Original subtitles

Tonight on "Secrets Declassified"...

the ultimate masters of deception

who pulled off schemes so convincing,

they stayed hidden for decades.

From the FBI agent posing for six years

as mobster Donnie Brasco...

He's so deep undercover, he's the best man

at a Mafia wedding.

To one cop's unbelievable mission

to become a Black Klansman.

The idea of a Klan chapter in his city?

He ain't having it.

And the World War II weapon that's

disguised as a treat good enough to eat.

All you'd have to do is stick

a detonator into a loaf of bread,

you've turned a baguette into a bomb.

These are the astonishing

and sometimes terrible deceptions carried out

by governments and the people who work for them.

It's time to bring them to light.

Imagine taking a job for six months

and ending up living a double life for six years.

That's exactly what one FBI undercover agent does

to bring down one of New York's most feared crime families.

In the mid 1970s, five Mafia families

are locked in a battle for control

of New York's underworld.

This mob war creates an explosion of crime

in the greater New York area.

Murder, prostitution, drug dealing--

this has to be brought under control.

To take down organized crime,

the FBI needs informants.

But when it comes to the Mafia, nobody talks.

A Mafia family is an impenetrable fortress.

Its activities are shielded by a sacred code

of silence known as omerta.

Informers and their families

face threats of brutal retaliation.

With no one daring to rat,

the bureau takes a different tack.

The FBI decides to embed one agent in the Mafia's world

for six months, long enough, they hope,

to win the mobsters' trust and gather the intelligence

needed to begin breaking apart the mob.

This is the FBI's first long-term

undercover operation targeting the Mafia.

To pull it off, the bureau turns to Joe Pistone.

Pistone is a young but seasoned agent

with a unique set of qualities,

qualities that make him perfect for infiltrating the Mafia.

He's of Sicilian descent.

He speaks fluent Italian, and he grew up

in the blue collar neighborhoods of New Jersey.

Those are Mafia heartland, so he has an intimate

understanding of mob culture and its rules.

To enter the Mafia's world,

Pistone first creates a bulletproof cover story.

Pistone is reborn as Donnie Brasco,

a slick, small time jewel thief with a yellow Cadillac

and a bling fashion sense.

The FBI forms this new identity

with painstaking precision.

They give Pistone a fake driver's license

and a fake Social Security number.

Next, Pistone needs someone

who can get him an in with New York's Mafia,

so he spends night after night in the city's mob haunts

looking for an opening.

After weeks of work, he finally gets his break.

A contact introduces him to Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero,

a respected foot soldier in the Bonanno family.

Lefty could be Pistone's ticket

into the heart of this notorious crime family.

But to win this mafioso over, Pistone must convince him

he's the real deal.

The only way to gain Lefty's trust

is to help him commit mob crimes.

This means that Pistone has to hock stolen goods,

sell weapons, and collect on loans.

As an FBI agent, it's a constant balancing act.

He's permitted to get his hands dirty,

but they have two strict rules:

no violence, and he can never be the one to initiate a crime.

While the FBI keeps tabs from afar,

Pistone plays the aspiring mobster to perfection.

Finally, Lefty brings him into the Bonannos' inner circle,

and Pistone is plunged into New York's underworld.

Soon, Pistone is gathering a mountain of evidence

against dozens of Bonanno mobsters.

And the operation's going so well that,

when the six months are up, his supervisors decide

to extend it indefinitely.

But Pistone faces a problem

he never saw coming as the line between

his two identities begins to blur.

Pistone begins to develop genuine friendships

with Lefty and his crew.

He's so trusted by Lefty that Lefty invites him to be

the best man at his wedding.

That's one of the highest honors

in Sicilian Mafia culture, and here it is,

unknowingly being given to a cop.

He's constantly forced to confront

an impossible question.

Do his loyalties lie with his new friends or with his badge?

By 1981, Pistone has been living his life for six years.

He's so trusted, his mob associates want to make him

a fully initiated member of their world, a made man,

but that means one final test, committing cold-blooded murder.

The Bonanno family eventually asks Brasco

to carry out a hit as a means of proving

his loyalty to the family.

Undercover agents are granted some latitude

to break the law, but murder?

Firmly off limits.

The bureau has no option

but to pull Pistone out.

In July 1981, he boards a plane leaving New York,

and Donnie Brasco disappears forever.

One year later, a landmark trial begins.

The star witness? Pistone.

His explosive testimony helps dismantle

the Bonanno family and their rivals,

sending more than 120 mobsters to prison.

Among them is Lefty, who is sentenced

to 15 years for racketeering and conspiracy.

With so many foot soldiers behind bars,

the Bonanno family is decimated and left reeling

for more than a decade.

This is one of the most devastating blows

the American Mafia has ever suffered.

Four years after the trial, Pistone leaves the FBI

and finds himself needing a new way to make a living.

So he cashes in on his remarkable story

with a best selling book, laying bare how one cop

fooled New York's Mafia

into accepting him as one of their own.

Joe Pistone deceived the mob with the right clothes,

the perfect accent, and a watertight backstory.

Our next spy's undercover mission

hinges on an altogether more intimate detail--

not what's in his papers, but what's in his pants.

In the late 1950s, Egypt's President Nasser

is determined to turn his nation

into an unshakeable power in the Middle East.

One of the ways he wants to do this

is to launch an Egyptian ballistic missile program.

The problem is that he doesn't have the expertise

inside the country to be able to launch this program,

so he turns to German rocket engineers

who were actually part of the missile program

during World War II.

For Egypt's neighbor, the state of Israel,

the rocket program is a major red flag.

Israel is alarmed by the idea of the dictator

of an unfriendly country having long-range missiles.

If Egypt perfects these missiles,

they could strike Israel with no warning.

Israeli intelligence decides to send in a spy,

but that means finding a Jewish agent

who can befriend former Nazi scientists.

One man fits the bill.

Wolfgang Lotz is an Israeli spy who was born

in Germany to a Jewish mother.

He's blond-haired, blue-eyed, and speaks fluent German,

which makes him the perfect fit to go into Cairo

to cozy up to some German rocket engineers.

In December of 1960,

Mossad deploys Lotz to Egypt

armed with an extravagant cover.

Lotz's cover story is that he's a fabulously wealthy

ex-Nazi officer who has

an unquenchable thirst for champagne.

To find his marks, Lotz begins wining and dining

Egypt's high society.

Lotz is a fun guy. He's really good at parties.

He's great at cocktail conversations.

He quickly becomes the drinking buddy

of a lot of high-ranking Egyptian officers,

including, in particular, General Osman.

This is the very general who

oversees security for the rocket bases

that he's here to spy on.

Lotz's party is cut short

when Mossad sends an urgent report.

Israeli reconnaissance identifies what it believes

to be a rocket base in the desert east of Cairo

in a place called Shallufa.

They want to send Wolfgang Lotz in

to basically see whether or not this is an active base.

If it turns out to be the real deal,

Mossad will probably recommend that

the Israeli Air Force bomb the site.

Lotz heads into the desert to investigate.

He brings his wife along so they can pose as tourists

visiting a nearby lake.

At a crossroads, they identify a lone track

and a sentry box, no barriers, and a single guard.

And that one guard steps away for a bathroom break,

so the two of them jump on the accelerator

and charge down the track past the barrier.

This is a terrible idea.

They haven't thought through

the ramifications of what they're doing.

Lotz and his wife are intercepted by a Jeep load

of heavily armed Egyptian military troops.

Inside the base, the commanding officer

interrogates them.

Lotz makes up a tale about how they were trying

to find a place to picnic, and they just got lost,

so he tells the base commander to call his friend

General Osman to prove his identity.

A few minutes later, Lotz is chatting with Osman,

who even unknowingly teases him about his spy mission.

Osman has no idea how close to the truth he really is,

and the pair is set free.

But just as Lotz's operation is gaining momentum,

his plan falls apart.

Lotz has been secretly communicating with the Israelis

using a covert radio transmitter,

and the Egyptians pick up on his transmissions.

In February of 1965, Lotz and his wife

return home, and it's filled with Egyptian agents.

They find the radio transmitter.

Lotz knows at this point the game is up.

Lotz and his wife are accused of being Israeli spies.

The punishment for that is execution.

To save them both, this smooth-talking spy

must spin his greatest lie of all.

Lotz insists that he's a German patriot,

and he only agreed to spy for Israel

because he needed the money,

and they threatened to expose his SS background

if he refused.

The problem is,

Lotz's interrogators aren't convinced.

They press him with the same question over and over,

is he Jewish?

Luckily for Lotz, he has one ace left to play,

a bold move that could put their doubts to rest.

Lotz's father wasn't Jewish, and his Jewish mother

wasn't particularly religious, so he'd never been circumcised.

Lotz decides that his best form of evidence

is to pull down his pants.

Faced with this incontrovertible

physical evidence, his interrogators

finally buy his story.

Lotz is imprisoned for spying,

but he escapes execution.

Three years later, he's returned to Israel

in a prisoner exchange, yet the details of his mission

remain secret.

Then, in 1972, Lotz breaks his silence

by publishing an explosive memoir, "The Champagne Spy."

The book finally reveals how this silver-tongued spy

fooled Egypt's military by baring it all.

Stealing secrets is part of the spy game.

But what about stealing hearts?

When East German intelligence needs

to reel in new informants,

they settle on a ruthless solution:

building an entire army of catfish.

It's the 1950s. Germany is a divided nation.

Both sides are desperate to learn

information about the other.

Western intelligence agencies

can afford all kinds of sophisticated

electronic surveillance,

but East Germany's secret police, the Stasi,

don't have that kind of budget.

They rely on this vast network of informants.

The man tasked with recruiting this network

is Markus Wolf, the elusive head

of the Stasi's foreign intelligence unit.

Looking into Western Germany, he spots a potential goldmine.

He comes up with an idea to take advantage

of a situation that develops naturally

in both the East and the West after World War II--

there are more women than men.

Young women outnumber men about 2 to 1.

A whole bunch of women now hold jobs in government, parliament,

and intelligence services, and they have access

to tons of classified documents and confidential chatter,

just the kind of intelligence the Stasi is looking for.

Many of these women find themselves alone.

Sensing an opportunity, Wolf devises a plan

to target lonely hearts.

Markus Wolf decides to create an army of eligible men

who in reality are Stasi agents sent to court these women

and steal the government secrets they hold.

To ensure these women fall head over heels,

Wolf handpicks a special cadre of suitors.

He calls them his Romeos.

Wolf recruits men who aren't

stereotypical womanizers.

Instead, they're educated, well-mannered men

who can listen, empathize, and create genuine emotional bonds.

Only one in a hundred candidates make the cut.

Those who make it through are sent to what

is effectively a dating school for spies.

The Romeos are given meticulous instructions

on everything from how to wine and dine a partner

to the finer points of female anatomy.

Across three decades, Wolf molds around 80 Romeos.

one of them is a blond, blue-eyed physicist

named Rudolf Reck.

While Reck is undergoing training,

Stasi agents are building detailed profiles

of women who have access to high-value intelligence,

who could also be susceptible to Reck's charms.

Wolf's matchmakers soon set their sights

on a young West German woman named Gabriele Kliem.

Kliem is the ideal target because her job as a translator

with the U.S. embassy in Bonn puts her in a position

to get her hands on information

that is classified.

She's also 32, single, and she's told her friends

that she had this love affair with a blonde hair,

blue-eyed math teacher.

So the Stasi knows that Reck is her type.

Now Reck's entire mission rests on one question:

will she say yes to a date?

In July 1977, Kliem is sitting

on the banks of the Rhine when Reck approaches her.

He introduces himself as Frank Dietzel,

a Munich-based physicist who works

at a peace research institute.

Reck puts all of his newly acquired skills

to action and quickly sweeps Kliem right off her feet.

The plan works beautifully.

After three months of dating, he asks her to marry him.

And of course, she says yes.

Reck has wooed his target.

His next move is to build a relationship

where he holds all the power.

Reck claims to be away on business for long stretches

and insists that they only meet in hotels every few weeks.

The arrangement keeps her isolated and removed

from his real life.

He talks about their future life as a married couple,

having children.

But through all of this, he manages to keep

delaying the actual wedding.

Reck has been trained in psychological manipulation,

and he uses it to control Kliem.

She's terrified of losing him, so she feels obligated

to do whatever he asks for.

With Kliem firmly under Reck's thumb,

he moves to the final phase of his mission--

convincing her to bring him intelligence

he can take back behind the Iron Curtain.

Reck begins to insist that she prove her love for him

by photographing top secret documents

all for his supposed peace research.

She finally caves in,

and for years, she smuggles out top secret documents

from the U.S. embassy, including training programs

and plans for advanced weapons.

Unknown to her, Reck is funneling all this information

straight to East Berlin.

But Kliem can only take so much.

In August 1984, she breaks off the engagement.

Even then, her ordeal isn't over.

In 1991, Kliem is arrested for espionage.

It emerges that a Stasi defector has exposed

the Romeo operations, revealing Kliem's name and her role

in stealing documents from the embassy.

Kliem receives a suspended two-year sentence

and a heavy fine for espionage.

But she's not alone.

Over 40 victims of the Stasi's Romeo program

are prosecuted, with some jailed for years,

but the man behind it all evades justice.

For decades, Markus Wolf keeps his secrets

hidden from the West.

But in 1997, he publishes his memoir.

And in that, he pulls back the curtain

on the disturbing realities of his Romeo operations

for the very first time.

Wolf offers no apology.

He was running an intelligence service,

not a lonely hearts club.

In fact, he writes, "As long as there is espionage,

"there will be Romeos seducing unsuspecting Juliets

with access to secrets."

When one Jewish prisoner is forced

to help save the lives of Nazi troops,

he conspires to do the exact opposite

and spins a lie that will kill hundreds,

all from inside a concentration camp.

By 1942, German forces on the Eastern front

are being decimated by the Red Army,

by the brutal Russian winter, and also by an invisible enemy,

typhus.

Typhus is a bacterial infection

that is caused by lice.

And if it is left untreated, it will produce

a neurological decline and eventually death.

Under the grueling conditions of the Eastern front,

it is spreading like wildfire.

More than 40,000 German soldiers

have been struck down, and 4,000 have died

in just 12 months.

Hitler's generals need to find a way

to protect their troops fast.

Effective typhus vaccines already exist.

The problem is scale.

They can only produce 6,500 doses per month.

And yet, they have millions of people in uniform

who could be potentially exposed.

This is a major problem for their ability

to continue to wage war.

The SS decides to establish a large scale

vaccine production facility

inside the Buchenwald concentration camp,

where they can use forced labor to make

vast quantities of vaccine.

But untrained inmates

don't make great microbiologists.

They fail to produce even a single working dose

of typhus vaccine, let alone enough

to inoculate the entire German army,

so the Nazis seek out an expert they think

will solve the problem.

Dr. Ludwik Fleck is a renowned

Polish-Jewish microbiologist and immunologist.

He has developed typhus vaccines previously.

And convenient for the Germans,

he's already being held in the concentration camp

at Auschwitz.

Fleck is transferred to Buchenwald

and ordered to produce a working vaccine.

But this scientist has no intention

of helping Hitler's army.

Instead, he gambles his life on a truly audacious deception.

Fleck sees the opportunity

to convince the Nazis that he's producing

a working typhus vaccine,

but then mass produced a useless version

and send it out to thousands of Nazi troops on the front line.

German command is gonna believe their soldiers

have been vaccinated when, in reality,

they're just sitting ducks,

totally vulnerable to this disease.

This is no easy deception to pull off.

For Fleck's plan to work, he must produce two vaccines,

one real and one fake.

His first task, make the real one.

The inmates have been trying

to produce a vaccine by growing typhus bacteria in rabbits.

But Fleck realizes that what they're extracting

from the rabbits isn't typhus.

It's the animal's own white blood cells.

Fleck arranges for a fresh sample of typhus bacteria

to be sent from Krakow, one far better suited

to growing inside rabbits.

Using this, he infects the animals

and harvests their tissue, allowing him to cultivate

small batches of genuine, effective typhus vaccine.

When the Nazis test Fleck's jabs,

they pass with flying colors.

Now Fleck starts the second phase of his plan, sabotage.

He begins mass producing

a fake typhus vaccine destined for the front lines.

This is basically just water, blood, and preservatives.

It's completely useless.

Tens of thousands of doses of Fleck's fakes

are created and sent east.

Then he adds one final twist to his deception.

He returns to a secret stockpile of genuine serum

that he's put aside, and he marked it

with a little red dot.

In a truly heroic act,

he uses those vials to secretly vaccinate

the most vulnerable prisoners of the concentration camp,

likely saving countless lives.

But after months of pulling the wool

over the Germans' eyes, Fleck's plan

comes under dangerous scrutiny.

Reports begin filtering back from the front

that vaccinated troops are still falling ill.

Nazi command grows suspicious and demand proof

that Fleck's vaccine is effective.

Fleck argues that no vaccine can be foolproof,

and he submits small samples of the real vaccine for testing.

Appeased by these lab results,

the Nazi officials are satisfied,

and shipments of Fleck's fake vaccine resume.

Fleck's extraordinary deception only ends in 1945

when U.S. forces liberate Buchenwald.

A year later, at the Nuremberg trials,

Fleck and fellow inmates are called to testify

about the Nazis' medical experiments at the camp.

Here they make a shocking admission.

They reveal for the first time that they secretly sent

200,000 doses of fake typhus vaccine

to the German front line.

But the details of exactly how Fleck achieved

this incredible feat remain a mystery for nearly 70 years,

until author Arthur Allen publishes a book on Fleck

in 2015.

Drawing on survivor testimony and Fleck's own writings,

it's the first ever detailed account

of his heroic deception,

finally sharing Fleck's story with the world.

When one of America's most notorious organizations

moves into town, one detective wants to go undercover

to find out what they're up to.

There's just one problem:

they're the KKK,

and he's Black.

In October 1978, Detective Ron Stallworth

of the Colorado Springs Police Department

is combing through the newspaper

when a small classified ad catches his eye.

"Call this number to receive more information

"about joining the Colorado Springs chapter

of the Ku Klux Klan."

Stallworth is the only Black detective

on the Colorado Springs force.

And the idea of a Klan chapter getting a foothold in his city,

he ain't having it.

Stallworth knows exactly

what the Klan is capable of.

A decade earlier, the KKK murdered three civil rights

activists in Mississippi.

Determined to find out what they're up to

in Colorado Springs,

he takes a chance and pens a reply.

The letter that Stallworth writes

is a work of fiction.

He's filling it with all kinds of references

to wanting to further the cause of the white race.

But when he finishes the letter,

he actually signs his own real name

and provides a phone number.

He assumes that he's just gonna receive some pamphlets

in the mail or something.

A week later, the phone rings.

The man on the other end of the line

is Ken O'Dell, the local chapter organizer for the KKK.

O'Dell explains that he's looking

to recruit new members.

He says to Stallworth,

hey, you sound like a great guy,

but before we can admit you,

we have to meet you face to face.

Secretly joining the KKK

would be the perfect way to uncover any criminal activity.

But while Ron can play a convincing white supremacist

over the phone, he can't in real life.

Stallworth's solution is to recruit

a white colleague to impersonate him at the meeting.

He turns to a friend named Chuck,

an undercover Narcotics officer,

and explains the situation he's got himself into.

Once Chuck stops laughing, he agrees to help.

A new undercover operation begins to take shape,

one unlike any other in the FBI's history.

Chuck will become Ron's physical stand-in

attending the in-person meetings.

Stallworth takes the lead on all things communication

and administrative, so he's the one

handling the phone calls.

He's the one sending the correspondence.

And two cops playing a single alter ego

will require impeccable coordination to pull off.

Their stories, their opinions, their emotions

all need to be consistent to make sure

that nobody suspects that Ron is really two different people.

On November 9, 1978,

they face their first big test,

their debut meet with local Klan boss Ken O'Dell.

Stallworth acts as surveillance outside

while Chuck goes into a local dive bar

to carry out the meeting.

Chuck anxiously studies O'Dell

for any signs that he's been had.

But it becomes clear, O'Dell and his buddies

don't suspect a thing.

Chuck does so well that O'Dell actually

starts to volunteer that local military personnel

are also signing up secretly for the KKK.

By the end of the night,

Ron and Chuck get what they came for.

O'Dell hands Chuck a membership application

along with instructions for paying the $10 entry fee.

Stallworth becomes the first known Black man

to apply to the KKK.

He and Chuck have infiltrated one of America's most

secretive extremist organizations,

but their incredible double act doesn't stop there.

Over several months, Stallworth and Chuck

both play Ron and gather detailed intel

on the Klan's activities and its members.

Their intelligence helps to prevent multiple cross burnings

and even foils a neo-Nazi bomb plot.

Their biggest coup uncovers

just how far the Klan's secretive reach extends.

One morning, two officers

from the Air Force Office of Special Investigation,

the FBI equivalent for the Air Force,

show up unannounced at Stallworth's desk.

They've heard about the investigation,

and they wanna know whether any U.S. military officers

have joined the KKK.

Ron's immediately escorted to a secure base

for a briefing with a colonel.

The colonel asks Ron for a list of every KKK member

he's managed to unmask over the course

of his investigation.

The colonel reviews Stallworth's list

and makes a chilling discovery.

Two of the Klan members are high-ranking officers

with top secret clearance.

These two men had secrets

to American air defense systems

that protect all of North America.

There's no telling how much information

they've given the KKK.

The colonel takes immediate action.

Within minutes,

the colonel is on the phone to the Pentagon,

and the men are quietly reassigned

to the military equivalent of Siberia.

Stallworth and Chuck's undercover investigation

continues into April 1979, when their own success

becomes their downfall.

Stallworth and Chuck have impersonated a local KKK member

so well that a fellow Klansman has

actually nominated Ron to be the new leader

of their chapter.

Now, Stallworth wants to continue the investigation,

but his bosses are terrified of the potential scandal

that could erupt if word got out

that a Black cop was leading the local KKK,

so they pull the plug.

For decades, the details of their operation

stay hidden.

Then, in 2006, after retiring from the force,

Stallworth speaks to a local reporter about his career,

giving "Deseret News" an unexpected scoop.

His extraordinary story eventually

catches Hollywood's attention and inspires

the film "BlacKkKlansman."

Not all masters of deception disguise themselves.

Sometimes it's a weapon that goes undercover.

When America wants to secretly arm

resistance fighters battling Japan,

it creates an edible explosive.

In early 1941, even though the United States

has not yet entered World War II,

it's already working secretly to undermine

Japan's war effort in China.

The United States is sending a large quantity

of high explosive that the Chinese desperately

need to continue fighting.

But in December, the covert supply route

being used by American agents is cut off.

Japan seizes both Hong Kong and Burma,

two critical corridors through which the American

supply network operates.

The U.S. has to come up with another way

to slip explosives to the Chinese resistance.

That means smuggling the explosives

through Chinese ports now under Japanese control.

So the Office of Strategic Services,

America's first intelligence agency,

decides it needs a disguise.

And they find inspiration in an unlikely place.

Chinese ports handle hundreds of tons

of ordinary flour every day.

And a lot of explosives are odorless and tasteless

and pretty much look like flour.

The OSS comes up with this idea of,

why don't we create something that

is both flour that you can actually cook with,

but it is also an explosive.

This mission to cook up

this remarkable edible disguise

is codenamed "Aunt Jemima".

But to perfect the recipe,

the OSS needs a real wiz in the kitchen.

Enter George Bogdan Kistiakowsky.

Kistiakowsky is a Ukrainian-born

Harvard chemistry professor and the chief explosives

expert for America's wartime science agency.

Now, his first task is to find an explosive compound

that can convincingly pass as flour.

He starts with RDX, a white crystalline powder

about one and half times more powerful than TNT,

and closely resembles flour,

though slightly coarser in texture.

This explosive can visually

pass for flour at the border.

The problem is, its cover will be blown

the moment any suspicious guard puts it in an oven.

Any baker knows that the best bread is cooked at

around 430 degrees Fahrenheit, but RDX ignites

at around 390 degrees Fahrenheit.

Meaning that if you attempt to turn it

into a muffin or a loaf, it could end

in a very explosive kitchen nightmare.

Kistiakowsky pivots to a different explosive.

This one's called HMX.

Crucially, its ignition temperature

is a far safer 530 degrees Fahrenheit.

In the kitchen, Kistiakowsky experiments

with this new explosive, working out how to mix it

with flour to cook up authentic baked goods.

He settles on a blend made of 80% explosive

and 20% real flour.

When you mix this with ordinary baking ingredients

like eggs and milk, a dough can be made

and baked into muffins, cookies, or loaves

that look completely real.

After baking, Kistiakowsky's treats

will still pack a punch.

All you'd have to do is stick a detonator

into a loaf of bread, and no joke,

you've turned a baguette into a bomb.

Now the OSS must make sure

whatever it cooks up tastes as good as it looks.

If, hypothetically, a smuggler gets stopped

and questioned, they may have to eat

whatever they bake to prove that it is what they say it is.

The problem is that Kistiakowsky's HMX mixture

in anything more than small quantities is toxic.

Any smuggler forced to eat an entire muffin

would fall violently ill, an immediate giveaway

that this is no ordinary flour.

Kistiakowsky bakes batch after batch of explosives

until he finally cracks it: a mixture that's safe to eat,

powerfully explosive, and convincingly delicious.

To prove it, he stages an unforgettable demonstration.

Kistiakowsky goes to

a high-level war department meeting

and brings with him a batch of his very own

home baked "Aunt Jemima" cookies.

Right in front of the military's top brass,

he decides to put his own life in his hands.

He takes a cookie, and he eats it.

Then he reaches for another one.

And he goes through the whole tray,

finishing every last crumb.

It's the ultimate demonstration

that this delicious covert weapon

is finally ready to be served.

The U.S. packs the explosive

into replica Chinese flour sacks

then sends them on their way.

They are delivered into the hands of the resistance.

And although many of its uses remain cloaked

in classified information, it is known that Aunt Jemima

is used to knock out a critically important bridge

being used by the Japanese military.

For decades, the tale of Aunt Jemima

is whispered about only in intelligence circles.

Then, in 1963, Stanley Lovell,

the former head of OSS Research and Development,

shares the secret with the world

when he publishes the first insider account

of the OSS's technical branch,

laying out the astonishing story

of World War II's most explosive kitchen staple.

Desperate times demand daring deceptions.

In 1941, when one American singer

wants to save her husband from the horrors

of a Japanese internment camp,

she deceives hundreds of enemy troops

and puts on the performance of a lifetime.

On December 8, 1941,

the Japanese begin an amphibious landing operation

on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

These islands host key U.S. military bases,

and Tokyo is determined to stop them

from becoming a launchpad for future American counterattacks

in the Pacific.

U.S. forces beat a hasty retreat

out of the capital, Manila.

Fleeing with them is a young American couple in love,

Claire and John Phillips.

Claire is a singer from Michigan

who's been performing in the Philippines

for the last two years.

John is a young and handsome sergeant

that she met while working there.

Despite the war, Claire and John marry,

tying the knot in a makeshift chapel.

But these newlyweds are torn apart

when John is sent to the front line.

Five months later, Claire gets the news she's been dreading.

Claire learns that John has been captured

by Japanese forces and sent to a prison camp

called Cabanatuan, roughly 60 miles North of Manila.

This is one of the most infamous prisoner-of-war camps

in the Philippine Islands.

Meals are mainly basic rations of rice.

Sanitation is all but nonexistent,

and dysentery and malaria are everywhere.

The thought of her husband suffering

is unbearable, so Claire dreams up an audacious scheme

to help him survive, one that will call on all her skills

as a performer.

Claire's idea is to open a high-end nightclub

in the heart of Manila that she'll run and star in.

She'll pack it with paying Japanese officers

and use the profits to help her husband and other POWs

by smuggling money and medical supplies into the camps.

Claire's grand plan has just one problem.

She's an all-American girl.

To run the hottest nightspot in Manila,

she needs an entirely new identity.

So Claire Phillips disappears

and Dorothy Fuentes, a Filipino-Italian showstopper,

steps into the spotlight.

Dorothy's persona is perfect for Claire.

Claire is already an accomplished performer,

and although she doesn't speak Italian,

she knows most Japanese troops won't either.

She persuades someone who used to work

in the Italian embassy to cook up some fake documents

to support the Dorothy Fuentes cover story.

Now Claire gets to work opening

the best cabaret in town.

She pawns her jewelry, including her wedding ring,

and pours every dollar she has into leasing

a modest dance studio.

Then, she painstakingly transforms it

into one of the city's most glamorous nightspots.

To appeal to Japanese clientele,

she names it Club Tsubaki,

named after a delicate Japanese flower.

On October 15, 1942, Club Tsubaki

finally opens its doors.

Japanese officers are treated to dazzling dance routines

and very overpriced drinks.

The liquor's flowing.

The music is hot.

And at 10:00 p.m. on opening night,

they're already turning away customers.

Her grand opening is the talk of the town.

But before Claire can funnel any profits to help John,

her world is turned upside down.

Claire receives word that John caught malaria

and has died at Cabanatuan.

Claire is devastated by the news,

but she realizes that while she couldn't save John,

she can press on to help other prisoners.

Driven by Claire's grief,

Club Tsubaki is soon raking in thousands of dollars a week.

Now Claire needs to get this money and the aid it can buy

to the prisoners inside Cabanatuan.

She links up with a Filipino allied guerrilla network,

and they quickly devise an ingenious way

to slip goods past the guards.

They have sweet-faced young women

pose as street vendors, and they sell bags of fruit

to prisoners on work detail for just a few centavos.

The bags look completely innocent,

but inside are hollowed-out bananas stuffed with medicine

or secret messages, while some bags have false bottoms

that hide hundreds of pesos.

Soon, Claire is funneling the equivalent

of $20,000 U.S. a week into the camps,

money that's used to buy vital rations

at the camp's commissary.

Thanks to Club Tsubaki, countless lives are saved.

But after almost two years, the curtain finally

comes down on Claire's daring act.

In early 1944, incriminating resistance letters

are discovered inside Cabanatuan

that point directly to Claire.

Soon after, armed policemen storm the club

and Claire is arrested.

Japanese military police subject Claire

to weeks of brutal interrogation and torture.

She displays incredible resolve,

refusing to reveal the names of co-conspirators

who could be targeted and keeps the details

of her operation completely hidden.

In November 1944,

Claire is tried in a military court

and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Clare endures brutal conditions.

She's starved and forced to do hard labor.

Her weight drops to a mere 85 pounds,

leaving her on the brink of death.

Her rescue comes in the nick of time

when, in February 1945, U.S. troops retake Manila.

Two years later, she shares her story with the world

in a sensational memoir.

Shortly after, the United States government

awards the singer-turned-spy the Medal of Freedom

for her truly heroic wartime deception.

From a fake mafioso to a Black cop posing as a Klansman,

true masters of deception can pull the wool

over anyone's eyes.

But no lie lasts forever,

and even the greatest impostors get unmasked in the end.