Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show, fellow conspiracy realists. We're diving
Speaker 1: into a bit of hidden history. We've been on sort
Speaker 1: of a George Washington kick. I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say by the time this comes out. Yeah, I you know,
Speaker 1: it's weird when we think of spies, we think of
Speaker 1: like James Bond, the World's worst spy, or we think
Speaker 1: of the Cold War. But it's weird that growing up
Speaker 1: we don't learn much about the colonial spies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was a major thing, go I think
Speaker 2: we get into in the episode, just the fact that
Speaker 2: everybody's speaking English. It was probably it probably made it
Speaker 2: really both easy to spy but then also really difficult
Speaker 2: to know who was a spy.
Speaker 1: There's also something that's just kind of interesting about colonial
Speaker 1: spying or like the early days of spycraft, especially when
Speaker 1: you're a buff for this kind of stuff like we are.
Speaker 1: And you've probably heard of Benedict Arnold, one of history
Speaker 1: only a few bad bends, But have you heard of
Speaker 1: Agent three fifty five?
Speaker 2: No, Well, then listen up.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1: Our compatriot Nole is on the road, but we'll be
Speaker 1: returning at some point in the future. They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We are joined with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decad.
Speaker 1: Thanks for saving the show as always, Paul. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: you are you. You are here, and that makes this
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. Matt. Today we
Speaker 1: are taking a journey back in time.
Speaker 2: Yes, time traveling again, that's one of my favorite things
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. And of course there's that great
Speaker 1: point that people make sometimes that we're all time travelers.
Speaker 1: We're just moving in the toward the future. One second,
Speaker 1: per I don't know.
Speaker 2: Second, Yes, it's definitely at an even clip.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what, this might be an episode, This
Speaker 1: might be for another episode better suited to a different
Speaker 1: line of thinking. But time is you know.
Speaker 2: It's all relative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, as doctor who said, what was it? Timey
Speaker 1: whimy stuff? Are you a doctor who?
Speaker 2: Fan?
Speaker 1: I No, I totally thought you were going to say,
Speaker 1: doctor Who's That's the first thing I did when someone
Speaker 1: told me about it as a kid.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a great show, and I have seen
Speaker 2: several episodes. I'm not like a you know who, a
Speaker 2: Doctor Who had I don't know what the Whovianovian yeah
Speaker 2: who who enthusiasts.
Speaker 1: Yep, oh right right in let us know what Doctor
Speaker 1: Who fans are called, or what they self describe as
Speaker 1: our time traveled today takes us back to the beginning
Speaker 1: of the United States, back to a time when it
Speaker 1: was the odds were looking pretty dicey for the colonists,
Speaker 1: the would be Americans, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they decided to buck the whole system and fight
Speaker 2: their controllers. Yeah. They went to a bold move.
Speaker 1: They went rage against the machine. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this this is a story that you and I
Speaker 1: stumbled on a long, long time ago in a different episode,
Speaker 1: and it's surprised. I don't know about you, Matt, but
Speaker 1: it surprised the heck out of me.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. The the the fact that espionage dates back
Speaker 2: this far and was as complicated as were this story
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about today, that was astounding to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You hit it. You hit on the word of
Speaker 1: the day or a word of the day, espionage, right,
Speaker 1: Espionage is a tale as old as time or in
Speaker 1: the case of this country, at least as old as
Speaker 1: the state. Espionage actually predates the actually colonial espionage predates
Speaker 1: the existence of the United States. This sort of stuff
Speaker 1: occurred when the idea of what we now call the
Speaker 1: US was nothing more than a weird twinkle in the
Speaker 1: eyes of various founding fathers and would be rulers of
Speaker 1: a new nation. Most of us associate the concept of
Speaker 1: spies and spycraft with works of fiction, right, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what are some of your favorites?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, well, I mean you have to go back
Speaker 2: to Double O seven, I think the original at least
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: Which is weird because technically wouldn't he be the seventh one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: But yeah James, right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. And characters that you find in stories like
Speaker 2: Mission Impossible, I remember were really cool, some of the
Speaker 2: concepts in there. And then if you go There's There
Speaker 2: were some Netflix shows back in the day that were
Speaker 2: surrounding espionage around World War Two that I found the
Speaker 2: most fascinating because of the technology they were dealing with
Speaker 2: at the time and the stakes being so high as
Speaker 2: they were. I think that's why I found that to
Speaker 2: be the most fascinating, although I can't tell you the name.
Speaker 1: Of the Steaks is it s T A. K Ees Right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the spy show featuring like these amazing
Speaker 1: ribbis and.
Speaker 2: T bone stacks of them, just stacks of.
Speaker 1: Them, and then also spying. I would watch that show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you're I kind of know what you're
Speaker 1: thinking about, if not the specific episode the trope, because
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the television show The Americans. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: which have you seen that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So that that show gets a law of often for
Speaker 1: being a I don't know about an entirely realistic depiction,
Speaker 1: but a pretty good depiction of how deep cover sleep
Speaker 1: agents would actually work. So we see spycraft and espionage
Speaker 1: in all sorts of works of fiction. But we also
Speaker 1: know that strange real life accusations of spine pop up
Speaker 1: every so often in the news cycle, and usually when
Speaker 1: they pop up, they disappear pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like a diplomat will get in trouble, but it's
Speaker 2: just some unnamed diplomat and then it goes away.
Speaker 1: Right right. Or three hikers will get caught crossing the
Speaker 1: border into Iran, three American hikers and then they'll be
Speaker 1: arrested as spies. The DPRK accuses people of being spies
Speaker 1: fairly often.
Speaker 2: Does it ever make you wonder if there are spies
Speaker 2: caught internally within the United States, but we just never
Speaker 2: hear anything about it. Oh, sure, they just disappear, basically.
Speaker 1: Like there's the case of Jonathan Pollard, an American who
Speaker 1: spied for Israel was and was caught. I think he
Speaker 1: was sentenced to life in prison for violating the Espionage Act,
Speaker 1: but later surprised he didn't have to do that. I
Speaker 1: think it was after thirty years of incarceration he was
Speaker 1: released on November twenty, twenty fifteen. So some spies have
Speaker 1: been exposed and then serve their time, or somehow not
Speaker 1: been killed and have been able to continue living their lives,
Speaker 1: so it is possible to get away with it. Your
Speaker 1: odds are not very good. They were especially not that
Speaker 1: great in the Revolutionary War, because in the Revolutionary War
Speaker 1: on the colonial side, your odds in general weren't spectacular.
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
Speaker 1: So the Revolutionary War, we all kind of know what
Speaker 1: that is. They call it, I think the War for
Speaker 1: American Independence in other countries, but down here, this is
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary war. We're very, very self important about it,
Speaker 1: and I think we've earned the right to be. The
Speaker 1: seeds of democracy had already been planted in the colonies.
Speaker 1: People were already thinking about becoming an independent country well
Speaker 1: before seventeen seventy six. The war went from seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: six to seventeen eighty three and died by the Treaty
Speaker 1: of Paris. And when we look back at this war
Speaker 1: and the nation created, it's incredibly important to remember that
Speaker 1: the government that was put into place, or I guess
Speaker 1: that existed on paper, was see like it was seen
Speaker 1: like a crazy thing. It seemed to be an insane notion.
Speaker 1: How could you rule without a case? How close did
Speaker 1: George Washington come to becoming the king? Right well?
Speaker 2: And a lot has been said that the presidency itself,
Speaker 2: the way it was created, was specifically to prevent any
Speaker 2: one man from becoming king because of you know, the
Speaker 2: way the way the country was set up, with dividing
Speaker 2: powers up and not calling the president certain things, not
Speaker 2: referring to them in that way. It was it was
Speaker 2: an active move to move away from a monarchy.
Speaker 1: Right right again, that's the that's the official narrative, and
Speaker 1: We have an old episode on the Unofficial Narratives that
Speaker 1: you can check out, but it's several years old now, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's back in the day. So they wanted
Speaker 1: something different. They did not want to practice resource extraction
Speaker 1: for the benefit of the kingdom across the pond. They
Speaker 1: did not want to pay taxes. They were very much
Speaker 1: against that. And they they knew that due to the
Speaker 1: huge stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, even the world's most
Speaker 1: powerful naval force wouldn't be able to win the war easily.
Speaker 1: The problem was that even before the war actually broke out,
Speaker 1: the US forces knew their odds of success were dangerously,
Speaker 1: dangerously low. And the colonial leaders, even the really optimistic ones,
Speaker 1: knew that if they were able to win independence, they
Speaker 1: would be literally paying for it in blood.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's an historian, David McCullough who wrote a
Speaker 2: book called seventeen seventy six which we would recommend. The
Speaker 2: Americans suffered terrible, just horrendous losses, roughly twenty five thousand
Speaker 2: casualties in all, or roughly about one percent of the
Speaker 2: entire colonial population, which if you think about that in
Speaker 2: like equivalent terms to today, that would be as though
Speaker 2: if there was a modern war or within the United
Speaker 2: States on American soil that cost three million United States citizens' lives.
Speaker 2: That's an intense thought.
Speaker 1: And as mccolla says, those who have been with Washington
Speaker 1: and who knew what a close call it was at
Speaker 1: the beginning thought the outcome, the ultimate outcome of the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War was a little short of a miracle, the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that makes you say, for instance, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly a spiritual person, but is this a
Speaker 1: coincidence or is this destiny? Because so much stuff had
Speaker 1: to go right. Modern historians have speculated that if the
Speaker 1: colonists hadn't caught a number of key breaks, the rebellion
Speaker 1: might have been crushed. American colonies would have remained under
Speaker 1: the rule of King George, and the ringleaders would have
Speaker 1: been executed in horrific ways. The people probably would have
Speaker 1: been forced to pay a punitive tax.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: It would have made this situation increasingly unsustained able. But
Speaker 1: the war occurred, and as you know in the Hamilton
Speaker 1: musical that comes up whenever we do Reary War episode.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: The there was this huge perception that the US forces
Speaker 1: were outmanned and outgunned.
Speaker 2: I think it's outgunned, outmanned, and I don't remember the
Speaker 2: next part. There's actually a lyric in there, right, I
Speaker 2: don't which song is that? Right hand man, right hand man?
Speaker 2: Oh man, I need to listen. It's been almost a
Speaker 2: year since I think it's right in the soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll have to listen to it after this or Paul, Uh,
Speaker 1: do you want to just play it low under the
Speaker 1: entire Oh wait, we'll get sued.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, sorry, I heart So.
Speaker 1: It is true that the United Kingdom had certain advantages.
Speaker 1: It's not so much the number of people they had,
Speaker 1: but it's the experience those people had and the organization
Speaker 1: or discipline that the British soul was possessed.
Speaker 2: But in the end it kind of was one of
Speaker 2: the things that led to their downfall, not necessarily, but
Speaker 2: because of the use of grilla tactics.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, Yes, so we've talked about before they
Speaker 1: had Napoleonic warfare versus grilla tactics. Yeah, that's a good point, Matt.
Speaker 1: At the height of the war on the US side,
Speaker 1: around eighty thousand members of the Continental Army or militia
Speaker 1: members were active in service oddly enough, on the British
Speaker 1: side there were only about fifty six thousand British soldiers,
Speaker 1: but they were joined by thirty thousand German mercenaries known
Speaker 1: as Hessians. And in Sleepy Hollow, the Johnny Depp version
Speaker 1: of it, that's the Christopher Walkin's character is a Hessian
Speaker 1: at the very beginning.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's the headless horseman.
Speaker 1: Huh wow.
Speaker 2: You're saying it's at the beginning of the movie, right,
Speaker 2: you're saying it's an allegory of some sort.
Speaker 1: I don't know, perhaps, or perhaps Hessians were just seen
Speaker 1: as scary characters due to their the role they played
Speaker 1: in this war. But the would be Americans, which I
Speaker 1: guess we have to call the colonists at this time,
Speaker 1: had some surprising advantages.
Speaker 2: Yeah. First, the main one is that they're fighting in
Speaker 2: a place that they know, they know the terrain, they
Speaker 2: know at advantageous spots and locations. They're on home turf,
Speaker 2: and they didn't have to mess with any kind of
Speaker 2: real logistical things with supply chains, especially ones that would
Speaker 2: cross a major ocean like the Atlantic, the way the
Speaker 2: British had to do in the Germans. But second, they
Speaker 2: could easily in theory, replenish their ranks if soldiers died,
Speaker 2: because they could just get some more people there. Now,
Speaker 2: those people wouldn't be trained necessarily or even ready for
Speaker 2: battle in any way, but you could put bodies on
Speaker 2: the front lines or whatever lines you.
Speaker 1: Required, something to put in front of the cannons. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: it is you're you're absolutely right. That supply chain problem
Speaker 1: was huge, and supply chains are still a huge problem
Speaker 1: in modern warfare today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, logistics of warfare is probably I mean, the biggest
Speaker 2: guns are important. But if you don't have a good
Speaker 2: supply chain to not only feed people and get supplies
Speaker 2: and other things that you need to your the human
Speaker 2: beings that are there performing the work, you're screwed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then on the colonists side, at this time,
Speaker 1: there's a big question of finance. How on earth do
Speaker 1: we pay for this? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we just talked about that in our live show.
Speaker 1: That is true. That is true through the creation of
Speaker 1: the first Central Bank.
Speaker 2: Thanks Hamilton, what a creative name.
Speaker 1: So they there were people who said, should we abandon
Speaker 1: all hope? Is this a not only horrific endeavor but
Speaker 1: ultimately a fruitless one. It was clear that the war
Speaker 1: would be a close thing, possibly a losing conflict for
Speaker 1: the Americans, with brutal consequences for anyone, not just for
Speaker 1: anyone active in the rebellion, but anyone who wasn't an
Speaker 1: active British loyalist. They would the population would bear the punishment. Right,
Speaker 1: This thing didn't succeed, but unbeknownst to most, the colonists
Speaker 1: still had a few tricks up their sleeves.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. One of the most important aspects of the
Speaker 2: colonial military was this extensive spy network that they had
Speaker 2: been building and were continuing to build. It was this
Speaker 2: huge apparatus that in its own way, became as important
Speaker 2: as the weapons, the cannons that the colonists had to
Speaker 2: fire at somebody, because they had people on the inside everywhere.
Speaker 2: In fact, this intelligence network was so stinkin good that
Speaker 2: even today, mysteries about this time and this network remain unsolved. Ooh,
Speaker 2: you know what that sounds like.
Speaker 1: Time for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. So intelligence work is fundamentally American.
Speaker 1: The creation of this nation is inseparable from the creation
Speaker 1: of this nation's intelligence network, military and civilian leaders of
Speaker 1: the American Revolution didn't just use espionage, covert action, counterintelligence, deception,
Speaker 1: and cryptanalysis to offset the British Army's advantage. They used
Speaker 1: it very well. They were very very good at it,
Speaker 1: and the techniques they employed were pretty sophisticated even by
Speaker 1: today's standards.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and when the history books look back at
Speaker 2: the things that the Americans did the heroes of the Revolution,
Speaker 2: a lot of times they'll look over names like Agent
Speaker 2: seven to eleven, which is hilarious when they're talking about
Speaker 2: people like John Bolton or George Washington or perhaps Patrick Henry.
Speaker 2: But they should because as we're gonna as you're gonna
Speaker 2: learn here, as we learned, they were as important or
Speaker 2: integral to the effort as any of those big.
Speaker 1: Names that we just mentioned, right right, Agent as. It's
Speaker 1: gonna crack me up. And John Bolton different John, not
Speaker 1: the John who's currently serving in the US now. Correct,
Speaker 1: He's not some ancient centuries old vampire.
Speaker 2: It was John Bolton.
Speaker 1: Should be kind of cool. More vampires in office, That's
Speaker 1: what I say.
Speaker 2: Well, so these guys were part of something.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, sorry, I was. I started daydreaming full out
Speaker 1: of alter midte style about vampires in office. I am
Speaker 1: pretty on board with it, but you're right, Matt. They
Speaker 1: were part of something that a lot of people were
Speaker 1: unaware of, a spy ring called the Culper Ring, and
Speaker 1: these people's identities were kept secret until well after the
Speaker 1: war ended. In seventeen seventy eight, a guy named Benjamin Talmadge,
Speaker 1: a young American officer who was George Washington's new chief
Speaker 1: of intelligence, organized this top secret network of spies. Several
Speaker 1: of these people, it's important to note, were just otherwise
Speaker 1: ordinary citizens, no military experience, no political ambitions per se.
Speaker 1: Some of them, in fact, were probably just the idol
Speaker 1: rich oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who had meetings with specific people.
Speaker 1: Right on the s surface were British loyalists, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, and probably had British representatives at their house,
Speaker 1: and they talked about how best to keep down the
Speaker 1: peasants in the filth.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and they were so secretive about this that even Washington,
Speaker 2: the guy in charge of everybody, the entire military, the
Speaker 2: country that is being born, he said, no, no, I
Speaker 2: don't even want to know who these people are. Do
Speaker 2: not tell me.
Speaker 1: Oh yet it was a huge deal to him that
Speaker 1: he not know, and that as few people know as possible,
Speaker 1: because they didn't want there to be any way that
Speaker 1: the ring might be compromise. So for recruits, Tomadge turns
Speaker 1: to people that he already knows, people who he made
Speaker 1: friends with in his hometown on Long Island.
Speaker 2: Because how do you trust somebody enough to be a spy?
Speaker 2: Like building trust to get someone to be a spy,
Speaker 2: It's no short order. There's a lot of work you
Speaker 2: got to put into.
Speaker 1: That, You're absolutely right, and even today there the process
Speaker 1: to just work at the FBI or work at the
Speaker 1: CIA involves exhaustive vetting. Also, we should point out that
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of those images of a
Speaker 1: quote CIA spy get romanticized in fiction. Oftentimes a spy
Speaker 1: is going to be a resident of a country that
Speaker 1: you know, they already live in this country and they
Speaker 1: just got turned one way or another into an asset.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they're just years and ice.
Speaker 1: But there are real you know, there are real James
Speaker 1: bonds out there that are just far fewer than you
Speaker 1: might think.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, So this guy is looking to build some bonds,
Speaker 1: to build some real spies, and he chooses a guy
Speaker 1: named Abraham Woodhol to be his his agent, sort of
Speaker 1: his man on the ground. But Woodhold, who was code
Speaker 1: named Samuel Coulper Senior, soon fell a foul of British
Speaker 1: counterintelligence because he kept traveling to Manhattan and they were like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What's your business?
Speaker 2: And he's like, I just really love the park. What
Speaker 2: are you talking about? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1: But he So Woodhall has has some moves, he's got
Speaker 1: some moxie.
Speaker 2: What's he do well? He he actually recruited a relative
Speaker 2: who happened to be living with his sister in their
Speaker 2: in her Manhattan boarding house. This guy was a dry
Speaker 2: goods merchant. He was also a society reporter, and his
Speaker 2: name was Robert Townsend, but his real name was Samuel
Speaker 2: Culper Junior, his real spy name, his real spy name
Speaker 2: when he was walking around.
Speaker 1: So is Junior and Senior at this point.
Speaker 2: So now they're a family.
Speaker 1: So now they're a family. So they need some technology
Speaker 1: and they want to disguise their activities. They have a
Speaker 1: couple of different methods and techniques. One of the strangest
Speaker 1: is that they used a type of invisible ink that
Speaker 1: was developed here in the States and could only be
Speaker 1: read under certain circumstances. They developed a cipher so they
Speaker 1: would write in code, and they were quite good at this.
Speaker 1: They were quite accomplished. They were not perfect, and we'll
Speaker 1: explore we'll explore the bumps in the road they encounter.
Speaker 2: Yeh.
Speaker 1: But for today's episode, we have to focus on the
Speaker 1: most mysterious member of the Culpa ring. This agent was
Speaker 1: a person, yes, or persons, known only by the code
Speaker 1: name Agent three fifty five.
Speaker 2: So much better than seven eleven.
Speaker 1: It is. It is much better than seven to eleven.
Speaker 1: And for comic book fans, if you've read Why the
Speaker 1: Last Man, you will see there's there's an Agent three
Speaker 1: point fifty five in this story and it comes from
Speaker 1: this real historical person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Here's what we know about Agent fifty five. Because you're like,
Speaker 1: whoa Agent fifty five is such a badass and Why
Speaker 1: the Last Man? I can't believe there's a person really
Speaker 1: like this. There may have been, we don't know.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. There's no real historical consensus about who
Speaker 2: this person was, what they really did, even what happened
Speaker 2: to them.
Speaker 1: We just know that they were alive in an active.
Speaker 2: Spy Things got attributed to them Yeah.
Speaker 1: There we go. That's a more fair way to say it, Matt.
Speaker 1: This person is so sketchy that two hundred years later
Speaker 1: we have over two hundred years later, we have no
Speaker 1: idea who they are, and maybe we never will, but
Speaker 1: we do know the things that we're attributed to them
Speaker 1: were stunning and spectacular acts of spycraft. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 1: how do we know they're even real? That's square one, right.
Speaker 1: We know that because there is one direct reference to
Speaker 1: Agent three fifty five in any of the culpor Ring
Speaker 1: letters or correspondencies. It is a letter from Abraham Woodhull,
Speaker 1: remember that's Culper senior to George Washington, when several spies
Speaker 1: have been exposed and arrested. And what a Woodhull describer has.
Speaker 2: Met one who hath been ever serviceable to this correspondence?
Speaker 1: That's right her.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not only was Agent three fifty five one of the
Speaker 1: most accomplished the mysteries of the Culpur spies, but many
Speaker 1: experts today believe Agent three fifty five may have been
Speaker 1: a woman, or even a group of women.
Speaker 2: And this is based on the fact that the culpor
Speaker 2: Ring coding system of this this phrase or this number
Speaker 2: three fifty five actually meant within their cipher, it meant lady.
Speaker 1: And there's not much other proof than that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: She.
Speaker 1: Let's let's just assume that Agent three fifty five is
Speaker 1: indeed a woman. She worked with the American Patriots during
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War. She would have been recruited by Woodhull
Speaker 1: rather than Talmadge. They're guessing because of the way her
Speaker 1: reports coincided with British visits to New York City.
Speaker 2: Aha.
Speaker 1: So the fact that they call three fifty five, the
Speaker 1: fact that three fifty five means lady doesn't just imply,
Speaker 1: you know, gender, it also implies social standing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, it means she probably had some kind of
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know what you would call
Speaker 2: this prominence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, affluent maybe, ah, socially connected. So she was likely
Speaker 1: living in New York City. We know at some point
Speaker 1: Agent three fifty five had contact with Major John Andre
Speaker 1: and Benedict Arnold, one of the only bad bends. Well
Speaker 1: there's Benito moves Selini. Yeah, there's Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 2: There's Benjamin Bratt. I'll just show he's awesome. So I
Speaker 2: don't know anything about it.
Speaker 1: I don't either. I just like the alliteration. You know what, Matt,
Speaker 1: What if this is how we find out he's a
Speaker 1: terrible person?
Speaker 2: I know, because I'm like, I really like this dude.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, we we will.
Speaker 2: We are unsure about Benjamin Bratt.
Speaker 1: That is our official stance. Undecided, undecidedful, hang on, I'll
Speaker 1: ask Paul, Paul, do you know anything about Benjamin Bratt.
Speaker 2: He's just shaking his head. Okay, he looked up. He's like,
Speaker 2: what are they talking about?
Speaker 1: So away from Benjamin Bratt back to Benedict Arnold, Major
Speaker 1: John Andre. There's pretty solid speculation that three point fifty
Speaker 1: five passed along the information that exposed Benedict Arnold as
Speaker 1: a trader and led to the arrest of Major John Andre,
Speaker 1: who was captured with Matt of West Point and a
Speaker 1: pass signed by Arnold in his possession. Oh man, So,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Talmadge's memoirs revealed this struggle to prevent the news
Speaker 1: of the major's capture from reaching Benedict Arnold, because as
Speaker 1: soon as Benedict hears that someone's been exposed, he's gonna
Speaker 1: high tail it. Andre confessed, and then he was hanged.
Speaker 1: So around this time, Abraham Woodhol's correspondence that's Culper Senior
Speaker 1: indicates that Robert Townsend and other Culper ring members fled
Speaker 1: New York City. They went into hiding. Something went sour,
Speaker 1: something went south, something was rotten in Denmark.
Speaker 2: Somebody knew, somebody knew too much. Well, yeah, but then
Speaker 2: then after about two weeks, they saw that there was
Speaker 2: some kind of decline in whatever heat they were experiencing,
Speaker 2: decline in Tempa's and they returned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which they probably shouldn't have done, because that's when,
Speaker 1: you know, we said, there's that one direct reference to
Speaker 1: three p. Fifty five. Yeah, that's when Woodhull had to
Speaker 1: inform Talmage about and Washington about the arrest of quote
Speaker 1: several of our dear friends, including one who hath ever
Speaker 1: been serviceable to this correspondence, which was as close as
Speaker 1: they would come to saying, Okay, the jig is up exactly.
Speaker 1: Let's look at how that occurred and then see if
Speaker 1: we can make any guesses toward Agent three fifty five's identity,
Speaker 1: which remains again unknown in the modern day. And we'll
Speaker 1: get right back to that after a word from our sponsor. So, Matt,
Speaker 1: what do we know about the roundup of the suspected
Speaker 1: American spies.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go back to Major John Andre. When the
Speaker 2: perubrial t closed on him, it triggered this whole other thing,
Speaker 2: a round up of suspects who were living in British
Speaker 2: occupied territory. And there was a pregnant female spy who
Speaker 2: was arrested and questioned, but she refused to reveal any
Speaker 2: information of her activities or even who the father of
Speaker 2: her child was. So it's a double mystery wrapped in
Speaker 2: a burrito mystery.
Speaker 1: Floating in a nice enigma sauce. So this spy was
Speaker 1: held aboard a prison ship called the HMS Jersey. The
Speaker 1: HMS Jersey was famous for being squalid and just a terrible, terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible place, even in the realm of ship prisons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the last places you want to end up, right, And.
Speaker 1: The life expectancy in these prison ships was you're not
Speaker 1: staying there for years, Yeah, like several months. The good
Speaker 1: news is you won't be that miserable for that long
Speaker 1: because you'll die.
Speaker 2: Such good news.
Speaker 1: Infection, starvation, abuse, violence, terrible, terrible place.
Speaker 2: But she remember she was pregnant. She actually gave birth there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she, according to this story, gave birth to a boy.
Speaker 1: But she died aboard the ship, and then the reports
Speaker 1: from the culpa ring decay significantly even after Robert Townsend
Speaker 1: goes back to Spye. There's a lot of speculation concerning
Speaker 1: Robert Townsend and this expectant female spy because according to
Speaker 1: letters from the Townshend family and the relatives and their
Speaker 1: loved ones, he was never the same after this person
Speaker 1: passed away. He lived out his days depressed, He never
Speaker 1: got married, He drank like a thirsty fish. And this,
Speaker 1: coupled with you know, the female spies pregnancy and his
Speaker 1: activities leading up to enduring the arrest, caused some experts
Speaker 1: to speculate that he was actually the father of this
Speaker 1: child and that this spy, if she were Agent three
Speaker 1: point fifty five, was his common law wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there's a legend that when the boy
Speaker 2: that was born ended up being named Robert Townsend junior.
Speaker 2: But a lot of academics kind of poopoo this idea
Speaker 2: or they debunk it.
Speaker 1: It's like it's just sort of conveniently romantic, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it made it would make for a great book.
Speaker 1: We do know that once he had news of this
Speaker 1: roundup or this search for spies, people were suspect Townshend
Speaker 1: did attempt to steal a ton of money, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: high tail it, skidaddle probably with this person if the
Speaker 1: story is true.
Speaker 2: One and wonder if it was just out of fear.
Speaker 2: But who knows.
Speaker 1: It's weird because you can go on the official CIA
Speaker 1: website and you'll see arguments that imply they accept this claim.
Speaker 1: So that's what we do know about Agent three point
Speaker 1: fifty five. There is, however, a tantalizing bit of extra
Speaker 1: information in terms of this this kid's story.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this little boy who became a man, Robert
Speaker 2: Townsend Junior. He was a son of James Townsend and
Speaker 2: also a brother of Robert Sr. He became a lawyer.
Speaker 2: He went into politics, and oddly enough, maybe not that oddly,
Speaker 2: because we know who his mother is, right, One of
Speaker 2: his pet projects as a lawyer was the prison Ship
Speaker 2: Martyr's Memorial Fund, which eventually became the prison Ship Martyrs
Speaker 2: Monument at Fort Green Park in New York. Coincidence, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it just has more to do with who
Speaker 2: his mom was, right, Well, we.
Speaker 1: Don't know that that was his mother.
Speaker 4: Oh oh so okay, Yeah, so there's a mystery a
Speaker 4: foot man a mystery that remains, and that leads us
Speaker 4: to what we don't know about Agent three p.
Speaker 1: Fifty five, which is literally anything else, any any stuff
Speaker 1: other than the wild guesses that we've seen the speculation
Speaker 1: from historians at one mention in one letter, one direct
Speaker 1: reference rather other than that, absolutely nothing concrete is known
Speaker 1: about her other than when the British leaders were in
Speaker 1: New York. Information came to General Washington an incredibly quick
Speaker 1: and prodigious rate. But when those British leaders left town,
Speaker 1: the information slowed down to a trickle. So yeah, probably
Speaker 1: lived in New York. But who is Agent three fifty
Speaker 1: There are a couple of possibilities, and maybe we can
Speaker 1: start with just some rough demographic stuff and work our
Speaker 1: way up to specific names.
Speaker 2: Yes, say, one possibility is that she was a well
Speaker 2: bred lady.
Speaker 1: What a weird term.
Speaker 2: It just it means probably from a wealthy family from
Speaker 2: New York, within the upper crust of society, and she
Speaker 2: was probably this family was probably a loyalist family to
Speaker 2: the British, to the British government, and you just have
Speaker 2: to imagine. One of the reasons this is a good
Speaker 2: possibility is because such a position would have given her
Speaker 2: access to visiting officials just by having a meeting, having
Speaker 2: a dinner, or having officers over for any reason or another,
Speaker 2: especially if they're living in a kind of lavishly in
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 1: A social function.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna have a social function up here in
Speaker 2: New York. Shity. This is not how people talk in
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 1: Shit it I hope it is. Uh, it would be
Speaker 1: such a de Latin merriment. Well at the cast, wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be.
Speaker 2: Great if if everybody talked like or if the if
Speaker 2: the early colonists had like New York accents, like real
Speaker 2: like gritty New York accent's like full.
Speaker 1: On tell the British to get at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that'd be wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I would be into that. So
Speaker 1: there's that. But that's a that's a really good guestimate,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Oh, absolutely demographic guests. There's the other possibility
Speaker 1: that maybe she was agent three fifty five. Again, if
Speaker 1: we're assuming three fifty five a woman, Yeah, there's this
Speaker 1: other possibility that three point fifty five was in one
Speaker 1: of these great houses of note, she was with a
Speaker 1: well bred family. To borrow that terrible term.
Speaker 2: Having constant contact with these officers, but.
Speaker 1: Not as an equal, perhaps as a servant, a maid
Speaker 1: in a house where British soldiers slept or.
Speaker 2: Were or bivouact.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, exactly. And from these guesses we can go
Speaker 1: to some specific names. You'll hear people such as Anna Strong,
Speaker 1: proposed as Agent three p. Fifty five. She was a
Speaker 1: known member of the Culper spy ring, and she was
Speaker 1: Abraham Woodhole's neighbor. She she had a cool These people
Speaker 1: all have her specialties, right, Yeah, Like her cool shtick
Speaker 1: was that she would convey messages via the way she
Speaker 1: hung laundry on her clothesline.
Speaker 2: Oh that is so cool.
Speaker 1: It makes you paranoid when you when you learn about
Speaker 1: how people signal things.
Speaker 2: Just everything is a sign, now, you know.
Speaker 1: I honestly, when I see somebody bendover to tie their shoelaces,
Speaker 1: oh yes, I know, I know that that is way
Speaker 1: too paranoid of me. But I try not to stand
Speaker 1: around when they're doing that.
Speaker 2: I get that sometimes I know I'm profiling.
Speaker 1: I'm basically profiling people who have laces in their shoes.
Speaker 2: Dude. I was driving by this dude the other day
Speaker 2: and he just happened to bend like he like made
Speaker 2: eye contact with me as I'm driving past. Then he
Speaker 2: bent down to his backpack, and I did not like
Speaker 2: it one bit because I was just like, Uh, what's happening?
Speaker 2: What exchanges occurring here?
Speaker 1: What's the signal?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Also, I don't know about It would always seem like
Speaker 1: it would be so much fun to perpetrate those sorts
Speaker 1: of spy activities. Oh, just randomly, just like in a park,
Speaker 1: walk by and have walk by and switch suitcases with someone, yes,
Speaker 1: or do that thing where they're you know, back to
Speaker 1: back benches and you sit on one one side of
Speaker 1: the bench and the other person sits on the other
Speaker 1: side facing away from you.
Speaker 2: Oh that's great, and then just remark about the passers
Speaker 2: by to the other person hmm quietly.
Speaker 1: Oh man. It just seems it seems like it would
Speaker 1: be It would be fun because personally, if I saw
Speaker 1: somebody doing a suitcase and off, I would be I
Speaker 1: would be mystified. It would make my day. These were
Speaker 1: not suitcase handoff times though, These were messages and laundry
Speaker 1: and disappearing inc times. But there are other candidates for
Speaker 1: three fifty five correct.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, one would be Sarah Horton Townshend. This is
Speaker 2: Robert Townsend's cousin. And there's also Elizabeth Brugan or Bruin,
Speaker 2: who helped American prisoners on British prison ships. And it's
Speaker 2: just trying these ideas are just looking at placement location,
Speaker 2: like is this a possibility? I mean really, all of
Speaker 2: these are just kind of not reaching out in the
Speaker 2: dark because we've got these tiny little pieces, right.
Speaker 1: These breadcrumbs. Well, they're built on the assumption that three
Speaker 1: point fifty five being lady meant either a female spy
Speaker 1: or a specific female spy, And all you can extrapolate
Speaker 1: from that is, hey, who were the female spies active
Speaker 1: with the culper ring in the TV show Washington Spies?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Is that the show?
Speaker 2: You? That's it?
Speaker 1: There we go, We got there. In turn, Agent three
Speaker 1: fifty five is actually a former slave of Anna Strong
Speaker 1: who mentioned earlier. And that's that's that's it, that's all
Speaker 1: we got. At this point, the cover up seems to
Speaker 1: have been successful. More than two hundred years after the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War, we have no way of discerning the true
Speaker 1: identity of Agent three fifty five. Is it possible that
Speaker 1: someone out there knows? Is it possible that one of
Speaker 1: our fellow listeners has passed this family secret down the
Speaker 1: line for generations.
Speaker 2: Is there a reason why you would want to continue
Speaker 2: to keep it secret.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that somewhere in a long neglected attic
Speaker 1: or dusty tome, future historians might discover a new clue
Speaker 1: to three fifty five's identity. For now, it is difficult
Speaker 1: to say. One thing is for sure. The identity of
Speaker 1: Agent three point fifty five was and remains the stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. And at least in
Speaker 1: this case, America's forefathers proved more than capable of keeping
Speaker 1: it that way.
Speaker 2: Wow, so we have.
Speaker 1: To say they did a good job. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know we knocked the government a little bit occasionally here
Speaker 1: in this show.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely. By the way, I'm I'm so silly.
Speaker 2: Turn is a whole different thing that I was also watching.
Speaker 2: I keep watching all these spycraft shows. Turn is about
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff back in the Revolutionary War, which
Speaker 2: is a great show in my opinion. But this other
Speaker 2: one was about World War two and I still can't remember.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry World Wars. Sorry yeah, wait no, let's let's
Speaker 1: let's figure this out. Let's let's guess some ex company. No,
Speaker 1: I know, Hotter Culture.
Speaker 2: That's probably not it either. Hogan's Heroes. Oh, okay, that's
Speaker 2: what it was called. He's right.
Speaker 1: It's a real hard hitting dark drama there.
Speaker 2: I honestly cannot remember what it is. It was so
Speaker 2: good too. Is a BBC show, I want to say,
Speaker 2: I believe.
Speaker 1: How about this? How about we ask our fellow conspiracy
Speaker 1: realists for some help. Let us know what some of
Speaker 1: your favorite spy shows are. Let us know how you
Speaker 1: think the If you want to practice some counterfactual history,
Speaker 1: let us know what you think would have happened to
Speaker 1: this continent had the United States not emerged independent from
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War. And yes, of course, if you think
Speaker 1: the US is still under the control of the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: why and what is the evidence? We'd love to hear it.
Speaker 1: We also have that episode about whether the UK still
Speaker 1: controls the US, which is a surprisingly prominent belief.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is. And when will British Royalty finally
Speaker 2: bring about the Moonchild? I mean, we've been waiting for
Speaker 2: a long time, and I don't just bring that moon
Speaker 2: Child on it's time?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I am very pro Moonchild do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would totally bow down to the moon tild
Speaker 2: kind of like the species has peaked, you know, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: we're both talking about the same thing, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, from the Invisibles particularly okay, cool, cool, the
Speaker 1: half human half outer god hybrid. Yes, yeah, that comes
Speaker 1: through a mirror or something. This sounds wild, but this
Speaker 1: is not even spoiling the Invisibles at all. It's chock
Speaker 1: full of that stuff and we want to thank you
Speaker 1: so much for diving into this history here with what
Speaker 1: could have been. Well, I guess it's probably not the
Speaker 1: most successful spy in US history because we know they
Speaker 1: existed and the most successful spies alright, ghosts, Yeah right,
Speaker 1: they're just traveling salespeople or something like that. They're listening
Speaker 1: to this episode, if they will, thank you, because you
Speaker 1: could have listened to so many other spy podcasts.
Speaker 2: They have to listen to all. It's just kind of
Speaker 2: it downloads.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, okay, Well, still, we appreciate your time. We
Speaker 1: hope that you enjoyed this episode, and we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Those were not idle questions. You can
Speaker 1: answer these questions on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
Speaker 1: You can talk to us on Facebook. We're big fans
Speaker 1: of our community page. Here's where it gets crazy, but
Speaker 1: let's see.
Speaker 2: And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
Speaker 2: have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
Speaker 2: get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
Speaker 2: One of the best is to give us a call.
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Speaker 2: good old fashioned email.
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