# You Better Listen to the Radio: Operation Ostrich

An episode of [Ridiculous Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1608230191), 4 Dec 2025, 55 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/0b4bcc39-7ba2-453f-aaac-ae510011dd80/ebad355b-3b2f-4031-aa68-b3a8014c3192/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3a4c50f5-ff69-4807-aa26-ae510011dd8e

During WWII, there were lots of ways to contribute to the war effort. One involved sitting at a radio station on Long Island, feeding lies to the Nazis to aid the Allies. Owen House was the secret center of Operation Ostrich, the most intense counterintelligence effort you've never heard of. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:03] Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth, Hello.
[0:07] Speaker 3: Zarn, Hello, Michel Lai. Listen pal, how are you?
[0:11] Speaker 2: I'm doing pretty well? How about you? Good?
[0:13] Speaker 3: Good? Do you know what's ridiculous?
[0:15] Speaker 2: Oh?
[0:16] Speaker 4: Man do I? But I want to preface this. This
[0:19] Speaker 4: is ridiculously cool. Oh really yeah, not like ridiculous, like
[0:23] Speaker 4: what ridiculous?
[0:24] Speaker 2: Like what?
[0:26] Speaker 5: I like that?
[0:29] Speaker 4: So we got this message right and the intern send
[0:33] Speaker 4: it to me. I thought this was I just wanted
[0:35] Speaker 4: to share it with you. So one of our rude
[0:37] Speaker 4: dude listeners is cat Josh Murphy from Down Under Down
[0:41] Speaker 4: to Aussie Rye.
[0:42] Speaker 3: Oh yes this guy, yeah right.
[0:44] Speaker 4: So he's a He opened a cafe in Brunswick, Melbourne, Melbourne,
[0:49] Speaker 4: and he named it after somebody we mentioned in one
[0:53] Speaker 4: of our episodes, The Horse, the Beautiful jim Key. Now
[0:56] Speaker 4: I'm not sure if you remember Beautiful jim Key, but
[0:58] Speaker 4: it was in the episode Lady One of.
[1:00] Speaker 2: This like a course, yes, yes, yes, okay.
[1:02] Speaker 4: So as Josh Murphy noted that he was inspired by
[1:06] Speaker 4: Beautiful jim Key and was like, you know, we named
[1:10] Speaker 4: our spot after it. And I looked up like some
[1:13] Speaker 4: some write ups and stuff, and he and his partner.
[1:16] Speaker 4: They've got this really cool spot. If I recommend if
[1:19] Speaker 4: you're in Melbourne go check it out. It is apparently
[1:23] Speaker 4: in Brunswick on Wilson Avenue, Okay, and it's right by
[1:27] Speaker 4: Iris the Bakery if you're familiar with the area. It's
[1:30] Speaker 4: described as a light filled space. It's full of character
[1:33] Speaker 4: and uh yeah, he wanted to name it.
[1:36] Speaker 2: After the horse fired by the show.
[1:39] Speaker 4: Yeah, which is just I thought ridiculously cool that that
[1:41] Speaker 4: this formerly enslaved man trains a horse. Way back in
[1:45] Speaker 4: the day. We cover him briefly in a story This
[1:47] Speaker 4: guy down in Australia names a cafe after this horse.
[1:50] Speaker 2: Well, you know, and it's such a great name, beautiful Jim.
[1:52] Speaker 3: So he's the guy. Josh Murphy is the guy who
[1:55] Speaker 3: sent us that mustard that we love.
[1:57] Speaker 2: Oh, the one you want to try Russell and Son.
[2:00] Speaker 2: He sended from Australia. Yes, it is proper good. God,
[2:05] Speaker 2: you had some, did I?
[2:07] Speaker 3: Yeah, we made that sandwich.
[2:09] Speaker 2: Oh that's what that was.
[2:10] Speaker 3: That's what that was. Oh.
[2:12] Speaker 2: I wish you would have let me know.
[2:14] Speaker 3: I told you never listening.
[2:17] Speaker 2: No, it's really really good.
[2:18] Speaker 3: And it was like we found out he sent us
[2:21] Speaker 3: this Mustard Russell and sons. Yes, phenomenal, kind of like
[2:25] Speaker 3: a small batch thing. And we're like, oh, that's so cool.
[2:27] Speaker 3: What a rad rude dude.
[2:28] Speaker 2: Totally and then.
[2:29] Speaker 3: He's like, oh, ps I named a restaurant after something
[2:31] Speaker 3: you talked.
[2:32] Speaker 2: About, Josh Murphy, you rock man.
[2:35] Speaker 4: So yeah, if you're ever in the Melbourne area, please
[2:38] Speaker 4: go check out his restaurant and let us know how
[2:40] Speaker 4: it is.
[2:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like cafe. I don't want to say take.
[2:44] Speaker 3: It down there.
[2:46] Speaker 2: We can get you on a plane that long. Yeah,
[2:48] Speaker 2: probably not, maybe someday, who knows. There you go, thank
[2:51] Speaker 2: you again for that one. That game was both here smile.
[2:53] Speaker 3: That is wonderfully ridiculous. And do you want to know
[2:56] Speaker 3: what else is ridiculous but not wonderfully ridiculous?
[2:58] Speaker 2: Please being a not see what.
[3:22] Speaker 3: This is? Ridiculous? Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
[3:27] Speaker 3: heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
[3:31] Speaker 3: and one hundred percent ridiculous.
[3:34] Speaker 2: I know you hear that.
[3:35] Speaker 3: I done heard that. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said,
[3:41] Speaker 3: quote in Wartime, truth is so precious that she should
[3:45] Speaker 3: always be attended by a bodyguard.
[3:48] Speaker 2: Of lies. Yeah, it sounds like him, right, I'm not
[3:53] Speaker 2: a huge like.
[3:55] Speaker 3: I got like a secondhand gin buzz off of that anyway.
[4:00] Speaker 3: So I told you about old Velvelee Dickinson. Oh yeah
[4:03] Speaker 3: you did, and the codebreakers at the FBI during World
[4:07] Speaker 3: War Two, and that kind of led me down a
[4:10] Speaker 3: rabbit hole of other FBI efforts during World War Two.
[4:14] Speaker 2: You love rabbit holes.
[4:15] Speaker 3: Oh my god, I just live in them. Espionage is
[4:18] Speaker 3: a crime, obviously.
[4:20] Speaker 2: Oh for the other side.
[4:22] Speaker 3: However you slice it.
[4:23] Speaker 2: Well, know, if you're doing it for the right side,
[4:25] Speaker 2: it's actually like, yeah, you.
[4:27] Speaker 3: Can get busted for espionage. Yeah, violating the right And
[4:31] Speaker 3: that was a big problem and affair during World War two.
[4:34] Speaker 2: Oh, being like espionage spies, Oh just in general. Okay,
[4:38] Speaker 2: I think I like getting labeled as a spider.
[4:40] Speaker 3: No, no, no, no. So we're going to start with this guy,
[4:42] Speaker 3: Leon Terreau.
[4:44] Speaker 2: Okay.
[4:45] Speaker 3: He was an FBI agent who investigated the first major
[4:48] Speaker 3: Nazi spy ring in the United States. Oh and he
[4:52] Speaker 3: was born in nineteen hundred in the Russian Empire modern
[4:55] Speaker 3: day Belarus. He immigrated to the United States as a
[4:58] Speaker 3: young man. He served in the army during World War One,
[5:01] Speaker 3: but in like a non combat capacity. He joined the FBI,
[5:06] Speaker 3: but it was the Bureau of Investigation back then in
[5:08] Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties. He was fluent in a bunch of
[5:11] Speaker 3: different languages, including German and Russian, and that made him
[5:15] Speaker 3: like super valuable in early foreign counterintelligence works. And so
[5:22] Speaker 3: that was an area that the FBI had like really
[5:24] Speaker 3: limited experience in before World War Two. So there we are,
[5:29] Speaker 3: early nineteen thirty eight, and that's when a former US
[5:34] Speaker 3: Army private named Gunter Gustav Rumrik, he was arrested for
[5:39] Speaker 3: attempting to fraudulently obtain passports, and so they interrogated him.
[5:44] Speaker 3: That interrogation reveals something even bigger. He spilled it all
[5:48] Speaker 3: about a German obverse spy network operating in the United States,
[5:53] Speaker 3: collecting military, aviation and naval secrets. So like that's the
[5:58] Speaker 3: interview of a lifetime in there, totally.
[6:00] Speaker 2: I've heard about this in the Green Hornet.
[6:02] Speaker 3: So this is where Leon Terrell comes in. He became
[6:06] Speaker 3: the lead FBI agent on the case, and so he
[6:08] Speaker 3: conducted this like a drawn out interrogations of Rumrek what
[6:14] Speaker 3: with you know, he has all this language skills and stuff,
[6:16] Speaker 3: and he also ran surveillance on suspected German agents. He
[6:20] Speaker 3: tracked down all these couriers and safe houses and cutouts.
[6:24] Speaker 3: The FBI coordinated with the US Attorney's Office for indictments
[6:28] Speaker 3: in the matter eighteen of them. And it was the
[6:31] Speaker 3: first major espionage prosecution in the United States before World
[6:35] Speaker 3: War Two. And it exposed the presence of this like
[6:39] Speaker 3: organized Nazi intelligence apparatus in the United States. This was
[6:44] Speaker 3: a huge deal because it pushed the US to take
[6:47] Speaker 3: foreign espionage seriously for the first time. About it so well,
[6:53] Speaker 3: it seemed like a victory. Terrell kind of blew it
[6:58] Speaker 3: Wellll the case was still active. He leaked information to
[7:03] Speaker 3: the press.
[7:04] Speaker 2: Oh okay Germans.
[7:06] Speaker 3: Yeah. But then he wrote newspaper serials for the New
[7:08] Speaker 3: York Post about the case.
[7:10] Speaker 2: Uh huh.
[7:11] Speaker 3: He collaborated on a book called Nazi Spies in.
[7:14] Speaker 2: America That's Bad for Prosecution.
[7:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, assisted in the development of a Hollywood film called
[7:19] Speaker 3: Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Oh Yeah, nineteen thirty nine
[7:23] Speaker 3: Warner Brothers picture. He worked with the director as a
[7:26] Speaker 3: paid consultant. This is all while the investigations ongoing. Confessions
[7:33] Speaker 3: of a Nazi Spy was the first major studio picture
[7:36] Speaker 3: explicitly criticizing Hitler.
[7:38] Speaker 2: I was gonna say, that's why it's famous.
[7:40] Speaker 3: And it was released before we even got into World
[7:42] Speaker 3: War two. So all of this goes down before the
[7:47] Speaker 3: remaining suspects had been apprehended. That court, no, no, So the
[7:52] Speaker 3: indictments go out, but they're like, we got a round
[7:54] Speaker 3: them all up. And meanwhile he's like, I want to
[7:56] Speaker 3: be in pictures. So before they be arrested and.
[8:01] Speaker 2: Charged, how do I meet May West.
[8:04] Speaker 3: For the arrests? Before they're charged, all but four of
[8:08] Speaker 3: the spies fled the United States and made their way
[8:11] Speaker 3: safely to Europe.
[8:12] Speaker 2: Of course they did. First both they get hit. J
[8:15] Speaker 2: Edgar Hoover, Oh my god, he must have lost.
[8:18] Speaker 3: Livid, head of the FBI. Livid, so not only had
[8:22] Speaker 3: the case been blown, but he was highly sensitive to
[8:26] Speaker 3: publicity that was not controlled by him.
[8:28] Speaker 2: Yes, he wanted to always be the one telling, always had.
[8:30] Speaker 3: To be in charge, and so that was just like
[8:32] Speaker 3: on top of it. So Hoover made his move. He
[8:36] Speaker 3: accused Terreu of compromising ongoing investigations, which that's appropriate.
[8:41] Speaker 2: Oh, that's actually very accurate for what he did.
[8:44] Speaker 3: And obviously Terreu gets removed from the case, I hope.
[8:48] Speaker 1: So.
[8:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, he then resigned under pressure, and it's like, was
[8:51] Speaker 3: he forced out? Did he resigned?
[8:53] Speaker 2: Is he a German spy? Oh? No, double agent?
[8:55] Speaker 3: Start to wonder, I do so the FBI they publicly
[8:59] Speaker 3: distanced itself from him too, And Hoover had all these
[9:03] Speaker 3: internal memos that came out decades and decades later. Yeah,
[9:06] Speaker 3: of course it described him as quote a man who
[9:09] Speaker 3: permitted personal ambition to override bureau interests.
[9:14] Speaker 2: Hated that.
[9:14] Speaker 3: He's like, that's my job, I do. Hoover made sure
[9:19] Speaker 3: that that round never worked for US intelligence again. But
[9:23] Speaker 3: here's the thing, though. After his resignation, Tarrell got gigs
[9:27] Speaker 3: as a journalist and a writer. He wrote about espionage topics.
[9:32] Speaker 3: He did serve in the US Army counter Intelligence Corps
[9:35] Speaker 3: during World War Two, but he didn't serve with FBI
[9:38] Speaker 3: or OSS. He later in his life moved to California.
[9:42] Speaker 3: He wrote sporadically about intelligence matters.
[9:45] Speaker 2: I'm sure he tried to dabble in Hollywood for the
[9:47] Speaker 2: rest of his day.
[9:48] Speaker 3: Look a bunch of screenplays in the drawers. He never
[9:51] Speaker 3: regained his former standing in US counterintelligence, but like historians
[9:56] Speaker 3: now see him as this pivotal early figure whose missteps
[10:01] Speaker 3: helped define the FBI's strict secrecy culture. Yes, I got
[10:06] Speaker 3: to so it was kind of brewing, and he just
[10:07] Speaker 3: made it like, okay, now we actually have to really
[10:09] Speaker 3: do something about this.
[10:10] Speaker 2: That's how we always say ongoing investigation. It's part of
[10:12] Speaker 2: an ongoing.
[10:13] Speaker 3: Investigation, right right, instead of like, well here, let me
[10:15] Speaker 3: tell you everything.
[10:16] Speaker 2: Do you want the dish.
[10:17] Speaker 3: Sit So, while it was this total cluster with Tourou,
[10:22] Speaker 3: it kicked off the FBI's involvement in counter espionage efforts
[10:25] Speaker 3: for World War Two. It was a wake up call.
[10:28] Speaker 3: So the US needed serious strengthening of security surrounding all
[10:33] Speaker 3: these like military and industrial secrets, and they also needed
[10:36] Speaker 3: to launch serious counter espionage efforts. So the military starts
[10:41] Speaker 3: working with the FBI to address this stuff as crime,
[10:44] Speaker 3: which brings us to Ultra, not MK Ultra.
[10:48] Speaker 2: I was just about to ask.
[10:49] Speaker 3: As much later. Ultra was the code name used by
[10:54] Speaker 3: the British government beginning in June of nineteen forty one
[10:58] Speaker 3: to describe intelligence that it came from the Enigma decrypts
[11:03] Speaker 3: the German military Lushwaffe stuff they'd had it DECRYPTID then
[11:07] Speaker 3: naval Enigma crazy all these like high level German high
[11:11] Speaker 3: command traffic.
[11:12] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[11:13] Speaker 4: So basically after the Battle of Britain, they get the
[11:15] Speaker 4: Enigma machine decryptied before we even get in the war.
[11:18] Speaker 3: Correct.
[11:18] Speaker 2: I thought it was until like forty two of No.
[11:21] Speaker 3: Ultra wasn't really a single project, but it was like
[11:23] Speaker 3: a classification or a category.
[11:25] Speaker 2: I got you.
[11:26] Speaker 3: So it basically meant so secret that it was beyond
[11:28] Speaker 3: top secret.
[11:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, like all the Queen can learn this.
[11:31] Speaker 3: Yes, the work itself was conducted primarily at Bletchley Park,
[11:34] Speaker 3: which I mentioned before, under Government code and Cipher School,
[11:39] Speaker 3: and so the Ultra designation was created in nineteen forty one,
[11:42] Speaker 3: but that technical groundwork began way earlier. So what I
[11:47] Speaker 3: learned I didn't know. Between nineteen thirty two and nineteen
[11:50] Speaker 3: thirty nine, Polish cryptoanalysts broke early versions of Enigma really
[11:55] Speaker 3: all the way back then, and then in July of
[11:58] Speaker 3: thirty nine Poland shared their methods with Britain and France,
[12:01] Speaker 3: and after the war began, then England expanded operations at Bletchley, Okay,
[12:08] Speaker 3: so in nineteen forty initial breakthroughs came from Alan Turing
[12:13] Speaker 3: Gordon Welchman in the design of the bomb machine. So
[12:18] Speaker 3: lufwaff of traffic was like the first thing that they
[12:20] Speaker 3: were able to successfully and consistently read. By mid nineteen
[12:26] Speaker 3: forty one, there was enough high level German traffic being
[12:29] Speaker 3: read that they had to create this new Ultra classification
[12:35] Speaker 3: and so that was like mid forty one, that's the
[12:37] Speaker 3: formal creation of Ultra as this intelligence handling system. So
[12:42] Speaker 3: what did ULTRA produce, Seren?
[12:44] Speaker 2: What did it produce, Elizabeth?
[12:45] Speaker 3: I'm glad I asked that question. Ultra intelligence that had
[12:50] Speaker 3: like the Air Force operations U.
[12:51] Speaker 2: Boat positions because they're killing the shipping leg.
[12:55] Speaker 3: Exactly, Army operational plans, logistics supply routes, and so the
[13:00] Speaker 3: decrypts were translated, analyzed, and distributed only to like this tiny,
[13:05] Speaker 3: tiny handful of commanders, and they were forbidden to reveal
[13:08] Speaker 3: the source, so super super secretive, and the value depended
[13:12] Speaker 3: on that secrecy. So that's something that the FBI was like, Oh,
[13:17] Speaker 3: we should try that. That looks like that's a really
[13:20] Speaker 3: good idea. So they get wind of Ultra around nineteen
[13:23] Speaker 3: forty two and they're like, I want that. That would
[13:26] Speaker 3: be fun. So they're like, we need counterintelligence. FBI is like,
[13:30] Speaker 3: you know what, We're ready. We were messing around before.
[13:33] Speaker 3: We're totally JK, just so totally ready. So the Brits
[13:37] Speaker 3: passed along intelligence that they gathered through Ultra. The FBI
[13:41] Speaker 3: took it, incorporated it into their criminal investigations, and that
[13:45] Speaker 3: they came up with something they called Operation Ostrich. What
[13:51] Speaker 3: is there going to stick their head in the sands?
[13:52] Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't I don't know.
[13:55] Speaker 3: I guess Operation Ostrich wound up being part of this
[13:58] Speaker 3: larger effort by Ali forces to deceive the enemy called
[14:02] Speaker 3: Operation Bodyguard. And that comes from the quote that I
[14:06] Speaker 3: read you up top. In wartime, truth is so precious
[14:09] Speaker 3: that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
[14:13] Speaker 3: So all of these intercepted messages, some are decrypted by
[14:16] Speaker 3: the Brits, others by a US Army and Navy code
[14:20] Speaker 3: breakers or that crew of crazy kids led by Elizabeth
[14:24] Speaker 3: Smith Friedman in the new Cryptoanalyst team at the FBI laboratory.
[14:29] Speaker 3: They played a part in protecting the Allies, breaking down
[14:33] Speaker 3: the Germans. The Nazis the bad guys. Nazis are the
[14:36] Speaker 3: bad guys. So remember it was Elizabeth Smith Friedman who
[14:41] Speaker 3: took down that Nazi network in Argentina I talked about
[14:45] Speaker 3: in the Velvore. So she helped uncover the strong political
[14:49] Speaker 3: influence and intelligence activities of a German agent named Johannes Becker.
[14:55] Speaker 3: She and her FBI colleagues they mapped out his operation,
[14:58] Speaker 3: disrupted the works throughout the war, later shut it down completely,
[15:03] Speaker 3: and then without Ostrich, the FBI would not have been
[15:06] Speaker 3: as successful in pinning down the extent of Nazi espionage
[15:10] Speaker 3: in South America.
[15:11] Speaker 4: Right right, because also you sometimes want to keep the
[15:13] Speaker 4: network going so you can just exactly and then also
[15:18] Speaker 4: put out fake stuff for them to report on. See
[15:21] Speaker 4: how effective is what Ostrich was all about.
[15:23] Speaker 3: November of nineteen forty one, right before the attack on
[15:25] Speaker 3: Pearl Harbor, FBI special agent William Gustav Friedman sat down
[15:31] Speaker 3: with a man named Jorge Mosquerra. Quick note, Elizabeth Smith
[15:35] Speaker 3: Friedman's husband was William F. Friedman, one end on the
[15:40] Speaker 3: last name. The FBI special agent was William Gustav Freeman.
[15:44] Speaker 3: Two ms. No relationship.
[15:45] Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to ask for a huge loop.
[15:49] Speaker 3: So anyway, who was Mouscara and why was a g
[15:54] Speaker 3: Man talking to him? Yeah, what's I would love to know?
[15:56] Speaker 3: You tell me.
[15:57] Speaker 2: Well.
[15:58] Speaker 3: Muscarra was a forty six year old businessman. He was
[16:01] Speaker 3: originally from Argentina and he'd spent the last twenty years
[16:04] Speaker 3: of his life living in Germany. So this made him
[16:07] Speaker 3: very interesting to the FBI for good reason. So let's
[16:10] Speaker 3: back up. Let me tell you about him. He had
[16:12] Speaker 3: a very successful import export business in Germany, always moving
[16:19] Speaker 3: stuff between Germany and Argentina. But during the thirties, I
[16:24] Speaker 3: don't know if you've heard about this, things in Germany changed.
[16:27] Speaker 2: I have.
[16:27] Speaker 4: I've read a little bit about this that I change
[16:30] Speaker 4: in leadership in the biz.
[16:31] Speaker 3: We call that an understatement. So he wove this tale
[16:35] Speaker 3: of woe about how German militarism started to get out
[16:39] Speaker 3: of hand. Then there were all these like crazy new
[16:42] Speaker 3: finance laws that were sort of dooming his business. So
[16:45] Speaker 3: he sold everything and headed back to Argentina to start
[16:48] Speaker 3: from scratch. The problem was that the Nazi authorities wouldn't
[16:52] Speaker 3: let him leave the country with his money. Instead, the
[16:57] Speaker 3: other they put pressure on him to work for them
[17:00] Speaker 3: as an intelligence agent in America. So no buenos aires
[17:04] Speaker 3: for you, sir. You're going to the US of a
[17:06] Speaker 3: and in return for his spy work, he would get
[17:09] Speaker 3: his s growd funds with interest. But that was as
[17:13] Speaker 3: soon as Germany won the war.
[17:15] Speaker 2: Oh wow, So.
[17:16] Speaker 3: He didn't really have a choice. He couldn't go back
[17:18] Speaker 3: to Argentina with nothing. He had nothing and no one there.
[17:21] Speaker 3: He couldn't stay in Europe because he saw how bad
[17:23] Speaker 3: it was about to get. So he agreed, but he
[17:26] Speaker 3: also had no intention of helping them.
[17:28] Speaker 2: But he also has this light at the end of
[17:29] Speaker 2: the tunnel. If he does, if.
[17:31] Speaker 3: He does the work and the Germans win, then he
[17:33] Speaker 3: gets his money plus interest. Well, so he tells the Nazis,
[17:37] Speaker 3: you know what, let's do this, and I don't want
[17:39] Speaker 3: I want to cover my trucks, so I'm going to
[17:42] Speaker 3: take this circuitous route to the United States. And they're like, great,
[17:46] Speaker 3: I love that perfect and action. And so August nineteen
[17:51] Speaker 3: forty one, he leaves Nazi occupied France, goes over the
[17:55] Speaker 3: Pyrenees and across Spain to Portugal. Then there he gets
[17:59] Speaker 3: on a ship South America. He gets to Montevideo, Uruguay,
[18:04] Speaker 3: goes straight to the American embassy and spills the beat. Yeah,
[18:08] Speaker 3: tells them everything, and he's like plus ps I want
[18:14] Speaker 3: to help Allied forces. I want nothing. I am at
[18:16] Speaker 3: your service.
[18:17] Speaker 2: I can win this war.
[18:18] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[18:18] Speaker 3: So days later he's on his way to New York
[18:21] Speaker 3: on the FBI dime to begin life as a double agent.
[18:25] Speaker 3: So the Germans, they gave him instructions, Okay, this is
[18:28] Speaker 3: what you do. You go to America, you spy on them.
[18:32] Speaker 3: You build a secret radio station. Here are your broadcast times,
[18:36] Speaker 3: Here are the frequencies, the call letters like emergency keys
[18:40] Speaker 3: and transposition codes. You have to be somewhere in the
[18:42] Speaker 3: New York area. We're going to be sending you messages,
[18:46] Speaker 3: and you're going to send messages back to Hamburg. So
[18:49] Speaker 3: he's like, you know what, that's great, I'm all in.
[18:52] Speaker 3: Then he goes and he tells the FBI exactly what
[18:54] Speaker 3: he's been told.
[18:55] Speaker 4: I'm wondering how they're capturing it. I wonder if they're
[18:57] Speaker 4: coming from like you know, U boats, like where there,
[18:59] Speaker 4: because you can't be broadcasting that far at the time,
[19:02] Speaker 4: he doesn't like me.
[19:04] Speaker 3: Yeah, So the FBI is like, thank you for for
[19:07] Speaker 3: your input. I love this. You're going to be a
[19:09] Speaker 3: double agent. We're going to code name you n D
[19:12] Speaker 3: ninety eight. Okay, and this is it showtime?
[19:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, lights, camera action.
[19:17] Speaker 3: Let's take a break. When we get back, we're going
[19:20] Speaker 3: to follow along with ND ninety eight. Zaren, I want
[19:45] Speaker 3: to tell you about a place called Owen House.
[19:47] Speaker 2: Owen House.
[19:48] Speaker 3: Yes, it was a beautiful estate on seventy one acres
[19:52] Speaker 3: in Wading River, New York. That's on Long Island, across
[19:56] Speaker 3: Long Island Sound from New Haven, Connecticut.
[19:58] Speaker 4: This is Owen like O I owe you money.
[20:02] Speaker 3: Owen Wilson ow E m so. The US Department of
[20:06] Speaker 3: the Interior describes this place as such, quote. Located eighty
[20:11] Speaker 3: miles east of New York on Long Island's North Fork.
[20:14] Speaker 3: The spacious three story building sat on a cliff bordered
[20:18] Speaker 3: on one side by Long Island Sound and acres of
[20:21] Speaker 3: dense trees on the other three sides, and the only
[20:24] Speaker 3: approach to the station was a bumpy, rutted quarter mile path.
[20:27] Speaker 3: Even by today's standards, the house is not easy to find.
[20:30] Speaker 3: In nineteen forty two, it would have been nearly impossible.
[20:34] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[20:34] Speaker 5: So.
[20:34] Speaker 3: The place was originally built as a summer home for
[20:37] Speaker 3: doctor Gabriel s Owen and his descendant. Sarah Owen was
[20:42] Speaker 3: the last occupant of the house. She was unmarried, no kids.
[20:47] Speaker 3: She died in nineteen forty She was almost ninety years
[20:49] Speaker 3: old at this point. So she has a niece, missus
[20:54] Speaker 3: Helen Owen Howell. Helen Owen Howell inherits the house in
[20:59] Speaker 3: nineteen forty one, something curious happened. Now keep in mind
[21:03] Speaker 3: that Owen house, like you said, super isolated, seventy one acres,
[21:07] Speaker 3: borders the sound, just a dirt path driveway. It's mid
[21:10] Speaker 3: December nineteen forty one. Helen was in the house. There's
[21:14] Speaker 3: a knock at the door. A guy is standing there,
[21:16] Speaker 3: dressed in a suit, very polite. He told her he
[21:18] Speaker 3: was interested in renting the house and the property. Now
[21:22] Speaker 3: Helen was in the process of trying to figure out
[21:24] Speaker 3: what to do with this place.
[21:25] Speaker 4: And we're like a week past Pearl Harbor. So like
[21:28] Speaker 4: everybody's thinking about the war. The only thought you have
[21:31] Speaker 4: her about the war.
[21:32] Speaker 3: She didn't need the house, she didn't intend to live there,
[21:35] Speaker 3: but this was strange. The distribution of the estate was
[21:38] Speaker 3: noted in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper in November of forty one,
[21:42] Speaker 3: So maybe she's thinking like he heard about it. But
[21:44] Speaker 3: still Helen told him, like place isn't for rent, he
[21:48] Speaker 3: goes on his way. Everything seems hinky. And like you said,
[21:51] Speaker 3: this is right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which
[21:54] Speaker 3: was December seventh, nineteen forty one, a day that will
[21:57] Speaker 3: live in infamy, as FDR said, the day afterwards, which
[22:01] Speaker 3: is the day that the US entered World War two.
[22:04] Speaker 3: So tensions are high, fears are building. Helen's trying to
[22:08] Speaker 3: imagine why someone would be looking to live at Owen
[22:11] Speaker 3: House at that time. Yeah, specifically, yeah, And she couldn't
[22:15] Speaker 3: think of anything that made sense, so she called the FBI.
[22:19] Speaker 3: See something, say something. So she told him all about
[22:22] Speaker 3: the visit from the man, that the home is on
[22:25] Speaker 3: the water and isolated, and she feared that it could
[22:27] Speaker 3: be like spies or soldiers or something nefarious. They took
[22:31] Speaker 3: all her information. They thanked her for sharing it. A
[22:34] Speaker 3: few days later, knock at the door. It's the same guy.
[22:39] Speaker 3: He pulls out his identification FBI. He explained to her
[22:43] Speaker 3: that it was the US government that wanted to us.
[22:48] Speaker 2: The FBI.
[22:50] Speaker 3: First test, so we need this her top secret activities.
[22:55] Speaker 3: In fact, the whole family would be sworn to secrecy.
[22:58] Speaker 3: They'd have to sign all these document They couldn't tell
[23:01] Speaker 3: anyone about this. So they renamed the place the Wading
[23:04] Speaker 3: River Station. And remember when we left off, the Nazis
[23:08] Speaker 3: had asked Jorge Moscerra to set up the.
[23:11] Speaker 2: Spy radio pirate radio station in or around New York.
[23:16] Speaker 3: So he immediately tells the FBI about a situation made
[23:20] Speaker 3: a double agent. They're like, let's set up our radio station. Guys,
[23:23] Speaker 3: let's start a station. And so an FBI technical agent
[23:28] Speaker 3: from Washington, d C. Named Richard Millan, he began searching
[23:32] Speaker 3: for a site somewhere on eastern Long Island. And according
[23:36] Speaker 3: to Ray bat Venice, a former FBI agent writing for
[23:40] Speaker 3: the Former Agents of the FBI Foundation, quote it's a
[23:46] Speaker 3: wow for the news site, Millan had two essential requirements. First,
[23:52] Speaker 3: atmospheric conditions had to be optimal for uninterrupted transatlantic high
[23:57] Speaker 3: frequency radio communication. Second, but equally important, it had to
[24:02] Speaker 3: be isolated and remote.
[24:04] Speaker 2: So they're trying to get across the Atlantic. Yes, how
[24:09] Speaker 2: how much watted are they running through this stage? And
[24:13] Speaker 2: they're doing AM radio which travels far. But even like
[24:16] Speaker 2: that's crazy.
[24:16] Speaker 3: So Owen House is perfect though, I mean, yeah, it
[24:19] Speaker 3: sounds like the box.
[24:20] Speaker 2: There's no mountains between them and the European.
[24:22] Speaker 3: And isolated and not in use everything. So at the
[24:26] Speaker 3: start of nineteen forty two, Millan got the house totally outfitted.
[24:30] Speaker 3: He had a team of engineers install all this like
[24:33] Speaker 3: crazy modern radio equipment. Keep in mind, this all had
[24:37] Speaker 3: to be self sustaining, so they had to have multiple
[24:40] Speaker 3: backup parts for everything. Yes, you couldn't just like pop
[24:43] Speaker 3: out and get stuff, so they that went for like
[24:46] Speaker 3: like spare parts, vacuum tubes, radios, dials, wiring paper, and pencils.
[24:51] Speaker 2: Ratchets, so many ratchets.
[24:53] Speaker 3: They had like a whole room of just ratchets, and
[24:57] Speaker 3: the place was crammed with stuff. So they had had
[25:00] Speaker 3: high frequency radios running twenty four hours a day and
[25:03] Speaker 3: that pulls a lot of electricity. Yeah, and they didn't
[25:06] Speaker 3: want the electric company to come sniffing around because as
[25:09] Speaker 3: far as they knew, a young family had moved into
[25:11] Speaker 3: the house. Okay, see, the agent sent to oversee operations
[25:15] Speaker 3: was this guy named Don Worth Johnson.
[25:18] Speaker 2: Wait what I'm near You need to hear that name again.
[25:20] Speaker 3: Don Worth Johnson.
[25:22] Speaker 2: So it's Don Johnson with an extra worth.
[25:24] Speaker 3: Yeah, more worth than Don Johnson. Not only was he
[25:28] Speaker 3: savvy with the technology, he also looked sickly.
[25:32] Speaker 2: Oh, and that was a selling point.
[25:34] Speaker 3: Okay, So the department picked him, yeah, to be the
[25:37] Speaker 3: face of Owen House to the public because he had
[25:40] Speaker 3: what they described as a quote tubercular appearance.
[25:45] Speaker 5: Right.
[25:46] Speaker 3: So the FBI was like this, this check's two boxes. One,
[25:50] Speaker 3: if the locals thought he was diseased, they wouldn't come calling, sure,
[25:54] Speaker 3: And two this explains why he doesn't get drafted.
[25:57] Speaker 2: So they're looking for a doc holiday looking guy to.
[26:00] Speaker 3: As far as everyone in town knew, part of the
[26:03] Speaker 3: war after he's just like this sickly, very rich lawyer
[26:09] Speaker 3: with a wife named Betty and an infant daughter named
[26:11] Speaker 3: Vicky Jean Jean and that was his real family. So
[26:15] Speaker 3: he brings his real family with him, plus their seventy
[26:18] Speaker 3: pound German shepherd dog named Clifford. Yeah, Clifford was a
[26:22] Speaker 3: piece of work. He like snarled at everyone all the time.
[26:25] Speaker 3: It was not one to be messed with.
[26:26] Speaker 4: Oh okay, so you know his snarl was like a
[26:29] Speaker 4: like a predicet to his bike.
[26:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, he was just nasty. So back to the power supply.
[26:34] Speaker 3: They needed a lot and a sick attorney and his
[26:38] Speaker 3: small family aren't going to need that much. So the
[26:40] Speaker 3: agents they had to set up a way to generate
[26:42] Speaker 3: their own power. And so Millan he put a diesel
[26:46] Speaker 3: engine in the basement that would boost the power supply
[26:50] Speaker 3: coming in from outside.
[26:51] Speaker 2: They made a generator.
[26:52] Speaker 3: Yeah, and so we got this big diesel engine. The
[26:55] Speaker 3: place is on seventy one acres. But they still had
[26:57] Speaker 3: to disguise the noise in case anyone rolled up.
[26:59] Speaker 2: That's a noise, So they.
[27:01] Speaker 3: Put a Buick karmuffler on it and a hose to
[27:06] Speaker 3: send the fumes out through the basement window. Oh right, yeah,
[27:09] Speaker 3: and then big engines like that also shimmy shake.
[27:12] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[27:12] Speaker 3: So the agents poured this huge concrete block into the
[27:16] Speaker 3: floor of the basement and bolted the engine to it.
[27:19] Speaker 3: So like problem solved. Everything's running smoothly, okay. And this
[27:23] Speaker 3: is how an FBI memo described the setup quote, we
[27:27] Speaker 3: have a highly confidential station at Wading River, Long Island,
[27:31] Speaker 3: where we have several radio operators assigned who are impersonating
[27:34] Speaker 3: enemy agents. And these operators have practiced and perfected this
[27:38] Speaker 3: impersonation almost to the ultimate point. They must live in
[27:42] Speaker 3: an isolated cottage under difficult conditions, and that they must
[27:46] Speaker 3: remain at the station twenty four hours a day, six
[27:49] Speaker 3: and seven days a week, it being impossible for them
[27:52] Speaker 3: to go to the next town for meals. They must
[27:54] Speaker 3: keep absolutely undercover in order that no suspicion as to
[27:58] Speaker 3: the activities being carried on at this station will leak
[28:01] Speaker 3: out to unauthorized persons in the vicinity.
[28:04] Speaker 4: So they're like creating a little Antarctic station. You got
[28:08] Speaker 4: to be with these people all the time.
[28:10] Speaker 3: It's a big house. So there we got Owen house.
[28:12] Speaker 3: We got the Johnson family, which you know they see
[28:16] Speaker 3: seem to be living a normal life to for everyone
[28:18] Speaker 3: on the outside. And then they've got like two or
[28:20] Speaker 3: three other radio operators at a time working non stop
[28:23] Speaker 3: on the second and third floors of the house, and
[28:26] Speaker 3: they would have to like change shifts at night under
[28:29] Speaker 3: cover of darkness. Missus Johnson cooked all the meals really yeah,
[28:34] Speaker 3: and just like ran a house, and then Clifford provided security,
[28:38] Speaker 3: including for the family. Zarin, close your eyes. I want
[28:44] Speaker 3: you to picture it. You are Vicky Jean Johnson. You
[28:53] Speaker 3: are two years old. It's one year into the US
[28:56] Speaker 3: involvement in World War two. Your house is always buzzing
[29:00] Speaker 3: with activity and radio waves. But this is not unusual
[29:03] Speaker 3: for you. It's all you've ever known. You're currently sitting
[29:06] Speaker 3: on the back porch of the house where you live.
[29:09] Speaker 3: The sun is out, the bird's chirp in the thick
[29:12] Speaker 3: cops of trees around you. Clifford, the family dog, sleeps
[29:15] Speaker 3: at the other end of the porch, waking every now
[29:18] Speaker 3: and then to growl and cuff, then go back to
[29:21] Speaker 3: sleep in the sun. Your mother's in the kitchen, baking
[29:24] Speaker 3: a pie, rinsing berries for the filling, checking the blind
[29:28] Speaker 3: bake on the crust. She's busy, otherwise occupied on this
[29:32] Speaker 3: warm day. You're wearing nothing but your diaper, the liberating
[29:36] Speaker 3: wardrobe afforded toddlers in the insane. You look out across
[29:40] Speaker 3: the lawn behind the house and spot something a butterfly.
[29:44] Speaker 3: It's beautiful. You scoot your rear down the few backsteps
[29:48] Speaker 3: and stand on the grass. The butterfly flits and skips
[29:51] Speaker 3: on the air. You can hear the static of radio
[29:54] Speaker 3: transmissions coming from the window above you. You begin to
[29:58] Speaker 3: follow the butterfly form the sober drunkard's walk of a
[30:02] Speaker 3: young child, knees stiff and gate rocking across the lawn.
[30:06] Speaker 3: You go following the big yellow butterfly. You make it
[30:10] Speaker 3: to the edge of the lawn and into the trees,
[30:12] Speaker 3: the butterfly still in the air above and just ahead
[30:15] Speaker 3: of you. You hear more birds now and a frog
[30:18] Speaker 3: somewhere far off. The trees block the midday sun, and
[30:21] Speaker 3: you're cast into shade. The yellow butterfly a beacon, a
[30:25] Speaker 3: spot of sun that you simply must follow. You reach
[30:28] Speaker 3: your chubby arms into the air, trying to grab it.
[30:31] Speaker 3: It slits on. You've now toddled almost three hundred feet
[30:35] Speaker 3: from the back steps. You emerge from the woods, still
[30:38] Speaker 3: tailing the butterfly. It's a erratic path, so tempting to chase.
[30:42] Speaker 3: As you come through the trees, you can hear the
[30:44] Speaker 3: water below Long Island sound. You hear waves, The wind
[30:49] Speaker 3: is up and the chop is out on the water.
[30:51] Speaker 3: The butterfly buffets against the breeze, coming over the cliff
[30:54] Speaker 3: before you. It lands on a flower of a small
[30:57] Speaker 3: weed living defiantly in the sand on the bluff. You
[31:01] Speaker 3: click in your chunky steps, eager to grab the butterfly
[31:05] Speaker 3: to grab the sun. You reach the plant and look down.
[31:08] Speaker 3: The steep cliff heads straight down to the now rough
[31:11] Speaker 3: waters below. You hear your mother calling your name in
[31:14] Speaker 3: the distance. It's Fate, but she sounds terrified urgent. You
[31:19] Speaker 3: look down and see the sand starting to slide from
[31:22] Speaker 3: under your feet. You're now slowly beginning to lean forward,
[31:27] Speaker 3: gravity pulling you to the water below. Then there's a jerk.
[31:31] Speaker 3: Your diaper tightens around your belly and your yank backward,
[31:35] Speaker 3: back over the sand spun and then back toward the woods.
[31:38] Speaker 3: You look behind you, hoping to see the butterfly. Instead
[31:42] Speaker 3: you see Clifford's smooth coat and caramel eyes. He's got
[31:45] Speaker 3: you by the diaper and is trotting you back to
[31:48] Speaker 3: the house. Your mother emerges from the trees, shouting your name.
[31:52] Speaker 3: She sees you and breathes a sigh of relief. She
[31:55] Speaker 3: reaches out to pluck you from Clifford's jaw, but he
[31:57] Speaker 3: does not release. He lets out a low ground and
[32:00] Speaker 3: continues back toward the house, intent on putting you back
[32:03] Speaker 3: where you were on the porch. He mutters to you, sheesh,
[32:07] Speaker 3: I gotta do everything around here. But that really happened,
[32:12] Speaker 3: by the way, not Clifford talking, but everything else, everything else.
[32:16] Speaker 4: So I love those I get videos, I think because
[32:19] Speaker 4: of I follow you on Instagram, and I think I
[32:21] Speaker 4: just get bleed over from things you watch because it's
[32:24] Speaker 4: like recommended by Elizabeth or right, I ever liked it,
[32:26] Speaker 4: and so my huh. But I've noticed that all these
[32:28] Speaker 4: animal videos keep showing up that I think you like. Anyway,
[32:31] Speaker 4: There's been ones that I've seen recently of dogs doing
[32:34] Speaker 4: exactly this, saving people, mostly saving children and the elderly,
[32:39] Speaker 4: and I'm always astounded. I mean, I'm sure you like
[32:42] Speaker 4: the fact people get saved. I'm astounded by how the
[32:44] Speaker 4: dogs read the behavior so well and assess the danger
[32:48] Speaker 4: and then know when to act, and they wait till
[32:50] Speaker 4: the very last moment.
[32:51] Speaker 3: That stood out to me about this whole like little vignette. Right,
[32:55] Speaker 3: So they're in this top secret space and there are
[32:59] Speaker 3: all these people and everyone's focused on their intense stuff,
[33:02] Speaker 3: and they all are irritated with Clifford because he's a
[33:05] Speaker 3: nasty dog and he prowls at everybody. But at the
[33:08] Speaker 3: same time, you're thinking, well, it's good to have this
[33:10] Speaker 3: security dog. Like if someone rolls up on the house
[33:13] Speaker 3: with Clifford and you think, well, but you know, is
[33:16] Speaker 3: Clifford okay around a kid and all this stuff, And
[33:20] Speaker 3: while all of this you know, high level work to
[33:23] Speaker 3: keep everybody safe is going on. You have a two
[33:27] Speaker 3: year old who's not being kept safe or watched or watched,
[33:30] Speaker 3: who toddles out and literally almost goes over the side
[33:33] Speaker 3: of the cliff until the dog grabs her by the
[33:35] Speaker 3: diaper and walks her back to the house.
[33:37] Speaker 2: At the very last moment.
[33:41] Speaker 3: Was just and that's like this, this this you know,
[33:45] Speaker 3: analog for what's going on up in the second and
[33:47] Speaker 3: third floors of the house. Really like they're they're pulling
[33:51] Speaker 3: us right back from the cliff and people don't even
[33:53] Speaker 3: know about it. So people don't know that these a
[33:55] Speaker 3: dog like Clifford is doing it. Anyway, I just thought
[33:57] Speaker 3: it was an interesting thing.
[33:58] Speaker 2: So that was a great moment.
[33:59] Speaker 3: I said, go back to Wading River Station. Let's get
[34:02] Speaker 3: back to it. So January nineteen forty two until the
[34:06] Speaker 3: end of the war in Europe in forty five, the
[34:08] Speaker 3: station just like cooked along. They weren't intercepting messages though
[34:13] Speaker 3: they were generating them. So remember we have Muscerra and
[34:17] Speaker 3: D ninety eight. The agents are sending out coded messages
[34:20] Speaker 3: to the Nazis from him, and the Nazis were like, ooh,
[34:23] Speaker 3: we are getting the goods. They're like, girl, come listen.
[34:27] Speaker 3: And so he's giving details about US forces, munitions, war preparations,
[34:33] Speaker 3: and everything is highly orchestrated to play them like fiddles.
[34:37] Speaker 3: So the Nazis think like, Okay, Muscarra, we sent him out.
[34:41] Speaker 3: He's doing what we asked. He has highly placed informants
[34:44] Speaker 3: and that's where he's getting all this intel. So, according
[34:48] Speaker 3: to that former agent bat Venice quote, one was Wash,
[34:52] Speaker 3: a senior civilian official working for the War Department in Washington,
[34:56] Speaker 3: who occasionally became infuriated when the Germans questioned his information. Nevy,
[35:01] Speaker 3: a secretary working for a Navy admiral, routinely supplied juicy
[35:05] Speaker 3: gossip hints of emergency high level meetings, together with extracts
[35:09] Speaker 3: from confidential documents. The other two were rep an employee
[35:13] Speaker 3: of the Republic Aviation Corporation in Farmingdale, New York, and Officer,
[35:19] Speaker 3: a worker at the vitally important Brooklyn Navy Yard, the
[35:22] Speaker 3: world's most important ship repair facility and the largest supplier
[35:25] Speaker 3: of convoys for every Allied battlefront. Of course, these informants
[35:30] Speaker 3: did not exist.
[35:31] Speaker 2: So they're peppering in some real stuff that's not too
[35:34] Speaker 2: dangerous than mostly fake.
[35:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, and they but he creates like these characters. I
[35:40] Speaker 3: was talking's like, you know, the juicy gum.
[35:46] Speaker 2: It's a good spread.
[35:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's.
[35:50] Speaker 5: So.
[35:51] Speaker 3: Muscara and another FBI double agent code named Kohler. They
[35:55] Speaker 3: used separate radio circuits at the property, so they had
[35:58] Speaker 3: each been asked in dependently to do this, and.
[36:01] Speaker 2: They're running out of the one.
[36:02] Speaker 3: They're running out of the same one, and the Germans
[36:04] Speaker 3: have no idea.
[36:05] Speaker 4: So the Germans don't have like Boondis they're checking in
[36:07] Speaker 4: with like in New York that occasionally they're just like,
[36:09] Speaker 4: it's good.
[36:10] Speaker 3: I think that that's him, right, Yeah. So they spit
[36:13] Speaker 3: out supposed intelligence detailing everything from like what was said
[36:18] Speaker 3: in a dust up between soldiers and sailors at a
[36:21] Speaker 3: bar like to troop movements and assignments and mosquera. He
[36:26] Speaker 3: bolstered his credibility with the other by telling them some truths. Yes,
[36:31] Speaker 3: one of them was he talked about a senior British
[36:34] Speaker 3: commander who was going to be replaced. And then the
[36:37] Speaker 3: news of that actually broke weeks later, and the Germans like, oh,
[36:41] Speaker 3: he is good. He is getting that stuff way ahead
[36:44] Speaker 3: of time. So a spoiler alert Moscira. So let's break
[36:48] Speaker 3: for some ads and we can pretend they're intercepted transmissions.
[36:52] Speaker 3: When we come back, things escalate at Wading River.
[37:16] Speaker 6: Muscerae, the fly mosquera.
[37:20] Speaker 3: Okay. So he would have these long interview sessions with
[37:24] Speaker 3: the Germans over the radio.
[37:26] Speaker 2: Oh really, Oh yeah.
[37:27] Speaker 3: They would just.
[37:29] Speaker 4: Interesting, So he wasn't just like broadcasting like Wolfman Jack.
[37:33] Speaker 2: For the Germans, he'd.
[37:34] Speaker 3: Be like, hey, Rudolph, oh what's up. So they would
[37:39] Speaker 3: press him for information. He'd supply it. But one day
[37:42] Speaker 3: he had a really strange conversation with his other handler
[37:48] Speaker 3: and he told Agent Friedman about it. But it's likely
[37:51] Speaker 3: that Friedman didn't understand the significance of the time. So
[37:55] Speaker 3: a German officer named Hans Bloom asked scra to sniff
[38:01] Speaker 3: out information about a new weapons system, one that involved
[38:05] Speaker 3: quote the shattering of atoms.
[38:08] Speaker 4: Oh so not like one of Tethla's death rays. They
[38:10] Speaker 4: actually wanted a real stuff. They're like, hey, what's up
[38:13] Speaker 4: with these atoms?
[38:14] Speaker 3: Blooms screwed up though, because he told Musketta that German
[38:19] Speaker 3: military planners were like all worked up and they wanted
[38:22] Speaker 3: to create these massive explosives from atoms sources, and they
[38:28] Speaker 3: were calculating that they would weigh no more than like
[38:30] Speaker 3: a pound or a pound and a half too, total devastation.
[38:35] Speaker 3: This is like foreign to to everybody at this point,
[38:39] Speaker 3: to the you know, the general, which almost anybody, even
[38:41] Speaker 3: in the military. True. So Blum said that, quote, the
[38:45] Speaker 3: victorious nation in this war will be the one which
[38:48] Speaker 3: has accomplished the task of shattering atoms and applying the
[38:51] Speaker 3: results thereof shattering atoms.
[38:53] Speaker 2: Such a great phrase. Yeah, do we think of splitting
[38:58] Speaker 2: the shattering.
[38:58] Speaker 3: Shattering of them? It's the violence, said that. So Agent
[39:02] Speaker 3: Friedman he makes a note of this, and he includes
[39:05] Speaker 3: it in his next report out to Washington. Three months later.
[39:08] Speaker 3: That intel gets added into other chatter picked up by
[39:12] Speaker 3: the US and the Brits, solidifying the understanding that the
[39:16] Speaker 3: Germans they want to build an atomic weapon.
[39:18] Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
[39:19] Speaker 3: And so it was this information, born of Bloom's overly
[39:23] Speaker 3: confident chatter into the equipment at Owen House that pushed
[39:27] Speaker 3: President Franklin Roosevelt to decide in May of nineteen forty
[39:31] Speaker 3: two to start development of the atomic bomb.
[39:34] Speaker 2: So that's why we get the Manhattan Project is because of.
[39:37] Speaker 3: This chatty A chatty German, so like, hey, y'all, let's
[39:41] Speaker 3: become dumb.
[39:43] Speaker 4: I thought it was always like yeah, like the whole
[39:45] Speaker 4: German physicists being like, you know what, we're hearing about
[39:47] Speaker 4: it in the conferences.
[39:48] Speaker 3: It kicks off.
[39:50] Speaker 2: That's crazy, that's cool. Yeah.
[39:51] Speaker 3: So meanwhile, the FBI they keep feeding bogus and confusing
[39:55] Speaker 3: information to the Germans from the upper floors of Owen House.
[39:59] Speaker 3: In the summer of nineteen forty three, they like befuddled
[40:03] Speaker 3: the Germans into freezing their forces in northwest Europe, which
[40:07] Speaker 3: prevented their redeployment to strengthen the Italian and Eastern Front. Yes,
[40:12] Speaker 3: so nineteen forty four and forty five, the agents at
[40:14] Speaker 3: Owen House they fed Germans a whole slew of truthful
[40:19] Speaker 3: and false information aimed at confusing their military about the
[40:23] Speaker 3: size and position of Allied forces in Great Britain. This
[40:26] Speaker 3: included the time and place of the D Day invasion.
[40:30] Speaker 2: Okay, so d wondering if this was going to come
[40:33] Speaker 2: into it.
[40:33] Speaker 3: As you well know, D Day was the successful Allied
[40:36] Speaker 3: invasion of Europe June sixth, nineteen forty four, along a
[40:40] Speaker 3: very narrow stretch of beach at Normandy France. Yes, and
[40:44] Speaker 3: so this surprise attack caught the German army completely off guard.
[40:49] Speaker 4: Oh, completely, Yeah, they were so fixated on this. I mean,
[40:52] Speaker 4: it was like a really big deal. But they were like,
[40:53] Speaker 4: you know, chess game playing in the head.
[40:56] Speaker 3: Yes. So Operation Bodyguard and then the US version, Operation Ostrich,
[41:01] Speaker 3: generated an incredible number in the lead up of phony
[41:05] Speaker 3: radio broadcasts, and then there were all these artfully created
[41:09] Speaker 3: like rubber tanks to make the broadcast look legit.
[41:15] Speaker 2: Yes, oh that's great. They're coordinating with that exactly.
[41:19] Speaker 3: So the closer they got to D Day, the more
[41:21] Speaker 3: the Allies amped up their counterintelligence moves. On May second,
[41:26] Speaker 3: nineteen forty four, the Wading River station at Owen House
[41:30] Speaker 3: sent out messages talking about how pissed off General Dwight D. Eisenhower,
[41:34] Speaker 3: who's the supreme Allied commander of the invasion forces, how
[41:38] Speaker 3: pissed off he was when he learned that essential landing craft,
[41:42] Speaker 3: which was already hard to come by, was being diverted
[41:44] Speaker 3: to the Pacific. So all those things you see in newsreels,
[41:49] Speaker 3: band of brothers and everything like that, And where my
[41:52] Speaker 3: great uncles were great great uncle, I don't know anyway,
[41:57] Speaker 3: So they're like, oh, this is going to delay a
[41:59] Speaker 3: British operation in the Balkans, and that's our most important thing.
[42:04] Speaker 3: So like they're just scattering everything, according to the Department
[42:08] Speaker 3: of the Interior. Quote. Just four days before the invasion,
[42:12] Speaker 3: the Wading River radio station again sent a message, this
[42:16] Speaker 3: time calculated to ease German anxieties about an imminent attack.
[42:20] Speaker 3: Quote WASH just reported information appearing of highest importance and
[42:25] Speaker 3: possibly indicating a change of plan. It appears that a
[42:28] Speaker 3: force consisting of a number of infantry and armored divisions
[42:32] Speaker 3: originally scheduled for the United Kingdom are being diverted for
[42:36] Speaker 3: special operations. And so it went. In the days, weeks
[42:40] Speaker 3: and months that followed, the agents in Wading River kept
[42:43] Speaker 3: up the deception pressure.
[42:44] Speaker 2: I love this.
[42:45] Speaker 3: All the misinformation is so good.
[42:48] Speaker 2: So that also the believability of it.
[42:50] Speaker 4: Yeah, the fact you've got to do it and then
[42:51] Speaker 4: give them like, you know, like a little taste, and
[42:53] Speaker 4: then you got to have the inflatable tanks. Yeah, and
[42:57] Speaker 4: in the personal drama of like you know, of course
[42:59] Speaker 4: I could exactly.
[43:01] Speaker 3: And so that other double agent Cohler, he also had
[43:05] Speaker 3: fake contacts. He had holtz Auto and Herman and they
[43:11] Speaker 3: were all employees at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, so again
[43:14] Speaker 3: largest ship yard facility in the world at the time.
[43:18] Speaker 3: There were more than one hundred thousand employees there.
[43:20] Speaker 2: Oh, totally, it's massive.
[43:23] Speaker 3: Massive, And so these three contacts were said to be
[43:26] Speaker 3: government workers in like sensitive posts, and Kohler told the
[43:30] Speaker 3: Germans that there was a build up of forces in
[43:33] Speaker 3: Iceland that he got from them, and that would mean
[43:36] Speaker 3: there was going to be an attack against Norway or
[43:39] Speaker 3: Denmark carried out by Allied forces based in Scotland. So
[43:43] Speaker 3: they're like, look up there. And it wasn't just European
[43:48] Speaker 3: intel that got spread out of owen House. They also
[43:51] Speaker 3: spread information about Allied actions in the Pacific, so the
[43:55] Speaker 3: Germans would pass that stuff along to the Japanese that
[43:57] Speaker 3: were based in Berlin. The owen House crew made up
[44:01] Speaker 3: all sorts of troop movements in the Pacific that they
[44:03] Speaker 3: would like nonchalantly mention in passing to the Germans. It's
[44:07] Speaker 3: just gossip. It's like, no big deal.
[44:09] Speaker 2: Just hot gossy.
[44:11] Speaker 3: They wound up pulling away major parts of Japanese naval
[44:14] Speaker 3: forces from what they thought was an impending attack in
[44:18] Speaker 3: the Central Pacific. And then meanwhile Allied forces like descend
[44:22] Speaker 3: on the Marshall Islands.
[44:23] Speaker 2: Oh, go down to Australia and work their way up right.
[44:25] Speaker 3: And so essentially per the Department of the Interior. Quote.
[44:29] Speaker 3: Until the last days of the war, as British forces
[44:32] Speaker 3: closed in on Hamburg, the Germans were still radioing the
[44:36] Speaker 3: agents and wading river with offers of thousands of dollars
[44:39] Speaker 3: to end ninety eight for information. In the words of
[44:42] Speaker 3: one historian, German faith in Moscera never wavered. They never
[44:48] Speaker 3: gave up on this do They never thought, you know what,
[44:50] Speaker 3: like he's not always right, Like they fully believed it. So,
[44:53] Speaker 3: I mean it's sort of a testament too, to the
[44:55] Speaker 3: skill of the FBI agents. They yes, in crafting all
[44:58] Speaker 3: this stuff. We never really associate the FBI with spy
[45:02] Speaker 3: stuff in World War Two. You think of it as
[45:04] Speaker 3: like higher You never think of it as a domestic thing.
[45:06] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[45:06] Speaker 4: I think about them like trying to get like saboteurs
[45:09] Speaker 4: at the Brooklyn Naval Yard exactly.
[45:11] Speaker 3: So, what happened to the place after the war, after
[45:14] Speaker 3: Operation Ostrich wrapped up.
[45:16] Speaker 2: What happened to Elizabeth after Operation Austrie wrapped.
[45:19] Speaker 3: Up Sarah, That's a great question.
[45:21] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[45:21] Speaker 3: Nineteen forty five a movie came out. Of course, it
[45:24] Speaker 3: was called The House on ninety second Street. It was
[45:28] Speaker 3: the spy film very of the moment, and it was
[45:31] Speaker 3: made with the full cooperation of the FBI, and it
[45:34] Speaker 3: was Hollywood's first semi documentary spy film, interesting dramatizing the
[45:39] Speaker 3: real nineteen thirty eight to forty one German spy investigations.
[45:43] Speaker 2: In the US House on ninety second Street.
[45:45] Speaker 3: House on ninety second Street. So the story follows this
[45:48] Speaker 3: young American with German roots who gets recruited by the Nazis,
[45:52] Speaker 3: but instead of joining the obver, he secretly contacts the
[45:56] Speaker 3: FBI and becomes a double agent. Sound familiar, totally movie.
[46:00] Speaker 3: The guy's mission was to join a Nazi spy ring
[46:03] Speaker 3: operating out of a boarding house on East ninety second
[46:06] Speaker 3: Street in Manhattan, and he was supposed to identify its
[46:09] Speaker 3: leadership and prevent the theft of atomic research secrets from
[46:12] Speaker 3: US laboratories. And he also had to help the FBI
[46:16] Speaker 3: roll up this entire espionage network. And so the climax
[46:20] Speaker 3: of the movie recreates an FBI raid using actual agents
[46:24] Speaker 3: and real procedures. So the AFI catalog American film Institute,
[46:29] Speaker 3: not the band notes quote. After the opening credits, a
[46:33] Speaker 3: written prologue reads, this story is adapted from cases in
[46:37] Speaker 3: the espionage files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Produced
[46:42] Speaker 3: with the FBI's complete cooperation. It could not be made
[46:46] Speaker 3: public until the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan.
[46:50] Speaker 3: The scenes in this picture were photographed in the localities
[46:53] Speaker 3: of the incidents depicted, Washington, New York, and their vicinities,
[46:58] Speaker 3: wherever possible, in the actual place the original incident occurred.
[47:03] Speaker 3: With the exception of the leading players, all FBI personnel
[47:07] Speaker 3: in the picture are members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
[47:12] Speaker 3: The like celebrity worship of Jangarl.
[47:15] Speaker 2: Oh my god, he, oh my god, have you got
[47:19] Speaker 2: a movie camera? Lord?
[47:23] Speaker 3: So some of the filming for the movie took place
[47:26] Speaker 3: at Owen House aka Wading River Station. And so then
[47:30] Speaker 3: you compare this to how the UK, like, how over
[47:33] Speaker 3: there anyone with the slightest involvement in intelligence activities during
[47:38] Speaker 3: World War two had to sign a State Secret Act
[47:40] Speaker 3: thing like an agreement seventies right, Yeah, it was everything
[47:43] Speaker 3: stayed classified to the seventies. You couldn't even say that
[47:46] Speaker 3: you worked at a certain place like you just couldn't
[47:48] Speaker 3: talk about it. But we're the home a Hollywood baby.
[47:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, story must be told.
[47:54] Speaker 3: June nineteen forty.
[47:55] Speaker 2: Five from the headlines we love that not a new thing.
[48:01] Speaker 2: You watched the like I was a Communist for the FBI.
[48:03] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So June nineteen forty five, Waiting River Station
[48:07] Speaker 3: was dismantled. They went took all the stuff out. The
[48:10] Speaker 3: FBI lease was up. The house and its seventy one
[48:13] Speaker 3: acres got transferred to the Episcopal Diocese.
[48:16] Speaker 2: Of New York. They didn't give it to the family, No.
[48:19] Speaker 3: The family was like here you were donated and they
[48:22] Speaker 3: to be used as a youth camp eventually called campd Wolf,
[48:27] Speaker 3: and the house became known as Benson House in honor
[48:30] Speaker 3: of Mary E. Benson, a Brooklyn Episcopalian who's fifty thousand
[48:34] Speaker 3: dollars bequest to the diocese funded the purchase of the property.
[48:39] Speaker 3: So in the subsequent years, like they built all these
[48:41] Speaker 3: other like outbuildings in a chapel and all this other stuff,
[48:45] Speaker 3: Benson House stayed the camp's administrative and residential corps. The
[48:50] Speaker 3: diocese shifted Camp to Wolf from like just a summer
[48:53] Speaker 3: youth camp to this like retreat, a conference ministry. Yeah.
[48:59] Speaker 3: By the nine they also were doing like family reunions, weddings, retreats. Yeah,
[49:05] Speaker 3: and they had like a swimming pool. They actually paved
[49:07] Speaker 3: the drivewood. But this whole time, no one really knew
[49:11] Speaker 3: much about the FBI presence there, really.
[49:14] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[49:14] Speaker 3: So then retired FBI agent Raymond bat Nivis, who liked
[49:20] Speaker 3: to write for the Society of Former Special Agents. He
[49:23] Speaker 3: was a history professor at George Washington University at the time,
[49:27] Speaker 3: and he was researching a book that he wanted to
[49:29] Speaker 3: write about wartime counterintelligence in the US and he uncovered
[49:33] Speaker 3: all this information about Owen House. So on the seventieth
[49:37] Speaker 3: anniversary of the D Day invasion June sixth, twenty fourteen,
[49:41] Speaker 3: there was a ceremony to honor the efforts of FBI
[49:45] Speaker 3: agents during World War Two, and they held it at
[49:47] Speaker 3: Owen House. The Society of Former Special Agents, the Episcopal
[49:51] Speaker 3: Diocese in New York, Suffolk County Historical Society, and the
[49:55] Speaker 3: FBI's New York Division installed a plaque there to you know,
[50:00] Speaker 3: recognize what had happened. And that's the first time that
[50:03] Speaker 3: the house's significance was made public. Everyone kept mum so
[50:10] Speaker 3: now it's The house is now officially referred to as
[50:12] Speaker 3: the Wading River Radio Station. In twenty eighteen, it was
[50:16] Speaker 3: put onto the National Register of Historic Places. Camp de
[50:20] Speaker 3: Wolfe's executive directors said there were quote not too many
[50:24] Speaker 3: artifacts that have survived. Besides the odd piece of physical evidence,
[50:29] Speaker 3: our basement was running a radio antenna. They actually put
[50:32] Speaker 3: a car engine in the basement in the floor to
[50:35] Speaker 3: make their own electricity. So we still have the block
[50:38] Speaker 3: where the car engine was actually mounted down there, but
[50:41] Speaker 3: there's actually very little evidence that anything happened there. So
[50:46] Speaker 3: they were pretty you know, FBI was pretty good and clear.
[50:49] Speaker 2: They just like, we couldn't get the cement block up,
[50:51] Speaker 2: so we left.
[50:54] Speaker 3: Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
[50:57] Speaker 2: Well, okay, this is going to sound wild. Maybe not.
[51:00] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[51:00] Speaker 4: You know me pretty well, the like, you know, the
[51:02] Speaker 4: the Djibuki tweet about the FBI and MLKA day being like,
[51:06] Speaker 4: just because we killed assassinated MLK doesn't mean we can't
[51:10] Speaker 4: miss them. I always feel very conflicted about the FBI
[51:16] Speaker 4: because of co intel, pro mk ultra a lot of
[51:19] Speaker 4: bad stuff, But I am able to like somehow compartmentalize
[51:23] Speaker 4: and be able to follow stories about well meaning things
[51:26] Speaker 4: like the FBI trying to fight fascism, so I can
[51:29] Speaker 4: love certain things and then hate other things without having
[51:32] Speaker 4: to have to have only one simple view of the FBI.
[51:34] Speaker 4: So I can marvel at an FBI agent doing their
[51:37] Speaker 4: really you know, their best work, all this like spycraft stuff,
[51:40] Speaker 4: and really be into it, be like, wait to go, FBI,
[51:43] Speaker 4: And then part of me is like, what are you
[51:45] Speaker 4: talking about?
[51:46] Speaker 2: So like I don't.
[51:47] Speaker 4: I'm always like thrilled at like stories of FBI agents,
[51:50] Speaker 4: especially of this period of time, and and I marvel
[51:53] Speaker 4: at and then I find my reaction to myself ridiculous
[51:56] Speaker 4: because I'm like, oh, so that's how it is now,
[51:58] Speaker 4: and I'm like, no, no, I'm just talking about this
[52:00] Speaker 4: in one individual FBI agent.
[52:01] Speaker 2: I don't mean the whole program.
[52:03] Speaker 4: So I find that these stories really like I love
[52:06] Speaker 4: the FBI of this period, which I find ridiculous that
[52:09] Speaker 4: I can even say that with that with this trade face.
[52:12] Speaker 2: So there you go. That's Mine's the I'm.
[52:14] Speaker 3: They're with you. I'm always I hear these stories. I'm
[52:18] Speaker 3: so impressed with the network that they had and how
[52:21] Speaker 3: quickly pre Internet they were getting information out there. And
[52:25] Speaker 3: acting on things, and the level of intelligence gathering.
[52:30] Speaker 4: Yes, the intelligence gathering and remarkable their work with the underworld.
[52:34] Speaker 4: I mean, let's not lie.
[52:35] Speaker 3: That was crazy, and we always say you don't lie
[52:38] Speaker 3: to the FBI because they're just like the alternate. And
[52:40] Speaker 3: that's why I think, like the things that diminish it,
[52:43] Speaker 3: the dark moments, and also like the disintegration of parts
[52:47] Speaker 3: of it these days is disappointing because there are really
[52:51] Speaker 3: incredible elements to to what they've done, what they.
[52:53] Speaker 2: Do, especially individually.
[52:55] Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, but anyway, I just I'm with you on that.
[52:58] Speaker 3: Let's get a talk back.
[53:00] Speaker 4: Yeah, oh.
[53:05] Speaker 2: My god, do illed g.
[53:15] Speaker 5: Hi Elizabeth and the man host. That's for you, Elizabeth.
[53:19] Speaker 5: My name is Katie. I am from Albuquerque. I'm a
[53:21] Speaker 5: longtime listener, but my husband is not. He's a new listener,
[53:24] Speaker 5: and I introduced the podcast to him because he recently
[53:27] Speaker 5: fell off the latter and broke his back. And while
[53:28] Speaker 5: he's being sad, I'm being like, here, listen to this podcast.
[53:31] Speaker 5: It will give you a joy. When he fell up
[53:33] Speaker 5: the ladder, he's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
[53:35] Speaker 5: I let everybody down, and I was like, no, the
[53:37] Speaker 5: only person you let down is yourself when you fell
[53:39] Speaker 5: off that ladder.
[53:40] Speaker 3: I thought you would enjoy that.
[53:43] Speaker 2: Hey, Katie, my sense of humors darking up. I love
[53:46] Speaker 2: that incredible. I feel.
[53:48] Speaker 3: I'm so sorry for your for your husband, that's terrible,
[53:52] Speaker 3: and I wish him the quickest of recuperations. But Katie,
[53:57] Speaker 3: he is one lucky duck to have you for You're amazing,
[54:01] Speaker 3: You're so funny. Oh my goodness.
[54:03] Speaker 4: Anyway, as the man host, I really appreciated that.
[54:09] Speaker 3: That's it for today. You can find us online at
[54:12] Speaker 3: ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on
[54:16] Speaker 3: both Blue Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous
[54:20] Speaker 3: Crime Pod. You can email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com,
[54:24] Speaker 3: or you can be like Katie and leave us a
[54:26] Speaker 3: talk back on the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime
[54:34] Speaker 3: is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and
[54:37] Speaker 3: edited by special agent in charge of Mixed Berry Pies
[54:41] Speaker 3: Dave Kusten, starring Annale Rutger as Judith. Research is by
[54:45] Speaker 3: expert radio operator MRSA Brown and German accent coach Jabari Davis.
[54:50] Speaker 3: The theme song is by our Man and Argentina Thomas
[54:53] Speaker 3: Lee and Chief Petty Officer Travis Dutt. Host wardrobe is
[54:57] Speaker 3: provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by
[55:00] Speaker 3: Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are FBI handlers Ben
[55:04] Speaker 3: Bowen and Noel Brown.
[55:11] Speaker 5: Ridicous Crime Say It One More Time Piquious Crime.
[55:18] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
[55:21] Speaker 1: from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[55:24] Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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