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A

0:39

couple of months ago, I found myself watching

0:41

an old interview from The Late Show with

0:44

David Letterman. Ladies and gentlemen, this is

0:46

his first time with us. Please welcome Peter

0:48

Falk. Peter!

0:51

As the actor Peter Falk loped

0:53

onto the stage, his gray hair standing

0:56

out against his black leather jacket.

0:57

The audience greeted him with

1:00

a roar. They

1:02

love you. That

1:07

must make you feel very, very nice. By

1:10

this point in his career, Falk had played

1:12

almost a hundred different roles, but he

1:14

was beloved for one in particular.

1:16

I'm just another cop.

1:19

My name is Columbo. I'm a lieutenant. Lieutenant

1:22

Columbo, who has no first name, was

1:24

the star of the smash detective series

1:26

Colombo, which aired on and off

1:28

for 30 years, beginning in the 1970s. In

1:32

every episode, the brilliant yet unassuming

1:34

Colombo doggedly pursued high-class

1:37

murderers while wearing a scruffy brown raincoat,

1:40

chomping on a cigar, and absentmindedly

1:42

mentioning his wife. Now,

1:44

the worst cook in the world, but

1:46

there's one thing I do terrific, and that's an

1:48

omelet. Even my wife admits it.

1:51

And just when his investigation seemed

1:53

to have hit a dead end, he'd

1:55

circle back to ask. Oh, listen,

1:57

just one more thing. I

1:59

want One more thing, sir. Listen, one more thing.

2:02

It'll just take a second. The

2:04

show also had a very particular

2:07

structure. Well, in a manner of speaking,

2:10

this isn't really a whodunit. It's more

2:12

of a how we hit it. Each

2:15

episode begins with the murder. The

2:18

audience sees the crime, sees

2:20

who the killer is and how they kill

2:22

before Columbo even appears

2:25

on screen. Then the audience

2:28

gets to watch Columbo engage

2:30

in a battle of wits with the murderer, who

2:32

underestimates the schlumpy lieutenant,

2:34

until it's too late.

2:37

You're very lucky, Lieutenant. No.

2:42

Congratulations, you're very smart.

2:46

The pleasure of the show isn't nerve-wracking

2:49

suspense. It's the satisfaction

2:51

of watching Columbo unravel

2:54

the mystery. a satisfaction

2:56

that has helped make the show a hit all

2:58

over the world.

3:01

It's very, very popular in

3:03

Romania. In Romania. This is

3:06

Falk on Letterman again. He's sitting in one of

3:08

those big late night armchairs and

3:10

he takes a sip from a coffee mug and

3:12

launches into a story.

3:13

As a matter of fact, about 10 years ago,

3:16

I got a call from the State Department and a guy

3:18

called me up and he says, we got a problem in Romania,

3:20

maybe you can help us.

3:23

—Faulk was chatting with Letterman in March of 1995,

3:25

10 years prior was during the Cold War,

3:29

when Romania was under the control of a particularly

3:32

cruel and autocratic communist dictator.

3:35

Faulk tells Letterman he was asked to meet

3:37

two men from the State Department and one

3:40

from the Romanian embassy, maybe even

3:42

the ambassador himself, at a hotel

3:45

room in Los Angeles. There,

3:47

they explained that the Romanian government

3:49

had aired every episode of Colombo

3:52

available.

3:52

Okay, so what's the problem? He

3:55

said the problem is that

3:57

the people don't believe the government.

3:59

They told that the Romanian people

4:01

were clamoring for more Colombo, and

4:04

they believed the communist government

4:06

had it, that

4:07

they were sitting on a pile of fresh

4:09

episodes, keeping those episodes

4:11

from them the way it withheld

4:14

so many other things.

4:16

And they were mad, and Romanian

4:19

officials were worried. So

4:22

what do you want me to do? He said, we

4:24

got a camera here. Would

4:27

you talk to the people we got, we got phonetic Romanian

4:30

here. And

4:33

I gotta tell the people, I gotta tell the people, put

4:35

down your guns. They

4:38

were

4:38

arming themselves over this? My God!

4:41

It was that severe. Yes, I guess so.

4:44

Why would the Romanian ambassador come

4:46

here today? Faulcon Letterman

4:48

bantered a bit more

4:49

until Letterman seemed ready to move on. That's

4:52

good. We want to... Is that a good story? It's

4:54

an excellent story. And

4:58

it is an excellent story. But

5:00

listening to it, I couldn't help wondering, is

5:03

it true?

5:13

This is Dakota Ring. I'm Willa Paskin.

5:16

When I first saw Peter Fox interview with

5:18

David Letterman after it went viral

5:20

not so long ago, I had to

5:23

know more. Did Colombo

5:25

and Romania really have a special

5:27

relationship? Could a fictional American

5:30

detective really have helped calm

5:32

a communist revolt? Had

5:34

Falk actually recorded this

5:37

message? And if so, why?

5:39

And how? Or was this whole

5:41

story too good

5:42

to be true? I

5:45

couldn't find the recording in any of the usual

5:47

easy places, so I donned the proverbial

5:49

raincoat and started sleuthing. At

5:52

which point, Falk's late-night anecdote

5:54

cracked open into an intricate geopolitical

5:56

saga that stretches from DC

5:59

to Bucharest. from a Los Angeles hotel

6:01

room to the palatial estate of a despot.

6:04

It's a story that involves dueling ideologies,

6:06

dozens of diplomats, and millions

6:08

of viewers. It's an honest-to-goodness

6:11

Cold War caper about American soft

6:13

power behind the iron curtain,

6:16

and it's so involved it's going to take us two

6:18

episodes to solve. So

6:20

today on Decodering, the first

6:23

half of a very cold case, did

6:26

Peter Fox appearance on Romanian

6:28

television? actually happen.

6:52

It's time to reboot

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So

7:44

let's go with this whole I'm a detective

7:46

thing for a minute. I wanted

7:49

to start with the basics. What

7:51

was the deal with Columbo anyway? You

7:53

know, Colombo,

7:54

you're almost likeable

7:56

in a shabby sort of way. Maybe

7:59

it's the way... Come slouching in here

8:01

with your shop-horned bag of tricks.

8:05

Me? Tricks?

8:08

Peter Falk was born in 1927 to

8:11

Jewish parents who were themselves the children

8:13

of Eastern European immigrants. At

8:15

just three, he had his cancerous right eye

8:17

removed, and he wore a prosthetic from then on,

8:20

one that gave him a perpetual squint.

8:23

The key to

8:23

it is when you realize you can get a laugh with

8:26

it. This is Falk later in life, talking to

8:28

the hosts of The View. By the time

8:30

I was in high school, that's a true story. I

8:34

was playing baseball, the umpire called me out,

8:36

it was a bad call, everybody saw it. And

8:40

I whipped out the eye and I handed it

8:43

to the umpire. I

8:45

said, try this one.

8:46

Falk broke

8:48

out in 1960 in an Academy

8:51

Award-nominated dramatic role as a bloodthirsty

8:53

gangster, but he could always

8:56

do comedy. He

8:57

has that unique, lackadaisical comic

8:59

timing, the way he can't be rushed,

9:02

the way he moseys through his sentences

9:04

and comes back around when you least expect

9:07

it.

9:08

You know exactly the comic timing

9:10

of Columbo. He has many

9:12

of the same idiosyncratic

9:14

characteristics of the cop.

9:17

He's rather sloppy, he's forgetful.

9:20

William Link was the co-creator of Columbo,

9:22

and he's heard here giving an oral history to the

9:24

Television Academy. But in his

9:26

acting, he's obsessed. I

9:29

mean, he's really dead onto

9:31

it in a very humble, self-effacing

9:35

kind of way. It's Falk. So

9:38

he had that to draw on, that

9:41

whole well of personality quirks

9:43

to bring to that cup. When

9:46

Falk was cast as Columbo, the character

9:49

had actually been kicking around for a while, appearing

9:51

in a stage play and a TV movie. But

9:54

as soon as Falk got the role, he made

9:56

it his own. Colombo's signature

9:58

brown raincoat even came from Fox's

10:01

own closet. Fox and

10:03

the raincoat debuted as Columbo in the 1968

10:06

NBC TV movie, Prescription

10:08

Murder, about a psychiatrist trying to get

10:10

away with killing his wife.

10:12

Come on, buddy, you are magnificent.

10:15

You really are. What

10:17

makes you say that, Doc? You're the most persistent

10:20

creature I've ever met. An

10:22

11-year-old named Mark DeWidziak was watching.

10:25

I was just getting into mysteries, and my idea of mystery

10:27

was that, well, of the detective,

10:30

you follow Sherlock Holmes, you follow the clues,

10:33

and eventually you reach the

10:35

point where the detective says, and

10:37

the murderer is. And this starts

10:40

with you knowing who the murderer is.

10:42

Marc is talking about Columbo's structure

10:44

again. Unlike most mysteries, Columbo

10:46

unfolds in chronological order.

10:49

The details of the murder are right

10:51

there at the beginning of the story,

10:53

instead of being saved for the climactic

10:56

end. to an 11-year-old, that

10:58

just took the top of my head off. Mark

11:00

liked what he saw so much that when he grew

11:02

up, he became a TV critic and the author

11:05

of The Colombo File, spelled P-H-I-L-E,

11:09

a book about the series. But as

11:11

a kid, he'd have to wait to see more of it.

11:14

Prescription Murder was just a one-off, a TV

11:16

movie. It wasn't until three years

11:18

later that NBC decided to turn Colombo

11:20

into a regular event. And

11:22

even then, they couldn't make it weekly.

11:25

What kind of movie career to think about? So

11:27

what do we do? That's where they

11:30

come up with the whole idea of the mystery movie.

11:32

It's not going to air every week. It's going to air every

11:35

four weeks. It'll rotate with

11:37

three other detective characters. We don't have

11:39

to do 22 episodes. We can

11:41

do seven or eight episodes a year. Colombo

11:45

premiered in September of 1971 on a Wednesday night. I

11:49

kind of knew it right from the start. There's

11:52

nothing definite. It's a lot of little things

11:56

Little things.

11:57

The episode was directed by a very young Steven

12:00

Spielberg. Immediately it was

12:02

a smash, a water cooler show

12:05

that people were talking about. Audiences

12:07

watched in droves.

12:09

Well it's terrific to win.

12:13

It won Emmys. I'm trying to figure

12:15

out some way to look you're humble. Falk

12:20

became the highest-paid TV actor in

12:22

Hollywood. Celebrities lined up to

12:24

play murderers. Faye Dunaway,

12:26

Dick Van Dyke and Johnny Cash all

12:28

played killers on the show. William

12:31

Shatner did it twice. Simultaneously,

12:34

Universal, the entertainment company that owned

12:37

and distributed Columbo, began to license

12:39

the show around the world. As

12:41

Johnny Carson noted to Peter Falk in 1973. Your

12:44

show is in Japan and a lot of the foreign

12:47

countries. You ever seen it in Japanese or anything? I've

12:49

never seen it in another tongue, Johnny.

12:50

The series would ultimately air in

12:53

over 40 countries and Falk would come

12:55

to revel in stories of its global

12:57

success. There was one about the the Italian

13:00

director Federico Fellini leaving dinner

13:02

parties early to watch Colombo. One

13:04

about the Emperor of Japan asking

13:06

if Colombo can meet him at the White House. One

13:09

about Falk being recognized while filming movies

13:11

high up in the Andes Mountains and on the

13:14

bombed-out streets of West Berlin. Mark

13:16

Dewidziak heard all of these anecdotes

13:18

from Falk firsthand when he was

13:20

writing his book.

13:22

Peter loved telling stories and Peter loved

13:24

telling his favorite stories. He got so tickled.

13:27

His favorite story was Romania.

13:31

Romania sits on the eastern edge of Europe,

13:33

bordered by five different countries and

13:35

the Black Sea. It is a population of around 19

13:38

million, most of whom speak Romanian,

13:40

a romance language similar to Italian.

13:43

The most famous Romanians outside

13:45

of Romania are the absurdist playwright

13:48

Eugenio Nesco, the gold medal winning

13:50

gymnast Nadia Comonici and Dracula.

13:53

Transylvania is now a part of

13:55

Romania.

13:57

Mark DeWidzeyax's fault told him his

13:59

Romania story. during their very first sit-down

14:01

around 1986.

14:04

I did the interview in his art studio,

14:07

which is actually his garage at his Beverly Hills

14:09

house. He had converted into a sort

14:11

of an art studio man cave. This is

14:13

what you know, what's said to me that night. He

14:16

said, the Romanian government called

14:18

the American ambassador and they had a meeting.

14:19

It's similar to the version Focke told

14:22

on Letterman. So I end up in

14:24

a hotel room at one in the morning. Though

14:26

not identical. They've got a

14:28

camera set up and I'm speaking Romanian

14:31

phonetically.

14:32

And I say, put down your guns,

14:35

be patient. Your government

14:37

is not responsible. If Peter's stories

14:39

were truthful, but were they

14:41

embellished? Was it one in the morning? I

14:44

don't know.

14:45

What stands out

14:47

as embellished to me isn't the

14:49

time of night it happened, though

14:52

it changes where it happened,

14:54

though the hotel changes or who was

14:56

there when it happened. Though

14:59

that changes too. It's how

15:01

dramatic the whole thing was. It's

15:03

hard to believe Romanians were really up

15:05

in arms about Colombo. But let's imagine

15:08

for a minute they were. Why

15:10

would Peter Falk be telling them to stand

15:12

down? Wasn't this the Cold

15:15

War? In his 2006 memoir,

15:17

Just One More Thing, Falk tells

15:19

an even more detailed version of the

15:22

In it, he says the Romanian ambassador

15:24

himself asked Foc to say

15:27

on film about the Romanian communist

15:30

regime, I'm here to

15:32

tell you that you should trust your government.

15:35

It tells you the truth. Believe

15:38

me when I say that.

15:41

And then Foc writes that after

15:43

some initial hesitation, but

15:45

with US State Department officials

15:48

in the room, he did. It's

15:52

all so preposterous and far-fetched

15:54

it's hard to believe, if

15:57

not for the next

15:58

clue.

16:00

We'll be right back.

16:11

It's time to reboot your credit card with

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If you want to see first-hand what

16:58

made Colombo such a smash in Romania,

17:00

then you should check out 24 Hours of Colombo

17:03

on Sundance TV. It's a marathon

17:05

featuring the best episodes, one of the greatest

17:07

detective shows in history. There's a reason

17:09

Peter Falk won four Emmys playing Colombo,

17:12

and you'll see why as you watch him take on a murderer's

17:15

row of guest star criminals, including Johnny

17:17

Cash, Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh. We

17:20

discover one of the most iconic television

17:22

detectives of all time with Sundance

17:24

TV's 24 hours of Colombo

17:26

marathon, all day Sunday,

17:28

April 16th. And every week

17:30

you can crack cases with all your favorite crime

17:32

dramas, Monday through Friday on Sundance

17:35

TV.

17:42

I mentioned earlier that Peter Falk's interview

17:44

with David Letterman went viral. It

17:46

did that back in June of 2021, thanks to Radu Tikhinash.

17:50

Like many other Romanians,

17:52

I did grow up watching a lot of Colombo and I

17:55

was a big Colombo fan. Rado grew

17:57

up watching the show in Romania during the 1990s.

18:00

But during the pandemic, at home

18:02

in Bucharest, Romania's capital, he

18:04

found himself watching the show again. He wasn't alone in this.

18:08

Lockdown turned the cozy, well-crafted

18:10

Columbo into a sleeper hit. He

18:12

wanted to learn more about the show, and

18:14

so he started poking around online.

18:16

There's basically three or four videos about

18:19

Columbo on YouTube as far as I could see.

18:22

Radu is a freelance writer and video editor,

18:24

so he decided to make a Columbo video

18:26

of his own. He wanted to explore an unsourced

18:28

anecdote anecdote he'd read years earlier

18:31

about how Peter Falk had once

18:34

taped a PSA to Quel riots

18:36

in Romania. Let's do a

18:38

quick five-minute video on this

18:41

weird story about Peter Falk

18:43

apparently stopping

18:45

the revolution 15 years before

18:48

it actually happened or some weird

18:50

stuff like that. So Radu started to look into

18:52

the story in earnest. He came

18:54

across a mention of Peter Falk's David Letterman

18:57

interview, which Radu to that point had never

18:59

heard about, let alone seen. But

19:01

it was nowhere online until

19:03

Radu emailed a Letterman fan, an unofficial

19:06

archivist, who sent it to him.

19:07

For over 20 years, our first

19:09

guest has starred as the beloved Lieutenant Colombo.

19:12

Radu found something else, too, an article

19:15

about Fox Story with a WikiLeaks

19:17

link in it. WikiLeaks is the giant

19:19

cache of various government documents

19:21

that went online in 2007. And

19:24

this particular link was to an American

19:26

cable, It's self unclassified.

19:29

And then I had the idea of like, hey,

19:31

maybe there's more. Let's give

19:33

a quick search. And then I search

19:35

for Peace or Falk. I search for Columbo.

19:37

I search for concerns individually. And

19:41

lo and behold. American

19:44

Embassy, Bucharest to USIA

19:46

Washington, DC. Between

19:48

April and June of 1974, eight

19:51

official diplomatic cables were sent

19:53

between the American Embassy in Bucharest

19:55

and Washington, D.C. about

19:58

Peter Falk. Romanian

20:00

TV requests a short, two-

20:02

to three-minute optical, 16-millimeter

20:04

sound film clip of star Peter

20:06

Falk.

20:07

The back and forth corroborates a number

20:09

of things about Falk's story. For

20:12

one, the U.S. government really

20:14

did reach out to him.

20:16

Falk willing to make Colombo

20:18

closing. For another, Romania

20:21

really had run out of Colombo

20:23

episodes. Romanian TV

20:25

says it aware that Colombo is still

20:27

in production, but notes that it has run

20:30

all episodes received thus far and

20:32

must fill space on weekly basis.

20:36

But the cables do not substantiate

20:38

many of Falk's details. There's

20:40

no mention of armed or incensed

20:43

Romanians, no midnight meetings,

20:45

no Romanian ambassadors present

20:47

and no communists insisting Falk

20:50

tell people to trust them.

20:52

The first Falk

20:54

interview is as follows. Oh,

20:57

excuse me. Do you have a minute? I'm

20:59

Lieutenant Columbo. Sometimes I'm known

21:01

as Peter Falk.

21:03

In fact, the transcript included in

21:05

the cables, relaying what Falk apparently

21:08

said is tame.

21:10

We would like to thank Romanian

21:12

television for having put us on the air on

21:14

Saturdays and Sundays. But most of

21:16

all, all of us, myself and the crew

21:18

and the other actors, we want to thank

21:20

the Romanian people for their great response

21:22

to our show.

21:24

But according to the cables, even this generic

21:27

greeting was a big deal. Judging

21:30

from comments of embassy, foreign service

21:32

locals, and other Romanians, Fox

21:35

Greetings and his use of Romanian language

21:37

tagline created minor sensation

21:39

here.

21:42

The last cable, sent back after

21:45

the message aired, says that Romanian

21:47

television reported 10 million

21:50

people watched it. That

21:52

was about half the population

21:54

at the time. Why would

21:56

Romania have wanted an American

21:58

star like Peter? Falk reaching

22:01

half of its population. Seems

22:03

weird for one, Romania,

22:08

the Communist Party to do such a thing without

22:11

any ulterior motive. And it would also

22:13

seem weird for Peter Falk or the

22:16

American State Department to

22:18

give into such a request without

22:20

getting something in return.

22:22

Weird is right. What was

22:25

the nature of Romania and America's

22:27

relationship that they would be working

22:29

together on something like this.

22:32

I had to know more about Romania.

22:35

["The Star-Spangled Banner"]

22:39

So as a detective, sometimes

22:42

you need to learn some history. At

22:45

the end of World War II, Europe was carved

22:48

up by the victorious Allied powers

22:50

into spheres of influence. The Soviet

22:52

Union's authority extended to eight nations

22:55

that would become satellite states known as

22:57

the Eastern Bloc.

22:59

It is necessary to remember that

23:01

these are all separate countries, but

23:04

the fact that each is communist and

23:06

the fact of their physical proximity to

23:08

each other enable us to consider

23:10

them as a unit.

23:13

Romania was a part of this unit. In 1944,

23:16

the Soviets directly occupied the country

23:19

and would remain for more than a decade. I

23:22

am old enough, usually I was born

23:24

in 47, to have gone through

23:26

some of these phases of

23:29

the communist takeover.

23:31

Ioana Ironim Latham is a Romanian

23:33

poet, playwright, and author. At

23:35

the time she was born, Romania was in the midst

23:38

of massive social and political

23:40

upheaval. As communism was enforced

23:42

on the country, the mostly agrarian

23:45

nation was collectivized. A secret police

23:47

called the Securitate was established,

23:49

and purges and mass arrests were

23:51

common.

23:52

It was horrible in the 50s.

23:54

Political presence was full and people disappeared

23:56

from home. In 1958, Soviet troops began to

24:00

to pull out of the country. It remained

24:02

communist, but by the early 1960s, things felt different.

24:06

I was still a schoolgirl, and I

24:08

remember you could almost feel it

24:10

in the air that I was a change. It

24:13

was exactly 20 years after our

24:15

having been taken over, and

24:18

it became more relaxed. This

24:20

period is known as a thaw, and

24:22

as part of the warming, newsstands

24:24

carried Western papers, Romanian rock

24:26

and roll band started to appear, and

24:28

foreign films and series aired on television.

24:32

It's very simple. I don't

24:34

like being a cog in the machine. Being one of the millions

24:36

of ants that devour the dragon is all very noble,

24:39

but it's not half as much fun as being St. George,

24:41

is it?

24:42

The spy show The Saint, starring the

24:44

future James Bond Roger Moore,

24:46

became Appointment TV on Saturday

24:49

nights, airing thanks to an agreement

24:51

between Romanian state television, TVR

24:54

and the BBC to license shows

24:57

cheaply.

24:58

Also during the 1960s, programming

25:00

increased to about eight and a half hours a day.

25:03

The number of people with televisions rose

25:05

tenfold. A second channel was

25:07

added

25:08

and Romania got a new leader.

25:16

Nikolai Ceausescu was a longtime member

25:19

of the Communist Party who became General secretary

25:21

in 1965 and then president in 67.

25:25

Around this time, a British student named Dennis

25:27

de Letante began studying at a Bucharest

25:29

University where he is housed with three Americans.

25:33

Every week, the Securitati,

25:35

the secret police would come to

25:37

our rooms and rummage through our belongings

25:40

and leave very clear evidence

25:43

that they have been in our rooms.

25:45

Dennis went on to become a scholar of Romania

25:47

at University College London and the author

25:50

of dozens of books about the country. And

25:52

he's now a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Institute.

25:54

He says that this was a time of great change.

25:57

Romanians were not seeking to break away.

26:00

from Soviet influence, but they were

26:02

seeking a certain amount of autonomy.

26:05

— This was telegraphed to the world in 1968. That

26:09

year, the Soviet Union sent tanks into

26:11

a liberalizing Czechoslovakia to clamp

26:13

down on mass protests known as the

26:15

Prague Spring. But Romania

26:17

refused to support the Soviet

26:20

action. Ceausescu

26:22

even denounced the invasion in a famous speech.

26:26

This was an act of

26:28

defiance for the West, did

26:31

not forget. Richard

26:33

Nixon in particular took notice. As

26:36

president, he pursued a policy called differentiation,

26:39

picking out the communist countries that

26:41

seemed most susceptible to Western

26:44

influence.

26:45

President Nixon and

26:47

his advisors were aware of Ceausescu's

26:50

desire to have closer

26:52

contacts with the United States.

26:54

In 1969, Nixon visited Romania. This

26:58

is an historic occasion. It

27:00

was his second visit in as many years.

27:03

Both times, Ceausescu was savvy enough

27:05

to welcome Nixon with much respect.

27:08

Well, this is not my first visit

27:10

to your country. It is the first

27:12

visit of a President of the United

27:15

States to Romania, the

27:17

first state visit by an American

27:19

President to a socialist country or

27:22

to this region of the continent of Europe.

27:25

Ceausescu would, in turn, visit America

27:27

three times. He'd be knighted by the

27:29

Queen of England and appear on the cover of Time

27:32

magazine as the face of a relaxed

27:34

communism. Romania would join

27:36

the IMF, open a Pepsi Cola

27:39

factory, and be granted most

27:41

favored nation trading status by the

27:43

United States.

27:45

All of this solidified Ceausescu's reputation

27:47

as a maverick communist leader. That

27:49

word maverick was used a lot in

27:51

the press, and one that the U.S.

27:54

wanted to pull closer with trade and

27:56

with culture. The State Department arranged

27:58

visits by the astronauts.

28:00

and a concert tour by the rock band

28:02

Blood, Sweat and Tears, all

28:04

while turning something of a blind eye to

28:06

Ceausescu's domestic policies.

28:08

I think there is this great paradox

28:11

with Ceausescu. So the paradox

28:14

of his, we might say, very inventive,

28:17

ambitious foreign policy and

28:21

the repression, the internal repression.

28:23

This paradox was already

28:26

on display by the early 1970s. birth

28:29

control and abortion had already been banned

28:32

to boost the population. The Securitate

28:34

acted with impunity, and Ceausescu

28:37

announced that all cultural output

28:39

needed to be ideological and nationalistic,

28:42

ultimately putting an end to the thaw. But

28:44

at the same time, Ceausescu's foreign

28:47

policy, with its focus on international

28:50

trade, was boosting material living

28:52

conditions for regular Romanians

28:54

and still allowing for some cultural

28:57

exchange, including of

28:59

television shows.

29:01

Do you just want to tell me your name?

29:05

Alexandrina teacher.

29:06

Alexandrina was in high school in the 1970s,

29:09

living in the same apartment in Bucharest from

29:12

which she spoke with me a few months ago, with

29:14

the help of a translator. So she

29:16

said that in the 70s

29:17

they were having

29:20

streaming from 730 in the

29:22

evening until around midnight. Good

29:24

life

29:25

in this chocolaty. Good

29:28

life in this 70s, comparison

29:31

with the previous years.

29:33

Most of what was on TV was dull, ideological

29:35

and political. Long speeches and footage

29:38

of Ceausescu and his wife Elena visiting

29:40

farms and opening factories. But

29:42

this only made the foreign shows, which

29:44

included Bewitched, The Untouchables, and

29:47

Lost in Space stand out more.

29:50

Alexandrina particularly remembers

29:52

Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Charlie

29:54

Chaplin movies, and especially the

29:57

oil gushing soap opera Dallas.

30:00

But of course, I'd called her to talk

30:02

about one show in particular.

30:04

And do you remember Colombo? Duh,

30:06

duh.

30:07

Alexandrina remembers Colombo's slouchy

30:10

posture, which she imitated as we spoke.

30:12

She remembers his cigar and his clothes,

30:15

which she wondered why he never changed. She

30:17

remembers his French roadster and his love

30:19

of dogs, and that all the murderers

30:22

were wealthy.

30:23

She remembers also like the

30:26

mystery and the best part of the action

30:28

was actually happening in the first minutes,

30:30

because after that, you are knowing what

30:32

happened. She also remembers

30:35

when the show aired

30:36

Saturday nights. She recalled

30:38

that it was an event, the thing to do,

30:41

and she wasn't the only one who told me so. It

30:44

was a national phenomenon. Streets

30:46

were empty. Ioana Yaronim-Latham

30:49

again. Everybody made

30:51

a plan to be there and to see installment

30:54

after installment. It was enormously

30:56

successful, enormously.

30:58

Columbo was so popular it would air

31:00

again on Sundays, and it wasn't the

31:02

only show that cleared the streets in Bucharest.

31:05

Love you, baby. You're

31:08

beautiful.

31:09

Kojak, the cop drama starring

31:11

Telly Savalas that premiered in America in 1973,

31:15

was also a hit with Romanians in the

31:17

mid-1970s. The bald-headed

31:19

Kojak was as debonair as Columbo

31:22

was disheveled, and he sucked on a lollipop

31:24

instead of a cigar. What's with

31:26

the

31:26

lollipops? I'm

31:29

looking to close the generation gap. Get out

31:31

of here. CoJack,

31:33

because he was having

31:35

this lollipop, they created

31:37

lollipops in Romania that they were

31:40

selling in the streets, vendors,

31:43

with CoJack. They called them CoJack, by

31:46

the CoJack. CoJack also

31:48

kicked off a craze for American-style coffee

31:50

mugs and thin cigarettes. It was

31:52

a sensation.

31:54

such a sensation that

31:57

there are American diplomatic

31:59

cables about about it too. March 1975,

32:02

US Berlin

32:04

to Am Embassy Bucharest. Subject,

32:07

Telly Savalas film clip for Romanian

32:09

TV.

32:12

A little less than a year after the Peter Falk

32:14

incident, the US diplomatic corps had apparently

32:17

asked Telly Savalas to do the exact

32:20

same thing. Though Savalas filmed

32:22

in West Berlin, not Los Angeles.

32:26

at the embassy in Bucharest at the time

32:28

must have looked at the popularity of both

32:30

of these shows and seen an opportunity

32:33

to do their job, to

32:35

bring the countries closer together. But

32:38

who exactly? I

32:40

thought I had an idea.

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34:01

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now.

34:35

So at this point I was pretty confident the incident

34:38

I was investigating had taken place. I

34:40

also had a solid handle on motive,

34:43

on why the message had been made, and

34:45

what the US and Romania both stood

34:48

to gain. But I still didn't know

34:50

the method. The cables didn't get into

34:52

the nitty gritty of how the message was filmed,

34:55

and Falk's version seemed a little over

34:57

the top.

34:58

I wanted to find someone who could tell me what had

35:00

gone down, not give me the dramatic

35:03

late night TV version, but

35:04

the real thing.

35:06

The cables offered up an obvious place

35:09

to begin. At the bottom of the ones coming

35:11

out of Bucharest, there was the same name

35:14

over and over again.

35:15

Please advise if film

35:18

possible and if developed film can

35:20

be here in time for May 15 program,

35:23

post strongly concurs TV request,

35:26

Barnes.

35:27

was the sign off of Harry Barnes,

35:29

the American ambassador to Romania from 1973 to 77. He

35:34

done a previous three-year stint in the country

35:36

and spoke Romanian so fluently he

35:38

acted as Nixon's translator, rare

35:41

for an ambassador. In an interview,

35:43

he recalled of this time, I got

35:45

the sense in Washington that we ought to

35:47

keep looking for opportunities to suggest

35:50

collaborative activities with the Romanians.

35:53

Maybe he looked at Columbo and Kojak

35:56

and thought they could be one of those activities.

35:59

Harry Bar- died in 2012 though,

36:02

so I got in touch with his son Doug. I

36:04

asked him about an infamous incident in which

36:06

Romania's Securitate bugged

36:08

the soul of his father's

36:10

shoe. My sister just went

36:12

and did a trip to D.C. and went to the spy

36:14

museum and sent us all pictures of the shoe,

36:17

which is on display there.

36:18

Doug had never heard anything about the Peter

36:20

Fox segment or the Telly Savalas one either,

36:23

but he'd become a Foreign Service Officer himself,

36:25

and in this capacity, he told me something

36:27

important.

36:28

An ambassador's name is on every

36:31

single cable that leaves an embassy

36:33

as a matter of course. Every single

36:36

telegram as long as he's in the country. So

36:38

though Barnes could have written these cables,

36:40

they also could have been authored by nearly anyone

36:43

at the embassy.

36:44

I asked Doug if you could think of anyone else who might

36:46

remember anything about this, and a

36:48

couple of calls later I reached a man

36:51

named Richard

36:51

Gilbert. I was hosted at

36:53

the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest

36:56

as the cultural attache.

36:58

Richard was there from 1972 to 1976. When I first spoke with him on the

37:00

phone, he told me he remembered

37:04

Colombo's popularity, and we arranged

37:06

a Zoom call. Where it turned out, he

37:08

remembered

37:09

more. I do remember him giving

37:11

his little spiel, I would

37:13

call it. Like other members of the Foreign

37:16

Service, Richard lived in an apartment in Bucharest,

37:18

furnished by the State Department, but provided

37:20

by the Romanians. And one Sunday

37:23

night in 1974, he and his

37:25

family turned on the TV to

37:27

watch Colombo. Quite

37:29

a coup for the Romanians because

37:32

they got Peter Falk to say all

37:34

these positive things about what

37:36

essentially was a rather despotic

37:40

communist government in Eastern

37:42

Europe. Richard doesn't remember much more about

37:44

it, besides part of it being delivered in stilted

37:47

Romanian. We didn't usually

37:49

tune in, but we watched this one,

37:52

certainly because it was so unusual. Do

37:54

you think you knew it was coming and that's why you tuned

37:56

in? I suspect I must have. That's

37:59

why I happen to be watching. I'm not sure

38:01

how we knew, but we did know. In

38:03

your experience or just like knowledge this, is this

38:05

like kind of thing

38:09

common? I mean, my guess would

38:11

be definitely not common.

38:13

I can't imagine such a thing. I just

38:16

find a little head scratching

38:18

how they made contact with Peter

38:20

Fall in the first place.

38:23

I got off this call feeling optimistic. I

38:25

still didn't know the method, but

38:27

I was making progress. Sure,

38:30

it had taken some legwork to find Richard,

38:32

but I could do more legwork.

38:34

I was a detective. I honed in

38:36

on the embassy in Bucharest in 1974,

38:39

tracking down any name mentioned in the cables

38:42

and scouring old Foreign Service telephone

38:45

directories. I got the American

38:47

Foreign Service Association to ask its 16,000

38:50

members if anyone recalled anything

38:52

about it. On a lark, I emailed

38:55

the press officer of Henry Kissinger,

38:57

who was Secretary of State at the time to

38:59

see if Kissinger remembered anything himself.

39:02

He did not. But I was confident

39:05

someone would know something if

39:07

I just kept making phone calls. My

39:10

name is Willa Paskin. I

39:12

make a podcast for the website Slate. This

39:15

is going to be very

39:15

convoluted and I'm just going to babble

39:18

it up. I've got you a couple of messages so I'm sorry to

39:21

keep calling. Just about everyone I

39:23

reached suggested someone else. I'm

39:26

in the middle of sort of obsessively

39:28

reporting out this story,

39:31

and as I said, it's a little bit zany about— — who

39:33

suggested someone else.

39:34

— to basically film— Um,

39:37

oh, uh-oh. Hi,

39:41

sorry, this is Willa again. I'll keep it much shorter.

39:44

— All told, I communicated directly

39:46

with over 20 people who'd been at the embassy

39:48

in Bucharest around 1974. But

39:51

my optimism had been premature.

39:55

Listen, I don't want you

39:58

to waste your time with me. because

40:01

I have no memory whatsoever

40:04

of either

40:06

of those things. I don't remember

40:09

anything about that incident. I'd love

40:11

to read more about it, but you're just

40:14

hitting a blank with me, I'm sorry. Anyway,

40:16

good luck.

40:17

No one recalled it. Like,

40:20

no one. It didn't even ring

40:22

a bell. No one thinks it's real. Not

40:24

one person who was at the embassy at the

40:26

time remembers it. It just

40:29

seems so unlikely."

40:31

I'd begun all of this thinking that Peter

40:33

Falk's story sounded a little exaggerated,

40:36

and wanting to figure out what had really happened,

40:39

and why, and how, and

40:41

what Peter Falk had really said, I'd read

40:44

diplomatic cables and gotten a crash course

40:46

in Romanian history. I'd learned

40:48

Romanian slang for lollipop and yammered

40:51

into more voicemail boxes than I could

40:53

count.

40:54

And from all of this, I had gotten the sense

40:56

that these messages would have been a big

40:59

deal. Peter Fauxshore said

41:01

so, but so did the cables. They

41:04

described Faux's message as a minor

41:06

sensation seen by 10 million

41:08

Romanians. 12 million

41:11

had watched the message with Telly Savalas.

41:14

Moreover, all the people I'd spoken

41:16

with to this point had told me this

41:19

would have been an unusual and creative

41:22

undertaking for any diplomat

41:24

involved.

41:25

So why couldn't I find anyone

41:28

who remembered it? I mean besides

41:30

Richard Gilbert. I

41:32

do remember when Peter

41:35

Falk gave this

41:36

introduction. But as it would

41:38

turn out months later, when I finally

41:41

figured out what really happened with Peter

41:43

Falk's message, Richard Gilbert would

41:45

still be the one and only person

41:47

who ever recalled seeing it. If

41:51

a message gets made for television and

41:53

no one remembers seeing it, did

41:56

it actually happen?

41:57

I was back where I started.

42:03

Next week on Decoder Ring, we get some answers, but

42:05

not before a whole lot more questions. There's

42:08

a couple of loose ends I'd like to tie up. Nothing

42:10

important, you understand, but I

42:13

would like to get them tied up. This is Decoder

42:18

Ring. I'm Willa Paskin.

42:23

You

42:26

can find me on Twitter at WillaPaskin, and

42:28

if you have any cultural mysteries you

42:30

want us to decode, you can email

42:32

us at decodering at slate.com.

42:35

I want to give a special thank you to Andrada

42:38

Lautauro, who translated and worked with

42:40

me from Romania. I'd also like

42:42

to thank Carol and Joel Levy, Jonathan

42:44

Ricker, Alan and Ori Fernandez,

42:47

Katie Coob, Felix Renschler, Richard

42:49

Veitz, Jock Shirley, Gabriel

42:52

Roth, Cameron Gorman, Tori Bosch,

42:54

Delia Maranescu, David Koneg,

42:57

Don Giller, Forrest Backner, Karina

42:59

Popa, David Langbart, William

43:01

Burr, Asger Siegfitzen, John

43:04

Frankensteiner, Tom Hoban, and everyone

43:06

else who helped with this episode. For

43:09

my research into Romanian television, I

43:11

relied heavily on the scholarly work of

43:13

Dana Mustada, Alexandru Matay,

43:16

Anne-Marie Suresko-Marinkovic, and

43:18

the screening socialism project from the University

43:21

of Loughborough. I also relied on the work

43:23

of Denis de la Tante and Timothy W.

43:25

Rybak's Rock Around the Block, a

43:27

history of rock music in Eastern Europe and

43:30

the Soviet Union. You

43:32

also heard a song in this episode from the Romanian

43:35

rock band Phoenix.