# Brother, Can You Spare Half a Dime: The Hollow Nickel Case

An episode of [Ridiculous Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1608230191), 1 Jan 2026, 54 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/0b4bcc39-7ba2-453f-aaac-ae510011dd80/a4133bc4-5d2d-4db3-914b-b3c4015c6a2d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3a4c50f5-ff69-4807-aa26-ae510011dd8e

The best part of espionage is the spycraft, the cool gadgets and codes often disguised as everyday objects. Some look like lipstick, others like umbrellas. And then there are the ones that are a bit riskier because they're smaller and easier to misplace. Coins. Talkin' about coins. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Elizabeth.
[0:05] Speaker 2: How are you.
[0:06] Speaker 3: I'm doing well? How about you?
[0:08] Speaker 2: I'm well, I'll thank you.
[0:10] Speaker 3: Look at us. Both of us will at the.
[0:11] Speaker 2: Same time healthy, hailed, God blessed. I love to love it. Listen,
[0:15] Speaker 2: you know it's ridiculous.
[0:16] Speaker 3: I do. And I'm so glad you asked, because I
[0:18] Speaker 3: wanted to share this one, please do. So there's this
[0:20] Speaker 3: guy he uh, well, I don't know how best put it.
[0:23] Speaker 3: A couple of years. Happened a couple years ago, think
[0:25] Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three. I think he was a Florida man,
[0:28] Speaker 3: So you know it's going to get good. Sure, he
[0:30] Speaker 3: was just hanging out near a dog park, you know,
[0:34] Speaker 3: and he saw that the owner walked away from their car,
[0:36] Speaker 3: so he went in like rummaged around, and he found
[0:39] Speaker 3: the keys were in the cup holder, so he stole
[0:42] Speaker 3: the man's BMW uh and then he drove off. Okay,
[0:47] Speaker 3: apparently he was speeding because he or that he was
[0:49] Speaker 3: just not very good at driving a BMW or he
[0:51] Speaker 3: was just like so cool with like, man, I can't
[0:53] Speaker 3: believe a fast BMW's go. He got up to one
[0:55] Speaker 3: hundred miles an hour. And then he crashed the car
[0:58] Speaker 3: in a single vehicle accident by himself. I imagine he
[1:02] Speaker 3: hit a tree, and then passing motorists saw that, They're like,
[1:05] Speaker 3: oh my goodness. They pulled over, and then they pulled
[1:08] Speaker 3: him from the total car. Yeah right, And then the
[1:10] Speaker 3: cops arrived at the crash scene. And this guy, he's
[1:13] Speaker 3: his name is Calvin Johnson. He was thirty six years
[1:15] Speaker 3: old at the time. He's like kind of out of it.
[1:18] Speaker 3: But I do not think that that explains what I'm
[1:21] Speaker 3: about to tell you, because I think he would have
[1:23] Speaker 3: said this even if he had not bumped his head
[1:25] Speaker 3: on the steering wheel. So the cops were like, so
[1:29] Speaker 3: what happened here? And he's, oh, man, you guys saved
[1:32] Speaker 3: me from the aliens. They're like what. And so then
[1:36] Speaker 3: they took him to a local hospital, where he was
[1:39] Speaker 3: placed under guard because they realized the car was stolen.
[1:42] Speaker 3: And on top of that, Johnson had also told the
[1:45] Speaker 3: police that, you know, like how he got into the
[1:48] Speaker 3: stolen car was that he was teleported into the car
[1:53] Speaker 3: by the aliens.
[1:54] Speaker 2: So but the truth.
[1:57] Speaker 3: He also made a passing reference to the X Men
[1:59] Speaker 3: movies and comics books.
[2:00] Speaker 2: Okay, so he was.
[2:02] Speaker 3: Like, I think, probably referencing Nightcrawler. He was like, Bam,
[2:05] Speaker 3: all of a sudden, I'm there, I'm in the car.
[2:07] Speaker 3: I'm doing one hundred miles an hour. So they're like, okay,
[2:11] Speaker 3: he gets charged with grand theft, auto driving on a
[2:14] Speaker 3: license that was suspended, and also, yeah, there you go.
[2:19] Speaker 3: That's pretty much it is. Man claims that he was
[2:21] Speaker 3: teleported into a stolen car by aliens to get out
[2:25] Speaker 3: of charges.
[2:26] Speaker 2: What if he was telling the truth.
[2:27] Speaker 3: There is that possibility, Elizabeth.
[2:29] Speaker 2: You can't rule that out.
[2:30] Speaker 3: I think if we're lucky, we should one day like
[2:32] Speaker 3: find like a Florida like you know, sheriff or like
[2:36] Speaker 3: policemen who will tell us all the various just the
[2:39] Speaker 3: best stories they've ever heard from people trying to get
[2:42] Speaker 3: out of crimes. Oh Man, you know that could go
[2:44] Speaker 3: for a full amazing you want to go year by
[2:48] Speaker 3: year or alphabetical, like how do you want to do this?
[2:51] Speaker 2: So there you go, this is ridiculous. Do you want
[2:54] Speaker 2: to know what else is ridiculous?
[2:55] Speaker 3: Please?
[2:56] Speaker 2: Losing your best magic trick? This is ridiculous crime. It's
[3:22] Speaker 2: podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heis and cons It's
[3:28] Speaker 2: always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
[3:32] Speaker 3: Oh you damn right, you heard the nice lady.
[3:34] Speaker 2: You heard me. Spies, man, spies. Do you think you'd
[3:38] Speaker 2: make a good.
[3:38] Speaker 3: Spy depends on the context.
[3:40] Speaker 2: I mean, it's a type of criminal.
[3:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I think that I have some of the
[3:43] Speaker 3: skill sets for it. But i'd have to because you
[3:46] Speaker 3: have to be duplicitous and lie to the people. I'd
[3:48] Speaker 3: have to really believe in the mission. You couldn't just
[3:50] Speaker 3: make me a spy and drop me off anywhere. I'd
[3:52] Speaker 3: have to believe that it was necessary to do this
[3:54] Speaker 3: because I have a hard time lying to people who
[3:56] Speaker 3: I think are, like you know, not worthy of being
[3:59] Speaker 3: lied to. But if I believe they're worthy of being
[4:01] Speaker 3: lied to, you better believe it. The best damn spy
[4:04] Speaker 3: you could send in.
[4:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, I am not sure i'd be the best spy.
[4:07] Speaker 2: Like I can sort of blend in as a white
[4:10] Speaker 2: lady of a certain age, Like you get to a
[4:13] Speaker 2: point where you become invisible, which is both nice and
[4:16] Speaker 2: kind of a bummer. Oh yeah, but it makes for
[4:18] Speaker 2: a good spy, I would guess. And I've been thinking
[4:22] Speaker 2: a lot lately about the French resistance. You know, no reason,
[4:26] Speaker 2: no reason. I think that I would have been amazing
[4:29] Speaker 2: in that because you're like a saboteur. I can mess
[4:33] Speaker 2: stuff up really well. So let's take advantage of that,
[4:37] Speaker 2: like go next level, like put putting the metal plates
[4:40] Speaker 2: on the railroad tracks. Stuff like that, blow and whistles,
[4:45] Speaker 2: whistle misinformation, as Billy Bragg saying, if you've got a blacklist,
[4:51] Speaker 2: I want to be on it. He also sang in
[4:53] Speaker 2: the same song waiting for the Great Leap Forward another
[4:56] Speaker 2: favorite line of mine, the revolution is just a T
[4:58] Speaker 2: shirt away. Seeing that to myself when I put on
[5:01] Speaker 2: my US out of California t shirt. Okay, so the
[5:07] Speaker 2: whole like taker, tailor, soldier, spy. Yeah, it's too tense
[5:12] Speaker 2: for me really, So it's too much stress.
[5:15] Speaker 3: It's a it's a it's too tense.
[5:19] Speaker 2: Oh Zarah, that was beautiful, Like you know that I
[5:22] Speaker 2: work really hard to keep my day to day life
[5:25] Speaker 2: is like to tamp down the stress. It's never going
[5:28] Speaker 2: to be stress free, but to minimize the stress.
[5:30] Speaker 3: Anxiety the thing that's worth it for you to worth it.
[5:34] Speaker 3: So I try to increase I tried to introduce stress
[5:36] Speaker 3: and anxiety into my life. I'm like, how can I
[5:38] Speaker 3: bike on the edge of a cliff? Yes?
[5:40] Speaker 2: How can I make this to the situation worse? You
[5:43] Speaker 2: told us earlier this week about some World War two battles, Yes,
[5:47] Speaker 2: And I told you recently about World War two spies. Yes,
[5:51] Speaker 2: the doll Lady, the folks up in New York and
[5:53] Speaker 2: that has radio, with the radios and the such. I'm
[5:57] Speaker 2: going to close out my spy triptych today. Trip. Yeah,
[6:02] Speaker 2: you're going to move it. It's all of these earthly delights.
[6:07] Speaker 2: I'm gonna move it forward a little to the Cold War. Okay,
[6:11] Speaker 2: So back when we were unfriendly with the USSR and
[6:15] Speaker 2: we had all sorts of spycraft. It was different from
[6:18] Speaker 2: what went down during World War Two. Yes, Like the
[6:21] Speaker 2: English had more classic spy stuff going on then double
[6:24] Speaker 2: agents and that sort of thing, and they'd have someone
[6:27] Speaker 2: drop behind enemy lines who would pretend to be a
[6:29] Speaker 2: Nazi sympathizer or something like basically wearing a trench coat. Sure,
[6:33] Speaker 2: playing a part. But you get into the Cold War,
[6:36] Speaker 2: you got the two Germany's, the lives of others and
[6:39] Speaker 2: all that stuff. Have you ever seen that movie? Great,
[6:42] Speaker 2: good movie. It's a powerful dramas, Aaron, I love those.
[6:45] Speaker 2: I say that because I couldn't remember the name of
[6:46] Speaker 2: the movie and I had to blind google it and
[6:49] Speaker 2: like you know, like like East German Spy others, and
[6:55] Speaker 2: I saw the movie described as a powerful drama, powerful drama.
[7:00] Speaker 2: So yeah, the Cold War was tense. Brother two eventual
[7:04] Speaker 2: superpowers quietly going at it. We've got the CIA for
[7:07] Speaker 2: Intelligence over on state side, with help from the FBI.
[7:11] Speaker 2: They meaning the Russians. The Soviets had the KGB. The
[7:16] Speaker 2: Soviet Union may not still exist, but you can't tell
[7:19] Speaker 2: me the KGB isn't still kicking and running.
[7:21] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they just changed the letters to FSB.
[7:23] Speaker 2: Precisely, and they know how to mess with us. They
[7:26] Speaker 2: play the long game, Yes, very good at the long game.
[7:29] Speaker 2: Very good at the long game. So let's talk about
[7:31] Speaker 2: Cold War spy stories. And I have one particular incident
[7:35] Speaker 2: that's super ridiculous. It's right up our alleys.
[7:38] Speaker 3: Perfect a crime.
[7:39] Speaker 2: Yes, So we're going to start in nineteen forty eight,
[7:45] Speaker 2: and that's when the KGB sent and experienced illegal operators
[7:49] Speaker 2: what they would refer to these as Villiam General Kovich.
[7:54] Speaker 2: Fisher sent him to North America and he traveled under
[7:58] Speaker 2: the name Andrew Kotis, and he had the real Chaotis' passport.
[8:03] Speaker 2: Don't ask questions, I've said too much. He used the
[8:06] Speaker 2: passport to enter Canada and then cross into the United
[8:08] Speaker 2: States in November of nineteen forty eight. So once he
[8:12] Speaker 2: gets into the United States, he sheds that identity and
[8:15] Speaker 2: with help from another KGB illegal operator, Josef Grigoulovich, Fisher
[8:21] Speaker 2: picks up a new identity. He gets his hands on
[8:24] Speaker 2: genuine but repurposed American documents in the name Emil Robert Goldfuss, Goldfuss, Goldfuss.
[8:32] Speaker 2: This was one of those old con moves where they
[8:35] Speaker 2: took the identity of a male child who died as
[8:37] Speaker 2: an infant.
[8:37] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the classic Goldfist.
[8:39] Speaker 2: He's a New Yorker who died in infancy, and so
[8:42] Speaker 2: the NKVD, that's the predecessor to the KGB. They got
[8:47] Speaker 2: the dead kid's birth certificate years earlier.
[8:50] Speaker 3: Just in case they needed to put somebody in just
[8:51] Speaker 3: for future long game.
[8:52] Speaker 2: I'm telling you, planning ahead.
[8:54] Speaker 3: It's that chest mind, it is.
[8:57] Speaker 2: So by late nineteen forties, early fifties, Fish Emil, he's
[9:02] Speaker 2: living quietly in New York what's his code name?
[9:05] Speaker 3: What's his code name? Elizabeth?
[9:06] Speaker 2: Good question?
[9:07] Speaker 3: Mark Mark.
[9:08] Speaker 2: There's a lot happening with that, Like he's like, my
[9:11] Speaker 2: name is Emil, but folks call me Mark. It kind
[9:14] Speaker 2: of makes me think of our discussions about the like
[9:17] Speaker 2: really common gen X millennial names. So like number one
[9:21] Speaker 2: is Josh. Mark is in there, Mike Scott, Kevin, Aaron, Brian.
[9:27] Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, for the.
[9:29] Speaker 2: Gals, Jennifer, Stephanie, Teresa. So Mark he ran Mark. My
[9:38] Speaker 2: name is Mark. He ran a Soviet espionage network that
[9:42] Speaker 2: handled atomic and defense related secrets, and he used couriers
[9:47] Speaker 2: for his work. For example, Morris and Lona Cohen. They
[9:50] Speaker 2: had been associated with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Yeah, and
[9:55] Speaker 2: I'll remind you, as you probably well know, the Rosenbergs
[9:58] Speaker 2: were US citizens who spy for the Soviets during the
[10:01] Speaker 2: Cold War, cost them their life. Yes, spiona is just
[10:03] Speaker 2: serious stuff. So this wasn't easy work getting the secrets
[10:07] Speaker 2: to the bosses. Soviet intelligence relied on what those in
[10:11] Speaker 2: the biz call clandestine tradecraft.
[10:15] Speaker 3: M love that way you say that this is stuff.
[10:17] Speaker 2: Like dead drops in parks and bridges. Yes, coated radio transmissions.
[10:22] Speaker 3: Spy gear leaving stuff like in newspapers, and just like you.
[10:26] Speaker 2: Sit next to someone on a bench and you put
[10:28] Speaker 2: your briefcase down next to their identical briefcase. Saren you
[10:32] Speaker 2: know how it is.
[10:33] Speaker 3: I tried doing that with my friends and they always
[10:35] Speaker 3: bring the wrong briefcase. We timed this.
[10:38] Speaker 2: I do it to strangers.
[10:40] Speaker 3: Take the briefcase.
[10:41] Speaker 2: Yeah. I see sevenger like with a bag and you're
[10:43] Speaker 2: going to set down and you walk off. They're like, wait,
[10:46] Speaker 2: there's something called the Bulgarian umbrella and it shot out
[10:50] Speaker 2: a dart poisoned with rice and old Bulgarian umbrella.
[10:55] Speaker 3: Dang.
[10:56] Speaker 2: There was an anal Cia toolkit what and so it
[11:00] Speaker 2: was like a good sized capsule thing that contained little
[11:03] Speaker 2: tools and like a file and knife blades. It's basically
[11:06] Speaker 2: like a Swiss army knife but in a rounded tube,
[11:08] Speaker 2: and he just kept it prisons. You stuck it up
[11:11] Speaker 2: there and if you're caught, you could poop it out
[11:13] Speaker 2: and use the tools to escape and get poop on
[11:16] Speaker 2: your hands.
[11:16] Speaker 3: Yeah apparently, okay, back I guess back then the prisons
[11:21] Speaker 3: didn't do the whole like open your cheeks but.
[11:23] Speaker 2: Like squat and cough. No. No, the KGB had transmitters
[11:28] Speaker 2: that they would build into the heels of shoes.
[11:30] Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, they.
[11:32] Speaker 2: Complete with batteries, microphones, and they'd rig up the shoes
[11:35] Speaker 2: of a target so they could listen in on their
[11:37] Speaker 2: conversations and like all the walks that they took.
[11:40] Speaker 3: And also people were getting their shoes shined back then,
[11:42] Speaker 3: so like when like Castro visited the America United Nations,
[11:46] Speaker 3: he left his shoes outside of his hotel to have
[11:48] Speaker 3: him shine, and the CIA is like, let's get our
[11:50] Speaker 3: hands on the shoes there.
[11:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The Soviets also made a lipstick gun ooh yeah.
[11:57] Speaker 2: They called it the kiss of Death, and he'd twist
[11:59] Speaker 2: the base and it would shoot out a single bullet
[12:02] Speaker 2: and then there'd be me like dig through my purse
[12:04] Speaker 2: to put the lips to gun sublamo take a lip off,
[12:08] Speaker 2: and then you know. Of course, they had like disappearing
[12:10] Speaker 2: ink pens. Oh nice, the ink disappeared, not the pens.
[12:13] Speaker 3: I assume this is not like the kid's lemon juice version.
[12:16] Speaker 2: According to History on the Net, I swear to god,
[12:18] Speaker 2: I'm finding the best, like solid, most reputable website lately.
[12:23] Speaker 2: History on the Net quote the accepted method to conceal
[12:27] Speaker 2: ink used to be wet writing. An agent would write
[12:29] Speaker 2: with ink on the paper, steam it, let it dry,
[12:33] Speaker 2: re steam the paper to remove any indentations, let it
[12:36] Speaker 2: dry again, and then write something on top to cover
[12:39] Speaker 2: the original message. It took up a lot of time
[12:42] Speaker 2: and effort. During the nineteen fifties, the KGB developed a
[12:45] Speaker 2: quicker method disappearing ink pens. But they don't tell us
[12:49] Speaker 2: what the mustage.
[12:52] Speaker 3: I'll tell you all about what they used to do.
[12:54] Speaker 2: None of you BIG's history on the web. And then
[12:57] Speaker 2: there was there were trick concealment devices like hollow bolts
[13:02] Speaker 2: or like everyday objects that had been like hollowed out.
[13:05] Speaker 3: I have a bunch of those, actually, do you no,
[13:07] Speaker 3: legitimately do I've got like fake a lot of fake
[13:11] Speaker 3: products like But I also have like like a sharpie
[13:13] Speaker 3: pen that I can like unscrew and but you can
[13:15] Speaker 3: write with it if you take the top off and
[13:17] Speaker 3: somebody like wants to use it, it works. But then I
[13:19] Speaker 3: can unscrew it and I can like put my weed
[13:21] Speaker 3: in there or whatever, and pretty much I have it
[13:25] Speaker 3: all for traveling with weed. I have like I've got
[13:27] Speaker 3: like shaving cream. I've got like I've got fake lenses
[13:31] Speaker 3: for cameras. Really, I've got a ton of fake.
[13:34] Speaker 2: Things, yes, purely for traveling.
[13:37] Speaker 3: Well, my dad would got me into a long time
[13:38] Speaker 3: ago when I would go to visit him and he
[13:40] Speaker 3: would like, you know, give me like pot to travel
[13:42] Speaker 3: back and see my mother. And then I would like,
[13:45] Speaker 3: you know, have to do it. And so he's like,
[13:46] Speaker 3: this is how I do it. I get a couple
[13:48] Speaker 3: of cans or whatever. And he had like these screw
[13:50] Speaker 3: top cans that he got from like High Times magazine,
[13:52] Speaker 3: and he would put them in a cooler. But my
[13:54] Speaker 3: favorite was is that sometimes when he had a large amount,
[13:56] Speaker 3: he wouldn't put it anything. He just put it in
[13:58] Speaker 3: his dirty laundry and then he would put like some
[14:00] Speaker 3: dirty underwear on top. No CoP's gonna dig through a
[14:03] Speaker 3: black man's dirty laundry. But that's putting a lot of
[14:06] Speaker 3: trust in racism policy.
[14:08] Speaker 2: Really is Well, I I have a story for you
[14:13] Speaker 2: today that's about one of those hollowed out concealment devices.
[14:16] Speaker 2: Oh nice, you're gonna love this, the hollow nickel. So
[14:21] Speaker 2: while Mark is in the US stealing secrets, what's happening
[14:25] Speaker 2: back in the USSR?
[14:26] Speaker 3: What is happening back in the US Elizabeth.
[14:29] Speaker 2: And ridiculous crime is perfect. Okay No a Finnish speaking
[14:34] Speaker 2: Soviet citizen named Reno hey Yan first name Reno r
[14:40] Speaker 2: e I n O okay so Reno not like No.
[14:44] Speaker 2: When I was like looking up the pronunciations of it,
[14:47] Speaker 2: it's like either Reno or Reno. And they were saying
[14:50] Speaker 2: that the finish would be Reno, but it's probably not
[14:52] Speaker 2: and all the Finns are going to be like Lizbeth.
[14:55] Speaker 2: It's actually, why do you hate us? Hey yann okay
[15:00] Speaker 2: hey a. And then he was being groomed for illegal work.
[15:03] Speaker 2: So he was born near Leningrad in nineteen twenty and
[15:06] Speaker 2: he served the NKVD, the KGB predecessor during the Soviet
[15:12] Speaker 2: Finnish War aka the Winter War. He was an interpreter
[15:16] Speaker 2: and a security officer, and then he spent World War
[15:19] Speaker 2: two and the post war years doing counterintelligence in the
[15:23] Speaker 2: Soviet North, which is cold. Nineteen forty eight, KGB brings
[15:28] Speaker 2: him to Moscow, trained him in photography, codes, clandestine communications,
[15:33] Speaker 2: and they gave him a new identity, Eugene Nikolai Maki.
[15:38] Speaker 2: Maki an American citizen of Finnish descent. Ah interesting so
[15:44] Speaker 2: for several years in Finland, he like painstakingly builds this
[15:48] Speaker 2: false identity. He got a genuine Idaho birth certificate for
[15:53] Speaker 2: this identity of Maki, and then in nineteen fifty two
[15:57] Speaker 2: he gets a US passport in that name. He sails
[16:00] Speaker 2: out of Southampton on the Queen Mary heads for the States,
[16:03] Speaker 2: gets to New York October twenty first, nineteen fifty two.
[16:07] Speaker 2: Now he's Eugene.
[16:08] Speaker 3: Mackey, American citizen.
[16:10] Speaker 2: So before leaving Europe, he had been told that once
[16:13] Speaker 2: he got to New York, he should announce his arrival
[16:16] Speaker 2: to his new superior, this guy code named Michael. And
[16:20] Speaker 2: the way that he was to do it was to
[16:22] Speaker 2: put a red thumbtack on a sign post labeled horse
[16:26] Speaker 2: Carts near Tavern on the Green and Central Park. Okay,
[16:30] Speaker 2: so a white thumbtack would signal to him that Mikhail
[16:34] Speaker 2: suspected surveillance. So what that means is that if you
[16:37] Speaker 2: happen across a random thumbtack on a telephone post or something,
[16:41] Speaker 2: take it off and put it somewhere else, or toss
[16:43] Speaker 2: it in the trash, loose lips, sink ships, saren. We
[16:47] Speaker 2: all have to do our parties.
[16:48] Speaker 3: So I do love about stuff. It's just innocuous things
[16:50] Speaker 3: that nobody would really take a second look at. But
[16:53] Speaker 3: he's totally sending a very powerful mess exactly.
[16:55] Speaker 2: So Maki like he followed these instructions and made contact
[17:00] Speaker 2: with Mikhale who was later identified as Soviet un official
[17:05] Speaker 2: Mikhail Severin. And so once they make contact, Machi worked
[17:09] Speaker 2: as a courier. He handled dead drops and communications for
[17:13] Speaker 2: the networks. And when I say dead drops, let's imagine
[17:16] Speaker 2: he was doing that Vogue dancing split smooth backwards on
[17:19] Speaker 2: the ground. I love that. That's so good. And so
[17:24] Speaker 2: as part of his equipment, the KGB gave him this
[17:27] Speaker 2: assortment of concealment devices. So we had like hollow pens
[17:31] Speaker 2: like you have nice pencils, screws, batteries, coins. Some were
[17:35] Speaker 2: magnetized so they could cling to metal surfaces. Like that's
[17:38] Speaker 2: the best part of spying the gadgets.
[17:40] Speaker 3: Really, and I think's my favorite part.
[17:42] Speaker 2: I mean, that's what we think of with James Bond, right,
[17:44] Speaker 2: Q coming through with like that is true, the pens
[17:46] Speaker 2: that are guns and like the oil slick out of
[17:48] Speaker 2: the back of the aston Martin.
[17:49] Speaker 3: Even when like you do investigations into the actual Cia.
[17:53] Speaker 3: They always cite like I want some of those James
[17:55] Speaker 3: Bond gadgets.
[17:56] Speaker 2: Like you guys like you so Maki. He has all
[18:00] Speaker 2: these toys, like spy things, and among them is a
[18:03] Speaker 2: hollow Jefferson nickel. And he'd picked it up in a
[18:06] Speaker 2: dead drop at some point like late nineteen fifty two,
[18:09] Speaker 2: early nineteen fifty three, but he never used it. He
[18:12] Speaker 2: didn't properly use it, Okay. Inside that coin was a
[18:16] Speaker 2: micro photograph that had a coded message from Moscow in it,
[18:20] Speaker 2: and the Soviets intended it as a welcoming instruction for
[18:24] Speaker 2: this new agent in America.
[18:26] Speaker 3: That's crazy.
[18:27] Speaker 2: But instead the nickel slipped out of his hands and
[18:30] Speaker 2: into the stream of everyday New York change.
[18:33] Speaker 3: Are you kidding me? He lost the dead drop.
[18:35] Speaker 2: The dead drop nickel.
[18:36] Speaker 3: In fact, that is the danger of making something a coin.
[18:39] Speaker 2: It could be as long as seven months. The coins
[18:42] Speaker 2: circulated anonymously through the city.
[18:45] Speaker 3: You know what. You know me, I used to be
[18:47] Speaker 3: and when I was a very young boy into magic,
[18:49] Speaker 3: and I would buy double sided nickels, so that way,
[18:51] Speaker 3: when you flipped it always came up the same thing.
[18:53] Speaker 3: It was always tails or always heads. Yeah, And I
[18:55] Speaker 3: could only keep one of those for like a month
[18:57] Speaker 3: before I would spend it as changed. I'd always be
[18:59] Speaker 3: so frustrated, exactly put it in the special pocket.
[19:03] Speaker 2: So you're going to relate to this. Let's take a break.
[19:08] Speaker 2: When we come back, We're going to track that nickel.
[19:31] Speaker 2: Welcome idiot.
[19:34] Speaker 3: When we last we last spoke, you say, how I
[19:38] Speaker 3: show what are you being rude?
[19:39] Speaker 2: I'm so rude. Soviet spy gets a hollow nickel then
[19:43] Speaker 2: loses it immediately to it. That is the kind of
[19:47] Speaker 2: spy I would be like, I would probably okay, I'd
[19:50] Speaker 2: like obsess over not losing it, and then I'd use
[19:55] Speaker 2: medical tape to fasten it to my bosom, and then
[19:58] Speaker 2: I'd be like constantly physically aware of it being there
[20:00] Speaker 2: at all times, and then it would stress me out
[20:03] Speaker 2: and I'd get all sweaty, and then the tape would
[20:05] Speaker 2: get damp and lose its stickiness, and I'd be like
[20:07] Speaker 2: riding the subway and get up from a seat and
[20:09] Speaker 2: it would slip off and follow the ground. Then I'd
[20:12] Speaker 2: go to a store and I'd try and clothes in
[20:14] Speaker 2: the dressing room and like go to change and I'd
[20:16] Speaker 2: see that the tape was gone, and the color would
[20:18] Speaker 2: drain from my face, but then the heat would rise
[20:20] Speaker 2: up on my face and I'd have a panic attack.
[20:22] Speaker 3: And he tried to like really quickly mentally calculate all
[20:25] Speaker 3: the places you've.
[20:26] Speaker 2: Just been, Sarah, this is dressing me out just thinking
[20:28] Speaker 2: about it, like spiraling the thoughts. No stop, okay, Zaren,
[20:33] Speaker 2: it must be so difficult to be here, have no idea.
[20:35] Speaker 2: I really don't close your eyes.
[20:39] Speaker 3: Oh wow, really yes, okay.
[20:42] Speaker 2: I want you to picture it. It's Monday evening, June
[20:51] Speaker 2: twenty second, nineteen fifty three. You are Jimmy Bozart, a
[20:56] Speaker 2: fourteen year old paper boy, freckle faced and apple cheeked.
[21:00] Speaker 2: You wear your ginger hair slicked into a good boy haircut.
[21:03] Speaker 2: You're a hard worker, very personable, and that's what makes
[21:06] Speaker 2: you really good at one part of your job, collections. Tonight,
[21:10] Speaker 2: you are collecting for the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper at thirty
[21:14] Speaker 2: four oh three Foster Avenue in the East Flatbush section
[21:17] Speaker 2: of Brooklyn. It's a massive, standard postwar brick apartment building.
[21:22] Speaker 2: Tonight is one of your collection nights. You've gone apartment
[21:26] Speaker 2: two apartment, ringing, buzzers, knocking on doors, and collecting spare
[21:30] Speaker 2: change and small bills from subscribers. You knock at one
[21:33] Speaker 2: apartment belonging to a woman. She owes you money for
[21:36] Speaker 2: her Eagle subscription, but only had a one dollar bill
[21:39] Speaker 2: on hand. That's far more than what you're collecting for
[21:42] Speaker 2: dollar bill, real high roller. The problem is that you
[21:45] Speaker 2: don't have a full dollar's worth of change in your pockets.
[21:48] Speaker 2: This happens a lot. You just knock on the next
[21:51] Speaker 2: door and see if they have change for a dollar.
[21:53] Speaker 2: So you knock on the door across the hall. Door opens,
[21:56] Speaker 2: a woman stands before you. You tell her you need
[21:59] Speaker 2: change for the woman across the hall. Can they break
[22:01] Speaker 2: a dollar? The woman calls to another woman in the apartment,
[22:04] Speaker 2: sitting in a chair listening to the radio. She explains
[22:07] Speaker 2: the situation. We got change for a buck, newsboy needs
[22:11] Speaker 2: it for what's her name across the hall. The two
[22:13] Speaker 2: women proceed to scrounge around their apartment, digging through purses
[22:17] Speaker 2: and drawers and cigar boxes. These are helpful gals, you
[22:21] Speaker 2: think to yourself. They huddle together and count out the coins.
[22:24] Speaker 2: A dollar one calls out, tickled to have collected enough
[22:28] Speaker 2: coins for you. She shuffles back to the doorway and
[22:31] Speaker 2: you extend your hand holding the rumpled dollar bill. The
[22:34] Speaker 2: woman takes the bill and pours a combination of nickels, dimes,
[22:37] Speaker 2: and pennies into your cupped palms. If you walk back
[22:40] Speaker 2: across the hall and hand the woman or change, she
[22:43] Speaker 2: counts out the subscription money and you continue on to
[22:45] Speaker 2: the next customer's door. When you're done, you make for
[22:49] Speaker 2: the stairs and race down, your feet in quick percussion
[22:51] Speaker 2: on the industrial tiles. You get to the ground floor
[22:54] Speaker 2: and head down the corridor into the foyer. You're jingling
[22:57] Speaker 2: the coins in your hand as you go. You push
[23:00] Speaker 2: open the front door of the building and step out
[23:02] Speaker 2: into the warm evening Cars cruise by on Foster Avenue.
[23:06] Speaker 2: You pass a group of older teens sitting on the
[23:08] Speaker 2: stairs from the building to the street. They're listening to
[23:12] Speaker 2: Dooop on the transistor radio. You continue to jingle the
[23:15] Speaker 2: change in your hand, but something sounds weird. You fish
[23:19] Speaker 2: around through the coins. There's one in there that has
[23:22] Speaker 2: a sort of thinner ring to it. You think you
[23:25] Speaker 2: do this every week. You've memorized the sounds of the coins.
[23:28] Speaker 2: As you move from building to building, you feel each
[23:31] Speaker 2: coin and then lift a nickel from your palm. It's
[23:34] Speaker 2: lighter than any nickel you've felt. You click it against
[23:37] Speaker 2: another coin, it sounds almost hollow. You balance the nickel
[23:41] Speaker 2: on the tip of one finger and flick it upwards
[23:43] Speaker 2: to see it flip and fall. When it comes down
[23:46] Speaker 2: on the sidewalk, the nickel splits cleanly into two halves.
[23:50] Speaker 2: On the ground are Jefferson's Head and Monticello. No longer
[23:54] Speaker 2: are they out of sight from each other, And in
[23:56] Speaker 2: between them is a miniature, circular piece of mine microfilm.
[24:01] Speaker 2: At first, do you think it might be a magician's
[24:03] Speaker 2: trick coin or some kind of toy. You pick up
[24:06] Speaker 2: the two halves of the nickel and the tiny film disc.
[24:09] Speaker 2: You see a dense page of numbers on the microfilm,
[24:12] Speaker 2: but you can't read them without magnification. You tuck the
[24:15] Speaker 2: busted coin into the breast pocket of your shirt and
[24:18] Speaker 2: head off to meet up with some friends. Can't wait
[24:21] Speaker 2: to show them this crazy coin, So Saren, that is
[24:25] Speaker 2: so awesome. His kid had no idea what he was
[24:28] Speaker 2: sitting on.
[24:29] Speaker 3: Also, just quick note, do you love that? Back then,
[24:33] Speaker 3: and I did this as a paper boy, I used
[24:35] Speaker 3: have to go do collections and we would send children
[24:37] Speaker 3: off into the night time with like fistfuls of cash
[24:40] Speaker 3: or change and go, yeah, go get your pay from
[24:43] Speaker 3: all these neighbors who you've been delivering a paper to.
[24:46] Speaker 3: And I'd never once got robbed, never even thought about it.
[24:49] Speaker 3: But I don't think parents today would have let them
[24:52] Speaker 3: their children do any.
[24:53] Speaker 2: Of them stranger's doors.
[24:54] Speaker 3: Would need to be a paper boy on the bike
[24:56] Speaker 3: riding around this and then going to strangers and asking
[25:00] Speaker 3: them for money, and then trying to come home and
[25:02] Speaker 3: doing this once a month, usually the same time, so
[25:05] Speaker 3: people could very quickly figure out, like it was this
[25:07] Speaker 3: a little boy going around with lots of money on him. Yeah, exactly, kids, man,
[25:11] Speaker 3: I'm telling you that they had a very different past.
[25:13] Speaker 2: Different time. So Jimmy, right, he has no idea this
[25:18] Speaker 2: is crazy.
[25:19] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he's got the coolest stuff around.
[25:21] Speaker 2: So he goes and he shows the coin to this
[25:23] Speaker 2: neighborhood friend later in the evening.
[25:25] Speaker 3: Of course, of course his best friend.
[25:26] Speaker 2: I assume yes, And so Jimmy, he's raised on like
[25:29] Speaker 2: pulp spy story. This looks like something out of a
[25:32] Speaker 2: comic book.
[25:33] Speaker 3: Or one of the old radio shows. I mean, this
[25:34] Speaker 3: is straight out Green audience.
[25:36] Speaker 2: Right, So he and his friend like they didn't they
[25:38] Speaker 2: thought it was cool, they didn't really get the importance
[25:41] Speaker 2: of what they'd found. So the coin gets passed around
[25:44] Speaker 2: informally among kids, like, oh, this guy wants to see it,
[25:47] Speaker 2: and like, finally, this original friend his dad is a
[25:52] Speaker 2: New York City cop. Okay, So the cop hears the
[25:56] Speaker 2: kids talking about it, and then they say, well, let's
[25:57] Speaker 2: show the dad, and then that is how like the
[26:01] Speaker 2: chain starts to get it to the FBI. So the
[26:03] Speaker 2: New York City cop dad, he takes the coin to
[26:06] Speaker 2: a New York City police detective and then that guy
[26:10] Speaker 2: goes and interviews Jimmy, and so the detective he talks
[26:13] Speaker 2: to Jimmy, but he also he realizes a couple of
[26:16] Speaker 2: things after looking at this coin, like actually holding it,
[26:20] Speaker 2: it's professionally machineda has to be. The microfilm has all
[26:24] Speaker 2: these unknown coded numerals, and right away he's like, this
[26:29] Speaker 2: is espionage related. This is not a fun magic trick thing.
[26:33] Speaker 2: So the detective he takes the hollow nickel and the
[26:36] Speaker 2: microfilm to the FBI's New York City office. That was
[26:40] Speaker 2: on June twenty fourth, two days after the original discovery,
[26:44] Speaker 2: so it passed around every kid in Flatbush before it
[26:47] Speaker 2: made its way to the FBI. The New York office
[26:50] Speaker 2: immediately is like, okay, that's a microphotograph. If all these
[26:54] Speaker 2: five digit numbers are arranged in columns, this looks like
[26:57] Speaker 2: coded intelligence. So they carefully pack it up ship it
[27:01] Speaker 2: to the FBI lab in Washington. Lab gets it on
[27:04] Speaker 2: the twenty sixth of June nineteen fifty three, so they
[27:07] Speaker 2: examine it and it shows that the device was more
[27:10] Speaker 2: sophisticated than just stage magic. So the obverse the face
[27:16] Speaker 2: was a genuine nineteen forty eight Jefferson nickel, and it
[27:19] Speaker 2: was drilled with like a nearly invisible hole in the
[27:24] Speaker 2: r of trust, so that you have to use like
[27:27] Speaker 2: a fine needle to pop the halves apart. Is how
[27:31] Speaker 2: you were supposed to do it, not flick it up
[27:33] Speaker 2: in the air and let it hit the ground, Jimmy.
[27:36] Speaker 2: And the reverse side was made from a different nickel
[27:39] Speaker 2: that had been minted between nineteen forty two and nineteen
[27:42] Speaker 2: forty five. And they knew that because they had been
[27:45] Speaker 2: producing copper silver alloy.
[27:47] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[27:47] Speaker 2: THET war, Yeah, wartime shortages. I have a couple of
[27:51] Speaker 2: those Okay, so maybe you have a fake one. I
[27:54] Speaker 2: wish then, So then we have the round microphotograph, ten
[27:58] Speaker 2: columns of five dis groups. Think about how tiny that
[28:01] Speaker 2: has to be. Yeah, inside a nickel twenty one numbers
[28:05] Speaker 2: in most of the columns, So we have two hundred
[28:07] Speaker 2: and seven five digit groups. That's crazy. It's tiny. And
[28:12] Speaker 2: this is like looks like it's a photo reduction of
[28:15] Speaker 2: a typed page.
[28:16] Speaker 3: Yeah. Completely, that's what I was kind of imagining, like
[28:18] Speaker 3: like it's like microfiche microfiche right, right.
[28:21] Speaker 2: So lab specialists, cryptanalysts, they tried all these different standard
[28:26] Speaker 2: techniques on the numerical groups, but they couldn't break the cipher.
[28:30] Speaker 2: And then they tried to identify the typewriter from which
[28:33] Speaker 2: like the original page had been produced.
[28:35] Speaker 3: I'm wondering if it's like if it corresponds to a
[28:37] Speaker 3: book and page numbers.
[28:38] Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing. They're trying absolutely everything. Their reference
[28:42] Speaker 2: collection covered US manufactured typewriters, but none of them match.
[28:46] Speaker 2: So they're like, okay, so we can say it's a
[28:48] Speaker 2: foreign typewriter, but that doesn't really get you too far. Yeah,
[28:52] Speaker 2: the cipher specialists, they you know, they jump into it.
[28:55] Speaker 2: Field agents in New York. They're trying to trace the
[28:58] Speaker 2: physical coin, but the cipher specialists just keep cracking at it.
[29:02] Speaker 2: They can't. They're not making any headway. The field agents
[29:06] Speaker 2: they find the two women who gave the change to
[29:09] Speaker 2: Jimmy that evening. Yeah, and both remember Jimmy, but neither
[29:13] Speaker 2: of them ever heard of a hollow coin, and they
[29:16] Speaker 2: were like, no, we gave him ordinary money. We didn't
[29:18] Speaker 2: have anything crazy like that.
[29:20] Speaker 3: I'm sure they were worried about suspicions or sure.
[29:22] Speaker 2: Yeah, so agents they canvassed novelty and magic shops. They
[29:26] Speaker 2: showed pictures of the nickel and they were asking if
[29:29] Speaker 2: anyone sold similar quote trick coins. One novelty salesman commented
[29:35] Speaker 2: that the hollow interior was too small to be useful
[29:38] Speaker 2: for stage magic.
[29:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, what would you put in there?
[29:40] Speaker 2: Yeah? Everyone's like, we've never seen anything like that. Like
[29:43] Speaker 2: you're saying, what's the point of it? Why would you
[29:45] Speaker 2: do that?
[29:45] Speaker 3: Yeah? Exactly. I mean like they would rather do like
[29:48] Speaker 3: what I bought, which it's like a double headed nickel,
[29:50] Speaker 3: because then it actually has some value, right.
[29:52] Speaker 2: But what are you gonna do with this tiny little
[29:54] Speaker 2: piece of paper.
[29:54] Speaker 3: And that little compartment?
[29:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, so over the next several years, FBI offices around
[30:01] Speaker 2: the country sent suspicious coins and tokens to the lab.
[30:05] Speaker 2: A hollowed half dollar from New York, a nickel plated
[30:09] Speaker 2: penny from LA, a pair of hollow pennies from DC.
[30:12] Speaker 2: Everything gets examined. None showed the same tool marks or
[30:16] Speaker 2: construction details as the Brooklyn nickel. Meanwhile, cipher specialists still
[30:21] Speaker 2: at work. Even with help from defectors from communist block
[30:25] Speaker 2: intelligence services, no one could identify the cryptosystem that was used.
[30:30] Speaker 2: So by the mid fifties, the hollow nickel had become
[30:33] Speaker 2: super high priority. But everyone's like, I think it's just unsolvable.
[30:37] Speaker 3: Do you think some of the other spies who decided
[30:39] Speaker 3: to flip or defectors, They're like, I didn't get them.
[30:42] Speaker 3: Why didn't I get a nickel? They didn't tell me that.
[30:44] Speaker 3: I guess I'm not top tier, I'm not mark.
[30:49] Speaker 2: So this is obvious espionage. We have this signal without
[30:54] Speaker 2: an identified sender, recipient, or message, so it's like a
[30:58] Speaker 2: true mystery. The break came almost four years after Jimmy
[31:02] Speaker 2: dropped the nickel on the floor. In early May of
[31:06] Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven, a man in his mid thirties, called
[31:09] Speaker 2: the US embassy in Paris, and then showed up in
[31:11] Speaker 2: person right afterwards, and he talked to American officials and
[31:15] Speaker 2: said that he was an officer in Soviet intelligence who
[31:18] Speaker 2: had been operating for the past five years in the
[31:20] Speaker 2: United States, and that he was now being recalled to
[31:24] Speaker 2: Moscow and he wants to defect. Who is this man?
[31:27] Speaker 3: Who is this man?
[31:28] Speaker 2: Elizabeth Reno Jyadnen What the OG remember him? Eugene Nikolai Machi.
[31:36] Speaker 2: So he had sailed from the US on the French
[31:39] Speaker 2: liner La Liberte, ostensibly to go home to Moscow. Instead
[31:45] Speaker 2: he gets to Europe. He diverts to Paris, walks into
[31:47] Speaker 2: the embassy. CIA officers are kind of skeptical, but then
[31:51] Speaker 2: he produces one of his gadgets, a hollow, finish five
[31:55] Speaker 2: Marco coin containing microfilm, and so they're like, oh wait, no,
[31:59] Speaker 2: he really is by the press, He's for real. So
[32:02] Speaker 2: the CIA are holding a coin just like the one
[32:05] Speaker 2: that turned up in Brooklyn. Let's stop there for a bit,
[32:08] Speaker 2: get some ads in far more than our recommended daily allowance,
[32:12] Speaker 2: and then when we come back, we're going to talk
[32:14] Speaker 2: more spice stuff, all right.
[32:37] Speaker 3: Zaren dude, I'm loving this story. Not only has it
[32:39] Speaker 3: made me now go have to like go online after
[32:42] Speaker 3: we're done with this so I can go buy myself
[32:44] Speaker 3: some more double headed nickels. But I'm loving.
[32:46] Speaker 2: This is the hollow nickel you remember.
[32:49] Speaker 3: I gave one to your nephew. I bet he lost.
[32:50] Speaker 2: He did. He probably did.
[32:53] Speaker 3: Within like a week. That's how I used to do it.
[32:55] Speaker 2: Most kids can't hang on to it. Yeah, no more
[32:58] Speaker 2: than a month obviously. So where were we May eleventh,
[33:02] Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven. So the American authorities, they fly Maki
[33:08] Speaker 2: back to New York, turn them over to the FBI,
[33:11] Speaker 2: They give him medical checks, they give him a safe
[33:13] Speaker 2: place to live, and then he just goes through these
[33:16] Speaker 2: really long debriefings by counterintelligence agents. It's like weeks and
[33:21] Speaker 2: weeks of interviews. And so he describes his recruitment, his
[33:25] Speaker 2: training under the identity of Eugene Nikolai Macky, his service
[33:30] Speaker 2: in New York. He explains how his first boss, Mikhail,
[33:35] Speaker 2: met him only rarely, usually in the Prospect Park subway station,
[33:40] Speaker 2: and they communicated through dead drops. So some of these
[33:44] Speaker 2: dead drops, right, one was a hole in the concrete
[33:47] Speaker 2: steps in Prospect Park, one was at the base of
[33:50] Speaker 2: a lamppost in Fort Tryon Park. Yeah, we had one
[33:55] Speaker 2: at the end of an iron fence near Maccomb's Bridge.
[33:58] Speaker 3: Did you ever use things like this, use dead drops
[34:00] Speaker 3: of friends?
[34:01] Speaker 2: No, No, I had no reason to do such a thing.
[34:06] Speaker 2: I don't have hollowed out stuff.
[34:07] Speaker 3: But you're a smart person. You ever needed to, like
[34:09] Speaker 3: give somebody a message. We didn't want anyone else to
[34:11] Speaker 3: find it. No friends or do crimes crimes crime with friends.
[34:17] Speaker 3: So if I wanted to leave them something that their
[34:19] Speaker 3: parents didn't want to have them, No.
[34:23] Speaker 2: I just kept kept myself.
[34:24] Speaker 3: Yeah, we all knew like which like you know, the
[34:27] Speaker 3: top of a banister in a house where you could
[34:28] Speaker 3: lift off, or some like decoration outside of their home,
[34:32] Speaker 3: like one of the bulbs you could unscrew and you
[34:34] Speaker 3: put in things like that.
[34:35] Speaker 2: Oh way, that's some spycraft, your spike kids.
[34:38] Speaker 3: Well, I've been reading this kind of stuff since I
[34:40] Speaker 3: was like, I'd love you know me, I wanted to
[34:41] Speaker 3: be a con man or a spy.
[34:44] Speaker 2: Were little boys would do that kind of stuff? No,
[34:47] Speaker 2: I did not. I did not.
[34:50] Speaker 3: You and your brother might.
[34:51] Speaker 2: No, he didn't want to play with me. So one
[34:57] Speaker 2: of the dead drops. FBI agents found a hall bolt
[35:01] Speaker 2: that had been cemented in place for two years by
[35:04] Speaker 2: repair workers, and they open it up, they like, get,
[35:06] Speaker 2: you know, pry it out. It still had a typewritten
[35:09] Speaker 2: note about missed meetings in it.
[35:11] Speaker 3: You don't come to the meetings.
[35:13] Speaker 2: Where have you been man?
[35:16] Speaker 3: He also he talked to Moscow.
[35:19] Speaker 2: Come on, like your attendance is abysmal. He talked about
[35:23] Speaker 2: all the tools that use hollow bolts and coins, hollow pens, pencils, batteries,
[35:28] Speaker 2: all intended to conceal tiny messages or lists of numbers.
[35:32] Speaker 2: And so they search his home in Peakskill, New York.
[35:36] Speaker 2: They find, you know, all a ton of these devices.
[35:40] Speaker 2: And then they find another, this one to finish fifty
[35:42] Speaker 2: Marca coin. And there was a small hole in one
[35:46] Speaker 2: letter of the inscription, just like the hole in the
[35:49] Speaker 2: R and trust and Jimmy's nickel. And the coin had
[35:52] Speaker 2: been made by joining two separate pieces. So lab examiners
[35:56] Speaker 2: compared the finish coin to the hollow nickel from nineteen
[35:58] Speaker 2: fifty three. They all these similarities in the design, the workmanship.
[36:03] Speaker 2: It became really clear that the Brooklyn coin had probably
[36:06] Speaker 2: come from the same espionage apparatus that was now just
[36:09] Speaker 2: being laid out like a beautiful banquet for them by
[36:12] Speaker 2: this defecting KGB officer. So once the FBI figures that
[36:17] Speaker 2: the hollow nickel is tied to Reno Machi's network, they
[36:22] Speaker 2: questioned him in detail about the codes and the cryptosystems
[36:25] Speaker 2: that he had been using since the late thirties.
[36:28] Speaker 3: Totally they think have started there, but.
[36:30] Speaker 2: You'd think so. Using his descriptions, the FBI cryptanalysts they said, like,
[36:36] Speaker 2: let's talk about those five digit groups on the micro
[36:38] Speaker 2: photograph please, And it turned out to be a really
[36:42] Speaker 2: sophisticated KGB cipher related to what is now known as
[36:46] Speaker 2: the VIC cipher, combining this like substitution with transposition with
[36:51] Speaker 2: additive elements. The structural key information was supplied by Reno
[36:58] Speaker 2: and the lab finally breaks the messag So by June third,
[37:02] Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven, almost exactly four years after the nickel
[37:06] Speaker 2: reached the Bureau, the full text was decoded. It was
[37:09] Speaker 2: a five point message from Moscow Center addressed to a
[37:13] Speaker 2: newly arrived illegal agent, almost certainly intended for Reno. So
[37:18] Speaker 2: he gets it, loses it. Here's the message. He missed
[37:22] Speaker 2: one we congratulate you on a safe arrival. We confirm
[37:26] Speaker 2: the receipt of your letter to the address V repeat
[37:29] Speaker 2: V and the reading of letter number one. Two for
[37:33] Speaker 2: organization of cover, we gave instructions to transmit to you
[37:37] Speaker 2: three thousand in local currency. Consult with us prior to
[37:41] Speaker 2: investing in any kind of business, advising the character of
[37:44] Speaker 2: this business. Three, according to your request, we will transmit
[37:48] Speaker 2: the formula for the preparation of soft film and news separately,
[37:52] Speaker 2: together with your mother's letter. Four. It is too early
[37:56] Speaker 2: to send you the gammas and cipher short letters, but
[37:59] Speaker 2: the longer ones make with insertions. All the data about yourself,
[38:03] Speaker 2: place of work, address, et cetera. Must not be transmitted
[38:06] Speaker 2: in one cipher message. Transmit insertions separately. Five The package
[38:11] Speaker 2: was delivered to your wife personally. Everything is all right
[38:14] Speaker 2: with the family. We wish you success. Greetings from the
[38:16] Speaker 2: comrades number one, third of December. Wow, yeah, all of
[38:21] Speaker 2: that inside on Nickel. Yes, yeah, it is super cold war.
[38:25] Speaker 2: So beyond the cipher Reno. Reno gives the FBI far
[38:31] Speaker 2: more dangerous information. So he talks about Mark, the man
[38:36] Speaker 2: now running the network after Mikhail returned to Moscow. So
[38:40] Speaker 2: He didn't know Mark's real name or is current address,
[38:42] Speaker 2: but he knew that Mark was bald and wore this
[38:45] Speaker 2: like really distinctive dark snap brim fedora that had a
[38:49] Speaker 2: white band. He's all milady. He posed as an artist
[38:53] Speaker 2: and photographer in Brooklyn, and he had a studio in
[38:57] Speaker 2: the Ovington Studios building on Fulton Street.
[39:00] Speaker 3: He wasn't attached to the embassy. He was like actually
[39:03] Speaker 3: just free floating right right.
[39:05] Speaker 2: So they have the description, the location. FBI agents they're
[39:08] Speaker 2: able to identify this middle aged man living quietly as
[39:13] Speaker 2: a meal are goldfuss, So surveillance teams they start watching
[39:17] Speaker 2: the studio and its surroundings. On May twenty eighth, nineteen
[39:21] Speaker 2: fifty seven, they watch this man who's acting all nervous.
[39:24] Speaker 2: He's in a small park opposite Fulton Street. He's kind
[39:28] Speaker 2: of like moving around checking for contacts, then leaving, and
[39:31] Speaker 2: the FBI had set up all these hidden cameras to
[39:34] Speaker 2: capture this nice On June fifteenth, nineteen fifty seven, the
[39:38] Speaker 2: FBI shows the pictures to Reno. Reno, he immediately identifies,
[39:44] Speaker 2: like that's Mark there. He is that man Mark, that's
[39:47] Speaker 2: my handler, and so they have positive ID. They intensify
[39:51] Speaker 2: the surveillance. So they follow Mark from his studio to
[39:55] Speaker 2: the Hotel Latham in Manhattan, and that's where he was
[39:57] Speaker 2: staying under the name Emil Goldfuss. And it seemed like
[40:01] Speaker 2: he was aware that he was being watched, but he
[40:03] Speaker 2: didn't have a valid passport under any of his identities,
[40:07] Speaker 2: so he couldn't really like skip the country quickly.
[40:10] Speaker 3: Whoa, Yeah, that seems like a big hole in their
[40:14] Speaker 3: whole plan.
[40:14] Speaker 2: Like, oh, yeah, you'd think you should be able to
[40:17] Speaker 2: jump quickly.
[40:17] Speaker 3: You have multiple passports, So.
[40:19] Speaker 2: What he doesn't know. Moscow had already decided that he
[40:22] Speaker 2: should exfiltrate. So the KGB was in the process of
[40:26] Speaker 2: getting him new identities and passports, one in the name
[40:30] Speaker 2: of Robert Callan and then another in the name of
[40:33] Speaker 2: Vasili Zogel. And they had all these contacts in Canada
[40:37] Speaker 2: that was want to help him out. Yeah, the only
[40:39] Speaker 2: problem was that the paperwork wasn't ready in time. So
[40:42] Speaker 2: seven am June twenty first, nineteen fifty seven, FBI agents
[40:46] Speaker 2: knock on the door of room eight thirty nine at
[40:48] Speaker 2: Hotel Latham. The occupant opens the door. They addressed him
[40:52] Speaker 2: as Colonel and they told him They had information about
[40:55] Speaker 2: his involvement in espionage, the use of his rank ceronel,
[41:00] Speaker 2: which only his KGB colleagues and Reno knew. Told him
[41:04] Speaker 2: immediately like, oh my god, Reno sold me out. The
[41:08] Speaker 2: jig is up. So he doesn't say anything. They just
[41:10] Speaker 2: take him into custody. After about twenty minutes, the agents
[41:14] Speaker 2: called Immigration and Naturalization Services officers and they arrest him
[41:18] Speaker 2: as an alleged illegal alien under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
[41:23] Speaker 2: So they searched his hotel room. They searched the Brooklyn studio.
[41:27] Speaker 2: They find a ton of espionage material.
[41:30] Speaker 3: Like all photographs, photographer.
[41:34] Speaker 2: Shortwave radio receivers and transmitters, cipher pads, micro dot cameras
[41:40] Speaker 2: and film, a hollow shaving brush, hollow bolts, a hollow
[41:44] Speaker 2: pencil that had microfilmed ENCRYPTID messages in it. He had
[41:49] Speaker 2: this hollow ebony block that had a two hundred and
[41:52] Speaker 2: fifty page Russian codebook in it. Yeah, they also.
[41:56] Speaker 3: Found out the codebook.
[41:57] Speaker 2: They got the actual code book, two hundred and fifty
[41:59] Speaker 2: pages in like this big block of wood. They also
[42:02] Speaker 2: found sixty five hundred dollars in cash in his hotel
[42:05] Speaker 2: room and a key to a safe deposit box that
[42:08] Speaker 2: had another fifteen thousand. So he gets flown to the
[42:12] Speaker 2: Federal Alien Detention Facility in McCallan, Texas, and he spent
[42:17] Speaker 2: weeks there, said nothing, wouldn't say a word. Then suddenly
[42:21] Speaker 2: he adopts a new name. He's like, actually, guys, my
[42:25] Speaker 2: real name is Rudolph Ivanovitch Abel. And they're like, okay,
[42:29] Speaker 2: should Rudy Yeah, and he's like, I'm a Soviet citizen
[42:32] Speaker 2: and I am not going to cooperate with US authorities.
[42:35] Speaker 2: Oh yeah. So Rudolph Abel, though, is actually the name
[42:39] Speaker 2: of a dead KGB colleague of his.
[42:42] Speaker 3: He picked a different spy.
[42:43] Speaker 2: So he knew that when Moscow saw that name in
[42:48] Speaker 2: the American press, they would know that Mark had been
[42:51] Speaker 2: captured and he hadn't talked. Wow, that's how he's signaling
[42:55] Speaker 2: to them. So August, right August of nineteen fifty seven,
[42:59] Speaker 2: Mark's emil. He gets transferred back to New York to
[43:03] Speaker 2: face federal charges of conspiracy to transmit defense information to
[43:07] Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, conspiracy to obtain such information, and conspiracy
[43:12] Speaker 2: to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.
[43:15] Speaker 3: I wonder if at this point he was worried that
[43:16] Speaker 3: they would just like, you know, cut their losses and
[43:19] Speaker 3: like he would just be found not breathing.
[43:22] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that happened. He gets formally
[43:25] Speaker 2: indicted August seventh, and the Brooklyn Bar Association got him
[43:29] Speaker 2: this lawyer James Donovan, who was a former OSS lawyer.
[43:34] Speaker 2: At the trial in October of nineteen fifty seven, the
[43:37] Speaker 2: government presents this like super detailed case, and they have
[43:41] Speaker 2: all the physical evidence from the studio, the hotel room.
[43:44] Speaker 2: They have the testimony of Reno who explained the codes,
[43:48] Speaker 2: He explained the dead drops, concealment devices. He did the
[43:53] Speaker 2: dead drop and the gallery gagged. He was serving spy.
[44:00] Speaker 3: I'm going to give you that, thank you.
[44:02] Speaker 2: Among the exhibits and like all of these narrative elements
[44:06] Speaker 2: was the story of the Hollow Nickel, the legend of
[44:09] Speaker 2: the Hollow Nickel. So the government could now tell the
[44:11] Speaker 2: jury that the seemingly isolated mystery that started in that
[44:15] Speaker 2: Brooklyn hallway in nineteen fifty three was part of this
[44:18] Speaker 2: huge KGB apparatus that had employed Mark. The coin, the microphotograph,
[44:24] Speaker 2: the decoded message all helped tie him to Soviet intelligence.
[44:28] Speaker 2: So the jury, they deliberate for three and a half hours,
[44:31] Speaker 2: they come back guilty all three counts.
[44:34] Speaker 3: Of course.
[44:35] Speaker 2: November fifteenth, nineteen fifty seven, the judge sentenced him to
[44:38] Speaker 2: thirty years in prison and a fine of three thousand dollars.
[44:42] Speaker 2: That's thirty five thousand today. That does not seem like
[44:45] Speaker 2: a lot, does no. The press ate this up. So
[44:49] Speaker 2: media coverage like really quickly picked up on the FBI's
[44:52] Speaker 2: internal shorthand, and they start referring to the espionage prosecution
[44:57] Speaker 2: as the hollow Nickel case.
[44:58] Speaker 3: Of course that's the sexy, right.
[45:00] Speaker 2: It's just too ridiculous not to highlight. So Mark he
[45:04] Speaker 2: serves his sentence, and they also mean there were pictures
[45:06] Speaker 2: of Jimmy getting like a medal of Yeah, yeah.
[45:10] Speaker 3: Of course from the FBI.
[45:12] Speaker 2: I mean it's great.
[45:13] Speaker 3: You got a paper boy with a Nickels the best.
[45:17] Speaker 2: So Mark, they send them to prison at the Federal
[45:19] Speaker 2: pen in Atlanta. Oh yeah yeah. And he when he's there,
[45:23] Speaker 2: he's like pulling on Martha Stewart, he's painting, studying, getting
[45:29] Speaker 2: he wrote logarithmic tables for amusement, which is totally something
[45:32] Speaker 2: you would do, are you a spot? And it was
[45:36] Speaker 2: also like associating with other imprisoned spies.
[45:40] Speaker 3: They keep them together that way.
[45:42] Speaker 2: Apparently they had like spy club and they all go out.
[45:45] Speaker 2: February nineteen sixty two.
[45:47] Speaker 3: I'd love to know the board games they play.
[45:49] Speaker 2: Risk.
[45:49] Speaker 3: Of course, there you go.
[45:51] Speaker 2: H February nineteen sixty two. After more than four years
[45:53] Speaker 2: in prison, he gets released as part of a high
[45:56] Speaker 2: profile spice.
[45:58] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[45:58] Speaker 2: So at the bridge between West Berlin and Potsdam and
[46:03] Speaker 2: Soviet officials exchanged Rudolph Abel aka Mark for down YouTube
[46:08] Speaker 2: pilot Francis Gary Powers while at Checkpoint Charlie, the East
[46:12] Speaker 2: Germans simultaneously released American graduate student Frederick Pryor. You may
[46:16] Speaker 2: remember that scene from Bridge of Spies. The Tom Hanks
[46:20] Speaker 2: movie is theren It's a powerful drama, right, the powerful
[46:23] Speaker 2: drama to starring Tom Hanks America's Sweetheart.
[46:26] Speaker 3: Once you started saying this, I'm like, I'm pretty sure
[46:28] Speaker 3: this is the Tom Hanks movie.
[46:30] Speaker 2: And you know what, he's a treasurer. Yes, it was
[46:32] Speaker 2: a powerful drama. And Sacramento and went to Skyline High Inkland.
[46:37] Speaker 3: Yeah, he considered himself an Oakland boy. He went to Sacramento, stay.
[46:41] Speaker 2: For college, America's Sweetheart. Back in the Soviet Union, Mark
[46:45] Speaker 2: lived out his days as like a celebrated intelligence professional.
[46:50] Speaker 2: He did lectures about the spycraft, the trade craft, he
[46:53] Speaker 2: did some consulting, and what of the hollow nickel of
[46:57] Speaker 2: it lives in the FBI files and in our hearts.
[47:00] Speaker 3: Oh, they don't have like in one of their cases,
[47:02] Speaker 3: like when they like, you know, you walk down the
[47:03] Speaker 3: hallway and see like, I don't.
[47:05] Speaker 2: Know they have it, trophies, they have it, but it
[47:07] Speaker 2: lives in all of us at some point, whether we
[47:10] Speaker 2: like it or.
[47:10] Speaker 3: Not touched it.
[47:12] Speaker 2: What's your ridiculous takeaway?
[47:13] Speaker 3: Two things? One, Hobo Nichols, those are cool.
[47:20] Speaker 2: The carved when.
[47:21] Speaker 3: They when they carve it, because it's one of the
[47:23] Speaker 3: softest metals.
[47:24] Speaker 2: Of the elements carved on top of you can.
[47:27] Speaker 3: Turn like Jefferson into like you know, you know, I
[47:30] Speaker 3: don't know, a member of the Grateful.
[47:32] Speaker 2: Dead, like exactly.
[47:35] Speaker 3: Yeah. So I was like thinking, I'm like I need
[47:37] Speaker 3: to get into Hobo, Like maybe I can actually do that.
[47:40] Speaker 3: Maybe now I have the patience to if not the
[47:43] Speaker 3: artistic talent. And then the second one was I can't remember, so.
[47:51] Speaker 2: That ridiculous, it's so ridiculous.
[47:53] Speaker 3: What's yours? What's your ridiculous take away, Elizabeth, I.
[47:56] Speaker 2: Just I love. I love a good spycraft.
[47:58] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I love.
[48:00] Speaker 2: He's kind of you know, and the ridiculousness of it
[48:03] Speaker 2: of like the stakes were really really high, but there's
[48:06] Speaker 2: all these like kind of goofy elements to it and
[48:10] Speaker 2: elements of chance. You know, you put something in a
[48:12] Speaker 2: hollow bolt and then workers come by and they're like, oh,
[48:15] Speaker 2: this seems loose and they cemented in yeah, and then
[48:18] Speaker 2: now you've missed all your meetings, Like it's just silly.
[48:21] Speaker 3: Oh I remember what it was. Yes, did you ever
[48:24] Speaker 3: see the skit about the guy who does ass pennies? No? Oh, yeah,
[48:30] Speaker 3: it doesn't matter, but you're what, Yeah, so your girl
[48:34] Speaker 3: Amy Poehler was in a comedy group, right, and in
[48:38] Speaker 3: one of the sketches, if it was she wasn't. In
[48:40] Speaker 3: the sketch was this guy on a golf course talking
[48:43] Speaker 3: about how he had confidence because he did ass pennies.
[48:46] Speaker 3: And the guy's like, what's that? And he's like, for
[48:48] Speaker 3: a number of years, I've been putting pennies in my
[48:50] Speaker 3: butt and then I afterwards I spend them and so
[48:55] Speaker 3: I know, and he just does this like crazy math
[48:57] Speaker 3: of like how many hundreds of thousands or millions of
[49:00] Speaker 3: pennies he's put out that have all spent time inside
[49:02] Speaker 3: of his rectum. And so he's like, anytime I deal
[49:05] Speaker 3: with somebody and i'm nervous, I know that they've handled
[49:07] Speaker 3: one of my ass pennies and it makes me relax.
[49:10] Speaker 3: It's he's like, you need to go get yourself some
[49:12] Speaker 3: the ass pennies and used to be the key to successful.
[49:15] Speaker 2: That's how you do That's how you stay calm as
[49:17] Speaker 2: a spy.
[49:17] Speaker 3: Yes, you just know someone's like, that's been my rectum.
[49:20] Speaker 2: That's perfect. Damn near that is a great Takeaway's ridiculous though,
[49:25] Speaker 2: you know what I think?
[49:26] Speaker 3: Upright, Citizens Brigade?
[49:27] Speaker 2: That was the girl? Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, with that,
[49:31] Speaker 2: I think I need to talk back.
[49:34] Speaker 3: Oh oh my god.
[49:37] Speaker 2: I let.
[49:45] Speaker 4: Hi Elizabeth and Zaron and producer Dave. This is Diana
[49:50] Speaker 4: from Oregon, and I just wanted to say I love
[49:53] Speaker 4: it when Elizabeth goes on about California history and like
[49:58] Speaker 4: how much she loves Bay area and stuff, because that's
[50:01] Speaker 4: how I feel about Oregon. Sorry, I I'm from here
[50:05] Speaker 4: and I love it. And you know, I don't know
[50:08] Speaker 4: how many generations but at least you know, five or something.
[50:12] Speaker 4: So yeah, I like that, keep up the good one.
[50:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's it's really it feels good to
[50:19] Speaker 2: be rooted in a place, you know, and like, especially
[50:22] Speaker 2: because sometimes we feel sort of rootless just in general,
[50:25] Speaker 2: and so.
[50:26] Speaker 3: Especially as Americans, there's a lot of rootlessness.
[50:28] Speaker 2: And it's really cool to live in a place in
[50:31] Speaker 2: obviously we live in the moment where we are in places,
[50:36] Speaker 2: and to be in the present, but to like look
[50:39] Speaker 2: around and figure out what happened, you know, however many
[50:42] Speaker 2: decades years before, Yeah, and to see how things have
[50:45] Speaker 2: changed and evolved, and that's awesome.
[50:47] Speaker 3: And to have that sense of connection where you can
[50:50] Speaker 3: feel pride about something that is not something you had
[50:52] Speaker 3: anything necessary to do, but you now have an affinity,
[50:55] Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
[50:55] Speaker 2: Well, and I think too, like, you know, I was
[50:58] Speaker 2: talking to someone recently who had just move to a
[51:01] Speaker 2: place and where you're trying to Like, they were moved
[51:04] Speaker 2: to Oakland, and we're trying to learn more and more
[51:06] Speaker 2: about like what had you know, gone inspired there? They
[51:09] Speaker 2: hit the whole history of it, and so I think
[51:11] Speaker 2: you don't like, you know, you're from Oregon and going
[51:15] Speaker 2: back several several generations, same for me for California. But
[51:19] Speaker 2: I think you don't have to have that to feel
[51:21] Speaker 2: rooted and connected to a community like you can. You can,
[51:25] Speaker 2: you know, get in there and become part of that
[51:27] Speaker 2: community and learn that history and it's just fascinating stuff.
[51:31] Speaker 2: But you do feel a little bit special, even though,
[51:33] Speaker 2: like you're saying, it's not anything you've personally accomplished. But
[51:37] Speaker 2: to have like that long route to the to the ground.
[51:41] Speaker 3: When you can feel like as you not just to
[51:43] Speaker 3: repeat the same expression, but rooted somewhere, it gives you
[51:47] Speaker 3: a quiet and really pleasing confidence. You know, it's like
[51:50] Speaker 3: this is my place, and it's like I'm going to
[51:52] Speaker 3: look out for this.
[51:53] Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
[51:54] Speaker 3: It makes me maybe more likely to pick up litter.
[51:56] Speaker 3: I mean, who knows.
[51:57] Speaker 2: Honestly, I think we have a problem where people don't
[51:59] Speaker 2: feel connected to their communities. You know, we all we
[52:04] Speaker 2: don't get out of like a little online bubble sometimes,
[52:06] Speaker 2: you know, I'm saying.
[52:07] Speaker 3: And ask somebody who has had to get rooted in
[52:09] Speaker 3: new places, I definitely recognize the value of it.
[52:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and you've done that pretty well. But you
[52:15] Speaker 2: also you haven't lost your connection to Atlanta you still
[52:18] Speaker 2: feel like right, I think that's awesome. That's the way
[52:22] Speaker 2: to do it. That's it for today. You can find
[52:25] Speaker 2: us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at
[52:28] Speaker 2: Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and Instagram. We're on
[52:31] Speaker 2: YouTube a Ridiculous Crime podd Email ridiculous Crime at gmail
[52:36] Speaker 2: dot com and then leave us a talk back on
[52:38] Speaker 2: the iHeart app. Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted
[52:47] Speaker 2: by Elizabeth Duttman's Aaron Burnett, produced and edited by the
[52:50] Speaker 2: Guy who Came In from the Cold Dave Cousten, starring
[52:53] Speaker 2: Annaalice Rutger Is Judith. Research is by Agent Double O six,
[52:57] Speaker 2: Marissa Brown and Marathon Man Jabari Davis. The theme song
[53:01] Speaker 2: is by Spy Kid Thomas Lee and three Days of
[53:03] Speaker 2: the Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred.
[53:07] Speaker 2: Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre. Executive
[53:10] Speaker 2: producers are the sum of all Ben Bollen's and the
[53:13] Speaker 2: Noel Brown identity Redicous Crime, Say It One More Timequous Crime.
[53:26] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
[53:30] Speaker 1: my Heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or
[53:33] Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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