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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Dexter Ingram, "The Spy Archive: Hidden Lives, Secret Missions, and the History of Espionage" · The Spy-Fi Guys

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:09
  Speaker B: Welcome to the spy fi guys, where we cover spy facts, spy fiction, and everything in between. I'm Christian.
• 0:15
  Speaker C: And I'm Zach.
• 0:16
  Speaker B: And today we have a very special episode for you. We've got an author interview from the author of the Spy Archive, Hidden Lives, Secret Missions, and the History of Espionage. And the author is our past guest, Dexter Ingram, who is a member of the advisory board for the Spy Museum, as well as the founder of the In Network Foundation. Is that right?
• 0:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's In Network. It's a nonprofit. CSM LinkedIn @IN Network, the national Security Academy. But the whole mission is to get more young people involved into national security work and consider careers in diplomacy, intelligence, and law enforcement.
• 0:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, thanks for coming back, Dexter.
• 0:57
  Speaker A: It's my pleasure. You guys are so much fun, and I see you at the museum and the different events. So you guys are like part of family here. You guys are in, you know.
• 1:07
  Speaker C: That's nice. Thank you. So, Dexter, before we jump into the book, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
• 1:14
  Speaker A: So I've been in the national security world for almost, well, 35 years. So kind of crazy. I have to keep my hair short, so I don't look as old as I am. But I started out flying airplanes for the Navy, and it's been kind of a dream career since then. Really got interested in WMD before 9 11. After 9 11, I was asked to run the terrorism policy for the brand new Homeland Security Committee. And since then I've had dream jobs. I run the Preventing WMD Terrorism office, the Countering Violent Extremism office, the Defeat ISIS office, and spend some time in a. And at an Interpol.
• 1:51
  Speaker B: Oh, wow.
• 1:51
  Speaker A: Running their counterterrorism program, as well as Homeland Security and the FBI. So really, really dream career. I'm retiring next month, so I'm looking forward to just a lot more downtime and being able to kind of relax a little bit. But the book, I'm super excited about.
• 2:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So. So let's get into it. So what motivated you to write the book?
• 2:16
  Speaker A: Well, I've been collecting spy gadgets for 30 plus years, so I've always had this natural interest in the real stories, the real history. And so many of them are so much better than the fiction that you see on tv. These real stories, real heroes. It doesn't matter if you're talking World War II or the Cold War or, you know, even back to ancient Egypt. Spying has evolved, but it hasn't. The human piece of it has always been there. Technology is a Tool that helps us, but the human piece, if you. If you basically looked at pharaohs getting briefed about enemies and water supplies and food supplies and number of men, you know, that same kind of briefing could happen today at the CIA or any other intelligence agency.
• 3:16
  Speaker C: Dexter. I must say so. Dexter. I must say that I was surprised when I read the book, because this is Dexter. He's worked for 35 years in the IC. He has a collection of spy gadgets. The book is called the Spy Archive, but it's not about the gadgets.
• 3:35
  Speaker B: Right.
• 3:35
  Speaker A: It does talk about some gadgets. It talks about like the Caesar cipher or, you know.
• 3:41
  Speaker C: Correct. But I thought it was good. I thought it was going to be about your gadgets. You were like, let me tell you about all the gadgets that I have.
• 3:47
  Speaker B: Yes, your collection is the archive.
• 3:50
  Speaker A: That is such a great plug, though, because one of the things that I'm doing now that I'm retiring is I'm getting more on social media. So you're going to basically see how this book and my substack kind of intertwine. There's so many stories in the book that are going to kind of be related to what's happening today. And again, it's going to show you that this stream is not something new that just started happening over the past five, 10, 20 years, but it's been happening for hundreds, even thousands of years. So we can take so many of the things that we see in the news today and kind of compare it to the history piece. And my Instagram page is going to have a spy Gadget of the week, so that's going to be kind of cool.
• 4:28
  Speaker B: All right. Yeah. So I appreciate. Because, you know, if you read other. Now, this isn't enough not to knock any other, you know, history of espionage books, but, you know, I, you know, they don't always go back to ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. They usually, oh, you know, we had the Elizabethan era. You had, you know, what's His Face, the Babington plot and that, and, you know, that sort of thing. But you went all the way back and I was like, oh, that's the stuff that, you know, you don't really hear about that. Or the Greek or. Well, I guess you usually hear about the Caesar saga, but that's really about it. So I appreciated that you went further back than any other books that I've read.
• 5:06
  Speaker C: Yeah, I appreciated it, too. Sorry to jump in. I appreciate it as well. I thought the best part of the book was right in the beginning because I was learning so Much. We've all read a lot of Cold War books, and there's a lot to learn about the Cold War, too.
• 5:18
  Speaker A: But.
• 5:18
  Speaker C: But I hadn't read anything about the way the Romans spied on each other or all the Asian ones, too. Like Sun Tzu with the spying. I like that. I was writing down ideas for microdot episodes for the spy fi guys, and I was struck by how easy it is. It's like playing civilization. Like, if you don't have the right intel, it doesn't really even matter how big your army is. You can still be in trouble.
• 5:46
  Speaker A: Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry.
• 5:47
  Speaker C: So, one last thing. My favorite part of the book was the rod with the thing wrapped around it. Do you remember this Christian, where they wrote a message on, like, a rag and then wrapped the rag. That was very cool.
• 5:59
  Speaker B: Which I believe they have a sample, like, an example of that at the spy museum in their, like, codes and ciphers gallery.
• 6:07
  Speaker A: Absolutely. And I have one in my. My man cave, too. It's neat because it's. There's so many stories. I was in Mongolia last year, right? So I was leading a US Delegation to really talk about countering Russian disinformation and misinformation and things like that. And I was out there, you know, in Ulaanbaatar, and it was. It was really interesting because so much of what they talk about and what you see is Genghis Khan and, you know, the highways he. He put together and that concept of being able to travel on horseback and change horses every 20 or 30 miles so that things and messages could be relayed in sometimes days versus weeks or months. Just the level of ingenuity was really, really special. So this. This book makes me smile. But there are certain pieces that I just absolutely love, because I've always told people, spying and espionage and national security, you don't want a lot of attention. You want to be that kind of gray man they talk about. Well, if you look at a lot of the folks that have been underestimated throughout history, they've been underestimated because of who they are or what they look like. A lot of women have been underestimated because during, you know, medieval times, they didn't know that the servants and the maids were actually spying on them. They were thinking, women don't have the ability to analyze this information. During World War II and World War I, they were like, women don't have a math brain. And then they were forced to use women to decipher at Bletchley Park. And they were like, wow, wow. Wow. These women are really contributing. So that overlooking of people is something that has always stood out to me.
• 8:08
  Speaker C: That's true. Something I said to Christian back in the Game of Thrones world and the Middle Ages, because everything is human powered and you need servants to do everything. It's such an easy way to spy because there's people everywhere and you only need to reach, like, one or two to get all the info you need.
• 8:31
  Speaker B: I feel like we talked about that on our, like, the King's man episode because I was, you know.
• 8:35
  Speaker C: Yeah, we did.
• 8:36
  Speaker B: Which one? They. That was sort of the network of spies that they had created that they had built up for that particular movie. Yeah, I really appreciated that you had not just one chapter, but sort of woven in marginalized people acting as spies because they're underestimated. With you go back to, you know, Harriet Tubman or James Lafayette and then even forward into. Yeah, like women in World War I and World War II and like, coders or, of course, Virginia Hall.
• 9:05
  Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, and then you have folks out there, like code talkers, right?
• 9:10
  Speaker B: Oh, yes.
• 9:10
  Speaker A: These are individuals who literally were like, beaten or punished for speaking their native language. And they were growing up. But During World War II, these men became Marines and were on the front lines in the Pacific Ocean. And battles like Iwo Jima wouldn't have been won without them. It been very difficult to win without them. It was difficult to win with them. Yeah. So that. That. Those are special stories, you know, Nor Khan how she was the first woman to volunteer to go into France during World War II. Again, this is a woman of Indian descent who was a Muslim who basically went into the situation where the average lifespan was six weeks. Her first couple weeks there, her whole network was taken down. They offered to bring her back. She said, no, I'm going to keep going. And many months later, she was still doing her job until she was caught. And they thought she was kind of frail and weak. And when the Germans came in and caught her, she really beat the hell out of, like, five of them, you know. And then they eventually captured her, took her to the camp, and she tried to escape twice, almost escaped once, got on the roof. And eventually, when the Americans in the west were coming in, you know, they shot her in the back of the head. But these are true, true heroes.
• 10:35
  Speaker C: I think one of my favorite parts of the spy museum is where you have to lift her briefcase. Yes. And it's very heavy, even for a strong man like myself.
• 10:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's either like £40 or something and she. It's supposed to be disguised. You know, it's got her radio equipment in there and it's supposed to be just an ordinary case that, you know, a young woman of her, you know, status would be carrying around, but it's obviously much heavier, so she had to carry it around and look like it was effortless.
• 11:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, imagine her in Virginia Hall. Like both of them. You have the looking lady, right. You know, literally these, these, these women that would be overlooked when it comes to any kind of military recruitment really stood out in World War II. And that's, that's one of the reasons it's my favorite time for spying. Because of those kind of stories, right?
• 11:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
• 11:25
  Speaker C: So, Dexter, were there any favorite stories of yours that didn't make it into the book?
• 11:28
  Speaker B: Stole one of my questions, Zach.
• 11:30
  Speaker C: I'm just that good, Christian, what can I tell you?
• 11:32
  Speaker A: I don't want to get into it, but I have, I take criticism. I did leave out about a thousand years of Islamic spying, Muslim spies, and that's something that I really want to tie in in the future. I don't want to give much away, but I can see that being part of the substack. I can see that being maybe an episode 2 of the book kind of going into filling gaps where I've missed some. This book has been about a two and a half year process of a lot of research. And it. I've had a lot of just great, great friends come out and endorse it. So it's been a lot of fun. I mean, Chris Costa, Jonah Mendez, they're both on the back cover. But I, Eric o' Neill's come out and endorsed it.
• 12:15
  Speaker B: Oh, nice.
• 12:16
  Speaker A: Malcolm Nance has come out and endorsed it. Sasha Ingber has come out and endorsed it. You name it.
• 12:22
  Speaker C: So many great friends run for office with that level of endorsements.
• 12:29
  Speaker A: You know, the great thing about it is everybody's just a good human. Like there's no jerks. You know, I, I'm at the point in my career where I'm not going to associate myself with groups or individuals that are, you know, just one sided. And all the people I just named, you know, some of my favorite people. That's why John and I are doing the book signing together on September 6th. It's going to be Saturday the 6th, from 2 to 4. Two to four? Yes.
• 12:55
  Speaker B: Yeah. That's exciting. Yeah. I mean, obviously you're a great draw also. John is also a great draw. And she, I love her stories, like, and she's just such A great speaker.
• 13:06
  Speaker A: I agree. That's literally why I asked her to join me. I was like. They were like, how about September 6th? And Janna was next to me. I think you were there, Christian. We were at the. Gosh, what hotel were we at? Hotel Monaco. And I looked at her and I said, johnna, join me. And she goes, always.
• 13:20
  Speaker B: Oh, that's so great. So let's start. Take us through your research process. How do you. That's always been for my questions, like, all right. For intelligence books, especially history ones, how do you do research on that when either a lot of it is secondhand information or you have to get into literal archives of things.
• 13:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I had a buddy of mine who has his PhD, and he spent years in the archives going through, you know, different documents for his books. The great thing is I've been thinking about this and studying this stuff for a long time. So I had my own angles that I kind of wanted to highlight, but I also wanted to make sure I didn't, you know, just focus on. On what I know. I wanted to learn and grow as I kind of researched this. And one of the neat things, modern technology, especially right when I was getting started, you know, I was still kind of doing the old school research piece. And AI gives you a lot of pieces that kind of fill gaps that I didn't think about. And to be very honest, like, going to Mongolia last year, that. That got me the Genghis Pond part.
• 14:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:33
  Speaker A: Thinking about, you know, spying in the East, I've always done Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, but there are blind spots that everybody has. You know, I've known World War II. I've known the Cold War. I've known. I've known about the Caesar cipher. But, like, again, finding those pieces, going back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and looking how the snake charmers would also use the venom for assassinations and how in the Middle Ages, you know, folks would basically study certain aspects of cities and, you know, kingdoms for years, and they would just blend in, like local beggars or sellers or whatever it may be. I love also the fact that the most powerful spies in the Middle Ages got their information from basically logistics or those kind of jobs that I think are super important, but are something that just never spoke to me in my career. And I feel like I missed an opportunity because when it comes to acquisitions, I used to joke and say, oh, I could have been the assistant secretary for acquisitions a decade ago, but that didn't speak to me. And now I'm like, why didn't I do that? That would have been cool because those, those things that you learn and know are extremely powerful. And I wasn't downplaying those positions. For me, I've always done things that I thought just really interested me. I have friends that are into space policy. I think that's super cool. Obviously Eric and other friends are into cyber policy. For me, it's. It's been mostly counterterrorism. Those are the things that have spoken to me.
• 16:18
  Speaker B: So I would say, I think one of my favorite parts of the books was the stuff on ninjas, which, you know, you have your pop culture idea of ninjas, which is always very cool. But then you get into the, you know, the actual realistic pro portrayal of them that. Okay, yes, sure, they might have occasionally worn, you know, the all black get up, but more commonly they were disguised as like farmers or, or peasants going around getting their information and doing their work.
• 16:45
  Speaker C: I also liked how you had ninja, like corporations that would just sell ninjas to anyone who would hire them. That's very like something out of fiction. I'm thinking like Star wars, the Bounty Hunters. Yeah, or like Dungeons and Dragons or something like that.
• 17:05
  Speaker A: It is. And the technology they used back then, I mean, they couldn't walk on water, but they would have these kind of snowshoes, like devices that allowed them to move in places where others couldn't. And that's kind of neat. Like, you look at modern movies and TV shows and those are fun. I love the shows. You guys are spy fi guys. You know, I love the movies, the TV shows. But this is real spying. This is the real history. This isn't the, you know, the flying ninjas through the sky and, you know, just hiding in the shadows and appearing out of nowhere. What really happened was they were always there. People just didn't notice them because they weren't, you know, anything that people considered.
• 17:48
  Speaker C: A threat weren't supposed to be noticed.
• 17:51
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 17:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. And then of course, you also had, you have talking about spies. You have to talk about spies on the screen which are like, oh, here's the chapter made for us.
• 18:02
  Speaker A: I felt like I was a little harsh, but like, it was, it was one of those things where I look at the movies that, that, that I think are real, you know, to a certain extent. And you have obviously Zero Dark Thirty. You have, you know, Black Hawk down. You have, you have certain things that speak to me in the sense of being in the field and being blown up and spending time in safe houses and all those kind of crazy things. But then you have the fantasy piece. You know, you have James Bond, whether it's Casino Royale and I really, I love that stuff. And then you have the point where it gets to kind of total fantasy where you're like Moonraker and you're fighting in space or Thunderball and you're under the ocean, you know, getting classics, like, love them but you know, there's levels.
• 18:57
  Speaker B: Definitely. Definitely.
• 18:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:59
  Speaker C: Well, I get the impression that people from the ic, as they call it, have a bit of a love hate relationship with Hollywood. Would you agree with that?
• 19:09
  Speaker A: I think some do, but I mean, for. Everybody's different and so there's not this monolith. Right. I think that there are some folks out there that, you know, when they're recruiting, have to really kind of be realistic about what it is because these jobs are, are tough and they're, they're taxing and mentally, physically, emotionally, you're seeing a lot of things, you're doing things and you're at places where it really drains you. It's, it's interesting because when I announced that I was retiring, people saw me and they were like, you, you look happy. And I've loved my career. I loved my career, but I got to exchange and I just was like, okay, now, now what? And I went through a couple weeks of, I'm not going to think about anything except for just kind of being. And then I'm just really excited to start the sub stack. It's going to be called codename Citizen. That starts the tool first.
• 20:09
  Speaker B: Oh, I like that.
• 20:09
  Speaker A: That would be really cool. And then, you know, I think my dog and I are going to kind of grow our social media handle because he's a, his name is Bond and he's, he's a Bouvier, which is this really Beautiful World War II Belgian herding dog that was used during World War II to, to move people and equipment across the fields. Hitler tried to put a hit out on them and have them all go extinct. So that's, that's the plan. We're going to have fun together.
• 20:42
  Speaker B: Oh yeah.
• 20:43
  Speaker A: You know, just highlight again how history and modern day times are connected. So that'll be a lot of fun. Malcolm Nance, it was his idea. He was like, Dexter, you got to start a substack. And I was like, I'm not good with technology, but we'll go on this adventure together.
• 21:00
  Speaker B: Yeah. One of the other things that I really loved in the book was when you highlighted. So, you know, Post World War II, Cold War, one of the differences in the spy techniques between the CIA and the kgb. CIA is very much text based everything. And the KGB is really all right, you know, about taking that time to create the human element. You study the human element. And so I was like, oh, you know, I've watched all these movies about the Cold War and I've really never thought about that difference.
• 21:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, you're completely right. US really got tech savvy. You know, there was obviously the atomic bomb. There was the race to space, also where the Russians were ahead. They were really good at either taking or re engineering certain technology. You were dealing with the UK and the Cambridge Five incident, which really kind of brought down, you know, where they were when it came to status and espionage. But the US got the chance to learn a lot from them also because they'd been doing this stuff a lot longer. So the Russians really were involved in building out people. I mean, you look at these movies that are kind of fashionable today, and you see how they invest in people sometimes when they're kids to get them ready, you know, or these sleeper agents that, you know, eventually go into the U.S. you know, so it's Red Sparrow. Look at that. Right? I mean, these are the kind of things they would do.
• 22:34
  Speaker B: Yep. So going into sort of more of our vein, would you ever want to follow in the footsteps of former intelligence professionals like Ian Fleming, John Le Carre, and of course the late, great dame Stella Remington and read, write some spy fiction?
• 22:49
  Speaker A: I'm just trying to, you know, entertain and make a difference with young people. If I can motivate young people to see themselves doing this kind of work. Yeah, no matter what your background is, I think that would be super, super important. There's nothing in my life I really do for me, like most of it, whether it's my career or it's writing these books or the nonprofit we founded, it really comes down to young people and especially finding young people in places where they're underrepresented, you know, because when they see somebody like me who might look like them, if you're from the inner city in Baltimore, you know, that hopefully gets them thinking, oh, this is attainable. It's hard to kind of make those connections when you don't actually see somebody who looks like you doing the things that you want to do. You might know nurses or teachers, and those are amazing positions and jobs. But for somebody to learn languages and go to places like Afghanistan and travel to Ulaanbaatar and run counterterrorism teams, it's a rare group.
• 23:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:58
  Speaker C: So Dexter here on the Spotify guys I'm the one who asked the provocative questions.
• 24:03
  Speaker B: Oh, boy, here we go.
• 24:04
  Speaker C: I think it's safe to say so I'm going to ask you a provocative question. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to. But I was wondering just something I was wondering when I was reading the book, which is you talked about the enhanced interrogation issue in the war on terrorism, and the spy museum includes it as well. And it's very important and it's very relevant, but it's also from another era. It's from like, the late George W. Bush administration, which is now. Well, in the past. So I was wondering, has anything like happened with that? Like, has anything changed to make you included in the book, or is it more in the realm of history now?
• 24:46
  Speaker A: I think it's. I would like to think so. There's a lot of things that I mention in the book that I am optimistic about that that change is one. So whether it's, you know, after 9, 11, we all had the 24 Jack Bauer mentality, right? We were like, get the information. Now there's 24 hours on the clock. Let's whatever, by any means necessary. And I think a lot of us fed into that. Unfortunately, that was something I think the agency kind of leaned in, especially when it came to black sites overseas. Looking at the FBI, though, Robert Mueller was like, no, we're not going to do that. And you look at the Sufan center, founded by Alex Sufan, who literally was able to get information by building relationships with these Al Qaeda leaders and figures. I can tell you, as somebody who has gone to seer school, survive, evade, resist, escape. They put aviators and seals and others that have a high chance of being caught through these two weeks of prisoner of war school, torture, sleep deprivation, not feeding you all kind of mental games and physical games. It gets you ready for the real thing, but it's not the real thing. And just because hopefully we don't do this doesn't mean that others won't do it. And we saw this during Vietnam. We saw this during Black Hawk Down. We see all these incidents of people being captured and tortured for information. I think people will say anything to get out of really painful and uncomfortable and mentally challenging situations over time. I think most of it's over time. You know, in the book, I talk about how Nor Khan and Jean Mulan were tortured endlessly and never gave up anything. I mean, I think that was a different breed of person. I think it would. I really do. I also look at surveillance, you know, Mass Surveillance and what the US Used to do and how we've kind of changed based on a lot of leaks that have happened. And I'm not saying break the law and leak, but I'm saying, you know, it's important that we don't mass surveil our people. We see court cases nowadays where, you know, police want every single bit of information from a cell tower in the last X amount of days to try to find that one person, and you might be looking at tens of thousands of people's information. There's a line there. When it comes to freedom, civil liberties, and the Constitution versus, you know, how far are we going to go? It's tough. You can masturbate everybody, but is that what the Constitution wants? I don't think so.
• 27:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, thanks for that answer, Dexter. So, on a completely different note, I had you mentioned one of my favorite artifacts. The thing.
• 28:07
  Speaker A: The thing, yes.
• 28:09
  Speaker B: Which was, you know, the KGB basically had a wooden carving of the great seal of the US and gifted it to the US Ambassador in Moscow, where there was. And there was a bug inside it. Where do we know where the. Does these real thing still exists? Because I know that spy museum has a replica. So does the NSA museum.
• 28:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. So the real ones at the State Department. We have it at the State Department.
• 28:32
  Speaker B: I did not know that. Okay. I was the right. You're the right person to ask about that because, yeah, I like, I had seen that and I think I'd seen other copies of it. I was like, where is the real thing?
• 28:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, we have a diplomacy museum. And it's neat because I've seen it out. It's not a constant display. They had a short period where the real thing was out, which basically was a device given by Russian boy scouts to our ambassador to Moscow, which sat behind his desk for years. And because it was a passive listening device, our normal techniques of listening didn't pick it up. It wasn't pinging. It wasn't an active device. So it needed a certain amount of, you know, attention paid by the Soviets to activate it. And then they could hear what was going on. But yeah, that was really cool. And then I know our friend Keith Melton, he actually got the original artist to build three others.
• 29:32
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 29:33
  Speaker A: So those are probably one of those museum. And I want one, but I don't have Keith Melton money.
• 29:43
  Speaker B: Yes, who does?
• 29:45
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 29:46
  Speaker C: So can you just go to the State Department and see it or is it hidden off somewhere?
• 29:51
  Speaker A: Oh, no, it's in storage. I think they need to do a better job of letting people know when it's out so that you can see it. I think I saw it by chance many years ago, and I've talked to the folks at the Diplomacy Museum because there's so much overlap between that museum and the Spy Museum. And I've talked to all the historians at the State Department, too, and we get to geek out together. It's really fun.
• 30:16
  Speaker C: I didn't even know there was a Diplomacy Museum.
• 30:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's not like a huge museum. They have a whole center that's fairly new that I would say is probably 10 years or so old that has, you know, certain artifacts that are out. You know, pen Diplomacy by Madeleine Albright, you know, all her famous pins that she wore, things like that. But obviously it's not the Spy Museum. Yeah.
• 30:49
  Speaker B: All right, Zach, you have anything else? I think I've run through my questions.
• 30:53
  Speaker C: I think that's all.
• 30:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Dexter, for your time. And like we said, the book is the Spy Archive, Hidden Live Secret Missions and the History of Espionage and can be found at all major booksellers, including the Spy Museum Gift Shop.
• 31:11
  Speaker A: That's right, it's on Amazon. Spy Museum Gift Shop. It actually, surprisingly, was number one new release under Military History and Espionage, which was really cool on Amazon. It's only been out, I would say, about a month and a week. So excited about that. Excited about our substack codename Citizen. Please feel to reach out to in network. Also, if you're looking at getting involved into the national security world, we're here to help. Everything we do is free.
• 31:44
  Speaker C: And when was that book signing again? For those who are interested, it's going.
• 31:48
  Speaker A: To be Saturday, September 6th from 2 to 4 at the International Spy Museum with John Amendez, Dexter Ingram. That's great.
• 31:56
  Speaker B: And listeners, don't be surprised to hear us bring up this book because I like, as I was reading through this, I was sort of making notes on things that you've mentioned that we've covered on the podcast, like the Babington plot or Harriet Tubman Zimmerman telling them, like, oh, we could have definitely used this as just a point of reference, saying, all right, you know, for our spy. Here's our, you know, spy Fact versus spy fiction from the Spy Archive. So don't be surprised to hear that come up in future episodes.
• 32:26
  Speaker A: I love that. That is super cool. And that's what I'll be doing a lot of, too. So let's, you know, let's keep this thing going.
• 32:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. We would love to have you back on for another episode, maybe. So you talk about what is. What's the. What's the Le Carrie book? That's not. That's not the Spy who came in for the go. The other one, Thinker Taylor Soldier Spy. Maybe we could have you come on for that, because I'll tell you the truth, I don't think either of us. Wait, Zach, have you watched it?
• 32:54
  Speaker C: Yeah, I watched the Gary Oldman one. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep because I have no idea what happened.
• 32:58
  Speaker B: I also fell asleep during the Gary Oldman one. So maybe we need someone who is, you know, better. You know, has a better insight into that, because I don't. I may. I also watched it while I was kind of tired, so maybe that's part of it, too. But. And I know it's, you know, one of the good. Well, it's one of the good books of espionage, like, you know, more realistic and also one of the good movies. So I'm like, I need to be able to enjoy this or at least understand this movie.
• 33:24
  Speaker C: It's the White Rail.
• 33:25
  Speaker A: It's funny because I saw that for the first time in Afghanistan. Oh, really? With our British colleagues in Las Vegas, Helmand, Afghanistan. And I was thinking the same thing I was used to. I was like, but nobody's blowing them up like they're doing to me. Nobody's shooting at them like, I want that job.
• 33:45
  Speaker B: Oh, that's funny. So from completely different perspectives, we came to the same sort of. Oh, wow, that's great. Well, again, thank you for joining us. Do you have anything else you want to plug other than your book and your nonprofit and your substack?
• 34:01
  Speaker A: I think that is good. We got the. We got the book signing as well. So I really want to thank you guys. You guys are so much fun and you're good humans. And you. You know what I like is finding my people. And you guys are my people. So thanks for doing what you're doing. I always will endorse you guys. Appreciate you as humans and then the work that you're doing. So really, thank you.
• 34:24
  Speaker B: Well, thank you. And thank you, all of our listeners, for joining us. You can find us on social media at the Spy Fi guys on Facebook, Blue Sky, YouTube and Instagram, and our merch store@redbubble.com. until next time. I'm Christian.
• 34:39
  Speaker C: And I'm Zach.
• 34:40
  Speaker B: And we are the Spy Fi Guys signing off. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed our podcast, please be sure to rate and review us on itunes. The theme music is by Jer Fitzgerald and Big Man Joe Media reviewed by Our podcasts are the intellectual property of their respective copyright holders and no infringement is intended.
• 35:02
  Speaker C: This is a personal podcast. Any views, statements or opinions expressed in this podcast are personal and belong solely to the participants. They do not represent those of people, institutions, or organizations that the participants may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity. Unless explicitly stated, any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual.
• 35:27
  Speaker B: You can find our podcast on social media at the Spyfy Guy on Facebook, the New Sky, YouTube, and Instagram.