Treasury Department, the Signal Intelligence Service of the Army, and the OP-20G of the Navy. And we also had MI-8, which is better than MI-6 in the UK by two MIs. And that was our precursor to the NSA. But MI-8 got shut down in 1929 by Secretary of State at the time, Henry Stimson, our precursor to the NSA. But MI8 got shut down in 1929 by

Secretary of State at the time, Henry Stimson, because, quote, gentlemen don't read each other's mail. So once we entered World War Two, we decided to get an official unified spy team. Sorry, everyone. It turns out some gentlemen are gassing the Jews. Back to the meal we gave. Right. Pretty much. Yeah, yeah, we gotta make rules around war.

Things get really out of hand. Like a war could break out. No, yeah, I hear that. There you go. So here's how the OSS got started. At some point in 1941, William Stevenson, a senior British intelligence officer for the Western Hemisphere, met with President Franklin Roosevelt and explained that our disorganized collection of spy stuff

was stupid. Roosevelt called up a decorated World War I hero and genuine crazy person named William Wild Bill Donovan and told him to create a unified national intelligence agency. So Donovan got together with all the people who eventually killed Kennedy and they built the initial organization. God. And in June of 1942, they officially became the office of strategic services overseeing all American intelligence efforts. Well, except no, they didn't. The FBI was in charge of all domestic intelligence plus all of Latin America too because J. Edgar Hoover was an asshole about it and the Army and the Navy both continued doing their own things

separately. But dad said you had to play with me! Sorry, circling back, I feel like you automatically win every argument in every bar when the title on your business card says, senior intelligence officer for the Western Hemisphere. Yeah, that's a pretty sweet title. Okay, now granted, we still have some amount of disconnected intelligence work even now, but we have Telsey Gabbard overseeing the whole thing. So it's all good. We're not going to like, you know, group text a journalist about like,

Yeah, you will. Yes, you will. Well, despite the lack of centralized control in the early 1940s, the OSS got plenty of work done during the war and wild Bill made some interesting hires along the way for his organization. Instead of your typical military types, he put together an eclectic bunch from all different fields and he called his team the Glorious Amateurs. Yeah, that's not a comforting name for your spy team there, Wild Bill. Yeah. No, they got some stuff done, but it's a weird name.

Some notable members of the OSS include eventual world renowned chef Julia Child. Huh? Weirdest imaginable. Yeah, I was so excited. I saw that. Also actor John Wayne, singer Marlene Dietrich, author John Steinbeck. Are they going to Broadway? Architect Eero Saarinen.

Okay, maybe not. Retired baseball player Moe Berg. Now it's weird. Who is definitely going to get his own episode. Future Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg and NFL football player turned pro wrestler Jumpin' Joe Savaldi. What is happening right now? Yeah.

Eclectic punch. Jumpin' Joe had a sweet signature finishing move, the flying dropkick, which he claims he invented. That is disputed. I can't believe Inglorious Amateurs started out as a humble pilot episode called Fox Force 5. That's really amazing. Yes, no, this sounds like the B-Team, right? Like the fucking spin-off or something. Jesus.

So the OSS was up and running with their weird team. And of course, while Bill Donovan wanted sweet gadgets for doing spy stuff, he set up the Research and Development Branch and hired a mad scientist from Boston named Stanley LaVell to be in charge. Donovan referred to LaVell as Professor Moriarty and told him to start inventing approximate quote, you know, cool stuff like in books in the movies like weird gadgets and shit One of the first inventions was a new version of a grenade Instead of pulling a pin and then you know waiting forever until the grenade finally explodes

Lavelle invented the be no grenade That explodes on impact Those are bombs Stanley. I knew it was a thing. I kept saying, I kept saying, didn't I say? I said, how has nobody thought of this? And he was like, I don't know, I don't know. We were just going, we were going and going and going.

So the Beano grenade had its pros and cons. In terms of ergonomics, pretty good. Instead of the old pineapple shape, it was just a metal baseball full of TNT. And they stuffed it with enough TNT to have double the explosive force of the typical grenade. So good stuff. However, there was a setback during its final field testing. One of the engineers doing the testing tossed a beano in the air and then caught it which led to blowing himself up. That's the beano got approved for combat. Okay well I think we can all agree that Chris deserved to die right? Let's not let Chris's death kill a good idea as well.

Thank you, yes appreciate it. Did he throw it up and do that thing you do with an apple where you Chris deserved to die, right? Let's not let Chris's death kill a good idea as well. Thank you, yes, appreciate it. Did he throw it up and do that thing you do with an apple where you knock it off your bicep and catch it again? Did he do one of those? He actually knocked off the bicep, yeah. The OSS Gadget Department also invented several sweet spy guns.

That includes a pen gun a cigarette gun a neck dart gun with a very long barrel and a single shotgun attached to the back of a leather glove Oh my god, it was activated with a pleasure by Punching the time ah punching. I just want to throw out there I feel like if you can punch your target without suspicion you can also shoot them with that Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what problem this solves or what is made to solve for like hey You can punch your target without suspicion. You can also shoot them without suspicion. No, certainly. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out what problem this solves or what is made to solve for. Like, hey, it'll be great.

Let's build a gun with without the pesky disadvantage of being useful for anything guns are good for. Right. This is like you would be better off having the power glove. This is the dumbest fucking thing. You could just hold a regular gun. Why is it built wrong? I tell you what,. Hitler. I'll rush and bow you for it The problem with a gun is that you do you don't have to be right up on a motherfucker to use it

What I guess it's for you get disarmed, but like if the person knows risk control They're gonna risk control your punch gun. They're to take your punch gun if they're disarming. Aha. Oh, you took that too. OK, so they also built an umbrella gun that the inventor was very proud of. It was developed by OSS engineer Al Poulsen, who explained the way they would kill people was by putting it right up against a guy's kidney. And bam, it was gone. If you don't have a kidney, you're gone. The way they would kill people was by putting it right up against a guy's kidney and BAM

It was gone. If you don't have a kidney you're gone Unless you have two kidneys, but no one has two kidneys You got to aim perfectly through the body You're gonna carry two That's gonna attract the eye stay still I gotta get the other one you son of a bitch. So according to the article I read, you could place the umbrella gun under your arm and then fire it by quote, simply turning it slightly. So like the punch gun, it has the versatility of a gun with the limitations of a knife.

That is amazing. Yes. Right. Well yeah, and if there's any words you look for in a triggering mechanism, it's the word slightly, am I right? Jesus Christ. Like the boss. They made it earlier.

You've got one under each arm to get each kidney. You're going to turn one by accident. Windy day, you blow the shit out of some guy walking behind you. Seems dangerous. Oh, Nick, I'm so sorry. The accident, windy day, you blow the shit out of some guy walking behind you. Seems dangerous. Oh, Nick, I'm so sorry. Is that Mary Poppins? That seems dangerous too.

So the Gadget team also created a gun that was nearly silent and had almost no muzzle flash. And in order to get it quickly approved, wild Bill Donovan went straight to FDR in person. But Donovan's a lunatic. So instead of just a normal meeting, he snuck into the Oval Office with a loaded gun and a bag of sand. FDR was dictating a letter to a staffer at the time, and somehow nobody noticed. Donovan stepped into the Oval Office and fired ten rounds into the sandbag. Fucking what?

FDR finally turned around only after smelling the burnt gunpowder and Donovan was standing there with a smoking gun. Donovan handed the new stealth gun to the president and pulled the bullets out of the sandbag to prove the stunt. FDR was so impressed and he said Donovan was quote, the only Republican I'd allow in the Oval Office with a gun. Great stuff Bill really. Hey Bev can you get the Secret Service into my office? I'd like to yell at them a lot. Yeah, I am not a security expert but if you can sneak the whole bag of sand into the Oval office and then shoot your sneak gun in the same room as our wheelchair bound president,

I think we have other problems beyond Gatling umbrellas or whatever. Yeah. So here's some other inventions. We have, uh, invisible ink for, you know, spy notes, mini cams. You could hide in your clothes and your accessories, a bunch of exotic knives that were no doubt super fucking cool knives, but also very very silly. And of course, those poison capsules that spies can eat to kill themselves to avoid being tortured.

They also created something they codenamed Aunt Jemima, named after the racist syrup mascot. So fun. It was explosive pancake mix. According to the National Archives, it had to be undetectable, safe to transport, and able to be baked into normal bread, biscuits, or muffins.

Oh my God. Kind of weird they didn't mention pancakes there. Regardless, it disguised the explosive powder in bags of flour to get it through Japanese checkpoints and they gave it to resistance fighters in China. I'm sorry, the requirements that it's undetectable and can really bake into biscuits and muffins, that seems prank based. Right?

Like what the fuck are you thinking? Not enough gluten, back to the drawing board. Yeah. Yeah, if that guy didn't die from throwing the grenade up in the air, he would have died from a pancake thing for sure. Yeah. Right. So the gadget lab also created something called the Hedi,

named after the actress and inventor, Hedi Lamar. The Hedi device was a small tube that agents could drop into a trash can to create a big diversion. When the heady got activated, it would make a loud shrieking sound and everybody around would panic. According to mad scientist Lavelle, that's just like how everybody would panic when the beautiful heady Lamar was around. And this was another gadget that while Bill Donovan decided to demonstrate in person to the higher ups, this time it was a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. At some point during the while Bill Donovan decided to demonstrate in person to the higher ups.

This time it was a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. At some point during the meeting, Donovan dropped a heady into a trash can when nobody was looking, and then crazy loud noises started happening in a very small room. Why did it do every demo as a surprise? I don't know, just explain it.

But according to Donovan, when he did that, I saw two and three-star generals clawing and climbing to get through the room's single door. After the meeting, he pulled aside Stanley LaVelle and said, hey, Professor Moriarty, we overdid that one. One of the generals is like, I normally only hear the screams of children in my dreams. Ah, yes, the hear the screams of children in my dreams. Oh, yes.

The famed quiet of war interrupted by an alarm clock or whatever that set the nation's finest into a panic. The OSS also worked on a bat bomb project. Bat bomb. The idea came from a dentist and also apparently bat enthusiast who knew Eleanor Roosevelt and the guy eventually got a meeting with FDR and got the president on board to try out bat bombs. And at some point mad scientist Lavelle got assigned to test it out.

The idea was to round up a bunch of bats, attach incendiary bombs to the bats with a 15 minute fuse, and then release big swarms over cities in Japan from bomber planes. The drops would happen during the day so the bats would fly out and their nocturnal instincts would make them immediately look to roost inside buildings. And with lots of wooden structures in Japan, the cities would go up in flames all at once. That was the theory. Nope, Moriarty, I clearly said bath bomb. You wrote it down wrong. Bath. So, Lavelle looked into the bat bomb idea, but he did not like it.

Apparently, he tested it with bombs that were way too heavy and a giant plane load of bats just fell straight down. And then exploded right that's very important for the visualization they just all drop it and everybody's like ah damn it and then it's amazing. The Air Force on the other hand was all about the bat bombs. They did a big test run at the Carlsbad Air Base in New Mexico, and it went also very badly. A bunch of the armed bats roosted under a fuel tank and set the entire facility on fire.

Were they hoping the bats would have heard the plan and would fly to Japan? I don't understand. Well, General, it turns out that bombs distributed. Check notes. Completely randomly is not actually a great idea. So following the very bad test run, the Air Force handed the project to the Navy. The Navy had the Marine Corps run another big test, without a giant fuel tank in the area. They made a model Japanese village, and the BATS did a surprisingly good job. According to their

findings, regular bombs would create 167 to 400 fires per plane load, but a plane load of bats would create 3,625 to 4,748 fires. Jesus Christ. I don't know how they got those exact numbers. So the Bat Bombs Project was a go. Fucking Adam West kicks down the door, damn it guys, that name is taken. Fucking Adam West kicks down the door. Damn it guys that name is taken

But in the end the bat bombs never got used right around the same time as the final testing we Invented something else for attacking Japan that seemed a little more effective By the time the bat bomb project was scrapped in 1945. We'd spent the modern equivalent of 34.9 million on fire bombs stapled to a swarm of bats. Jesus. All right, well, I feel like everybody needs a minute to reflect on how weird it is that we actually ended up winning this war, so we're going to pause for a quick break and a little apropos of nothing. You wanted to see me, sir? Yes, Brigham, come in. Shut the door, William.

Yes, sir. Are you know Wild Bill from our new office of OSS? Yes, sir. Of course. Hi. So look, I know you boys in the army have been working on a way to take out Mr. Hitler over in Germany for a while, so I brought in Bill here to lend you a hand. That'd be great, sir.

All right, so tell us, Brigham, what has the issue been? Well, sir, Hitler, he keeps a tight circle. Frankly, it's, it's hard to get someone close enough to assassinate him. Assassinate him. How? Oh, I'm full with a gun. I don't get it. You don't get what? Like what kind of gun? Any kind of gun? You know, the ones that shoot bullets? Those guns? Okay, well, there's your problem. Yeah, I was going to say.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sir. What's the problem? Okay, have you considered an exploding muffin? Now we're talking. No, no, like I said, we don't have anyone in his circle. If we had someone close enough to poison his food, I didn't say poison muffin, I said exploding muffin very different. Thank you, right? Okay, right. My point is if we could give him a deadly muffin of any kind we could just shoot him

Oh, what if we booby trap his bed to catapult him out the window? Oh my god I love it. Just know you guys are you're missing the point We cannot think we are. Get close to Hitler. If we could get close to Hitler, we could shoot him with a gun to death. That's how we would kill him, but we can't because we can't get close. Does that is that making sense? Okay.

Wow. Knife spoon. Stop drilling your head oil. I hate you guys. ["Wild Bill Donovan's Theme Song"] And we're back where we last left off. Wild Bill Donovan was just one Acme shipment away from winning this damn war. So where does that take the story next for us, Heath? Okay. So in addition to inventing insane weapons, the OSS was also heavily involved in aiding resistance efforts against the Axis

powers. In order to make that happen, they wrote a book called The Simple Sabotage Field Manual. It's all about how a civilian can sabotage whatever office they're working in, mostly with low-level japs that can't really hurt anyone or get you in big trouble. The OSS covertly disseminated the manual to citizens in Nazi occupied areas, hoping to give people a playbook for fucking up the progress of, you know, whatever the fascist autocrats might be trying to accomplish. And by some weird coincidence, that manual got a whole bunch of renewed attention this year in the United States. Over the first month of the new presidential administration, just all of a sudden it became

the fifth most accessed book on project Gutenberg just behind Romeo and Juliet. Yeah. And people were mostly just reading Romeo and Juliet for the suicide tips. So you know, honestly, that would be a really weird play to assign to a bunch of teenagers at a tumultuous and delicate time in their lives. But like none of them read that. So yeah, no, that's the thing is, is it just, I am definitely on team teach the OSS simple sabotage field manual instead of Romeo and Juliet.

If we're picking sides for that, I'm shirts or skins, whichever one that is. Do I get to watch a Leonardo DiCaprio movie of the OSS simple sabotage field manual when I'm hungover? No illusions? Because that's my challenge to you, sir. Okay. So this book is pretty fun. Here's some of my favorite highlights from the manual and, you know, do with these what

you will. This podcast is for novelty purposes only. First up, we have a section called organizations and conferences. The tips include, insist on doing everything through channels, never permit shortcuts. Yeah, bonus points if you create a Slack forever. Make speeches, talk as frequently as possible at great length, illustrate your quote points

with long anecdotes. So a podcast then? And never hesitate to make a few patriotic comments. Also refer all matters to committees for further study and consideration and make the committees as large as possible Never less than five You know there should be a name like you know like we have murder murder of crows for like a group of ineffective bureaucrats gathered together stifled change We could call it a Congress

Hey guys was every office I ever worked in trying to stop Hitler? Sadly no, but they might have been able to help. They also said haggle over precise wordings. So our podcast. And refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to reopen those questions. Hey guys, is Eli trying to stop Hitler? There are so, I limited myself to later,

but there are so many of these points where I was like. I know. I was looking at it afterwards, I was like, there are a lot of places I could drop this joke in. Just Eli chorus. All right, next we have a section for managers and supervisors. The tips include demand written orders, misunderstand orders, ask endless questions and engage in long correspondence about those orders.

Okay. It's not my fault. I didn't understand. I wasn't paying attention. Also to lower morale and production, be pleasant to inefficient workers, give them undeserved promotions. No, actually I'm good. I've been promoted to exactly the right place. I'm happy.

Don't leave me being. And of course, one of my favorites, malicious compliance or as the OSS put it in the manual, apply all regulations to the very last letter. So, so maybe the problem with American corporate culture is that we didn't put a and then stop on these instructions for the war result. It's like when the hypnotist dies in office space. Here's the advice for employees in general. They said work slowly, take really long shits. I'm paraphrasing that one. Okay, guys, I am not sabotaging the podcast.

I have ideas. Yes. Ableism in this manual. Make confusing mistakes. And they give an example. They say, mis-type minimum to read mix-imum. So it's not clear if it says minimum or maximum because it could be either one. Oh, nice.

Say next Thursday knowing you mean this Thursday. You know, you're not going to be able to read it. You're going to be able to read it. You're going to be able to read it. You're going to be able to read it. You're going to be able to read it. You're going to be able to read it. You're going to be able to read it. You're going to be able to read it. You're going to be able to read it. You're going to be able to read it. read, mix-a-mum. So it's not clear if it says minimum or maximum. Cause it could be either one. Say next Thursday knowing you mean this Thursday.

Okay. We will address all of that at our bi-weekly meeting, which you may be very early or very late for. I'm not clarifying. All right. And finally, some tips from a section called general devices for lowering morale and creating confusion. They said, give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations. When questioned, report imaginary spies, act stupid and Nailed it. Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion. Very easy today. Very easy nowadays. I just I want to commend Bill for his ability to refrain from adding drop a tape recording of a screaming lady in the trash can

through all of that stuff. So the Field Manual had some great ideas for the average person to fight back against an evil regime. But one guy took it a step further with his own sabotage ideas on a grander scale, so he deserves a quick mention. That would be Pierre-Jules Boulanger, the president of the French carmaker Citroën. When the Nazis took over France, they forced him to make trucks for the German army. So he secretly met with the team at the factory who made the dipsticks for the oil tank and had them move the notches way down. So it looked like an almost empty oil tank

was actually full. This led to a whole bunch of Nazi trucks having their engines seize up, leaving troops and supplies stranded all over France and Europe. Amazing. Car maker against fascism? Whatever.

Come on. all over France and Europe. Amazing. A car maker against fascism? Whatever. Come on. It's weird because cyber trucks simultaneously have no dipstick and yet all share the same one. It's true, yeah. So the OSS conducted a whole bunch of very successful campaigns throughout the war, especially some espionage operations that kept track of Germany's pursuit of a nuclear weapon and several missions that fucked with their progress on that. But while Bill Donovan wasn't satisfied with just winning in the standard ways, he was

all about demoralizing the Nazis too. Love it. And OSS officer Barbara Lowers pulled off one of the best operations. She set up a network of saboteurs called the League of Lonely War Women. The target was homesick Nazi soldiers and their morale. Lowers and her team disseminated thousands of leaflets all over the front that said, any Nazi soldier who wears a red heart pinned to his lapel will get approached by horny German women in your area and the belief in lonely war women would make Nazi soldiers

worry that their wives and girlfriends might be doing the same thing and my part of that team. And that brings us to one last project from the OSS, the shit smell weapon. Huh? Yup. This is a real thing we did. The OSS spent two years developing a chemical compound that would demoralize enemy commanders by making them smell like they shat themselves. For real. The original directive was to create a substance with quote, the revolting odor of a very loose bowel movement.

They called the project who me as in like, and the idea was to pass out little spritzers of extremely powerful shit cologne to Chinese kids in shit. Sirs, the Chinese kids in the resistance and have them spray it on the pants of occupying Japanese officers to embarrass them. Now they just call that a Trump diaper and people wear them with pride on their ears. Okay so they're still better getting sprayed with cologne at Macy's though. Sure. Okay so the reason for targeting specifically the Japanese military was because, well, insane

racism. Not surprisingly, that came from the Boston Mad Scientist. He believed that Japanese people were uniquely vulnerable. According to Lavelle, quote, these are his words, not mine. A Japanese thought nothing of urinating in public, but he held defecation to be a very secret, shameful thing. Okay, I mean, I know what videos he watched that gave him that idea, but yeah, not cool, man. Not cool.

The Germans love shitting in their pants. Yeah, exactly. That's a real weird distinction. So the OSS hired a fecal odor specialist, a real named Ernest Crocker, to figure it out. I think the fecal odor specialist. I told you my shit stink degree wasn't stupid, Dad! He is also from Boston, by the way.

Oh, okay, yeah. I appreciate you taking care of the why would you choose that specialty question before I had to ask. There you go yeah yeah still better than my B.S. So he was a chemist known as the million dollar nose and his job was to create a weaponized shit smell device with three main requirements. One it had to have a range of at least 10 feet without backfire. Two, it had to be silent in operation. And three, it had to linger long enough to confer shame on Japanese people

for at least several hours. Yeah, like the last Zelda game. I feel like you could have got away with one that just went you know, like it could have made some noise. All right, so it turns out the without backfire element was the most difficult. After a whole bunch of failed testing where the person wielding the weapon got sprayed with the odor of a very loose belt movement and then a big scramble to get highly rationed rubber at the time to produce a batch of spritzers with anti-dribble rubber sleeves,

they finally got approved to roll out 9,000 units of Humei in 1944. Okay, just during the same time period where we had worked out how to turn rocks into a weapon so deadly, it would eventually hold the secret to ending all life on the planet in the most horrific manner possible. We were also head scratching our way through a perfume spritzer that did that. But there's an alternative universe though where the shit spray won the war, right?

Where they dropped two giant shit spray bombs and the news and the news are just like an aside in some larger citation needed episode Tom that's that's a delightful thing to know little boy and fart man yeah The world would have been a different movie for sure. Right? So lopping Heimer so nice Well done. Thank you So this is bleeding The lopping Heimer, but that's fine. Well, I was good

So the proto CIA is about to do an amazing shit-based prank But sadly the moment the final prototype got approved, Ernest Crocker realized his funding was going to go away, so he made up a new racist thing to stall. He said that further analysis was showing that fecal odor wasn't considered objectionable enough by, quote, again, his words, orientals. In a report on the project, it said, in discussions with a Navy physician who had dealt with a great deal of oriental peoples, the conclusion was reached that only two types of foulness could be counted upon as certainly objectionable, skunky odors and cadaverous odors. With Hume as a pattern, but with skunkiness substituted for fecal odor, we produced Hume

II. It is reasonably certain that it will fill all Japanese requirements. Excuse me, General, but it appears you may have died in your pants At least you can't call it who me anymore you gotta change the Nate Yeah, like a commander that smells like a dead body. That's like, you know Valorists or something probably weird. But once again, none of the poop smell weapon got deployed because the war ended and It was fucking stupid either way. And sadly, the story of the department of Nazi sabotage ends on September 20th, 1945,

when the OSS got dissolved by President Truman. But then in January of 1946, Truman realized that spy stuff is fucking awesome and he created the Central Intelligence Group which officially became the CIA in 1947 and they've been doing nothing but good work for the whole world ever since. And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? Sabotage Nazis. Oh, there you go. There you go.

And are you ready for the quiz? Ready. All right Heath, it's obvious that Who Me is a terrible name for the shit-yourself spray. What should it have been called? A. The shit spritz. Nice. B. The shart fart. Nice. Crap Trap. All right. Or D. Who me? Okay. Pretty solid all around. I like the sharp dart the best.

That is correct. Okay, Heath. They had one version of that gun glove that allowed you to eat up really close and personal with the nether regions. What was it called? A. The Bushmaster. B. Penis pump shotgun. Really close and personal with the nether regions. What was it called? Hey the bushmaster Penis pump shotgun see the unzip gun or D

the shell shocker Okay, tough call I love see Andy I'm gonna go with see the unzip gun. Oh you are correct nice All right, Heath, I am so glad you told the Bat-Bomb story, mostly because I now get to close another one of my many Chrome tabs. What was another Psy-op that didn't quite get a mention here, but which is also totally real? A, Operation Fantasia, which aimed to create

glowing foxes or kitsune to scare the Japanese. Nice. B, the CIA's weaponizing of the Filipino legend of the Aswang, the mythical beast that was part witch, part vampire and part were creature. C, the gay bomb developed in 1994, which was a bomb which after detonation supposedly would make all of the soldiers irresistibly start fucking each other or

D those are all real, but we are defunding the Department of Education Okay, the reason I know that it's D those are all real is because genuinely I have apparently the same chrome tabs open as you Like I have a whole thing planned out for like a bunch of ridiculous psyops one of us will do it I'm sure and those are all on the list. Absolutely indeed All right. So obviously Heath is our winner this week. All right next week. Let's get something from Tom All right. All right. Well for Tom Heath Cecil and Eli, I'm Noah thanking you for hanging out with us today We're gonna be back next week and by then Tom will be an expert on something else But we know and then you should absolutely definitely check out Cecil's new show the no Rogan experience if you haven't already I almost hate to say this given our tribulate subject matter should be but it's

Legitimately one of the most important podcasts being produced in the English language right now Somehow but this is that no But Jesus Christ, why is it that important? We ask every week why it is. It is. It is. But this show is pretty good too. So if you think you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod

or leave us 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 pod.com. And then the weasel just explodes right in the bathtub when he's washing off the syrup. That's perfect. I'm going to I'm going to shoot you guys with what kind of gun? A regular gun, a regular one. Boring. Boo.