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Welcome to SpyC, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum.

I'm your host, Sasha Inber, and each week I take

you into the shadows of espionage, intelligence, and covert operations across the globe.

It's a story that journalist and veteran Stephen Harding uncovered, a secret component of the FBI's European

operation, whereby agents traveled abroad and undercover to track down American citizens who had betrayed

their country during World War II. The traitors ran the gamut from spreading propaganda for the fascists to joining Nazi spirings.

And what became of them is just as varied.

Steve pieced together the mission and the targets by interviewing the relatives of retired FBI agents,

sifting through British archives, and making Freedom of Information Act requests.

It's all documented in his new book, GIG Men.

Stephen, thank you so much for joining us.

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for asking me.

So, let's get into it.

We think of the FBI as a domestic agency. So tell me, why did

Jay Edgar Hoover start this mission overseas? Mainly was a power struggle, an administrative

power struggle between Hoover and the military intelligence services,

the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Army's military intelligence division. Hoover decided that

because the FBI had been responsible since World War I really for chasing spies, that it was logical for the FBI to chase Americans

overseas who had collaborated with the Nazis or the Italian fascists. It was a very

difficult thing for him to achieve because he had to deal with various agencies and the heads of those

agencies. But he eventually won. And in 1940, created a sub-organization of the FBI called the

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