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Getting to Know the Office of Naval Intelligence · Conspiracy! The Show

0:10
Speaker 1: Winter Insurance. Did I'm true de trop I'm a check
0:14
Speaker 1: out with insurance? Get a true than is?
0:31
Speaker 2: Hey? Everybody, welcome to Conspiracy the Show. I'm your host
0:36
Speaker 2: Adam Todd Brown joining me as co host this week.
0:40
Speaker 2: Oo my favorite co host of all no co host.
0:43
Speaker 2: In fact, I'm going it alone this week for the
0:47
Speaker 2: first episode in what I'm thinking is going to be
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Speaker 2: kind of a massive undertaking. I've been vowing for a
0:56
Speaker 2: long long time that I was going to do a
0:58
Speaker 2: series about getting to know the various intelligence agencies of
1:04
Speaker 2: the United States. We got a bunch of them, and
1:07
Speaker 2: you know what, for reasons I couldn't possibly explain, I'm
1:12
Speaker 2: lately way more in the mood to talk about historical
1:16
Speaker 2: stuff as opposed to say, modern politics. So here we
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Speaker 2: are with the first episode in that series about intelligence agencies,
1:26
Speaker 2: starting with, as the title implies, you've already seen it,
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Speaker 2: the Office of Naval Intelligence. Here's a weird coincidence. I
1:34
Speaker 2: decided to start with the Office of Naval Intelligence because
1:38
Speaker 2: they were the outfit I was genuinely the most curious about,
1:42
Speaker 2: mostly because of all of their trading state secrets for
1:46
Speaker 2: suckling pigs shenanigans during the Fat Leonard scandal, which we
1:51
Speaker 2: talked about on a previous episode. But as fortune would
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Speaker 2: have it, they also happened to be America's first and
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Speaker 2: oldest inteenelligence agency. So they make for the absolute perfect
2:03
Speaker 2: place to start. And the fact that they are the
2:06
Speaker 2: first is surprising until you think about it for like
2:09
Speaker 2: a minute, and you'll realize that at the point in
2:13
Speaker 2: history when the Office of Naval Intelligence was formed, we
2:16
Speaker 2: were still doing all our war stuff with boats. Of
2:19
Speaker 2: course they were going to be first. Most of what
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Speaker 2: I'm talking about on this episode comes from two books.
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Speaker 2: The first is called The Office of Naval Intelligence, The
2:29
Speaker 2: Birth of America's First Intelligence Agency eighteen sixty five to
2:33
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen. The second is called Conflict of Duty Duty
2:38
Speaker 2: the US Navy's Intelligence Dilemma nineteen nineteen to nineteen forty five.
2:45
Speaker 2: It seems like neither of them are in print currently,
2:49
Speaker 2: but you can find them. I did, and who am
2:52
Speaker 2: I a professional book finder? No, they were both written
2:56
Speaker 2: a long time ago by a professor Jeff free doorworked
3:01
Speaker 2: to give you an idea of how long ago. I
3:04
Speaker 2: reached out to Professor Dorwert, who is still part of
3:06
Speaker 2: the faculty at Rutgers University to see if he'd maybe
3:10
Speaker 2: want to be on the pod, and he replied, in
3:13
Speaker 2: all caps, mind you quote, I'm eighty years old. I
3:18
Speaker 2: don't remember my Office of Naval Intelligence Research end quote. Hey,
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Speaker 2: fair enough. And so these books weren't written long enough
3:26
Speaker 2: ago that Professor Dorwart isn't with us anymore. But they
3:29
Speaker 2: were written long enough ago that I was three years
3:32
Speaker 2: old when the first of those two books was published
3:35
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine. It's not just a smashing Pumpkins song.
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Speaker 2: It was also a highly interesting point in history when
3:44
Speaker 2: it comes to intelligence agencies. The United States was fresh
3:48
Speaker 2: off of the Church Committee hearings, which were all about
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Speaker 2: reigning in the American intelligence apparatus at least a little bit,
3:56
Speaker 2: to the point that they weren't doing jonestown in stockpiling
4:00
Speaker 2: shellfish tocsin to assassinate the Kennedys with anymore. It didn't
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Speaker 2: work like not at all. That's a discussion for another episode.
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Speaker 2: But that moment in history is what inspired the writing
4:12
Speaker 2: of these two books. Dorwerk mentions in the preface of
4:15
Speaker 2: the first book that while the country was on the
4:18
Speaker 2: edge of their seats listening to the Shenanigans. Outfits like
4:23
Speaker 2: the FBI and CIA had been up to over the
4:26
Speaker 2: past few decades, the Office of Naval Intelligence barely came
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Speaker 2: up at all, despite once again being the country's oldest
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Speaker 2: and longest running intelligence agency of them all. Now, just
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Speaker 2: a heads up covering the Office of Naval Intelligence, or
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Speaker 2: ONI as they will sometimes be called from here on out,
4:46
Speaker 2: is going to take at least two episodes, if for
4:48
Speaker 2: no other reason than me talking alone for more than
4:52
Speaker 2: forty five minutes at a time is probably as exhausting
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Speaker 2: for you as it is for me. So this first
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Speaker 2: episode will cover the Office of Naval Intelligence from the
5:03
Speaker 2: end of the American Civil War up through right before
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Speaker 2: the start of World War Two, and how in that
5:10
Speaker 2: relatively short span of time they go from being the
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Speaker 2: outfit tasked with spying on foreign warships to the outfit
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Speaker 2: tasked with aggressively violating Americans constitutional rights in the name
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Speaker 2: of sniffing out foreign agents. And then the second episode
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Speaker 2: will cover World War two through to present day. Professor
5:32
Speaker 2: Dorwertz telling of the history of ONI starts again in
5:37
Speaker 2: the years immediately after the Civil War. The first one,
5:40
Speaker 2: not the one that's probably going to happen a few
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Speaker 2: months from now. The American Civil War heavily involved both
5:46
Speaker 2: sides employing new and exciting naval techniques on the battle water,
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Speaker 2: I guess. But once the war ended, America was left
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Speaker 2: with a bunch of bitch and warships that had nowhere
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Speaker 2: to go and nothing to do. Over the years, the
6:02
Speaker 2: country's naval fleet, ships and officers both kind of started
6:06
Speaker 2: to fall into sort of a state of disrepair. For
6:10
Speaker 2: a while there, the Navy kept themselves useful by undertaking
6:13
Speaker 2: exploration missions in the name of science, but somewhere along
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Speaker 2: the way someone realized, hey, we could be doing this
6:20
Speaker 2: for military purposes too. That had a lot to do
6:23
Speaker 2: with military activity in Europe experiencing a bit of an
6:27
Speaker 2: uptick around this time. While the United States was content
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Speaker 2: to use the ships they had to do whatever bullshit
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Speaker 2: science they needed to do, the rest of the world
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Speaker 2: was building newer and better warships so they could do
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Speaker 2: cool stuff like fight wars and take each other's land.
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Speaker 2: In eighteen sixty nine, Nice, a Navy squadron in Europe,
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Speaker 2: was commanded to obtain information quote respecting improvements in foreign
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Speaker 2: navies and Navy yards end quote. Though it wasn't an
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Speaker 2: official thing yet. These information gathering missions laid the foundation
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Speaker 2: for what would later become the Office of Naval Intelligence.
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Speaker 2: In the years leading up to that formation, Navy intelligence
7:12
Speaker 2: efforts mostly involved checking out other countries' naval fleets, writing reports,
7:17
Speaker 2: sometimes whole entire books about it. But for a long
7:21
Speaker 2: time naval intelligence wasn't really an official department of the Navy.
7:26
Speaker 2: It was just expected that if you were in the Navy,
7:28
Speaker 2: you'd sometimes have to do intelligence work. One of the
7:31
Speaker 2: conclusions reached during these intelligence missions was that if it
7:36
Speaker 2: came down to it, the United States Navy as it
7:39
Speaker 2: existed at that point in history was probably incapable of
7:43
Speaker 2: defending the Monroe Doctrine, which demanded that there be no
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Speaker 2: foreign influence in Western Hemisphere governments. And the reason we
7:51
Speaker 2: couldn't defend that Monroe doctrine is because our navy was
7:55
Speaker 2: still mostly rickety wooden ships at this point, while the
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Speaker 2: rest of the world was reinforcing their boats with iron
8:03
Speaker 2: and steel. That started to become less of a problem
8:06
Speaker 2: after the assassination of President James Garfield. Chester A. Arthur
8:10
Speaker 2: was second in command, and when he took office, he
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Speaker 2: made modernizing the Navy a top priority. Here's a quote.
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Speaker 2: Cannot too strongly urge upon you my conviction that every
8:21
Speaker 2: consideration of national safety, economy, and honor imperatively demands a
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Speaker 2: thorough rehabilitation of our navy. That was obviously Chester A.
8:32
Speaker 2: Arthur talking around this time. A precursor to the Office
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Speaker 2: of Naval Intelligence was formed in eighteen eighty two, and
8:40
Speaker 2: then very shortly thereafter the same year. In fact, so
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Speaker 2: I don't know what the point of the precursor even was.
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Speaker 2: The directive that ordered a for real Office of Naval
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Speaker 2: Intelligence to be created was issued and again for a
8:54
Speaker 2: long time, their main function spy on the various naval
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Speaker 2: fleets of the world. Write article about what you saw,
9:01
Speaker 2: just in case we had to get off into some
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Speaker 2: warship with a foreign adversary. So they were war bloggers essentially.
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Speaker 2: The article writing part of the job was hugely important, though,
9:11
Speaker 2: because eventually it changed from just informational stuff about British
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Speaker 2: warships to essays meant to convince the government and the
9:20
Speaker 2: public both that the US Navy needed to not only
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Speaker 2: be modernized but also vastly expanded. And there was good
9:27
Speaker 2: news for THENI on that front when President Grover Cleveland
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Speaker 2: took office in eighteen eighty five. He was a champion
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Speaker 2: of naval modernization and expansion both and it's around this
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Speaker 2: time that the Office of Naval Intelligence expands beyond spying
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Speaker 2: on foreign boats and moves into helping to draft war
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Speaker 2: plans for the countries most likely to start some shit Japan, Germany, England, Russia,
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Speaker 2: the usual suspects. Now, this was a very unique point
10:01
Speaker 2: in history in that the rest of the world didn't
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Speaker 2: really view the United States as a threat. We were
10:08
Speaker 2: fresh off of Civil War, our navy was ass compared
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Speaker 2: to the older and more powerful nations of the world.
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Speaker 2: On top of that, we were willing to spend lots
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Speaker 2: of money overseas to shore up our naval fleet. On
10:21
Speaker 2: account of all that, Naval Intelligence officers were able to
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Speaker 2: inspect entire shipyards in Europe in Asia and document everything
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Speaker 2: about our future enemy's capabilities with no stress at all.
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Speaker 2: In addition to gathering data about other countries' naval fleets.
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Speaker 2: When other countries started doing war stuff, the ONI was
10:42
Speaker 2: usually on hand to just you know, watch and take notes.
10:47
Speaker 2: If there was unrest in Latin America somewhere, we'd send
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Speaker 2: a ship or two down to keep an eye on things,
10:52
Speaker 2: you know, how we do around this time, which would
10:55
Speaker 2: be the eighteen nineties, so right around the time your
10:58
Speaker 2: mom was born America. So it was at a bit
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Speaker 2: of a crossroads in that we were still figuring out
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Speaker 2: if we wanted to be an isolationist nation that stays
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Speaker 2: out of other countries affairs, or if we would rather
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Speaker 2: expand and modernize our navy and start getting super duper
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Speaker 2: involved in other nations affairs. Feelings about that would kind
11:21
Speaker 2: of ebb and flow depending on what president was in
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Speaker 2: office at the time. It was during the McKinley administration
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Speaker 2: that the need for a more imposing naval presence on
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Speaker 2: the world stage started winning a little more favor among
11:35
Speaker 2: the populace due to an incident that happened on February fifteenth,
11:39
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety eight. That's the day the USS main which
11:43
Speaker 2: had been sent to Cuba to protect American interests after
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Speaker 2: conflict erupted between them and Spain, exploded and sank to
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Speaker 2: the bottom of Havana Harbor, killing more than two hundred
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Speaker 2: and sixty sailors. We blamed Spain for that, and the
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Speaker 2: Office of Naval Intelligence responded by going into full on
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Speaker 2: war planning mode. Their reports about the might and fierceness
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Speaker 2: of the Spanish naval fleet went a long way toward
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Speaker 2: the United States finally spending real money to expand our
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Speaker 2: own naval fleet. Here's a quote from one of those reports.
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Speaker 2: There is much confidence expressed that if the squadrons meet,
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Speaker 2: the Spaniards will win the first few fights, and that
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Speaker 2: they will destroy our commerce and devastate our coast end quote.
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Speaker 2: After hearing enough shit like that, President McKinley decided we
12:39
Speaker 2: should maybe start taking a tougher stance against Spain. Sure,
12:44
Speaker 2: it was later revealed that we were way overestimating Spain's
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Speaker 2: war fighting abilities, but who listening to this didn't see
12:51
Speaker 2: that part coming. This all, of course, led to the
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Speaker 2: Spanish American War, which broke out on April twenty fourth,
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Speaker 2: eighteen ninety eight. And it's at that point that the
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Speaker 2: Office of Naval Intelligence expands from just being an outfit
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Speaker 2: that gathered intelligence about enemy boats and things of the
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Speaker 2: like into a for real dispatch secret agents to Europe
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Speaker 2: kind of thing. That's because we weren't getting enough intelligence
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Speaker 2: about Spain just looking at their coastline through binoculars. Or
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Speaker 2: whatever it was we were doing up to that point,
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Speaker 2: we needed boots on the ground in Spain acting like
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Speaker 2: they weren't there as representatives of the United States government.
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Speaker 2: Spies are what we call them. The US already had
13:37
Speaker 2: a series of naval attaches all over the world. Those
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Speaker 2: are officers posted to various countries in case, you know,
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Speaker 2: maybe someone has a question about what the Navy is
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Speaker 2: up to, like an ambassador sorta. They definitely aren't there
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Speaker 2: to do any spying themselves, no sir. But during the
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Speaker 2: Spanish American War, they did start dipping into a quote
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Speaker 2: secret Service emmer Urgency fund end quote to higher informants
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Speaker 2: and buy information about what the Spaniards were planning. And
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Speaker 2: it seems like that helped because by December that war
14:10
Speaker 2: was over, and thanks to the treaty we signed with Spain,
14:14
Speaker 2: along with a couple other military conquests, America was starting
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Speaker 2: to become a bit of an empire, not to brag.
14:21
Speaker 2: So now there's no question that the Navy needed to expand,
14:25
Speaker 2: because empires don't just protect themselves. On top of that,
14:28
Speaker 2: Japan and Germany both were starting to seem like for
14:31
Speaker 2: real threats that we were inevitably going to have to
14:35
Speaker 2: deal with in some way at some point, and the
14:38
Speaker 2: Office of Naval Intelligence was also kind of instrumental in
14:41
Speaker 2: building that empire. Under the Taft administration from nineteen ten
14:46
Speaker 2: to nineteen thirteen, Naval Intelligence officers were used as salespeople
14:51
Speaker 2: promoting American business interests abroad, so really quick we went
14:56
Speaker 2: from shopping for war machines to trying to sell our
15:00
Speaker 2: war machines in those same countries. But again, attitudes toward
15:04
Speaker 2: naval intelligence and the need for expanding the Navy were
15:08
Speaker 2: constantly changing depending on what president was in office. When
15:12
Speaker 2: Woodrow Wilson took the reins, it seemed, at least at first,
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Speaker 2: that he was going to go in more of an
15:18
Speaker 2: isolationist route, which would obviously not call for naval expansion.
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Speaker 2: This set off something called the Preparedness Movement. That was
15:27
Speaker 2: a movement within the military that advocated for constant war
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Speaker 2: planning and bolstering our military and its weaponry so we
15:36
Speaker 2: were always ready to take on any threat that might
15:39
Speaker 2: come our way. And then on the other side of
15:41
Speaker 2: the Preparedness movement where a whole bunch of no good
15:44
Speaker 2: piece nicks who thought we should just stay out of
15:47
Speaker 2: things even as war was overtaking Europe. But then the
15:51
Speaker 2: sinking of another boat, this time the Lusitania in May
15:55
Speaker 2: nineteen fifteen, prompted President Wilson to get on board with
16:00
Speaker 2: the principles of the preparedness movement, and finally, on April seventh,
16:04
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen, that stubborn son of a bitch declared war
16:08
Speaker 2: against Germany. Just like that, the United States was in
16:12
Speaker 2: the thick of World War One. Now, obviously, you can't
16:17
Speaker 2: successfully fight a foreign adversary if said adversary has a
16:22
Speaker 2: bunch of sneaky operatives in your country. To that end,
16:25
Speaker 2: during World War One, the Office of Naval Intelligence became
16:29
Speaker 2: a domestic surveillance organization. To pull that off, they not
16:34
Speaker 2: only hired intelligence officers from within the Navy's own ranks,
16:38
Speaker 2: but also started outsourcing surveillance to volunteers who, at least
16:43
Speaker 2: at first, could best be described as elites. Wall Street bankers,
16:49
Speaker 2: prominent publishers, celebrities, shipping magnets, you name it. If you
16:54
Speaker 2: were rich and willing, then I had a spy job
16:59
Speaker 2: waiting for you. This eventually expanded into pulling volunteers from
17:02
Speaker 2: less privileged backgrounds as well. Here's a quote from Professor
17:07
Speaker 2: Dorwartz's first BOOKI operatives came from every walk of life,
17:11
Speaker 2: from the quiet stenographer to the super patriot of the
17:14
Speaker 2: American Protective League. These people, rather than the Harvard graduate
17:19
Speaker 2: and society celebrity, held ONI's domestic intelligence operation together. End
17:26
Speaker 2: quote that sounds a lot like esteemed former Governor of
17:29
Speaker 2: Minnesota Jesse the Body Ventura's story about having a sit
17:33
Speaker 2: down meeting with CIA agents after he was elected and
17:37
Speaker 2: how they all just looked like your regular ass neighbors
17:40
Speaker 2: and strangers you'd pass on the street, instead of whatever
17:44
Speaker 2: vision of CIA agents you might have in your mind.
17:48
Speaker 2: These undercover agents searched passengers on incoming ships, They opened mail,
17:54
Speaker 2: they censored incoming and outgoing cables and messages. Whatever it
18:00
Speaker 2: took to sniff out enemies hiding amongst us, even if
18:04
Speaker 2: that meant lots and lots of innocent Americans got their
18:08
Speaker 2: privacy invaded in the process. It was war man. All
18:12
Speaker 2: bets are off, rules fly out the window. At one point,
18:16
Speaker 2: it was claimed that this ragtag but also massive team
18:20
Speaker 2: of spies were identifying fifteen thousand potential subversives a week.
18:27
Speaker 2: Ohni was also put in charge of ensuring the safety
18:31
Speaker 2: of the plants where our naval equipment was made, and
18:34
Speaker 2: of course that sometimes meant busting up attempts at organizing
18:40
Speaker 2: and forming unions and things of the like that was
18:44
Speaker 2: considered subversive activity too. Go figure case in point we
18:47
Speaker 2: just mentioned stenographers. There was an incident where a stenographers
18:51
Speaker 2: started organizing to try and get equal pay for women
18:55
Speaker 2: who were doing the exact same jobs as their male
18:58
Speaker 2: counterparts but making much less money. The Office of Naval
19:01
Speaker 2: Intelligence responded to this by launching an investigation into that
19:06
Speaker 2: woman's personal life, her sexual preferences, her finances, whatever else
19:11
Speaker 2: they could get their hands on, before ultimately just getting
19:14
Speaker 2: her fired from the plant she worked at. Also, despite
19:19
Speaker 2: the main adversary in the war being GERMANYNI surveillance extended
19:25
Speaker 2: beyond possible German infiltrators when they decided to start surveilling
19:30
Speaker 2: America's Jewish population for still unknown reasons. And we're talking
19:36
Speaker 2: people getting dishonorably discharged from the Navy solely because they
19:40
Speaker 2: were born in a part of New York with a
19:42
Speaker 2: mostly Jewish population, no other explanation given, and naturally, given
19:48
Speaker 2: the period in history we're TALKINGNI was on the hunt
19:52
Speaker 2: for communists and socialists on the regular. In just a
19:56
Speaker 2: little over twenty years, the Office of Naval Intelligence grew
20:00
Speaker 2: from mostly spying on other countries and their naval capabilities
20:06
Speaker 2: to spying on Americans based on their race, ethnicity, or
20:10
Speaker 2: political leanings. Along with justifying the expansion of domestic surveillance,
20:15
Speaker 2: the war also paved the way FORNI to set up
20:19
Speaker 2: a global espionage network, place in agents in Europe, Latin America,
20:24
Speaker 2: and the Far East. And naturally that eventually turned into
20:28
Speaker 2: interfering in the politics of other nations if we thought
20:31
Speaker 2: someone who wouldn't be beholden to our interests was about
20:35
Speaker 2: to be elected. So the Office of Naval Intelligence was
20:38
Speaker 2: the CIA before we knew we needed a CIA. Basically,
20:42
Speaker 2: they even at one point start clamoring for some sort
20:45
Speaker 2: of central agency that could collect and organize all of
20:50
Speaker 2: the information that they and other intelligence agencies were bringing in.
20:55
Speaker 2: That is precisely what the CIA was meant to be
20:58
Speaker 2: when it was founded. But of course, yes, as soon
21:00
Speaker 2: as World War One ended, the government immediately flipped the
21:04
Speaker 2: switch to off and shut down domestic surveillance at once. Ah,
21:11
Speaker 2: just joke, and they never do that for one thing.
21:14
Speaker 2: Not sure how familiar everyone is with the end of
21:17
Speaker 2: World War One and the Treaty of Versailles, but things
21:20
Speaker 2: were still highly contentious on the world stage after World
21:24
Speaker 2: War One ended, especially between the participating countries. If anything,
21:29
Speaker 2: America needed more spies than ever before, so in the
21:33
Speaker 2: years between the two World Wars, the ONI's public mission
21:38
Speaker 2: was still to gather intelligence about foreign naval fleets, but
21:41
Speaker 2: they also had a secret second mission, which was to
21:44
Speaker 2: perform surveillance within the United States to keep an eye
21:48
Speaker 2: out for foreigners looking to start trouble once again. That
21:51
Speaker 2: inevitably involves spying on a bunch of innocent Americans in
21:55
Speaker 2: the process, and sometimes doing things that fell outside the
21:59
Speaker 2: boundaries of the Constitution. Jeffrey Dorwert calls this the Navy's
22:03
Speaker 2: conflict of duty and or the intelligence dilemma. That's when
22:08
Speaker 2: you have to do something unconstitutional in the name of
22:12
Speaker 2: keeping the country safe. Big Air quotes around that, even
22:15
Speaker 2: though as a naval officer you took an oath to
22:18
Speaker 2: uphold the constitution and protect constitutional freedoms, quite the dilemma. Indeed,
22:24
Speaker 2: Office of Naval Intelligence agents even broke into a guy's
22:28
Speaker 2: office in nineteen thirty on the request of then President
22:31
Speaker 2: Herbert Hoover after he heard Democrats had dirt on him
22:35
Speaker 2: that could end his career if it came out again.
22:37
Speaker 2: They are basically the CIA before the CIA. For all
22:40
Speaker 2: intents and purposes, the Office of Naval Intelligence's main job
22:45
Speaker 2: after World War One was crushing dissent. They were always
22:50
Speaker 2: on the hunt for communists and other foreign agitators violating
22:55
Speaker 2: the Constitution. At every stop along the way, they delivered
22:59
Speaker 2: constant report about how communism had infiltrated every aspect of
23:04
Speaker 2: American life, up to and including Pennsylvania coal miners, who
23:08
Speaker 2: were also targets FORNI surveillance. For some reason, even before
23:13
Speaker 2: McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare, the Office of Naval
23:17
Speaker 2: Intelligence was compiling massive lists of supposed domestic enemies who
23:23
Speaker 2: were guilty of things like writing a letter to the
23:26
Speaker 2: President suggesting that the country didn't need to expand the navy.
23:30
Speaker 2: That was enough to get historian Charles Beard branded as
23:33
Speaker 2: a quote dangerous radical end quote in the eyes of
23:37
Speaker 2: Naval Intelligence. Basically, if you thought we had enough warships,
23:41
Speaker 2: you were a communist agitator. If you were critical of
23:44
Speaker 2: the Navy in any way, you were a communist agitator.
23:48
Speaker 2: Even if you just knew someone who'd been labeled a communist,
23:51
Speaker 2: the Office of Naval Intelligence was at least going to
23:54
Speaker 2: write your name down. In one report, they compiled a
23:57
Speaker 2: list of communist minded into sellectuals, who they called quote
24:02
Speaker 2: fringe revolutionists too lacking in intestinal fortitude to go all
24:08
Speaker 2: the way with communism, but who stand by and urge
24:11
Speaker 2: the Communists to do his worst and provide him with protection, sympathy,
24:17
Speaker 2: and defense while he commits the overt act they had
24:21
Speaker 2: not had the courage to commit themselves end quote. Basically,
24:27
Speaker 2: any form of protest, especially if it was about the
24:30
Speaker 2: Navy itself, was considered subversive activity as opposed to a
24:35
Speaker 2: thing the Constitution clearly says you're allowed to do. And unfortunately,
24:41
Speaker 2: all of this focus on domestic surveillance distracted the Office
24:46
Speaker 2: of Naval Intelligence a bit from their obligations to also
24:50
Speaker 2: spy on our enemies overseas, like when they assured the
24:53
Speaker 2: powers that be that Japan had no actual intention of
24:58
Speaker 2: invading China or causing any problems militarily really, or when
25:03
Speaker 2: they repeatedly assured leaders that Mussolini was only providing stability
25:08
Speaker 2: and prosperity to the people of Italy. Oh and they
25:11
Speaker 2: also reported that Adolph Hitler was a good natured leader
25:16
Speaker 2: and that quote, the indications are that Germany's relative strength
25:21
Speaker 2: will never be great enough to encourage her to initiate
25:25
Speaker 2: hostilities without powerful allies. End quote. And whoops, that take
25:32
Speaker 2: did in age well. In the eyes of the Office
25:34
Speaker 2: of Naval Intelligence. America's enemies weren't the burgeoning fascists who
25:40
Speaker 2: would eventually set off World War two. No, it was
25:43
Speaker 2: the internal enemy that we needed to worry about, the
25:47
Speaker 2: enemy within. If you will not sure if that sounds
25:50
Speaker 2: familiar at all, you probably don't need me to tell
25:52
Speaker 2: you this, but that turned out to be a very
25:55
Speaker 2: bad decision once World War II rolled around. But hey,
26:00
Speaker 2: that's for next week's episode, which will conclude our deep
26:04
Speaker 2: dive into the Office of Naval Intelligence. In between those
26:07
Speaker 2: two episodes will be a subscriber only bonus episode coming
26:12
Speaker 2: out later this week about a dice game called the
26:15
Speaker 2: Deadly Double and how adds for it maybe predicted the
26:19
Speaker 2: attack on Pearl Harbor. Don't let Snopes tell you it
26:22
Speaker 2: was just a coincidence. If you want to hear that one.
26:24
Speaker 2: Just head over to Patreon dot com, slash and Pops
26:27
Speaker 2: or you don'tpod dot supercast dot com and subscribe for
26:31
Speaker 2: bonus episodes and thanks, goodbye everybody, We love you.