Episode 06: Memoires & Mysteries

In Mémoires & Mysteries, we examine the intriguing connection between President Woodrow Wilson's confidential Aide-Mémoire authorizing the American Expeditionary Forces' mission in Siberia and Franklin D. Roosevelt's later fictional work, The President's Mystery Story.

The episode explores Wilson's secret directive, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker's reported meeting with General William S. Graves in Kansas City, and the role of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt in overseeing the naval routes linking Vladivostok and San Francisco. Drawing on documents, military records, and historical research presented in Rescuing Nicholas, we investigate whether these events formed part of a broader Allied effort to protect the former Tsar.

We also examine Roosevelt's remarkable mystery story, published while he was President of the United States, about an aristocrat who stages his own death and disappears under a new identity. Was it simply fiction, or did it echo events Roosevelt may have known from his earlier government service?

Mémoires & Mysteries explores the intersection of presidential leadership, wartime secrecy, and historical memory, asking whether two presidents may have left behind clues that have remained hidden in plain sight for more than a century.