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<v Speaker 1>We're working back everybody. Today, we're talking about the butterfly

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<v Speaker 1>who wasn't inside the shape Pooh espionage affair, Beijing, nineteen

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<v Speaker 1>sixty four is where we begin our story. A young

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<v Speaker 1>French embassy employee named Bernard Bosco is at a party

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<v Speaker 1>when he meets a captivating opera performer. The singer's name

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<v Speaker 1>is Shee Pepe, who celebrated for playing female rules in

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<v Speaker 1>Peking opera, a tradition where male performers called Dan specialized

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<v Speaker 1>in portraying women on stage with such precision that audiences

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<v Speaker 1>forget they're watching a man. Borscou has drawn in immediately.

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<v Speaker 1>He believes from the very beginning that he's falling for

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<v Speaker 1>a woman, though that belief will hold for the next

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<v Speaker 1>twenty years and it will cost him almost everything. Let's

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<v Speaker 1>set the scene, because context matters in this story. China

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<v Speaker 1>in the mid nineteen sixties is a closed, watched, paranoid

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<v Speaker 1>country on the edge of the Cultural Revolution. Foreign diplomats

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<v Speaker 1>are followed Chinese citizens who associate with them or suspects

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<v Speaker 1>by default into that environment. Steps of relationship that on

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<v Speaker 1>its face looks like forbidden romance. A young frenchman and

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<v Speaker 1>a beautiful Chinese performer meeting secretly falling in love against

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<v Speaker 1>the backdrop of political upheaval. What Bosco didn't know was

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<v Speaker 1>that Chapei, who had, by his own leader admission, been

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<v Speaker 1>recruited by Chinese intel. The relationship was not incidental at all.

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<v Speaker 1>It was the vehicle for recruitment. And here's why the

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<v Speaker 1>psychology gets interesting and complicated. Where a purely spy thriller

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<v Speaker 1>framing starts to fall apart. Che The or Shai maintained

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<v Speaker 1>the illusion of being a woman with extraordinary level of consistency.

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<v Speaker 1>The two reportedly always had intimate encounters in darkness, where

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<v Speaker 1>Briscou attributed at the time to modesty, to cultural difference,

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<v Speaker 1>to a woman's shyness. It's worth city with how much

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<v Speaker 1>cognitive work that requires from both parties. She had to

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<v Speaker 1>perform a sustained performance, not just on stage but in

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<v Speaker 1>the most private, unguarded moments of a decade's long relationship,

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<v Speaker 1>and Moorscow had to hold for two decades an interpretive

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<v Speaker 1>frame that made every consistency explainable. That's not gullibility. That's

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<v Speaker 1>the machinery of motivated belief, the mind's tendency to protect

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<v Speaker 1>the story it has already invested heavily in the more

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<v Speaker 1>someone has already sacrificed for a belief, reputation, family relationships,

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<v Speaker 1>a stainable sense of self. The heart of the mind

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<v Speaker 1>works to preserve it, and Burscow had sacrificed plenty. He

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<v Speaker 1>took a hardship post of Mongolia and enduring brutal winters

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<v Speaker 1>over largely so he could keep visiting she in Beijing.

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<v Speaker 1>Over the course of the relationship, she even produced a child.

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<v Speaker 1>It bore. The couple raised on their as their biological son,

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<v Speaker 1>who she claim was conceived to what Burscou understood to

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<v Speaker 1>be an elaborate and secret of conception. It would later

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<v Speaker 1>come out to the child was not biologically theirs at all.

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<v Speaker 1>During these years, Briscoe passed classified embassy documents that she

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<v Speaker 1>documents that made their way to Chinese intelligence. This is

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<v Speaker 1>part of the story that moves it out of tabloid

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<v Speaker 1>territory into genuine national security issue. Whatever the emotional architecture

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<v Speaker 1>of the relationship, the practice tackle outcome was a foreign

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<v Speaker 1>diplomat compromise and turned into an unwinning intelligence asset through

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<v Speaker 1>what intelligence services call a honeypot operation. The deception finally

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<v Speaker 1>collapsed in the early eighties, when Bursuko and she had

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<v Speaker 1>both relocated to Paris and French counter intelligence began investigating

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<v Speaker 1>in a jail cell. At nineteen eighty three, in a

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<v Speaker 1>direct and unavoidable circumstances, she finally revealed the truth. There

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<v Speaker 1>was no wife, no mistress, no woman at all. Bursa

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<v Speaker 1>co described the moment as devastating, not just the revelation

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<v Speaker 1>of a lie, but the collapse of two decades. Both

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<v Speaker 1>men were charged with espionage and put on trial in

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<v Speaker 1>Paris in nineteen eighty six. The defense strategy leaned heavily

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<v Speaker 1>into portraying both defendants as psychologically unusual, rather than calculating

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<v Speaker 1>an early example of a courtroom trying to litigate the

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<v Speaker 1>murkiness of intention. The jury wasn't fully persuaded either way.

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<v Speaker 1>Both men were convicted in SEVENCE to six years well

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<v Speaker 1>then roughly a year though French President met Heran pardoned

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<v Speaker 1>Sheepei Pu, reportedly to avoid further diplomatic issues with China,

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<v Speaker 1>a decision that speaks volumes about how espionage cases get

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<v Speaker 1>quietly absorbed into larger, larger geopolitical calculations. The story might

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<v Speaker 1>have stayed a footnote in cold War intelligence history. If

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<v Speaker 1>it wasn't that For the playwright David Wang, who turned

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<v Speaker 1>out into m Butterfly, a Tony Award winning play later

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<v Speaker 1>adopted into a ninety sorry nineteen ninety three film. Hwang

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<v Speaker 1>used the bones of the real case, but built something

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<v Speaker 1>more symbolic, an exploration of Western fantasy, orientalism, and the

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<v Speaker 1>assumptions people make about gender and desire. It's worth noting

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<v Speaker 1>that the real Shay Pey Poo would offer to share royalties,

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<v Speaker 1>reportedly turned it down in favor of a much grander

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<v Speaker 1>and unrealized request a solo at Carnegie Hall that theatrical

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<v Speaker 1>instinct never really left him. Shay Pay Pooh died in

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<v Speaker 1>Paris nursing home in two thousand and nine. Bursa Co,

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<v Speaker 1>when reached for common, offered no sentiment, only a kind

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<v Speaker 1>of hard won relief that the story was finally over. Well,

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<v Speaker 1>this case, like most cases in the world of SPA

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<v Speaker 1>and ours, rarely closed. They linger as case studies and

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<v Speaker 1>how identity gets performed, and how intelligence service weaponized intimacy,

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<v Speaker 1>and how just friend mind will travel to protect the

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<v Speaker 1>story doesn't want to lose. That's different now, folks,