Brad Meltzer's Decoded (2010) s01e08 Episode Script
The President's Inner Circle
What if I were to tell you that the commander in chief of the United States had an inner circle of trusted spies working just for him? Well, in 1778, such a spy ring was established by major Benjamin tallmadge.
It was made up of mostly ordinary people.
The group played a crucial role in winning the revolutionary war by providing critical intelligence about the British and helping to expose the most infamous traitor in American history.
They were called the culper ring.
They were at the cutting edge of espionage for their day, using invisible ink and even publishing coded messages in newspapers.
These guys were so secretive, none of them even knew who the other members were.
In fact, Americans didn't even know there was a culper ring until the 1930s.
There's been a lot of speculation about the first American spy ring.
This time, I know their story.
And when it comes to the greatest spy master in the United States, the man who created what led to the CIA, you won't believe who he is.
I'm Brad Meltzer.
I've spent my life collecting stories.
The best include signs, symbols, and codes, secret meanings that are hidden in plain sight.
Some have become the basis for my novels, but I've only scratched the surface of what's out there.
And now history has given me the resources to investigate the rest.
This is "decoded.
" -- Captions by vitac -- if you're looking at the history of American espionage and the history of spy rings in this country, where else would somebody go but the CIA? Oh, my God, I can't imagine what Brad had to go through to get us in here.
He must know someone who knows someone.
First time I've ever been here -- no experience like this.
I've been all over the world in the military, but this is the first time at the CIA headquarters, so I'm really excited about it.
It just is a place most people don't get to go.
Most people think that the need for a spy organization grew out of the desperation of World War II.
But it's even older than that.
The culper ring grew out of the need for intelligence about the British stronghold in New York city, and the group itself remained unknown to history for more than a century.
But their practices were used in the design for the CIA and their predecessors, the office of strategic services, or the oss.
The origins of U.
S.
Intelligence dates to the founding of the Republic.
In a sense, espionage is as American as cherry pie.
To understand where the CIA came from, we still in our training courses go all the way back to the American revolution and, really, the first spy in U.
S.
History, Nathan hale.
And here he is, ready to say, "I only have but one life to lose for my country.
" Nathan hale was a 20-year-old captain in the continental army when he volunteered to sneak across enemy lines and spy on the British.
Unfortunately, hale was a terrible spy.
He was captured, and the brits executed him.
Just before he died, he uttered that famous line, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
" The thing is, some historians say hale never said it.
It was a line from a popular play back then.
And the statue of him in front of CIA headquarters -- when William Casey took over the CIA, it drove him crazy that there was a Nathan hale statue there.
Nathan hale was a spy who failed.
In Casey's eyes, the statue should've been a member of the culper ring.
What happened after Nathan hale's demise? The continental army very quickly develops an amazing array of techniques involving deceptions and double agents and phony troop movements and a very sophisticated network of agents based in New York city and further out on long island.
So, you're talking about the very origins of American espionage? Exactly.
Because it's so elaborate, involves a lot of trade-craft techniques and technologies, probably best if we head inside to the CIA museum, and we can talk about it and show you some of the capabilities that the continental army was using way back when.
So, you've got a museum right here at the CIA? We call it the best museum you've never seen.
"We got a great museum.
We're just not gonna show you anything.
" That's right.
The CIA museum has a great collection of trade-craft devices that we and other services have used throughout our history to encode and encrypt and conceal our writing.
And those are techniques that, though they sound really modern and sophisticated, we can see being used back in the day of the culper ring.
Much of the information was written in code and cipher and concealed with invisible ink, or sympathetic stain, as they called it back then.
Here's how the culper ring actually worked.
Members in New York city reported their information to an operative, who was called culper Jr.
That information was then passed to a member from long island, who came to town to get supplies for his tavern.
And when he got home, he passed the information to another member, whose code name was culper sr.
And he then decided what information was important and passed it on to a fourth member, who would paddle across long island sound to Connecticut, where the army was holed up after losing New York to the British.
From 1778 to 1781, this was how top-secret information was relayed back and forth.
They were volunteers.
And then -- and this is a key part to the ring -- nobody knows entirely who everyone is and how it's all working.
So, if one guy's caught, no matter what they do to him, he can't possibly -- exactly.
It's all part of being able to keep the ring completely secure.
Is there an example you can give us of where this ring actually had some success? In 1780, there are clear indications that the British are mobilizing an attack force to greet an incoming contingent of French troops.
This is only two years into the alliance, and the French had been stalwart friends of ours.
But a military disaster like that could've got them thinking a little bit differently about the long term.
Because of information coming from culper Jr.
, the continental army gets this news, sends out messages through known British agents that Washington was going to attack New York city.
That disinformation got to the British commander.
He stops in midstride, turns the whole army back to New York city to counterattack against a continental army that isn't there.
It isn't coming at all.
And French troops arrive in Newport, several thousand of them, untouched.
The members of the culper ring were not men who looked for glory.
These were ordinary civilians.
They met in bars, alleys, and secret locations all around New York to pass information that was essential to the Americans winning the war.
Among these places was the area around what is now rivington street in lower Manhattan.
Buddy's there now to find out more about the successes of the culper ring.
I suggested we meet here on rivington street.
It's named after this great spy that nobody in New York city knew was a spy during the revolution.
Rivington knew everybody inside the culper ring.
He worked and owned rivington's royal gazette, a very pro-British newspaper which gathered news from all the loyalists and the British officers, et cetera, and put it in the paper, where Washington and his officers could interpret it and figure out what was going on.
Talk about hidden in plain sight -- spy-coded information going out in the public newspaper? The British were completely fooled.
The key to the war was control of the Hudson river and fort west point, which was perched on the west bank.
As long as we had that, it meant the British only controlled half the river.
And this was key because if they were able to seize the west bank, they could divide new England from the southern colonies and choke our supply lines.
West point was also strategic because it was situated at an "s" curve in the river.
Boats had to slow down to pass the area.
And that meant enemy ships were particularly susceptible to attacks there.
So the British knew to win the war, they had to take west point.
Sounds like you're saying that west point was the key to America's future.
I don't think that's any exaggeration.
The British had tried to fight their way up a few times before.
They had ships all over the river.
But there was a chain across it, for one thing, that would've stopped any British ship from getting near west point.
A physical chain across the river? A huge chain from constitution island to the west point shore.
So, you needed a serious pass to get up the river? Oh, you needed a total pass to get past the river, and it could only come from the commanding officer at west point, who happened to be Benedict Arnold, the greatest hero of the revolution up till that time.
So, what exactly happened with Benedict Arnold? Benedict Arnold was seven years behind in his pay.
And it all added up to him saying, "I've had enough.
I'm going to get my money.
" And he began writing coded messages to the British in New York city.
You know you're the best at something when your name becomes synonymous with it, and Benedict Arnold quite simply means "traitor.
" But that wasn't always the case.
At one point, Benedict Arnold was the greatest hero our country had ever known.
The problem was we were fighting a guerilla war, and money was sparse.
This gave the British just the opening they were looking for.
Arnold's plan was to sell west point To the British in exchange for £20,000, a fortune at the time.
He was going to tip off the British at the right moment to come up the Hudson when Washington, Lafayette, and all the American and French generals were at west point.
Arnold would then very lightly defend the fort and then surrender it, along with Washington and all the generals.
And the war would be over.
If Benedict Arnold had succeeded in his plan, the American revolution would've collapsed.
There would be no independent nation.
So, how exactly was Benedict Arnold exposed? The culper spy ring was putting together what was going on through a year and a half of intelligence gathering that a high-ranking American officer was about to go over, that it had to be Benedict Arnold.
As far as we can tell, the culper spy ring intercepted coded messages sent by Benedict Arnold to John andré, the head of British intelligence.
As brilliant as Arnold was, it turned out he was no match for ordinary American citizens.
How did John andré finally get busted? He accidently got caught by three fellows who thought he had nice boots and maybe had some money.
The men who captured andré turned him over to a subordinate, a man underneath Arnold, who was just gonna send him to Arnold.
And then Arnold would be in the clear.
Instead Benjamin tallmadge, head of the culper spy ring, was the next man to see John andré on his way to west point and said, "here's our man.
" Did Benjamin tallmadge get andré to confess? Yes.
When John andré admitted to tallmadge that he was on a spying mission, tallmadge sent the documents found in andré's boots to west point, and Arnold saw them, didn't even wait to kiss his wife goodbye, ran down to the river with two pistols, and ordered his guards to row him down the Hudson to the nearest British ship.
He went to New York and immediately started rounding up the members of the culper ring.
He got a few.
He got a few.
But the rest went into hiding.
Spies in hiding -- I like it.
The culper ring is without question the predecessor of both the oss and the CIA.
But what amazes me most is just how successful the culper ring was to us winning the revolution.
You have to remember, nobody back then truly knew who was loyal to the crown and who was loyal to George Washington.
New York city, like today, was filled with people who were playing all the angles, so knowing who to trust was Paramount.
The adage "all is fair in love and war" was coined in 1850 by an English writer, but it was just as fitting in revolutionary America.
By 1778, the colonies have lost control of New York city to the British, and they're holed up in Connecticut, trying desperately to maintain access to the port of New York.
The Americans know that their only chance to retake the island of Manhattan is if they get better intelligence.
So major Benjamin tallmadge helps create a network of civilian spies known as the culper ring to help provide insight into the British plans.
The ring operates in and around New York, where buddy, Mac, and Scott are headed right now.
Morning.
Hi.
We're expecting a package for 1410.
Room 1410 -- my pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What the hell? Brad Meltzer's book.
It's the advanced copy of his new book.
Does he want us to read it? I don't know.
Is it free? What is he doing? There's a blank piece of paper in here.
This has got to be more than a shameless self-promotion for the book.
Okay, there's nothing on here.
Yeah, there is.
Yeah, there is, 'cause you can see a tiny mark.
Like it's invisible ink or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's not helpful.
Mac, how would you check if there's something on there? The best way to speed up a chemical reaction is heat.
All right, who's got some matches? Heat it up.
Oh, he included matches? Yeah.
Okay.
I hope we don't set off any alarms in here.
Just like that? Okay, hold it there.
Nothing.
Nothing's happening.
I like the intrigue, though.
Yeah.
Ooh, ooh! Whoa! It's working! Wow.
Look at this.
"The who was the greatest American Spy master of all time?" "Who was the greatest American spy master of all time?" No idea.
Yeah, I would go cold war.
Were there spies in world war I? Looks like we have everything we need in here.
[ Laughs .]
Look, he's done a little dedication for us.
"Go to 54 pearl street, New York, New York, to find the answer!" Okay.
Okay.
So, we got to go.
Let's head over there.
Keep the matches.
God knows what else he's gonna do.
I'm sending the guys to fraunces tavern, which is where the original idea for the culper ring may have first been discussed.
It's also the place where president George Washington gave the nation's first farewell address when he decided that two terms in office were enough.
Buddy, Mac, and Scott are gonna meet with someone who knows more about the culper ring's methods than anyone else in history.
And let me promise you, there will be no more product placement, except for the giant Porsche the guys drive around in.
Brad told me to expect you.
Now, the answer to his question is written between the lines.
We'd better just fire it up.
"This is how the culper spy ring used invisible ink to communicate with" Oh, check it out! Look, look, look, look! All: "George Washington.
" How is that? Come on.
He's the first founding father.
We think of George Washington as an honest, noble gentleman.
For somebody who never told a lie, he stretched the truth a lot.
You're telling us he was a spy? He was a spymaster.
While major tallmadge organized the culper ring, he did so at the direction of general George Washington.
And while many remember Washington for his honesty, the future president knew the value of covert info better than anyone.
Washington had lost new York city to the British in 1776, but he had loyal citizens living in the city -- regular, ordinary people who were willing to provide details of the plans of the entrenched redcoats.
That's who George Washington relied on, and the culper ring was crucial to Washington's plan to take back the key port of New York.
To do it -- to pass those messages -- it was dangerous, so the ring devised ways to move their secrets in plain sight.
Washington's favorite method was to use white or invisible ink.
And he'd physically write between the lines of a normal letter, which is where we get the saying "read between the lines.
" He called it his sympathetic stain, which is a horrible name, but it was made using persulfate and water.
It was a chemical process.
You write in one chemical, called the agent.
Then the reader of the letter paints it with another chemical, the re-agent.
That way, you can't just crack it with a match.
The solution was supplied by Dr.
James Jay, and let me tell you, these guys knew what they were doing.
To this day, the FBI and CIA use invisible-ink messages that are based on George Washington's method.
He set up many spy rings, and the culpers were one of the first.
Wow.
And they used invisible ink to communicate.
So, did they keep records of how to decode this stuff? Here's the copy of the culpers' actual code book.
Invisible ink wasn't the only code used by the culper ring.
Major tallmadge came up with a series of other codes that were all listed in his code book.
Only four copies of the book were produced.
Tallmadge had one copy for himself, he gave general George Washington another, and the culper ring leaders were given the remaining two.
The code was simple.
The most popular words at the time were all assigned a number.
The word "signal" was 600.
The word "lord" was 351.
The members of the ring were also given a similar code name.
General George Washington's, for example, was number 711.
So, this was a very valuable document that people would die for yes.
And die over? Wow.
To think of the American revolution being this high-tech is very strange to me.
It is.
This is the way it worked.
What I want to know is, how'd this group of people move information from place to place so quickly? I mean, when it comes to speed, horses and sailboats aren't exactly like sending an e-mail from a dummy hotmail account.
And most important, whatever happened to the culper ring? Did they die off, or are they still out there today? To this day, it may be George Washington's greatest magic trick, creating a small, covert spy ring made up of regular citizens who kept their secret for over 100 years.
These guys were the grandfather of the CIA, and it shows you how smart our founding fathers were.
The ring's existence was hidden for a century and a half, and these guys were so far undercover that even death didn't reveal them.
The true identities of the culper spies were hidden from the history books for 150 years.
You see, general Washington didn't know who the spies were, and the spies didn't know the real identities of each other.
But they were eventually discovered.
Mac and Scott are in the east Hampton library to find out how.
Gina, Scott and I are trying to find out everything we can about the culper spy ring.
Mm-hmm.
And it's hard to find these guys' identities because they were so well protected, it seems like they were even protected after their death.
So, how were they discovered eventually? Eventually, the identities were discovered through the diligence of Morton pennypacker.
Mr.
pennypacker was a local historian here in the east Hampton area, and he mainly collected information having to do with long island history.
He was going through a collection of papers that were discovered in the Robert townsend family home.
They found an old chest in the attic.
It was filled with singed letters, old documents, things of that nature.
This was very exciting to Mr.
pennypacker because he discovered a possible link to the identities of the members of the culper spy ring.
How did he link it to the culper spy ring? They actually compared Robert townsend's letters that had been found in the George Washington collection.
They put them side by side, and they were able to analyze the handwriting that way, and they discovered that, without a doubt, these were the same people.
So, the letters that George Washington had, they knew were culper spy ring letters, and they compared it to the townsend letters, and they're the same guy? Yes, that is correct.
Wow.
George Washington himself did not even know the identity of the members of this spy ring, and then here we have somebody around the 1930s who finds some documents in an attic and is able to compare them and find out these are the people that were the members of the culper spy ring.
It's just incredible.
Who was townsend in the culper spy ring? He was known as culper Jr.
[ Gasps .]
That is culper Jr.
I actually have some examples here of books that were kept by Robert townsend himself.
These are original documents.
They're not copies.
They weren't fabricated.
These are his actual account books.
Wow, look at this.
We can't touch this, right? I'm being careful.
I'm being careful.
Touch with your eyes.
That handwriting is amazing.
The minute she told me I couldn't touch the book, all I wanted to do was touch that book.
I wasn't even looking at what was in it.
So, what's the significance in learning so long after the revolutionary war who these people were? I think it changes our perception of history, where we thought that we just had these lone agents that were spies going into enemy lines and gathering information.
Now we discover that there was an intelligence system of people.
Well, what's interesting, too, is when you look at where we are today, especially in the intelligence community, you know, you look back at this and see maybe where it really all started.
Possible, yes.
The culper ring helped uncover the plot by America's greatest traitor, Benedict Arnold, to betray his country.
But I want to know is, what happened to them, and is there a chance they still exist today? Buddy, Mac, Scott are headed to the culpers' base of operations on long island to see if they can find out more.
Washington had determined after the battle of New York he couldn't get stuff through Westchester county because there were too many British around there, so he came way out here.
Nobody would ever suspect that they were transferring information across the sound from here, and that's the reason they picked this area.
This was the spot from which they disseminated the messages.
Not very populated at the time? Five houses.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
This was one of them.
The house behind you was built by Phillips roe in 1755.
He became a member of the spy ring, and his brother, Nathaniel roe, and they were the ones who picked up and delivered the messages.
Austin roe used to ride in once a week on his horse to New York city, pick up the information that was gathered in the city, bring it out here to Phillips roe and his brother, Nathaniel roe.
What was their relation to Austin roe? They were cousins.
Oh, okay.
And these gentlemen would deliver the information to Caleb Brewster, who used to run across the sound once a week in his whale boat, and they would always come into a different cove and pick up the information.
And he would deliver it back to Connecticut, but it's a long row.
It's 12 miles.
And the sound was laced with British ships, so you had to be stealthy and careful.
Amazing.
So, we're talking about riding on horseback from here in setauket 55 miles to New York city and returning here with a message that Caleb Brewster would row physically across the long island sound to Connecticut to deliver to Benjamin tallmadge.
That's right.
Spying is not nearly as athletic now.
Incidentally, with respect to whale boats, I think it might be of interest to you people to see what one looked like.
Just imagine that you're captain Brewster coming across the sound in this with maybe a dozen guys rowing, six on each side.
And the storms on the sound can come up very quickly, and there's not much freeboard on this boat.
It must've been very dangerous.
The British would've seen them very easily.
They'd have been sitting ducks.
And I think the guys were pretty brave to do this.
Tough.
Tough.
Yeah, that's the word -- tough.
These guys are amazing.
They ride 110 miles round trip to gather the information, and then they row 24 miles across long island sound to deliver it.
Forget the ironman triathlon.
This was true endurance.
The thing I'm most impressed by is that they're doing it with the British everywhere, all around them.
These guys know if they're caught, they're gonna be shot on sight.
So one thing they did was try to have codes inside codes inside codes.
Some of them were literally hidden right in front of everyone's faces.
This is a typical north shore cove, where Caleb Brewster would've come in to pick up his messages.
Now, you see what looks like a clothesline over there.
You see anything unusual about this clothesline? Nope.
It's actually a coded message.
What?! Come on.
Yeah, it's a coded message.
You mean to tell me that there's crucial information in here that the people of setauket would know? Absolutely.
Now, this was Anna strong's clothesline, and Anna hung the petticoats to help culper sr.
In the early days and later the roe brothers.
What did the handkerchiefs and the petticoats signify? The petticoat signifies that Caleb Brewster had come in.
And the number of handkerchiefs told which of the many coves he came into.
So, Caleb Brewster's here, and he's in the fourth cove? That's right.
He's in the fourth cove.
They wouldn't have suspected her at all, would they have? No, because she was just a woman by herself.
But she furthered the cause.
All the while just doing her laundry -- just innocently doing the laundry.
Nobody would suspect her of anything.
One of the little-known stories about the culper ring is that there were a great many women who helped its cause.
And think about it -- women had the perfect cover story because back then, no one expected they'd be involved in something that was so nefarious.
Anna strong and the other female members of the culper ring led the way for some of the most successful female spies of all time.
Among the most well known was mata hari, who spied for the Germans during world war I, and Julia child, one of my heroes, who, believe it or not, spied on the Nazis during World War II.
Now, one of the most famous spies of all was one went under the name of agent 355.
There are some historians who think 355 was simply a number for a female.
So, the whole story got a little twisted.
So, 355 may or may not have existed -- depends upon which historian you want to listen to.
I studied them for two years, and the culper ring still surprises me.
These people were the precursor of the CIA, the first civilian spy agency in our history.
They helped foil the plan by Benedict Arnold that would've allowed the British to win the war, and they're one of the first to treat women as true spy equals.
And one of the best parts of the story -- there's still major debate about agent 355's identity or even if she was real.
It seems like the trail's gone cold with agent 355, but the question remains -- did the ring die with her, or is it still in existence today? The culper spy ring, one of the greatest secret creations of George Washington, was lost to history for more than a century and a half.
It wasn't until the 1930s that this crucial part of American history was actually found again.
Agent 711.
Hey, agent 711.
That's Washington.
If you're gonna pick a guy, you got to pick the top guy.
Absolutely.
We think we cracked it.
Yeah, tell me what you got.
Well, the culper ring uncovered Benedict Arnold's nasty plot to hand over west point and helped us win the American revolution.
We couldn't have done it without them.
Now you see my obsession with the culper ring, right? It's an unwritten moment of American history, and Benjamin tallmadge and his group bring us to a point that we would've otherwise not been at.
Absolutely.
Okay, you found that piece.
What about agent 355? Well, we're still not sure, Brad, because we're being told by some that it was just a term, a spy term for "lady.
" We saw that in the code book.
Exactly.
And then we're also hearing, though, that it was a specific woman who had a lot to do with this.
You know, there are people out there who will say she's absolutely fake, she's a myth, she's an amalgam, but there are people who insist that 355 is a real person, that she actually saved us, that she actually did stuff for us, and that no one knows who she is.
And I found a woman who's convinced of that.
And she's someone who has studied her for years, can tell you exactly what she did for American history.
I don't know if I believe her, and if she's right, I want to know who this woman really is that we owe a great deal of thanks to.
I want her to be right.
[ Laughs .]
I want -- listen, I want her to be right, too, but I want to know about her for my daughter.
Yeah.
I want my daughter to have that hero.
So, behind us here is west point, which was the American stronghold.
And it would've kept the British from moving up the Hudson river.
West point, as you can kind of see, kind of commands control of the Hudson river here.
It's really central to any traffic up and down, and it really kind of limits traffic from going further north.
If you were kind of stopped at west point, you couldn't really continue, and during the American revolution, everyone kind of recognized that this was the thing that was keeping the British from going further up the Hudson river.
As we know, Benedict Arnold was engaged in a plot to turn over west point to the British.
All they had to do was meet his price.
His main contact on the British side was a man named major andré, who, can we just say is either the best- or worst-dressed ghost of all time? Some say the culper ring had a spy in andré's camp, so when he travels to west point to negotiate with Arnold, the head of the culper spy ring, major tallmadge, knows that andré is coming.
And this was stopped by a spy known as agent 355.
And she was a female culper spy.
She was able to stop Benedict Arnold by intercepting the correspondence in major andré's quarters.
How did she get the information? How did she get into his quarters repeatedly? Well, we don't know exactly because good spies don't get caught, but we do know 355 was a female member of the culper ring.
And she was probably major andré's girlfriend, so she may have even been sleeping with the enemy.
Wow! What's the one rule of every James Bond movie? You know it -- never trust the girl.
The good thing for us -- andré had never seen James Bond.
So, what do we actually know about agent 355? We know just from her name that she was both female and from the upper class because the word "lady" implied that somebody was kind of an elite.
You weren't the washerwoman, you weren't just a woman, you were a lady, somebody of breeding.
So, we know that she was probably well connected because of that.
We also know that she probably was one of major andré's girlfriends.
He had a history of always looking to marry up and make a name for himself in the colonies.
He was always looking for advancement.
There's a word for that.
[ Laughter .]
You date up.
He was looking to move up.
He was definitely looking to make his fortune and move up.
The most amazing part of the story of agent 355, to me, is that no one suspected her, you know, that you've got -- that he might've had this woman in his office, in his life, and telling her secrets, letting her overhear, but since he thought women had no political opinions and no vested interest, would not -- not suspect her.
I mean, it's -- to me, it speaks to the power of being underestimated.
And he probably didn't think she was one bit interested in politics.
Well, women were assumed to have the same political views as their fathers or spouses, so it would've been very easy for a patriotic woman to be assumed to have the same political views as her father.
Andrea, we've heard that 355 was just a code word for "lady," that it really wasn't a person, but, obviously, you think otherwise.
What proof do you have of that? Well, first of all, there's a letter that specifically refers to a lady working with the ring.
That's August 15, 1779.
And woodhall talks about the fact that she's going to start working with the ring shortly.
That's culper sr.
? That's culper sr.
, yes.
There's a point in the culper correspondence where they suddenly are reporting really, really good information.
They go from not reporting anything of use -- it's all old -- to suddenly, right after 355 is mentioned, they're getting the innermost secrets of the British army.
They're reporting practically black ops.
They're reporting a counterfeiting operation, things that only could've come from British headquarters.
So, what information about the plot did she discover? Well, she definitely discovered that Arnold planned to betray west point.
There was a letter with Arnold's name in the margin of andré's correspondence in June of 1780.
So, that's months of correspondence that are being intercepted.
Wow! At the point that andré was intercepted, andré had just met with Arnold.
They had agreed that Arnold was going to sell west point, and andré was going back to New York.
He's met by a group of three seemingly random guys.
They're highwaymen.
They're militia men.
So, these three guys stop him, and they're looking to rob him.
So, he doesn't seem to have any money, and they said, "hey, he doesn't have any money.
Let's see if we can get a prize off of this guy.
" Wow.
So, they decide to take him to the local American commander, commander jameson.
Unfortunately, he's kind of big on protocol, and he has no idea what's going on with the culper spies.
So, he sends word to Benedict Arnold because there's a pass from Benedict Arnold, and he says, "gee, what's going on, Benedict Arnold? Fill me in.
" Tallmadge finds out what's going on, though.
He interrupts, and he says, "no, no.
We've got to send word to Washington.
" Jameson compromises.
He sent one rider to Washington, who was on the move, and another rider to the closer Benedict Arnold.
The rider to Arnold left first, so Arnold got word and escaped.
So, Benedict Arnold literally escapes by the skin of his teeth, destroying his friendship with George Washington.
History reports it is the only time anyone ever sees George Washington break down and cry.
This was a betrayal by one of his best friends, and with culper ring information, tallmadge almost had him.
But you know what Washington does when it all calms down? He sends the culper ring after Benedict Arnold.
George Washington -- American badass.
So, when Benedict Arnold flees to New York and goes over to the British side, his first assignment is to round up the members of the culper ring.
This is one of the greatest unseen fights in U.
S.
history.
But in the end, Arnold never really figures out what to do with his life, and he certainly can't catch the culper ring.
So he goes back and forth from England to Canada before eventually dying miserable in London.
But the biggest question remains -- whatever happened to the culper ring, and do they still exist in some form? The culper spy ring was the first of its kind, one of the best.
Conceived by general George Washington, the all-civilian spy organization played a key role in the forming of our country.
The group was so secretive, they didn't even know who each other were.
In fact, Washington himself didn't know all the members.
This allowed the organization to stay hidden for 150 years.
The first records of the ring appeared in 1930, when a series of letters were found, detailing the group's operations.
The letters match unexplained correspondence from the estate of president Washington himself.
Through analysis and research, the members of the initial ring were identified.
But no matter what we know of the culper ring, the role they played in America's independence can't be overstated.
As for agent 355, some say that Arnold caught this great spy, though I'm actually not convinced she even existed.
Either way, though, the legend of agent 355 becomes the story of an American hero in the truest sense -- someone who sacrifices everything and then goes unnoticed for the rest of history.
So, is it fair to say that agent 355, a lady in the culper ring yes.
Exposed Benedict Arnold's plot and saved the revolution? Yes, definitely.
So, whatever happened to 355? 355 was captured by the British.
She was probably imprisoned, so she was probably questioned by the British.
Because the culper ring continued to operate, there's no reason to think that she ever betrayed her fellow ring members.
And you think she died in prison? I think she died in prison.
There's no reason to believe she was released.
She's really quite heroic.
What a sad ending, too.
Yeah.
A true American hero.
Yeah.
And she's completely forgotten.
It sounds like there is some pretty good evidence that agent 355 actually did exist.
It seems logical that somebody who was a girlfriend maybe or who had some inside information would've had have to been responsible for this.
It doesn't surprise me at all that agent 355 could've been a woman.
I was really impressed that the culper ring was that sophisticated to use whatever means necessary to get the information that George Washington needed.
I think in the context of the American revolution, anything that needed to be done Should be done.
I mean, if she was sleeping with the enemy and that's what it took, if that won our revolution, I'm grateful.
This has been great.
I mean, we're standing here on the banks of the Hudson river, right across from west point, where Benedict Arnold nearly sold out America.
And it's the kind of history that I love most because you say to yourself, "I had no idea.
" And how -- and how did we have no idea? How did we not learn about this in school? The culper spy ring was absolutely crucial to beating the British.
And that's exactly the point.
It's not just "did they exist?" We know they exist now.
But it really seems to come down to this group and what they were able to accomplish that did it.
They weren't these highly trained operatives who we think of when we think of spies.
These were ordinary American people who happen to believe so much in the cause that they're willing to put their lives on the line and be part of this big, big ring.
And think of just how committed they were to that, because they'd already seen their predecessor, Nathan hale, hanged.
They knew that, and they did it anyway.
It's unbelievable.
And the cool thing about this story is that the culper spy ring, about whom we knew virtually nothing, are responsible for bringing down Benedict Arnold and changing the course of American history.
And agent 355, who we still don't know much about, might have been the one feeding the culper spy ring the information they needed to do that.
Who else would've had access to that type of information but the girlfriend of a major? And not been suspected for that long, because women just weren't seen as political beings.
They wouldn't have thought that they had anything invested in the revolution, which is crazy.
The pieces of the puzzle fit.
I think she existed.
I just don't -- not sure who she was.
And who would've guessed the spy master was George Washington? I mean, of all people, we never thought that kind of thing about him.
It's the ultimate brains over brawn.
The British were stronger, they were bigger, and America was outgunned, but they outfought them, and I love that part of it.
For the first time in our history, we had an organized spy ring, and, really, this is, in my mind, what led to the CIA, the FBI, and everything we have today.
Yeah, it's the birth.
Makes me kind of wonder whether There are embedded regular folks still today who are doing that work.
I'd almost say for sure.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The skies have opened! We'd better get out of here and tell Brad.
Before we get drenched, let's go talk to him.
The trail of the culper ring dies out following the revolution, and it seems that they ceased to operate around 1785, at least as far as we know.
But let me tell you the greatest secret of all -- I think it's still around.
A few years ago, I got a call from the department of homeland security, asking me to come brainstorm different ways that terrorists can attack the United States.
They read my novels, they saw my research, and I was honored to be part of what they called the red cell team.
I kept the secret until they asked me to go public.
But the point is I was a regular civilian brought in to help our country, just like the culper ring.
Even better, last week, when I was telling a former top national security agent about the culper ring, the phone went silent, and he said to me, "you know, there are rumors they're still here.
" But the best legacy of the culper ring is that it supports my core belief.
You see, I believe ordinary people change the world.
I don't care where you went to school.
I don't care how much money you make.
I believe that regular people like the culper ring is how the world gets changed.
Don't ever forget, history is a selection process.
Most of us think that it chooses a moment and a person and it puts them together, but history chooses each of us every single day, and the only question is, will you hear the call?
It was made up of mostly ordinary people.
The group played a crucial role in winning the revolutionary war by providing critical intelligence about the British and helping to expose the most infamous traitor in American history.
They were called the culper ring.
They were at the cutting edge of espionage for their day, using invisible ink and even publishing coded messages in newspapers.
These guys were so secretive, none of them even knew who the other members were.
In fact, Americans didn't even know there was a culper ring until the 1930s.
There's been a lot of speculation about the first American spy ring.
This time, I know their story.
And when it comes to the greatest spy master in the United States, the man who created what led to the CIA, you won't believe who he is.
I'm Brad Meltzer.
I've spent my life collecting stories.
The best include signs, symbols, and codes, secret meanings that are hidden in plain sight.
Some have become the basis for my novels, but I've only scratched the surface of what's out there.
And now history has given me the resources to investigate the rest.
This is "decoded.
" -- Captions by vitac -- if you're looking at the history of American espionage and the history of spy rings in this country, where else would somebody go but the CIA? Oh, my God, I can't imagine what Brad had to go through to get us in here.
He must know someone who knows someone.
First time I've ever been here -- no experience like this.
I've been all over the world in the military, but this is the first time at the CIA headquarters, so I'm really excited about it.
It just is a place most people don't get to go.
Most people think that the need for a spy organization grew out of the desperation of World War II.
But it's even older than that.
The culper ring grew out of the need for intelligence about the British stronghold in New York city, and the group itself remained unknown to history for more than a century.
But their practices were used in the design for the CIA and their predecessors, the office of strategic services, or the oss.
The origins of U.
S.
Intelligence dates to the founding of the Republic.
In a sense, espionage is as American as cherry pie.
To understand where the CIA came from, we still in our training courses go all the way back to the American revolution and, really, the first spy in U.
S.
History, Nathan hale.
And here he is, ready to say, "I only have but one life to lose for my country.
" Nathan hale was a 20-year-old captain in the continental army when he volunteered to sneak across enemy lines and spy on the British.
Unfortunately, hale was a terrible spy.
He was captured, and the brits executed him.
Just before he died, he uttered that famous line, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
" The thing is, some historians say hale never said it.
It was a line from a popular play back then.
And the statue of him in front of CIA headquarters -- when William Casey took over the CIA, it drove him crazy that there was a Nathan hale statue there.
Nathan hale was a spy who failed.
In Casey's eyes, the statue should've been a member of the culper ring.
What happened after Nathan hale's demise? The continental army very quickly develops an amazing array of techniques involving deceptions and double agents and phony troop movements and a very sophisticated network of agents based in New York city and further out on long island.
So, you're talking about the very origins of American espionage? Exactly.
Because it's so elaborate, involves a lot of trade-craft techniques and technologies, probably best if we head inside to the CIA museum, and we can talk about it and show you some of the capabilities that the continental army was using way back when.
So, you've got a museum right here at the CIA? We call it the best museum you've never seen.
"We got a great museum.
We're just not gonna show you anything.
" That's right.
The CIA museum has a great collection of trade-craft devices that we and other services have used throughout our history to encode and encrypt and conceal our writing.
And those are techniques that, though they sound really modern and sophisticated, we can see being used back in the day of the culper ring.
Much of the information was written in code and cipher and concealed with invisible ink, or sympathetic stain, as they called it back then.
Here's how the culper ring actually worked.
Members in New York city reported their information to an operative, who was called culper Jr.
That information was then passed to a member from long island, who came to town to get supplies for his tavern.
And when he got home, he passed the information to another member, whose code name was culper sr.
And he then decided what information was important and passed it on to a fourth member, who would paddle across long island sound to Connecticut, where the army was holed up after losing New York to the British.
From 1778 to 1781, this was how top-secret information was relayed back and forth.
They were volunteers.
And then -- and this is a key part to the ring -- nobody knows entirely who everyone is and how it's all working.
So, if one guy's caught, no matter what they do to him, he can't possibly -- exactly.
It's all part of being able to keep the ring completely secure.
Is there an example you can give us of where this ring actually had some success? In 1780, there are clear indications that the British are mobilizing an attack force to greet an incoming contingent of French troops.
This is only two years into the alliance, and the French had been stalwart friends of ours.
But a military disaster like that could've got them thinking a little bit differently about the long term.
Because of information coming from culper Jr.
, the continental army gets this news, sends out messages through known British agents that Washington was going to attack New York city.
That disinformation got to the British commander.
He stops in midstride, turns the whole army back to New York city to counterattack against a continental army that isn't there.
It isn't coming at all.
And French troops arrive in Newport, several thousand of them, untouched.
The members of the culper ring were not men who looked for glory.
These were ordinary civilians.
They met in bars, alleys, and secret locations all around New York to pass information that was essential to the Americans winning the war.
Among these places was the area around what is now rivington street in lower Manhattan.
Buddy's there now to find out more about the successes of the culper ring.
I suggested we meet here on rivington street.
It's named after this great spy that nobody in New York city knew was a spy during the revolution.
Rivington knew everybody inside the culper ring.
He worked and owned rivington's royal gazette, a very pro-British newspaper which gathered news from all the loyalists and the British officers, et cetera, and put it in the paper, where Washington and his officers could interpret it and figure out what was going on.
Talk about hidden in plain sight -- spy-coded information going out in the public newspaper? The British were completely fooled.
The key to the war was control of the Hudson river and fort west point, which was perched on the west bank.
As long as we had that, it meant the British only controlled half the river.
And this was key because if they were able to seize the west bank, they could divide new England from the southern colonies and choke our supply lines.
West point was also strategic because it was situated at an "s" curve in the river.
Boats had to slow down to pass the area.
And that meant enemy ships were particularly susceptible to attacks there.
So the British knew to win the war, they had to take west point.
Sounds like you're saying that west point was the key to America's future.
I don't think that's any exaggeration.
The British had tried to fight their way up a few times before.
They had ships all over the river.
But there was a chain across it, for one thing, that would've stopped any British ship from getting near west point.
A physical chain across the river? A huge chain from constitution island to the west point shore.
So, you needed a serious pass to get up the river? Oh, you needed a total pass to get past the river, and it could only come from the commanding officer at west point, who happened to be Benedict Arnold, the greatest hero of the revolution up till that time.
So, what exactly happened with Benedict Arnold? Benedict Arnold was seven years behind in his pay.
And it all added up to him saying, "I've had enough.
I'm going to get my money.
" And he began writing coded messages to the British in New York city.
You know you're the best at something when your name becomes synonymous with it, and Benedict Arnold quite simply means "traitor.
" But that wasn't always the case.
At one point, Benedict Arnold was the greatest hero our country had ever known.
The problem was we were fighting a guerilla war, and money was sparse.
This gave the British just the opening they were looking for.
Arnold's plan was to sell west point To the British in exchange for £20,000, a fortune at the time.
He was going to tip off the British at the right moment to come up the Hudson when Washington, Lafayette, and all the American and French generals were at west point.
Arnold would then very lightly defend the fort and then surrender it, along with Washington and all the generals.
And the war would be over.
If Benedict Arnold had succeeded in his plan, the American revolution would've collapsed.
There would be no independent nation.
So, how exactly was Benedict Arnold exposed? The culper spy ring was putting together what was going on through a year and a half of intelligence gathering that a high-ranking American officer was about to go over, that it had to be Benedict Arnold.
As far as we can tell, the culper spy ring intercepted coded messages sent by Benedict Arnold to John andré, the head of British intelligence.
As brilliant as Arnold was, it turned out he was no match for ordinary American citizens.
How did John andré finally get busted? He accidently got caught by three fellows who thought he had nice boots and maybe had some money.
The men who captured andré turned him over to a subordinate, a man underneath Arnold, who was just gonna send him to Arnold.
And then Arnold would be in the clear.
Instead Benjamin tallmadge, head of the culper spy ring, was the next man to see John andré on his way to west point and said, "here's our man.
" Did Benjamin tallmadge get andré to confess? Yes.
When John andré admitted to tallmadge that he was on a spying mission, tallmadge sent the documents found in andré's boots to west point, and Arnold saw them, didn't even wait to kiss his wife goodbye, ran down to the river with two pistols, and ordered his guards to row him down the Hudson to the nearest British ship.
He went to New York and immediately started rounding up the members of the culper ring.
He got a few.
He got a few.
But the rest went into hiding.
Spies in hiding -- I like it.
The culper ring is without question the predecessor of both the oss and the CIA.
But what amazes me most is just how successful the culper ring was to us winning the revolution.
You have to remember, nobody back then truly knew who was loyal to the crown and who was loyal to George Washington.
New York city, like today, was filled with people who were playing all the angles, so knowing who to trust was Paramount.
The adage "all is fair in love and war" was coined in 1850 by an English writer, but it was just as fitting in revolutionary America.
By 1778, the colonies have lost control of New York city to the British, and they're holed up in Connecticut, trying desperately to maintain access to the port of New York.
The Americans know that their only chance to retake the island of Manhattan is if they get better intelligence.
So major Benjamin tallmadge helps create a network of civilian spies known as the culper ring to help provide insight into the British plans.
The ring operates in and around New York, where buddy, Mac, and Scott are headed right now.
Morning.
Hi.
We're expecting a package for 1410.
Room 1410 -- my pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What the hell? Brad Meltzer's book.
It's the advanced copy of his new book.
Does he want us to read it? I don't know.
Is it free? What is he doing? There's a blank piece of paper in here.
This has got to be more than a shameless self-promotion for the book.
Okay, there's nothing on here.
Yeah, there is.
Yeah, there is, 'cause you can see a tiny mark.
Like it's invisible ink or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's not helpful.
Mac, how would you check if there's something on there? The best way to speed up a chemical reaction is heat.
All right, who's got some matches? Heat it up.
Oh, he included matches? Yeah.
Okay.
I hope we don't set off any alarms in here.
Just like that? Okay, hold it there.
Nothing.
Nothing's happening.
I like the intrigue, though.
Yeah.
Ooh, ooh! Whoa! It's working! Wow.
Look at this.
"The who was the greatest American Spy master of all time?" "Who was the greatest American spy master of all time?" No idea.
Yeah, I would go cold war.
Were there spies in world war I? Looks like we have everything we need in here.
[ Laughs .]
Look, he's done a little dedication for us.
"Go to 54 pearl street, New York, New York, to find the answer!" Okay.
Okay.
So, we got to go.
Let's head over there.
Keep the matches.
God knows what else he's gonna do.
I'm sending the guys to fraunces tavern, which is where the original idea for the culper ring may have first been discussed.
It's also the place where president George Washington gave the nation's first farewell address when he decided that two terms in office were enough.
Buddy, Mac, and Scott are gonna meet with someone who knows more about the culper ring's methods than anyone else in history.
And let me promise you, there will be no more product placement, except for the giant Porsche the guys drive around in.
Brad told me to expect you.
Now, the answer to his question is written between the lines.
We'd better just fire it up.
"This is how the culper spy ring used invisible ink to communicate with" Oh, check it out! Look, look, look, look! All: "George Washington.
" How is that? Come on.
He's the first founding father.
We think of George Washington as an honest, noble gentleman.
For somebody who never told a lie, he stretched the truth a lot.
You're telling us he was a spy? He was a spymaster.
While major tallmadge organized the culper ring, he did so at the direction of general George Washington.
And while many remember Washington for his honesty, the future president knew the value of covert info better than anyone.
Washington had lost new York city to the British in 1776, but he had loyal citizens living in the city -- regular, ordinary people who were willing to provide details of the plans of the entrenched redcoats.
That's who George Washington relied on, and the culper ring was crucial to Washington's plan to take back the key port of New York.
To do it -- to pass those messages -- it was dangerous, so the ring devised ways to move their secrets in plain sight.
Washington's favorite method was to use white or invisible ink.
And he'd physically write between the lines of a normal letter, which is where we get the saying "read between the lines.
" He called it his sympathetic stain, which is a horrible name, but it was made using persulfate and water.
It was a chemical process.
You write in one chemical, called the agent.
Then the reader of the letter paints it with another chemical, the re-agent.
That way, you can't just crack it with a match.
The solution was supplied by Dr.
James Jay, and let me tell you, these guys knew what they were doing.
To this day, the FBI and CIA use invisible-ink messages that are based on George Washington's method.
He set up many spy rings, and the culpers were one of the first.
Wow.
And they used invisible ink to communicate.
So, did they keep records of how to decode this stuff? Here's the copy of the culpers' actual code book.
Invisible ink wasn't the only code used by the culper ring.
Major tallmadge came up with a series of other codes that were all listed in his code book.
Only four copies of the book were produced.
Tallmadge had one copy for himself, he gave general George Washington another, and the culper ring leaders were given the remaining two.
The code was simple.
The most popular words at the time were all assigned a number.
The word "signal" was 600.
The word "lord" was 351.
The members of the ring were also given a similar code name.
General George Washington's, for example, was number 711.
So, this was a very valuable document that people would die for yes.
And die over? Wow.
To think of the American revolution being this high-tech is very strange to me.
It is.
This is the way it worked.
What I want to know is, how'd this group of people move information from place to place so quickly? I mean, when it comes to speed, horses and sailboats aren't exactly like sending an e-mail from a dummy hotmail account.
And most important, whatever happened to the culper ring? Did they die off, or are they still out there today? To this day, it may be George Washington's greatest magic trick, creating a small, covert spy ring made up of regular citizens who kept their secret for over 100 years.
These guys were the grandfather of the CIA, and it shows you how smart our founding fathers were.
The ring's existence was hidden for a century and a half, and these guys were so far undercover that even death didn't reveal them.
The true identities of the culper spies were hidden from the history books for 150 years.
You see, general Washington didn't know who the spies were, and the spies didn't know the real identities of each other.
But they were eventually discovered.
Mac and Scott are in the east Hampton library to find out how.
Gina, Scott and I are trying to find out everything we can about the culper spy ring.
Mm-hmm.
And it's hard to find these guys' identities because they were so well protected, it seems like they were even protected after their death.
So, how were they discovered eventually? Eventually, the identities were discovered through the diligence of Morton pennypacker.
Mr.
pennypacker was a local historian here in the east Hampton area, and he mainly collected information having to do with long island history.
He was going through a collection of papers that were discovered in the Robert townsend family home.
They found an old chest in the attic.
It was filled with singed letters, old documents, things of that nature.
This was very exciting to Mr.
pennypacker because he discovered a possible link to the identities of the members of the culper spy ring.
How did he link it to the culper spy ring? They actually compared Robert townsend's letters that had been found in the George Washington collection.
They put them side by side, and they were able to analyze the handwriting that way, and they discovered that, without a doubt, these were the same people.
So, the letters that George Washington had, they knew were culper spy ring letters, and they compared it to the townsend letters, and they're the same guy? Yes, that is correct.
Wow.
George Washington himself did not even know the identity of the members of this spy ring, and then here we have somebody around the 1930s who finds some documents in an attic and is able to compare them and find out these are the people that were the members of the culper spy ring.
It's just incredible.
Who was townsend in the culper spy ring? He was known as culper Jr.
[ Gasps .]
That is culper Jr.
I actually have some examples here of books that were kept by Robert townsend himself.
These are original documents.
They're not copies.
They weren't fabricated.
These are his actual account books.
Wow, look at this.
We can't touch this, right? I'm being careful.
I'm being careful.
Touch with your eyes.
That handwriting is amazing.
The minute she told me I couldn't touch the book, all I wanted to do was touch that book.
I wasn't even looking at what was in it.
So, what's the significance in learning so long after the revolutionary war who these people were? I think it changes our perception of history, where we thought that we just had these lone agents that were spies going into enemy lines and gathering information.
Now we discover that there was an intelligence system of people.
Well, what's interesting, too, is when you look at where we are today, especially in the intelligence community, you know, you look back at this and see maybe where it really all started.
Possible, yes.
The culper ring helped uncover the plot by America's greatest traitor, Benedict Arnold, to betray his country.
But I want to know is, what happened to them, and is there a chance they still exist today? Buddy, Mac, Scott are headed to the culpers' base of operations on long island to see if they can find out more.
Washington had determined after the battle of New York he couldn't get stuff through Westchester county because there were too many British around there, so he came way out here.
Nobody would ever suspect that they were transferring information across the sound from here, and that's the reason they picked this area.
This was the spot from which they disseminated the messages.
Not very populated at the time? Five houses.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
This was one of them.
The house behind you was built by Phillips roe in 1755.
He became a member of the spy ring, and his brother, Nathaniel roe, and they were the ones who picked up and delivered the messages.
Austin roe used to ride in once a week on his horse to New York city, pick up the information that was gathered in the city, bring it out here to Phillips roe and his brother, Nathaniel roe.
What was their relation to Austin roe? They were cousins.
Oh, okay.
And these gentlemen would deliver the information to Caleb Brewster, who used to run across the sound once a week in his whale boat, and they would always come into a different cove and pick up the information.
And he would deliver it back to Connecticut, but it's a long row.
It's 12 miles.
And the sound was laced with British ships, so you had to be stealthy and careful.
Amazing.
So, we're talking about riding on horseback from here in setauket 55 miles to New York city and returning here with a message that Caleb Brewster would row physically across the long island sound to Connecticut to deliver to Benjamin tallmadge.
That's right.
Spying is not nearly as athletic now.
Incidentally, with respect to whale boats, I think it might be of interest to you people to see what one looked like.
Just imagine that you're captain Brewster coming across the sound in this with maybe a dozen guys rowing, six on each side.
And the storms on the sound can come up very quickly, and there's not much freeboard on this boat.
It must've been very dangerous.
The British would've seen them very easily.
They'd have been sitting ducks.
And I think the guys were pretty brave to do this.
Tough.
Tough.
Yeah, that's the word -- tough.
These guys are amazing.
They ride 110 miles round trip to gather the information, and then they row 24 miles across long island sound to deliver it.
Forget the ironman triathlon.
This was true endurance.
The thing I'm most impressed by is that they're doing it with the British everywhere, all around them.
These guys know if they're caught, they're gonna be shot on sight.
So one thing they did was try to have codes inside codes inside codes.
Some of them were literally hidden right in front of everyone's faces.
This is a typical north shore cove, where Caleb Brewster would've come in to pick up his messages.
Now, you see what looks like a clothesline over there.
You see anything unusual about this clothesline? Nope.
It's actually a coded message.
What?! Come on.
Yeah, it's a coded message.
You mean to tell me that there's crucial information in here that the people of setauket would know? Absolutely.
Now, this was Anna strong's clothesline, and Anna hung the petticoats to help culper sr.
In the early days and later the roe brothers.
What did the handkerchiefs and the petticoats signify? The petticoat signifies that Caleb Brewster had come in.
And the number of handkerchiefs told which of the many coves he came into.
So, Caleb Brewster's here, and he's in the fourth cove? That's right.
He's in the fourth cove.
They wouldn't have suspected her at all, would they have? No, because she was just a woman by herself.
But she furthered the cause.
All the while just doing her laundry -- just innocently doing the laundry.
Nobody would suspect her of anything.
One of the little-known stories about the culper ring is that there were a great many women who helped its cause.
And think about it -- women had the perfect cover story because back then, no one expected they'd be involved in something that was so nefarious.
Anna strong and the other female members of the culper ring led the way for some of the most successful female spies of all time.
Among the most well known was mata hari, who spied for the Germans during world war I, and Julia child, one of my heroes, who, believe it or not, spied on the Nazis during World War II.
Now, one of the most famous spies of all was one went under the name of agent 355.
There are some historians who think 355 was simply a number for a female.
So, the whole story got a little twisted.
So, 355 may or may not have existed -- depends upon which historian you want to listen to.
I studied them for two years, and the culper ring still surprises me.
These people were the precursor of the CIA, the first civilian spy agency in our history.
They helped foil the plan by Benedict Arnold that would've allowed the British to win the war, and they're one of the first to treat women as true spy equals.
And one of the best parts of the story -- there's still major debate about agent 355's identity or even if she was real.
It seems like the trail's gone cold with agent 355, but the question remains -- did the ring die with her, or is it still in existence today? The culper spy ring, one of the greatest secret creations of George Washington, was lost to history for more than a century and a half.
It wasn't until the 1930s that this crucial part of American history was actually found again.
Agent 711.
Hey, agent 711.
That's Washington.
If you're gonna pick a guy, you got to pick the top guy.
Absolutely.
We think we cracked it.
Yeah, tell me what you got.
Well, the culper ring uncovered Benedict Arnold's nasty plot to hand over west point and helped us win the American revolution.
We couldn't have done it without them.
Now you see my obsession with the culper ring, right? It's an unwritten moment of American history, and Benjamin tallmadge and his group bring us to a point that we would've otherwise not been at.
Absolutely.
Okay, you found that piece.
What about agent 355? Well, we're still not sure, Brad, because we're being told by some that it was just a term, a spy term for "lady.
" We saw that in the code book.
Exactly.
And then we're also hearing, though, that it was a specific woman who had a lot to do with this.
You know, there are people out there who will say she's absolutely fake, she's a myth, she's an amalgam, but there are people who insist that 355 is a real person, that she actually saved us, that she actually did stuff for us, and that no one knows who she is.
And I found a woman who's convinced of that.
And she's someone who has studied her for years, can tell you exactly what she did for American history.
I don't know if I believe her, and if she's right, I want to know who this woman really is that we owe a great deal of thanks to.
I want her to be right.
[ Laughs .]
I want -- listen, I want her to be right, too, but I want to know about her for my daughter.
Yeah.
I want my daughter to have that hero.
So, behind us here is west point, which was the American stronghold.
And it would've kept the British from moving up the Hudson river.
West point, as you can kind of see, kind of commands control of the Hudson river here.
It's really central to any traffic up and down, and it really kind of limits traffic from going further north.
If you were kind of stopped at west point, you couldn't really continue, and during the American revolution, everyone kind of recognized that this was the thing that was keeping the British from going further up the Hudson river.
As we know, Benedict Arnold was engaged in a plot to turn over west point to the British.
All they had to do was meet his price.
His main contact on the British side was a man named major andré, who, can we just say is either the best- or worst-dressed ghost of all time? Some say the culper ring had a spy in andré's camp, so when he travels to west point to negotiate with Arnold, the head of the culper spy ring, major tallmadge, knows that andré is coming.
And this was stopped by a spy known as agent 355.
And she was a female culper spy.
She was able to stop Benedict Arnold by intercepting the correspondence in major andré's quarters.
How did she get the information? How did she get into his quarters repeatedly? Well, we don't know exactly because good spies don't get caught, but we do know 355 was a female member of the culper ring.
And she was probably major andré's girlfriend, so she may have even been sleeping with the enemy.
Wow! What's the one rule of every James Bond movie? You know it -- never trust the girl.
The good thing for us -- andré had never seen James Bond.
So, what do we actually know about agent 355? We know just from her name that she was both female and from the upper class because the word "lady" implied that somebody was kind of an elite.
You weren't the washerwoman, you weren't just a woman, you were a lady, somebody of breeding.
So, we know that she was probably well connected because of that.
We also know that she probably was one of major andré's girlfriends.
He had a history of always looking to marry up and make a name for himself in the colonies.
He was always looking for advancement.
There's a word for that.
[ Laughter .]
You date up.
He was looking to move up.
He was definitely looking to make his fortune and move up.
The most amazing part of the story of agent 355, to me, is that no one suspected her, you know, that you've got -- that he might've had this woman in his office, in his life, and telling her secrets, letting her overhear, but since he thought women had no political opinions and no vested interest, would not -- not suspect her.
I mean, it's -- to me, it speaks to the power of being underestimated.
And he probably didn't think she was one bit interested in politics.
Well, women were assumed to have the same political views as their fathers or spouses, so it would've been very easy for a patriotic woman to be assumed to have the same political views as her father.
Andrea, we've heard that 355 was just a code word for "lady," that it really wasn't a person, but, obviously, you think otherwise.
What proof do you have of that? Well, first of all, there's a letter that specifically refers to a lady working with the ring.
That's August 15, 1779.
And woodhall talks about the fact that she's going to start working with the ring shortly.
That's culper sr.
? That's culper sr.
, yes.
There's a point in the culper correspondence where they suddenly are reporting really, really good information.
They go from not reporting anything of use -- it's all old -- to suddenly, right after 355 is mentioned, they're getting the innermost secrets of the British army.
They're reporting practically black ops.
They're reporting a counterfeiting operation, things that only could've come from British headquarters.
So, what information about the plot did she discover? Well, she definitely discovered that Arnold planned to betray west point.
There was a letter with Arnold's name in the margin of andré's correspondence in June of 1780.
So, that's months of correspondence that are being intercepted.
Wow! At the point that andré was intercepted, andré had just met with Arnold.
They had agreed that Arnold was going to sell west point, and andré was going back to New York.
He's met by a group of three seemingly random guys.
They're highwaymen.
They're militia men.
So, these three guys stop him, and they're looking to rob him.
So, he doesn't seem to have any money, and they said, "hey, he doesn't have any money.
Let's see if we can get a prize off of this guy.
" Wow.
So, they decide to take him to the local American commander, commander jameson.
Unfortunately, he's kind of big on protocol, and he has no idea what's going on with the culper spies.
So, he sends word to Benedict Arnold because there's a pass from Benedict Arnold, and he says, "gee, what's going on, Benedict Arnold? Fill me in.
" Tallmadge finds out what's going on, though.
He interrupts, and he says, "no, no.
We've got to send word to Washington.
" Jameson compromises.
He sent one rider to Washington, who was on the move, and another rider to the closer Benedict Arnold.
The rider to Arnold left first, so Arnold got word and escaped.
So, Benedict Arnold literally escapes by the skin of his teeth, destroying his friendship with George Washington.
History reports it is the only time anyone ever sees George Washington break down and cry.
This was a betrayal by one of his best friends, and with culper ring information, tallmadge almost had him.
But you know what Washington does when it all calms down? He sends the culper ring after Benedict Arnold.
George Washington -- American badass.
So, when Benedict Arnold flees to New York and goes over to the British side, his first assignment is to round up the members of the culper ring.
This is one of the greatest unseen fights in U.
S.
history.
But in the end, Arnold never really figures out what to do with his life, and he certainly can't catch the culper ring.
So he goes back and forth from England to Canada before eventually dying miserable in London.
But the biggest question remains -- whatever happened to the culper ring, and do they still exist in some form? The culper spy ring was the first of its kind, one of the best.
Conceived by general George Washington, the all-civilian spy organization played a key role in the forming of our country.
The group was so secretive, they didn't even know who each other were.
In fact, Washington himself didn't know all the members.
This allowed the organization to stay hidden for 150 years.
The first records of the ring appeared in 1930, when a series of letters were found, detailing the group's operations.
The letters match unexplained correspondence from the estate of president Washington himself.
Through analysis and research, the members of the initial ring were identified.
But no matter what we know of the culper ring, the role they played in America's independence can't be overstated.
As for agent 355, some say that Arnold caught this great spy, though I'm actually not convinced she even existed.
Either way, though, the legend of agent 355 becomes the story of an American hero in the truest sense -- someone who sacrifices everything and then goes unnoticed for the rest of history.
So, is it fair to say that agent 355, a lady in the culper ring yes.
Exposed Benedict Arnold's plot and saved the revolution? Yes, definitely.
So, whatever happened to 355? 355 was captured by the British.
She was probably imprisoned, so she was probably questioned by the British.
Because the culper ring continued to operate, there's no reason to think that she ever betrayed her fellow ring members.
And you think she died in prison? I think she died in prison.
There's no reason to believe she was released.
She's really quite heroic.
What a sad ending, too.
Yeah.
A true American hero.
Yeah.
And she's completely forgotten.
It sounds like there is some pretty good evidence that agent 355 actually did exist.
It seems logical that somebody who was a girlfriend maybe or who had some inside information would've had have to been responsible for this.
It doesn't surprise me at all that agent 355 could've been a woman.
I was really impressed that the culper ring was that sophisticated to use whatever means necessary to get the information that George Washington needed.
I think in the context of the American revolution, anything that needed to be done Should be done.
I mean, if she was sleeping with the enemy and that's what it took, if that won our revolution, I'm grateful.
This has been great.
I mean, we're standing here on the banks of the Hudson river, right across from west point, where Benedict Arnold nearly sold out America.
And it's the kind of history that I love most because you say to yourself, "I had no idea.
" And how -- and how did we have no idea? How did we not learn about this in school? The culper spy ring was absolutely crucial to beating the British.
And that's exactly the point.
It's not just "did they exist?" We know they exist now.
But it really seems to come down to this group and what they were able to accomplish that did it.
They weren't these highly trained operatives who we think of when we think of spies.
These were ordinary American people who happen to believe so much in the cause that they're willing to put their lives on the line and be part of this big, big ring.
And think of just how committed they were to that, because they'd already seen their predecessor, Nathan hale, hanged.
They knew that, and they did it anyway.
It's unbelievable.
And the cool thing about this story is that the culper spy ring, about whom we knew virtually nothing, are responsible for bringing down Benedict Arnold and changing the course of American history.
And agent 355, who we still don't know much about, might have been the one feeding the culper spy ring the information they needed to do that.
Who else would've had access to that type of information but the girlfriend of a major? And not been suspected for that long, because women just weren't seen as political beings.
They wouldn't have thought that they had anything invested in the revolution, which is crazy.
The pieces of the puzzle fit.
I think she existed.
I just don't -- not sure who she was.
And who would've guessed the spy master was George Washington? I mean, of all people, we never thought that kind of thing about him.
It's the ultimate brains over brawn.
The British were stronger, they were bigger, and America was outgunned, but they outfought them, and I love that part of it.
For the first time in our history, we had an organized spy ring, and, really, this is, in my mind, what led to the CIA, the FBI, and everything we have today.
Yeah, it's the birth.
Makes me kind of wonder whether There are embedded regular folks still today who are doing that work.
I'd almost say for sure.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The skies have opened! We'd better get out of here and tell Brad.
Before we get drenched, let's go talk to him.
The trail of the culper ring dies out following the revolution, and it seems that they ceased to operate around 1785, at least as far as we know.
But let me tell you the greatest secret of all -- I think it's still around.
A few years ago, I got a call from the department of homeland security, asking me to come brainstorm different ways that terrorists can attack the United States.
They read my novels, they saw my research, and I was honored to be part of what they called the red cell team.
I kept the secret until they asked me to go public.
But the point is I was a regular civilian brought in to help our country, just like the culper ring.
Even better, last week, when I was telling a former top national security agent about the culper ring, the phone went silent, and he said to me, "you know, there are rumors they're still here.
" But the best legacy of the culper ring is that it supports my core belief.
You see, I believe ordinary people change the world.
I don't care where you went to school.
I don't care how much money you make.
I believe that regular people like the culper ring is how the world gets changed.
Don't ever forget, history is a selection process.
Most of us think that it chooses a moment and a person and it puts them together, but history chooses each of us every single day, and the only question is, will you hear the call?