Buy the book at the book sale shop. Politics and prose, a local shop in washington d. C. Is selling the books and we want to find out what youre reading. Amare, in california, youre on book tv. What are you reading . Whats on your list . Good morning, how are you doing this morning . Im reading please, go ahead. Im writing the gettysburg address by Martin Johnson how the gettysburg they wrote the gettysburg address over and over again. Its pretty fun and i enjoy it. Who is the author again . Martin p. Johnson. Thank you, sir for calling in. Ray in glendale, arizona. Hi, peter. I just happened to switch over from washington journal. What im reading right now is a book called troubled refuge, struggles for newly freed folks in the civil war and i just finished master, slave, husband, wife, and excellent book on the same subject. Right, which we covered on book tv. Can you tell me, ray, how often you read books . How many you have going at once and you get through a book a week or what . Oh, i go to the library quite often, just down the block from my house and i pick up any i look through the new books first and then right now besides that one i have rebel yell, which is the biography of jackson and for fun, latest from christopher wright, kind of all over the map. Ray, thanks for spending a few minutes from us. Lets work in caroline in raleigh, north carolina. Good morning to you. What are you reading . Good morning. A pleasure to speak with you and i wish i was there at the book festival. I am currently reading actually my book club here in raleigh, we are reading Toni Morrisons the bluest eye. And what do you think . And well, were just getting into it and i cant believe that i have never had a chance to read it before. And so far its just been so profound and just very interesting to the forward of the book where she mentions that shes not sure that the book did what it was what she intended it to do in the sense that she wanted people to be beyond touched, she wanted people to be moved and i think literally a call to action with that book. So far so good. Caroline, thanks for being with us and just a reminder, raleigh is only four hours from washington so you can come up to the National Book fair any year you want. Well, were going to go now to the first author discussion of the day. And this is a group of authors talking about accidental spies. Its moderated by jeff of cbs. Here it is. Our coverage of the 2023 library of congress National Book festival continues now. Welcome to the library of congress National Book festival. Im Kevin Butterfield at the sponsor of the festival, and were helping to bring most beloved here. And they work up to a year to write books like these and to be a part of the national dialog. Welcome to everyone who is joining us now on cspan today. We are proud to partner again with cspan this year. Youll encounter a range of conversations from the history of american spy craft, the first program, to our eating choices define who we are, and well hear about climate change, practice of interior designs in black homes and what it means to be latino in america and join our writers at their signing. The accidental spy, jonathan is a historian of science and book hell talk about is the dirty trick department. Janet is the author of 10 books flirting with danger, social light spy. And our moderator, the most of the cbs news podcast, america changed forever. Lets welcome them to the stage. [applause] hello, hello, hello. Im not perky like you this morning. [laughter] i dont know how you do it. Ill wake up this early for a tee time, but this is a little different for me. Forgive me if, you know, my mind starts wandering toward the golf course and i ask some ridiculous questions and thats when you come in, you know . We want you to participate, obviously, youre not going to get this opportunity too often to speak to the authors of these incredible books, i think, the library of congress has done a great job of matching moderators with authors because when i picked up the books, i was like, okay, spy craft, cia, i like that. This is right down my alley. I mean, its not golf, but. Thanks for coming, janet and john, appreciate your time. I loved your books. Thank you. It was sort of reminded me of college where i had to cram to study up, but im ready. Okay. [laughter] im ready. Lets talk about the books, start with flirting with danger, i love the title and i love the book, in part because it takes talks about maryland and baltimore, not baltimore, baldmore. And its interesting and then you have this heroine, right, this woman who decided when it wasnt the thing for women to be spies, she wanted to be a spy. And she was a pretty good spy. Tell us about marguerite harrison. She was from maryland and in fact, she was an 8th generation american from a very prominent family in maryland and she was part of well, she was a daughter of the gilded age. Her father was a shipping tycoon and her mother was a social light hostess who wanted her daughter to marry for money and for title. I want that for my daughter. [laughter] nothing wrong with that. Well, marguerite was a rebel so she wasnt so keen on what her mother wanted. She did have a romance with a turkish, and did have dull dinners with Winston Churchill who stepped on her toes when they went dancing and she did marry a handsome stockbroker from maryland, but he had more charm than money. And she was madly in love with him. He with her, and she had one of the most lavish weddings ever held in maryland and this was i forgot to say, she was born not long after the civil war in 1878. So right after the wedding well, nine months after the wedding they had a son. I did count. I kept count. [laughter] they made it. [laughter] and they had a wonderful society kind of life, you know, the country club dinners and the charity luncheons and special dances. Why would she want to be a spy, janet . She seems to have a perfect life and existence and why do that . She did, but in 1915 her husband died very young. She was a widow at 37. She was very interested in world affairs. She had traveled as a child to europe every summer. She spoke five languages fluently, at the age of 10, she was the family translator in germany and france. Thats pretty impressive. She hasnt traveled at all with her husband, she was at home taking care of the family. When her just died, instead of going back to the family to live with her father or her inlaws, she went out on her own. Not a likely thing for a Society Woman to do. She got a job at the sun as assistant society editor. When the war broke out as a reporter. When america joined the war as a reporter and she wanted to go to the front. No women were allowed at the front. So she applied for a job as a spy. What else . [laughter] and she applied first to Naval Intelligence because thats where the Intelligence Department was at the time. And they said a woman . Not a chance. So she applied to the army that was just getting setting up intelligence. There hadnt been a cia, oss, none of that and the army sent an interviewer who talked to her and her german was so good, that he was worried. [laughter] he said, how long did you live in germany . And she said im an 8th generation of american. Ive only lived here. He thought that she might be sympathetic to the cause to the kaiser. Were in world war i. And he was sure she was sympathetic. No, that wasnt true. So the head of military intelligence with a wonderful name of marlboro churchill, love it. Said you are hired. And she was the First American woman sent overseas and she was a spy in germany and in russia and the far east. So and hugely successful in her work. I kept thinking james bond. Somebody needs to make a movie about marguerite harris, unless theres already one out there. Is there . No. Any laughter once hollywood comes back from strike we can make a proposal. Thats right. I have to say, the New York Times review, which i think comes out tomorrow in the papers, called her George Smiley in a mink trench coat. [laughter] wow. So you mention oss, which brings me to the book and for those of you dont know, oss was one of the precursers of the cia. There were several different versions of that agency. Your book is the dirty Tricks Department, like that one, too, flirting with danger and dirty Tricks Department. Tell us about stanley is it lovell. Yes. He is the driving character. Hes the main character. Stanley is a chemist from around boston. He worked for much of his early life in just a shoe and leather factory, nothing that he would indicate that he would get involved in intelligence agencies. When world war ii happened, especially after pearl harbor, he needed to do something for his country and happened to run into one day, carl compton, at the time the president of mit. And he he knew lovell. Youre a businessman and chemist, we someone like you. And the stated reason for leaving his job, he says war. And he left the job and goes to washington d. C. And hes an assistant to veneever bush. Hes from the northeast, has a similar attitude as Stanley Lovell. And recommends Stanley Lovell to join the oss. And the head of that is donovan, a war hero from world war i. Head of conducting espionage, and kind of the main thing that theyre doing. Donovan recruits lovell, we need you here. Here is how it happens. Stanley lovell gets a letter saying let me at this one building in d. C. He doesnt know who its from. He shows up at the building and doesnt know why hes there and why theyre meeting. Hes led into a room thats barren. And waits for a couple of hours. And William Donovan comes into the room and he walks in, i need you to be the professor moriarty of the oss. And he knows that thats the bad guy. Donovan says we need a scientist for the gadgets, and special objects for our agents. And heads up the research and department, thats what he does throughout the bar, creating gadgets and disguises. I thought it was interesting, too, how he had to reorient his mind from doing good to being as evil as possible. Well, thats one of the main arcs of the book. Stanley lovell is reluctant to get involved in this work in the first place. After donovan recruits him, a few weeks later he goes to donovans house, i dont know if im cut out by this, im a science. Its created good things, agriculture that feeds people and medicines that keep people well. Now im going to use the knowledge ive gained to create weapons that are iffing to kill people . Donovan basically said, the war is important, youre going to help us. Throughout the book we see the development, arc as a character reluctant to engage in this behavior, at the end. Stanley lovell is advocating to use things like truth construction on prisoners of war. Or chemical weapons, the use of biological weapons. Its strange he goes to the advocacy. And its a dilemma for anyone who chooses that type of work. Most will not choose that court of work. What is coursing through both books is a sense of patriotism in the characters in your book. To the characters in your book. So, im wondering, you know, as i listen to you describe the book, the research in both of these books is, to me, meticulous. How much time, janet, did that take . Well, it took me 30 years. 30 years . Yes, i was doing research in 1993 in new castle, england at the library gertrude bell, world war i for the british. All of her pains were there, thousands of letters and diaries and colonels, so on. And i came across a letter that she had written home to her father in 1924 saying that this extraordinary American Woman who come through town and invited her to dinner and shed never had heard such tales from a woman and how this american just had everybody under her spell. And she invited her not once, but twice to two dinners, it was the same thing. And i read this and i saw it, an American Woman in baghdad in 1924. What was she doing there . She must have been a spy, thats the first thing that came to my mind, and it stayed with me. I tried to find information about her, i couldnt. I wrote five books each time i finished a book i would look for the section subject as we always do and i couldnt find anything. I hired a professional researcher and she found nothing. Finally, i was determined after the last book and i said, she can hide from me for just so long. She may be a spy, but im going to find her. And i wound up filing an foia request, freedom of information act and sure enough her papers were here in washington, college park, maryland and that was a fabulous, tedious, frustrating experience because its youre constantly filling out forms and getting permission and waiting hours and hours for papers to arrive, but what i found in there was like cold. So it was classified paints. Some of people from where did you find the classified papers . Just kidding. [laughter] i did take home copies. I dont know where that came from. What did you do with them . Should we name a special counsel . Just kidding. Did you go into that process thinking, okay, i want to look for a female spy, early 1900s or did you know marguerite was the one that you wanted . The little bit that i read about her told me that shes the one. And she was her whole viewpoint was as an internationalist. She really cared about world affairs. And thats something thats always interested me. She was really smart. She was beautiful. She was, well, charming because her governest told her, you can be intellectual if you want, but much further being charming. Which theres a lot of truth, i guess, in that. And where she went and what she did, how she inserted herself. Every level of society was fascinating. It really is. Really is. And stanley lovely is another one. Essentially orphaned, and he found his way to cornell. Was it. Yeah, graduated from cornell. So he really rose from really modest means and hes not household and how did you find him . His parents died young. He was raised by his older soldier, a seem seamstress and put him through school. My dissertation from university of texas and working on scientists within the Intelligence Community and through reading about that, i kind of would come across this name Stanley Lovell. Hes the guy burg world war ii who invented kind of things like glowing foxes, cyanide pills. Awas focusing on my dissertation. Every time i went back to the na archives. Half the time working on my dissertation and the other part, some day im going to write about Stanley Lovell. So i pulled some of that throughout the side. I did that through grad school ap i finished school, im going to put the dissertation away. Im going to hang out in the National Archives fulltime. For some people it can be begun. So thats the origin, i guess how the story was almost too good for me not to follow up. I couldnt help myself. It almost became an obsessive thing, ied wanted to find out who he was. Theres one quote, another, when you work in tv and you hear things in sound bites. At tv for 30 years now and when people talk about that, thats a good sound bite. A sound bite. And one good sound bite in your book is when someone is talking about, oh, all you read need are seven properly trained men to essentially do these dirty tricks. They can cripple a city, which thats good information for a special report. [laughter]. Who said that, and was that the thinking at that time as they tried to get poss up in running . And thats one for Stanley Lovell. When he was appointed he didnt know what to do. The United States didnt have the same pred agree in nefarious war yunld does. And hes sent to learn what have you done in the past and how can we take those ideas and use thome ourselves. One of the things that stanley recreates, an limpid mine, and row away and after a while it will detonate the sink the ship. He got that from the british. When he was seven well trained men are able to destroy a city and thats where they came from. He gets original ideas from the british and a lot of what hes doing is brain storming. His idea, well throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks and see what the soldiers and undercover saboteurs need from abroad. Your account takes place in the early 1900s or world war i. Yours a really 1945, 1940 time frame with the nazis, they spread across europe. The japanese bombed pearl harbor. And they were looking as much as they could do from the enemy. Britain was not the enemy, but they had the intelligence apparatus in place. The fbi had been created, but in terms of intelligence gathering, which is, yeah, its Law Enforcement, but its a different kind of Law Enforcement and as nefarious as it sounds, you know, sabotage and dirty tricks, thats the way i think so this work in the intelligence game. And so, i wanted to ask you, janet, dont forget, i need you to ask questions, too, okay . So, im going to be asking for questions in the next couple of minutes. What do you want people to take away from the book . How extraordinary a woman that she was and how women can do extraordinary things. Nobody expected a woman to be able to do what marguerite did. From the time the war started and we were thinking about getting involved in it and we were worried about the the public was worried who is going to earn a living for the family if and she went out and did jobs men only did, ship building plants and street car conductors and showed how women would just take over their husbands or their fathers jobs and the life would go on and then of course, she was one of the most important intelligence agents in world war i. Yeah, we can do a lot. It was almost like the enemy, ee the enemy didnt see her coming. Sure werent. Werent expecting someone like her in that spot. All right, who has a question . Right there. My question is can you stand up . Oh theres a mic. That was my fault, i should have told you there was a mic. [laughter] im just curious, was it as difficult to find out about marguerites personal life as her professional life . Did she have to leave her son hyped . Were you able to find out that information as well because its just harrowing. It was harder in a way to find out the personal information because her daughterinlaw destroyed all of her letters home. That tells you a little bit about her relationship with her daughterinlaw. [laughter] and with her son, which was loving, but very distant and that created a distance physically and emotionally. So that created a lot of problems with are you sure the daughterinlaw didnt want to destroy the correspondence . Did they know she was a spy . Yes, by the time this was much later. This is the second marriage and this was much, much later in her life so she told her family what she was doing. I was lucky she had two granddaughters who were around who were very interested in this book and in helping to tell her story so they were wonderful and i did get good information from them. I see, right over here. Two questions, if i may. Lovell seems an odd choice, a random chemist at a how do they want him as the position, and also can you give us an idea of nefarious gadgets . Lovell had a couple of main advantages. Hes from new england and a lot of the people in washington d. C. In scientific positions were in new england and we kind of know the people. And bush, bush was basically the unofficial science advisor to and coordinating research, manhattan project, radar, and he knew bush and that worked in his favor for the job. As for the second part of the question. What kinds of things. I mentioned a couple like bat bombs and glowing foxes. I can briefly kind of state what these were, the bat bock was this idea instead of dropping incendiary targets in tokyo, they might way for the becomes. What if we have bats and invent the tiny incendiary, and put the bats in artificial hibernation, send them to japan, and theyll go roost in warehouses and buildings. And theyre like heat seeking missiles. They will blow up and start fires and wont have to use the resources. Never got put into actual use in japan, obviously, but theres an interesting fact, it kind of worked. During one of the tests one the bats got away and flew into a military barracks and control tower and through up and burned them down. That seemed to work. Thats an idea of one of the inventions, and there were cyanide pills, forged documents for undercover did, and disguise, how to age a persons appearance, how to make them look as though theyre a long shore fisherman instead of an agent. You in the book talked about, i think Stanley Lovell, he was asked, quizzed, i forget who was quizzing him, but he said, okay, if you had to do this and that and this to the enemy as a sole position, what did he say . He was an aide to bush, he was looking to recommend someone to france. He gave a test basically, if you were stranded on an enemy beach and there were guards you needed to take out whats the one weapon youd want to have with you so you could do it without anyone knowing . He walks around washington dc thinking about the weapon and he submits an answer which is silence, fleshless pistol and they thought thats what you would need. That is one of the turns out to be very useful this exact pistol created during world war ii, it was used throughout several decades into the vietnam war. Were there silencers at time on weapon . Yeah. This is one ofhe the earliest. Okay. Interesting. And so Vannevar Bush was like youre the guy for the job. I like the way you think. Go ahead. Your question. Did your protagonist continue in their activity after the wars . If not have toni be adapt . She was in germany and in russia where she was in prison for ten months. She went on to the far east and she was in japan where the japanese wanted her to spy on the chinese, and the chinese wanted her to spy on the russians, and the americans wanted her to spy on the japanese on the chinese and russians. Then in 1924 she was in persia where she made one of the first silent film documentaries on a nomadic tribe, and it was a deathdefying trip across the highest mountains of persia and through goatskin barges, through rapids, horrible rapids in the rivers. So she did continue for a while. And then like so many spies she just sort of faded away. All right. A question over here. Thank you for your amazing stories. I just finish binge reading both of your books. I just finished my binge of the americans and it led me to think of, i think both of you hinted at it, did either of these individuals, seems like they were hiding in plain sight. Did they eversi get exposed for what they were doing by the enemy . Not so much. He worked under William Donovan as head of the os as. When he was appointed head of the os as at the early stages of u. S. Involvement in world war ii, the chairmans put out some articles on donovan saying he is the spymaster, he knows all this stuff, he has unlimited funds and blah, blah, blah. Donovan loved it because he thought they were spreading disinformation. I dont have any of that stuff. That sort of thing didnt happen with a level. He wasnt a wellknown figure at the time. So not too many people suspected what he was doing. And even if they did he was working in the United States. He didnt get deployed abroad. He deployed people abroad. Hes the one creating their disguises and cover stories and gadgets for them to go abroad. He was in the u. S. Anyway. If i can follow up on the last question about what happened after the war. I will briefly mention he did continue this kind of work in a way. He was a consultant to the cia after the oss, with a couple of iterations and the cia immerse in 1947. Stanley was a consultant to the cia. He recommended to allen dulles a branch similar to the r d branch of the oss. Our windows crates whats called the Technical Services staff, thats the branch for cia agents create their gadgets and disguises and all that. Theres an interesting parallel here. One of the scientists who eventually heads that branch is called sydney godley. If youve youve heard of the infamous mind control program duringng the 1950s, sydney is a scientist who ran that. I was looking in some of his papers and i was hoping to make a connection between stanley and sydney. I wanted to see, theyre doing similar things at different times. As a a connection between them . I was in the archives taking pictures of documents try to take as many pictures as i can before had to leave so i didnt have time to sit there and focus on the documents. I was snapping and going. I was looking at these depositions of sydney what hes talking but his work in the cia and in the deposition i see the name stanley level. I couldnt read it at the time. I had to take as many pictures as i could but he knew the name was in there. I was so excited. I know he is connected in some way so i eventually found what is a connection between the world war ii os as veteran and this mkultra scientist . You have to read the book to find out but it is great. [laughing] in the News Business we call that a tease. [laughing] look at this crowd, dolly. All these people up this early in the morning to talk about spy craft. I love it. Go ahead. Question for the first woman spy. She was not acknowledged at all when she approached the navy. The army took a risk on her. What were some of the early challenges that she had within the spy community, especially in terms of the navy . I mean the navy was all men, no women, correct . And you have a woman now becoming a spy for another branch of the army. What was a level of acceptance for some of the frustrations she mightve experienced early on . Interestingly, she was part of society that was patrician, well bred, well educated, well east if you can put will try hard. She actually attended ratcliffe, and many of the men who were in intelligence went to harvard. So she was of the same class, and that did give her acceptance within the Intelligence Community. I actually didnt see anything referring, and all of the classified papers that i i re, and there was a lot of, i dont want to call it gossip, but remarks going back and forth about her work, about how, where she was, about what she was doing, how risky it was, some about how courageous she was, some about how it was just too dangerous. But nobody actually referred to Agency Entrance of her being a female. So she was accepted, but her work used her ability to engage with people from the higher echelons of society as well as the hanging out at a bar drinking beer with the workers. And when she was in germany, she was, her job was to find out what exactly was going on. No americans had been there during the war because the war was in france and in belgium. Nothing happened in germany. We needed to know if were going to cite any kind of peace agreement, how much, how big was the military, how was it your economy, how was her infrastructure, what was the mood of the people . That was her job to find out. So she could be very Close Friends with former german Army Officers, generals, and she could be friends with the average working person, and thats how she got her information. Now, it soo happened that she also had to be, joined secret societies on the right and on the left with socialists. And within that group somebody had a contact, state department, who was a double agent, and thats how she wound up in lubyanka. John, i your book you also talk about how, there are similar plot twists here in that a lot of the hires within the oss were from wealthy families, millionaires. These are people who could have been doing other things, or nothing at all. Yeah. One of these jokes about the oss in the early cia was it was composed of people who were pale, male, and yale. [laughing] there certainly was a similar pedigree to a lot of these people. There were a lot of acquisitions against the oss especially from people in military intelligence who did necessary like the oss because they felt like it was infringing on the turf one of the jokes was the oss stood for all, so social because as a social club of all these guys getting together for another was it added up socalled cellophane commission because they were kind of seethrough like obviously they didnt get the point and get the draft off so you wouldnt get drafted into the military. Ofthe was of this kind social aspect to it, especially people made fun of. Donovan the head of the oss resented this and when anyone would say that to him, went ad was an admiral in the navy imagined to donovan this is just a social club of people, you are not really doing anything. Donovan goes and calls up some of his guys in the oss and he tells them rake into his office and bring me his documents. [laughing] so the guys snake and his admirals office, breakin, plant some dummy dynamite near his office and the rush to were donovan is at this dinner party. Donovan walks up to the admiral and says heres a content any unsafe and if some dynamite next to your building, too. [laughing] the dirty tricks. Thanks for your patience for questions. Im hoping you read each others books. I only read one. I was wondering what you thought these two people who were so involved in adventure shared in common . I will mention something. Even the kind of topic of this panel is kind of accidental spies, these are people who are not necessarily the first person to you think of, a scientist becoming this dirty Tricks Department, guy, or fso moriarty was creating these devices and a female journalist might look into world war i. But the more i thought about it i do think there is some similarity in that these are actually two people be a must suspect would go into this kind of thing, not just given the background, journalist, and in particular are usually our spies tend use journalism as a cover. Journalists are people ask a lot of questions. If your local baker is asking you about what alloy you are using to create some kind a missile, well, its going to be suspicious. If its a journalist, a journalist is just asking questions. Its easier to useli journalisms a cover for espionage, and in the summer with scientists as well. This is especially prevalent around the 1950s cia was time to recruit scientists to service spies because thats all scientists want to do is ask questions. What is that . What is that . Its not what if a scientist is asking you what alloy you using. Its expected. The problem the cia ran into with these scientists is a wanted to talk about their work so much. Its not just they would get information, they were liable to give it away. [laughing] reporters do that, too. Got to be honest. You wanted to add to the question as well . I think john actually mentioned it before, and that was that they were both so patriotic. They put their lives at risk to do this work because they believed in their country. I think thats something thats worth remembering. Especially today. Yes. Especially today. Your question, please. How large was a context of spies . Like, how many spies were out there . And again how many individuals were in the oss at that time . I honestly dont know how many spies there were working for military intelligence. Not a lot. Not a lot of. We used the military used their attaches around the world. They with the people who really were feeding information back to and doesnt mention marguerite was only one sent overseas. So this is a small community. As long as it always is, the oss itself became a pretty Large Organization overtime. It of thousands of people, thousands of personnel. Not that many of them were actually in this r d branch. The main component of the r d branch visually like a dozen dozen scientists who are, at the Congressional Country Club in maryland in the basement of the clubhouse. Thats what had a laboratory that would create a lot of these gadgets. It were not that many scientists involved with this. However, one thing that stanley did pioneer inn a way is creatig contracts to develop some of these weapons. Its not just inhouse these are being developed but he would contract out things to different universities Like Columbia University created that would delay a detonation. It wasnt just the oss personal working on this gadgets either. Its being farmed out to other individuals who might have expertise in a specific area but that you dont want to bring into the organization. Thank you. Two people of clue spent a lot of time and energy on the subject, what is it do you think captures the american fascination with spies . And what got you interested in the s idea . I dont think americans are alone. Think about the british, who on and on and on with the spy stories and spy novels. I think in a way every country has itsry particular fascinatio. The russians by the way fourway head of the americans during world war i in developing secret ways of spine. I think there with ones who invented, or discovered using urine to write h in secret. Yeah, not too lovely. I cant talk about that one. [laughing] i will draw the line right there. Theres an fascination with espionage. I dont think its particular to the United States, but i kind of see what i do not as bad but its almost like a detective story. I am looking are constantly get documents, trying to make connections, trying to finddo letters people are writing to each other. The story of how the story is made itself is interesting but its a similar thing on whats happening with espionage in that itsen almost like a suspense. Whats going to happen . Are they going to get caught or not . Inherent in the plot of any kind of spy book or novel is suspense, the thrill, the thrill of the hunt. Thats what you feel doing research. I might find something, i might not. Its more of a broader sense of people like being in suspense in a story. Its exciting and its espionage tales lend themselves to that very well. Fair question. Something you said earlier about data with tasha a dual dinner with Winston Churchill. How to some have a dull dinner with Winston Churchill . Was apart of d spy craft . No, this is her mother wanting her to marry the right man and her mother knew Jamie Churchill was an american, Winston Churchills mother was an american. How was he dull wax he wanted to talk series talk at dinner. She was a debutante, and she wanted, this was a point in her life when sheoi just wanted to have a good time. He had come back from the war. Yet just join parliament. He was very interested in what is going on in europe. This was not for her. Besides which stepping undertow. At might not have been a dual dinner for chortle but probably for her. Right. [laughing] who is next . Thank you. This has been terrific. Im still trying to process a dual dinner with churchill. I lost my question. For both of you and you mentioned a little bit about this but what with the one or two threads that you just couldnt find or follow up on . Iq like you wake up at night ad you still think, if i just couldve gone there. Whatever love to hear that. Thank you. I will say one of the chapters in the book is called the Document Division and its about the part of the r d branch of the charge of forging passports and train tickets and ration tickets and all that kind of stuff. There is a part of it that talks about secret writing which you mentioned earlier, hearing or lemon juice or anything like this. There were a lot of famous chemists working on this, one is linus pauling, a twotime Nobel Prize Winner in chemistry. I just cannot find that many documents on the creation of the secret writing techniques themselves, so thats one thing if i could find documents and later add something to this but would do more on secret writing because its so intriguing that i couldnt find enough forces. The story is a slave to the sources. If i didnt have sources to tell that particular story, i just couldntid put much but that wod do one thing i would want to follow up on. One of the things that i was inspired by icann stymied by, theres two kinds of intelligence. Theres positive intelligent where you reporting on whats happening wherever you are, so she was reporting for example, on the political, social, economic, psychological situation in germany. But theres also a negative intelligence which is counterintelligence, and thats reporting on people who are trying to undermine our country. That was a lot of what marguerite did in germany and russia. She was involved with trying to get an american cartoonist, who was one of the most popular cartoonist at the time, into american hands. He was a socialist, and she was told to track him down and pretend to be, well, do whatever she had to do because they never give instructions that are so specific. But she had to pretend to be a serious supporter of radical socialism, bolshevism. And i never could get past, it didnt work out, it didnt work out. And he was actually, they found, she found information about him that they could have used but the government i didnt go because his father was very influential. But there was a lot to that story that i just couldnt find, and she said that that situation caused her great problems for many years to come. And thats where that person that double agent was involved. So i ie would have loved to e had the specifics. Its very hard to say to find the specifics. They didnt write about them. They had to be careful. All right. One more question. A question related to something that somebody asked earlier about stories about spies come out. I think of a woman of no importance and Ben Macintyre wrote about the codebreakers and a lot of stories of women in world war ii and i wonder if you think some more stories of women doing spy craftwork and world war i might come out . Its possible. I i dont, i dont, i think thee are wonderful stories about world war i that will come out. If they come out about women they will be about women who are working here, not overseas. But im sure there are Great Stories to be told, no question. Your question. This is a question more about intelligence overall since both of your kind of talk on this. I what is your take on the consequences in the long run of intelligence, like thinking post second world war, u. S. Was involved in lots of coos, think iran, honduras, chile, et cetera, et cetera, that at the time were considered to be really positive results but ovec the long run we see our relationship with iran, nicaragua, et cetera, et cetera doing that. A lot of it has come especially like the dirty tricks thing. Just want to hear, think of your ideas on the value of intelligence in general over the long run. Intelligence itself i think is very valuable. At least the aspect of gathering information. Thats what intelligence is, having information is in typically theres an analysis portion of that. Theres usually intelligence gathering and intelligence analysis. Ig knowvery useful just to about what our potential enemies doing . Comedy troupe to they have . Where are their missile station . Its important to know that stuff but the are really two aspects to the Intelligence Community, the second one develop very early in history of the cia. Visit the postworld war ii. The cia was created originally just as an intelligence gathering and organizing mechanism. Its way to g inform the presidt on whats going on in the world. Very soon after 1947 the cia expanded itsts modus operandi beyond that not to just be intelligence government but also be covert operations. So not just find out whats going on but also trying to influence what is going on. There are a lot more probably negative things to say about his covert operation side, intelligence gathering side is come just a necessary thing in the modern world. The covert. Operations are not just if areas in some instances because they might have bad abroad but one o of things theyo is expose and the same kind of immoral or unethical is the value trust in the cabin. The fact our government do Something Like this, elites people down this slippery slope to then say if they did that ensure they are doing this. If they did that then of course they would still be doing that today. This is one theld things when i studied this mkultra my control Expert Program come what of the typical things i say especially if people are kind of conspiracy there is around this is look, the government performs these unethical experience on these people. Obvious he if they did that then theyre youre still doing something similarri today. Its an airplane contras come the water, the vaccines was easy for them to use that as an example of if that happened, then surely it is still going on. It undermines trust in the government which is probably one of the worst things that these unethical covert operations in that doing. I have a followup question. You said unethical covert operations, but in the name of defending the country, is there a limit to what you should be doing . This is one of the central questions that i am kind of playing out in this book that im writing. Its a continuation his first book. Its focusing on mkultra expertness by the documents i found in the library of congress. A lot of these documents are depositions of the perpetrators come thousands of pages of attorneys asking them questions. What were you thinking when you did this . Why did you dorp this . Didnt you know the consequences will quickly to people to suffer . And you can see the deer spending in these peoples minds trying to think about why did we do that . They had justification for its not they are completely unethical people who are n doing this because they want to see people suffer. Thats rarely ever the case with anyone. Its very few people are just nefarious people. These people come sydney, ahead of the mkultra program, he was in his mind a patriot. If the soviets are going to lace or does our Drinking Water with lsd, shouldnt we know with the effects of that a coin to be . This one potential i could happen. How are we going to find out what those effects are . What if we do it on a smallscale course we will do something with lsd and see how they react, that we we will know ife the city gets dosed with it and will be able to counteract it, weon will how to respond. So in his mind hes doing something patriotic. Im trying to prevent this catastrophe from happening so theres a lot of rational justification if you can come up for this so it is hard to walk the line between what is ethical and unethical . Sydney thought when he was doing was ethical. He has a justification for a 50 thought in the cold war we are in a war. If stanley was doing the same stuff from one or two, i am just as justified in doing it during the cold war. At least was his rationalization. All right. We have about a minute left. One last question. Very easy one. Your career in the stacks and you more recently. Ai is coming along. How is it going to impact your research and your w ability this is a one minute question. [laughing] okay. Real quick. I dont think you can substitute human intelligence, the kind of work that marguerite harrisonor did where she is engaged in a very personal relationship with people who have information that otherwise would not be gained. So, for example, the german former Army Officers were plotting to go against any treaty that was signed and to create monarchy states, rightwing states, and prussia and in Eastern Europe after world war i. She saw on the street people marching, Army Officers in their uniforms, boys in gray jackets and caps, goosestepping underway to stop out the jews. This is a kind of thing you need people to see and to know about. And no ai is going to do that. [applause] i will just come our mentioned briefly and ijo will play a role in what historians do when documents are more doctors are digitized untilnd their digitized the story so go to the archives and see whats what. When documents are digitized thats going to enable ai or search algorithms to find specific phrases, specific events that happened and collate a bunch of information together from a bunch of different sources and a bunch of different archives that the historian would never been able to go to on their own. O hopefully, ai can be used to aid the historian. Hopefully ai or some language model dont just try to write history themselves. I would like a future where historians have some say what they think happen in the past. But it is, i mean is going to be a big deal especially when documents get digitized. The fact that a i will be able tole search them far better than any Human History ever could. Ar tell a day the somewhat silly to conduct interviews which hopefully is where we come in. [laughing] [applause] to end, as you can see. From this near stan, only crowd. Theres a lot of interest in your books, dirty Tricks Department john vile and flirting with danger, janet wallach. Thanks for your time. [applause] up next more conversations of the 2023 library of congress National Book festival. Host wean