Bats, those strange flying mammals of the night have a very particular viewpoint on the world.

Quite unconventional, one might imagine. if there's anything conventional about being a bat.

They move through twilight into darkness, feast on airborne prey, navigate with precise eco-ocation, instinctively instantaneously evading obstacles

as they collect their meals.

Fed and happy, it's back to the cave, the cavern, the hollow of a tree, or even some man-made structure, surreptitiously

suspended upside down in eaves and gables or in the gaps of Plankwood.

Humans might live for years never noticing them in their homes, schools,

factories, or sometimes military barracks. Which is why many years ago, one new and conniving department of the U.S. military considered the

bat as potentially a useful and insidious weapon. Hello and welcome back to American Estriate. I'm your host Don Wildman, happy you're listening.

By the heady World War Two days of summer 1942, the United States was just beginning to turn the

corner on how to fight a two-front conflict of dreadful scope and consequence.

The previous December 7th, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had caught the U.S. Navy flat-footed.

But as we've discussed on previous episodes, the U.S. was unprepared for this war in most regards.

Certainly, we had little capacity in the area of espionage and it was high time to catch up.

A new book authored by John Lyle entitled The Dirty Tricks Department.

Stanley Lovell, the OSS and the masterminds of World War II's secret warfare

addresses the fateful hiring of industrial chemist Stanley Lovell

by the famed Warrior Chieftain William Donovan, Wild Bill Donovan, head of the

OSS, Office of Strategic Services, the precursor

to the Central Intelligence Agency.

This top-secret collaboration led to a diabolical division of the OSS, a cracked team of scientists headed up by Lovell. a

diabolical division of the OSS, a cracked team of scientists headed up by level,

...