Germany. He received a great deal of the money that german ambassador had to spread, and tom tunney had to follow him around. Ultimately, he gets the information on him and he discovers, he goes up to his apartment up by columbia university, and he has a secret diary where hes recorded in german and in english meticulous prussian fashion, how he superintends hspends his day, everyone he meets with, all the things he wants to do, that hes going to stop smoking, stop drinking, and by the way, im also going to place a bomb on this ship on such and such a date. His key operative are he gives code names to d1, d2, d3. Part of the story that i tell in dark invasion is how tunney and his men track down these various operatives once they have this code book and how they, too, have to break this code and find these people. Yeah, fdr was undersecretary of the navy. He had his own private force of enforcement and investigators. I know that he was basically tracking down the immorality of the American Naval people and he got censured by the congress for doing that, which wasnt thought of as that important. Im wondering, when the war began, did he still maintain this investigatory squad squad, i would call them, or did that come at all into your no, it didnt. It does sort of come into the book im writing right now, which is a world war ii story where fdr is now president , and hes using his friends, really, jacob aster, and robert vanderbilt, they have a group of very well connected men who work out of a room that the vanderbilts own in a building on 63rd street, and theyre an informal spy network before america goes to war, trying to put the pieces together for fdr, before pearl harbor. You mention one of the german culprits, and you said that his father was a civil war hero. A medal of honor winner. Right, and you said they were involved. Was the father involved in this . The father was not involved. His brother and his sister were involved. The father died, but you know, you pick up the papers today, and the fear is that someone from isis will have an american passport, will be an american kid from detroit or wherever and hes now going to work with the enemy and hell be able to go right through security because hes an american. Theres no way to stop him. Well, thats what the germans did. They got and tom dillinger, who was an american citizen, had an american passport, was able to come here, didnt have to travel under an assumed name and was able to bring with him in a little medical bag, the cultures for anthrax, and he set up this covert lab six miles from the white house. Right. You mentioned the film that was made. I think i vaguely remember seeing it, just for nostalgia purposes, do you remember the stars, who was starring in that . The film i was referring to is the film that is going to be made of my book. I think there was something similar maim. Nothing similar, no way. Somebody was exploding certain things on ships during wartime. This will have Bradley Cooper dashing about very excitedly. It wasnt wartime, thank you. Hello. You talked about what has been done by this particular network. Whats your interpretation, how effective this was . Because obviously, this is an act that brought us into war against the germans with devastating effect. Yes. You raise also a very good point. Many ways, while it was effective in the shortterm, in that it stopped supplies going to europe, it resulted in deaths of about 100 americans, tens of millions of dollars of damage. But in many ways, it lost the war. It was a very narrow strategy for germany because it got the United States into the war. It energized the United States. I mean, what our enemies think today, they think if they blow up the world trade center, were going to be cowards and well back down and a muslim caliphate will go up and america will be overwhelmed. They dont understand the american character. The american character has a real streak of dont tread on me. And this energized america. I have a second question. Have you looked into the covert operations that the british were undertaking in america at the same time to get us into the war . I mean, they werent exactly, you know, hands off. They put a massive propaganda and covert operation activity into getting us into the war. From what i have been able to discover, britain was very active in world war ii, before the United States was in the war. Rockefeller center, they set up the British Security coordination units. And that was really a propaganda operation and a spy operation. They ran british spies here in the United States. Many of them with the knowledge of j. Edgar hoover and people in our government, to try to help bring us into the war. In world war i, they werent that organized in the sense. They had a man who was running things under the cover of a film executive, and he was trying to get propaganda out. They had a former naval captain, guy gaunt, who was a member of mi6, and he was based here in wall street, and he was in communication with arthur wood and tunney, and he was providing information. At that point, the federal government was so eager to get information that they needed the british help. America might not have discovered for another two years really what was going on, that this was a german plot against america, if the british hadnt passed on the information they had gotten from breaking the german codes. But sure, britain was determined to get the United States into the war, and they succeeded, and they were effective in doing it, in both wars. Yes, i dont understand the relationship between bombing the Capitol Building and then trying to assassinate jp morgan jr. In what sounds like a very amateur assassination attempt. Why would he, you know, one day bomb the capitol, and then i just dont understand the logic of it . Well, the logic was one of terror. And terror has no logic. In the sense the germans had this man who was their patsy. They could tell him what to do, and if he wanted to put a bomb in the u. S. Capitol building, he thought that would excite things and cause terror, they provided him with the weapon. They said, lets see what happens. Hes not one of our professionals. We have a handsoff relationship with him. And then they could use him, this sort of guided weapon, to get jp morgan. If it works, great. If it doesnt work, well see what happens next. He had an american wife, lived here. Can you tell us about why these people didnt get or have american citizenship . What kind of issue that was in those days. He was a member of the German Government. He was a german ambassador to the United States. He married he was here for 11 years. He was actually born in london. His father was the german ambassador of britain, and he grew up in a very rarefied atmosphere in britain and germany and then here in the United States. One of their big scams that he runs when he first comes to the United States is making phony passports for people so german sailors interred here can go back to europe and fight for germany. At that point, passports were pretty easy to get. You just send in to the secretary of state, i think he signed them all himself, and they would hire drunks from the bowery and have them pose for these passports and give them to the german sea mmen until those plots were uncovered. I read your book, i enjoyed it. I read it in one day. Thank you. Though its more than 400 pages. What i wonder is how the germans could be so stupid. They said trust this probably psychotic psychopath to kill jp morgan, and theyre not afraid just by hiring this guy, theyre going to end up in a war with the United States, which i dont think was inevitable. At least they had to keep it up as long as possible. Why were the germans so stupid and in a sense naive. I think they were naive and desperate. You could look, why hire Lee Harvey Oswald. Was he a lone gunman or recruited by some other country. Would you hire someone who had gone to live in the soviet union who was so such a strange temperament to say the least . Its very similar. People in intelligence agencies dont make the wisest decisions sometimes, but it almost worked. Jp morgan jr. Was severely wounded. Eric munter managed to get into his house. He managed to evade the authorities who were looking for him for over a decade for murdering his wife. He had a very successful spy. Yes. I wouldnt say the germans were that stupid. But first of all, von pappen is a threetiered operation going on. Youre trying to prevent munitions ships going through, and taken out morgan wasnt a bad idea because hes tied with the british, who are critical, and getting shot twice, they nearly succeeded. But theres also what you havent mentioned is the indian conspiracy. From punjab in particular and also the irish connection, too. All under von pappen, as i said it. He was indicted later on, but he got away with it because he was canceler. You know, the incitement of rebellion in ireland and in india, i mean, the home base seems to be new york. Oddly, its a safe haven. Its not a bad idea what theyre trying to do. Obviously, it kind of backfired a bit, but what they initially were trying to do made perfect sense. The home base, from my understanding, would have been berlin. And water nicholai sent out all his agents, pulling as many strings as he could. He was trying to create confusion as best he could all over the globe, in ireland, india, and in new york. Jp morgan was key. Under jp morgan, this consocm was put together that raised 900 million, 1915 dollars, for the allies. And with him gone, the consortium would have fallen apart. And for a while, it looked like he was severely wounded, but he did recover. And if the gun hadnt jammed after the two bullets had entered his abdomen, he might have succeeded and been killed and history might have been different. Just a point of information for one of your other answers, the British Security coordinating commission, which was led by sir william stevenson, who was canadian, whose wife was american, did not have as his primary objective to bring america into the waurb. It was coordinating espionage activities with actually colonel dawnivonovan and with the peopl fdr. I would respectfully disagree with you. Stevenson mandate, as was given to him and as they made clear in the proviso of the British Security coordination unit, was to bring america into the war. After america goes to war, then theyre working more hand in hand with donovan. But before that, it came from really, they had a different agenda. We disagree, both of us. Okay. You have a nice bibliog rfy. How did you get your hands on this stuff and could you have done it 10, 20 years ago . I was raising my kids 10, 20 years ago, but so much one of the things that is interesting to me when i try to tell these stories, and talking about what i have done. I did a book on the uconn gold rush about a detective. I did a book called american lightning about the bombing of the l. A. Times. These are sort of history that are true stories yet theyre written with drama and suspense. The way to do this is you have to be able to tell what the characters are thinking. I look for subjects where there are diaries, where there are memoirs, actual people who talked about what they did so i can say whats on their mind. Tunney wrote a book called throttle about his career as a policeman, so im able to say what he felt about it. All this information is out there. The internet makes it really easy. You can sit in a room and pull up all these books right on your screen and read them, and its like being brought back to the times themselves. So its all out there. Its finding a way of putting it together, finding the characters who will drive you through this narrative. One of the Little Things you havent talked about today is the rutter bomb, which i found fascinating. That was another ingenious device. And it was used against allies, shipping. What happened was a german engineer was on the front in europe, in france, and the shells are falling. He thinks to himself, ive got to get out of here, how can i get out of the front . Its too dangerous. Im not going to survive this war. So heres an engineer by training, and he comes up with this device, which he then is able to show to the Intelligence Officer of his unit, makes its way to berlin, sent to the United States, and its a rutter bomb. It attaches. You go onto, underwater to a ship in port. You attach this little bomb to the rutter, and it gets charged up, as the man steers the boat out of the harbor, hes putting the fuse into the bomb. And it explodes when it goes out of sea. Thats the rudder bomb. He worked out of a boarding house in new jersey, and tunney and his men track him down. Im going to assume that the germans knew about the academics real identity and not just his new identity . Its an interesting question. I would like to think they did, but one never knows. I mean, the man was all over the place. And i think they saw that heres a chance where we can take this guy who is out of control. We can pull the strings, but we can pull them from a distance and send him out and have him do our bidding, but we wont get the blame. Because what they were doing, you know, if germany was involved in the assassination of jp morgan, that would have brought the United States into war. Thats why he had to be eliminated. Thats why theres been when my book came out, the Dallas Morning News did this is Lee Harvey Oswald all over again. They said thats why oswald had to be eliminated, because we couldnt really trace back to whom he was really working for. There are many mysteries that havent been solved yet. I have a question about how the germans chose their agents. One has the impression of people coming to the German Embassy and knocking on the door and saying i want to work for germany. How did they sort through these people . How did they know some of them werent Double Agents . How did they pick and choose . Because im planning my own second career, and planning to work for an unnamed foreign power. What happened many times was, this was a german club on central park south, and the German Military attache and the naval attache would hold court there and people would come up to them at night. When word got out von ritlin was working under a pseudonym at wall street, people would come to his office. He would see in the course of a day, 20, 30 people who have fantastic schemes. Most of them he would send away, but every now and then, he would find someone who had something to offer. Thats how he found the cigar bomb. So they didnt really worry about Double Agents because america wasnt that sophisticated yet, but they worried about crack pots, people who would give things away, who would really be caught and then spill the beans. There was a strange transition between 1918 to 1920 leading to palmer raids where a lot of these agents who were formally working for the German Government started to work for the soviet as communists. And apparently diehard communists. But there is it is very odd that its particularly down in lower manhattan, thats where it all seemed to come to fruition. Well, thats where the power was. Thats where wall street was and where the germans set up their bases and where the hamburgamerican line set up their headquarters and where they rented the offices. And as you say, after world war ii, the german agents also went off and worked for other nations, too. And after the fall of the berlin wall, the east german agents did the same. With all of these things you talked about, all these plans, these nefarious plans, et cetera, it finally ended up with the Zimmerman Telegram real disaster for the germans when its intercepted by the british and then, you know, theyre trying to convince the mexicans to come in against the United States so they can have, you know its and it reminds me of some of the stuff that, you know, other powers including ourselves have done. Some really nitwit things. Where did they get where is the mintal thing on some of this . You dont want to irritate some of these major powers . Where do the mental ideas come far be it for me to get in the mind of what makes a spy master think he can convince mexico to go to war against the United States and its going to work, but history has also taught us a great deal of arrogance of the people in power and they think arrogant people think they can do whatever they want. They can change the course of history. And sometimes they do. Thank you very much. [ applause ] each week, American History tvs reel america brings you archival films to help tell the story of the 20th century. They had improved knowledge of the soviet union, but the critical questions went unanswered. Begin. On 10 august, 1960, the diagnostic flight was ready for launch. At the time diskorver 13 was launched, a number of major problems remained to be solved. Achieving an acceptable orbit, operating the camera, and the allimportant recovering of the payload film. By function only. On my mark, it will be t minus 5 seconds. Mark. It quickly revealed that 13 did achieve orbit, and the initial position was correct. On the 17th orbit, the recovery pack package descended normal except for missing by 13 miles. Although beyond the range of recovery aircraft, 13s capsule splashed down near enough for water recovery. For the first time ever, man had eastern on cspan. Cspans 2015 student cam competition is under way. This nationwide competition for middle and High School Students will award 150 prizes totaling 100,000. Create a five to sevenminute documentary on the topic the three branches and you. Videos need to include cspan programming, show varying points of view, and must be submitted by january 20th, 2015. Go to studentcam. Org for more information. Grab a camera and get started today. Next, a look at american and soviet spies during the cold war. As new information is declassified by the cia and fbi, researchers have been able to reevaluate the lines and legacies o