So far, so good. Thanks for being with us and just a reminder, only four hours from washington so you can come up to the National Book fair in any year you want. We are going to go to the first offer discussion of the day. This is a group of authors talking about accidental spies and 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 the director of the center of the library of congress. The cookie center is one of the sponsors of the festival and we are proud to bring the most beloved riders here. The center works to bring scholars into residents that work in the collections for up tohe a year to write books like these and to be a part of the national dialogue. Welcome to everyone joining on cspan today. A range today from the history ofon american spycraft to an evt about how the choices define who we are we will be hearing about climate change, but it needs to be latino in america. We hope you engage in the conversations today, ask questions and join the riders. The first panel today accidental spies the scientist and socialites janet and geoffrey. The historian of science and ofe American Intelligence Community the date you book today is the dirtyy Tricks Department. Janet is. The author of ten books. Her latest is flirting with danger the mysterious life of Marguerite Harrison and moderator cbs news chief National Figures and the justice correspondent o also the host of the podcast america change forever. Lets welcome them to the stage. [applause] i am not perky like you this morning. I dont know how you do it. This is a little different. Forgive me if my mind starts wandering toward the golf course and i ask some ridiculous questions. Thats when you come in. We want you to participate. Obviously you are 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 because when i picked up the book im like okay, spycraft, cia. I like that. This is write down my alley. I mean, its not golf. [laughter] thanks for coming. Appreciate your time. I loved your books. It sort of reminded me of college where i had to cram to study up, but im ready. Lets talk about the books. Weks are going to start with flirting with danger. Love the title. I love the book in part because it talks about maryland and it talks about baltimore, not baltimore, baltimore. It was interesting to me and then you have 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 in eighth generation american from a very prominent family in maryland and she was part of she was the daughter of the gilded age. Her father was a shipping tycoon and her mother was a socialite hostess who wanted her daughter to marry for money and title. I want that for my daughters. [laughter] marguerite was a rebel. She wasnt so keen on what her mother wanted. She did have a romance with a turkish and very bold dinners with Winston Churchill. [laughter] who would step on her toes when they went dancing. She married a handsome stockbroker and she was madly in love with him and he with her. 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, well, nine months after the wedding, they had a son. [laughter] i did count. [laughter] they had a wonderful society kind of life. The country club dinners and charity luncheons andan special dances and all that. She seemed to have a perfect life ande. Existence. She did. But in 1915, her husband died, very young. She was a widow. She was very interested in World Affairs and traveled as a child to europe every summer. She spoke five languages fluently and at the age of ten she was the family translator in germany and france. Thats pretty impressive. She hadnt traveled at all with her husband. She was at home taking care with of the family. Her husband died, instead of going back to the family to live with her father, her inlaws, she went out on her own not a likely thing for a Society Woman to do. She got a job at the Baltimore Sun as an assistant society editor, then when the war broke out as a reporter, when america joined with the war as a reporter and she wanted to go to the front, no women were allowed at the front. So she applied for jobs as a spy. What else. And she applied first to naval l intelligence because thats where the Intelligence Department was at the time and they said a woman . Not a chance. So she applied topl the army tht was just setting up intelligence. There hadnt been a cia, oss, none of that. The army sent an interviewer wo 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 i am in eighth generation american. Ive only lived here. He thought she might be sympathetic to exactly. He was sure. But no, it wasnt true so the head of military intelligence had the wonderful name of marlborough churchill, love it said you are hired and she was the First American woman sent overseas. With germany and russia and the far east and hugely successful in her work. I kept thinking james bond. Somebody needs to make a movie about marguerite unless there is already one out there. No. [laughter] once hollywood comes back from strike. We can make a proposal. Thats right. I have to say the New York Times review that i think comes out tomorrow in the papers called her George Smiley in a mink coat. You mentioned oss which brings me for those of you that dont know, its one of the precursors to the cia. There were several different versions of that agency. Your book is the dirty Tricks Department. Danger and the dirty Tricks Department. Tell us about stanley lavelle. Tell us about him. Hes the driving character. Hes the main character in the book. Hes a chemist from around boston. He worked for much of his early life in a shoe leather factory, indicate he would be involved in intelligence agencies. When world war ii happened after pearl harbor, he felt a kind of patriotic fervor he needed to do something for his country and happened to run into carl who at the time was the president of mit. He knew stanley and said you are a businessman and a chemist, we need to someone like you in washington, d. C. To help out, so he quit his job right after that and on his papers in the archives, you can see his stated reason for leaving his job justices war so he left his job to go to washington, d. C. And he becomes in aid first to bush and if anyone has seen the movie oppenheimer, theres a few appearances. So stanley is in aid and bush is also from the northeastsh and ha similar kind of attitude as stanley. Bush recommends stanley to join the oss, the head of the oss at the time is William Donovan. Donovan is a war hero from world war i, the head of this organization now thats been charged with conducting espionage and disinformation campaigns and also sabotaging the enemy abroad during world bowar ii. Thats kind of the main thing the oss is doing. Bush recommends him to donovan and donovan recruits him we need you here. Here is how it happens. Stanley gets a letter saying made to me meet me at this one building in dc and he doesnt know who the letter is from. He shows up to this building, budoesnt know why hes there or who hes meeting. He is in a room that is just barren and theres nothing there. He waits for a couple of hours and all of a sudden William Donovan comes in the room with a metal of honor on his lapel and says i need you to be the professor of the oss and hes thinking to himself no sherlock holmes, hes a bad guy. [laughter] but he talked with donovan and donovan says we need a spy to create the secret weapon for our undercover agents and so he recruits him to be that person and he ends up heading the Research Development branch and that ishe what he does throughot the war creating these gadgets and disguises. I thought that was interesting also how he had to reorient m his mind doing good o being as evil as possible. That is one of those main arts of the book. Hes reluctant to get involved in this in the first place. After donovan recruits him a few weekss later he goes to donovans house and he says i dont know if im cut out for this im a scientist and he felt this sort of hippocratic obligation i need to do good in society. Science has created good things. Agriculture that feeds people and medicine that keeps people well. Now im going to use the knowledge i gained to create weapons that are going to kill people . Donovan basically says just to screw it up we needed someone to do this. Of t the war is important. Youre going to help us. Throughout the book we see the character from someone who is reluctant to engage in this behavior to at the end of the war hes advocating for the United States to use things on prisoners of war, things like chemical weapons and the pacific, things like biological weapons so it is very strange how he goes from reluctance he too advocating for the use of weapons of mass destruction. It is a dilemma i think for anyone who chooses the type of work. Most people want choose the type of work but what is coursing through both books is a sense of patriotism from the characters in your book to the characters of your book and so im wondering as i listen to you describe the book the research in both of these books is to me meticulous. How much time did that take . It took me 30 years to find her. 30 years . Yes. I was doing research in 93 in new castle england at the University Library for a book about Gertrude Bell who was the chiefat creator of iraq after world war i for the british. All her papers were there. Thousands of letters, diaries and journals and so on. I came across a letter that she had written home to her father in 1924 saying that this extraordinary American Woman had comehr through town and that shd invitedr her to dinner and never had heard such tales from a woman and how this american had everybody under her spell. She invited her not once but twice, to two dinners and it was the same thing. I read this and i thought an American Woman in baghdad in 1924. What was she doing there . She must have been a spy. It was 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 the book i would look for the next subject as we always do and i couldnt findi 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. I wound up filing a freedom of information request and sure enough her papers were in the National Archives right here in college park maryland. That was a fabulous frustrating experience because you are constantly filling out forms and getting permission and waiting for hours and hours for papers to arrive. But what i found was like gold. So it was classified papers some of them from where did you find those classified papers . [laughter] [inaudible] i dont know where that came from. So what did you do with them . Can we name a special counsel . [laughter] just kidding. But did you go into the process thinking okay early 1900s, or did you know marguerite was the one that you wanted . The little bit that i read about her old me she was the one. Her whole viewpoint was as an internationalist. She cared about World Affairs and thats something thats always interested me. She was really smart. She was beautiful and charming because her government pulled her you can be intellectual if you want but you get much further being charming which is the latter truth from that. And where she went and what she did and how she inserted herself into every level of society. It really is. And hes another one. Essentially orphaned and he found his way to cornell. He rose through modest means and is not a household name. He was orphaned from a young age. His parents died a young age and he was raised by his sister who was a seamstress and put him through school i was working on scientists within the community and through reading about that i would come across this name. He invented of the kind of things like bath bombs and glowing foxes and cyanide pills and all kinds of stuff and i was intrigued but i was focusing on my dissertation. Every time i would go to the archiveses and we were talking backstage we spent a lot of time in the National Archives. Every time i would go, dont tell my professors but half the time i would work on my dissertation and the other half i knew in the back of my mind sometime im going to write about stanley. I would pull documents from the dissertation but also just kind of do that on the side. Eventually i finished school and i decided im going to focus on thisis other thing. Now hang out in the National Archives fulltime. For some people it can be fun. [laughter] so thats the origin i guess of how i found stanley. I knew his name through researching within the Intelligence Community, but the story was almost too good for me not to follow up on. I couldnt hardly help myself. It kind of became almost an obsessive thing i wanted to know moreou about who he was so thats what i spend my t time doing. Talk about theres one quote. You work in tv and hear things and soundbites. Ive been in tv for 30 years now so when people talk thats good to know, soundbites. And one good soundbite in your book is when someone is talking about all you need are seven properly trained men to essentially do these dirty tricks that can cripple a city which that is good information for a special reporter. Who said the fat, and was that the thinking atan the time to ty to get it up and running . It was kind of the thinking g especially forve stanleys bran. When stanley was appointed the head of this branch, he didnt really know what to do because the United States didnt have the same pedigree and nefarious warfare as someone like the british and so the first thing he does is go to england to learn about what have you all done in the past and how can we kind of take some of those ideas and use them ourselves for instance one of the things he recreates is something called a limpid mind this is something that a separate work and place on the bottom of a ship and row away and its time until after it will detonate and sink the ship. He got that from the british. When hes in england thats when one of the british kind of counterparts says the thing about seven welltrained men are able to destroy a city if you know the right places to attack so thatss where that comes fro. Thats where he got some of his original ideas and then when he gets back to the United States a lot of what hes doing is just brainstorming. He doesnt have any direction so his idea is we will throw stuff against the wall, see what sticks in to see what the soldiers and undercover saboteurs need so they just start creating all kinds of inventions. Your account takes place in the early 1900s world war i. Really 1945, 1940 timeframe and the japanese bombed pearl harbor and roosevelt was looking for as much information as they could get on the enemy because they had the intelligence apparatus in place. In terms of intelligence gathering, its Law Enforcement but itss a different kind of w enforcement and is nefarious as it soundsbo sabotaging dirty tricks thats the way things work in the intelligence case. So i wanted to ask you, janet, and dont forget i need you to ask questions also. 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 she was, and how women can do extraordinary things. Nobody expected a woman to be able to do what marguerite did. In fact from the time the war started and we were thinking about getting involved in it and we were worried about and the public was great whos going o earn a living for the family if we send our men overseas and she went out and gave jobs that only men did like shipbuilding plans and a streetcar conductors and showed how women could just take over their husbands or fathers jobs and the world life would go on and then of course she was one of the most important intelligence agents in world war i. So, yeah we can do a lot. Its almost like the enemy didnt see her coming. They were not expecting someone like her in that kind of job. We have a question right there. There is a microphone. I should have told you theres a microphone. Im just curious was it as difficult to find out about marguerites personal life as it was her professional life . Did she have to leave her son behind . Were you able to find out all that information as well because it is just harrowing. It was harder in a way to find out the personal information because her daughterinlaw destroyed all her letters home. That tells you a little about her relationship with her daughter and with her son, which was loving that a very distant and that created distance physically and emotionally so that created a lotre of problem. Were you sure the daughterinlaw didnt want to destroy the correspondence . Did they know that she was a spy . Yes, by the time but this was much later. This was her second marriage and this was much, much later so she had told her family about what she was doing but i was lucky that she had two granddaughters who were around who were very interested in this book and helping to tell her story so they were wonderful and i did get good information from them. Right over here. Two questions if i i may. It seems like an odd choice. What was it about him that led them to think that he is one they would want for the position and also can you give some examples of some of the nefarious gadgets . [laughter] he had a couple things working in his advantage to get into this type of work. One is that he was from new england and a lot of the people who were in washington, d. C. In the kind of scientific positions were from new england so he happened to personally know these people. Bush was also basically the unofficial science advisor to Franklin Roosevelt during the war. Not in charge of coordinating wartime Scientific Research that included the manhattan project, proximity fuses, radar, so stanley almost personally new bush so this worked in his favor and getting the job. As for the second part of the question what kind of things. Yes. I mentioned a couple of bath bombs and glowing boxes. The bath bomb was this idea that instead of dropping incendiary bombs on lets say tokyo and they might not even hit a target they would blow up and wait for these, what if we invent this tiny incendiary and attach it and put it in hibernation fly it to japan, released the bad and it will wake up and naturally they will go in and roost in the warehouses into buildings and lumber yards and instead of wasting bombs, the bats are exactly what we want them to be. They will blow up and set fires in the cities and we wont have to use as many resources. Thats the idea at least. It never got put to actual use but theres an interesting fact it kind of worked because during a test one of the bats got away and flew into a military barracks and a control tower and blew up and burned them down. [laughter] it actually seemed to work a little bit. But that is one example of the auto gadgets. There were pistols and cyanide pills, truth drugs, all kinds of different weapons, forged documents for undercover agents the department did and also undercover disguises so figurinn out how to artificially age a persons appearance and make them look one way and not another were to look as if they were a fisherman in the middle of europe instead of some american agent so thats what the department was doing. In the book you talk about stanley was asked, he was closed and i forget who was quizzing him but he said okay if you had to do this and this to the enemy, how would you operate alone as a sole mission . What did he say . When he was the age of bush, looking to recommend someone to William Donovan and gave a bunch of au to kind of a test he said basically if you were stranded on an enemy beach and there were guards you needed to take out what is the one weapon you would want to have with you so you could do it without anyone knowing so he walks around washington, d. C. Thinking about what weapon to create and ends up submitting his answer which is a silenced automatic 22 pistol and they thought this is exactly what you would need to so that is what got him recommended and one of the lessons they create that turned out to be very useful, this pistol created during world war ii that was recommended was used throughout several decades into the vietnam war. Were there silencers at that time on weapons . Yes this was one of the early thsilencers. Interesting. So you are the guy for the job. I like the way you think. He liked the answer. Go ahead with your question. Did they continue in their activities after the war and if not how did they adapt going back to life . After marguerite was in germany and russia, where she was in prison for ten months, she went on to the far east and wassh in japan where the japanee 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 into the chinese ad the russians. [laughter] 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 [inaudible] horrible rapids and the rivers. She did continue for a while and then like so many spies she sort of faded away. A question over here. Thank you both for your amazing stories. I just finished at home i finished i my binge of the americans and it makes me think of did either of these individuals, hiding in plain sight did they ever get exposed for what they were doing by the enemy . Not so much. He worked under William Donovan and when donovan was appointed head of the oss at the early stages of the u. S. Involvement in world war ii, the germans put out some articles on donovan saying he is the spymaster he knows all this stuff and has unlimited funds. He said they are spreading disinformation. They are doing my job for me, but thats sort of thing didnt really happen with him. He was not 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 and didnt get deployed abroad. Hes the one creating their disguises and cover stories and gadgets for them to go abroad to so he was in the u. S. Anyway. If i can follow up on that last question. What happened after the war, i will just briefly mentioned he did continue this kind of work in a way. He was a consultant to the cia after the oss in 1947. He recommended to alan that the cia create a branch similar to the rmd branch. He creates what is called the Technical Services staff and that is the branch that would for the cia agent create their branches and disguises and all that. I was looking in some of the papers and i was hoping to make a connection between but i want to see their doing similar things at different times, is there aff connection between th . I was in the archives taking pictures of documents, trying to take as many pictures as i can before rightly. I didnt have time to sit there and focus on the documents i was just snapping and going. I was looking at these deposition of sidney talk about his work in the cia. In the deposition i see the name. I cannot read at the time took us many pictures as i could but i knew the name was in there pretty so excited i knew it was connected in some way eventually found what is the connection between world war ii oss veteran by the psalter scientist . We will have to read the book to find out but it is there. [applause] clicks on the news because that a tease. [laughter] look at this crab. All of these people go ahead. Question for the first woman spy. She was not acknowledged at all the armor took a risk on her. Some were so early challenges that sheng had within the spikee community especially in terms of the group one could no women correct . And here you have a woman now becoming a spy for another branch of the army. Or some the export frustrations she expressed . Interestingly she was of society that was attrition will brad, well educated if you can put them in that category. [laughter] i will try hard. And so she attended radcliff many of the men who were in a intelligence went to harvard. She was of the same class. Her acceptance within the Intelligence Community i did not see anything at all the classified papers i read there was a lot of remarks going back and forth about herer work. Where she was, what she was doing, how risky it was, how courageous she was. It was just too dangerous. But nobody actually referred to hb in terms of her being a female. So she was accepted. Her work used her ability with people from the higher echelons of society. As well as hanging out at a bar drinking beer with the workers. And when she was in germany her job was to find out what was going on. No americans had been there during the war because the wars in france and belgium. Nothing happened in germany. We needed to know for going have any Peace Agreement how much. How big was their military . How is their economy . How is their infrastructure . What was the mood of the people . That was her job to find out. She could be very Close Friends with former German Army Officers and generals unshakably friends with the average working person. That is how she got her information. But so happened she had to be joined secret societies on the right and the left of socialist and within that girl somebody had a contact the state department was a double agent. That is how she ended up there. Whats interesting. Quick jon in your book you also talk about there are a similar plot twist here. A lot of the hires were from wealthy families millionaires these were people who couldve been doing other things or nothing at all. Worked with the jokes about the early oss and cia were people who were pale, gayle, they are certainly it was a similar pedigree to a lot of these people. There are lots of accusations especially from people in military intelligence who did not necessarily like the oss that felt like there infringing on their turf. One of the jokes was the oh ss stauffer oh so social. Its a social club guys getting together others was it handed out cellophane commissions they were seethrough bike obviously you do not you deployed in a cap big draft off soon i get drafted into the military. Especially people donovan resented this one time theres an admiral in the navy who mentioned to him its a social club of people youre not really doing anything areis you . Donovan goes and called up from his guys in the oss and tells them break into his office and bring his documents. [laughter] seeks into his admirals office, breaks into his safety finds demi dynamite near his office that rush to write donovan is at this dinner party walked up to the edmonton heres the content in the sum dynamite next to building two. [laughter] the dirty trick. [laughter] thanks for the question. Some will be read each others books answer my question goes. I only read one and i wont say which one yet. These two people are so involved shared in common . I will mention something. Even the topic of this panel is accidental these are people who are not necessarily the first person you would think of in the scientist becoming this dirty Tricks Department guide this professor whose creating these devices and female journalist journalsright for the end of wor i. But the more i thought about i do think there is someut similarity these are actually two people who you might suspect you would go into this kind of think not justt given the background journalists in particular spies attend use of journalism as a covid journalists are people who ask athleticquestions. Your local baker is asking about what youre using to create some kind of missiles going to be suspicious. If its a journalist, a journalist is asking questions its a lot easier to use journalism as a cover for espionage it is similar it was scientist as well. This is especially prevalent around the 1950 cia was trying to recruit scientist to serve because thats all scientist want to do is ask questions, what is that . What is that . It is not weird of a scientist is asking what aloe you are using its part of the job it is expected. The problem the cia ran into the scientist as they wanted to talk about their work so much it wasnt what they would give information the reliable to give it away. Reporters do that too. [laughter] i got to be honest. He wanted to answer the question as well . Jon actually mentioned it before. They were both so patriotic. They put their lives at risk to do this work. Because they believe in their country. And i think that is something worth remembering. Especially today. Yes. Especially today per your question please . [inaudible] how large was the context of spies . Howw many spies were out there and entered this work . And again how many individuals were in the oss at that time . I honestly do not know how many spies there were working for military intelligence, not a lot. Not a lot. The military used there attaches around the world. They were the people who were feedingey information back to m. And as i mentioned marguerite was the only woman who was sent overseas. So this is a small community. Is first the oss became a pretty Large Organization over time it had thousands of people thousands of personnel not that many of them were actually in this rmd branch. The main component of the rmd branch is like one dozen scientists. At the Congressional Country Club in maryland and the basement of the clubhouse is where they had a laboratory they would create a lot of these gadgets. They were not that many scientists involved in this. However, oneve thing did a pionr in a way is creating contracts to develop some these weapons. Its not just inhouse these arw being developed but he would contract out things to different universe that Columbia University created a time missile that would delay a detonation. It was not just the oss working on the gadgets being farmed out to other individuals who might have expertise in a specific area but you do know what to you bring into the organization. Your question . Thank you. To be above gloom spent a lot of time and energy on the subject what is it you see captures the americans a fascination with spies and what got you interested in the idea . Brexit dont think americans are alone think about the british go on and on and on. With spy stories and spy novels. I think in a way every country has its particular fascination. The russians by the way were away ahead of the americans during world war i and developing secret ways of spying. I think they were the ones who invented or discovered using urine to write in secrets. Yes not too lovely pick. Cannot talk about that on tv. I draw the line right there for brickwork there is inherent fascination with with espionage. I dont think it is particular to the unitedh states. I kind of seat what i do not is that its almost like a detective story. I am looking at archives but i am look at document some trying to make connection some time to find letters people are writing to each other. The story of how the story is made itself is really interesting. It is a similar thing on what is happening with espionage and that its almost like a suspense but what is going to happen . Are theyit going to get caught . Are they not . I inherent in the plot of any spy booker spy novel it is suspense that is the thrill its the thrill of the hunt but its what you feel doing research i might find something i might not. It is more of a broader sense of people like being in suspense and a story it is exciting and espionage lend themselves to that very well. You a fair question. Struck by something you said earlier with Winston Churchill what how does someone have adult dinner with Winston Churchill . [laughter] second without part of her side craft with socialization . This is herpy mother wanting her to marry the right man and her mother knew Jenny Churchill who was an american Winston Churchill mother was american. I was sedo . He wanted to talk serious talk at dinner she was a debutante this was a point in her life she time. Anted to have a good he had come back from that war he had just joined a parliament he was very interested in what was going on in europe this was not for her. Besides which stepping on her toes. It might not been a dull dinner for churchill but probably for her. [laughter] r8, who is next question of. Thank youy this is been terrific im trying to process a dull dinner with churchill. For both of you you mentioned a little bit about this but what were the one or two threads you just couldnt find her followup on . You wake up at night and still think if i couldve gone that i would love to hear that, thank you. I will say one of the chapters in the book is called the Document Division its about part of the rmd branch that was in charge of forging passports and train tickets and ration tickets and all that kind of stuff. There is a part of it talks about secret writing you mentioned earlier urine, lemon juice or anything like that. They were a lot work on this one is linus is a twotime Nobel Prize Winner in chemistry. I just could not find that many documents on the creation of the secret writing techniques themselves. That is one thing. If i could find it documents and later add something to this book can be more in secret writing because it is so intriguing i just cannot find enough sources by the historian has become a slave to the sort we can only write with the sources tell us if i didnt have the source in search of a particular story i could not put much that would be one thing i want to follow up on. One of the things i was startled by was this kind of intelligence this positive t intelligence you are reporting on what is happening wherever you are. So she was reporting for example on the political social economic psychological situation in germany. But there is also negative intelligence which is counterintelligence that is reporting on people who are trying to undermine our t count. That was a lot of what marguerite did in germany and russia. She was involved with trying to get an american cartoonist who is one of the most popular cartoonist at the time into american hands he was a socialist. She was told to track him down and pretend, do whatever she had to do that they never give instructions without specific but she had to pretend to be a serious supporter of radical socialism. I never could get past make it didnt work out it did not work out. She found information about him that they could have used but the government let him go because i saw he was very influential but theres a lot to that story i just cannot find he said that situation caused her great problems for many years to come. That is where that person or that double agent was involved. I wouldld have loved to have the specifics. Its very hard to find the specifics they did not write about them. They had to be careful. One more question. Ask a question related to something somebody asked earlier about lies coming out with the importance and then mcintyre wrote the code breakers and you rehave a story of women and word war ii. When you think of more stories of women doing spy work and world war i might come out . It is possible. I think there are wonderful stories about world war i that will come out. If they come out they will be about women who were working here not overseas. But i am sure there are Great Stories to bee told, no questio. Answer questions . This is a question more about intelligence overall. I just want to hear your take on the consequences of the long run of intelligence thinking postsecond world war the u. S. Was involved lots of cues think iran, honduras, chile et cetera et cetera. At the time were considered to be a bit over the long run we see our relationship with iran, nicaragua et cetera et cetera and a lot of it especially the dirty tricks thing. Just want to think of your ideas on the value of intelligence in general for the long run. Intelligence itself is very valuable. The aspect of gathering information and typically there is an analysis portion of that. This usually intelligence gathering intelligence analysis thats veryce useful to know wht are potential enemies doing . How many troops do they have . Where are they station . Its important to know that that there are two aspects of the Intelligence Community the second one developed a very early in the history of the cia but this is not postworld war ii. The cia was created originally as an intelligence gathering and organizing mechanism print the way to inform the president on what is going on in the world. Very soon after 1947 the cia expanded beyond that not to just be intelligence gathering but to be Covid Operations. Not just fighting it was going on that also trying to influence whats going on. There are a lot more negative things toga say about this covid operation the intelligence gathering side is a necessary thing in the modern world the Covid Operations arent just nefarious in some instances because they might have better results abroad at one of the things they do if they are exposed and they seem immoral or unethical is a devalued trust thes government the fact our government would do Something Like this leads people down a slippery slope to say if they did that then surely they are doing this. If they did that then of course they would still be doing that lltoday. This is one of things when i studied this mind control Experiment Program one of the typical things i see especially in people who are conspiracy theorists around this is what the government performance unethical experiment on these people obviously if they did that they are still doing something similar today. Ts its in the airplane contras is in the water, the vaccine its easy for them to use that as an example of if that happened then surely it still going on. It undermines trust in the government which is probably one of the worst things the unethical Covid Operations end up doing. I have a followup question. You said unethical covid atoperations. But in the name of defending the country is there a limit to what should be doing . Is one of the central questions i am playing out in this book i am writing it is a continuation of this first book its really focusing on these experiments by the documents i found in the library of congress. A lot of these documents are depositions of the perpetrators thousands of patient of attorneys ask them questions were you thinking we do did this . Why did you do this . Didnt you think the consequences would lead to people too suffer . You can see the gears spinning in these peoples minds trying to think why did we do that . They have justifications they are not unethical people who want to see people suffer thats rarely ever the case with anyone. Very few people are nefarious people thesee people the headsf the Ultra Program he was in his mind at patriots the soviets are going to lay sword dose our Drinking Water with lsd shouldnt we know what the effects of that are l going to e a question but theres one potential that could happen however going to find out where those effects are . What if we do it on a small scalpel dose a bit lsd will see how they react. That weight we will know of the city gets dosed with it we will be able to counteract it. We will know how to respond. He is doing something patriotic i a trying to prevent this catastrophe from happening. Theres a lot of rational justifications you can come up with. Its hard to walk the line between what is ethical and unethical . Sydney certainly felt he was doing was ethical. In the justification for it he thought in the cold war we are in a war it was doing the same stuff during world war ii i am just as justified doing it during the cold war. At least with this rationalization. We have about a minute left and one last question. You have spent your career and more recently ai is coming along how its going to impact your research . Thisis is a one minute question. [laughter] x okay it real quick. I dont think you can substitute human intelligence. The kind of work that Marguerite Harrison did where shes engaged in a very personal relationship with the people who have information that otherwise would not be gained. So for example the germans are former army Army Officers were plotting to go against any treatyha that was signed into creates monarchy states right wing states and russia and Eastern Europe after world war i. She saw on the streets people rcmarching, Army Officers in thr uniforms boys and grave jackets and caps. Next hide, knees goosestepping on the way to stomp out the jews. This is the kind of thing you need people to see and to know about. No ai is going to do that. [applause] i will mention briefly ai will play a role in what the historian does when document mark docking as are digitized until they are digitized dixon sorkin can go. When documents are digitized thats going to enable ai or search algorithms to find specific phrases specific events that happen collate a bunch of information together from a bunch of different sources and a bunch of different archives for the historian would never have been able to go to on their own. Hopefully ai or english models dont try to write history themselves i would like a future first during substance save the think happened in the past. It is going to be a big deal especially when documents get digitized the fact ai is going to be able far better than any Human History ever could until that day though someone still needs to conduct interviews which is hopefully were we commend. [applause] effects great way to end as you can see of this nearest sand room crowd theres a lot of interest in your books, and flirted with danger janet wallick thank you for your time. [applause] up next mark conversation from the 2023 library of congress National Book festival. Excellent introduce you to author r kate russell here is