[00:00:00] Since the Dawn of civilization, spies of every nation and culture have worked to infiltrate their adversaries and glean the information that will give their side. The advantage, the stakes are sky high, the strategies varied and imaginative, and the ultimate sign of success is that no one ever even knew you were there.
In each episode, we will explore the moral and ethical gray zones of ESP espionage, where treachery and betrayal go hand in hand with cunning and courage. This is the spycraft 1 0 1 podcast. Welcome to your clandestine classroom. This is episode number 55 of the spycraft 1 0 1 podcast for the first time ever.
I'll be answering questions submitted by my listeners and followers. If you follow the spycraft 1 0 1 account on Instagram, you might recall that several weeks ago, I took questions [00:01:00] from everyone. For a future episode, I had way more responses than I anticipated. In fact, there were exactly 101 questions submitted to that story post coincidentally.
So I took some of the best questions that were submitted and will be answering them today. Because there was such an overwhelming response. I'll probably do more episodes like this in the future. So if you asked a question and you don't hear it answered today, don't worry. I might still get to it down the road.
But first, I wanna say a big thank you to everyone listening, who is also supporting me on Patreon, including will D and Adam G your monthly contributions there. Help me keep this podcast going week in and week out as a way of thanking my patrons. I offer a lot of great freebees and promotions, including free and discounted books and products from the spycraft 1 0 1 store patrons.
Also get exclusive access to long form articles of mine that aren't available anywhere. If you haven't signed up for my Patreon yet, but you want to just click the link in the show notes on whatever podcast platform you're listening to right now. [00:02:00] So one of the first questions I got was whether there were any good ESP espionage stories from New Zealand, New Zealand, probably isn't the first place that comes to mind when you think about espionage or international intrigue, but it's actually had its fair share of covert activities.
Over the years. One of the most interesting ones that comes to mind is the rainbow warrior affair of 1985, which caused a major diplomatic rift between New Zealand and France. In 1985, the French government was still conducting nuclear weapons tests near the MAOA a to. Part of French Polynesia in the south Pacific it's way out in the middle of nowhere, which is why it was chosen for nuclear testing in the first place.
French government conducted tests there for 30 years from 1966 through 1996, a total of about 181 nuclear tests took place there. Some of them were atmospheric detonations and the rest were underwater tests where the nuclear weapons were placed deep. [00:03:00] In drilled shafts as much as 1600 meters underwater and detonated there.
Well, right from the start, there were protests against these kind of tests, which were primarily centered around the environmental effects of detonating. The weapons, lots of Marine life was presumably killed with every detonation. And in some cases, the landscape of the ATO itself was changed due to landslides or cracks in the bed.
The New Zealand government was pretty unhappy with the testing and lodged protests with France on many occasion. In fact, in 1973, they sent a pair of Navy frigates to monitor the planned French tests for that year. The frigates recorded electronic and radiological data related to the tests and the French government subsequently ended its atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, probably as a result of the interference by the Royal New Zealand Navy.
So tensions between the two countries were quite [00:04:00] high over this issue for many years. It wasn't just the regional governments that were protesting though. Several other anti-nuclear weapons groups were involved as well. The biggest of all was green peace, probably the best known environmental activist group ever.
Green peace sent their ship, the rainbow warrior into the area to protest against and hopefully disrupt the ongoing nuclear tests. The rainbow warrior was a 40 meter long converted fishing trawler green pre piece, brought it in, excuse me, bought it in 1977 and refitted it to enable their protests in the Pacific.
Leading up until July, 1985, they had multiple run-ins with the French government and on at least one occasion, the ship was boarded by French commandos. When it sailed into the exclusion zone around the Morro, a toll. For their part, the French were tired of having their nuclear test disrupted and took a shockingly direct approach to [00:05:00] getting the green piece activists out of the way.
They sent a team of nine covert operatives from the DGSE intelligence agency to New Zealand to sync the rainbow warrior while it was in port a French agent named Christine Kebo went undercover as a green piece volunteer for six weeks prior to the bomb. She infiltrated their Auckland New Zealand office and was able to collect their itinerary for the ships upcoming excursion to murro.
She also made logistical arrangements for the remaining team members who were coming in behind her. She was kind of like the advanced party, Christine then departed New Zealand before the bombing took place. The rest of the team arrived in small groups to avoid arousing suspicion. Two agents flew in under aliases as a newlyw Swiss couple on their honeymoon.
And others arrived on a French yacht called the Uve, where they were posing as crew members on a chartered voyage.[00:06:00] On the night of July 10th, 1985, two DGSE combat divers swam to the ship and placed limp at mines on the hole and on the propeller shaft, the mines exploded at about 11:50 PM and opened a six foot wide gash in the hole and flooded the engine room almost immediately.
Most of the crew members were on shore at that time, just as the French team had anticipated, but at least three people were still on board, including a Portuguese photographer named Fernando Perta. He rushed below Dex to see what was happening and to recover his camera gear, but he became trapped as the ship sank and he drowned.
So he was the only casualty of the attack. The only fatality. An investigation started the following day by New Zealand authorities. And as it turned out, the DGSE operatives made a few mistakes that quickly pointed to their involvement in the attack. The two divers used a Zodiac inflatable boat to approach the rainbow warrior [00:07:00] and then abandoned it on a nearby beach afterwards, where they were picked up in a van.
A local bystander thought it was very odd to just leave the boat there on the beach, you know, in it's expensive boat. Of course. So they took down the Van's license plate number and called the local police. The van itself that they were using had been rented. And two days later, when the two agents driving took it back for a return to the rental agency, the police were called after a rental employee at the rental agency realized they might have been involved in the T, which was now all over the news, 48 hours.
Most of the DGSE personnel escaped the country right afterwards. But these two agents at the rental agency were arrested and eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, the French government intervened on their behalf. They were transferred to the French owned island of how in the south Pacific and agent named Dominique preor was soon released when she became pregnant.
After her husband came to stay with her on the [00:08:00] island. So this was not a very harsh prison sentence. If you know, family members can travel across the south Pacific to spend time with you. The other prisoner, the other agent who unfortunately was named Elaine Mafar was. Eventually evacuated to Paris on the claim that he required specialized medical care only available there.
And he never returned to complete his sentence on the island of how, because the French government had him back. Like they wanted him. This entire incident became known as the rainbow warrior affair and the resulting political fallout elevated green piece of status on the international stage and led to the resignation of several senior French government officials.
The case was still being discussed more than 30 years later after the original operative Christine Cabo was located in a small village in Southern France, where she'd been living for years. After her cover was blown in the operation. She left intelligence work and continued in the French army as an administrative officer, until she retired [00:09:00] as of 2017, she was a town Councilwoman and historian in her village.
When she was contacted by reporters from New Zealand that year, she was unapologetic about her role in the whole. Shortly after the bombing of the rainbow warrior Australia, New Zealand, Papa, new Guinea, and many of the smaller island nations in the south Pacific signed the treaty of RERA Toga, which declared the entire region off limits to nuclear testing.
And France eventually ended nuclear testing in the region 10 years later. So they didn't immediately comply with this treaty, but eventually they did. And that was the fallout from this rainbow warrior. What I would call a disaster for the French, really? And of course, for this photographer, Fernando Perera as well, who perished in the attack.
It's, there've been a lot of run-ins, like I said, between the French government and green piece, but it's still shocking that they would send commandos to blow up one of their boats in Harbor, no matter what. So the next question comes from Chris lb, who asked, [00:10:00] where does the well rod pistol originate and why was it used.
If you're not familiar with the well rod already, you might have seen it on my page. You can find almost anywhere, really very unusual weapons. Certainly the well rod is definitely one of the coolest and most unusual weapons of the 20th century. In my opinion, I dedicated one of the longest chapters of my book, covert arms to it a few months ago when I published, it's also one of the few weapons in that book that has several well documented real world uses in covert operations and in assassinations.
Even though you can find information about the well rod all over the place. The best single source that I've found is the website time lapse.dk. That's a site run by Anders. Tson a very thorough researcher based in Europe. You can also find him on Instagram at, at S O E 4 0 4 5 S O E 4 0 4 5. So definitely give him a follow.
As soon as you finish [00:11:00] listening to this episode, he's got some amazing photographs of clandestine weapons and equipment from world war II stuff. You can hardly see anywhere else. He's kind of my go to guy for the world war II clandestine stuff that I tend to post about a lot. So I really encourage you to give him a follow.
Regarding the origins of the well rod, we have to go all the way back to July, 1940. When the British special operations executive was formed to quote, set Europe ablaze. In the words of Winston Churchill, the SOE, once it was formed, quickly set up a bunch of different research and development branches spread throughout the country.
These branches developed and produced wireless radio transmitters, disguised explosives. Camouflage all the other important tools of clandestine warfare, one branch called station nine was located in the fre estate, near whirlwinds garden in her future. An enormous variety of devices, gadgets and weapons were developed at station [00:12:00] nine, which was not too far north of London, including radios for resistance fighters, time pencil, delayed detonators magnetic li mines for sabotaging ships in Harbor.
Just like we talked about. Maybe even chemical and biological weapons who knows those concepts that were considered successful designs were then built either at station 12 nearby, or they were contracted out to private companies for larger scale manufacturer. The engineers at station nine got in the habit of naming many of their projects with the prefix.
Well, w E L as a tribute to the station's location in well. These included the well bike, which was a collapsible motorcycle meant to be airdrop to troops and the well freighter, a submarine that could clandestinely transport up to a ton of cargo, just underneath the surface of the water. Some of the most interesting covert arms of world war II came outta station nine, including the well rod, the well gun, [00:13:00] the norm gun.
The sleeve gun and the remote control pistol, all of which are covered in my book, covert arms of these five easily, the best known of all is the well rod suppressed pistol, which was referred to in official documentation. As the hand firing device, it was built in several variants in the 32 ACP and nine millimeter Parabel in calibers.
And it was used all over Europe. During the war. The well rod was designed by major Hugh Quentin Allen Reeves. Who was one of station nine's most talented and creative engineers. He's also credited with designing the original St. Gun suppressor and development of the sleeping beauty one man's submersible canoe, which I've posted about on Instagram as well.
After the well rod was developed at station nine, it was manufactured by the Birmingham small arms company and possibly other manufacturers as. Due to its covert nature, paper records were deliberately [00:14:00] kept to a minimum. And to this day, BSA cannot confirm exactly how many world rods they produced for the special operations executive serial numbers exist up into the 14,000 range, but it is not clear if they were all sequentially manufactured or if they started at a, a mid-range number, for example.
So nobody knows for. From the outset, the well rod was intended to be used as a contact distance weapon. The official manual described the 32 ACP version as accurate up to 25 yards and the nine millimeter version up to 30 yards. But the Pistol's nose cap is hollow to specifically facilitate contact distance use.
Ideally the user would get close enough to the target, to press the muzzle directly into them before pulling the trigger. The mark one prototype that would become the well rod was radically different than the finished product. Many of us are familiar with today. It featured a manual external bolt handle and an ex internal magazine that was loaded with five [00:15:00] rounds from the top down, similar to a, a maser C 96 pistol.
The trigger was not in the traditional location below the barrel, but instead on the left side of the breach intended to be pushed forward with the right thumb instead of press to the rear by the index finger. So very, very unique initial prototype there. By June, 1943, lots of redesigns led to the more recognizable mark two and mark two, a 32 ACP pistols.
The redesign will rods had a detachable magazine adapted from a cult 1903 pistol magazine and sheath with rubber to function as the pistol grip. The trigger was moved back underneath the breach in a more conventional design. And the bolt handle was replaced by a neural knob at the rear of the breach, which could be pulled backwards, rotated 90 degrees, and then pushed forward again to eject the spent round load the next round and cocked the firing pin.
This resulted in a greatly [00:16:00] profile with easier concealment while still being fast to reload for a manually cycled. The mark one nine millimeter Parabel well, rods featured two notable differences from the 32 ACP versions. A trigger guard was installed, which allowed the pistol to be more safely concealed.
The 32 ACP version could not be tucked into a waistband while loaded for obvious reasons. The. The nine millimeter. Well, rod also featured a detachable suppressor, which again, allowed for much easier concealment leading up to an operational act. The pistol could be fired without the suppressor if necessary, but there were far better handguns available for unsuppressed fire.
By that point, well, rods were used operationally in Denmark on many occasions, according to research conducted by Anders, who I mentioned earlier. It was used by the Danish resistance, primarily in the killing of informants, among the Danish population who were working for the Nazis. Here's a few examples from 1943 and [00:17:00] 1944, that Anders has dug up in December, 1943.
The well rod was used by SOE agents, Fen Nielsen to dispatch a German century on duty at the Castro airport. Nielsen had was on a mission to infiltrate the airport and steal a newly developed bomb site from a parked German aircraft. So he had to infiltrate the airport airport, get into one of their Aircrafts, steal, something from inside, and then escape again successfully.
Nielsen was discovered, but he was able to escape. Although his partner on the mission was killed. So on the way in, they killed a century and on the way out, they were discovered, unfortunately, but he did manage to get away with the bomb site. On January 3rd, 1944, a Nazi collaborator named Mr. Nortel was attacked in his home by Danish resistance members, carrying well rods.
The two men pinned him to the floor and shot him in the head. The pistol was so quiet that his wife [00:18:00] who was home at the time did not hear the commotion from the next room over. She knew that her husband had taken in guests, but she had no idea that they were with the Danish resistance. Noal died in the hospital three days later without ever regaining consciousness.
Then on September 17th, 1944, Mrs. Frederika Runger was killed while recuperating in our house county hospital. She was another collab, a Nazi collaborator living in, Denmark, a nurse entered her private ward that day to find her dead from a gunshot wound to the head. And the killer was never identified, but it suspected that they used a well rod because no one heard anything in the hospital.
Even the Nazis themselves took to using captured well rods against the Danish resistance members at the direction of auto score. A very legendary figure in German military at the time, a group of SS officers known as the Peter group, which was the name of their leaders. Alias carried out assassination emissions against [00:19:00] prominent Danes as retribution for attacks by the re.
Between February, 1944 and January, 1945, the Peter group assassinated, excuse me, this Peter group killed at least three Danes and wounded. Another in targeted assassinations. These included a newspaper editor, a parliament member, and a prominent attorney. All of whom were suspected resistance members while rods were also provided by SOE to a few us personnel on Jedberg teams.
The office of strategic services received at least two well rods for testing and found it to be an excellent weapon overall, but they continued to stick with the high standard model HD Ms. 22 caliber pistol, which I've discussed before as their primary silence pistol throughout the war and beyond. Even after the end of world war II, the well rod remained in a number of inventories and popped up occasionally around the world.
In the late 1950s, us army special forces detachment in [00:20:00] Berlin was issued well rods and us made high standard model HDMS pistols. On one occasion, they were given a mission to perform a vulnerability assessment on west Berlin's mayor, Willie brand, who would later serve as the chancellor of west Germany.
So they were tasked to come up with methods that communist infiltrators from east Berlin might use to assassinate Brandt. So the detachment surreptitiously tailed him for several weeks to complete this assessment. They eventually presented four likely scenarios for assassinating him. One of these involved using a well rod pistol with the magazine removed and rolled up inside of a newspaper in order to get close enough for a killing shot, cuz you would still have one round loaded in the chamber, even without the.
The detachment also carried the well rod on missions up to the Berlin wall beginning in the early 1960s, in case it was necessary to dispatch an Eastern and century or guard dog. Although I don't know if that actually ever occurred. [00:21:00] There is some evidence that it was used by British forces in Northern island during the troubles.
During the Falkland islands war against Argentina in the early 1980s, the us central intelligence agency maintained a number of well rods, nine millimeter, well rods in their arsenal through at least 1965 and possibly beyond the commandos of military assistance. Command Vietnam studies in observation group use well rods in Vietnam, along with several other suppressed weapons.
And it may even have been issued as late as 1991 during the Gulf war against Iraq. So at that point, the well rod, this highly specialized pistol was over 50 years old and may have still been showing up on battlefields around the world. So that's the story of the well rod, at least as far as I know it, once again, check out S O E 4 0 4 5 on Instagram, or read more on time lapse.dk for more inform.
Before we go on to the next question, I wanna let you all know about a [00:22:00] new educational tool. You're not going to want to miss it's the gray man briefing classified by now. I think I know my listeners pretty well and take it from me. This briefing is exactly the news and educational reference source that you've been looking for.
You'll get breaking news updates from all over the world on topics, including planned protests and riots, low intensity conflicts, natural disaster alerts, cyber attacks, supply chain, disruptions, and more. You'll also get access to articles that help you build your own skills, including urban survival, home security, counter surveillance, escape, evasion techniques, and more.
And this is much more than just a newsletter in your inbox. Joining the grey man briefing classified also includes invitation only channels on the telegram and signal apps for convenient, realtime update. The newsletter subscription is normally $5 per month, but if you use the code GBC spycraft, you can save 20% each month for the life of your subscription.
I'm already a member [00:23:00] myself and have been reading and learning a lot since I first subscribed. Look it up [email protected]. That's gray with an a gray man briefing.com and use the discount code GBC spycraft to save 20% right from the.
Another question came from Dave Leonard who asked, what do you think was the most successful or far reaching operation? Well, the answer to that question unfortunately is probably one that we've never heard of, but of the operations that have come to light over the past few decades. The one that immediately stands out to me is operation Rubic.
Operation Rubicon has been called the greatest intelligence coup of the 20th century. It was a joint operation between the American central intelligence agency and the west German, B N D intelligence organization, along with help from the national security agency, N SA which successfully decrypted message traffic from dozens of other governments all over [00:24:00] the.
And this was not just a short term win either. The operation went on for more than 20 years and they did it all through an incredibly audacious and devious strategy, the CIA and the B and D worked together to sell encryption machines through a front company, to the very governments that they were targeting in operation Rubicon.
Story begins all the way back in 1951, there was a Swedish inventor named Boris Hak who had worked on mechanical cryptographic machines since 1925, selling a small number of devices to the Swedish and French governments, maybe 20 or 50 or a hundred at a time. In May, 1940, he and his wife barely escaped Europe as world war II began.
They made it safely to the United States and he brought two partially completed machines with him. Once he settled in the us, he was able [00:25:00] to finish the design of his newest cryptographic machines and sell them to the us army who named them the M two zero. Over the next five years, the army purchased and manufactured 140,000 of the M 2 0 9 S and they were the primary cryptographic devices for the entire service.
So he went from selling 20 or 50 or a hundred to selling 140,000 in the span of a few years. But Hain sold the patent rights for the M 2 0 9 to the us government for more than 3 million. In 1941, I believe it was making him the world's first crypto millionaire. So although he wasn't from the us, Halan had a strong affinity for America by this time.
And he was now close friends with a man named William Friedman. Friedman had started as a cryptographer with the us army in the 1930s. And by 1952, he was the chief ologist of the brand new national security agency[00:26:00] he's now considered to be the father of American cryptography that same year, 1952 ha moved his company, which was called AB crypto from Sweden to Switzerland, where he named renamed it, crypto ag, not long after that Friedman and the NSA started working to strike a deal with Halan that benefits both the NSA and crypto a.
There's a lot of back and forth, mostly because different parts of the deal keep getting objections from various people in the us intelligence community. But by December, 1955, everything is ready. Friedman travels to Switzerland and spends a few days with Halan before making his pitch. And Halan accepts the deal as offered on the spot.
Although he doesn't want anything written down. The details of this so-called gentleman's agreement are now known. Crypto ag would only sell its most secure machines to friendly [00:27:00] countries, such as the us and most of Western Europe, the companies slightly less secure products were available for purchase by much of the rest of the world.
These machines were already decipherable by the NSA, even then they would also be kept informed of any and all sales around the. And lastly, the NSA would compensate Hain for any lost sales due to him not being able to sell his most expensive hardware to a large number of potential clients. I'm not sure exactly how that was calculated though.
When they were initially trying to work out a formal agreement, they had planned to offer Hain $700,000 for his assistance, which you know, was a significant amount of money in 1952 more like 7 million. But he never officially signed on with that plan. So I'm not sure if the $700,000 figure is accurate or not, but this deal started to fall apart fairly quickly.
The main reason for this was that Friedman suffered a major heart [00:28:00] attack that led to his medical retirement from the NSA. He couldn't even travel anymore due to his condition, which meant that someone else had to take over the meetings with Hale in Switzerland. The next two people that were picked to work with Halan and kind of handle him, couldn't really manage him because they didn't have the longstanding friendship with him that Friedman did within a few years.
Halan is starting to sell some of, his best equipment to these countries that the NSA had asked him not to. So for a few years there in the mid to late fifties, there wasn't any more cooperation between the us government and crypto ag, but then the CIA saw the opportunity and stepped in to make a new deal with the company.
They worked out a licensing deal with Hain, which went into effect in 1960. The NSA was aware of this deal, but they opted not to be a partner at this. However NSA technicians were able to provide input to crypto ag on how they would like [00:29:00] certain devices to be built in a way that would be exploitable by them.
And Hain was willing to cooperate with these requests as he, so he was knowingly selling exploitable systems to many of his buyers in Latin America, the middle east, and. Then in 1970, after Hain reported to the CIA that the French government had offered to buy the entire company from him, they decided to beat the French to the punch, the west German BDI, and the CIA worked out an agreement between themselves to each purchase.
50% of crypto ag through a series of front C. Hain was paid about $7 million in total for his company. For years leading up to that, he wanted to turn the company over to his son, Bo, but Bo had, unfortunately not lived up to his father's expectations as a businessman. And while he still handled Latin American sales for the company, Hain had long decided that his son wasn't the [00:30:00] one to lead crypto ag over the coming years.
In fact, Bo was never even inform. Who the true owners of the company were after his father sold it. If you're wondering why the CIA chose to partner with the B and D on such an incredibly sensitive operation, you should probably keep in mind that the CIA essentially built the B and D from the ground up in the mid 1950s.
The core of that agency came from a group called the Gillen organization, headed by Reinhard Gill. He has served as a major general in the German army during world war II and his organization was full of former Nazi party members, SS officers and SD officers. I'll probably do an episode one day on the Gallen organization, but it's clear that the B and D owed a lot to the CIA in the first place.
The agreement between the two agencies was that they would totally share all captured traffic generated by operation Rubicon, but that each agency would be responsible for decrypting the messages [00:31:00] themselves. And wouldn't share that with each other. And since the NSA was decrypting messages, even without having bought into the operation, they had a slight advantage over the west German, B and D overall.
Especially considering that by this time the NSA had Cray supercomputers available, which the B and D couldn't afford on their more limited budget. But overall, both countries captured a tremendous amount of valuable information from this joint venture. At the height of operation Rubicon, they were capturing about 80% or more of all encrypted traffic worldwide.
Although they couldn't necessarily decrypt all of it. Now that they own the company, they had to keep the vast majority of crypto ag employees completely in the dark about this. Plus of course, keeping the clientele in the dark about it. This created some difficulties over the years. At one point in the mid 1970s, a crypto ag technician developed an improvement for their T four 50 tele printer encryption [00:32:00] device, which made it effectively unreadable even to the NS.
The owners therefore had to ensure that the best solution wasn't actually sold to the customer who in this case was the Egyptian government. And they also had to do that without the employees realizing why they were not giving out their best, solutions and algorithms. In November, 1978, the Yugos lobbying government found a flaw in a device.
They had purchased from crypto ag, a pair of undercover NSA agents flew there to provide a solution which should have put the Yugoslavian government at ease while still allowing the NSA to decrypt all of the traffic. But when they arrived, they found that other technicians from crypto ag had already come in and fixed the flaw in a way that made the devices truly.
This was the hazard of compartmentalizing. So much of this operation, the crypto AEG employees are just providing the best customer service that they can and working hard and, and doing what they can for their clients. And they have [00:33:00] no idea that they are pawns in this game between all of these different governments.
Furthermore over the years, a series of very gifted mathematicians and engineers were hired on and developed or improved unreadable algorithms for customers like the governments of Syria, Chile, and Argentina. These gifted mathematicians were mystified when they were told that a different algorithm developed outside of crypto ag would be used instead, because of course they felt they were the senior personnel there.
Their entire job was developing the best algorithms possible. Why in the world would they not use these new creations? Keeping these employees from poking around too much or even going public was this information was a very delicate problem for everyone involved. They didn't know everything about the program, but they knew enough to make some of the clientele distrust.
The equipment they'd purchased from crypto ag. Fortunately for the us and west German [00:34:00] governments, these problems didn't stop other countries from buying and using their products during Iran's decade, long war with Iraq in the 1980s, the NSA was able to read about 90% of Iran's encrypted messages. And when the us invaded Panama in 1980, They learned that Panamanian general Manuel Noriega was hiding in the Vatican's embassy after decrypting a message sent on a crypto ag device, the biggest crisis of all, and what you might call the beginning of the end for this operation was in March of 1992, a senior sales representative for crypto ag named Hans Bueller, traveled to Iran for what he thought would be a standard sales trip.
Iran had been a customer for many years. Instead, he and three other people were arrested and charged with espionage. The charges were not apparently specifically tied to crypto ag and were more in line with Iran's long [00:35:00] history of taking political hostages. He was held for 10 months until crypto ag paid $1 million for his bail.
The bail money actually came entirely from the German, B and D after a lot of back and forth discussion over the situation. Bueller was severely traumatized by his time in an Iranian prison. And he was unhappy with crypto ag for not doing more to get him released earlier. He soon went to the press and started talking about the back doors that were present in the company's chronology.
Eventually he stopped giving interviews after a settlement with the company, but the damage by that time was. This was the catalyst that led Germany to exit their decades old partnership with the CIA in 1994. So from 1994 on the CIA was the sole owner of crypto ag as technology and public encryption continued to improve in the two thousands.
Crypto AGS products and services were less valuable and less essential. Overall, [00:36:00] the program seems to have slowly wound down over time. Although records from more recent times are still classified. But the company itself broke up and all of its assets and its portfolio were sold to new owners by 2019 in February, 2020, new media reports should even more light on the company's history, which led to investigations by the Swiss government and a revocation of its export license.
Even though the new owners apparently knew nothing about the company's previous work with the us and German go. But despite the problems and the crises that arose over the years, this secret partnership paid incredible dividends in intelligence gained as well as financial profits, which were put to use in other operations.
For that reason, a 2004 CIA history of operation Rubicon called it the intelligence coup of the century. If you wanna read a lot more about this story, check out crypto museum.com. It's a tremendous resource for everything [00:37:00] related to cryptography signals, intelligence and wiretapping. This story is told in about 10 times the amount of detail that I've covered here, and they have tons of other fascinating information available about the history of S espionage.
So check out crypto museum.com. Whenever you have time. The last question for this episode comes from Atlas News, probably my favorite current events account to follow on Instagram. He asked me to talk about a very peculiar and infamous disguise container developed by the CIA's technical services division.
If you're listening to this episode on your speakers, while your carpooling or with the family, you might wanna put your headphones in because I'm talking about the fake scrotum concealment device. As I'm sure you can imagine. And you've probably seen on my account many times over intelligence agencies can be incredibly creative in the ways that they disguise their devices and their activities as well.
And of course, there's often a need to sneak something through a restricted area, whether that's an airport security checkpoint [00:38:00] or a border crossing or a foreign laboratory, just as a few examples. Earlier I was talking about station nine in the United Kingdom, which created all kinds of disguised devices during world war II.
For these devices, you often need the creativity of artists, just as much as you need the technical skill of engineers, probably the best known of all of these artists who worked in the intelligence community is Tony Mendez who worked for many years in the technical services division at the CIA. He worked on a lot of different projects over the years, including learning how to perfectly recreate foreign passports, visas, and entry, or exit stamps for use by CIA personnel, traveling around the world because of the expertise he developed on entering and exiting foreign countries using false identification, he was eventually selected to lead six us embassy employees out of Tarran Iran in 1970.
The employees had been hiding at the Canadian ambassador's residence for month. And Tony went into Tyran [00:39:00] and brought them out safely. The movie Argo is based around this incident and Tony was portrayed by Ben AFK besides creating false documents. He also spent years creating prosthetic disguise items along with his wife, John Mendez, who you might also be familiar with.
They developed some incredibly effective, full face masks that allowed the wearer to realistically appear to be other races and even other genders. At one point in the late 1980s, Jon was able to meet with president George H. W. Bush in the white house wearing a mask that made her unrecognizable. She took the mask off right in front of him, which shocked him, even though he himself was a former director of the CIA.
But probably Tony's most bizarre design of all was the scrotum concealment device. He and his team designed it in the late 1960s or early 1970s. There isn't any publicly available information as to whether it was ever used in the field. However, what is known is that Tony [00:40:00] demonstrated the effectiveness of the device by having another TSD technician who was probably a very low ranking guy who couldn't.
Where the device to a meeting with the director of the CIA Richard Helms, this technician revealed the device somehow. And director Helms was suitably horrified. As I think we would all. After that the device resided in Tony's desk for many years, until it was eventually donated to the international spy museum in Washington, DC.
It's on display there right now, in fact, so you can go check it out yourself. If you want to on the surface, you can see why they might pursue something like that. The fake scrotum was intended to hide a tiny escape radio, and of course it's positioned in the absolute last place that someone will look even when they're conducting a full body search.
The searcher has to be especially thorough and especially dedicated to uncover a device like this. So in that context, it makes a lot of sense, but I think that in the real world, the idea shrivels up pretty quickly for one [00:41:00] thing, how do you wear it? Does it have to be glued on, so as not to fall off, if so, how do you remove the glue?
How do you reattach it after you've retrieved your life saving escape radio. What happens if you discard it and it's found, definitely draw the eye wouldn't they need to make a new one for every single wearer to match their skin tone. What if the carpet doesn't match the drapes? So in my humble opinion, there are a few good reasons why this might work and lots of reasons why it wouldn't.
Tony was known to create all of his best disguises using latex molds fashioned from real human anatomy, like noses and chins and that sort of thing. It's unclear which patriotic American might have volunteered to be the model for the creation of this mold or whether they volunteered at all or had to be voluntold.
So that's all the questions for this episode. I still have lots of other great questions that came up. So there might be another similar episode in the future. [00:42:00] If you're interested in more of spycraft 1 0 1. Look for my pages on Instagram at spycraft 1 0 1 and at cold dot war dot stamps, you can also find more great articles on my website.
Spycraft one oh one.com. Thank you all for listening. And I hope you'll stick around because there's lots more to come. Thanks for listening to this program brought to you by daydreamer network. If you enjoyed the episode, please don't forget to rate and review on apple podcast or your preferred platform.
Your feedback allows us to rank on the best new shows list and continue to grow our podcasts in order to bring more unique and talented storytellers to the network, to check out our shows, including programs about relationships. Orts business nutrition, leisure, and more head to www.daydreamernetwork.com.
We look forward to seeing you back next week for another great episode, have a wonderful day.