← Noble Blood
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- [00:00]
Jason English
Oikos presents 15 seconds of strength.
- [00:02]
Dana Schwartz
Here we go. Steve's got a trunk full of groceries and no one to help him.
- [00:06]
Jason English
Oh, that's tough. Jim Looks like a five trip load at least.
- [00:09]
Dana Schwartz
He grabs the first bag, the second bob.
- [00:11]
Jason English
It looks like he's trying to do it all in one trip. He shimmies the door open, steps over the dog.
- [00:15]
Dana Schwartz
Oh, and he stumbles.
- [00:17]
Jason English
Oh, right into the kitchen without missing a beat.
- [00:19]
Dana Schwartz
Jim.
- [00:20]
Jason English
Now that's a man who eats his protein packed Oikos. With 15 grams of complete protein in each cup. Oikos Triple Zero can help build strength for every day. Oikos Stronger makes everything better. Every morning brings fresh new energy.
- [00:34]
Dana Schwartz
And no matter what the day holds.
- [00:36]
Jason English
We come to the Today show for all of it. We get the best start to the day because we started together. Watch the Today show weekdays at 7am on NBC.
- [00:48]
Dana Schwartz
Clorox Scentiva smells like lavender, cleans like Clorox, and feels like. Hmm.
- [01:05]
Jason English
All right, that could go on for a while. Experience the long lasting freshness of Clorox Scentiva. Available in Clorox Scentiva Lavender scented bleach. Use as directed. Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech Upgrade to the.
- [01:22]
Dana Schwartz
ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultra Light Ultra powerful and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed and AI powered performance. It keeps up with your business, not the other way around.
- [01:34]
Jason English
Whoa. This thing moves.
- [01:35]
Dana Schwartz
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search@lenovo.com Lenovo Lenovo unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 carbon powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity.
- [01:50]
Jason English
All on one device.
- [01:55]
Dana Schwartz
I heart Original this is an iheart original. January 21, 1944 was a Friday in New York City, and a woman named Velvely Dickinson had an errand to run. At 50 years old, she was a tiny little thing, short and skinny, with round glasses and hair pinned up in the wavy coiffure of the era. You might have described her as plain, ordinary, harmless. Her occupation suggested the same. Dickinson owned a doll shop on Madison Avenue just a block from Central Park. A doll shop owner with a name like Velvelee. How sweet. But Velvelee Dickinson had a secret. Unbeknownst to her, she'd been on the FBI's radar for more than a year. Now the feds were finally ready to make a move. By 1944, FBI agents, or G Men as they were called, had been trailing Dickinson for days, tracking her comings and goings at 718 Madison Avenue. Her little storefront with those cute antique dolls in the window. That afternoon, they watched her walk half a block to the corner of 63rd Street. That's where Dickinson entered the bank of New York, A mansion like building whose red brick and white marble recalled the early days of the Republic. She walked into the vault and opened a safe deposit box, none the wiser about the federal agents observing her as she rifled through its contents. Then, as Dickinson peered down at the wads of cash in her hands, the agents pounced.
- [03:47]
Jason English
Get her.
- [03:48]
Dana Schwartz
Dickinson didn't go quietly. She kicked, she screamed, she clawed at her captors. As the New York Times would note on its front page the following day, quote, the woman is scarcely five feet tall and weighs perhaps 100 pounds. But she fought bitterly against Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who took her into custody. Anyone observing the scene must have been stunned. What could these hard boiled lawmen possibly want with this diminutive middle aged woman just minding her own business? What crime of hers was serious enough to warrant a sneak attack in the safe deposit department of a local bank? The people in the bank that day had no idea just how serious Dickinson's crimes were. Not only had these bystanders witnessed a high stakes FBI sting, they'd had a front row seat to one of the strangest espionage cases of the Second World War. Welcome back to Very Special Episodes, An I Heart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is Spies and Dolls.
- [05:08]
Jason English
Welcome back to Very Special Episodes. I'm Jason English. She is Dana Schwartz. That's Zara Burnett. And today we got Old Fashioned Spy Story. I loved this one.
- [05:17]
Dana Schwartz
I am obsessed with this story.
- [05:19]
Jason English
Totally. And the name Velvee Dickinson. How dope is that? It's like honey on the tongue.
- [05:23]
Dana Schwartz
It's like a James Bond villain.
- [05:25]
Jason English
Yes, exactly.
- [05:27]
Dana Schwartz
I will say I always kind of thought that this sort of spy, I'll say shenanigans felt just like it was in pulp novels and like James Bond movies where I didn't realize spies were actually doing things like this.
- [05:40]
Jason English
Totally the South American dead letter drop. I mean, you're like, oh my goodness, that's real. Yeah, I'd love to this reel that. Yeah, with no spoilers. We'll just say there's a mail scam in here that I've been thinking about ever since I first heard about it. Oh, yeah. Dana, I don't know if you realize this. This is our second doll story we've collaborated on. A few years ago in the Haileywood podcast about Bruce Willis buying up a town in Idaho. One of the episodes is about the house that he bought for Demi Moore's dolls.
- [06:09]
Dana Schwartz
I have to say, Jason, throughout the entire, like, awards season, because Demi Moore obviously had an amazing role in the substance. She was everywhere. She was at the Oscars. I just could not stop thinking about the full human sized dollhouse in Hayley.
- [06:26]
Jason English
I know now I don't know as much about her doing this, but did she go and, like, hang out there, like on bad days or was it just like, to show people, like, you got to go see my dollhouse.
- [06:36]
Dana Schwartz
I really hope that she did spend time there occasionally, but, like, she didn't live there full time.
- [06:43]
Jason English
No, no, I couldn't imagine that. That would be freaky.
- [06:46]
Dana Schwartz
Also, it feels like if you use it as a guest house, it would feel like a punishment, like a creepy punishment to, like, tell your friends, like, oh, yeah, you can stay in the house, the house I keep all my antique dolls in.
- [06:57]
Jason English
Yeah, I hope you like haunted Victorian dolls.
- [07:02]
Dana Schwartz
In 1908, 36 years before Velvelly Dickinson's dramatic arrest, the FBI was only just coming into being. The Gilded Age had given way to the progressive Era, and America's rapidly growing cities were teeming with new immigrants, with overcrowded slums, with violence and corruption, labor unrest, a flourishing criminal underworld, crooked political bosses, law defying corporate overlords. You get the picture. And yet the country lacked a unifying law enforcement agency to grapple with matters of crime and security on a national scale. For President Teddy Roosevelt, this was a problem. Sure, Roosevelt had the Department of Justice, but the President wanted even greater leeway to monitor threats to ensure the enforcement of justice from sea to shining sea. In 1906, Roosevelt appointed an Attorney General named Charles Bonaparte. You may have heard of his great uncle Napoleon. At Roosevelt's behest, Bonaparte put together an autonomous investigative service reporting to the Justice Department. The problem was the Attorney General's new unit had to borrow operatives from the CPU Secret Service. Some lawmakers didn't like this, and Congress therefore banned the loan of Secret Service operatives to other federal departments. That meant Bonaparte lost access to the detectives his DOJ relied on. The solution, with Roosevelt's blessing, was for Bonaparte to create an investigative bureau with its own staff of special agents, which he did on July 26, 1908, decreeing that a new group of federal investigators would report directly to the chief examiner of the DOJ all matters relating to.
- [09:06]
Jason English
Investigations under the department, except those to be made by bank examiners. And in connection with the Naturalization Service will be referred to the Chief examiner for a memorandum as to whether any member of the Force of Special Agents under his direction is available for the work to be performed. In case the service cannot be performed by the regular force of special agents of the Department, the matter will be.
- [09:27]
Dana Schwartz
Specially called to the attention of the Attorney General. And just like that, the FBI was born. It wouldn't officially be called the Federal Bureau of investigation until 1935, but for simplicity's sake, we're going to refer to it as the FBI from here on out. In the beginning, the FBI's remit wasn't exactly the stuff of page turning thrillers. There was a lot of white collar crime, antitrust cases, fraud, copyright violations, that sort of thing. But the Bureau's scope began to expand over time.
- [10:02]
Jason English
From our earliest days, we had a couple of dozen responsibilities and they included national security matters.
- [10:10]
Dana Schwartz
That's John Fox, an academic who has served as the FBI's official historian since 2003.
- [10:17]
Jason English
But as our nation grew in importance in the world, both economically and politically, as we got involved in World War I and then afterwards, the national security matters started to become more prominent and the Bureau got new authorities because of the potential threats that we faced here at home.
- [10:37]
Dana Schwartz
Those threats largely faded into the background. After the First World War and during Prohibition, the FBI found itself with new fires to put out bootlegging speakeasies, bank robberies, gangster shootouts. Really anything that fell under the rubric of organized crime. But it wasn't long before dark clouds began rolling in from across the Atlantic.
- [11:01]
Jason English
As World War II started heating up and especially as it broke out in Europe, the Bureau moved back to the national security realm and things changed rapidly. We went from a couple hundred people in the Bureau to more than 10,000. Very quickly we were involved with our nation's domestic security, protecting our businesses and government institutions from espionage and sabotage. And so it was in this atmosphere that the FBI became the principal counter espionage, counterintelligence, counter sabotage force for the United States here in our homeland.
- [11:41]
Dana Schwartz
In a 1944 propaganda film, J. Edgar Hoover referred to these wartime counterespionage efforts as the Battle of the United States.
- [11:52]
Jason English
The Battle of the United States took place in every community in the nation. It was a struggle against enemy agents. We've been sent to this country to disrupt our industries, destroy our morale and damage the impact of our fighting armies. These agents were directed by the same high command that directs the German and Japanese armies in combat. Their ends were the same.
- [12:17]
Dana Schwartz
One of the most famous Sagas from this era was the Duquesne spy ring, which would go down as the largest espionage operation in US history to result in convictions. By the time of its conclusion at the end of 1941, the Bureau had set up dozens of field offices across the country. It needed that firepower to tackle investigations like the Duquesne case, in which 33 Nazi spies were brought to justice right as America was being pulled into the war.
- [12:50]
Jason English
Their conviction was made psychic by motion picture film taken by our agents with.
- [12:56]
Dana Schwartz
Cameras concealed at their meeting place.
- [12:59]
Jason English
Taking this film was dangerous work. By the time we were involved in the Duquesne spy ring, we were actually using some pretty sophisticated counterespionage work. We had set up a private office for our informant and he was basically to collect the intelligence from a couple of dozen German agents who would bring it to him. We weren't quite up to the standards of Great Britain at the time. And the Soviets were pretty effective too. But we were rapidly becoming a major force.
- [13:34]
Dana Schwartz
Even before America's entry into the war, it wasn't just German spies that found themselves in the FBI's crosshairs.
- [13:41]
Jason English
There were also a couple of Japanese related espionage cases dealing with people either selling information to Japan or Japanese nationals basically trying to gather intelligence in areas where they weren't supposed to be.
- [13:56]
Dana Schwartz
Once the US declared war on Japan, which had evaded American intelligence with its surprise attack on Pearl harbor, the pressure to sniff out Japanese agents was even greater. That explained why just two months after Pearl harbor in February 1942, the FBI took an interest in a peculiar letter brought to its attention by wartime censors. The purpose of the wartime censors was to monitor international mail. Physical letters embedded with coded messages were a key method for spies to communicate with German or Japanese intelligence. Letters addressed to neutral countries might arouse suspicions. Suspicion because that's how enemy agents would communicate with contacts abroad. A few years earlier, Britain's spy service had alerted the US about a woman in Scotland who had been sending and receiving correspondence from points across the globe. Roped into the investigation was a man in New York named Gunther Ruerich. He turned out to be a German asset and he helped the FBI crack its first major international spy case, as fictionalized in the classic Warner Brothers thriller, Confessions of a Nazi Spy.
- [15:18]
Jason English
It's A fine morning, Mrs. McLaughlin. Yes, isn't it, Mrs. McLaughlin, about the mail you get. There's so much of it every day.
- [15:24]
Dana Schwartz
And it seems to come from all over the world. I have many friends who still remember me, Mrs. McLaughlin.
- [15:29]
Jason English
Yes.
- [15:29]
Dana Schwartz
If it's not too much trouble.
- [15:30]
Jason English
Would you mind saving some of the.
- [15:31]
Dana Schwartz
Stamps off your letter? The letter that got flagged in February 1942 was bound for Buenos Aires, purportedly from a woman in Portland, Oregon. It mentioned a, quote, wonderful doll hospital where the sender had left three, quote, Old English dolls for repair. The letter also included references to fishnets and balloons. Sounds innocent enough. Unless, of course, you're an FBI cryptographer, in which case you would have determined that the three Old English dolls were code for warships and that the doll hospital was code for a shipyard where the vessels had been repaired. The fishnets were submarine nets protecting ports on the west coast, and the balloons suggested the monitoring of defense installations.
- [16:26]
Jason English
It's not entirely clear whether the FBI opened up an investigation based strictly on this first letter, but certainly in general, the FBI would have taken this as something to pay attention to. They would have sent out leads to its offices in the Pacific Northwest to see if these details rang some memory bells with our agents out there.
- [16:52]
Dana Schwartz
Before long, the plot thickened. One day in June, a woman named Mary E. Wallace greeted the postman as he arrived at her door on a maple lined street in Springfield, Ohio. Your letter to Argentina came back, the mail carrier told her. Letter to Argentina. He handed Wallace an envelope marked Return to Ryder, addressed to a woman in Buenos Aires named Inez Lopez de Molinali. The name and return address in the upper left hand corner were indeed Wallis's, but she had never laid eyes on this parcel. She opened the envelope and saw a typewritten letter with her signature at the bottom. Forged, but eerily similar to her own penmanship. Part of it said, you asked me.
- [17:42]
Jason English
To tell you about my collection. A month ago, I had to give a talk to an art club, so I talk about my dolls and figurines. The only new dolls I have are three lovely Irish dolls. One of these three dolls is an old fisherman with a net over his back. Another is an old woman with wood on her back, and the third is a little boy.
- [18:01]
Dana Schwartz
Wallace had, in fact, given a talk to an art club recently about her dolls. And she did, in fact, have three new dolls, albeit not Irish ones. Reading the letter, which also made reference to a Mr. Shaw whose car was damaged but is being repaired now, Wallace couldn't help but think of some flyers she'd seen in the post office, the ones that warned about foreign espionage being carried out via the mail service. Could the letter in her hand actually have been written by a spy? It seemed crazy, but she didn't want to take any chances. Wallace marched down to the Post Office and spoke to the postmaster. He then put her in touch with the FBI, whose agents had no doubt that Wallace's suspicions were correct. The Irish dolls were codename for aircraft carriers. The net referred to anti torpedo protection. The wood on one doll's back referred to a flight deck. And Mr. Shaw's damaged car was code for a Navy destroyer that had been repaired on the west coast after its bow was blown off at Pearl Harbor. By now, the FBI knew it was onto something. In addition to that first letter from February, Wallace's letter was one of four others that had been provided to the Bureau after being returned to senders who hadn't actually sent them.
- [19:35]
Jason English
My understanding of why these letters were returned was that the addresses themselves were not accurate, that there was a problem in some way with the delivery for those addresses, whether the postal code was wrong or the street didn't exist or something. And so it does appear that this was an error on the spy's part.
- [19:56]
Dana Schwartz
The letters were typewritten, each addressed to Inez Lopez de Malinali in Buenos Aires. They all bore signatures that resembled those of the women being impersonated. And they all included accurate information about the women's personal lives, including information about their interest in dolls. The messages were deciphered by code breakers, most notably Elizabeth Friedman, famously known as America's first female cryptanalyst. One of the letters, postmarked from Oakland, California, but purportedly written by a woman in Colorado Springs, made reference to seven real Chinese dolls. Another, dated May 1942, stated, I just.
- [20:43]
Jason English
Secured a lovely Siamese temple dancer. It had been damaged, that is tore in the middle, but it is now repaired and I like it very much. I could not get a mate for this Siam dancer, so I am redressing just a small, plain, ordinary doll into a second Siam doll. Translation, I just secured information of a fine aircraft carrier warship. It had been damaged, that is torpedoed in the middle, but it is now repaired and I like it very much. They could not get a mate for this, so a plain, ordinary warship is being converted into a second aircraft carrier.
- [21:19]
Dana Schwartz
Yet another letter, postmarked from Seattle with the return address of a woman in Spokane, reads, as I must tell you this amusing story.
- [21:29]
Jason English
The wife of an important business associate gave her an old German bisque doll dressed in a Hulu grass skirt. It is a cheap, horrid thing. I do not like it and wish we did not have to to have it about. Well, I broke this awful doll last month. Now the person who gave the doll is coming to visit us very soon. I walked all over Seattle to get someone to repair it. No one at home could or would try the task. Now, I expect all the damages to be repaired by the first week in February.
- [21:57]
Dana Schwartz
When FBI agents consulted with naval authorities in Seattle, they were able to figure out that the doll in this instance referred to a warship damaged at Pearl harbor, just like Mr. Shaw's car from Mary Wallace's letter.
- [22:14]
Jason English
All of these letters appear to refer to a combination of dolls, a state of disrepair or brokenness, and various foreign nations. The ones that I'm familiar with are mostly from the west coast, and I believe they were all being mailed to someone in South America. These were not being mailed directly to Japan, but rather were going to what would be known as a dead letter drop that would collect mail for a different intelligence service.
- [22:48]
Dana Schwartz
How and why had the purported senders been chosen? What was the connection between these individuals other than dolls? And above all, who had actually written the letters? When the agents re interviewed Mary Wallace, she remembered something crucial. She had corresponded with a doll shop owner in New York City. And in one of those letters, she'd mentioned certain details that also appeared in the mystery letter bearing her name. What were the odds? Light bulbs started going off for the others as well. The woman from Colorado Springs had made purchases from the same New York doll dealer the Spokane woman had actually met. Her agents compared the doll vendor's typewritten correspondence with one of the typewritten letters returned from Buenos Aires. It was a match. The FBI now had a very compelling suspect. Her name. You guessed it. Velvalee Dickinson. Dickinson was born Velvelee Malvena Bluker in Sacramento on October 12, 1893. Her father hailed from West Virginia and her mother from Kentucky, both of German descent. She graduated in 1913 from Snell Seminary, a fashionable girls preparatory school in Berkeley. Her academic pursuits then took her to Sacramento Junior College, the University of California, and Stanford, where she completed her undergraduate schooling in 1918. She wouldn't actually receive her bachelor's degree until 1937, reportedly because there were several books she hadn't returned. In 1926, Velvallee married a Philadelphia native named Lee Dickinson. That same year, she landed a job in the filing department of San Francisco's Crocker National Bank. She worked there for two years before accepting a position with a California brokerage firm. In 1937, the Dickinsons moved to New York, where Velvelle found work as a saleswoman in the doll section of Bloomingdale, a job that inspired loftier goals. She soon left the famed department store to open a doll business of her own, first at 680 Madison Avenue, then at 714 Madison and finally 718 Madison, where the Dickinsons lived above her eponymous shop in a third floor apartment. This was no store for little girls. Velvely catered to wealthy collectors, hobbyists and even Hollywood celebrities interested in rare and antique dolls from around the world. Ever the devoted husband, Mr. Dickinson handled the accounting until a long standing heart ailment finally took his life on March 29, 1943. Here's how the journalist Janet F.L. flanner described Velvelly's entrepreneurship in the July 1944 issue of Harper's Bazaar.
- [26:10]
Jason English
In her dealings with her doll loving ladies, Mrs. Dickinson seems remembered as grasping, but as one who sold no junk, sometimes she maybe cooked up a local color yarn to make a good doll sell better. Bonafide doll history being at best porous, such slight and attractive errata often raised the selling price. A New England collector remembers her for her thinness, her shrewdness, and the fact that he felt he couldn't trust her.
- [26:38]
Dana Schwartz
As the FBI launched its investigation into Velvely Dickinson in 1942, it all started to make sense. FBI historian John Fox we found out.
- [26:50]
Jason English
That a significant period in the 1930s, she had been involved in various business matters with a lot of Japanese, that she she was a member of a Japanese kind of cultural friendship club, that she knew some of the key Japanese diplomatic officials in the area.
- [27:09]
Dana Schwartz
Working at the California brokerage company in the mid-1930s, Dickinson had handled accounts for members of a Japanese community in the state's Imperial Valley region. She also became a member of the Japan American Family Society. Her dues to the society one year were paid by an attache of the Japanese consulate in San Francisco, where Dickinson had been a frequent visitor. The FBI additionally learned that Dickinson had attended prominent social gatherings in the company of Japanese naval and government officials. As Barbara Casey writes in her book Velvee the Doll Woman Speaking Spy Velvalee often dressed in authentic Japanese attire at these various occasions, and it had been reported that her name was in a book brought to the United States from Japan by a Japanese spy. Dickinson maintained her Japanese ties after moving to New York. The FBI confirmed she visited Japanese cultural institutions in the city. She'd also cultivated a friendship with the Japanese consul general and crossed paths with Ichiro Yokoyama, the Japanese naval attache in Washington, D.C. dickinson's occupation in the rare doll trade sometimes took her around the country for work. In the months after Pearl harbor, she had traveled to the Pacific coast with her husband retracing their steps, the FBI found that the couple had visited the areas from which the letters had been postmarked on the dates they'd been sent. Agents even located the hotels where Dickinson had stayed. An examination of the typewriters at these hotels. Showed they were the same typewriters that someone had used to compose the Buenos Aires letters.
- [29:07]
Jason English
We did a deep dive into her background. And that meant crossing the country and interviewing lots of people. And so this took time. Espionage is a hard case to make. And catching a spy red handed is often very important.
- [29:22]
Dana Schwartz
The FBI had to make sure its case was as ironclad as possible before making a move. They surveilled Dickinson for a year and a half. Maybe she was doing more than just writing coded letters about dolls. Maybe they could actually see her in the midst of a furtive microfilm handoff or an incriminating tete a tete. Or maybe they could at least identify accomplices willing to turn a dime. No dice. Dickinson, it seemed, was a lone wolf. Unless, of course, her husband was in on the act before he died. We'll come back to him a bit later. Still, the agents collected any and all evidence they could. Crucially, they got their hands on four $100 bills Dickinson had spent. And traced their provenance back to official Japanese sources.
- [30:17]
Jason English
In the course of the investigation, our surveillance of Dickinson becomes more regular and eventually more obvious.
- [30:25]
Dana Schwartz
Which brings us back to the afternoon of Friday, January 21, 1944.
- [30:32]
Jason English
Our agents follow her into a bank, and she, in the midst of getting a significant sum of Money, I think 15,000 or more dollars out of her safe deposit box, the FBI finally moves in. They had received the authorization from the U.S. attorney to make an arrest. At this point, it was time to stop the immediate investigation and bring this forward to the courts.
- [30:58]
Dana Schwartz
Like we said at the top, Dickinson didn't make things easy.
- [31:03]
Jason English
The reports of the day suggest that Dickinson went into a fit of rage, fighting with them to the point that the agents basically had to secure and handcuff her right there in the bank. And then take her, of course, to be arraigned.
- [31:18]
Dana Schwartz
Bank officials would later suggest that newspaper accounts of Dickinson's arrest were exaggerated. So we'll let you decide which version to believe. In either case, Dickinson was charged with violating wartime censorship laws. Weeks later, on February 11th, a federal grand jury indicted her for using a code and device to surreptitiously transmit information that was vital to our security and valuable to our enemies. As the FBI's New York chief put it in court. An assistant U.S. attorney told the judge, this woman is a member of the Japan Society and she has been associated with many persons high in the Japanese diplomatic service in this country, as well as with Japanese naval officers. The information contained in the letter is vital to the interests of the United States. Dickinson pleaded not guilty and was remanded on $25,000. Bailiff to the House of Detention for women on Greenwich Avenue and 10th Street. People who lived near Dickinson's shop on Madison Avenue couldn't believe it. Velvely, the petite, frail looking doll proprietor, a spy. You could have knocked me over with a feather, one neighbor said. The prosecution's case looked even stronger after FBI agents examined the over 15,000 thousand dollars seized from the Dickinson's safe deposit box. And by the way, that amounts to over $250,000 in 2024.
- [32:58]
Jason English
We would have taken the numbers of the bills and then traced them to see if we could figure out where they came from. Our investigation at least showed that some $13,000 of it could be traceable to Japanese sources.
- [33:12]
Dana Schwartz
Sources like, say, a captain stationed in the Japanese Naval Inspector's office in New York City. For Dickinson, the stakes were high. If convicted, she faced up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. But if the authorities expected her to be cooperative, they were sorely mistaken because Dickinson had a much different story to tell.
- [33:40]
Jason English
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Dana Schwartz
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- [35:17]
Dana Schwartz
Unlike the case of the Duquesne spy ring, the FBI hadn't actually caught Velvely Dickinson in the act. There was no concealed camera footage showing her passing off military secrets to a double agent, no sighting of her accepting cash from a Japanese official. But the circumstantial evidence was pretty damning, not least of all the $13,000 from her safe deposit box with the enemy's fingerprints all over it.
- [35:45]
Jason English
We, of course, questioned Dickinson about where she had gotten the money. And of course, in questioning her, a lot of her stories really didn't hold up.
- [35:54]
Dana Schwartz
First, Dickinson told the arresting agents that the money had come from insurance companies, a savings account, and her doll business. In a subsequent interrogation, Dickenson changed her tune. The money actually belonged to her late husband, she said, claiming to have found it hidden in the bed after he died. Velvalee couldn't be sure where the money had come from, but she believed it may have come from the Japanese consul in New York City. City. The FBI wasn't buying it.
- [36:27]
Jason English
She has been minimally cooperative in questioning, trying to basically pass off the messages and the money to her husband. And in turn, of course, the FBI sought to either confirm or deny each of her statements. And so, as our investigation continued, the circumstantial evidence against her grew.
- [36:51]
Dana Schwartz
In the grand scheme of things, you could argue that Dickinson's spy craft was small potatoes, dishing minor information about the repair of damaged naval ships in a handful of letters that hadn't even made it to their intended recipients. Surely the enemy had better spies on the ground than that. Or maybe not so much.
- [37:14]
Jason English
As far as the Japanese went, because most of their intelligence officers were Japanese nationals when we declared war in 1941 after the Pearl harbor attack, their ability to operate in the United States itself was minimal, and so their best bet were these few things. Like Dickinson trying to basically sneak out some key information to her intelligence contacts by the means that she used, the Japanese did not have an effective means of getting intelligence from the United States.
- [37:48]
Dana Schwartz
That's why it was so important for US Officials to bring Dickinson to justice. At first, the attorney general moved for a quick trial, but it kept getting pushed back. Dickinson, meanwhile, changed Lawyers. She was initially represented by Arthur Garfield Hayes, the famed civil liberties attorney. But his firm parted ways with Dickinson after just one week, and she ended up with counsel appointed by the court. The delays enabled the prosecution to strengthen its hand and turn up the pressure. On May 5, 1944, in a federal Manhattan courtroom, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, James McNally, approached the bench and said.
- [38:33]
Jason English
The original indictment against this woman charged that she sent but one letter to Argentina in violation of of censorship regulations. We now charge that she sent a number of letters to Argentina, some of them containing information concerning movements and repairs of battleships after Pearl Harbor.
- [38:52]
Dana Schwartz
We charge that she did this for.
- [38:54]
Jason English
Money received from Japanese agents.
- [38:57]
Dana Schwartz
This was a major development. Not only had Dickinson run afoul of the censorship statues, but she would also face trial for espionage, a capital offense that made her the first American woman to be so accused since the outbreak of World War II. According to the New York Daily News, which sensationally reported death looked across a federal courtroom at the dull woman of Madison Avenue. Dickinson, wearing a small black hat pinned with fake white flowers, appeared unmoved as the prosecution read aloud its lengthy indictment accusing her of selling out her country for cash. At one point, she raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn. Her plea remained unchanged. Not guilty. Who are all these people? She snarled as she was led away, motioning toward the FBI agents and reporters gathered in the courtroom. Dickinson's trial was now set for Monday, June 12. It got pushed back yet again to Monday, July 31. Government witnesses from the San Francisco Bay area began traveling to New York, including a former private secretary to the Japanese consul general. On July 28, three days before the proceedings were set to begin, Dickinson was back in court. Observers detected a noticeable change in her demeanor. The self assured defendant they'd laid eyes on a few weeks earlier was gone. In her place, they saw a timid little woman anxiously twisting a handkerchief behind her back. McNally, the U.S. attorney, stepped forward and surprised the courtroom with an unexpected turn of events. The doll woman wished to change her plea. One of Dickinson's court appointed lawyers piped up to confirm that his client had reached this decision independently. With the approval of her counsel. They'd reached a deal with the prosecution for Dickinson to accept the lesser censorship charge, which carried a maximum sentence of 10 years behind bars and a fine of up to $10,000. McNally explained his rationale for agreeing to take take espionage off the table.
- [41:23]
Jason English
The proof against the defendant was highly circumstantial in nature. In the absence of her confederates now in Japan. In my judgment, the defense to be offered by the defendant was to have been that the letters were written by her husband, lee, who died March 29.
- [41:41]
Dana Schwartz
1943, and that McNally told the judge would leave the jurors with enough room for reasonable doubt. As for Dickinson, what had prompted her 11th hour change of heart when the.
- [41:55]
Jason English
Government came back and indicted her for espionage? It actually put the idea of the death penalty on the case. Now, it's not clear that the government necessarily would have pursued that. Part of it would have had to, you know, if they linked some of that information to potential ship sinkings and things like this, this was the time of war, and she was trying to provide sensitive information to the people that we were at war with. And so this was considered a potentially capital crime. The severity of that certainly upped the ante, and I'm sure what leads to her eventually pleading to the lesser charge.
- [42:35]
Dana Schwartz
After pleading guilty, Dickinson finally admitted to FBI agents that she was at least partly behind the letters. Her methods were hardly very cloak and dagger. She'd simply gleaned information about the warships by chatting up unwitting citizens near the navy yards in Seattle and San Francisco. She claimed the instructions on coding the letters, as well as $25,000 in hundred dollar bills, had been passed to her husband by the Japanese naval attache, ichiro Yokoyama in November 1941. The handoff went down in her doll shop, she said, and Mr. Dickinson kept the money hidden in his bed until he died.
- [43:20]
Jason English
She still wants to kind of hold to that facet of it was my husband and plays into the censorship charge in that. If it was espionage, they would have had to show that she was doing this. They could show that she was in involved in this transmission of information and that she had sent the letters out. But she could still, in a sense, hold on to the fiction that this was her husband and not her.
- [43:46]
Dana Schwartz
The FBI's investigation, of course, suggested otherwise. The bureau found that Velvalee knew Yokoyama well, Whereas her husband didn't know him at all. A doctor for the ailing Mr. Dickinson claimed that his mental faculties were impaired at the time. Furthermore, Mr. Dickinson's nurse and the couple's maid Both emphatically denied that any money was hidden in his bed. Whatever the truth, you could argue that Dickinson got off easy. Here's what the judge said at her sentencing on August 14, 1944. It is hard to believe that some.
- [44:26]
Jason English
People do not realize that our nation.
- [44:28]
Dana Schwartz
Is engaged in a life and death struggle.
- [44:31]
Jason English
Any help given to the Enemy means the death of American boys who are fighting for our national security. You, as a natural born citizen, having a university education and selling out to.
- [44:43]
Dana Schwartz
The Japanese, was certainly engaged in espionage. I think that you have been given.
- [44:49]
Jason English
Every consideration by the government. The indictment to which you have pleaded.
- [44:53]
Dana Schwartz
Guilty is a serious matter.
- [44:55]
Jason English
It borders close to treason.
- [44:58]
Dana Schwartz
I therefore sentence you to the maximum penalty provided by the law, which is.
- [45:03]
Jason English
10 years and a $10,000 fine.
- [45:07]
Dana Schwartz
Velvee Dickinson was ordered to serve her time at the Federal Correctional Institution for Women at Alderton, West Virginia. There she crossed paths with Eunice Kennedy, who served as a social worker at the prison in 1950. The two women maintained a correspondence after Dickinson's conditional release on April 23, 1951, and Kennedy helped her find work as an administrative assistant. Velvelly was even reported to have attended Kennedy's marriage to Sergeant Shriver in 1953. After that, the historical record on Dickinson goes cold. It seems she more or less faded into obscurity until her death, which some sources pegged to the early 1960s and others as late as 1980. All these years later, the truth of Dickinson's motivations still evades us. In his 1967 book, Women who Spied, A.A. hoeling wondered if Dickinson had simply been driven by Queen, quote, a blind passion for a country other than one's own. Janet Flanner suggested two additional possibilities in her 1944 Harper's Bazaar profile.
- [46:26]
Jason English
The second motive for becoming a spy might have been Mr. Dickinson's failing health, a desperate reason for secretly earning extra monies in order to meet every costly medical emergency. But Mr. Dickinson was dying quite inexpensively of heart failure at home. The third reason for Mrs. Dickinson's having become interested as charged in espionage could have been venality. The Federal Bureau of investigation findings on Mrs. Dickinson led them to suppose that she sold her soul to Japan for sheer cold cash.
- [47:01]
Dana Schwartz
John Fox of the FBI thinks she could have been motivated by all of the above.
- [47:06]
Jason English
There seems to have been a connection to Japan, to Japanese culture and to the Japanese people, such that she seems to have been supporting it, at least through some sympathy for their cause. It's not known that she was a deep ideologue, though, in that sense. And so some of it could have been money. And as far as spies go, sympathy and some kind of financial remuneration often go hand in hand. Hand.
- [47:35]
Dana Schwartz
The Dahl spy affair was hardly the most significant FBI case during World War II. Sure, the intel in those letters would have been useful to the Japanese had they actually received it. But as far as intelligence goes, it was a drop in the bucket. Still, it reflected the growing ambitions, capabilities, and importance of America's domestic intelligence service at a key moment in its history. And quite frankly, it's just a really great yarn.
- [48:06]
Jason English
It's fascinating just because of some of the unique aspects of the case. I can't think of any other spy case where someone used a basically, you know, make do code based on antique dolls that make this unique and continue to give us something of interest to look at even today. All right, after each episode, we go to our resident casting director, Zarin, and ask, if we were to make a film version of this story, who would you cast?
- [48:39]
Dana Schwartz
Yeah, who's Velvely?
- [48:40]
Jason English
Yeah. I thought about this a bunch, and I was like, okay, I want a certain vibe. I want a certain, like, feel. And so then I started thinking about different actresses that could pull it off. And the two leading candidates. I came down to two was Diane Kruger from National Treasure and Inglourious Basterds. Yeah, right. I thought she could have that vibe where you would believe she was a doll maker, but also believe she was. I was like, okay. And then the other one was, if you wanted to go more of a fun route with it was Amy Adams. I just always like her in period pieces. This'll be her Oscar.
- [49:06]
Dana Schwartz
I was also thinking, Amy Adams, too. Yes.
- [49:09]
Jason English
I love that.
- [49:10]
Dana Schwartz
The whole time, I was like, amy Adams would kill this role.
- [49:13]
Jason English
I don't know if you can see that. I wrote Amy Adams as well. We got the trifecta.
- [49:18]
Dana Schwartz
Let's call her agent.
- [49:20]
Jason English
How about FBI historian John Fox? Do you have anyone for him? I was mulling over this one. I didn't come up with somebody that I absolutely loved for it, but I was debating, and then, like, I would say, because he's a historian, I tended to go a little academic with this, and I've done it before with these people. But I always really love Paul Giamatti as an academic, and so I just could see Paul Giamatti in the role. Look up a picture of FBI historian John Fox. I think you nailed it. You nailed it. Oh, really? Oh, nice. I did not. I did do blind. This is casting blind, so that's cool. Do you guys have any very special characters from this one? Because I definitely did.
- [49:57]
Dana Schwartz
I'm going to say one of the antique dolls. The antique doll in the window.
- [50:03]
Jason English
What about you, Jason? So Mary Wallace is the one who. Who had the letter to Argentina come back and then turned over the mysterious letter to her postmaster. So she's the one where I'm just thinking how creepy. A scam. Someone has mimicked your penmanship, written stuff that has some details that were in your life. And you just get this letter. You must think, am I going crazy here?
- [50:30]
Dana Schwartz
Yeah, totally. You fully would think you're going insane. It does feel. I don't mean to be like, this is a novel, but it's like there's always those, like the girl on the train, the girl on the airplane. Like, I feel like a novel about a woman getting letters that she doesn't remember writing, thinking she's going crazy. And then it turns out it was just part of an international spy conspiracy. Like, let's. Let's write this novel.
- [50:54]
Jason English
I think you should definitely keep that one in the back pocket because that one is just a genius idea. I love the idea of a woman, like, not necessarily the woman going crazy part, but that the letter writing is what's driving her insane. Like, is this me? Like, you have physical evidence in front of you?
- [51:06]
Dana Schwartz
Yeah.
- [51:07]
Jason English
For my very special character, I could not help but love Charles Bonaparte, son of Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon Bonaparte's grand nephew. Right. I even looked up this kid and I was like, is he somebody who I should like? And I was like, he was an Attorney General of US. Love that under tr but also he was nicknamed Charlie the Crook Chaser when he was like, before. Yeah, that was his nickname. And also he was a major activist for the rights of black people in Baltimore. This guy starts what would become the FBI. That just seems wild to me. So I was like, wow, the FBI really came a long way. Or I guess the opposite. My favorite Napoleon descendant story is Dana. I learned about this on Noble Blood. About. Is it just Joe?
- [51:43]
Dana Schwartz
Joseph, New Jersey Joe?
- [51:45]
Jason English
Yeah, New Jersey Joe. Just moved to New Jersey. Lived out of a good life here.
- [51:51]
Dana Schwartz
Yeah, it's a very fun. Because you're like, well, when Napoleon was overthrown, he had installed his brother as like, you know, a very prominent royal. But then Europe was like, get out. Anyone with the last name Bonaparte, get out of here. And so he just went to New Jersey.
- [52:08]
Jason English
Start fresh In New Jersey, Very special episodes is made by some very special people. Today's episode was written by Joe Pompeo. You might remember him from past episodes like the Great Gatsby one earlier this month, and the case of the missing novelist. Our show is hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zarin Burnett and Jason English. Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by Josh Fisher and Jonathan Washington. Mixing and mastering by Behead Fraser. Original Music by Elise McCoy Research and fact checking by Joe Pompeo and Austin Thompson Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla. Our Executive Producer is Jason English. If you'd like to email the show, you can reach us@veryspecialepisodesmail.com we'll be back next week with an episode set in North Korea. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart podcasts. Do you own a business that's ready to thrive? It's time to let Intuit QuickBooks take things like unpaid invoices and tracking expenses off your plate so you can take things to the next level. Intuit QuickBooks is an all in one business platform that can help with those day to day tasks like invoicing and expenses. Manage and grow your business all in one place. Intuit QuickBooks your way to Money Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc. Licensed as a money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
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Dana Schwartz
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