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Answer.

The Culper Spy Ring.

Organized by Benjamin Talmadge in 1778, the ring included Abraham Woodhull, Samuel Culper Sr., and Robert Townsend, Samuel Culper Jr., Its tradecraft foreshadowed many modern espionage techniques.

That concludes today's five daily trivia questions.

So there's still always new info coming out, which I think is a cool thing.

But to talk about like why it's different, um, it was the, what's called the Culper Spy Ring.

So it was Samuel Culper, um, was his code name, and then he had a list and ring of spies all the way from like that Port Jefferson area you were talking about to Manhattan and even across the Sound.

They had a, a old whaler who would pass messages from the Sound to Connecticut and then all the way to Manhattan, um, by horseback and by boat.

Case file number six is the American Revolution.

Remember our episode about it? Behind the scenes, General George Washington ran a secret spy network called the Culper Ring.

They wrote with invisible ink, and they used a code book where numbers stood for people, places, and words.

George Washington was a number, 711.

Um, and Ben Franklin had like 12 different names that he wrote under that we know about.

And George Washington was 711 when it came to, uh, the, the Culper Spy Ring.

So th... our, our entire country was built on people using fake names.

It was built on anonymity.

George Washington, another runner-up of that contest.

Uh, good old Gorgeous George and his Culper spies, a little spy network that he can send out and surround and do things.

And then my personal favorite so far, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.

Hmm.

Okay.

Now, you had asked me about... about getting paid, right? And as I told you, it was kind of an iffy story, right? And you asked this question around the time that Talmadge was heading up to Westchester, right? So when he's heading up to Westchester and the Culper Ring that we're going to talk about in this episode was taking shape, the army was completely broke.

One third of the army in June was still unpaid for April and May.

So, essentially, soldiers were approximately two to four months in arrears as far as pay goes.

That was definitely an important little secret to get from them.

For sure.

So now, Talmadge's Culper Ring is brushing up against British counterintelligence.

Operational security needs to be further hardened.

... written by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger.

The story, this story, uh, the whole Culper spy ring, all of it is in there, and it is just a wonderful true story-

Yes

... of basically without the spies, without Washington sticking with it after Nathan Hale-

Okay.

He oversaw, during the revolution, the Culper spy ring.

okay

which uh like was a rig of spies gathering intelligence on british troop movements the only reason i mentioned that because that's going to come into play in my unmatched character okay and the other big famous thing about george washington is his teeth oh he had four I think he wishes he had four.

I guess it's a

pun to 007.

No, it was up in his things about the Culper spy ring.

Oh, this is my knowledge here.

Well, I want to recap some of the other books that you've written for those who missed your first appearance on the podcast because it was very early on when I started this podcast and we have newer listeners.

So my favorite series that you've done, this is how I found you many years ago, was because of your books about the Culper spy ring, George Washington's spy ring during the American Revolution.

And we were studying the revolution.

I already knew about the spy ring.

And the whole series is just so fun.

And American history is one of my top favorite parts of world history, obviously.

And so I love it when I feel like your books are unique in that very specific niche about the Culper spy ring.

And, you know, there's lots of books about the American Revolution.