Stuff You Should Know - How Spies Work

Episode Date: February 23, 2013

Psst. You want to know how governments and corporations get the drop on one another? The frontline of intelligence is populated by spies. Learn about how spies get and transfer information (and why they do it) in this episode of Stuff You Should Know. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant in fast motion. Yeah and that makes us the super fast episode of Stuff You Should Know on Spice. Super fast? It's going to be not short. Oh okay. We're just going to be talking really fast like

this pretty much the whole time. All right, let's hope we can get out of here. Yeah, pick up will you? All right. Yeah, Spice like us. Yeah, did you like that movie? I did. I was raised to dislike Chevy Chase. Really? By whom? My dad. Really? Yeah. I don't think my mom liked him either, but my dad definitely thought he was a jerk. His words. Well he was kind of a jerk. Yeah, apparently I read this Saturday Night Live biography about like the show. Oh yeah. It's pretty interesting and they talk about how he was the first one to be able to develop a cocaine habit because he was the first one to start getting paid and apparently he didn't share. Really? So that made him a jerk. I guess. I don't think that's why my dad thought he was a jerk. Yeah.

Anyway, all apologies to Mr. Chase if you listen to this. I have always been a big fan. Have you? Yeah, and I was very saddened when his career kind of faltered and I miss Chevy Chase. Well okay. He's on TV now though. He's on the TV community, right? Yeah, is that it? He was on it. I don't know if it still is, but he was. I don't watch the show. Yeah, I don't either. But no, I hated Fletch. I'm just going to come out and say I hate that movie Fletch. I hate Fletch 2. I hate Fletch 8. I hate all the Fletches. I think it's a stupid movie and I hate Fletch, but I did like Funny Farm a lot. That's weird that you hated Fletch. I hated Fletch. Interesting. I still hate Fletch. You can show me Fletch right now. I'd be like,

this is stupid. Turn it off. It's so funny. So Chuck, you know a little bit about Spies. I believe you had a bit of a story to share with everyone? A little bit. I mean, I was obviously, Spies' story is a real life Spies are kind of fun. And to me, the best all time story, Spies' real true life Spies story was the story of Christopher Boyce and Dalton Lee, the Falcon and the Snowman. Oh yeah. I've never seen that movie of you. Yeah. Is it good? Yeah, really good. Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn, right? Yeah. Nice. And that is the story of these two guys who, two youngsters living in Southern California. And Boyce was hired by his father, I think, as a guard at an aerospace firm called TRW Incorporated. And they, that gave him access to

a lot of CIA documents that were working with the aerospace firm. They were drug dudes. He was like, Hey, we can raise like make a lot of money selling these secrets to the Soviets down in Mexico City at their embassy, make money for drugs to run a drug operation. And they did so for like a year successfully. A year, huh? From 76 to 77 and were caught, of course, and jailed for espionage. And I had a little trouble for some reason finding out the current status of Lee. I did find out that Boyce actually escaped from prison in 1980 from Lompoc, was picked up again in 81, I think, and then was released in 2003 and lives, I think in the San Francisco area. Wow. I've got this awesome LA Times article that I'm going to read tonight for fun because it didn't have a chance

to read it. Oh, is it like a long read? Yeah, it's one of those like 15 page articles. Nice. His big interview he did after he got released. But I can't find out what happened to Lee aside from a rumor that he was eventually released and Sean Penn hired him as his personal assistant. And I don't know if that's true. Weird. I can't verify that. I understand Sean Penn's like the real deal when it comes to like, um, combating poverty and Haiti. He's like in there in the trenches every day. He is. Isn't that crazy? Some people think he's a jerk. I happen to like the guy. Oh, I like the guy a lot too. Yeah. Um, so Chuck, how did the Falcon and the snowman become spies? They were working or or, uh, boys was working at an aerospace firm as a night guard and had

access to sensitive documents. So why did he start to make money? Okay. So that's actually one of the main ways that a spy is recruited. Yeah. There's, um, there's several nice intro by the way, dude. Thank you. That makes two. Yeah. Times they are changing. Give me your punch card. Okay. Um, the, uh, there are a few ways for a person to become a spy. Probably the most, um, straightforward way is to maybe join the army, army intelligence, join the CIA, ride out of college and basically just join your country's intelligence agency, be trained and then sent into the field. Sure. Maybe posing as a diplomat or being a diplomat. Yeah. Apparently the line is very, um, fuzzy between a person who's actually a diplomat and a diplomat who's a spy.

Oh, really? Yeah. It's like one in the same. I mean, they're still performing the same functions. Yeah. Yeah. They have a job as a diplomat. Yeah. But they're also just spying too. Sure. Um, and what are they, I guess, what's the basis of spying? Well, they're what they're after, obviously, and this is the no brainer stuff, but we always have to point it out. Um, they're after their, any valuable information to give to the country that they're working for, right? Any kind of it's, it's obviously usually military secrets, although we will talk a little bit later about corporate spying, which is huge. Yeah. These days. Oh, yeah. Um, but, you know, typically people with access to these, uh, either offices or high ranking officials. Um, they do have recruiters

that go out and like you said, they'll then go a little money in front of your face. If they think that a person is someone they can turn. Right. Like, hey, you're not happy with your own country. We know this. You want to sell them out or we know you really like money and you're kind of unscrupulous. Do you want to sell them out? Right. Or we know your mother needs surgery and your government insurance, although the gold standard of healthcare is American healthcare. It's part of the American system. Therefore, it's not going to really cover the surgery. So here's some money or mom, the surgery you want a movie made after you about you. Right. After you're executed, you want to be famous. You want to feel important because you're nobody.

You want to be somebody once you dig up some secrets for us. Right. And that's actually like a really good, um, recruiting tool or recruiting method is to identify somebody who has a menial job, some sort of file clerk. Yeah. But has access to really sensitive information. Exactly. Go in and like you said, pump them up. I mean, I don't think you would actually say you're a nobody. You would maybe promise the, um, making them a somebody. You have to break them down before you build them back up. You know, it depends. It depends on what you're trying to do. Okay. Um, so those are the, oh, did you touch on ideological, um, disillusionment with your home country? Yeah, a little bit. Just, you know, like communism obviously was a big thing.

Uh, yeah, we covered in McCarthyism. Yeah. Like the Rosenbergs. Sure. They were, uh, at the very least communist sympathizers who supposedly allegedly spied for the, for the communists. By the way, did you see that email we got about that? No, we got an email from a guy in the Air Force that said, uh, there was a great interview with, I can't remember who it was that basically said the Rosenbergs did have a lot more to do with it than like at first it was like, oh, they're guilty guilty. Then later on, as we pointed out, they're like, you know, they did exactly sell the deepest dark hits of secrets and maybe they were made an example of, but then apparently more recent interview does implicate them a little bit more to the extent that their

family even was like, ooh, it's so weird for McCarthy to be vindicated. Yeah. Um, so you've got blackmail too is a way of getting people to do what you want. Like we have these photos of you that you don't want published, right? Like you clearly have a lampshade on your head and now you have to be a spy for us. Um, and then once you, once you have the person agreeing to spy, oh, there's also walk-ins too. And I think that might have been voice's deal was an opportunist who was like, Hey, I want to be a spy. Yeah. Who do I call about that? Exactly. And usually if you're going to be a spy, um, you identify a country who's probably got the most money or the most desire for the information you have and then you go to their local embassy. I guess that'd be a good way

to do it. Yeah. You just walk right in. But if you are that country's diplomat slash spies working at the embassy, you're going to be immediately suspicious of someone like that. Very true. Apparently the U.S. had a Russian defector. I can't remember. It may have been the military. Yeah. It may have been the guy who's mentioned. Um, no, Oleg, uh, Pankovsky, Pankovsky. Yeah. Um, he was a Russian general, I believe, Soviet general, or he was with the KGB. Uh-huh. And I think he, he was a walk-in. Wow. He made a secret trip to the U.S. And over years and years and years, like he finally gained the trust of the Americans. He's like, look, this is legitimate information. This is Cold War stuff? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, that was like the height of spydom.

Not quite so. Oh, okay. Yeah. We'll get to that later. I read a recent article that, that can't wait. Yeah. There's like a lot more going on now than you might believe. All right. So you have a paid blackmailed, um, or ideologically disenchanted spy. Sure. You trust and you assign them a person named a controller. Yeah. Harvey Keitel, probably. Yeah. In most cases. Yeah. Yeah. A controller is the person who, I think they're, they're just like your only contact, basically, right? Who you're going to be given the information to. Yeah. Or getting information or instructions from, there's going to be one person you meet. Yeah. You don't want a large, you don't want your spy to know a lot of people because that's not, they'll be compromised. There's

not a Christmas party. No. You know, they should though. No, they shouldn't. They'd all just sit around and like look at each other very weirdly. Right. Or they don't make eye contact. Right. Um, they, the, uh, the reason why they do this is called compartmentalization. Um, because if the spy is caught, there's only so much information they can give. They're like, well, I was meeting a Mr. Orange that may or may not be his real name. Right. I never really saw his face and actually I never met him. It was all handoff stuff, the park bench. Well, you're talking about, uh, we might as well go ahead and cover that, the drop, the dead drop, the dead drop. Yeah. You see it in movies. Apparently it's real. You'll, you'll drop something in a public place,

very, uh, nonchalantly and, uh, then send the signal that it's, you know, been dropped to your controller. Then they will go to the little hidden loose brick and the public park wall and fish out the microfilm. Yeah. The microfilm, the, uh, micro dot, maybe. Uh, what's, what has always struck me about spy work or articles on spies and especially the gadgets and technology they use. Yeah. I always just assumed it's like 20 years out of date. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I was reading, um, this book called Vail by Robert Woodward, an excellent book about like Reagan's Secret Wars, really good book. And they're talking about this, this light beam, I guess a laser. Yeah. That you can point at a window and it measures the vibrations from a conversation,

um, and translates them into audio. So it's an eavesdropping device that they were using in the early sixties. You're talking about the laser Emax 3500. I am. Well, they have these now. I'm sure it wouldn't, that there are different ones, but yeah, it's an invisible infrared beam, hits the window that and records the vibrations, filters out all the gobbledygook. Yeah. And then amplifies it and records it. It's amazing. And it's been around since the sixties. What do you think they're doing now? Well, this is the one that's available now. So it's probably just that's a slicker version. Well, in the article I read too, on modern spy equipment, basically said just that is it's a lot of the same stuff. It's just faster and smaller and, uh, you know,

digital. What's that one called? This is called the laser Emax 3500. And the cool thing is when you go to their website, it said as used by David Letterman and Jay Leno and Fox five undercover. Weird. Yeah. I guess they, I don't know. I guess they've done little bits where they spy on people. Well, I don't know. Jay Leno spied on a NBC board meeting when they were trying to figure out whether to go with Letterman or him to really Carson. Yeah, you got to see that movie. No, I've seen it. I don't remember that though. Yeah. Well, he was just sitting in another room, like taking notes, like in a closet. Yeah. Right now. Exactly. Okay. Let's get back to it, man. You have a controller. Your spy is compartmentalized very much before you start doing dead drops

and everything. You don't want to get ahead of yourself because your spy is going to get greased. You have to first create a cover and support it with the legend. Yeah. Right. So a cover is just like your secret identity or your false identity. Sure. And then the legend is the backstory around it. Yeah, it needs to be detailed and thorough. Right. So for example, you are a, if you're into fishing, I think the article uses. It's good. Good example. Or your let your character is, your cover is. Right. You're going to have fishing gear. And if you have a, that's part of the legend, you're going to have fishing. The part, the legend is that you are into fishing, you're a fly fisherman, big time. So then at your house, your apartment, whatever that's set up for

you, you're going to have fishing equipment. Yeah. And if you're good, it's going to be used fishing equipment. And it's going to be of a certain quality, depending on whether your cover is frugal. Sure. Or, you know, kind of spendy or likes, you know, the best of the best. That's a good point about you. Is that even think about that? Oh, yeah. That'd be like a movie thing, is the guy sees the fly fishing gear and it's got a tag on it or something and all of a sudden doom. Right. Or boom. Or both. Yeah. Yeah. The, if you are, say, a Russian accountant posing as a Russian accountant, you probably should know the ins and outs of Russian tax law. Sure. You should also probably speak Russian with a Russian accent from the, from the region that you're

supposedly from, that your cover is from. Yeah. You saw no way out, right? Is that the one with Kevin? What's his face? A customer? Yeah. No, I didn't. Oh, that's a good one. I've heard. That was like a couple of years ahead of my, I think I was watching disorderly as well. My family went and saw no way out. I'm not going to ruin that one, actually. I'm a spoiler guy, usually for movies that are like 15 years old, but I'm going to leave that one to the people to go see it or to rent it or whatever because it's got a nice little twist. Okay. What else, Chuck? Oh, this is not a quick thing. No, no, no. If you establish a cover, it takes years to establish a cover. You're not going to waltz into the Russian, the Russian embassy and say,

hey, I'm just a Russian accountant and where are your documents? This is not a small camera in my tie. It takes a long time and people go, it's like being an undercover cop. You have to establish his trust over a period of months and years even. Yeah. And you're going to, in the meantime, be performing, accounting for as part of your business. You better be good at it. Yeah. Or toast. Yeah. Or you could go to jail for tax fraud. Wouldn't that be surprising? That would definitely help your cover though, wouldn't it? Oh, you had to go to prison for the state? Yeah, sure. You are not going to be memorizing things, although in a pinch, I'm sure they're probably trained to memorize a certain amount of information. But what you really want to do, and it is like

in the movies, is to make tiny little copies, photocopies or photographs of sensitive documents. Yeah. And relay those to your controller. And then that ends up on the microfilm, the microdot, or it could even just, you could make copies if you are like that file clerk who has regular routine access to that information. Just make copies of it and take it out of there. Yeah. And they have the little handheld copiers. Have you seen those? Those are cool. Yeah, those are pretty cool. What you don't want to do is take anything. No, because then somebody might notice that. Exactly. The documents are missing. Right. But you don't have to listen to us. Your controller is going to tell you how he or she wants the information. Sure. And there are plenty

of female spies. So we definitely don't mean to say he a lot. But we're dudes. I said he or she. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. I mean Valerie Plain. She was a spy. Yeah. Yeah. Very true. It's not just on the ground either. It's not just human spies. We've been using satellites for years. Since 1960, I believe. And the fact of the show for me is that before the digital age, the satellite would take photographs and I guess develop them and drop them in a bucket in the ocean. I think it was undeveloped. Oh, was it just the negative? Yeah. It was like the film canister. Of course it didn't develop it. Yeah. It's like a photo mat up there. Yeah. There's like some stoner up there. Yeah. He lives inside developing pictures. Oh, you remember the photo mat? Yeah.

What a bygone era that is. Yeah. And those stoners, where are they working now? They're not at video stores either. Coffee shops. Yeah. I think so. That's where I always see them. They are the 99%. So they don't obviously have to drop them in the ocean any longer. They can just relay them digitally and they've actually been doing that since 1970. Yeah. That's pretty cool. So long before we were taking digital photos, the government and sending them wirelessly. Yeah. Over radio, I think they did it. Well, that's what wireless is. Yeah. Radio. It's pretty amazing. It is. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Harden, Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flip through the pages

of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award-winning artist Michelle Williams and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood, and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So again, that kind of proves my point though, Chuck. I mean, like, what are we on to now? I know it's faster, smaller, better. There's got to be some cool stuff that like wasn't around before though. Well, spy planes back in the day were large like the U2 spy plane and it would

have to fly right over the enemy. These days, of course, we have drones flying them well not flying themselves, but unmanned drones, right doing the dirty work. All sorts of very dirty, dirty work. That's right. All of this Chuck is called technological intelligence or tech int. I'll bet everybody at your work thinks you're a jackass if you call it tech int in the CIA. Yeah, they're like, it's TI dude. Right, exactly. Or if you want to just really be in on this line, just T. Just T. So you've got spy planes technically at one point where T satellites, which now apparently can read a headline on a newspaper. That's crazy. Yeah. Well, you see Google Earth. Yeah. I mean, my car and my driveway was on it and that was a little creepy. I know.

I had bird poop on the roof. There's like wire taps that whole laser listening listening device. Letterman is in too. Do you want to talk about some more? They have seismic equipment to detect nuclear testing. They have underwater sensors to find things like submarines. Yeah, which is a big deal again in Vale, which by the way, I recommend. They were talking about how back in the day to eavesdrop on Russian cables like the Soviets didn't encrypt all of their stuff on certain cables that were transmitted underwater. Oh, yeah. Especially ones that were close to the motherland, right? Right. So the US would send subs to go and clamp on to these cables and listen for a few days. Wow. And they were like right off the coast of

the USSR. Holy cow. Really dangerous work. And then they finally made a recorder that they could go clamp on, drop off, and then leave for like a month or six months or whatever and then come back and get it. So there's only like two windows where it was really scary rather than several days, just having to sit there quietly on the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. This isn't new stuff. That evolution of spy tools article I read was like, have you ever read The Art of War? What was it? Sun Sue? Sun Sue, and there are more than a hundred references to spies and espionage intelligence gathering in The Art of War. I didn't know that. This is very old.

And in the Revolutionary War, they would use invisible ink called J's sympathetic stain was apparently the best one to use. And they still use or until recently they still used invisible ink, the transmit messages. It's crazy. You heat up certain things and it'll appear or hold it under a certain light like lemon juice. Yeah. That's the old little crafty trick. How to be a spy. It turns like kind of this ugly burnt sienna color. Does it? Yeah. But also if you look at it, you can be like, oh, it's written in lemon juice. I can see without even just by moving the paper a little bit. I don't think it's real bona fide spy stuff. Apparently the Spartans would spy and they had a device called the Skytail.

And it was a long, slender ride which was wrapped with a thin strip of papyrus. And the message was written on the wrapping and it was passed on to a messenger and apparently it could only be read if it was rewound around a rod of the same diameter. So it was sort of like an enigma machine. Yeah. There you go. Let's talk about that. Okay. Have you read enigma? No. There's a book about this whole thing about the people who are cracking the code. The Nazis had this very, very clever system of coding or encrypting messages where they would have what's called an enigma machine, which is kind of like a random typewriter that would assign a code to a message and it could only be decoded by the same machine,

like a twin machine that would get this message and then turn it back into whatever it was originally supposed to say. And the British apparently got in on breaking this a place called Benchly or Blenchly, I think, Park where they had a few of these captured enigma machines and had secretly cracked the code. I think the Polish even before that discovered it and then shared it with the Brits who were probably a little further along. Well, maybe not. Well, I think Alan Turing, who invented the computer essentially, was one of these enigma code breakers. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. The information, it was code named Ultra and it was obviously something they kept on the very down low because you don't want Hitler to know you've

got an enigma machine because then Hitler kills the guy who invented the enigma machine. I think they got one from a sunken sub that the Germans were like, well, well, it's on the bottom of the ocean. We'll just leave it there. It'll be okay. And somebody, somebody in the Allies went and got it. Yeah, it's a pretty cool book, enigma. Not to check that out. Yeah. What about the number stations? Did you see that? Yeah. That's pretty cool. So remember we talked about the Yosemite Sam transmission? Yes. A data burst and then, you know, the whole, I'm going to blow you to smithereens farm it. Yeah. Yeah. I imagine that that has to be from some sort of numbers station. But

what is it? Well, it's a radio station that the government operates and it broadcasts on short band frequencies just intermittently. Right. So they'll have a clue, like a song or an announcement that will mark the beginning or the end of the secret broadcast. And obviously, they won't say like, you know, and now we will play the secret broadcast. Right. Some sort of hidden message. And then it'll be just a bunch of a series of numbers that is obviously a coded message. Right. What's awesome is it's not secret, like any schmo with who's tuned into the right frequency can hear this broadcast, but he won't be able to make heads or tails of it. And apparently like this stuff happens all over the world. It's crazy. Yeah. So codes are huge,

though. Right. A secret code. The U.S. isn't like, well, yeah, we're doing this, but it's, I mean, it's kind of like use your brain. Yes, that's exactly what. Well, the article I read on the modern spy says basically the Americans and the Russians, while getting along, just have this sort of implied understanding that we're both still spying. Like let's not get each other. Oh, yeah, everybody's spying on everybody is those WikiLeaks cables revealed. True. I mean, it's just, you just want to gather intelligence or information on whatever is the case, you know, from trade policy to, you know, defense. Any information that you can get gives you an upper hand and I think everybody does it. Well, since we're there on these days, you're going to find

a lot of spying going on. I think the Washington Post said last year that there are more than 1200 government organizations and close to 2000 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism. That's a huge way that they're spying these days, obviously is terrorist cells. Homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations all across the US. So these days, we're spying mainly on terrorist cells, Iran, North Korea and China, obviously. Right. And it says that the US is the recipient of hundreds of thousands of cyber attacks every day from Beijing. Basically, they're trying to penetrate our firewalls and seeing what they can get. And does it work? Well, I hope not. We are also spying on Israel. Sometimes you spy on your buddies

because in 2008, there was an Israeli report that said that we have a long history of spying on Israel in regards to their secret nuclear program. So even if you're friends with the country, it doesn't mean you're not keeping tabs. Yeah. Well, that was one of the things about the WikiLeaks cables is they were a lot of them were about our very close allies and friends. And that was just very embarrassing. And now Bradley Manning is going to spend the rest of his life in prison because the State Department was embarrassed. And then corporate spying is huge these days. Private sector spy firms basically, they said that there is nary a large merger acquisition deal that goes down these days without a lot of spying going on, a lot of corporate spying.

And the CIA even lets people spies moonlight for corporations to make a little extra scratch. Is that right? That's what they said. Huh. And they said there's even an entire network of people who do nothing but trap corporate jets in their flight patterns. Wow. That crazy. But makes sense. It does make sense because, you know, you go to where the money is, right? Yeah. Or, you know, I think was it Coke that had the girl that worked there, the lady sell out. Oh, yeah. Or almost sell out to Pepsi. They're the secret formula. Yep. She approached, she was a walk-in. That's right. They approached Pepsi with the secret formula for Coke. And Pepsi told Coke about it. And that lady got in big trouble. Oh, Pepsi came out. Yeah. They said,

yeah, we got our own formula. Yeah. We don't mind being stuck in here. Yeah. They like it. There's less pressure. So what are you going to do with all this stuff? When you got all this information, who's going to be looking at it? It's obviously not the spy. Well, that's the thing. Like if you, you know, you're not just, you don't have one controller with one spy. And that's what all of your information is. You have all of this information coming in from all these different sources, whether it's, you know, satellite photos or, you know, human intel. And you have people called data analysts who are putting it all together. And they write daily briefs or papers or profiles on say like the newest leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un. Yeah. And they,

it's basically just like, here's this threat. Here's what you want to know about this person. And there may be an attack from this group. And it's, it's basically this picture that's cobbled together like a mosaic of, of creative of data and information. Yeah. Stalin apparently received information that the Germans were going to turn on the Soviets in World War Two. And he said, yeah, I don't believe. So he ignored the data and look at what happened. Like a million people died in St. Petersburg or Stalingrad. So he did not analyze the data to his advantage. No, apparently also we, you can, you can use this, these data analysts to say, we've got a gap here that we need to fill in. So go do this. So there's kind of like a, it's a two way street,

as far as data collection and data analysis goes, right? Right. A pretty good example was the purple code of Japan in World War Two, where, well, we, we had a pretty good idea that Midway Island was going to be attacked. But we didn't know if we were reading the code for Midway Island correctly, which is AF. We thought it was, but we weren't sure. Right. So the, I guess, army intelligence or somebody said, Hey, get Midway to issue a plea for fresh water saying they're low on fresh water. And they did. And then we intercepted a Japanese transmission saying that AF was low on fresh water. So we knew the AF was Midway and we knew then that Midway was definitely going to be attacked. And we won the battle of Midway as a result. USA. USA. Uh, misinformation is, is just as important

as the real information spies spend, you know, from the sounds of this article, just as much time doling out misinformation as they do collecting the real stuff. Right. Very important part of it. Yeah. And one good way to do that is to get caught spying double agent. Yeah. What's a double agent? Well, a double agent is somebody who say is spying an American who's spying for the Russians. And then the Americans say, wait a minute, this guy's spying for the Russians. Let's make sure that all of this information that he's access to is altered and wrong and flawed. And then he'll pass it along to the Russians and he'll be what's called an unwitting double agent. Right. Or we can go to him directly and be like, we're going to fry you, pal, unless you start

giving fake information to the Russians. And then that person is a witting double agent in that case. And he'll say, you're no pal of mine. No. Or, Josh, you can be a triple agent or even, I guess, a quadruple or quintuple agent. It happens. Yeah. To where the Russians, the Americans nab you and then they turn you into a double agents, but the Russians know about that. And you're still secretly working for the Russians. And was this the Grabster that wrote this? He points out that it's gotten so convoluted with the quadruple and up that sometimes in the end, his history can't even tell what they were. Yeah. Like who the person was actually, whose side they were on. Yeah. I would imagine that person is probably on their

own side after a while. Yeah. Just trying to not get thrown in the hiscale. Exactly. Or the gulag. Yeah. I guess we can talk about Operation Fortitude because that's kind of cool. Yeah. This was a really big misinformation campaign about the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. A very, like, elaborate one. Well, yeah. It included creating fake troops, fake tanks and troop transports, fake fuel depots. Like built out of wood. Yeah. And amassing them on the southern coast of England to make the Nazis think that the invasion of France was going to come from, no, I'm sorry, the northern coast of England. Right. To make them think it was going to come from the north. Exactly. And instead of the south where Normandy was. And part of this was a big part of it was

feeding double agents, false information. And there was one guy named Garbo who was a big player in this whole thing. Code name Garbo. I like that. Yeah. Right. This is like Blazing Sattles. How so? Well, they built a fake rock ridge at the end with fake townspeople in a fake rock ridge. And when they came riding into town, they found out it was not real. And then Cleavon Little was able to prevail. Nice. Well, in this case, the allies prevailed. Yeah. Sort of like Cleavon Little. Yeah. They even went further than painting a bunch of fuel depots to look like the real thing. They created a completely fake battalion, the first U.S. Army group. Yeah. It was led by General Patton, even though it was totally fake.

They had fake radio chatter about this group and the invasion. And on the day of the invasion, they dropped all sorts of aluminum from planes to reflect radar to make it look like there's a big movement of an air force across the English Channel. They did the same thing with submarines. And it looked like there was an invasion coming from the north while there was really one coming from the south. And it worked, right? Well, yeah. I mean, we took Normandy. That was the first, like, 15 minutes of saving Private Ryan. Yeah. So I don't know if it worked. I mean, I guess it worked. Well, not the first 15 minutes. I think you're forgetting about the bookends of that movie with the old Matt Damon in the cemetery. Right. And then they went to the awesome part. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, you're right. It was like the first five minutes kind of sucked. And then they was Matt Damon. Yeah, it was him grown up. I just thought it was it was uncanny. He hit the uncanny valley. Yeah. If it was an actor playing him, or was it Matt Damon and makeup? No, no, no. It was an actor who looked a lot like an old Matt Damon. Gotcha. Well, he was in the uncanny valley. I'm not sure he exists. Yeah, you know, here's my advice to filmmakers, to people like the Steven Spielbergs of the world. Don't don't book into your movie like that. It's always a bad idea. You think so? Yeah, man, that movie would have kicked so much more. But if it was just started with the D day invasion and ended how it ended. Okay, like everything from that to

what was the Clint Eastwood bridges of Madison County, terrible bookends on that one. Whenever you show like the modern day bookends, just don't do it. Just stick to the story. Okay, we're clever. We don't need Matt Damon, old Matt Damon in a cemetery breaking down. No, that was a little, a little, that was a little off putting a little heavy handed. Yeah, it was kind of like suck it up, pal. But who am I? I'm just a podcaster. Steven Spielbergs. You're definitely not part of the greatest generation. I'll tell you that. No, I'm not. Do you want to hear a pretty cool story about the D day invasion? Sure. Um, the day before, no, I'm sorry, the month before the, the invasion of Normandy, the D

day invasion, the turning point of the war. One of the MI five guys was doing the daily telegraph puzzle. And he started noticing that a lot of the answers were kind of curious. Like for example, one of the answers was Utah. Another was Omaha. These were code names for the beaches at Normandy where landing points were going to be for the invasion. Another answer was Mulberry, which is the name of a floating harbor that was going to be towed across the channel to accommodate the supply ships. Another was shrapnel. Another was Neptune, which was the code name for the naval support for the operation. And then they also had the answer overlord, which was the name for the whole operation for the D day invasion. So

MI five is like, what's going on? Like clearly somebody's feeding information. One of the, one of the ways of disseminating, like you were saying, getting in touch with your controller or letting them know that you've done a dead drop is through the newspaper. Yeah. Like a classified ad or something. Right. And so they went and my five sent some, some guys to go rough up the person who wrote this crossword and find out what the deal was. He's a 54 year old school teacher and he had no idea the whole thing was total coincidence. What? The MI five finally, they were convinced like this guy has no clue what's going on. He is not an agent. They looked into his background and it was total coincidence. How many words total? There was like six, I think.

Interesting. Big ones. Wow. Isn't that weird? That is really weird. A month before the invasion. I bet he was, I bet he was, uh, I'll bet that guy was nervous. Yeah. Until they believed him. But he was pooping his pants. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss

you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma

surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flipped through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award-winning artist Michelle Williams, and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Um, well, I guess that does it for pooping your pants on this one. If you want to know more about spies, you can type spies as P-I-E-S into the search bar at howstuffworks.com and it's going to bring up listener mail. That's right, Josh. And before we read listener mail, we want to announce that our email address has officially changed from stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. Oh yeah. We, Discovery has finally said, all right, I guess you guys are really working for us. We'll give you addresses with our, with our name on it here, your official. Yes. So that's how you can reach us now and we're going to point this out quite a few times over the next few weeks. Well, yeah, plus at the same, at the same time when we say it at the end of the

podcast every time. Sure. Um, what else? Oh, we have a newsletter. Yeah, go ahead, spill it. We have a stuff you should know newsletter that you can subscribe to. There's a little link to it on the left rail of our Facebook page at facebook.com. You should know it's free. It's not spam. It's bacon because you have to opt in for it. And you'll probably like it. It sends out a link to the newest episode. It has a bunch of articles that we wrote or like on the site. It's just cool. It's fun. And South by Southwest. Yeah. People of Austin, Texas, we're coming back. Yep. And we will be podcasting live on Sunday, March 11th. Not quite sure exactly what time this will be a badge event. If you have a badge, please come out and see us. But fear not, we are also trying,

trying to get a non badge event together at a local watering hole for regular old fans to come out. Yeah. So stay tuned for information on that. We're working on it. Hey, if you've got a place, hit us up. Yeah, we're looking. Yeah, please do. But hopefully we'll have a non badge event that will be pretty cool. We got some fun stuff cooking here. Yeah, you got anything else? Yeah, just a listener mail. Oh, yeah, that's a regular old man about that. This is a correction. And while we're correcting, I want to point out, as I have many, many, many times that polar bears do not live in Antarctica. I was very ill that day. And shouldn't have probably even been podcasting, but I miss spoke. Josh, technically was talking about Emperor penguins. No, I'll tell you what I was talking

about. You know how you're saying polar bears only live in Antarctica, and they only live in the Arctic? Well, I didn't say that. But yes, isn't that the gist of what you're saying? Yeah, okay. I was saying that penguins don't live in the Arctic. They live in Antarctica. Yes, they are also found in places like Australia. I'm sure Argentina has a share Chile, places not too far away from Antarctica. But what I was saying is they're not found in the Arctic. And pink and Emperor penguins, though, are only found in Antarctica. So thank you. Originally, that's what you're talking about. So I'm defending you. Okay, so let's let's hear yet another correction yet another correction. And we messed up Edmonton to the Canadians are very happy with this. No, I know. So let me clear this

up. Okay, Calgary, Alberta is a city in Canada. Edmonton, Alberta is also a city in Canada. Alberta is a province in Canada. So it's like Atlanta, Georgia. New York, New York. And here's the thing. I love Canada. I hate that we messed Canadian things up because we got a lot of fans there and they are sensitive people. I know. The only problem with Canada is it's so close to Detroit. Boy, we love Detroit too, by the way. So I think that's good. We don't need a listener mail because all those corrections were enough. Cool. So thank you to all the Canadian fans who wrote in and all the polar bear and penguin defenders of the earth. We are sorry. We are human and we do. We did. Hopefully we will do better. Let's make it a stuff you should know resolution to do better in 2012.

Well, well, that's supposed to be done before. So let's just make it for 2013 and let's just keep screwing up. No. All right, let's do better. Okay. Oh, I want to hear spy stories. Okay, me too. We want to hear them in 140 characters or less on Twitter at syskpodcast. That's all one word. And you can also reach us on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The HowStuffWorks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.

The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Where were you in 92? Bouncing your butt to Sir Mixalot? Wondering if you, like Billy Ray Cyrus, could pull off a moment? Now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Longfied and on my new show, Where Were You in 92, we take a ride through the major hits,

one hit wonders and shocking scandals that shaped the wildest 12 months in music history. You know, the president came after me. Everybody time Warner was madness. Music was magic and I had completely burned that to the ground. I realized I'm the forbidden fruit. So listen and follow Where Were You in 92 on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.