Mission Implausible is now something you can watch.

Just go to YouTube and search Mission Implausible Podcast, or click on the link to our channel

in our show notes.

I'm John Seifer.

And I'm Jerry O'Shea.

We have over 60 years of experience as clandestine officers in the CIA, serving in high-risk

areas all around the world.

And part of our job was creating conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.

Now, we're going to use that experience to investigate the conspiracy theories everyone's talking about,

as well as some you may not have heard.

Could they be true, or are we being manipulated?

We'll find out now on Mission Implausible.

So today we're talking with historian Catherine Olmsted, UC Davis. She's the author of

real enemies, conspiracy theories, and American democracy, World War I to 9-11. And she's also

the author of Red Spy Queen, a biography of Elizabeth Bentley. And we're going to talk about

why Americans

are so drawn to conspiracy theories and about one very real spy in the middle of it all.

Catherine, glad to have you here with us. Thanks.

Thank you for having me. So just the simplest thing is what drew you as a historian to study

conspiracy theories and political secrecy in the United States? It started out, actually, during my dissertation research.

My first book was published in 1996.

It was called Challenging the Secret Government,

...