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Life of a KGB spy with Jack Barsky · The Smart Cookies podcast

• 0:00
  Jack's stories like yours, although highly puffed up and stylized, they're usually relegated
• 0:10
  to the pages of a popular novel or the silver screen where they continue to capture our
• 0:16
  collective imagination over and over again.
• 0:20
  No matter the incarnation or the medium, we simply never get tired of this character,
• 0:25
  the character of a spy.
• 0:28
  And not that that's an accurate representation of anything, of course, but they're simply
• 0:32
  never going to stop making a James Bond or a Jason Bourne or whatever, because we're
• 0:38
  never going to be fed up with it.
• 0:41
  We keep coming back for more.
• 0:43
  So my first question to you is this.
• 0:47
  When you think about your story, do you sometimes still pinch yourself in disbelief?
• 0:54
  Like thinking, holy cow, I was a real spy.
• 0:57
  I was the guy.
• 0:58
  How utterly crazy is that?
• 1:00
  Or is it one of those things where your life is the only one you've ever lived?
• 1:04
  And even if it sounds extraordinary to other people, to you, it just seems normal.
• 1:09
  I pinch myself more often about the life that I have today.
• 1:13
  Interesting.
• 1:14
  And I tell you why.
• 1:16
  Please.
• 1:17
  I tell you why.
• 1:18
  Because I meet so many interesting people.
• 1:22
  And this is like my brand, my past is like a key that opens all kinds of doors that I
• 1:29
  didn't even know existed.
• 1:31
  I mean, I can now continue talking for the rest of the evening about all these great,
• 1:37
  smart, successful, wonderful, heart-centered people that I know, mostly men, some women.
• 1:48
  But it's just amazing.
• 1:50
  And it happens almost every week that somebody pops up and says, oh my God, here's another
• 1:55
  person who could be a really, really good friend.
• 1:59
  You mentioned East Germany.
• 2:01
  You were born in 1949, I believe, in what was East Germany, in Jena or close to Jena,
• 2:08
  right?
• 2:09
  No, no, no.
• 2:10
  Jena was where I went to college.
• 2:12
  University.
• 2:13
  Yeah.
• 2:14
  And I was born as a small city right on the border.
• 2:21
  There's a triangle where Germany borders both Poland and the Czech Republic.
• 2:28
  And surprise, surprise, I'm only half German, genetically, a quarter Polish and a quarter
• 2:34
  Czech.
• 2:35
  Oh, well, welcome to the fold.
• 2:37
  I'm Slovenian.
• 2:38
  So we're fellow Slavs then, at least partially.
• 2:42
  Yeah, half of it.
• 2:46
  On your mother or on your father's side?
• 2:48
  Are you like half, I mean, quarter Polish and quarter Czech?
• 2:51
  I don't know.
• 2:52
  They both grew up in the same region.
• 2:56
  I see.
• 2:57
  So they didn't grow up in the same town or same village, but in the same area of the
• 3:02
  country.
• 3:03
  So it could be both.
• 3:05
  But I'm thinking it's mostly my mother, because genetically, as far as my behavior and my
• 3:16
  character, my basic character, I'm more like her than my dad.
• 3:20
  I see.
• 3:21
  But they were both native German speakers, right?
• 3:24
  Oh, yeah.
• 3:25
  Yeah.
• 3:26
  You were studying chemistry at the University of Jena, though.
• 3:28
  That part is correct.
• 3:31
  You mentioned this highly unusual proposition, but before we go to that proposition itself,
• 3:37
  why do you think it was you specifically who was approached?
• 3:42
  Which criteria did you fulfill that was important?
• 3:46
  Well, first of all, nobody ever told me the events that happened for me finally being
• 3:57
  asked whether I was ready to join.
• 3:59
  I know pretty much what they were looking for for candidates for this kind of a job.
• 4:07
  This I found out many, many years later.
• 4:09
  It's so funny that you're calling it a job.
• 4:12
  It's a nine to five, even though we're all like, oh my God, this is the most crazy, exciting
• 4:17
  thing of all time.
• 4:19
  Mission.
• 4:20
  Mission.
• 4:21
  Yes, yes, yes.
• 4:22
  The information I gathered came out of interviews that were given by two ex-directors of the
• 4:32
  directorate S, the illegals directorate that was on the part of the first directorate espionage.
• 4:39
  They were pointing out the character traits that they were looking for, sort of a character
• 4:48
  profile with about a dozen entries.
• 4:53
  Obviously they were looking for really, really smart people.
• 4:56
  They were looking for people that were fearless.
• 4:59
  They were looking for people who had no problem with change.
• 5:03
  They were looking for people who can make quick decisions and quick and good decisions.
• 5:12
  My favorite was, I'm going to finish with that.
• 5:18
  There were a few more, but my favorite was a well controlled inclination for adventure.
• 5:24
  Absolutely.
• 5:26
  I mean, I was always an adventurous kind of person, even as a child.
• 5:34
  That goes with high risk tolerance.
• 5:37
  Implementation of those character traits didn't necessarily make me a better person, but it
• 5:43
  is rather unusual.
• 5:46
  It took them 18 months to even figure me out and making sure that I fit the mold, so to
• 5:54
  speak.
• 5:55
  Eighteen months after the first contact, I had 18 months worth of informal contact with
• 6:03
  one agent who was stationed in Jena.
• 6:10
  We talked about everything.
• 6:11
  He became sort of like my second father because my dad left the family.
• 6:17
  This fellow was about 10 years older than me.
• 6:20
  I was glad to have a male in my life to share everything, including weaknesses and things
• 6:29
  that I didn't like and on and on and on.
• 6:31
  I was just completely honest.
• 6:38
  I never met a psychologist who studied me in the KGB.
• 6:42
  That was him.
• 6:43
  It was his judgment that he sent to Berlin, which then triggered the question by the head
• 6:55
  of the KGB in East Germany.
• 6:57
  Are you going to be joining us?
• 7:02
  At that point, I thought I was in, but not really.
• 7:06
  Once I said yes.
• 7:09
  That question was a final test.
• 7:15
  It was not really the final test, but the final test to just make sure that I'm the
• 7:21
  right person.
• 7:24
  He gave me less than 24 hours to come up with the answer.
• 7:28
  If I had stalled, they would have said, okay.
• 7:33
  This is not the guy.
• 7:34
  Go back to your job as a professor at the university.
• 7:41
  I already was an assistant professor.
• 7:44
  No harm done.
• 7:46
  They would have just figured this guy is not quick enough in terms of making decisions.
• 7:51
  I'm super quick.
• 7:52
  I shoot from the hip.
• 7:53
  The final question is actually a test, whether you'd say yes or no.
• 7:59
  It wasn't a test.
• 8:00
  I didn't know it was a test.
• 8:02
  After you said, please go ahead.
• 8:05
  There was a couple other tests that I didn't know they were tests.
• 8:08
  Such as?
• 8:09
  Can you talk about them?
• 8:10
  When I said yes, we made arrangements for me to quit the university.
• 8:14
  Within a month's time, I showed up in Berlin with a suitcase and a briefcase.
• 8:22
  Not much.
• 8:23
  Not that much in terms of belongings.
• 8:26
  I figured this is the KGB.
• 8:29
  I would be given a nice place to live.
• 8:32
  No.
• 8:33
  I meet my new handler named Nikolai.
• 8:39
  We're in his car.
• 8:41
  He looked at me and he says, I already have a task for you.
• 8:44
  I said, oh, what is it?
• 8:46
  I was getting excited.
• 8:47
  He said, you've got to find a place to live.
• 8:52
  My heart dropped from here down to very low.
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  But being the stoic that I didn't know I was and I am, I didn't show any reaction.
• 9:03
  Poker face.
• 9:04
  Yeah.
• 9:05
  It was an impossible task because all living space was owned and managed by the government.
• 9:16
  There were married couples with children who lived with their parents.
• 9:19
  There was a waiting list.
• 9:22
  Absolutely.
• 9:23
  There were no apartments available and I couldn't afford a hotel.
• 9:31
  When I arrived in New York, I stayed at a hotel for one year where the rent was month
• 9:36
  by month by month as a single room occupancy.
• 9:43
  If I fail that test, I'm out.
• 9:49
  I wasn't aware of that.
• 9:50
  I just found a room with a concrete room, a windowless room that had a bed, a table
• 10:01
  and running cold water.
• 10:03
  I didn't tell Nikolai anything.
• 10:05
  I just told him I found something.
• 10:08
  And then the last test that I actually became aware of because I met somebody who failed
• 10:17
  that test was when they sent me to the other side of the Berlin Wall.
• 10:26
  To West Berlin.
• 10:28
  Yeah.
• 10:29
  Just like, you know, just go there and walk around.
• 10:36
  But the wall was already there or was it just the bar?
• 10:39
  Yeah, the wall was there.
• 10:42
  I see.
• 10:43
  No, no, no, no, the wall was there.
• 10:44
  And I traveled with an East German passport.
• 10:45
  But, you know, I was in enemy territory.
• 10:49
  And I had to go twice.
• 10:50
  The first time just, you know, just smell the air and look around.
• 10:57
  Second time I had to go to an apartment and ring the bell and find a way to talk to the
• 11:05
  occupants and find out something about them or whatever.
• 11:10
  I don't quite remember.
• 11:11
  Just a specific person or random?
• 11:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:15
  It was a specific person.
• 11:16
  It was an operational test.
• 11:17
  Wow.
• 11:18
  And the reason that I know that this was also a test because I met a classmate of mine accidentally
• 11:26
  who had failed the same test for East German secret police, Stasi.
• 11:35
  When he came back from his test visit, he told him, I can't do that.
• 11:42
  And guess what?
• 11:43
  He never worked as an engineer.
• 11:45
  He had a degree in engineering.
• 11:48
  He had to find his way through a whole bunch of odd jobs and eventually wound up selling
• 11:56
  training in model train sets.
• 11:58
  In hindsight, some of the most dangerous situations I was in, in my career or wannabe career,
• 12:07
  there was right at the beginning.
• 12:09
  Interesting.
• 12:10
  Yeah.
• 12:11
  Wow.
• 12:12
  Okay.
• 12:13
  Okay.
• 12:14
  Before we go on, if we rewind just a little bit back.
• 12:18
  Yeah.
• 12:19
  Sure.
• 12:20
  Why did you say yes?
• 12:21
  Was it the sense of adventure you always had or were reasons a little bit more ideological?
• 12:27
  Yes.
• 12:28
  Without the ideological foundation, I wouldn't have signed up.
• 12:31
  Right.
• 12:32
  I mean, it was a foundation.
• 12:37
  Adventure was, I mean, that was a big, big, big bait in front of me.
• 12:46
  But finally, and I want to quote Kim Philby.
• 12:49
  Yeah, the famous spy.
• 12:52
  Yes.
• 12:53
  When he was asked why he joined, he said, well, when the most powerful intelligence
• 13:01
  agency on the planet and in history asked you to join, you don't think twice about it.
• 13:05
  There was a phenomenal amount of flattery in that offer.
• 13:11
  Right.
• 13:12
  A certain sense of prestige that they picked you, right?
• 13:14
  When you're at that age, and I was in my mid-twenties, first of all, I had already
• 13:20
  aged high school and I had received a national scholarship that was limited to 100 concurrent
• 13:29
  holders.
• 13:30
  So I already was the elite.
• 13:32
  Okay.
• 13:33
  I was going places.
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  Most likely I would have wound up in government.
• 13:39
  And so I was already like really full of myself.
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  And now comes this offer.
• 13:44
  Right.
• 13:45
  You can't say no to that.
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  Never mind all the negative thoughts and all the bad things that could happen.
• 13:52
  I was at a point where everything I touched turned out to be successful.
• 13:58
  I even made myself into a functioning basketball player, even though I had no talent.
• 14:05
  That's impressive because I'm a big basketball nut and it's not the easiest game out there.
• 14:10
  I had no left hand.
• 14:11
  It doesn't matter.
• 14:12
  I still don't.
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  I wound up playing on the fifth best team in East Germany.
• 14:19
  Wow.
• 14:20
  Respect.
• 14:21
  Yeah, because I worked like a maniac and I ran and I jumped and I knew how to flop.
• 14:28
  Which position did you play?
• 14:29
  I played forward in those days.
• 14:32
  At my height, I was one of the tallest people and the taller ones were very awkward.
• 14:39
  I'm six feet three.
• 14:41
  I would play point guard in college.
• 14:43
  Oh, wow.
• 14:44
  Yeah.
• 14:45
  You're tall.
• 14:46
  Yeah.
• 14:47
  Would you say that Germans were particularly popular recruits within the KGB?
• 14:53
  I'm in Japan right now.
• 14:55
  And of course, Japan is the country where one of the most famous spies of all time,
• 15:00
  Richard Zorga, another German worked.
• 15:03
  He infiltrated the German embassy here during the Second World War and actually found out
• 15:08
  that the Nazis plan to attack the Soviet Union.
• 15:14
  So it's an interesting.
• 15:15
  I just read his biography coincidentally and it just made me think, wait, maybe Germans
• 15:20
  are well predisposed to be spies.
• 15:24
  This is a educated guess.
• 15:27
  But Russians, for some reason, because of their language, have a hard time to get rid
• 15:34
  of the accent.
• 15:35
  I see.
• 15:36
  So I mean, but Germans can have a strong accent, too.
• 15:38
  Let's I mean, OK, Arnold Schwarzenegger is Austrian, but a lot of illegals were smuggled
• 15:43
  into third countries.
• 15:45
  And if you, let's say, travel with a German accent and you go to Brazil and you seek,
• 15:53
  you know, you want to get some kind of documentation to be able to work there and then you get it
• 16:00
  becomes a citizen, then you then you can legally emigrate.
• 16:05
  Canada and Brazil were favorite countries to do that.
• 16:12
  So I think Germans, the only other illegal that of the batch that I belong to that I'm
• 16:20
  aware of is also a German.
• 16:23
  He wound up living in New York at the same time I did about five miles.
• 16:28
  We were five miles away from each other.
• 16:31
  I didn't know about each other.
• 16:34
  And he had been sent with his wife, but he did not do what I did, you know, because he's
• 16:41
  he speaks English with a bit of an accent.
• 16:43
  I see.
• 16:44
  I can hear my own accent, but it's it's negligible and easy to explain.
• 16:49
  Right.
• 16:50
  How did you explain it, by the way?
• 16:52
  By accident, the birth certificate of Jack Barsky has his mother, his mother's maiden
• 17:01
  name Schwartz German.
• 17:03
  So I yeah, the German Jewish.
• 17:08
  But it could it could be non Jewish.
• 17:10
  It could be just German.
• 17:12
  And we in the back story, we just killed my father.
• 17:18
  He died in his 30s of a heart attack, which caused me some problems when I when I, you
• 17:25
  know, had to tell doctors my medical history, they were really fascinating.
• 17:33
  So let's go back.
• 17:34
  You're in Berlin for a while, but then I think you go have some additional training in Moscow.
• 17:39
  Is that correct?
• 17:40
  How does that happen?
• 17:41
  Because well, I got some basic training in Berlin that was supposed to be about two years
• 17:48
  and part of the training I was required to acquire another language.
• 17:54
  Another what?
• 17:55
  Excuse me.
• 17:56
  I didn't hear you.
• 17:57
  Another language, another language.
• 17:58
  Yeah.
• 17:59
  And and they allowed me to pick the language.
• 18:03
  So I picked English.
• 18:05
  And like with everything else I did in those days, and I still do today when I when I do
• 18:10
  something, I give it 100 percent and I I went I went at it like a maniac every day.
• 18:18
  OK.
• 18:19
  But were you a complete beginner or did you know some English already?
• 18:22
  I knew I had some schooling.
• 18:24
  I see.
• 18:25
  So not much.
• 18:26
  And I know I actually started from scratch.
• 18:30
  Yeah.
• 18:31
  Wow.
• 18:32
  Impressive.
• 18:33
  The first tutor that I had, we worked off of the beginner spoke high school book.
• 18:39
  But I pretty quickly advanced to the next guy.
• 18:43
  And then I outgrew him.
• 18:45
  And the third guy I had I had conversations with.
• 18:49
  And after that, there was nobody available anymore.
• 18:53
  And I was already able to read novels without the help of a dictionary.
• 18:57
  And when Moscow found that out, they had the light bulb went on and said, wait a minute.
• 19:04
  So they had me speak freely into a tape recorder, whatever.
• 19:12
  And they were sent back to Moscow.
• 19:15
  And within a week, I was on a plane to Moscow to be to be interviewed by two ladies.
• 19:23
  One was a born American and the other one was a teacher, English teacher at Moscow University.
• 19:29
  Obviously, she she was KGB.
• 19:32
  And after 20 minute talk, they withdrew to another room and they were talking back and
• 19:38
  forth.
• 19:39
  And it turned out that the American overruled the Russian who had doubts.
• 19:48
  But the Americans said I can work with him.
• 19:52
  American optimism.
• 19:55
  And so now I moved to Moscow and I spent two and a half years in Moscow.
• 20:04
  I worked with this woman for you know, twice, I met her twice a week, every week, and every
• 20:12
  evening for a year and a half.
• 20:17
  I did these phonetics exercises again, like I did like stuff, repetitive stuff, because
• 20:23
  it had to be done.
• 20:25
  You know, so I had one tape.
• 20:27
  Okay, phonetics tape where the English speaker says a word and you repeat it.
• 20:34
  And that is how I got rid of like, I would say 90% of my German accent and another 5%
• 20:42
  followed when I was introduced to one Robert, not Morris Cohen, who was an atomic spy.
• 20:53
  And wound up eventually in the Soviet Union after he was exchanged in a prisoner exchange
• 21:01
  and he wound up doing espionage in England as well.
• 21:05
  So anyway, I finally had a male voice I could model myself after because the woman is a
• 21:12
  different story.
• 21:14
  And so it was roughly about five years after I started my training in Berlin, I was launched
• 21:23
  to the United States.
• 21:26
  Just a second.
• 21:27
  What else did the training include?
• 21:29
  Okay, getting rid of your accent is one thing language training.
• 21:34
  What else?
• 21:35
  What are the skills that were needed in the 70s?
• 21:39
  And expect them?
• 21:40
  Yeah, please trade right?
• 21:44
  All the skills, these were skills that you had to acquire.
• 21:48
  They were not talents that I was born with.
• 21:53
  Technical skills, I had to learn Morse code.
• 21:55
  I had to learn shortwave, you know, reception.
• 22:00
  I had to learn algorithms for decryption and encryption, secret writing, meeting protocols,
• 22:13
  dead drop operations.
• 22:14
  You know what a dead drop operation is?
• 22:17
  Right.
• 22:18
  You leave something somewhere and then somebody picks it up.
• 22:20
  That's correct.
• 22:23
  It's an asynchronous exchange of objects as opposed to information.
• 22:32
  And photography, I learned how to make micro dots.
• 22:38
  Did I say secret writing?
• 22:40
  Oh, and surveillance detection.
• 22:43
  Surveillance detection, so figuring out if somebody's following you.
• 22:46
  Oh yeah, that was huge.
• 22:49
  The skill with regard to surveillance detection is that you cannot be, it cannot be clear
• 22:59
  that you're looking for surveillance.
• 23:01
  So you have to do something that looks quite normal.
• 23:05
  That means you need to find spots where if somebody is following you, and that's usually
• 23:11
  a team, where one of that team is close enough so you can see their face.
• 23:16
  So if you see the same face twice, you know that you're being followed.
• 23:22
  Now interestingly enough, that skill set is a little bit out of date because I met the
• 23:29
  woman who is another person I can brag about, who together with her husband developed faces
• 23:38
  that can be changed very quickly.
• 23:40
  What, like a mask?
• 23:42
  Yeah.
• 23:43
  She has a picture of herself as a mask of herself looking like a black man.
• 23:49
  Okay wow.
• 23:50
  And the changes would take no longer than a minute.
• 23:56
  So now you have to pay attention to the shoes.
• 23:59
  Oh, interesting.
• 24:01
  I see.
• 24:03
  So you can change your face quicker than your shoes.
• 24:08
  Well, people forget, you know.
• 24:11
  Right.
• 24:12
  It's harder.
• 24:14
  And I don't know if every counterintelligence service is familiar with that technique.
• 24:21
  But anyway, that was my big advantage that I had phenomenal memory of faces.
• 24:28
  How do you not get, once you receive this training, especially in counter surveillance,
• 24:32
  how do you not get constantly paranoid in your everyday life?
• 24:37
  I think I would be the worst spy of all time because I'm already like a little bit anxious.
• 24:41
  And then, you know, armed with this sort of training, I would just be looking over my
• 24:46
  shoulder constantly when I was in enemy territory.
• 24:50
  Yeah, that's a big no-no obviously.
• 24:54
  And didn't I tell you I'm a stoic?
• 24:57
  Yeah, you did.
• 24:58
  You did.
• 24:59
  You did mention that.
• 25:00
  People ask me, were you ever afraid?
• 25:02
  No.
• 25:03
  I was tense in certain situations, but afraid?
• 25:08
  No.
• 25:09
  I just like, I did what I had to do.
• 25:11
  And that is, I think, the best, if not the only way to be successful in this business.
• 25:18
  Because if you're worried and you're fearful, you're going to make decisions based on fear
• 25:25
  and that's the worst decisions you can make.
• 25:27
  You're going to make mistakes then.
• 25:29
  Okay.
• 25:30
  I was like, I call this execution mode.
• 25:34
  I was very mechanical when I had to perform these particular tasks.
• 25:40
  I needed to know, I knew what I needed to do and I just did it.
• 25:45
  And in my brain, I didn't, I'm not going to say it, but for emphasis, I would like to
• 25:55
  say the F word, like just get...
• 25:57
  You can totally say it if you want to on this podcast.
• 26:00
  Yeah, get the fuck, get it done.
• 26:05
  Okay.
• 26:06
  Just one last question regarding training.
• 26:09
  This is a trope in every spy film, but did you get any sort of weapons or martial arts
• 26:15
  training or is that not really necessary?
• 26:18
  Yeah, I got some self-defense training.
• 26:22
  Really?
• 26:23
  Yeah.
• 26:24
  In what kind of martial art?
• 26:25
  Is it Judo?
• 26:26
  Is it karate?
• 26:27
  That's in the seventies.
• 26:28
  It was Jiu-Jitsu.
• 26:29
  Jiu-Jitsu, wow.
• 26:32
  And it was not to fight with the FBI.
• 26:36
  It was because a lot of dead drop operations take place in parks, in places where there
• 26:47
  aren't too many people, where you could be subject to an ambush.
• 26:51
  Being held up.
• 26:52
  Right.
• 26:53
  Yeah.
• 26:54
  And if you have your material in your possession that could have indicated that you're up to
• 27:02
  no good.
• 27:04
  So they were worried about something like that.
• 27:06
  So I, you know, for over six months, once a week, I was trained.
• 27:14
  And for the first couple of years while I was in New York, you know, I spent every night
• 27:19
  before going to bed, I spent practicing my moves, but over time I said, okay, so that's
• 27:26
  a good slap.
• 27:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:30
  That's a real thing.
• 27:31
  That's really, really interesting.
• 27:33
  Anyway.
• 27:34
  But no, but no firearms, nothing.
• 27:36
  I never touched a firearm in my entire life.
• 27:40
  Right, right.
• 27:41
  No license to kill.
• 27:42
  No, you know, and you can even with martial arts, you can kill.
• 27:46
  Of course.
• 27:47
  Yeah, yeah.
• 27:48
  None of that.
• 27:49
  I believe in 1978, you were finally sent on your mission in the US.
• 27:54
  Suddenly, you're alone in enemy territory expected to navigate a country you've never
• 27:59
  been to before, if I understand it correctly, right.
• 28:03
  And not simply.
• 28:04
  Yeah, from Moscow, I flew to Belgrade.
• 28:07
  Oh, to Yugoslavia.
• 28:09
  Yeah.
• 28:10
  But I didn't spend more than a half a day.
• 28:12
  All right.
• 28:13
  It was just a way station.
• 28:16
  From Belgrade, I took a train to Vienna, Austria.
• 28:20
  That was easy for me to navigate.
• 28:23
  Right.
• 28:25
  But then I wound up in Italy in Rome.
• 28:29
  So a lot of people that would have a problem, and I found a way to get through because you
• 28:38
  need to find your way.
• 28:39
  I didn't speak the language at all.
• 28:42
  Not even a little bit.
• 28:43
  And there's no internet in those days.
• 28:45
  No, and I had to meet another agent and exchange passports.
• 28:51
  In Rome.
• 28:52
  I met one agent in Vienna, we exchanged passports there.
• 28:55
  And in Rome, I got my Canadian passport, and from there, from Rome, I went via Madrid and
• 29:02
  wound up in Mexico City.
• 29:04
  And I didn't speak one word of Spanish.
• 29:09
  And I managed to find my way to a, I think English did reasonably well in Mexico, but
• 29:18
  not with regard to the signs.
• 29:19
  It wasn't a bilingual country, but a lot of people spoke English.
• 29:23
  So and from there, I got, I took a plane, landed in Chicago.
• 29:29
  And that's what that was my point of entry in the United States.
• 29:32
  What are your first moves then in the US?
• 29:35
  I had to find a place to stay overnight because it was already dark.
• 29:42
  Seems to be a bit of a theme, finding a place to stay in the spies life.
• 29:46
  Yeah.
• 29:47
  Yeah.
• 29:48
  And, and I, for the longest time, I didn't have a lot of luck because this one, I was
• 29:56
  not given any help by the KGB because they didn't have anybody in Chicago.
• 30:04
  They didn't know anything about the city.
• 30:06
  And they didn't know that there were some things that they didn't know that I should
• 30:12
  have known because I wound up in the south side of Chicago in a hotel.
• 30:17
  You know, the south side of Chicago.
• 30:18
  I've heard of it.
• 30:19
  Yeah.
• 30:20
  I heard it can be a bit of a dodgy place.
• 30:24
  Excuse me.
• 30:25
  There were no white people in that place.
• 30:27
  Right.
• 30:28
  So here I am 6'3".
• 30:29
  You know, when I woke up after the first night, I woke up and I get outside and looking for
• 30:39
  some place to eat.
• 30:41
  And after about 10 minutes, it says, I don't belong here.
• 30:45
  You know, and I had cash on me and this place just didn't feel right.
• 30:50
  I didn't know where I was, but it felt really bad.
• 30:53
  So I had to make a decision.
• 30:55
  And this is when I almost, almost blew it because I decided, okay, I got to get out
• 31:01
  of here.
• 31:02
  And I, as I had traveled down by cab from the airport in the southern direction, I sensed
• 31:12
  that the neighborhoods got less and less nice.
• 31:17
  So I figured I would just take a walk going north.
• 31:20
  It was a good idea.
• 31:21
  But I also decided at that point to kill the Canadian to destroy the passport and take
• 31:31
  a birth certificate of Jack Barsky, authentic birth certificate copy out of a secret compartment
• 31:38
  in one of my bags and become Jack Barsky.
• 31:41
  Because in those days, you really didn't need ID at all.
• 31:44
  You could get on a plane without showing anything.
• 31:48
  Okay, you just get a ticket.
• 31:50
  That's all you needed.
• 31:51
  How did you get your hands on a legit American birth certificate?
• 31:55
  The KGB provided that for you in advance?
• 31:57
  Yes, they did.
• 31:59
  Because they found an agent on the diplomatic cover who was stationed in Washington, DC
• 32:07
  found the grave of Jack Barsky in a cemetery.
• 32:12
  Jack Barsky was a young person who died at the age of 11.
• 32:16
  By the way, I now have a picture.
• 32:18
  I went to visit that graveyard.
• 32:20
  I have a picture where I'm standing next to my tombstone.
• 32:25
  That does not go on social media.
• 32:29
  That could easily be misunderstood.
• 32:31
  Of course.
• 32:32
  Anyway, they sent me on my way when I left Moscow.
• 32:38
  I had that birth certificate with me.
• 32:41
  So now I'm proceeding to destroy the passport.
• 32:45
  Unfortunately, passport destruction was not part of my training.
• 32:50
  You have to destroy your Canadian passport, which is what?
• 32:53
  Faith?
• 32:54
  Yeah, it was a really good forgery, I'm assuming.
• 32:56
  I see.
• 32:57
  Yeah, you got to get rid of it.
• 32:58
  It was faith.
• 32:59
  Yeah.
• 33:00
  So as I said, passport destruction, I wasn't trained and nobody ever told me how to get
• 33:07
  rid of that kind of a document.
• 33:09
  So I tried to burn it.
• 33:12
  I went to the bathroom and I took a lighter out and I tried to first burn the page that
• 33:22
  had my picture on it.
• 33:23
  And it didn't really burn.
• 33:25
  It just like moved around and released a lot of smoke.
• 33:30
  And as I'm looking up the ceiling, I realized I'm right under a smoke detector.
• 33:38
  Panic!
• 33:41
  But good reaction.
• 33:43
  I threw that passport into the toilet.
• 33:45
  I was like right over the toilet into the water.
• 33:49
  And I got really lucky that that fire, the alarm didn't go off because if it does, I'm
• 33:55
  busted.
• 33:56
  Wow.
• 33:57
  I'm busted in a place where I have nobody to help me and I'm going to wind up in jail.
• 34:09
  And then I have to ask for protocol.
• 34:11
  I would have had to ask for the East German embassy, which didn't have anybody.
• 34:17
  I mean, this would have been like, and I would have returned as a total failure.
• 34:25
  You know, sometimes you get a little lucky.
• 34:31
  In the movies or TV shows, spies are usually prepared for every possible scenario, no matter
• 34:36
  how ridiculous it is.
• 34:38
  You, however, I believe quickly realized that you weren't properly prepared when it came
• 34:43
  to a more cultural aspect of living in America.
• 34:46
  I believe you're so right.
• 34:50
  I wasn't prepared at all.
• 34:51
  I think somebody said one of your friends eventually told you that you're a bit too
• 34:55
  pushy and argumentative.
• 34:57
  If I can quote you a little bit.
• 34:59
  In other words, you are apparently too East German to fit in.
• 35:03
  How come the most formidable spy agency in the world didn't seem to properly understand
• 35:09
  the culture it was sending its top sleeper agents to?
• 35:13
  Okay, because in those days, there was cultural ignorance and general ignorance both ways.
• 35:21
  Americans didn't know how Russia operated and what it meant to live in Russia.
• 35:25
  And Russians didn't know how to live and how to act and live as an American.
• 35:33
  The problem was that the KGB agents that had operated, that had experience in the United
• 35:40
  States were all under diplomatic cover.
• 35:44
  So while they had interaction with Americans, they didn't live as Americans.
• 35:51
  They lived in their own compound.
• 35:53
  They had their family with them.
• 35:56
  They didn't know what it would take to get a job.
• 35:59
  And they came back to Moscow and they were like super arrogant because they had had jobs
• 36:07
  that everybody wanted.
• 36:09
  Everybody wanted to go to the US.
• 36:11
  And so they looked at me.
• 36:13
  I was like American and I know everything.
• 36:16
  The shitheads, I'm sorry.
• 36:18
  No, no, no, not at all.
• 36:20
  They didn't know what they didn't know.
• 36:23
  The arrogance was astounding.
• 36:25
  And there was nobody within the KGB who could tell them that, hey, listen, you don't know
• 36:32
  much.
• 36:34
  And ultimately, I found out slowly, slowly, slowly with a little help from my friend there
• 36:42
  and I was already in the US for 10 years and I was still behaving like a German.
• 36:49
  But in New York, you kind of get away with this.
• 36:52
  Because it's so multicultural.
• 36:55
  Yes.
• 36:56
  But anyway, there was a little bit of luck, but it was also desire to find out what it
• 37:10
  meant.
• 37:12
  I learned a lot except for this one, the communication style.
• 37:16
  That just didn't play well.
• 37:19
  The worst thing in life is if you don't know what you don't know.
• 37:26
  If you know what you don't know, you are in a much safer space.
• 37:31
  And these guys didn't really didn't know.
• 37:33
  And they were the experts.
• 37:35
  Nobody could tell them that they didn't know anything.
• 37:37
  So yeah.
• 37:38
  Can you tell me more about these sort of cultural gaps?
• 37:42
  Were there any more that you can think of where you kind of stood out like a sore thumb
• 37:48
  when you tried to fit in because of ill preparation?
• 37:52
  Some of the other things I was somewhat prepared for by my tutor.
• 37:58
  But she, her knowledge was dated.
• 38:03
  For instance, in those days, most Americans would, you know, when they eat, they have
• 38:09
  a fork in the left and a knife in the right and they would cut the meat and then put the
• 38:15
  knife aside and start eating with the right hand with a fork only.
• 38:20
  That was important.
• 38:23
  And what I discovered very quickly, Germans are when they have an argument with you or
• 38:32
  you know, when they get intense, they get very close to your face, much closer than
• 38:37
  Americans.
• 38:38
  So I learned to avoid that rather quickly.
• 38:41
  And that is one of the reasons that I learned all of these things is my first job.
• 38:46
  I was a bike messenger and I interacted with a bunch of Americans who weren't curious about
• 38:55
  me.
• 38:56
  Most of them were transients and they didn't care where you come from, where you're going.
• 39:01
  But you know, I watched them.
• 39:03
  You were observing like a fly on the wall.
• 39:05
  Oh, yeah.
• 39:07
  And I'm naturally curious.
• 39:09
  So overall, that worked to my advantage.
• 39:15
  And when I went to college in the US, it was in New York and there were a lot of minorities.
• 39:22
  So the only thing that made me stand out a little bit was that I was 10 years older than
• 39:29
  the average student.
• 39:31
  But there were others like me.
• 39:33
  So you know, the path that I took and including my first job as a programmer, where at least
• 39:42
  half the other programmers were from other countries.
• 39:48
  And eventually, I got to a point where I felt really comfortable, particularly as I was
• 39:54
  able to soften my communication style.
• 39:58
  Here's something that's a little bit unclear to me.
• 40:01
  If I understand it correctly, the plan for you was that you were supposed to somehow
• 40:05
  get closer to circles of power in the US, right?
• 40:09
  Yeah, sure.
• 40:10
  And well, plan A was brilliant.
• 40:14
  So what was the plan?
• 40:17
  Plan A was for me to get the required documents to live as an American and live and work.
• 40:24
  That was an IT, a driver's license and a social security card.
• 40:29
  I had those.
• 40:30
  I could get a job.
• 40:31
  I had an apartment.
• 40:32
  And then the plan was after about two years to apply for a passport and move to a German
• 40:42
  speaking country, I'm thinking Switzerland or Austria, and open a business.
• 40:49
  And the KGB had experience how to funnel money into businesses.
• 40:57
  So let's take another two years, and I'm going back to the US with $10 million in my account.
• 41:05
  And I don't have to tell anybody how that all worked and how I acquired this, because
• 41:09
  I just did in Europe and I did this and this.
• 41:12
  Right.
• 41:13
  And you're immediately injected into the upper sphere of the society because you're a millionaire.
• 41:18
  Yes.
• 41:20
  And with that money, in those days, I would have been able to join any country club and
• 41:27
  I would have been able to socialize with interesting people.
• 41:31
  What happened to Plan A?
• 41:32
  I failed.
• 41:35
  But they sort of didn't help me not to fail.
• 41:41
  So in Moscow, we practiced filling out the application.
• 41:47
  So I was familiar with the application looked like.
• 41:52
  And sorry, application for a passport.
• 41:54
  For the passport, yeah.
• 41:57
  And I was advised to apply in person.
• 42:02
  You could do it by mail or in person.
• 42:04
  And I don't know why.
• 42:06
  I thought that was a stupid mistake.
• 42:08
  But the crucial mistake I made.
• 42:13
  So I went to the passport office with my ID.
• 42:19
  I needed the birth certificate, the driver's license and the filled out application.
• 42:26
  And it was already filled out.
• 42:28
  And the mistake I made was there was one question that asked, what is your profession?
• 42:35
  And I honestly wrote messenger.
• 42:37
  I didn't think that through.
• 42:40
  And then there was a couple of optional questions.
• 42:45
  Where are you planning to go and when are you planning to leave the country?
• 42:49
  And it was optional.
• 42:50
  I left it blank.
• 42:52
  So now, I was a messenger, all right.
• 42:56
  But I was on commission.
• 42:57
  I made enough money to actually be able to travel abroad.
• 43:03
  So I should have put in contractor.
• 43:06
  I see.
• 43:07
  So the guy who was looking at the guy behind the counter was looking at my application
• 43:12
  and he said, wait a minute.
• 43:13
  He is the guy who makes minimum wage because messengers make minimum wage.
• 43:18
  The vast majority of them.
• 43:22
  Minimum wage.
• 43:23
  He doesn't know where he's going and he doesn't know when he's going there.
• 43:28
  Something is fishy.
• 43:29
  And so he called me back and he said, we have some questions, some doubt about your identity.
• 43:36
  Could you please fill out this additional questionnaire?
• 43:42
  I still was in my stoic mode and figured out, okay, I'm just going to fill out the other
• 43:49
  questionnaire.
• 43:50
  Question number one.
• 43:51
  And this is where the stoic finally panicked.
• 43:58
  The question was, where did you go to high school?
• 44:01
  Oh, shit.
• 44:02
  Well, exactly.
• 44:05
  But I saved again with quick decision making.
• 44:12
  I didn't even think about it and there was no planning.
• 44:14
  I just instinctively, this is what I did.
• 44:17
  I took that questionnaire and I mumbled something to me with some curse words.
• 44:25
  And then I went to the counter and I put the questionnaire in front of him and I said something
• 44:31
  like, I don't need all this shit.
• 44:34
  I took the application and my documents that were lying in front of him with me.
• 44:40
  Oh, wow.
• 44:41
  No way.
• 44:43
  Is that a movie scene or what?
• 44:44
  That is a movie scene if I've ever seen one.
• 44:49
  And that's one of the reasons the KGB hired somebody like me because my instincts have
• 44:54
  been most of the time, very, very good.
• 44:57
  In your shoes, I would have just collapsed and confessed to everything on the spot.
• 45:02
  So that's really impressive.
• 45:04
  Yeah.
• 45:05
  So now plan B was going back to college and then working my way up.
• 45:10
  It would have actually worked in the long run because eventually I made a career and
• 45:14
  I even had an executive job in a company that co-owned a nuclear plant.
• 45:21
  And my last job was with a company that manages part of the United States electric grid.
• 45:29
  So I made it.
• 45:32
  May I ask, did plan B come up with a blueprint attached or was it just some sort of a long-term
• 45:40
  improvisational kind of a thing?
• 45:42
  You were just dropped there into an alien culture and expected to achieve that.
• 45:48
  It was a dream.
• 45:49
  But I tell you what, this will surprise you as it surprises everybody else.
• 45:55
  I was not really told what my value was to the KGB, what that primary value was.
• 46:04
  And that was me actually being there, living in the United States as an American.
• 46:11
  Again, I found that out through one of those interviews.
• 46:16
  And I'm going to drop two names, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanson.
• 46:20
  You know who they are, right?
• 46:21
  Yeah.
• 46:22
  I've heard of them.
• 46:23
  Okay.
• 46:24
  But they were the most destructive spies for the KGB in the United States.
• 46:30
  They were moles, one in the FBI and the other one in the CIA.
• 46:35
  And there were significant concerns that the spy war, CIA versus the KGB, would get out
• 46:46
  of hand.
• 46:48
  And almost all the spies in the other country, the Americans and the Soviets, they were all
• 46:53
  diplomats.
• 46:55
  And when a diplomat was caught doing espionage stuff, they got kicked out.
• 47:01
  And then there was retaliation.
• 47:03
  And sometimes it was three people got kicked out back and forth.
• 47:06
  And there was a significant fear that all of a sudden diplomatic relations would be
• 47:11
  cut.
• 47:14
  And the only ones left, if there were any besides me, and I think there may have been
• 47:19
  my other friend, to have contact with these super agents would have been us illegals.
• 47:28
  So everything else, they didn't tell me that.
• 47:31
  They also didn't tell me how I would get instructions what to do when diplomatic relations were
• 47:40
  cut.
• 47:41
  And there's also some rumors and even some folks in Russian intelligence are still hinting
• 47:49
  that there may be stashes of hidden weapons someplace in the United States.
• 47:54
  No, no training, no idea.
• 47:56
  I mean, they left me completely in the dark.
• 47:58
  They just told you to live your life as an American for an extended period.
• 48:01
  My life and the mantra was always contacts, contacts, contacts, get to know as many people
• 48:08
  as you can, and determine whether they would be in a position, maybe they already have
• 48:16
  access to any kind of secret, or they might be in a position one day to have access to
• 48:23
  secrets.
• 48:24
  So particularly students, when I was studying, I profiled a lot of students, whether they
• 48:32
  approached them and tried to recruit them, I don't know.
• 48:36
  I never got any feedback as to a specific job, well done, nothing, zero.
• 48:43
  How did you communicate with the center in Moscow?
• 48:49
  I got my instructions and answers to my questions, short wave transmissions once a week, double
• 49:01
  encrypted.
• 49:02
  There was a pain in the neck, but it was even more painful to communicate back because I
• 49:07
  had to use secret writing.
• 49:10
  And that took a half a day because I had to encrypt some of the information I sent.
• 49:16
  I had to write an open letter pretending I know the person I'm sending the letter to.
• 49:25
  And then I had to use a specific contact paper that was used to put the secret writing over
• 49:35
  the open text.
• 49:37
  It's invisible, some chemical that eventually would be mailed.
• 49:43
  The letter was mailed by airmail, regular airmail to a third country where somebody
• 49:49
  picked it up, a volunteer for the KGB, gave it to a diplomat, and they went into the diplomatic
• 49:57
  power to round up in Moscow.
• 49:59
  So the communication cycle for me to actually have a question and get an answer was about
• 50:05
  three weeks, so most of the time I couldn't wait that long.
• 50:13
  Communication was a royal pain in the neck.
• 50:15
  And I never, never, never, never, and again, I did not know that this was a hard rule that
• 50:22
  for all illegals, illegals were never to meet another agent in the country where they
• 50:31
  were illegals, so that was valid for France, Italy, any of the other countries, including
• 50:41
  the United States, simply because the other agents were mostly diplomats and were at least
• 50:47
  suspected by counterintelligence and more likely to be followed, which put us high value
• 50:55
  assets at severe risk of getting blown up.
• 51:00
  During your time as an active agent in the US, what was your biggest scoop, would you
• 51:13
  say?
• 51:14
  Since I didn't get any feedback, I don't know if they recruited somebody who actually wound
• 51:19
  up to do good work on behalf of the KGB.
• 51:22
  That I don't know.
• 51:25
  Other than that, I stole some software.
• 51:32
  For the company where I worked, I had access to high value software.
• 51:37
  I don't know if that was usable because it was software that's still in use today.
• 51:43
  I've improved a lot, but it's software that it's like an ERP.
• 51:52
  I don't even know what it stands for, Enterprise Management Software that allows you to run
• 51:58
  a big company.
• 52:00
  I don't know if that would have been useful in a communist economy.
• 52:07
  I thought that was pretty good, but my hands never touched anything that had top secret
• 52:14
  with me.
• 52:15
  Right, right, right.
• 52:18
  I thought I was a failure.
• 52:20
  I didn't feel good about this whole situation.
• 52:23
  But again, because of my ability to actually stick in the US and stay there for as long
• 52:31
  as I did, they thought I was really, really successful.
• 52:35
  I want to show you something.
• 52:43
  This thing is the order of the red banner.
• 52:46
  Oh, wow.
• 52:48
  That looks dope.
• 52:49
  I'm not going to lie.
• 52:51
  It's the second highest declaration of the Soviet Union.
• 52:55
  I received that in 1988 and it was given to my wife.
• 53:08
  And ironically, when I got the radio transmission where they said that the Central Committee
• 53:16
  had to approve that, that I got it and it came with a monetary award of $10,000.
• 53:28
  The irony of this, I don't have to tell you, they had no qualms.
• 53:37
  They just didn't see the dichotomy that I was being rewarded with the currency of a
• 53:42
  country that we were trying to destroy.
• 53:44
  It's ironic.
• 53:48
  So what?
• 53:49
  Yeah, but excuse me.
• 53:50
  They gave this to your wife who was in East Germany, right?
• 53:53
  Yeah, of course.
• 53:55
  Wow.
• 53:56
  Right.
• 53:57
  They wouldn't send this to the States.
• 53:59
  No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 54:01
  That would be funny.
• 54:05
  I also wanted to ask this.
• 54:07
  Were honey pots an actual strategy in KGB's arsenal ever or any other spy agency or is
• 54:15
  that just another Hollywood cliche?
• 54:17
  No, actually, they were.
• 54:20
  They were?
• 54:22
  Yes.
• 54:24
  And this is secondhand knowledge.
• 54:32
  I can't recall who shared that with me.
• 54:35
  But they had, I may have read it as well.
• 54:40
  I have a lot of friends who used to be counterintelligence.
• 54:45
  I also have a friend who was FSB.
• 54:49
  But they had sort of little universities where they trained women.
• 54:58
  That was real.
• 54:59
  So what's the famous movie about one of those honeypots, women?
• 55:07
  Anyway, Sparrow or something with Sparrow?
• 55:11
  I don't know.
• 55:12
  Okay.
• 55:13
  Yeah, no, big time.
• 55:14
  And as you know, the East Germans used the Romeos.
• 55:18
  They used men.
• 55:19
  I see.
• 55:20
  Wow.
• 55:21
  So that would have been a better fit for me.
• 55:25
  That was real.
• 55:26
  Well, you're a tall, handsome guy.
• 55:28
  Oh, yeah.
• 55:29
  But they never suggested that you do a little Romeo-ing on the side?
• 55:34
  No.
• 55:35
  Okay.
• 55:36
  Have you watched this TV show called The Americans?
• 55:38
  It's about the illegal program in the 80s.
• 55:42
  I watched every episode.
• 55:44
  I also was an extra in one of the episodes.
• 55:48
  Oh, interesting.
• 55:49
  Were you consulting on that show a little bit?
• 55:51
  No, I wasn't really consulting.
• 55:53
  Everybody thinks I was.
• 55:54
  They didn't need me.
• 55:56
  I did see a couple of things in there, the way they laid out a KGB office in the studio
• 56:06
  where there was a couple of things that were wrong.
• 56:09
  But they prided themselves on a lot of authenticity in terms of the clothing and the cars and
• 56:17
  everything.
• 56:18
  Because it's set in the 80s when you were active as well, right?
• 56:21
  Yeah.
• 56:22
  Yeah.
• 56:23
  In the 80s, and they did a good job of being as authentic as you can be.
• 56:30
  They also did a very good job showing the psychological issues that come with being
• 56:40
  an illegal in another country.
• 56:42
  And if you watch the show, the male eventually decided he liked it in the US and he wanted
• 56:52
  to stay and the female didn't.
• 56:54
  So it became like a family drama.
• 56:57
  And then you had the kids involved as well.
• 57:01
  But as far as the depiction of espionage activity, not a one is realistic.
• 57:10
  It's a very action packed show, right?
• 57:11
  And they use honey pots all the time.
• 57:13
  He's a bit of a Romeo.
• 57:14
  She's using it as well.
• 57:15
  Oh, yeah.
• 57:16
  That's why I mentioned it.
• 57:17
  They have all the skills that you could possibly, they pick locks, they know how to kill people,
• 57:25
  they know how to get rid of the corpses.
• 57:27
  Right, everything.
• 57:29
  And the one thing I squirmed every time I saw this, they would walk around in the city
• 57:37
  with wigs on their head.
• 57:40
  Is that not a...
• 57:41
  Absolute...
• 57:42
  That's not a good thing?
• 57:43
  It's a violation.
• 57:44
  It's illegal and somebody sees you with a wig on.
• 57:48
  Somebody who knows you, you're in trouble.
• 57:51
  Can't you just say like, I'm bald and I'm wearing a wig for cosmetic reasons or something?
• 57:55
  No, no, no.
• 57:56
  Somebody who knows you without the wig.
• 57:57
  Oh, right.
• 57:58
  Now the question comes up, why are you wearing a wig?
• 58:03
  Okay.
• 58:04
  Wigs can be worn by the team that follows you when they change their appearance.
• 58:10
  Because when they're busted, okay, they can go back home and say, okay, there was a failure.
• 58:16
  And on top of it, they had a functioning business and two kids.
• 58:22
  Right.
• 58:23
  How does it work?
• 58:25
  It doesn't.
• 58:27
  But it was good entertainment.
• 58:29
  Yeah, that's what it is.
• 58:31
  One more thing I need to say actually, it actually did some damage to Americans who
• 58:42
  figured that this is what real undercover spies look like and this is how they act.
• 58:49
  Everybody knows that the James Bond is fiction.
• 58:51
  Of course.
• 58:52
  Most Americans, I get this question all the time.
• 58:55
  Most Americans thought that this is realistic when in fact, I can tell them a little bit
• 59:01
  how to possibly discover a spy among us.
• 59:10
  Because you know, I lived it.
• 59:11
  How can we do that?
• 59:12
  I'm going to...
• 59:13
  Patterns.
• 59:14
  Patterns?
• 59:15
  Patterns.
• 59:16
  Can you be a little bit more specific?
• 59:19
  Every Thursday night for 10 years, I was not available for any social event because I had
• 59:24
  to listen to the radio.
• 59:27
  Okay.
• 59:29
  And when I stole the software that took a while, I went to work on Saturdays, all of
• 59:39
  a sudden.
• 59:41
  And nobody cared what I was doing.
• 59:43
  If you pay a little bit of attention, you may see something that is a touch unusual.
• 59:52
  So if you observe people, if I have a friend who's always missing during the Thursdays
• 59:57
  basketball practice, he's always missing just on Thursdays, I might have a bit of a reason
• 1:00:02
  to question him a bit further.
• 1:00:05
  Nobody ever asked me and I honestly, I would have probably not been ready with a good answer.
• 1:00:16
  I just never thought about it.
• 1:00:18
  There's a lot of things that I know now that I didn't know then.
• 1:00:21
  I had a lot of time to think about it.
• 1:00:24
  You were speaking of the TV show The Americans.
• 1:00:28
  What do movies or TV shows get most wrong about spy work usually?
• 1:00:32
  Is it that they're like so action packed?
• 1:00:34
  Is it all the glamorous lifestyle?
• 1:00:36
  Well, most lifestyle is a possibility.
• 1:00:40
  It is a possibility for sure.
• 1:00:42
  I mean, for instance, Kim Philby, he lived a high life, right?
• 1:00:48
  And the Cambridge Five, generally, they were upper class.
• 1:00:53
  So that's possible.
• 1:00:55
  But end to end action, it's anybody who, let me rephrase this, every retired ex-intelligent
• 1:01:06
  agent who I spoke with confirms what I'm telling you now is the espionage game is 95% waiting
• 1:01:13
  and 5% action.
• 1:01:16
  Yeah.
• 1:01:18
  You got more patience.
• 1:01:20
  I hate waiting.
• 1:01:21
  I'm not a patient person.
• 1:01:23
  So there you go.
• 1:01:24
  I would be very ill suited for this type of work.
• 1:01:27
  Anxious, impatient, impulsive, just the worst agent of all time.
• 1:01:33
  But you were patient.
• 1:01:34
  I had to be.
• 1:01:35
  I forced into patience.
• 1:01:38
  The protocols that we had required me to be patient.
• 1:01:41
  I am by nature impatient.
• 1:01:46
  But then I also have Germanic genes and I was brought up to be very disciplined.
• 1:01:56
  OK, so I was able to overcome the impatience.
• 1:02:03
  Back to your story, the final stretch of it.
• 1:02:06
  Your cover wasn't blown when you were still active.
• 1:02:09
  It was you who decided to finally get out.
• 1:02:12
  How did that happen?
• 1:02:15
  And most of all, how did you live to tell the tale?
• 1:02:18
  We had a protocol of signals where I could and these were very simple signals.
• 1:02:25
  There was a signal spot where I could put a signal such as certain chalk marks or something
• 1:02:31
  like that at a spot where the person who was to look for the signal passed by on his way
• 1:02:41
  or mostly his way to work.
• 1:02:44
  So that signal spot, it's clear to me it was on a road at an underpass where the person
• 1:02:54
  would most likely drive his vehicle to the United Nations.
• 1:02:59
  So in my case, the signal spot was on a support beam, an iron support beam for the elevated
• 1:03:08
  portion of the A train.
• 1:03:10
  One of the A train was above ground, it was a subway, but it was above ground.
• 1:03:16
  And signals could have been something like when I would set a signal, when they asked
• 1:03:23
  me to confirm that I received and was able to decipher the most recent radiogram or they
• 1:03:31
  would ask me to go for a dead drop operation the next day and that kind of stuff.
• 1:03:41
  Very simple and one of the signals was the danger signal.
• 1:03:46
  If I placed a danger signal, I forgot what it was, essentially what that meant is I'm
• 1:03:53
  running.
• 1:03:54
  I think I'm being pursued.
• 1:03:56
  I'm out of here.
• 1:03:58
  Like out of here as in I'm leaving the country.
• 1:04:01
  Yeah, I'm going to Canada.
• 1:04:05
  Okay because out of the country I wouldn't have had the document to other than going
• 1:04:11
  to Canada because you needed no more than a driver's license.
• 1:04:17
  And if I ever saw that signal, which by the way was the strongest signal we ever had,
• 1:04:25
  it was a fist size red dot on that metal beam.
• 1:04:29
  If I ever saw that, it meant it's in order.
• 1:04:34
  Emergency protocol is now activated.
• 1:04:39
  Don't go home.
• 1:04:41
  Don't go to the bank.
• 1:04:44
  Hopefully when I always had to have cash with me, so just run to the Canadian border.
• 1:04:49
  So that means your cover has been blown, you got to get out.
• 1:04:52
  Yeah.
• 1:04:53
  Yes.
• 1:04:54
  Neither the FBI nor I have a clue why they thought the cover was blown, but they were
• 1:05:01
  super nervous.
• 1:05:03
  They were extremely protective of us simply because if we got caught it would cause a
• 1:05:11
  whole lot of problems because if we got caught, they have to get us out.
• 1:05:20
  Not because they cared about us, if they don't get us out, which wasn't easy to do.
• 1:05:27
  If they don't get us out, they don't get any more people to sign up for the job.
• 1:05:33
  So I knew that they would get me out because they got the Coens out when they were in British
• 1:05:37
  mail.
• 1:05:38
  Right.
• 1:05:39
  So usually in a swap, right?
• 1:05:40
  Yeah.
• 1:05:41
  Yeah.
• 1:05:42
  And so they were really skittish and nervous and they had reason to believe that I'm about
• 1:05:50
  to be arrested and emergency protocol was activated.
• 1:05:55
  What they didn't know that I had an 18 month old girl in the United States.
• 1:06:03
  Picture.
• 1:06:04
  She looked like this.
• 1:06:11
  Oh wow.
• 1:06:12
  At the time, pretty, pretty beautiful.
• 1:06:18
  When she came into my life, I fell in love the way I didn't know that you can love that
• 1:06:25
  way unconditionally.
• 1:06:26
  Excuse me.
• 1:06:27
  I mean, I just to interrupt you really quick.
• 1:06:30
  Was that allowed to have a family in the US?
• 1:06:35
  Could you have a partner?
• 1:06:36
  Could you marry?
• 1:06:37
  Was that encouraged?
• 1:06:38
  They knew.
• 1:06:39
  They knew.
• 1:06:40
  They knew that I most likely would have sexual relations.
• 1:06:44
  Of course.
• 1:06:45
  Yeah.
• 1:06:46
  I was married in Germany and I wasn't faithful in that respect because when you're in your
• 1:06:55
  late 20s, you have some, maybe not needs, but desires.
• 1:07:02
  It's kind of hard to live like a monk.
• 1:07:06
  Celebrate.
• 1:07:07
  Yeah.
• 1:07:08
  So if you live celebrate, then people might think, what's wrong with this guy?
• 1:07:14
  But no, obviously no marriage was not even talked about.
• 1:07:18
  But did they know that you're married and have a daughter?
• 1:07:21
  Did the KGB know that?
• 1:07:23
  No.
• 1:07:24
  No, they didn't.
• 1:07:25
  They didn't.
• 1:07:26
  They didn't check on me because the moment they check on me, they would put me in danger.
• 1:07:30
  So I knew for sure that they wouldn't know that I got married and they wouldn't know
• 1:07:39
  that I have a child because when I became the valedictorian in the US college, they
• 1:07:49
  didn't know it.
• 1:07:50
  They would have read me the riot act.
• 1:07:52
  It was not a good thing to be a standout.
• 1:07:55
  I see.
• 1:07:56
  Right.
• 1:07:57
  So I was almost 100% sure that they didn't know.
• 1:08:01
  My God.
• 1:08:03
  I actually went back to Moscow after I got married.
• 1:08:08
  Every two years I was back in Moscow for some debriefing and rest and relaxation and meet
• 1:08:12
  the German family.
• 1:08:14
  And if they had known that I was married, they would have kept me there and possibly
• 1:08:18
  put me in jail.
• 1:08:19
  Wow.
• 1:08:20
  So I knew they didn't know and then I also knew that they didn't know about the child.
• 1:08:26
  So but I had in my mind, I tried to figure out how I can take care of this girl because
• 1:08:37
  I was a loving father.
• 1:08:39
  I was a doting father.
• 1:08:43
  And the girl's mother, her name is Chelsea, the girl's mother had four years of schooling.
• 1:08:52
  She was from South America.
• 1:08:55
  Both of them would have grown up in a slum, literally.
• 1:09:02
  And I couldn't have that.
• 1:09:03
  So now I didn't know.
• 1:09:06
  I didn't know.
• 1:09:07
  Now my hand was forced.
• 1:09:09
  I had no solution.
• 1:09:10
  I didn't want to tell the KGB to help me send money to this girl because again, they probably
• 1:09:17
  would have kept me in a very uncomfortable living conditions.
• 1:09:25
  So I stalled for a while because there was always a reason why I didn't read the signal,
• 1:09:37
  why I didn't respond.
• 1:09:39
  Actually, that was on a Monday.
• 1:09:41
  On a Thursday, I listened to the shortwave radio again and in a few brief sentences,
• 1:09:46
  they explained you need to get out because we have reason to believe that the FBI is
• 1:09:51
  investigating you.
• 1:09:53
  Okay, so now there was always a possibility that the radio transmission failed or that
• 1:09:59
  the radio broke or one time I was sick for about a month and I couldn't do anything.
• 1:10:09
  But they eventually got really impatient and sent one of those diplomats to talk to me.
• 1:10:21
  They knew and I had to tell them that they knew the path I went to work every morning.
• 1:10:29
  So I'm going upstairs waiting for the A train and there's this guy who's coming up to me
• 1:10:37
  in a black trench coat and he whispers in my ear with a pretty heavy Russian accent,
• 1:10:43
  you got to come home or else you're dead.
• 1:10:47
  I would have been on my first flight back to Moscow.
• 1:10:52
  I hear you, but you have children?
• 1:10:56
  No, I'm not a father.
• 1:10:58
  Okay, so you don't understand the power of unconditional logic?
• 1:11:05
  Not yet.
• 1:11:06
  Really, I had to make a decision because now they knew that I knew that the emergency plan
• 1:11:18
  was relayed to you.
• 1:11:22
  I got one invitation for a dead drop to get a passport and some money and I figured I
• 1:11:31
  go and pick up the money.
• 1:11:33
  At least I had not made a decision, still not made a decision.
• 1:11:38
  When I get to that spot, which was really easy to find, was a tree in a park.
• 1:11:47
  This was in late December.
• 1:11:49
  There was nobody in the park and the tree was hollowed at the bottom.
• 1:11:53
  Very, very easy to find.
• 1:11:55
  I found it.
• 1:11:56
  I described it.
• 1:11:57
  I knew exactly where that container was supposed to be, across the Oirkan, where it was going
• 1:12:03
  to be.
• 1:12:04
  The protocol of a dead drop is that there are two signals.
• 1:12:09
  The first signal is put by the guy who deposits the container and the second one is the one
• 1:12:16
  who takes it and says, okay, I got it.
• 1:12:18
  The first signal was there, so I say, okay, let me go pick up the money.
• 1:12:24
  There was no Oirkan.
• 1:12:26
  That was the first and only time that ever happened that we had a dead drop operation
• 1:12:31
  that failed.
• 1:12:32
  I just couldn't find it.
• 1:12:33
  I walked around for a while.
• 1:12:36
  It wasn't accidentally placed a little close by.
• 1:12:40
  Nothing.
• 1:12:41
  So I walk out of the park and dejected.
• 1:12:47
  At that point, my subconscious made a decision because the analysis that I did as a scientist,
• 1:12:55
  so here's everything that can happen and will happen if I go home and here's everything
• 1:13:02
  that might happen and might not happen if I stay.
• 1:13:06
  So everything that was good for me was over there back home.
• 1:13:11
  I got dollars saved on my behalf.
• 1:13:14
  They promised me a house.
• 1:13:15
  I had received that nice little medal.
• 1:13:19
  And at that time, the Soviet Union doesn't look like it's going to fall apart yet or
• 1:13:23
  does it?
• 1:13:24
  Nobody.
• 1:13:25
  The wall is still up also.
• 1:13:26
  Nobody had a clue.
• 1:13:27
  That was the surprise to everybody.
• 1:13:31
  How were you at that time ideologically after spending a decade in the US already?
• 1:13:35
  I had adopted the convergence theory.
• 1:13:41
  I don't know if you know what that is.
• 1:13:43
  What that meant really was cooked up by social democrats in Western Europe that decided that
• 1:13:50
  the best thing to do would be to take the good parts of communism and the good parts
• 1:13:55
  of capitalism and have them converge.
• 1:13:59
  So some sort of like a social democracy?
• 1:14:02
  Yes.
• 1:14:04
  And so what we have now say in Scandinavian countries.
• 1:14:10
  And I thought about it.
• 1:14:11
  I knew that capitalism was significantly more efficient in terms of wealth generation, but
• 1:14:18
  I also still knew that there was a lot of oppression of minorities.
• 1:14:25
  Of course.
• 1:14:26
  There was a lot of injustice and poverty and all that.
• 1:14:32
  So let's just put it all together.
• 1:14:34
  That's where I was at the time.
• 1:14:38
  I also was still loyal to East Germany.
• 1:14:43
  Not the communist cause anymore.
• 1:14:46
  But I would not have betrayed East Germany for sure.
• 1:14:50
  But I walk out of that park and my subconscious says I'm staying.
• 1:14:55
  There was not a lot was not logically determined.
• 1:14:57
  There was the worst decision that I could have made in terms of self preservation.
• 1:15:04
  Right.
• 1:15:06
  You're putting yourself in active danger with this decision.
• 1:15:09
  Absolutely.
• 1:15:10
  Because they laid it out that you're dead if you stay.
• 1:15:15
  Well, the chances were that if I tell them that I'm not following the orders that they
• 1:15:22
  interpret this as a defection.
• 1:15:24
  So I came up with this.
• 1:15:27
  That was another sudden inspiration.
• 1:15:35
  I don't know.
• 1:15:36
  I didn't research.
• 1:15:37
  I didn't analyze.
• 1:15:38
  I just came up with this like this out of thin air.
• 1:15:41
  All right.
• 1:15:42
  I'm going to tell them I have AIDS.
• 1:15:44
  HIV AIDS.
• 1:15:45
  And I sent them to my last letter in secret writing.
• 1:15:48
  I told them I understand that I'm in danger.
• 1:15:52
  And I really want to come home.
• 1:15:54
  But I have HIV AIDS.
• 1:15:58
  And the only place where I could possibly get some treatments in those days, there was
• 1:16:03
  no treatment.
• 1:16:04
  It was a death sentence.
• 1:16:07
  It's the United States.
• 1:16:10
  And they bought it.
• 1:16:11
  But now I didn't know that they bought it.
• 1:16:12
  I found out much later when I met my son as an adult when he was an adult already.
• 1:16:18
  Yeah, they bought it.
• 1:16:20
  And I spent about three months taking some measures of precaution so that, number one,
• 1:16:34
  just in case the KGB was about to come after me, I made sure that I was not findable in
• 1:16:46
  the same spot at the same time on any given day.
• 1:16:51
  So I changed my routes.
• 1:16:53
  And I changed also the time when I went to work.
• 1:16:55
  I had flexible hours and stuff like that.
• 1:16:59
  And I also did surveillance detection and see if the FBI is after me.
• 1:17:05
  I don't know what I would have done if I found out that they were.
• 1:17:10
  And I did one other thing that made me pretty certain that the FBI is not coming after me.
• 1:17:21
  There's a way to find out whether your mail has been opened.
• 1:17:26
  I wrote a letter to myself and I closed the letter and left about one inch that wasn't
• 1:17:35
  where I didn't moisten the gum.
• 1:17:40
  Typically letters are opened mechanically and then they're re-closed completely.
• 1:17:47
  So I mailed this from some fictional address in New York City to me.
• 1:17:54
  And when I opened it, it was still dry that spot.
• 1:17:57
  So nobody had opened the letter.
• 1:17:59
  So I was pretty sure.
• 1:18:01
  After three months, I was certain I was home free.
• 1:18:06
  And that's when I told my wife, Chelsea's mother, it's time to see if we can get a house
• 1:18:15
  in the suburbs.
• 1:18:16
  So that communication that you sent to the KGB telling them that you have HIV, that you
• 1:18:22
  have AIDS, that was the last time you were in contact with them.
• 1:18:26
  Then everything just stopped.
• 1:18:27
  That was absolutely the last time there was nothing left there.
• 1:18:32
  And I knew when they had received and read the letter when the radio transmission stopped
• 1:18:40
  because every Thursday, no, they actually were transmitting at one point every day.
• 1:18:46
  So listen every day.
• 1:18:48
  And I turned it on and it beep beep beep beep beep beep.
• 1:18:52
  I certainly didn't write it down.
• 1:18:55
  But one day I turned it on, it was dead silent.
• 1:18:59
  So I knew they had gotten the letter.
• 1:19:01
  It's over.
• 1:19:02
  Yes.
• 1:19:03
  But it wasn't over in terms of me being cautious.
• 1:19:07
  This is when actually the period of caution started because at that point, I didn't know
• 1:19:13
  whether they believed a lie or not.
• 1:19:15
  Now in hindsight, again, they had no reason, absolutely no reason to not believe it because
• 1:19:22
  all they knew about me was what I told you that all the good shit for me was back in
• 1:19:27
  the other side of the wall.
• 1:19:31
  So the FBI eventually does get on your trail.
• 1:19:36
  How and why does that happen?
• 1:19:38
  Not at that time, but at a later time.
• 1:19:40
  Yeah, it was nine years later, nine years later.
• 1:19:43
  So you have nine years of living as an ordinary American, you stop being an agent, excuse me.
• 1:19:50
  And after nine years, the FBI finally knocks, I believe, on the window of your car.
• 1:19:57
  Well, they didn't knock on the window.
• 1:19:59
  They rented a state trooper to wave me over as a crossing over the Delaware River where
• 1:20:07
  you have to actually put a couple of quarters in.
• 1:20:09
  There was a toll bridge and I had to slow.
• 1:20:12
  OK, but let's excuse me.
• 1:20:15
  I have to interrupt you here.
• 1:20:17
  How did they catch a trail in the first place?
• 1:20:21
  I mean, especially because you weren't active anymore.
• 1:20:24
  Yeah, it was a betrayal.
• 1:20:26
  There's a person who worked in the archives of the KGB.
• 1:20:32
  He had access to he was the senior archivist and he had access to all kinds of files in
• 1:20:39
  Moscow and in Moscow.
• 1:20:42
  And he started and he had developed a deep seated hatred for the system.
• 1:20:49
  And the only thing that he could come up with how to do damage is like copy secrets by hand,
• 1:20:58
  small pieces of paper that he smuggled out in his underwear and in his socks.
• 1:21:03
  And when he got home, he copied it over with the typewriter and buried this all in his
• 1:21:09
  dacha and when the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the KGB was dissolved, he went
• 1:21:20
  and said hello to MI6 at a British embassy in Estonia, I believe.
• 1:21:28
  And they managed to get the stuff out of his dacha.
• 1:21:31
  It was the biggest intelligence related catch in the history of intelligence.
• 1:21:39
  Wow.
• 1:21:40
  Yeah.
• 1:21:41
  I mean, there were still a lot of active agents.
• 1:21:44
  I mean, the Russians like me, if I'm a Russian and I'm an illegal, what do I do now?
• 1:21:52
  So there was a lot of KGB assets were still in the US or all over the world.
• 1:22:01
  Yes.
• 1:22:02
  And they were disabled.
• 1:22:03
  I mean, there's a couple of books that were published after a while based on the notes.
• 1:22:09
  It's amazing.
• 1:22:10
  And amongst those notes were, there wasn't a whole lot, but there was Jack Barsky, illegal
• 1:22:16
  in the Northeast of the United States.
• 1:22:19
  And since Barsky is not a very common name, the FBI very quickly found that I was the
• 1:22:27
  person they were looking for because I was the one who got his social security card at
• 1:22:33
  the age of 34.
• 1:22:36
  And that was highly unusual.
• 1:22:39
  And then they spent literally two years watching me.
• 1:22:43
  They were concerned that I was still active.
• 1:22:46
  They wanted to make sure that they were extremely cautious, watched me from a distance until
• 1:22:55
  the lead agent determined that I really wasn't spying anymore.
• 1:23:00
  And that's when they decided to say hello.
• 1:23:04
  That was an uncomfortable moment.
• 1:23:06
  Okay.
• 1:23:07
  Yes.
• 1:23:08
  Please tell us about it.
• 1:23:09
  So you're at the toll booth.
• 1:23:10
  They let you through.
• 1:23:11
  Yeah.
• 1:23:12
  And the state trooper waved me over, nothing special.
• 1:23:19
  And he said, routine traffic stop, please step out of the car.
• 1:23:23
  I wasn't thinking as quickly anymore as I used to because that was unusual.
• 1:23:29
  Routine traffic stop, you don't step out of the car.
• 1:23:32
  You're just going to ask, can I have your license?
• 1:23:37
  I stepped out and at that point, again from my right, like the Russian who came from my
• 1:23:44
  right at the subway, came a person and he stops next to me and he flips open an ID.
• 1:23:55
  And I didn't have to look at it.
• 1:23:56
  I knew that.
• 1:23:57
  I knew instinctively that was FBI.
• 1:24:01
  And he later told me that I lost all the blood from my face.
• 1:24:10
  It went white because all of a sudden, the thing I had already forgotten that I once
• 1:24:17
  was an agent, I had a good job.
• 1:24:22
  I was in my second house, nice house in the country, another child, a good looking wife.
• 1:24:30
  I lived life as an American.
• 1:24:31
  I knew I would never go back to Germany and clearly I had completely lost my faith in
• 1:24:36
  communism and even convergence theory.
• 1:24:39
  I was, once I bought a house, I had become a capitalist.
• 1:24:46
  So and that all just like seemed to like fall apart at that very moment or at least there
• 1:24:53
  was a danger of falling apart.
• 1:24:54
  So they asked me to step into one of their, they had one car there into the car in the
• 1:25:01
  back seat.
• 1:25:03
  And the person who was sitting there was a partner of the lead agent.
• 1:25:08
  And he had a little prop.
• 1:25:10
  The prop was a handgun that was attached to his ankle in such a way that I could see it.
• 1:25:16
  On purpose.
• 1:25:17
  A little trickery.
• 1:25:18
  That didn't bother me.
• 1:25:19
  I mean, I knew they wouldn't shoot me.
• 1:25:23
  Right.
• 1:25:24
  But apparently they were still worried that I might pull out your jujitsu moves.
• 1:25:30
  Oh yeah, or run.
• 1:25:33
  Because they knew that I was a runner because I was always out running every other day I
• 1:25:39
  went for a run.
• 1:25:41
  So they took me to a motel where they had, it was an L-shaped motel with about 15 rooms
• 1:25:56
  and they had rented one wing.
• 1:26:00
  So they had, and at the entrance where I went in they had a guard armed with a machine gun
• 1:26:09
  and I saw another man standing at the end of the hallway.
• 1:26:11
  So I'm figuring there was another guard.
• 1:26:14
  And they put me right in the middle.
• 1:26:17
  So I think that to make sure that nobody could eavesdrop, somebody somehow found their way
• 1:26:25
  into the adjoining room.
• 1:26:28
  And there was another little prop that I, at that point I had my senses back.
• 1:26:39
  I was fully functional and they had some poster where they had some bits and pieces of information
• 1:26:50
  such as my code name and an address that I used to send letters in secret writing to
• 1:26:58
  and something else.
• 1:27:00
  And I immediately realized they don't know much of anything because it was all information
• 1:27:05
  for my early years.
• 1:27:06
  They got nothing.
• 1:27:08
  So what they wanted to indicate is like, we know a lot of stuff about you.
• 1:27:14
  That trick wasn't necessary because at that time already I spoke before they actually
• 1:27:20
  could ask a question.
• 1:27:21
  I said to them, I know that this is not a comfortable situation here and I know that
• 1:27:26
  the only way for me and my family to get out of this situation with the least amount of
• 1:27:32
  damage is if I cooperate completely and I will absolutely do that.
• 1:27:39
  And so we started talking and a little bit of an interview.
• 1:27:44
  It wasn't really an interrogation.
• 1:27:46
  It was quite friendly.
• 1:27:48
  And after two hours they let me go home.
• 1:27:52
  Not without a warning from one of the armed guards.
• 1:27:54
  He said, if you think of running, we got all the intersection covered.
• 1:28:00
  So I'm thinking, where am I going to run?
• 1:28:05
  There was no place to run.
• 1:28:07
  But they didn't know that 100%.
• 1:28:11
  It evolved as I started telling them my story.
• 1:28:17
  And the one thing that I know that's part of me, I'm a very credible person in terms
• 1:28:28
  of what I tell people.
• 1:28:30
  That makes me also a very dangerous liar.
• 1:28:33
  Okay?
• 1:28:34
  And in the 60 minutes interview, the interviewer asked me, were you a good liar?
• 1:28:41
  And I just didn't have to think about it.
• 1:28:43
  I said the best, of course.
• 1:28:44
  I lived a lie.
• 1:28:47
  But I'm very, very glad that I don't have to lie anymore because I'm really wired to
• 1:28:55
  tell the truth.
• 1:28:57
  In your face, baby.
• 1:28:58
  As a German.
• 1:28:59
  As a German.
• 1:29:00
  As an American, I'm wrapping it up in a nice package.
• 1:29:08
  Yes.
• 1:29:09
  It's very soft and gentle and some velvet around it.
• 1:29:14
  Yes.
• 1:29:15
  Not passive aggressive, but I learned how to communicate softly and still tell the truth
• 1:29:21
  in love.
• 1:29:23
  And that was pretty much the end of the story because I became a citizen about five, six
• 1:29:32
  years later.
• 1:29:34
  But you have to probably, you had to cooperate.
• 1:29:38
  You have to give some information.
• 1:29:40
  You have to help out.
• 1:29:41
  Did they consult you on some current events or the current state of the illegals program?
• 1:29:47
  Anything like that?
• 1:29:48
  I had no knowledge and I couldn't give away anybody because I literally had no knowledge.
• 1:29:55
  But what was very important for them was the message in operations because even though
• 1:30:02
  there was no more Soviet Union, the intelligence services of Russia were trained by who?
• 1:30:07
  Yeah.
• 1:30:08
  And some of them were like just the KGB agents that went over into the services.
• 1:30:13
  So they still operated in a similar way.
• 1:30:16
  It was apparently very valuable to them.
• 1:30:20
  The lead agent of the FBI who actually had to win an argument with his boss who wanted
• 1:30:27
  me in jail and he said, you know, he's more valuable if he cooperates with us.
• 1:30:32
  He got a commendation from the FBI director for the job that he did.
• 1:30:38
  So it must have been quite a bit of value.
• 1:30:40
  I had a couple of instances where I was able to consult, at least give my opinion as to
• 1:30:47
  how to handle the matter.
• 1:30:48
  And there was one time there was significant thought spent as to whether they would send
• 1:30:58
  me to Australia where the Australian counterintelligence suspected a sleeper, a Soviet sleeper who
• 1:31:08
  was still there and they thought I could wake him up.
• 1:31:12
  Somehow they dropped it.
• 1:31:14
  So, but you know, I think I provided value and going forward, I provided even more value
• 1:31:22
  by doing an outstanding job in corporate management.
• 1:31:26
  So I don't, whatever damage I might have done, which I don't know, hopefully I provided counter
• 1:31:37
  value on the other side.
• 1:31:40
  Do you think, of course, we know of the illegal program carried on with the Russian Federation,
• 1:31:45
  the famous Anna Chapman story, a lot of also very clumsy work, clumsy agents, the Novichok
• 1:31:52
  poisoning in the UK, the famous funny video of two agents saying they were in Salisbury
• 1:31:59
  because they wanted to see some sort of cathedral that nobody knows about.
• 1:32:03
  I don't know if you've seen that.
• 1:32:05
  But do you think this kind of program or programs are still running?
• 1:32:09
  Yeah, they are.
• 1:32:11
  Well, you know that recently there were like three of them were caught in, I think two
• 1:32:18
  of them in Brazil and one in Spain.
• 1:32:22
  And then, you know, the 10 that were caught in 2000, I think it was 2010, were arrested.
• 1:32:31
  And they were like rank amateurs.
• 1:32:33
  They were like very poorly trained.
• 1:32:35
  There's an FBI surveillance video that you can watch on YouTube and they make every damn
• 1:32:42
  mistake in the book that I was told not to make.
• 1:32:46
  And I believe that has a whole lot to do with the fact that the KGB was much, much better
• 1:32:54
  staffed and had more financial resources.
• 1:32:58
  They had the ability to comb through hundreds, if not thousands of candidates like me and
• 1:33:06
  pick the right ones and then train them for four to five years and then support them.
• 1:33:13
  That's a lot of money.
• 1:33:14
  You have to use the very best that you have to find them and train them and run them.
• 1:33:22
  And you know, Vladimir Putin doesn't care as much.
• 1:33:25
  He just can't.
• 1:33:26
  He doesn't have the kind of resources that the Soviet Union had.
• 1:33:31
  Yeah.
• 1:33:32
  And he doesn't mind if illegals get caught because it scares the heck out of people.
• 1:33:40
  When I started doing public appearances, I always get the questions, how many illegals
• 1:33:46
  do you think are still here?
• 1:33:49
  And I said, I don't know.
• 1:33:50
  There could be a lot, but you've got to be more worried about the Knox.
• 1:33:55
  The Knox shorts were not official cover.
• 1:34:01
  The exchange students and the business people and musicians, artists, there's so much more
• 1:34:12
  movement across borders these days.
• 1:34:16
  And you know, the, was it Maria Butina?
• 1:34:22
  That sounds familiar, but I'm not sure.
• 1:34:25
  Butina was a famous redhead who made contact amongst the National Rifle Association.
• 1:34:34
  And so she was pretty successful making contact, but I know she was not a trained agent.
• 1:34:41
  She communicated via social media.
• 1:34:46
  So you know, Putin, obviously he tries to do some more complex operations if and when
• 1:34:56
  he can, but he likes to throw volume at the problem and he hopes that some of that sticks
• 1:35:06
  and you don't know.
• 1:35:08
  You don't know because if somebody is successful, we don't know about them.
• 1:35:12
  Right.
• 1:35:13
  And like you said, if they're not successful, then at least they can scare the shit out
• 1:35:17
  of people, which is also something at least better than nothing.
• 1:35:20
  That's right.
• 1:35:21
  And one more thing with regard to the quality of their people, the GRU is the by anybody
• 1:35:29
  who knows something about Russian intelligence, the best intelligence service of the three.
• 1:35:36
  And even the GRU couldn't get it right, the poisoning effort with the Novichok in the
• 1:35:43
  UK.
• 1:35:44
  Yeah.
• 1:35:45
  Yeah.
• 1:35:46
  OK.
• 1:35:47
  They could not get out of the country undetected.
• 1:35:49
  And that's the best team that they have.
• 1:35:54
  Those are the two guys that are talking about the cathedral thing.
• 1:35:56
  They were GRU, right?
• 1:36:00
  By the way, do you think the CIA has something similar as well?
• 1:36:05
  Some sort of a legal program?
• 1:36:07
  I don't know.
• 1:36:08
  And, you know, I and I don't I have a friend who was a station chief for the CIA in Moscow,
• 1:36:16
  a really good friend.
• 1:36:17
  I guarantee you, if I ask him, he will not tell me.
• 1:36:20
  Of course.
• 1:36:21
  Of course.
• 1:36:22
  I don't know.
• 1:36:23
  Yeah.
• 1:36:24
  Honestly, don't know.
• 1:36:25
  But I tell you what, in my days, it was so much easier to recruit somebody to go from
• 1:36:29
  the east to the west than the other way around.
• 1:36:33
  How come?
• 1:36:34
  Because you would have to be an individual born to Russian immigrants who decided in
• 1:36:42
  a case like that who decided actually to move back.
• 1:36:47
  And in that case, you could possibly introduce an illegal who speaks the language fluently.
• 1:36:56
  But this is like not, you know, that that's extremely difficult.
• 1:37:01
  Yeah.
• 1:37:02
  Yeah.
• 1:37:03
  So it would have to be a very lucky stroke.
• 1:37:08
  And so in the days of the Cold War, I guarantee you there were no American illegals in the
• 1:37:16
  Soviet Union.
• 1:37:18
  We have to wrap up soon.
• 1:37:19
  I've eaten a lot of your time.
• 1:37:21
  Too much.
• 1:37:22
  Last time you will go.
• 1:37:24
  You did tell me.
• 1:37:25
  You should tell me.
• 1:37:26
  And you should have made a bet.
• 1:37:31
  I'm not going to die.
• 1:37:32
  OK, so I'm not a pro Madonna.
• 1:37:35
  I appreciate that a lot.
• 1:37:36
  I really appreciate that.
• 1:37:38
  I wanted to ask how has the spy game changed since the days you were active?
• 1:37:44
  Now we have everybody has a smartphone.
• 1:37:47
  Everybody has camera, camera, social media, cameras everywhere, surveillance, satellites.
• 1:37:53
  I don't know what else.
• 1:37:55
  How can you even be a spy in this age?
• 1:37:58
  You can.
• 1:37:59
  You still can.
• 1:38:00
  You know, there's obviously there's a lot of technology based spying and technology
• 1:38:06
  based communication.
• 1:38:07
  So more like hackers instead of like actual spies that we're used to like you were.
• 1:38:13
  Hackers, also deep fakes.
• 1:38:17
  That's so boring.
• 1:38:18
  It's becoming boring.
• 1:38:19
  It's not that sexy anymore.
• 1:38:20
  But if the deep fakes are really, really good, they can do some significant damage.
• 1:38:26
  Of course.
• 1:38:27
  But yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:29
  Go ahead.
• 1:38:30
  They're mostly meant to stir up trouble, you know, and even some Russian deep fakes
• 1:38:38
  were successful enough to penetrate certain organization, radical organizations in the
• 1:38:43
  United States and actually initiate demonstrations.
• 1:38:50
  Hmm.
• 1:38:51
  Like there was the lady, for instance, that joins, let's say, a group that is against
• 1:38:59
  global warming.
• 1:39:00
  And she becomes a leader because she's so good.
• 1:39:04
  The fake is so good, it's credible.
• 1:39:06
  And then one day she says, you know, we need to do, we need to demonstrate, mobilize everybody.
• 1:39:12
  And then she told everybody who's doing what.
• 1:39:15
  And I can't come because I broke a leg.
• 1:39:18
  There's a documented case in a book called Russians Among Us.
• 1:39:22
  I forgot the author.
• 1:39:23
  Right.
• 1:39:24
  And that's all done online with deep fakes.
• 1:39:26
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:28
  Deep fakes.
• 1:39:29
  And then then believe it or not, open source intelligence is incredibly powerful.
• 1:39:37
  There's so much information lying around just for the looking.
• 1:39:43
  I once took a course in the short, the abbreviation is OSINT, open source intelligence.
• 1:39:50
  And I was just...
• 1:39:51
  But what does that mean, open source intelligence?
• 1:39:54
  Well, you can find tons of information about me because, you know, I've been on the internet
• 1:39:59
  forever and I leave a trace.
• 1:40:04
  And you can just...
• 1:40:06
  Oh, here's one example.
• 1:40:08
  A friend of mine who is an expert, he knows how to create deep fakes.
• 1:40:15
  And he also is very, very familiar with OSINT techniques.
• 1:40:23
  I call him up and he said, did you have a good run?
• 1:40:27
  Oh, you're running around this lake.
• 1:40:29
  So how did you know that?
• 1:40:31
  And he told me.
• 1:40:33
  He didn't hack.
• 1:40:35
  He accessed one of those cameras that's just out there.
• 1:40:39
  He found it and he just said hello and he could see me.
• 1:40:47
  Creepy.
• 1:40:50
  But fundamentally it's impossible to protect yourself from being discovered in some way.
• 1:40:59
  It's astounding.
• 1:41:00
  And now, with all that said, the king of intelligence, the one with the crown on his or her head
• 1:41:13
  is human intelligence.
• 1:41:16
  Well unless we can hack into a human brain, humans still are making decisions.
• 1:41:21
  You know, wouldn't it be nice if we knew what Putin is thinking right now and wouldn't they
• 1:41:27
  want to know what our decision makers are thinking?
• 1:41:32
  So that part of intelligence is not likely to go away anytime soon.
• 1:41:41
  I don't know what AI is going to do to intelligence when once we have real thinking machines,
• 1:41:46
  we can't know.
• 1:41:48
  That made me think of that movie.
• 1:41:50
  I don't know if you saw it.
• 1:41:51
  It's more of a comedy, Burn After Reading by the Coen brothers.
• 1:41:55
  It's their espionage movie.
• 1:41:56
  No.
• 1:41:57
  Okay.
• 1:41:58
  Okay.
• 1:41:59
  It's really funny.
• 1:42:00
  I need to write it down because please watch it.
• 1:42:03
  I think you might enjoy it.
• 1:42:06
  It's just I know the names.
• 1:42:09
  They're funny.
• 1:42:11
  Yeah Burn After Reading.
• 1:42:13
  Right.
• 1:42:14
  Right.
• 1:42:15
  There's a phenomenal scene.
• 1:42:16
  I'm sorry.
• 1:42:17
  I'm going to spoil it for you.
• 1:42:18
  At the end, when the CIA chief is provided with all the information that his agents could
• 1:42:25
  gather about this conundrum of various people just doing random things and he just says,
• 1:42:32
  I have no idea what just happened.
• 1:42:35
  What did we learn from this?
• 1:42:36
  I think he says, we learned never to do it again, but I don't know what we actually did.
• 1:42:41
  And then he just closes the file and that's the end of the movie.
• 1:42:45
  And that made me wonder since you said that after all, we still need a human brain to
• 1:42:52
  interpret all the information.
• 1:42:55
  That means that the human brain is still faulty.
• 1:42:59
  And that means that sometimes even with a lot of data, we can't know or don't know what's
• 1:43:03
  going on.
• 1:43:04
  That must happen in the spy world as well.
• 1:43:07
  If I know, let's say I become a close friend with Vladimir Putin, right?
• 1:43:15
  And we talk about something and I say, whoa, this is interesting.
• 1:43:18
  I'm going to send this to my handlers.
• 1:43:21
  And he changes his mind tomorrow.
• 1:43:24
  Right.
• 1:43:25
  So yeah, ultimately, in the history of intelligence, I believe there weren't too many really grandiose
• 1:43:36
  successes because the world is not a better place today.
• 1:43:44
  It's a more dangerous place than it was several decades ago with what's going on with the
• 1:43:51
  threat of a nuclear war.
• 1:43:52
  All right.
• 1:43:53
  On that sobering note, we're going to conclude this conversation, but not before I ask you,
• 1:44:00
  what's your favorite spy film of all time?
• 1:44:03
  Spies Like Us.
• 1:44:04
  Oh, I haven't seen that one.
• 1:44:06
  Interesting.
• 1:44:07
  This is I'll make a note.
• 1:44:08
  That's a comedy.
• 1:44:09
  Oh, it's a comedy as well.
• 1:44:12
  It's a comedy.
• 1:44:13
  And the other one is a German one.
• 1:44:16
  It's called Kundschaft des Friedens.
• 1:44:18
  That means Scouts for Peace.
• 1:44:23
  East German agents were actually called that Kundschaft des Friedens.
• 1:44:28
  It's also a comedy.
• 1:44:29
  So you're definitely going to like Burn After Reading.
• 1:44:32
  What did you think about the Slebendes Anderen, the lives of others?
• 1:44:36
  Well, that was eye opening, actually.
• 1:44:39
  OK.
• 1:44:40
  It was totally eye opening because I now have talked to enough people who know that this
• 1:44:46
  wasn't fiction.
• 1:44:47
  This was reality.
• 1:44:48
  And I had no clue that this was going on while growing up in East Germany because I lived
• 1:44:55
  in a bubble.
• 1:44:57
  I knew we didn't have any relatives that were in the West.
• 1:45:02
  We my father was in the party.
• 1:45:04
  We were never investigated.
• 1:45:07
  And I didn't have a friend who had somebody in the family who was victimized by the Stasi
• 1:45:18
  or who knew somebody who knew somebody.
• 1:45:21
  Now it may well be that they had knowledge and didn't share it.
• 1:45:28
  But I had honestly I had no idea.
• 1:45:31
  Of course.
• 1:45:32
  Yeah.
• 1:45:33
  Jack Barsky, thank you so much for this eye opening, fascinating conversation.
• 1:45:39
  You have a book out.
• 1:45:40
  It's called Deep Undercover, My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB spy in America.
• 1:45:47
  I believe it's available everywhere.
• 1:45:49
  All fine bookstores everywhere.
• 1:45:52
  Do you have any?
• 1:45:53
  Well, not everywhere, but it was on for sure.
• 1:45:56
  Yes.
• 1:45:57
  And it's also available in translation in Swedish, German and Polish.
• 1:46:03
  Perfect.
• 1:46:04
  Do you have any social media accounts or where can people see what you're up to these days?
• 1:46:13
  It's JackBarsky.com is my website.
• 1:46:17
  I'm also on LinkedIn.
• 1:46:19
  But one thing I want to mention for people who don't like to read, there's a really well
• 1:46:26
  made production.
• 1:46:29
  People call it a podcast, but it's not like the typical podcast where somebody just like
• 1:46:34
  talks to another person.
• 1:46:37
  It's an audio drama.
• 1:46:39
  It's an audio documentary.
• 1:46:41
  It's like a documentary with audio only, which is a bunch of interviews.
• 1:46:49
  But it's not just with me.
• 1:46:52
  It's interviews with the FBI lead agents, interview with my daughter who found out that
• 1:46:59
  I once was a spy when she turned like 18 and a few other people that were important in
• 1:47:05
  my life.
• 1:47:06
  And what makes it really, really good is it's narrated by an A list actor.
• 1:47:13
  So the episodes are connected.
• 1:47:16
  There's historic background.
• 1:47:19
  They talk about when the wall came down and the kind of stuff.
• 1:47:24
  And there's music in there as well.
• 1:47:26
  So it got an award.
• 1:47:29
  It's called a Webby, which is the best of its type, of its class on the internet.
• 1:47:41
  And this is called The Agent.
• 1:47:44
  And if somebody is looking for it, they should always look for the agent and then add the
• 1:47:50
  word of the production company.
• 1:47:52
  Otherwise, you get too many responses.
• 1:47:54
  You write The Agent and a space imperative that's a production company.
• 1:48:01
  You'll get to it.
• 1:48:02
  And it's free of charge.
• 1:48:03
  It's available free of charge on all major streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify
• 1:48:10
  or whatever else is out there.
• 1:48:11
  Fantastic.
• 1:48:12
  We'll definitely give it a listen.
• 1:48:13
  I like I. Yes, I like it a lot.
• 1:48:16
  The producer did an outstanding job.
• 1:48:20
  Great.
• 1:48:21
  Thanks again, Mr. Barsky.
• 1:48:24
  This was great.
• 1:48:25
  Thank you for listening to the episode.
• 1:48:27
  If you've enjoyed it, please subscribe and follow on YouTube, Apple podcasts and Spotify.
• 1:48:33
  As always, eternal glory and gratitude to my producers who are supporting this show
• 1:48:38
  on Patreon, the Kings and Queens Gordon, you're a chook, Lorenzo, Veronica, Mila, Carmen and
• 1:48:46
  Tai Chi.
• 1:48:47
  Without you, this pot would not have been possible at all.
• 1:48:51
  If you'd like to become a certified to our short of the show to have to Patreon, find
• 1:48:57
  Smart Cookies podcast on there and become one.
• 1:49:00
  It's as simple as that.
• 1:49:01
  Thank you.