The Insane Tactics The CIA Used To Defeat Hitler In WWII - John Lisle

1. 0:00 – 0:50

   Intro

   1. JLJohn Lisle0:00

      ... is it possible to push Hitler, kind of, over that threshold from either male to female, or really upset his fragile masculinity? So, how can we do this? What if we inject female sex hormones into the vegetables that Hitler eats? If he eats these hormones, then that's really gonna push him over the edge and his mustache is gonna fall out, his voice is gonna turn soprano, and his chest is going to g- grow breasts. This will decimate his fragile ego and he's gonna lose all of his credibility, and people aren't gonna take him seriously, and we'll somehow win the war. This is the idea.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:35

      (wind blowing) What do you do? What's your job?

   3. JLJohn Lisle0:39

      I'm a historian. I'm a professor at the University of Texas, um, but I also write books. You know, this one that just came out, The Dirty Tricks Department, that's the book, uh, that I've been working on for a year, so I'm glad it is finally

2. 0:50 – 6:51

   The Dirty Tricks Department

   1. JLJohn Lisle0:50

      out there for people to enjoy, hopefully.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:52

      What is the story of The Dirty Tricks Department? What is it? How did it come about?

   3. JLJohn Lisle0:56

      Yeah, this, this is the story of a group of scientists during World War II who created the secret weapons, documents, and disguises for the OSS. This is the precursor to the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services. I had come across this topic when I was working on my dissertation in grad school, which was on science in the intelligence community, and then I came across some of the figures that appear in this book. And so my... while my dissertation was on a different topic, I couldn't help myself but really want to learn more about this topic (laughs) . And so I was kind of doing a dual, uh, investigation in the archives. I had to finish my dissertation, but my heart was interested in researching this stuff. So, this is the product of that kind of research that I just couldn't help myself from doing on the OSS and its, uh, Dirty Tricks Department.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:44

      What is the genesis of The Dirty Tricks Department, then? Does it grow out of the OSS? Is it built and then tacked on? How does that work?

   5. JLJohn Lisle1:51

      Yeah, it's, it kind of grows out of the OSS for the most part. Um, so the OSS is in charge of, uh, coordinating kind of intelligence during World War II for the United States. It did things like send spies abroad and gather information and analyze that information, uh, and spread disinformation, uh, abroad. One of the things that it also does is, uh, create these weapons and gadgets and disguises and forged documents that I mentioned, and that became the job of, uh, the research and development branch of the OSS, the R&D branch, or what I call the Dirty Tricks Department. Um, and so that pretty quickly grew out of the OSS as the head of the OSS, William Donovan, realized that he needed scientists to create these things so that the spies and saboteurs who were being sent abroad are equipped and can do their jobs.

   6. CWChris Williamson2:41

      There is an equivalent that happened in the UK, and I'm pretty sure that, uh, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, uh, is kind of... Is that, does that feel like a parallel? Does that feel like the Anglicized sister book to what you wrote?

   7. JLJohn Lisle2:55

      There are definitely parallels between those two organizations. So, the, the kind of parallel to the OSS for the British is the SOE, the Special Operations Executive. I talk about that a little bit in my book because the OSS, especially this R&D branch that I talk about, and the SOE are sharing a lot of their ideas, so there's a lot of collaboration back and forth. One of the things they collaborate on are creating specialized pills for these agents. So, one of the pills, the most well-known is, like, the L-pill, lethal pill, a cyanide pill. Um, an- another thing that the British work on that doesn't really make it to the OSS but they're doing independently that I talk about a little bit 'cause it's almost too interesting not to include was the idea of a rat bomb. So, the rat bomb was... You would take a, a dead rat, taxidermy it, you would kind of hollow it out and stuff in explosives, and you would throw this rat into a coal reserve of, say, the Germans, the idea being that the Germans would shovel the coal into their boilers of their locomotives and they're not gonna stop to pick out rats. If they happen to shovel in a rat, then they'll just shovel in a rat. Well, this, this rat bomb, it's gonna have explosives inside of these rats. They'll shovel it into their boilers and it's going to explode, it's gonna destroy their trains. So, that was a British invention. The OSS, the R&D branch, did something very similar called Black Joe, which was kind of hollowed out lumps of coal. So, it wasn't a rat, but the same idea. You'd hollow out these lumps of coal, you'd stuff explosives and throw it in the coal reserve for the same effect, hopefully.

   8. CWChris Williamson4:25

      How did the agents keep the L-pill on them at all times?

   9. JLJohn Lisle4:31

      So, for the L-pill, they would... Well, there are a, a few ways. M- most of the time, though, they would just keep it in a pocket or something. So, I tell one story in the book of William Donovan, the head of this OSS. On the day after D-Day, you know, so he's wanting to be in the action. This is kind of a common theme with William Donovan. He is dying to be in the action. He was a World War I war hero, he had earned the Medal of Honor during World War I, and he couldn't stand not being in the action, sitting behind the desk. So, he decides he wants to get involved in the Normandy invasion. So, on D-Day, uh, h- or the day after, he goes onto the beaches and he goes up to where kind of the German line is and he starts getting shot at, and he's with one of, kind of his right-hand man. They're getting shot at, they drop beneath some bushes and they start talking to one another, and this David Bruce, his kind of colleague who's with him, asks Donovan, "What are we gonna do? How are we gonna get out of th- you know, w- what's gonna happen?" And Donovan reaches in his pocket and he's rummaging around and he's looking for his L-pill that he's been supplied with by this R&D branch, his cyanide pill, 'cause he figures it's better to kill ourselves than to have the Germans capture us and interrogate us and potentially get information out of us. He ends up not being able to find his L-pill. He kind of makes a joke that, "I hope the, you know, the person who's cleaning my hotel doesn't, you know, see these pills and take them with them." Um-... but David Bruce, this guy, he, uh, Donovan tells Bruce, "Well, I, you know, I, I don't have the L-pill, so I think I'm just gonna have to shoot first." And Bruce doesn't really understand what Donovan means. He assumes that, "Oh, you're gonna shoot first at the Germans, and you're gonna supply cover for us so that I can run away." And Donovan says, "No, you've misunderstood me. I'm gonna shoot you're first as your commanding officer. You first as your commanding officer, it's my duty, that way you don't have to do the dirty work of killing me. I'll kill you, then I'll kill myself." Um, but eventually, they were able to get away, that didn't happen. But yeah, so L-pill could be stashed anywhere but, um, one of the ways was just in a pocket. Another way is in, that Stanley Lovell, the main character of this book, he comes up with, is to get hollowed out razors. So like a Gillette razor, hollow out kind of the inside, and you can just stash pills in there, and it's gonna be really hard to look. Who's gonna think to look in this hollowed out part of a razor? So there are a few kind of ingenious ways that came up.

3. 6:51 – 11:16

   The Mad Life of William Donovan

   1. CWChris Williamson6:51

      William Donovan is essentially the head of the precursor to the CIA and decides that he wants to be in the action storming the beaches of Normandy, the day after D-Day. That's right.

   2. JLJohn Lisle7:05

      Yes. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson7:05

      That's what that guy decided to do. Okay, that's-

   4. JLJohn Lisle7:07

      Yes.

   5. CWChris Williamson7:07

      ... psychotic. Okay. Tell me about William Donovan. Who is this man? What sort of a person is he? Uh, w- what's his working protocols like?

   6. JLJohn Lisle7:18

      Mm-hmm. Yeah, so like I mentioned, he was a World War I war hero. He was pretty much the most decorated American, uh, kind of soldier in World War I. So a really high, highly decorated. He was shot in the leg with a machine gun while he was commanding his troops, um, and he, he eventually got the Medal of Honor. He was a lawyer. He had gone to Columbia Law School around the same time that FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, had. When Franklin Roosevelt had left the governorship of New York, Donovan ran to be the Governor of New York. He lost that, but he had a close relationship with FDR. Um, they were of differing political philosophies. Uh, Donovan was a Republican, FDR a Democrat, but they were still relatively close. During the 1930s before World War II begins, FDR sends Donovan to Europe to kind of gauge the situation, to feel out, uh, what the tensions are between countries. Donovan comes back telling FDR that he thinks, uh, it's inevitable that another war is going to break out, and he urges Roosevelt to create some kind of centralized intelligence organization that will be able to gather information and keep the President, keep FDR as up-to-date and informed as possible on events that are happening abroad. He's lobbying for-

   7. CWChris Williamson8:33

      Just to interject that, John.

   8. JLJohn Lisle8:34

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson8:34

      Is there no... There's no other equivalent kind of agency or organization to collect this sort of information and give it to the President before this?

   10. JLJohn Lisle8:45

       Well, there, there are these agencies, but they have some problems in Donovan- Donovan's view, especially associated with the military branches, there's like Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, but Donovan is worried that they're not coordinating their information. So the President, you know, i- i- he's getting a bunch of different views. Another problem Donovan sees is that they're duplicating research. So we have all these different organizations doing the same thing, whereas we're just wasting money. We should have a centralized group that's able to coordinate all of this and, uh, analyze it for the President, that way we can trust what's being done. Um, so that- that's the basis, at least, of his view of what the OSS should do. So he eventually persuades Roosevelt to create this organization, what will become the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, and he's appointed as its head. So that's kind of how Donovan ends up being the head of this organization.

   11. CWChris Williamson9:33

       Got you. And what is he like once he gets in the OSS? Because it doesn't seem like his gung-ho war-fearing, warmongering ways have been left behind him.

   12. JLJohn Lisle9:44

       Not at all. (laughs) That, the gung-ho is a good term to describe William Donovan. The organization is kind of a reflection of his own personality too. He is someone who flies by the s- by the seat of his pants. He doesn't wanna ask permission for anything, he just wants to do it. And that's kind of reflected in the organization itself. Like I said, the main character of this book is this guy, Stanley Lovell. He's a chemist who's put in charge of this R&D branch. Stanley Lovell originally doesn't quite know what his job is supposed to be. He's recruited by Donovan to create all these weapons and disguises, but Donovan never tells him, "Here's what you need to create." He just tells Lovell, "Well, do it. Create stuff that's useful for us." Lovell doesn't know what to do, so he asked David Bruce, that guy who had, who would accompany Donovan on Normandy, he asked him, "What do I do? You're his right-hand man. Give me some advice." And David Bruce says, "Don't ask what to do. Just do something and then ask for forgiveness if necessary, but just do it." You know? So that was kind of the guiding principle. Fly by your seat of the pants, throw things against the wall, see what sticks, and you know, we'll try to get through this.

   13. CWChris Williamson10:46

       There's something so kind of almost romantic and whimsical and nostalgic about the fact that both the UK, our equivalent over here, uh, the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and you guys with, uh, what you were doing with the, this research group are just trying stuff out. Aniseed balls as timers for limpet mines, and making foxes glow, and trying to turn Hitler trans, all of which we'll, we'll get onto in a little bit. Um,

4. 11:16 – 20:47

   Recruiting Agents for the OSS

   1. CWChris Williamson11:16

      so William Donovan, he gets introduced, he gets told, uh, "Just do stuff. Make, make chaos and, and create some useful tools that our, uh, soldiers and our special operators can use overseas." What does he start with? What's the first thing that he does?

   2. JLJohn Lisle11:33

      Mm-hmm. Well, the main kind of mission of the OSS, again, is to gather intelligence. So you first have to recruit agents who are going to do that for you and c- uh, develop connections abroad, uh-... of people who know the geography, know the terrain, are able to see what the German troop movements are doing. So, that's kind of the main thing for the OSS. But in doing that, it quickly becomes evident that you're going to need this R&D branch that supplies these agents. How are they gonna get their disguises? Well, we need someone to create that. Um, so Roosevelt would frequently call Donovan ... Well, Roosevelt kind of had ... He, he, he was paralyzed. He couldn't walk, and so he called Donovan 'my secret legs'. "This is someone who's gonna go out and find stuff out for me and bring it back to me." Um, so that's, you know, that's kind of the purpose of the OSS.

   3. CWChris Williamson12:18

      Right. Okay. They need to get some different agents? Or, I guess they would ... What- were they called agents at the time?

   4. JLJohn Lisle12:26

      Uh, yeah. So, uh, the recruits for the OSS ... If you wanted to be a recruiter or if you were recruited, you would have to go to a training school. So, in Maryland at the, what's ... The Congressional Country Club, the OSS basically took this land over during World War II. It became known as Area F, and Area F was a place where all of these recruits were trained in how to engage in this unconventional warfare. So, where, where the driving range for golf balls had previously existed, it became a rifle range where they would practice their shooting. The bunkers, you know, with sand in them for shots, it became a target practice for their mortars and all kinds of stuff. Um, and on the Congressional Country Club, there's a clubhouse. In the basement floor of that clubhouse became what's known as the Maryland Research Laboratory, and this is the laboratory where Stanley Lovell and his underlings tried to develop all of these weapons.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:21

      Right. So, Stanley is in charge? H- w- he ... I'm gonna guess he was basically not ... There was no oversight or very little oversight from William Donovan. Is that right?

   6. JLJohn Lisle13:29

      Correct, yes. Stanley Lovell is this New England chemist who gets recruited to join the OSS. When he's recruited, he actually is told to go to OSS headquarters, and he shows up kind of after hours. It's all dark. No one's really there, and he gets tapped on the shoulder by a security guard, and he's spooked. Oh my gosh, he didn't know anyone was there. And he's led to a room, and he's waiting in this room for a long time, not even knowing really what he's doing there because he doesn't know much about the OSS. It's this secret organization. All of a sudden, this giant figure walks in the room. He's got a Medal of Honor lapel pin on him, and he says, "I want you to be my Professor Moriarty," and it was William Donovan saying this to Stanley Lovell. Professor Moriarty being the kind of antagonist in the Sherlock Holmes novels. This is the, you know, the bad guy. But "I want ..." He- Donovan tells him, "I want you to create all the dirty tricks for this organization." So, that's how Stanley Lovell gets wrapped up in all this.

   7. CWChris Williamson14:23

      Okay.

   8. JLJohn Lisle14:23

      He's initially rel- Yeah, yeah. He's initially reluctant to, to join because he's a chemist and he wanted to use his scientific expertise for good. He thought he had kind of an obligation to do that. But he realizes that he's also ... Growing up, he was an orphan basically. Both of his parents died very young. He was raised by his sister. He got a great education, and he thought that he owed it to his country to do something to help in this war. So, one of the arcs of this story is seeing Lovell's internal tensions. He doesn't want to use his scientific expertise to harm others, but at the same time, he feels a debt that he owes to his country that he feels he can repay by joining this organization in creating these weapons.

   9. CWChris Williamson15:06

      Right. When does he make the exploding pens? When does that happen?

   10. JLJohn Lisle15:11

       Um, that's, that's pretty early on. There's, uh, kind of just to break down the hierarchy of this, there's the OSS. One of the branches within the OSS is this R&D branch, the Research and Development branch that Stanley Lovell is in charge of, and then that's kind of broken into three different divisions. There's Division 19, which creates all the weapons. There's the Documents Division, which forges all the documents. And then there's the Camouflage Division, which creates all the disguises. So, Division 19 is in charge of creating, you know, the pen guns and the all ... you know, the exploding flour, all that kind of stuff, the, the incendiary devices, bat bombs. So, that's that one division. That happens pretty early, um, after the R&D branch is created.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:53

       Okay. What ... In terms of document forgery, that seems like the least exciting group to be a part of. Is that fair? You're just trying to create German passports all day and stuff?

   12. JLJohn Lisle16:06

       Um, maybe f- from a work perspective at that time, yeah, maybe that would be the least exciting. From my perspective, it's one of the most exciting because looking at the details of what they did is incredible, so it's really exciting to be reading-

   13. CWChris Williamson16:20

       What like? What did, what did they do?

   14. JLJohn Lisle16:22

       Um, so f- for a document, you had to be so specific that it, it, it, it really is extremely impressive. For instance, if you wanted to forge a German ration ticket or a ... Or anything, a license or a passport or anything, not only did you have to kind of use the right signatures and forge the right stamps to stamp on them, you also had to use the right kind of, like, paper. So, you had to analyze what kind of pulp is being used in this paper, and it, it just gets so incredibly cl- complex. And the idea that they figured this out is really incredible. They ... One, one of the interesting things about the Documents Division too is that the characters within it are really exciting themselves. Some of the forgers that worked for this Documents Division were sprung from prison because they had been forging government bonds and money and all kinds of stuff, and they got caught and were sent to prison. So, Stanley Lovell recruits them. "Hey, you've got this skill. We could use you in the war," you know? And maybe this will look favorably upon your, you know, sentencing or something like that. So, prisoners were used in this Documents Division, especially people who were experts at signatures, who could forge, forge the signatures of all kinds of people. One of the most n- well-known in this division was Jim the Penman. His real name is kind of never really revealed. But it was said that Jim the Pen- Penman would get his colleagues to sign their signature on a page, and he would recreate their signatures up and down the page multiple times, and he would bet them five bucks that they wouldn't be able to, to pick out their original signature. And he got, you know, a lot of money off of this. (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson17:53

       That is so good. Okay, so the Camouflage Division, what do they create? What are they working on?

   16. JLJohn Lisle17:59

       Yeah, they're in charge of the disguises. So, they're in charge of procuring the different kinds of, um, uh, anything that you might wear as an undercover agent. So, one of the things they did was try to get immigrants who were coming to the United States, European immigrants, they would offer to buy their clothes off of them so they could have authentic clothing for these agents going abroad. Another interesting thing they do is create secret compartments within, like, clothing so that you could carry messages with you without a German guard, say, if he were to, um, frisk you or something, w- wouldn't be able to detect it. So, these secret message chambers were put into all kinds of things. You could hollow out the sole of your shoe, you could... Um, one, one of my favorite ones is, involves lipsticks for female agents. So, the idea would be you would have a message, you would roll it up really small, you would melt the wax of lipstick, and you would put the message in the tube, and then you would pour the wax back into the tube and, like, mold it to look like lipstick. So, the lipstick would be surrounding the message and you would never know because it just looks like lipstick. Yeah, so... Uh, some of, some of the other things that the camouflage division would do, would artificially age people. So, putting charcoal in the wrinkles of the face would make the wrinkles look deeper and make you look older. Applying some white to the temples of your, you know, your hair makes you look a little bit older. Um, you could stuff newspaper into your shoe to kind of throw off your gait and make you a little bit taller. There were all kinds of these tricks of the trade. Rub your hands on rusty metal and then on your face, and it would give you a little bit different complexion. (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson19:31

       Wow. Okay, so this is, like, you know, we, we look at prosthetics and Hollywood, uh, and, uh, cosmetic surgery and stuff now. This is the most village, backyard equivalent of that done, whatever, 80 years ago.

   18. JLJohn Lisle19:48

       Yeah, for the most part. I, I think some of the simplest, uh, kind of inventions and disguises tend to be the most ingenious because it's just so simple. I, I just love the simple ones. But it actually gets... It, it does get fairly complicated. There are agents who undergo, like, facial reconstruction surgery.

   19. CWChris Williamson20:03

       No way.

   20. JLJohn Lisle20:03

       You know, they'll have their, they'll have their jaw broken to give their face a little bit different look, or they'll graft. There's one person that I talk about, um, George Langelaan. He was this agent for, for the British, actually. He gets trained by American, some American people. But he has... From a young age, he had very protruding ears, very large ears that were very distinctive. And he spoke French, which made him very valuable because he could go to France and train these resistance forces. But he knew a lot of people in this region, and they were worried that he's gonna be noticed, you know, they're gonna know who he is. And so he undergoes surgery to change the shape of his chin, but also to kind of pin back his ears, so they're a little bit less distinctive. (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson20:42

       Well, he might have been happy about that. I don't know if he's been teased about his ears all of the time. Okay, um,

5. 20:47 – 25:27

   Did the CIA Use Psychedelics in WWII?

   1. CWChris Williamson20:47

      what about psychedelics? I know that after the, uh, w- after World War II, we're talking about MK-Ultra-

   2. JLJohn Lisle20:55

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson20:55

      ... we're talking about the OSS and its involvements there. Did they decide to try and dip their toe in early during World War II with any psychedelics?

   4. JLJohn Lisle21:03

      Well, one of the, one of the things that Stanley Lovell wants to do is to develop a truth drug for interrogations. This has been kind of the goal of intelligence agencies for a long time. If you can have a truth drug, you can give it to someone you're interrogating, and they have no choice but to tell you the truth. That's the idea, at least. You know, this has been around for- forever, basically, with alcohol. The idea that you can ply someone with a few drinks, it'll lower their inhibitions, they'll tell you the truth. During the 1920s there was actually a doctor in Dallas, Robert House, who thought that he had come across a truth drug, and this is later going to really, um, uh, get the OSS interested in what he was doing. He had given a drug called scopolamine to a woman who was in labor, kind of a sedative. And suddenly she started talking and telling him all kinds of stuff that he thought, "You shouldn't be telling me this. Like, this is not stuff that normal people would say." And he starts realizing, or he starts thinking to himself, that perhaps this drug, scopolamine, had somehow dimmed her creative capacities. It had prevented her from imagining things. And if that was true, the only thing that she could say was the truth. She couldn't invent any lies. So, maybe that's why she's saying this stuff. That turned out not really to be the case, but, you know, this is the, the kind of idea of this truth drug, though. It, it eliminates your capacities to invent lies, therefore the only thing that you can say is the truth. This gets picked up during World War II when Stanley Lovell decides he wants to test different substances to see if they have this potential truth drug quality. One of the main one he catches on is kind of concentrated THC, like marijuana.

   5. CWChris Williamson22:38

      (laughs)

   6. JLJohn Lisle22:38

      You know, this is the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. This actually seems to work. He does several experiments with this. He's giving it to OSS personnel and literally recording what they say and measure- measuring how mu- how many words they speak. On the THC, they speak a lot more than off of it. Now, the problem is this doesn't guarantee that what you're saying is the truth. It just means your li- inhibitions are a little bit lowered. Um, but there were all kinds of experiments with these truth drugs. One of the main people that Stanley Lovell hires to do these experiments is a guy named George White. George White was an officer with the Bureau of Narcotics, a narcotics offer- officer. His job is to clean drugs off the street, but now his job becomes giving drugs to people (laughs) with this tru- these truth drug ex- experiments. So, he's injecting THC into cigarettes and handing it to his criminal contacts, the idea being if they start talking about the crimes they've committed, this is probably a good indication that this truth drug is working. And so he does this most famously to an, uh, a gangster in New York named August Del Grazio, and Del Grazio starts telling him about the people he could have killed and the, the politicians who were taking bribes and all kinds of stuff. So, George White w- writes a report saying, "This stuff is great," you know. "This tru- this truth drug is really working." Um, so anyways, one of the lasting legacies of this R&D branch that I talk about is that these experiments are going to really influence a lot of experiments that take place in the CIA, especially this MK-Ultra program.

   7. CWChris Williamson24:06

      Wasn't there something about a fear of them putting LSD in the water or did that come after World War II?

   8. JLJohn Lisle24:13

      Um, that's mostly afterwards. During the Cold War, um, once the CIA is established, kinda the, the successor to the OSS, the main guy who's put in charge of this MKUltra program, which is kinda the US CIA mind control program to figure out whether mind control, truth drugs, all that kind of stuff, is possible, either through drugs or hypnosis or something like that. The guy who's in charge of that is a chemist like Stanley Lovell. His name is Sidney Gottlieb. And one of the main motivations for trying to see whether mind control is possible is the fear that the Soviets are going to put LSD into, say, a city's water supply. And if they do that, Sidney Gottlieb wants to know how are people going to react. You know, if, how, how are we going to detect whether this is p- you know, happening? If someone puts LSD into our water supply, are people going to start killing each other or how are they going to behave? We need to know this so that we can prepare for it. And so one of the motivations for giving unwitting people LSD is to see how they're affected by it without knowing that they're getting it, because if the Soviets do that, we need to know, you know-

   9. CWChris Williamson25:16

      Ah.

   10. JLJohn Lisle25:16

       ... how that, how that's gonna turn out.

   11. CWChris Williamson25:18

       Yes.

   12. JLJohn Lisle25:18

       At least, that's kind of the rationale.

   13. CWChris Williamson25:19

       Very interesting. So going back to injecting people with stuff, what was this mission to try and trans Hitler?

6. 25:27 – 32:05

   When the CIA Tried to Trans Hitler

   1. CWChris Williamson25:27

   2. JLJohn Lisle25:27

      (laughs) Yes. So this is Stanley Lovell in the R&D branch. There is an OSS s- uh, a psychologist who's working with the OSS who writes a report on Hitler's personality, trying to understand who Hitler is, maybe he has vulnerabilities that can be exploited. One of the things that this psychologist points out, Henry Murray, he writes this report saying that Hitler has a large feminine component to his personality. This is what he says in the report. You know, he says, uh, that he has kind of these sexual... is a masochist and all, all kinds of stuff, is submissive. And Stanley Lovell reads this report and he, he wants to figure out a way to use this to the advantage of the United States. Is it possible to push Hitler kind of over that threshold from either male to female or something like, uh, really upset his fragile masculinity. So how can we do this? Stanley Lovell comes up with the idea that what if we inject female sex hormones into the vegetables that Hitler eats? If he eats these hormones, then that's really gonna push him over the edge and his mustache is gonna fall out, his voice is gonna turn sh- soprano, and his chest is going to g- grow breasts. This will decimate his fragile ego and he's gonna lose all of his credibility and people aren't gonna take him seriously and we'll somehow win the war. This is the idea at least. So Stanley Lovell in his memoir, he says that he got some of these female sex hormones. He was able to give it to a gardener in Germany who supplied the Eagle's Nest with its vegetables, where Hitler kind of frequently went. And so Stanley Lovell said, "Yeah, we got the sex hormones to this person, but we never knew really what happened to it. Either the gardener got cold feet or Hitler's tasters had a l- there was a large turnover in them." So when, you know, I don't know (laughs) what happened to it, but apparently it didn't go through.

   3. CWChris Williamson27:15

      Well, I mean, when you think about Hitler's, um, psychological, physiological health throughout the war, Theodor Morell that was his personal physician is just g- I mean, first off, completely insane in injecting him with bull semen and speed and heroin and crack and cocaine and ab- a- absolutely everything by the end of the war. He's on like 10 injections a day, I think. Um, but there is a lot going on. Like he's got a lot to deal with. It seems like Hitler was pre-Alzheimeric or something similar. Maybe he had like a Parkinsonian tremor or something that was going on.

   4. JLJohn Lisle27:46

      Mm.

   5. CWChris Williamson27:47

      The famous video, is it when he's meeting Mussolini and he's got one hand behind his back and the hand that's behind his back on the video won't stop trembling-

   6. JLJohn Lisle27:56

      Mm. Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson27:56

      ... I think, uh, which is pretty interesting. And, um...

   8. JLJohn Lisle28:00

      Mm-hmm. Yeah, there, there was another, uh, plot kind of dealing with his ego. One idea was that... And this doesn't come from the R&D branch, but from some other kind of psychologist. He's pitching it to the Air Force, the, uh, the Army Air Force. The idea being we should drop pornography all over Hitler's place where he's staying. And he doesn't like pornography and it's gonna upset him, and so he's gonna walk out-

   9. CWChris Williamson28:21

      (laughs)

   10. JLJohn Lisle28:22

       ... he's gonna see (laughs) , he's gonna see this smut, these naked women and he's gonna, it's gonna throw him into a rage. And, you know, he's gonna lose his temperament and somehow that's gonna help. He... So this psychologist actually got to a kind of an Air Force general and was explaining this plan and he was promptly thrown out of the office and it, that didn't go anywhere (laughs) . So-

   11. CWChris Williamson28:39

       What a shame.

   12. JLJohn Lisle28:39

       ... I, I never understood how that would actually help the war, but apparently it was some kind of psychological scheme that was cooked up.

   13. CWChris Williamson28:46

       Were there any other psychological warfare tactics that they decided to try and attempt?

   14. JLJohn Lisle28:51

       Yes, several. Um, I have a chapter in, in the book that talks just about psychological warfare. This is one of the most interesting ones because they really do get pretty outlandish. One, uh, this, this one's fairly well known, but there's a, a substance called Who Me that the R&D branch of the OSS created. Who Me, it's this subs- substance that smells really bad. The idea was that we can hire a chemical engineer to manufacture this substance that smells like feces or vomit or skunk or something like that and we're gonna sneak the substance in these tubes to little boys in Japan and, or little boys in China. And the Japanese are occupying China. These little boys are going to squirt this substance on the backside of the Japanese officials and it's gonna embarrass them and they're, you know, because it's gonna smell really bad and so they'll be demoralized and maybe they'll, you know, uh, make a bad decision or something. That was at least the idea. So it was called Who Me. I don't know if it had too much practical value. Stanley Lovell does tell a funny story where he kept this locked up in his office, in a kind of a, a cabinet with a lock on it. Well, of course, pretty much everyone in the OSS was taught how to pick locks. So some jokester, um, decided to start... pick the lock and take some Who Me and was squirting it around the office. Lovell decided to set a booby trap the next time this happened. So he booby trapped the lock so that whenever anyone picked it and opened the cabinet, it would spray the Who Me back at them. And so Lovell, he says one night someone came in, picked the lock, opened the cabinet, they got sprayed. He never reveals who it was, but he says it was someone too highly placed for me to discipline. So i- I, you know, it was someone apparently pretty high up in the OSS.

   15. CWChris Williamson30:25

       Wasn't there a story of somebody going into the president's office and unloading a full clip of a gun-... behind him.

   16. JLJohn Lisle30:32

       Ye- yes, William Donovan himself, the head of the OSS. Um, he wanted to show Franklin Roosevelt the kinds of things that his organization was working on because it never hurt to impress the president. You gotta have this guy on your side, so he wants to impress Roosevelt. And so, how better to impress him than with a silenced, flashless pistol? So, Donovan walks to Roosevelt's office and he, he was friendly with Roosevelt, so he was often just waved in. So, he's waived into the office by the security guard, he drops a bag of sand in the corner of the office. Meanwhile, President Roosevelt is dictating a letter to his secretary, so he's not really even looking at the door. He doesn't know Donovan has entered. Donovan pulls out the silenced, flashless .22 pistol that Stanley Lovell and the R&D branch have created, and he unloads the clip into this bag of sand in the office. After a little while, Roosevelt smells burnt gunpowder and he turns around and he sees Donovan standing there with this empty pistol in his hand. And he's flabbergasted. He thinks this is a gr- great, you know, "I didn't even realize this thing had gone off." So, Donovan makes kind of a show of it, he hands the pistol to the President and lets him keep it. And Roosevelt kind of jokes, "You're the only Republican I would ever allow in my office with a gun."

   17. CWChris Williamson31:43

       Uh... (laughs) Oh, man. It's so... This is what I mean when I say sort of whimsical and beautifully nostalgic. The fact that the, the gloves are off and the rules are out of the window and no one's got any rules or procedures. Everyone can just do what they want. Um, one of my favorite... I don't know whether you class this as psychological warfare, but Operation Fantasia, I think-

7. 32:05 – 39:10

   Creating Glowing Foxes to Scare the Japanese

   1. JLJohn Lisle32:05

      Yes.

   2. CWChris Williamson32:05

      ... is my favorite story from the entire book. Tell people from the beginning what Operation Fantasia was.

   3. JLJohn Lisle32:11

      Yeah, this might be my favorite one too. I was so excited. I had, I had heard generally that this idea existed, the idea that we would somehow use foxes to scare the Japanese. And the more I looked into this and the more documents I found, the more ridiculous I realized, and just really incredible and insane this plot really was. So, this idea of Operation Fantasia was the brainchild of a g- of a, a businessman named Ed Salinger. He had done a lot of business before the war in Tokyo, so he kind of knew Japanese culture, he knew the Japanese language. That's what made him very valuable to the OSS, because he kind of knew the psychological profile, they thought, of who the Japanese were, and they wanted to use that to exploit, to demoralize the Japanese. So, he's hired, Ed Salinger, by the OSS. He's part of what's called the Morale Operations Branch, was, which was in charge of spreading disinformation, but he gets the R&D branch to help on this project. The idea with Operation Fantasia kind of goes back to, uh, an idea within Shinto religion that there exists these portents of doom called kitsune. Kitsune are like spirit beings, animal, glowing animal beings, that if you see one, it's supposed to be a bad omen, something bad is going to happen. Salinger wants to capitalize on this by creating kind of fake kitsune, fake spirit beings. And if we can release them in Japan, it'll make the Japanese scared and think that something bad is going to happen. Well, what bad is going to happen? Well, we're in war, it's probably means we're gonna lose this war. We might as well give up now than wait for that end to come in some even worse way. That's the idea at least. And so Ed Salinger has a few ideas for how to capitalize on this. He wants to create either glowing foxes or the idea that there are glowing foxes to scare the Japanese. And so one is, o- one idea is to create a whistle that mimics a fox sound. We'll spread these throughout Japan, people will start blowing these whistles. They're gonna think it's the kitsune 'cause it's foxes, and they'll be demoralized. Y- th- this didn't really go anywhere because h- do people really know what foxes sound like, you know? And it didn't go any-

   4. CWChris Williamson34:17

      What the fuck does a fox sound like? Yeah, precisely.

   5. JLJohn Lisle34:19

      (laughs) Yeah. Yeah, a bit like that y- YouTube video, "What does the fox say?" (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson34:23

      What does the fox sound like is good enough. Yeah, exactly.

   7. JLJohn Lisle34:26

      Yeah. So that, that was... That, that didn't go. Um, there, there are a few more kind of variations of Fantasia. One is to recreate fox odors. So, get a fox odor, we'll spread that in Japan. People smell it and think, "Oh, foxes are around. This is a bad omen." But again, what, what does a fox smell like? Do people really know? And so Salinger scraps all that and he decides instead, we're going to capture live foxes, we're going to paint them with glowing radioactive paint, and we're going to release them in Japan. That way, the Japanese are gonna see them and know this really is a glowing fox. It must be a kitsune and it must be a bad omen. We must be about to lose this war. We might as well give up now. So, foxes are captured. They're painted with radioactive paint from the US radium, uh, Radium Corporation. Um, a- actually, before they are, just to see if paint adheres to fur, animal fur, they go... The O- OSS, some personnel go to the Bronx Zoo and they paint a raccoon.

   8. CWChris Williamson35:23

      (laughs)

   9. JLJohn Lisle35:23

      And they let it kind of do raccoon stuff for... Yeah. For a f- for a few days, these raccoons are just kind of glowing. They're, they're kept away from, from public view and so-

   10. CWChris Williamson35:33

       Full of cancer and glowing.

   11. JLJohn Lisle35:35

       Yeah, probab- but the paint actually stays on, so hey, this is one point for Operation Fantasia. Maybe it works.

   12. CWChris Williamson35:41

       (laughs)

   13. JLJohn Lisle35:41

       The, the next experiment with this is to take a few foxes to Rock Creek Park in Maryland, right by DC, and release these gro- glowing foxes. The idea is that if we can see if it scares Americans, well, it's definitely going to scare the Japanese. So, if the Americans are sc- spooked out by this, the Japanese are gonna be even more spooked out, so let's release these foxes and see how Americans respond to 'em. So, these foxes are released in Rock Creek Park. They're glowing at night, walking through the trails. And there's a newspaper report later that says the passersby were terrified and had the screaming jimmies when they saw these foxes, these ghostly apparitions. So, hey, point two for Operation Fantasia. The Americans really are scared of this thing. So, there's another experiment with Operation Fantasia. Can foxes swim? That's what needs to be answered. Because in order to get these foxes to Japan, it's not like you can just drop 'em out of a plane or something. You're gonna have to take a boat, drop them in the ocean and let 'em swim to shore. But can foxes swim? This is the question. And so as part of this-... Operation Fantasia. Several foxes are captured. They're taken into the middle of the Chesapeake Bay and they're thrown overboard. And it turns out, the foxes actually did swim to shore, so foxes do swim. The problem is that, that by the time they got to shore, all the paint had washed off, so it, it was kind of a bust. Like, what's the point? The paint washes off. That was the whole point of the operation in the first place. So, that didn't really go anywhere. But then Salinger, this is what I discovered in the archives, something that I, I've never seen anyone else talk about. I discovered this document that talks about how he wants to carry this even further. He said he had heard when he was in Japan, uh, one of these ideas about kitsuni that involved a skull. It was said that apparently, a fox with a skull on it was the worst omen of all. This is a really bad omen. So, his idea to capitalize on this is to taxidermy a fox, to paint it in glowing paint, to take a human skull and put it on the fox as if it's, you know, its own skull, and then he wanted to have a mechanical, uh, mechanism that could raise and lower this- the jaw of the skull. And then he would blast audio to the Japanese as if this skull was talking saying, "You need to give up the war. It's worthl- you know, just put down your arms." And then he would attach this fox with a skull and audio to a balloon and fly it over Japan so it would look like there was this flowing, glowing stuffed fox talking with a human skull out of it. Apparently, this is going to win the war. So, that's, that's th- his idea.

   14. CWChris Williamson38:10

       So, America tried to conduct spiritual warfare on Japan to try and make them think that Japanese gods were mad at them with a glowing fox that had a human skull on the top of it?

   15. JLJohn Lisle38:24

       Yes, correct. (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson38:25

       Right.

   17. JLJohn Lisle38:25

       And, y- th- y- there, there are a couple other, I mean, there are a couple other similar things that are tried to be done against Japan. One idea that the Army Air Force has is to drop bombs into Japanese volcanoes that are dormant and try to get them to become active. And if the volcanoes start kind of looking like they're active, maybe the Japanese will think that the gods are mad and then this is an indication that we shouldn't be in this war in the first place. Yeah, a- a- a-

   18. CWChris Williamson38:48

       Fuck yeah! That's what I want. I want some. (laughs) Let's do that. Let's anger the Japanese gods. I think... Oh, man. I mean, there is something about the advent of technology that has taken away all of this beautiful sort of wistful creativity. Everything's, everything's wa- far too logical and rational now. Uh, one of the other ones that you go through,

8. 39:10 – 44:15

   Strapping Bombs to Bats

   1. CWChris Williamson39:10

      bat bombs. We've spoken about rat bombs, but bat bombs as well. Strapping a bomb to a bat, I'm gonna guess?

   2. JLJohn Lisle39:16

      Uh, that is pretty close, yes. It's pretty close. So there, yeah, there are rat bombs, cat bombs, bat bombs. If you want any variation of an at bomb, this book has got it for you. (laughs) But the bat bomb idea, this is the brainchild of a guy named, um, uh, uh, Lytle Adams. Lytle Adams is a dentist. He's not even involved in the OSS or anything. He's a dentist from Pennsylvania. He goes on a vacation to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, and of course, this is home to a colony of millions of Mexican free-tailed bats. After he goes on that vacation, he hears about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and he's a patriotic American and he wants to try to think of, "What can I do to help us win this war that we're now involved in?" And he had just been to Carlsbad and he thinks of this bat bomb idea. What if we strap incendiary devices to bats and we fly them to Japan and we release them? These bats will kind of be like heat-seeking missiles. They will naturally roost in warehouses and, you know, in buildings, and they'll explode after a time delay and these incendiary devices will catch these buildings on fire. So, instead of flying over Japan and dropping bombs which might not even hit the target, let's release these bats and the bats are naturally going to go to these houses and roost in them and blow up and start these fires. That's the idea. Lytle Adams had one thing really going for him. He was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States. He gave this proposal to Eleanor Roosevelt, she gave it to her husband, the President of the United States. In turn, he gives it to none other than William Donovan, the head of the OSS. And attached to the proposal, Franklin Roosevelt writes, "This man is not a nut." So like, you know, this, there, this idea's got something going for it. Donovan, he gives it to the one branch of the OSS capable of actually studying this, the R&D Branch. So, that's how it gets to the R&D Branch. Stanley Lovell, the head of this branch, hires a man named, um, Louis Fieser to develop the incendiary devices that they're gonna attach to these bats. Louis Fieser is fairly famous at the time because he was the inventor of napalm. Uh, this is kind of a jellied gasoline that if it catches, you know, if it sticks to anything, it'll, it'll burn at a really hot temperature. It's, it can start fires really easily. Actually, he had invented this while he was at Harvard as, he's a chemist and some of his first napalm bomb tests had occurred on the Harvard soccer fields. (laughs) So, he had, he had literally detonated napalm bombs on, just on the soccer fields at Harvard. He actually got in trouble for this, not so much for the bombs but because he was hogging the soccer field and they needed it for drill instruction, and so he was told to find somewhere else. Um, but anyway, Stanley Lovell hires Louis Fi- uh, yeah, Louis Fieser to create the napalm bombs for these bats, really small. There are personnel who go to different caves, literally swing around nets, and they capture bats for, for the tests that they're going to do. So, for one of the first tests, they're not using live kind of, uh, incendiaries. Instead, they just have a kind of a dummy. They attach it to the bats. They cool the bats down because the idea is that we'll put them in an artificial hibernation state so we can get them on the plane. We'll fly them up, we'll drop them, they'll wake up, and then, you know, they'll fly away and we'll see how they-

   3. CWChris Williamson42:32

      (laughs)

   4. JLJohn Lisle42:32

      ... eh, if they're able to actually fly with the stuff on. The problem is that when they flew these bats up, they had cooled them down too much so by the time they dropped them, they didn't wake up and they just kind of crashed into the floor.

   5. CWChris Williamson42:47

      (laughs)

   6. JLJohn Lisle42:47

      So, (laughs) so that was one experiment with this bat bomb.... another experiment they tried with actual live incendiaries. Louis Fieser wanted to test the official package to make sure it actually worked with a, a live incendiaries. They cooled down the bats. The problem was that they did, didn't cool them down enough this time. The bats woke up prematurely, and they flew around before they could be stopped, and they actually burned down a control tower and a barracks that was nearby. So, in a kind of ironic sense, the bat bombs actually seemed to work because they did roost in these buildings and blow them up. But, you know, it was never deployed against the Japanese.

   7. CWChris Williamson43:21

      Jesus. H- honestly, I think that, you know, there's an argument to be made that the atomic bomb wasn't needed. We just needed to have, whatever, a million bats, send them down into Japan, everything would have been fine.

   8. JLJohn Lisle43:32

      Well, he... Well, what I think is one of the funniest kind of parts of the book is that Little Adams, the guy who conceived first of this bat bomb idea, he was talking to a lot of different generals in the military to try to get funding because he really wanted to pursue this idea and make sure the OSS was kind of carrying it out. So he was talking to generals. He comes back and starts talking to some members of the OSS really dejected and upset because the generals didn't want to give him that much money, and Little Adams says, "Yeah, there's apparently this other project in New Mexico, and they're kind of messing around with these atoms. Why should we be messing around with atoms when we have a sure thing like the bat bomb here?" (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson44:07

      (laughs) Oh, man. Uh, okay. So, in your opinion, given the fact that you are

9. 44:15 – 54:21

   The Most Pivotal Mission of the OSS

   1. CWChris Williamson44:15

      currently the world living authority on the Dirty Tricks Department-

   2. JLJohn Lisle44:18

      (laughs) .

   3. CWChris Williamson44:18

      ... what was the most successful contribution or the most pivotal mission that they, uh, were a part of?

   4. JLJohn Lisle44:26

      Mm-hmm. I, I think the most useful contribution is probably those other two branches, the documents division and the camouflage division, because this enabled agents to go undercover in Europe especially and to train resistance forces and to gather intelligence, which is actually useful for making decisions. I think that's probably the most useful thing. The most useful kind of weapon that was invented, it's either that Silence-22. That was actually being used up even through the Vietnam War i- i- in some places, um, wi- within different military branches. Another one of the useful technologies, weapons, that's developed by this R&D branch, is involves derailing trains. We already talked about Black Joe that you could throw in a boiler. There were several other things like that. And derailing trains was especially effective because not only could you destroy the train and all the material on it, you could, you could, um, derail it, but if you did it strategically, you could really mess things up. So, one invention was called the mole, and it was a light-sensitive explosive. The idea being it can detect a sudden shift from light to dark. And so, if, if you have a saboteur that attaches this to a train and kind of sets it, then the light-sensitive mole, when- whenever the train enters a tunnel, it'll notice that light to dark and it'll detonate, and it'll derail the train, not only derailing the train, but plugging up that valuable tunnel and preventing any other trains from getting through. So, that's a really useful device. One other of the most useful devices you kind of mentioned earlier is probably the limpet. The OSS and the British SOE are kind of working on this together and sharing ideas, but the limpet is this explosive device that a saboteur could attach to the bottom of a ship, set a time pencil that would ki- ki- a time delay, and then paddle away, establish an alibi somewhere else. And then after a while, this limpet will explode, putting a hole in the ship and causing it to sink. Those were used on many ships during World War II.

   5. CWChris Williamson46:22

      Do you know what the original trigger was that they used on the very first version of the limpet mine? They needed something that would dissolve, uh, consistently and was always in a reliable size.

   6. JLJohn Lisle46:33

      I'm not sure.

   7. CWChris Williamson46:34

      It was an aniseed ball, a sweet, like a little candy.

   8. JLJohn Lisle46:39

      Oh. (laughs) Okay.

   9. CWChris Williamson46:39

      We would have called it a candy. Um, so they're talking about it. This is in, uh, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

   10. JLJohn Lisle46:45

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson46:45

       And they're talking about the fact that they need to protect it from any moisture because if it gets a tiny little bit wet during transit, that means that the timer once it gets, uh, into the ocean is-

   12. JLJohn Lisle46:55

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson46:55

       ... actually going to be however much shorter. I think it's about... For those that are interested, I think it's around about 45 minutes, 30 to 45 minutes is the amount of time an aniseed ball takes to dissolve in, in the ocean.

   14. JLJohn Lisle47:06

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson47:06

       Um, so they, they're talking about the fact that they couldn't tell anybody what they were doing, and they had to go around the local village buying every pack of condoms that they could so that they could individually wrap these aniseed balls in condoms so that it was protected from water. And the guy that wrote the book says, um, it is unclear whether nine months later there was an increase in the fertility rate of this small village-

   16. JLJohn Lisle47:27

       (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson47:27

       ... because there was no access to condoms for a couple of weeks. Um...

   18. JLJohn Lisle47:31

       The, the SOE must have had a, a thing with condoms because there's another brief thing I mention in the book about how they developed this itching powder from, like, the seed pod of this one plant. And they would sprinkle it in condoms that were destined for German soldiers. And-

   19. CWChris Williamson47:44

       No way. (laughs)

   20. JLJohn Lisle47:46

       (laughs) Yeah. And there were apparently reports, there were apparently reports of a submarine crew who kind of came back and they noticed an uptick in, you know, hospital visits or whatever. (laughs) So-

   21. CWChris Williamson47:55

       Oh, my God.

   22. JLJohn Lisle47:55

       ... apparently that was one idea, itching powder.

   23. CWChris Williamson47:57

       Dude, that is so funny. So, um, we spoke earlier on about the fact that the atomic bomb is kind of happening. You know, i- it's being developed. It's not exactly rivalrous with the, with the bat bomb. Was the OSS involved in stopping any of the Germans or, or, or keeping tabs on what the Germans were doing? I know that there was heavy water plants. There obviously-

   24. JLJohn Lisle48:17

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson48:18

       ... was the dam busters. There was a bunch of other operations that tried to really, uh, slow down what the Allies thought was, uh, Nazi development of some sort of atomic weapon.

   26. JLJohn Lisle48:32

       Mm-hmm. Uh, absolutely. The most famous... Well, I'll start with, uh, I'll, I'll kind of build up to that. There was... Pretty much any physicist in the United States knew that if the Germans were going to have an atomic bomb program, the person who was going to lead it was Werner Heisenberg. This is one of the most famous, distinguished phy- physicists in the world at the time. He had stayed in Germany at the outbreak of the war, unlike many of his colleagues who either came to the United States and would work on the Manhattan Project or go somewhere else. He stayed in Germany. And pretty much everyone knew if anyone is leading a German atomic bomb project, it is Werner Heisenberg.So the OSS has a few ways they want to deal with Werner Heisenberg. The idea being if you kinda cut off the head of the snake, the program's gonna flounder. So, if you can just, if you can either kidnap or even maybe kill Werner Heisenberg, you could prevent the Germans from potentially acquiring an atomic bomb. One of the first people who was assigned to work on this and s- figure out what to do with Werner Heisenberg is a guy named Carl Eifler. Carl Eifler was head of what's called Detachment 101 in Burma. This is a group of OSS personnel that was sent to kind of in the Burma, India, China area. Their, their mission is to destroy a Japanese air base, where the Japanese are launching planes from. Um, he gets recalled to the United States. He has kind of, he got, he was on a mission, he fell overboard into the ocean, and he was dashed upon the rocks and he had, like, head damage. So, he, he was a little all over the place. But he got recalled to the United States. But after that, he gets assigned to kidnap Werner Heisenberg. Um, to think of a plan to figure out how to capture Werner Heisenberg and to smuggle him into Switzerland, and they're gonna rendezvous with a plane or even a submarine that will carry him somewhere else. So, he gets assigned to this. He ultimately gets called off of that because he was, he was like William Donovan in the sense that he was so gung-ho. He was rambunctious and wild and never followed orders and did things his way. And because of that, he wasn't really fit for this operation because it was going to be a very delicate affair, but he's the opposite of delicate. He's someone who would just say whatever and do whatever he wanted. So, they needed someone who was a little bit more discerning and technical and skilled. So instead of Carl Eifler, he's pulled off. The OSS assigns a baseball player named Moe Berg to assassinate Werner Heisenberg. Moe Berg was a catcher for several different Major League Baseball teams, like the, the Red Sox, he, you know, he was a catcher. He, what made him valuable to the OSS is that, is that he spoke many languages. So, he was kind of a, a polyglot. He spoke several languages that he had studied in school or grown up with. And so, that's very valuable to the OSS because especially as, say, an agent, he can pass as someone else because he can speak the language with the dialect and the emphasis and accent and whatever. He gets assigned to assassinate Werner Heisenberg. He's told that Werner Heisenberg is scheduled to give a talk in Switzerland on a specific date at this specific university. So, Moe Berg goes over there, and he's told to sit in the lecture and if Werner Heisenberg says anything that indicates that he might be working on an atomic bomb, anything about fission or, you know, uh, chain reactions, he's supposed to pull out a gun and shoot Werner Heisenberg right there in the lecture hall. So, Moe Berg goes to this lecture. He sits down, he's got a cyanide pill-

   27. CWChris Williamson52:03

       Armed, armed with a gun. Yeah, for sure.

   28. JLJohn Lisle52:03

       ... armed with a gun. He's got a cyanide pill in his pocket. The idea being after the assassination, he's gonna kill himself. Um, so, he listens to the lecture and his notes from the lecture still exist, you know? He says, "I'm sitting, you know, in the third row and Werner Heisenberg is looking at me a lot because he thinks I'm taking notes. And, you know, (laughs) he thinks I'm really interested in what he's talking about," and all this stuff. So, his notes are, you know, survive. Moe Berg doesn't get the sense that the topic, it has anything to do with an atomic bomb. So, he decides not to take the risk and assassinate Werner Heisenberg right there. A few days later, Moe Berg gets invited to a dinner with some physicists in Switzerland. Who is there? Werner Heisenberg. So, they're talking about the war and all kinds of stuff. Werner Heisenberg decides that he has to leave early, he's gotta go do something. But Moe Berg takes the opportunity to leave early too, so that he can leave with Werner Heisenberg and they can walk together for a while, giving Moe Berg an opportunity to interrogate Werner Heisenberg. Of course, his cover story is that he's, you know, this Swiss physics student, so he's talking to Werner Heisenberg in Swiss-accented German 'cause H- Heisenberg s- speaks German. So, he's asking him questions, k- kinda leading questions, "Are you working on anything? Well, you know, what's the state of nuclear physics..." And he still doesn't get the impression that Heisenberg is d- really doing anything with the German atomic bomb, so he decides not to kill him. But those were kind of the OSS attempts to assassinate Heisenberg and thus deny Germany his brain to build the atomic bomb.

   29. CWChris Williamson53:33

       And this guy, this catcher for the Red Sox, was prepared to take his own life as well. That was-

   30. JLJohn Lisle53:40

       Apparently.
10. 54:21 – 1:03:11

    Levels of Ethics in Chemical Warfare

    1. CWChris Williamson54:21

       on and, and I think you're right, you are right. It's interesting, uh, Lovell's, uh, ethical trajectory from the beginning of the war until the end of it-

    2. JLJohn Lisle54:30

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson54:30

       ... about what he felt was appropriate about the, the kind of force. Um, getting into chemical warfare, what was, uh, developed, used, um, what sort of tactics and then what kind of personal reflection and challenges did Lovell face with that?

    4. JLJohn Lisle54:45

       Mm-hmm. You, you are right because this, like I said, is one of the major arcs I'm following in this book, is Stanley Lovell going from someone who was reluctant to even create kind of deadly weapons like a silenced pistol, to someone by the end of the war, he is advocating for the use of weapons of mass destruction. Not only the atomic bomb, but also chemical agents, biological agents. So, in the R&D branch, he's involved with experimenting with some of these agents. Um-The United States had developed, uh, an installation in Maryland called Fort Detrick or Camp Detrick at that time. It was kind of the biological warfare installation where mass production of anthrax and all kinds of diseases were created. The United States, or Fr- Franklin Roosevelt in particular, had said that he has a no-first-use policy. So, the United States is not going to use these weapons first, but we're going to create them as a deterrent force. So, if somebody uses them, we have them to retaliate. And just by having them, we can deter others from using them. That's his idea. Stanley Lovell disagrees with this. By the end of the war, he comes to think that any way that you can end the war as soon as possible is the ethical thing to do. So, not just something we should do, but this is the ethical thing to do, especially regarding biological warfare. He says, "Look at the differences here. You can stab someone in the stomach with a bayonet, and then it's gonna get infected and they're gonna die from an- an infection, or you can infect them with anthrax or something through the- through a biological bomb, and they'll get an infection and die. At least with the second option, we spare them the bayonet. At least- at least we don't have to stab them first before they get this infection." He comes to see chemical warfare especially as an ethical alternative to conventional warfare. With chemical warfare, he starts developing the idea that perhaps you can... Especially in the Pacific theater, in these islands in Japan like Iwo Jima, there are these Japanese soldiers stationed on these islands. Instead of sending American forces to storm the island that's going to lead to tens of thousands of casualties, why don't we just shell the island with chemical weapons? These don't even necessarily have to kill the Japanese, just like paralyze them or, you know, something. And then we go on the island and prevent those casualties from happening. So, Stanley Lovell becomes in favor of using those because he sees it as the ethical alternative.

    5. CWChris Williamson57:07

       Doesn't he have a son somewhere as well? Isn't there a little bit of perverse incentive here?

    6. JLJohn Lisle57:11

       Yes, this is a really important point, because as the end of the war is coming to a close, Stanley Lovell's son is on a ship midway across the Pacific waiting to engage in an invasion of Japan. And so the sooner the war ends, the sooner that Stanley Lovell's son gets to come back home. Um, so he- he's, of course, thinking personally about his son too, but in general, he's also thinking, "If we don't use these weapons to end the war as soon as possible, that's just going to lead to a lot more casualties. We might as well end the war now." Of course, one of the... I mean there are several kind of ways to debate with what Stanley Lovell is arguing here. What about the- the precedent that it sets for future wars? What about the potential that this could spread to civilian populations? At least if you, you know, storm an island, you- it's a little bit targeted. If you just drop biological or chemical weapons somewhere, it's not really targeted, it could spread to anyone. So, the- there are a lot of, uh, there are a lot of objections that you could raise to what Stanley Lovell is saying, and when Stanley Lovell's grandson after the war years later kind of raises some of these objections, especially to the atomic bomb, Stanley Lovell was in favor of using it, his grandson wasn't. Stanley Lovell basically said, "We're an inventive people. We'll figure it out. So, we- we'll figure out how to deal with this stuff, we just needed to end the war. We just needed to end the war when we could have."

    7. CWChris Williamson58:31

       Were there many chemical weapons used during World War II? I remember hearing about mustard gas and stuff like that during World War I.

    8. JLJohn Lisle58:39

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson58:39

       But I- I don't remember reading or hearing about many chemical weapons in World War II at all.

    10. JLJohn Lisle58:45

        Yeah. Um, I'm not- I'm not too familiar, and certainly not as much as World War I. I have heard reports that, you know, the Germans might have used it on this one particular battle in som- you know, somewhere. So there are reports that that happened, but I'm- I- I don't actually know if they- they were. Yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson59:04

        Interesting. It just seems to me, especially as Hitler b- got more and more desperate when he was fighting war on two different fronts, when it- k- really starting to scrabble, Stalingrad, et cetera, et cetera, he was prepared to do pretty much anything. It seems surprising to me that there would be some ethic that he was unprepared to break in service of him... I mean, he killed himself, you know, and encouraged the people around him to do it too.

    12. JLJohn Lisle59:31

        Stanley Lovell's explanation for this was that if the Germans used especially chemical weapons, then they knew that the- the Allies were going to respond in kind.

    13. CWChris Williamson59:42

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JLJohn Lisle59:42

        And the way that Stanley Lovell explains this is that the German military was much more dependent on horses especially, and so, you know, he- he says kind of after the war, uh, he's kind of thinking about this, "Why didn't the Germans just use chemical weapons at Normandy and kind of stop the invasion?" And, you know, he- apparently he hears from someone, but I don't know how true this is, that, "Well, the Germans knew that if they did that, then the Allies were going to use these chemical weapons which would ruin their basically way of transporting material," which was these horses they were so dependent on. So, that could be one explanation. Um, I'm not really confident in Lovell's recollection of that particular incident, so I don't know if that's the case, but that's how he rationalized it.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:00:24

        How does Lovell's career finish? What's his legacy?

    16. JLJohn Lisle1:00:29

        Lovell becomes a businessman after World War II. He starts a chemical company. They invent all kinds of stuff, like different patents on shoes and filters and all kinds of stuff. His most lasting legacy, though, really involves his truth drug experiments that we talked about. During the Cold War, Sidney Gottlieb, that chemist who ran MKUltra, was trying to figure out what kinds of experiments he would do to determine whether truth drugs are possible or mind control are possible, and he didn't really know where to start.... to get inspiration for that, he started looking at old records. The records that he pulled from the archives, Stanley Lovell's records from the OSS. And so, there is this pretty direct connection between Stanley Lovell, not intentionally, but influencing directly Sidney Gottlieb in the creation of this MKUltra and trajectory of this MKUltra program, to the point where the person that Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA, who he hired to perform these truth drug experiments, was none other than George White, that same guy that Stanley Lovell had hired to perform truth drug experiments. Sidney Gottlieb had seen White's kind of reports in the World War II files and figured, "I need someone to perform truth drug experiments. I'll just use that same guy." This was really exciting to me. There are a lot more connections between Stanley Lovell and Sidney Gottlieb. And when I was writing this, I knew that there- there was some connection there. You know, their- their tr- their careers were so similar. During World War II in the OSS, Stanley Lovell was involved in creating deadly weapons and disguises and documents and truth drugs and experiments, and all kinds of stuff. Sidney Gottlieb is involved in that exact same stuff, almost to a- an item for the CIA and the Cold War. So, I had these two chemists and I- I- I wanted to play them off each other somehow, their different careers at these different times and how they're so similar. So, I was in the archives and I found these depositions that Sidney Gottlieb had to give in the 1980s. He was being sued by victims of the CIA and required to give these depositions. And in the archives, you can't read everything because you wanna get as much material while- while you're there as possible. So, I would take a deposition, I would take a picture of each page, but I wouldn't really read the pages because I can read those later. When I'm in the archives, I'm just gathering material. But I was really excited because I had been looking so long for this connection between Lovell and Gottlieb, and as I was flipping through these pages taking a picture, I looked at one of the depositions and I saw the name Stanley Lovell. And so I knew somewhere in there, Sidney Gottlieb is talking about Stanley Lovell and how they're connected somehow. And so, if you wanna know what that is in more detail, you gotta read the book.

11. 1:03:11 – 1:04:18

    Where to Find John

    1. JLJohn Lisle1:03:11

       (laughs)

    2. CWChris Williamson1:03:11

       John Lisle, ladies and gentlemen. John, I absolutely loved this. This kind of, um, very unique investigation into history. Uh, the inventiveness of everyone that you found, I think is fascinating. Dirty Tricks Department will be linked in the show notes below, if people want to go and get that. And if they want to keep up to date with the other stuff that you do, where should they go?

    3. JLJohn Lisle1:03:29

       Yeah, the best place is probably Twitter, just @JohnLisle. L-I-S-L-E is my last name. And if you're kind of interested in the story, not only do I post stuff about my book and whatever, but a lot of times most of what I post is just adventures in the archives. If I find a cool photo or description or something in the archive, I post it to Twitter. So, if you're interested in seeing what a historian does, that- that's probably a good place to get a- some exper- you know, to see what it's like. So, if you wanna follow me on Twitter, you can expect some of that stuff.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:03:57

       John, I didn't think that you could make histor- being a historian cool, but you've managed to do it. Congratulations.

    5. JLJohn Lisle1:04:02

       (laughs) Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:04:04

       What's happening people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:04:18