115: Operation Mincemeat: The Shadow Catalyst for CIA's Dark Age
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Hey, it's your buddy AJ from the Y-Files. And Hecklefish. Right, and Hecklefish. We just wanted to tell you that if you want to start a podcast, Spotify makes it easy. It'd have to be easy for humans to understand it. Will you stop that? I'm just saying. Spotify for Podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts from your computer. I don't have a computer. Do you have a phone? Of course I have a phone. I'm not a savage. Well, with Spotify, you can record podcasts from your phone, too.

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On April 30th, 1943, in the middle of World War II, a body washed up on the shore of Huelva, Spain. The deceased man was wearing a British military uniform. There was a briefcase strapped to his body containing British and American military secrets. The man was Major William Martin, a Royal Marine who was the single victim of a fatal plane crash at sea.

He had just returned from temporary leave in London, where he had gone to the theater and purchased an engagement ring for his fiancee, Pam. But there was something very strange about Major William Martin. He didn't exist.

It was the winter of 1942, and the Allies needed a win. Hitler's Nazi war machine had steamrolled all of Europe, and everybody knew England was next. The United States had just been dragged into the war by the attack on Pearl Harbor, and American bodies were piling up by the thousands. Inside job. What? Pearl Harbor was an inside job. Didn't you see that image that was going around? Show me. See, look.

the planes fly this distance in 1931? Uh, you know that was meant as a joke. Eh, maybe. And you know the Earth is round, right? Allegedly. No, it really is. Could be round, could be flat. You know, who's to say? Uh, science is to say. Oh, right. Science. I tried to make air quotes, but my fins wouldn't bend. Anyway...

German forces were better trained, better equipped, and of singular purpose. But Germany did have a weakness. It's not a country rich in natural resources. To wage war in the 1940s, you need iron, oil, rubber, and food. Germany had to import all of these. If the Allies could disrupt Germany's supply lines, the Germans would no longer have the ability to fight, and the war could come to a quick close.

but that was easier said than done. German engineers were among the best in the world. Every time the German army seized an inch of land, it was quickly fortified. Any allied advance on mainland Europe would be repelled and would result in catastrophic losses.

but the coastline of the Mediterranean was not as heavily fortified. UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill called this the soft underbelly of Europe. The key to taking back Europe was Italy, and the key to taking Italy was Sicily. Unfortunately, the Germans understood the strategic importance of Sicily as well. They were fully expecting the Allies to attack it.

And if the Allies had any hope of winning, they'd need the element of surprise. MI5, Britain's intelligence agency, was tasked with tricking the Germans into thinking the Allies would attack Greece instead. If the Germans bought the ruse, they would divert forces from Sicily to Greece, leaving Sicily unprotected and ensuring an easy win for the Allies.

One of the British intelligence officers working on crafting this deception was Charles Chumley. Hang on. What? Chumley, that's not what it says on the screen. Yeah, I know. That's how he pronounced his name. Well, he pronounced it wrong. Chumley's primary role in the war effort was an ideas guy. Charles Chumley remembered a top-secret memo distributed to British wartime intelligence at the beginning of the war. It became known as the Trout Memo because it compared intelligence to fly fishing. Oh.

Why would anyone want to catch flies? No, no, fly fishermen try to catch fish. Those fishermen.

The Trout Memo listed 51 specific ideas for fooling the Germans. The list was pretty wacky. It included dropping glow-in-the-dark footballs in the water to attract submarines. There was one about a fake treasure ship, and there was another about explosives being disguised as food. But the craziest idea in the Trout Memo was number 28. It involved loading up a corpse with phony documents, then dropping the corpse from a plane behind enemy lines.

And when you read the entire Trout memo, you can't help but think whoever thought of this stuff would be great at writing spy novels. The Trout memo officially was written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, but it was actually written by Godfrey's assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, the same Ian Fleming who went on to become a novelist best known for a series featuring the character James Bond. Idea number 28 on Ian Fleming's Trout memo was titled A Suggestion and Not a Very Nice One.

The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson: "A corpse, dressed as an airman with dispatches in his pockets, could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that had failed." I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval Hospital, but of course it would have to be a fresh one.

The idea was so crazy that Chumley thought it might be just the way to fool the Germans into believing the Allies were planning to attack Greece instead of Sicily. He presented it to his superiors

and they assigned a naval officer named Ewan Montague to help him develop the plan. Before the war, Ewan Montague was a lawyer. He came from an extremely wealthy family of bankers. And when the war broke out, he was too old for active service, but found himself rising through the ranks of naval intelligence. You know, I noticed that people from wealthy families tend to rise through the ranks rather quickly. Yeah, that does seem to be the case.

As it turned out, an inclination for wartime intelligence work ran in the family. Ewan didn't know it at the time, but his own brother, Ivor Montague, was actually a spy for the Soviet Union. Uh-oh. Well, luckily, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom were fighting this war on the same side. That's true. So did this Igor... Ivor. Ivor. Ivor. Ivor. Did he stop spying for the Russians after the war?

- Uh-huh. - The Montagues were also Jewish, so Ewan's wife and children spent the war in America for safety reasons. Ewan wanted in on this unique operation, to serve his country, of course, but also to keep his mind off how much he missed his wife. Chumley and Montague fleshed out the plan for their mission.

they would deliver a dead body via a submarine just off the coast of Spain. The body would be carrying information identifying him as a Royal Marine and most importantly, falsified documents regarding an upcoming military offensive in Greece. Spain was the ideal country to find the body because though they were officially neutral, they were in close communication with the Germans.

And if military secrets washed up on the Spanish shores, there was a good chance those secrets would end up in the hands of the Germans. Cholmondeley and Montague had the plan. Now they just needed a dead body. But not just any dead body. It had to be male and of military age.

The cause of death needed to line up with the story of a plane crash at sea. So drowning, exposure, shock, or traumatic injury. And the man shouldn't have any pesky family members who might not appreciate their loved one's corpse being dressed up as someone else and taken out of the country. Ewan Montague was friendly with a local coroner who agreed to keep an eye out for just such a body. It is.

And on January 26, 1943, the coroner called Montague and told him, I got one. Glendor Michael had a hard life. His father attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the neck with a knife. He was taken to a mental hospital where he caught influenza and later died. His

His mother struggled to care for the family on her own. They were often homeless and there was never enough food. Shortly before the war, she died of a heart attack. Glender was declared ineligible for military service, though it's not clear why. It could have been for poor physical health, poor mental health or both. He eventually became homeless and wandered the streets of London. On January 26th, 1943, Glender Michael consumed rat poison in an abandoned warehouse.

It could have been suicide, but most likely he was starving and found some bread. The bread had been laced with rat poison and Glender died two days later. Death by rat poison is a rough way to go. But considering the forensic technology available at the time, dying from rat poisoning could pass for drowning. Chumlee and Montague now had a body.

Not for long, though. Montague's coroner buddy... Corpse guy. ...his corpse guy stressed that Glender's body was already starting to decompose. He could keep him on ice, but he needed to be deployed within the next three months. At this point, Chumlee and Montague's mission had also been given an official codename, Operation Mincemeat. And this was a dark joke.

Mincemeat is a recipe combining chopped meat or animal fat with fruit and spices and whatever you've got lying around. And when those things you've got lying around include sugar and alcohol, it's a good way to preserve meat. At this time in the UK, people needed to preserve meat to make their rations last longer. But this time, the meat was a man.

It turned out that acquiring a highly specific dead body was the easy part. - It's good to have a corpse guy. - Now Montague and Chumlee needed to create a new identity from thin air, and it had to stand up to German scrutiny. He needed to be a military officer if it was going to be believable that he had possession of sensitive documents. They chose the Royal Marines because it was a common uniform and easy to get. To avoid the uniform looking too new, Chumlee wore it every day for the next three months. Now they needed a name.

Montague and Chumlee looked through the list of servicemen and found several Royal Marines named William Martin who were around the rank of captain.

The Germans likely had access to the same list of names, but not their postings. So Montague and Chumley borrowed the name. The fictional William Martin also needed identification. Royal Marines carried ID cards on them at all times that included a picture. Montague and Chumley attempted to photograph the dead body, but this was unsuccessful. - They couldn't pull a weekend at Bernie's. - Well, they tried, but the body was in rough shape and getting worse. The pictures were frightening.

But working in another department was a man who looked similar to Glendor Michael, and he was willing to be photographed. Montague and Chumley barred his face. There was one more thing they needed, but this one they wouldn't be able to give back. Underwear. A British military officer at the time would have been wearing underwear. Underwear was rationed in the UK at the time, meaning you couldn't find it in a store, and no one was giving theirs up. Ah, and this is where the expression going commando comes from. I don't think that's right. Well,

Montague presented this predicament to one of his superiors, and it just so happened that one of his superior's academic enemies had recently been run over by a truck. He was delighted to acquire his former colleague's underwear for Operation Mincemeat. Montague and Chumlee now turned their attention from the physical to the fictional.

They needed a backstory for Major William Martin. Every night they would go out with a few of their colleagues and fill in details on William Martin's backstory. He liked fishing and was bad with money. He was romantic and secretly wanted to be a writer. The team came to view Major William Martin as a friend. The backstory they created would be told to the Spanish who found the body and hopefully the Germans they showed it to in the form of pocket litter.

Pocket litter is the term for the random stuff people carry in their pockets. For the fictional William Martin, that included his falsified military ID card, the military documents hinting at the Allied plans to invade Greece, ticket stubs from the theater, a receipt for an engagement ring, an overdraft letter from the bank, and a photograph and love letter from his fiancée Pam. Jean Leslie, a secretary working at the agency, agreed to provide a photograph.

Jean now became Major Martin's fiancée Pam. And here's where things get a little awkward. Ewan and Jean began spending a lot of time together. They went dancing, they went to the movies. But not as themselves, not as Ewan and Jean, as William and Pam. They may have been playing characters, but the romance was real enough that Montague's own mother wrote to his wife suggesting she come back to the UK as soon as she could. But there was one last, very important letter to be written.

the military communication from a general revealing the supposed joint American and British attack on Greece. The work on this letter took over a month, and after many drafts were written by an increasingly frustrated Ewan Montague, they just had the general write the letter himself. - Nobody likes getting notes. - That's true.

And in the letter was placed a single eyelash. Eyelash? Yep. The British needed to know if the letter was opened. If the plan worked, they'd have the documents returned to them. If the eyelash was missing, that means someone opened the letter. Yeah.

But the month of rewrites was a problem, considering the three-month window given to Operation Mincemeat by the coroner. Go up, Skye. They needed to get Glender Michael, the photo of Jean, the worn uniform, the love letters, the dead academic's underwear, the all-important military document, and the pocket litter to Spain. And they needed to do it fast. Because acting major William Martin was starting to rot.

At this time, MI5 employed one of the UK's most famous race car drivers. During the war, Jack Horsefall had been recruited by British intelligence to provide transportation for its agents when they needed to get somewhere and get out of somewhere fast. In this case, he needed to transport Ewan Montague, Charles Chumley, and a secret package from England to Scotland, where Ewan and Charles would meet a submarine that would deliver Major William Martin to a specific location off the coast of Spain.

Glendermichael's body had been placed in a special container that was created for this exact purpose. It was essentially a thin coffin packed with dry ice. This would help keep the body cold to slow down the decomposition process and help keep it secret. It would also save the submarine's crew from being trapped in a small space with a very bad smell. They decided to travel overnight to risk being seen.

But the UK was under a strict blackout at the time. Every night, entire cities went dark to make them harder for German bombers to identify from overhead. This meant all streetlights were out and all vehicle headlights had to be covered. So Montague and Chumlee were going to be driven at high speed by a race car driver in pitch darkness.

And by the way, Jack Horsefall was legally blind and refused to wear glasses. What kind of badass? Maybe, or stupid. Horsefall wouldn't wear glasses because he was always very well-dressed. He liked martinis and was famous for driving an Aston Martin. Which is like... James Bond. You'll be using this Aston Martin DB5 with modifications. Now, pay attention, please. No!

James Bond was a composite character based on real people that Ian Fleming knew, including Jack Horsefall. The overnight road trip from England to Scotland was crazy and included a couple of close calls, but they made it to Scotland on time. In Scotland, they met the crew of the submarine HMS Seraph,

and loaded in their suspiciously large container, which was labeled optical instruments. In the early morning hours of April 30th, 1943, the submarine reached its destination. The officers aboard the HMS Serif performed a brief funeral service for Glender Michael, then placed his body with the briefcase attached into the water.

Then the sub was positioned in a way that the propellers could be used to propel the body toward the shore. They gunned the engine and the body was on its way. Their final task was to sink the body's container, and this turned out to be one of the biggest hurdles Operation Mincemeat faced. Part of the special container's cooling system included air pockets, and so when placed in the water, it floated. They tried shooting at it, but it still wouldn't sink.

And if they couldn't sink it, this would be a big problem. Imagine a strange coffin riddled with bullet holes washing up on shore just after Major William Martin's body. The Spanish would know things were not as they seemed. So the Seraph crew decided to blow it up. The explosion was loud, but the container did finally sink. And Major Martin, he ended up on the beach. ♪

At around 9:30 on the morning of April 30th, 1943, the body of Royal Marine Acting Major William Martin was discovered by a fisherman in Huelva, Spain. This was chosen as the drop-off site because of one specific Huelva resident, Adolf Klaus. That's the most German name I ever heard. Klaus was a notorious German spy who was the key to making sure the falsified documents were seen by the Germans.

The fishermen who found the body notified the Spanish authorities, who informed the British consulate in Spain, and now began a delicate diplomatic dance. After enough time had passed for news of Major William Martin's death to travel through official British channels, the British needed to start requesting Martin's briefcase. And by pushing for the return of the briefcase, it would alert the Spanish and hopefully the Germans that there was something juicy inside.

But they couldn't push too hard, or the Spanish might return the briefcase before the Germans could get a peek. But they did eventually need to get the documents back if this thing was going to work.

Because look, if the Germans believed that the British believed that their documents had been lost and the Germans had possibly gained possession of them, they would likely cancel the planned Greek attack. No reason to attack if the Germans know it's coming. And that couldn't be allowed to happen. The Germans had to read the letter and have it returned unopened. So a delicate dance. Less delicate was the matter of the autopsy.

Glendor Michael had, of course, not died by drowning or blunt trauma or shock or exposure. He ate rat poison. A detailed autopsy would almost certainly have revealed that something was off. But by this time, the stench of the body was so foul that the British vice consul, who was aware of Operation Mincemeat, was able to cut the autopsy short. He told the staff in the coroner's office, it's hot, this place stinks, let's go grab lunch instead, I'm buying. And that was the end of the autopsy. Okay.

A few days later, a funeral was held for Major William Martin. He was buried in Spain with full military honors. Among the crowd of mourners was the German spy, Adolf Klaus. Adolf knew about Major William Martin's arrival in Spain and was already working on obtaining a copy of the documents. It took a week and a half, but the documents did make their way into the hands of the Germans before finally being returned. No eyelash? No eyelash.

Even if the eyelash was there, the British would have known the letter was red because when they dried it out...

It curled up like a potato chip. And then the information from the falsified documents made it all the way to Hitler.

On July 9th, 1943, the joint American and British invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, began. The Allies were met with stormy weather, but little German resistance. The enemy was too busy planning for the invasion of Greece. Hitler had bought the Operation Mincemeat deception completely. The British had expected 10,000 killed or wounded in the first week of fighting, but only suffered 1,400 losses. The Navy expected that 300 ships would be sunk in the action, but they lost only 12.

The predicted 90-day campaign was over in 38 days. Operation Mincemeat is now considered one of the greatest episodes of wartime deception in history, and it's broadly credited with one of the turning points of World War II. But this successful operation had a dark side effect.

It ushered in a new era of espionage. It opened a Pandora's box of intelligence operations focused on deception. But the targets of the deception were no longer military. The targets were now civilians. In 1942, the United States military created the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. This was an intelligence agency modeled after Britain's MI6. After the war, the OSS was dissolved.

But in 1947, a new intelligence agency was created, the CIA. Technically, the CIA is a civilian agency tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world.

But CIA operations are much more creative and devious than simple intelligence gathering. In 1953, the CIA helped overthrow Iran's government via Operation Ajax. In 1954, Operation PB Success overthrew the president of Guatemala, a democratically elected president. Syria, Indonesia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Haiti, Uruguay, Panama. In these countries and many others, the CIA attempted coups.

attempted to remove elected leaders and in some cases assassinate those leaders. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is taught in every American school. It's a story about Soviet aggression and the bravery of President JFK.

What's not taught is that in the years leading up to the crisis, the CIA established a base of operations in Miami. The only place that had more CIA officers in the world was headquarters in Langley. - These men belong to a terrorist organization responsible for a recent wave of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations.

They are Cuban exiles waging a terrorist war against Fidel Castro, and their base of operations is an American city. From the Miami base, Operation JM Wave was launched. Cuban exiles were recruited and trained by the CIA to operate as agents.

Those agents then spent years engaging in an extensive campaign of terrorism on economic and civilian targets. A lot of civilians were killed. And this was a major factor in the Soviet decision to place missiles on Cuba. These terrorist attacks continued for years. In 1976, Cubana Flight 455 was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 73 people aboard. The CIA was immediately suspected, but naturally they denied it.

But in 2007, independent research connected the bombing to a CIA asset.

During the Vietnam War, the CIA spun up the Phoenix Program. This program was designed to identify and destroy the Viet Cong, the VC, via infiltration, assassination, terrorism, and torture. Phoenix was shut down after the abuse, torture, and murder were exposed. In the 1970s back home, the CIA's Operation Chaos targeted anti-war protesters. "I thought the CIA only operates overseas and doesn't spy on Americans."

Yeah, yeah, I realized how stupid I sounded when I said it. Hey, it's a good thing that the CIA, FBI, and other agencies aren't being weaponized and used against American citizens, eh? Sarcasm!

Operation Condor ran for over 20 years and was a program of terrorism, assassination, and overthrow attempts of every socialist leader in South America. There's compelling evidence to show that for over 30 years, the CIA helped organize, train, and fund death squads in El Salvador. During the US-inspired civil war, at least 75,000 civilians were killed.

MKUltra was an illegal human experimentation program. The CIA was testing drugs that could be used to force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.

The program ran for 20 years before being exposed. Through the 80s and 90s, the CIA was the biggest illegal drug trafficking and money-longering operation in the world, though this is only alleged. Operation Mincemeat is hailed as a great success, a major turning point in World War II that led to the Allied victory and probably saved millions of lives. And I believe that's true.

But out of the ashes of the war, and emboldened by the success of the OSS, emerged the CIA.

Now, the CIA and its defenders will say that, yes, mistakes were made, but the ultimate goal of the agency is to protect American lives and America's interests overseas. And that's what we're taught here in the US. And that's what we're shown in every movie about the CIA, which all have to be approved by the CIA. But there are people around the world and throughout history that view the CIA as an instrument of evil.

Thousands, perhaps millions of people would say the CIA is the most villainous organization ever conceived by man. And I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying every story has two sides. So is the CIA a hero or a villain? Well, it all depends on which side of the table you're sitting, on which end of the gun you are, on which end of the needle, on whether you are the tortured or the torturer.

Now, given the nightmarish abuses and atrocities it's committed, and given the political weaponization of the agency that exists today, the CIA, at least the way it's currently structured, might be doing more harm than good. But if America is going to have a powerful intelligence agency like the CIA, and I think it should, that agency needs to do better. And we the people, we need to demand it.

Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. My name is AJ. There's Hecklefish. What's crackin'? This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun or learned anything, do him a favor. Like, subscribe, comment, share.

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