Camp Gagnon - The Life of a Russian KGB Spy | Jack Barsky

Episode Date: June 8, 2024

One of the few Russian KGB Spies left in the world, Jack Barsky, stops by the tent to discuss how he became a part of the Soviet KGB, infiltrated the United States and eventually defected from the KGB before being caught by the FBI. Welcome to Camp!!! 🏕️S/o to sponsors Bespoke, My Heritage, Bakscape, and Morgan & Morgan!Thanks to Bespoke Post for sponsoring this video! New subscribers get 15% off of their first monthly shipment! Go to https://bespokepost.com/campgagnonand enter code [CAMP...

They had a list of enemies and they had to be killed. And so one guy showed up in the morning on the subway. It was dark. I'm waiting for the train and this guy comes up, a short guy with a black trench coat and he whispers into my ear. You got to come home. What else you are dead. So when does the FBI introduce themselves?

I was commuting from New Jersey into Pennsylvania and there was a toll gate there. They had positioned a state trooper that they rented just to stop me. He told me routine stop, which he was pulled over. And then I see this other man coming from my right. He said FBI we would like to have a talk with you. My face went white as the driven snow. Then I caught myself, and the first question I asked, so what took you so long?

And I saw they couldn't suppress a smile. Now, everything that we've talked about today, all the stories that you've shared, you don't have to say what, but is there anything that you've lied about? There's at least one thing I typically don't disclose the worst mistake I ever made. When I made the decision to stay here?

What was holding me here? your baby that you love. That's it. It's a spy story, but I think more than anything, it's a love story. You're going to make me cry. And why was your father a communist?

Because of career ambitions. He was not... Are we being taped already? We're going. We're going. We're doing it. See, I figured you're just trying to trick me here. You don't have to.

I'm a pro by now. So my father was, we never made, you know, strong statements in support of communism at home. As a matter of fact, in those days, there was a prohibition. You were not allowed to listen to West German radio, West German television. and we lived in a place that was called, jokingly, the valley of the clueless because the West German TB signal wasn't strong enough to get to us

unless you had a huge antenna. And once you had a huge antenna, the Stasi knocked on your door. Wow. Or the Young Communist League which just climbed up your door and rip the antenna down. So my father at one point, I remember that he ruminated me.

Maybe we should have an antenna like that in this, and I can't do this. So he was a communist just because it helped his career. He became the principal of the middle school that I attended and made good money. So he wasn't a staunch ideologue? No, he was not an ideologue, I believe. You know, he spoke ideology in school because he had to. But the brainwashing that I received did not come from home. It came from the institutions.

Oh, wow. And it started with kindergarten. Yeah, and I tell you, when you tell young people lies and they don't hear anything else, they stop thinking, they say, well, this is what it is. You know, and you can convince, you know, growing children when they're three, four years old, of a whole bunch of, like, the biggest lies there are. And what do you think of communism now? No, it's evil.

But up until you were 18, 20, you were fully bought into that ideology. 1820? I would say up until I eased my anti-capitalist feelings because once I had a job in corporate America with an insurance company, I was looking for the evil capitalists, and I couldn't find any. I'm sure there were some evil people in the organization, but in general they treated us really well.

This was in here in New York. We got free lunch. Pretty communist? Well, and also in those days, the insurance companies were very maternalistic, and it felt like going home. They said, we're going to take care of you, don't worry about it. And, you know, they paid me well over time.

you know, I hated, I started to find out that I really don't like big corporations, but in those days, it felt like coming home. Hey, what's up, guys? Sorry to interrupt this amazing program, but I need a little bit of help. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can probably see our subscriber number right down here. And if you're able to, it would mean the world if you could subscribe. That is the best way to support this show, because when you subscribe, I'm able to show it to potential guests or to different brands and stuff like that. And it really, really helps grow the show, get us cooler guests, have cooler conversations,

and it helps everything so, so much. if you don't mind, thank you so much. Let's get back to it. And there's a passage in something that Lenin wrote, and it goes like this. In those days, the ones that were resisting collectivization, and, you know, they were just much more individualistic than the factory workers, farmers,

because farmers own land, right? And that wasn't allowed. And there were some big farmers. They were called cul-locks, the ranchers. And so there's this passage in one of Lenin's writing, so it says, we need to string up 200 Kulags by the road, hang them. So everybody understands that fighting us and having a lot of property may be healthy to your,

may be dangerous to your health and even life. that's what he wrote. I said, oh, my God. And this was redacted out. We didn't get to read that kind of stuff. So you read it for the first time. Yeah. And you say, oh, this is the ideology.

This is how it was enforced. Oh, yeah. And we knew that Stalin was bad. And as I kept on doing research, and my eyes went really open up. And I said, I really served the wrong cause. And that's one thing that I regret. but on the other hand, if I hadn't said yes to the KGB,

I wouldn't be able to talk to you today. I wouldn't be an American, which is nowadays I'm much more American than I'm German, and this is still the best country that I can think of, and I will not do what some of my friends are doing now. They're fleeing the country because they don't like what's going on here instead of helping to keep our sanity and put up a little fight, You know, not the fight with your hands and guns and so forth, but, you know, have a message. Do you remember, and this is the last thing I want to know about this specific aspect of your life,

do you remember how you were intellectually inoculated as a kid about communism? Do you remember what they told you as a kindergartner? So there was a mandate. That was brilliant in Einstein. I'm not saying it was good, but it was brilliant. that we had to visit a concentration camp. All right, so we're not going for the feelings. And the concentration camp that we visited was Buchenwald.

That's where they killed a lot of Jews. And it was very well known. It was right next to a town where there was a lot of German history where Goethe and Schiller lived. the best writers in in German history and so as we

were on a bus and as we drive up there there's this this door with the famous door that says uh uh

Arbite maht fly work work will set you free very good you speak German you understand some a little bit because I have a problem translating my German

German and my English are not very well connected. You understand? I isolated them. Yeah. So anyway, and so we knew that we wouldn't be seeing something nice. It would be bad. So as we walked through there, you know, everybody got quiet, and then we went into the exhibition hall.

And it was a rotunda. And there were like pictures, large pictures of, piles of corpses, of the cremation, you know, of all this really, really bad things that were done there. And it was like, ouch. And then somewhere in the back were the two most horrible things that we saw. And two shrunken heads in a glass case and the size of a fist. These were not made up. These were at one point people.

These heads sat on the shoulders of a functioning human being. And a couple of lampshades, and they looked pretty nice. And then we saw what this was all about. The wife of the commandant of this concentration camp had them commissioned. She checked the incoming prisoners, and if somebody had a good tattoo, they were going to get killed and skinned and lambshades were made out of them.

You know, now the girls were crying and we were like, oh. And then to, now we're set up. I mean, this is evil stuff and it's horrible. But here comes where they were really clever. And then they took us into a room where people were just executed through a shot in the back.

The brainstem? Yeah, exactly. So the idea was that they told them, we need to measure you. And once they stood there, a hole opened and bam. And one of the people who was executed that way was Anz-Telman. And Ernst Thelman was the leader of the Communist Party

when the Nazis took over. They first put him in a, in a prison and just before the war ended, like maybe six months or so, they moved him to Buchenwald and executed him there. Now, historic background, before the Nazis took power, the only forces, and this is the historic truth, the only forces that fought the Nazis in the streets physically were the communists. Okay, now, does that mean if they had gotten to power that they had gotten to power that

they would have been any better. They would have been just as evil, but they fought them. And we knew that. So now here you have this juxtaposition of, we were the heirs of Ernstelmann who was killed by the Nazis, and there were Nazis in West Germany. So it was 100% clear that we were fighting the right fight. And on top of it, and I need to point that out,

in college, so this is like, now we're studying science that put the eye the dot on the eye we took a course that was called scientific Marxism

Leninism because we were told that Marx actually developed a science because he found out the law of how human society would evolve

and eventually wind up by law in worldwide communism so and that's that's a summary of the rainwashing. It was brilliantly done, and it's like the mouth of a shark.

Once you're in, the teeth are pointed inward, so you can't get out. Wow. And I knew one or two individuals in college who didn't believe into this, believe in this, one of them was a

declared Christian and another one was just a contrarian but the rest of us we bought it hook line and sink are all of us and the ones that are still alive unfortunately that's not too many of them anymore they

could never really get rid of that ideology it was so deeply implanted and I had the luxury of slowly contaminating and not not like being hit over the head with a two by four when the wall came down.

And all of a sudden, oh, my God, now they were victims or at least, you know, the rationalization was we were on the right side of history. We just had the wrong leaders. So communism was still good. And so in East Germany, when it comes to elections, the radical left and the radical right scores a whole lot more votes than the rest of the country. Wow. So they show you the atrocities with the Nazis, which are true and real atrocities and real tragedies.

And then they tell you the government of West Germany is run by Nazis. Yeah. And then they tell you one of our guys, the people that fought the Nazis, was martyred in this very place. Yeah, exactly right. And so then they give you all of the fuel, with all true facts, to create a story. Yeah. Feeling very often override thinking, and we have this in our context. country these days. There's a lot of feelings that rule and whatever. And the worst feeling that can do a lot of

damage is fear. Okay. So you're a very smart, arrogant, brainwashed 18-year-old. And you go to college. Yeah. And you kind of get deeper into this sort of ideology in who. you are and then you get recruited to go work at a job, I guess. And then you find out that it's a fake job. It is actually a ruse. And then you get recruited into the KGB.

Is that how that happened? It was, the fake was, didn't live very long. Okay. So, yeah, I'm sitting, I was in my, at the end of my second or the third year of college, I'm sitting in the dorm room

on a Saturday and I'm doing some homework. You know, I worked hard, to my credit. It wasn't just like falling into my lap. So I'm sitting there and there's a knock on the door. And we, when there was a knock on a dorm door that was another student indicating I'm coming in now because we didn't have strangers to visit. And nobody came in.

So I said, I knew already somebody who I don't know will come in. and interestingly enough in hindsight, that didn't occur to me then as smart as I was. I wasn't necessarily always very observant. How did he know which door to knock on? There were no nameplates. And in further hindsight, I realized that we had a Russian exchange student next door

who sort of befriended me and probably sort of tried to feel figure out, you know, who is this guy? And he was part of the recruitment team, okay? So Wow. I was not aware of it. But why would you investigate a compliment, right? Like, they're coming to you saying like, hey, we want you to do this thing. Why would you look into it? Yeah, well, it wasn't, it wasn't, it was a little more subtle. So the guy comes in and this was the The most stupid, most idiotic person that worked with the KGB was not a member of the KGB because he was German, but he wasn't Stasi.

So because his backstory was so, so he was just ignorant with regard to how East Germany operated. So he comes in and he says, you know, I want to just talk with you, with a little small talk, and then he said, we want to talk. with you what you're planning to do when you're done with college. Well, my plans really wouldn't have mattered much because we were all assigned. With one exception, if we were good enough to go and get the doctorate, we were allowed to stay. But after we got the doctorate, we were still assigned unless we were like really good, and then we had a career that would wind up in a tenure professorship.

So I already knew when he came up with this stupid lie, he said, you know, I'm from this company. It is an optics company that's known worldwide, called Size. And he said that he was from that company, and he wanted to know if I might be interested in a job there. And it was such amazing. And some more small talk, and suddenly, and that's when he opened it. kimono just a touch he said you know i you know i really i'm not really from called size i work for the government now the wicked me thought to ask him so what part of the government i already thought it was stasi you know that there was nobody else could have from the government i don't know

so i thought stasi and but i didn't ask him that question uh so and then he asked me the question and it was passive aggressive, but it worked in that, I read him well. He said, so could you imagine one day working for the government? And I said, yes, but not as a chemist. Okay, so we were communicating between the lines. So he invited me to lunch next week in the most expensive restaurant. I still remember what I had, the most expensive meal.

I had money but I was also cheap so What did you get? Was it steak? It was steak, yeah. Steak and French fries and steak friect. Steak frit? Yeah. It's a good order.

And obviously every lunch you had to have at least one glass of beer most often two. Out of respect. But when I get to the table where I see him, there's another man sitting at the table and I just didn't know, should I approach the man? Because in those days, there weren't enough seats in restaurants, so strangers would share tables. But he got up, he walks toward me, and he says,

come on, I want to introduce you to Herman. We were working with our Soviet comrades. Of course, I knew KGB. Immediately. Yeah, well, I knew the KGB existed, and with regard to Eastern espionage, the biggest heroes were KGB agents. A German, particularly by the name of Richard Zorke,

who was a journalist and operated as a German in Japan during, you know, when the Nazis governed in Germany and Japan was an enemy to the Western world, and particularly the Soviet Union, he was discovered and eventually executed. And he was a great hero of ours. So to me, now being introduced to KGB was like, wow, I've just been promoted, so to speak.

Wow. Because I knew, and it was probably even true, that the KGB was the most powerful intelligence organization on the planet because there were FBI, CIA police force and whatever else. And, you know, my ego started growing again. You know, like, okay. So, and then what really motivated me to even investigate what they have was my curiosity

because at that point no offer was made was just like, let's get, let's have a talk, let's get together. It took 18 months for the offer to be made. again in hindsight I understand that they were checking they knew the numbers

they knew that I was a good student and they knew that I was on the college basketball team that's a plus athlete and then I was very active in the youth organization so

overall my file said that he's a good guy he's going places what they didn't know and I brought a list here because I didn't, I have a problem remembering this. They were, and I know this

because they were looking for people with a certain character trait profile that would, and they were looking actively for people who can't be deployed as illegals, okay? Not just any old agent, you know, most, even today, most espionage agents

no matter where they come from, no matter where they operate under diplomatic cover. So, you know, I'd say, if they screw up, they get kicked out. But, and then there's something in between is called a non-official

cover, knock. That means they would operate under their name and their profession but wouldn't be known. You know, they would, you know, they're just, They don't have a diplomatic cover. And then when you say diplomatic cover, what do you mean by that? Well, at one point, except for the illegals, all the KGB agents were diplomats.

You know, they were like consul or second vice consul. Literally working within the embassy and had a very... Yeah, they had to do their job, and some of them were employees of the United Nations in New York. Got it. They had an official job as diplomats, and then they were doing the spying. Seems kind of obvious. Yeah. Well, and they were followed by the FBI.

And when they were caught, they got kicked out. And all countries have been doing it and are still doing it. So now when you say illegal, do you mean like an alias? Illegal is somebody who's taking on a completely different ID. I understand. And I was born in Germany, and the moment I set foot on the United States, I told everybody who wanted to know I was born in New Jersey. New Jersey.

Joyzy. So I didn't know how to pronounce it then, but anyway. They gave you a tank top and a gold chain, and they were like, just get out there, start making pizzas. You'll be a true New Jersey resident in a lifetime. Well, it worked a little different, but eventually, you know, I did it well enough to survive as an American, as an illegal American, until I was betrayed by somebody.

who let the, and it was MI6, let the MI6 know that there's a guy who's an illegals living someplace in the northeast of the United States. We'll get to that. Let me get back to, yeah, let me get back to what they were looking for. And I gathered this from a couple of interviews that were given by the, at that time, retired, there was no more KGB, the ex-heads of the directorate S, and that was the illegals directorate. And I pieced together what they were looking for in a candidate for an illegal. And if you don't mind, I'm going to read it off. Please.

And quickness of intellect, high erudition, language ability, bravery, focus, quick response to fluid situations. Makes all sense, doesn't it? Hardiness to stress. Adaptation to completely new conditions of life. well-controlled inclination to adventure. That's my favorite. Well, yeah. I was sometimes

actually reckless to a point where I thought I could get away with anything and actually I did. And emotional stability and that pretty much fits my personality. That is sort of a genetic imprint, part of my genetic imprint.

And they took so long to figure out whether I fit this profile before they made me an offer. And when I said yes, I thought I was in, but I was not, they tested me some more. And if I had failed those tests, I would have had a severe setback career-wise because re-entering, you know, the life, the professional life, I certainly wouldn't have become a tenured professor. I didn't know any of that, you know. It's like blindly, this is what I did. Even when I signed up and I said, yes, when I came to the U.S.,

I had no idea. But they were looking for people who just, you know, were optimistic. You say, oh, let's try this. And, you know, it's going to work. No problem. I was so, I'm sorry, I was so, I was so, I was so, convinced of my own ability to just come out victorious no matter what. I give you one example.

I was athletic, but I was an awkward athlete, you know, watching me play basketball would have given you a headache. And, you know, now watching me play golf would probably put you in the, in an asylum someplace. I'm awkward, okay? But so, and when I, we didn't play basketball in high school. When I came to university, I wanted to play basketball because I had seen it on TV

and I was one of the tallest people around. And I went to the coach and asked him, you know, can I join the team? He said, have you ever played it? I said, no. He looked at me. All right, we put you on the second team. first time

I went to practice we had a little game at the end I got hit in the head by the basketball from behind I had no clue and so and then I applied myself I

went to practice there was the first team we were allowed to practice with them the second team and then I joined a group of of maybe ninth graders

who were getting drilled for, they were prepared for, you know, becoming really good players. And I had no problem joining them and learning, you know, the basics. You had a confidence that you would figure it out. Yeah, well, and I knew that working hard somehow gets results because, you know, I didn't ace my college by just being smart by also studying like a maniac, okay?

And two years after I joined the second team, I was invited to join the first team, and a year after that I was on the starting lineup. So, you know, I knew I could overcome anything. It's, of course, not true. You have that feeling as a young man. I had that super confidence because once you try something that people say,

well, you may want to be a little more careful and you come out victorious, and it happens again and again, No one's telling me anything. You'll become your own God, right? So how did they assess these things in you? Like, how can they learn that you have a novelty and a desire for adventure? Okay, the adventure.

You know, I met with this Herman guy, you know, once every week or maybe once every other week. And he became sort of an Arsatz or, you know, a secondary father to me. My dad was out of my life. and he was 10 years older, Herman. And I shared everything with him. I was brutally honest. I shared the fears that I had. I was pretty shy around the girls in those days.

I was stupid, man. I was good-looking. What a waste. And I was tall. I could have had a girlfriend every other week. Should be ashamed of you. But I was just shy around girls. What's up, guys?

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from your cell phone. This is a paid advertisement. Now let's get back to the show after the short disclaimer. Do you mind if I see the list? See the list by all means. So. Oh, you want to go through a few others? I guess I'm just curious, like, how these things were assessed in you, right?

You're just meeting with this guy. Now we're getting into a part of the interview that nobody has ever touched. So, you know, virgin territory. Go ahead. Because I'm curious, right? Like, this is very much like, are you familiar with Harry Potter? Yeah, I read the entire series. There's something about.

As an adult, not too long ago. It's a great series. There's something about the series that I think resonates with many people is that this feeling of I'm underappreciated. People don't see my genius. People don't see the greatness that I have. And then one day you get a letter that says, hey, you've actually been selected. And we've been waiting for you. And now is time for you to fulfill your ultimate potential.

And hearing your story gives me that type of feeling. It may give you that kind of feeling, but I didn't have it at the time. I can when we get further into the interview way way down. down, I can tell you when in fact I knew that I had been underappreciated all my life, not when the KGB, this was while I was operating as an American as a citizen, okay? So go ahead ask them. So I'm curious. So language ability, at that time you spoke German.

Yeah, I spoke German and I pulled A's in Russian and in English. none of that was tested. But they could look at that and say... The language ability came... First of all, they wanted me to be in... This is actually for Russian recruits. And very few Russians can get rid of their accent. Very difficult.

That's why they recruited in the Baltic states and in East Germany. So language ability was not necessarily what Herman was looking for. That came out when I was already in, and I had to learn another language, and I blew them away by how quickly I became fluent in English. That's when they thought, they wanted me to go to West Germany.

That made sense, right? Language ability, the same language. But once there was a chance that I could actually come into the U.S. as an American and so that doesn't get any better than that. Yeah, because you don't really have an accent. I have a little bit of an accent.

I can hear it when I hear myself on tape. Can you say squirrel? Squirrel? Why not? Pretty good. It's pretty good. I've always heard, every German person I ever met, if you ever talked to a German person, ask him, say the word squirrel. It would be like scowril, scourish, scarring.

It's many videos about this. It's very funny. But you said squirrel perfectly. My ex-wife really he's a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger and she regretted that I don't have that accent. I'm the party pooper. Something like hardiness to stress.

How was that assessed? Well, college was stressful to a lot of us. It was very demanding and there were a lot of tests to take. And I aced the program because I was never stressed out. I was prepared.

And so what was the training like once you were actually given an offer? Training was all one-on-one. There was a lot of self-studies. So I had a list of things that I should be engaged in. There was never a curriculum. There was never a plan.

I was never told, next week, we're going to do photography. It was just like, all right, tomorrow we're going to start photography. They may have had a plan that didn't share it with me. So there was trade, which the training for tradecraft in Berlin was not very good,

except they taught me Morse code. They taught me how to work with a shortwave radio. And I learned one encryption decryption algorithm, a little bit of photography, and the basics of meetings, surveillance detection and dead drop operations. You know what a dead drop is? I'm familiar a bit just through listening to some things with you.

But I didn't understand exactly how it works. All right. This is dead drop operations. There's two ways of three ways of giving things back to the headquarters. There's information that you can do with Morse code or secret writing. Then there is,

and then there are things that have a dimension, weight, like money, passports, whatever else, keys. For things, you either need to meet and hand it to the other guy. You can also be done with a brush pass where like you pass each other and say have like both of you have a newspaper and something in that newspaper and he had changed newspapers in a in a spot where whoever follows you just lose a side of

you it's pretty complicated we never practiced that and the dead drop is is an asynchronous action so so you never meet so let's say My first dead drop was to hand me money and a passport so I can travel back to Moscow after two years. And so the way this works, first of all, you have what you want to hand over and you put this into a container, something that holds something that is not considered out of place where you put it. and I used rocks made out of plaster of Paris

if you do it where you put it in a park someplace nobody figures pick it up no animal would pick it up the mistake that they made

was they used oil cans now that again in hindsight I figured that was really stupid because we had this in a park so they had a crushed oil can what if a park ranger sees this and picks it up

and so is in the garbage. Anyway, so, but this is how it worked. Place and time, very well known to both parties, the spot very well known. It had some kind of a cover name, whatever it was. So operation there and there. And at this day, the time was always at 315 for me to actually check a signal, usually a chalk mark,

someplace near where the agent already dropped the can. And if the signal was there, I can go and pick it up. If it's not there, I go back home. Interestingly enough, all operations that we had were never abandoned. They all worked. That to me indicated that they were able, if they had, if they have a tail, they were able to shake the tail. You know, FBI was after them all the time.

When they left the officer, when they left where they lived, if they had enough agents, FBI would follow them. But, you know, when I met somebody who was working in that fashion at the time I was there, he said we didn't have enough people to cover them. So they would go out and there would have been maybe five. or six in a vehicle and then they would leave and one goes this way one goes that way and then the one does a little more surveillance detection and if he's clean he goes through with the operation so they had an advantage but anyway so I see the signal I pick up the can and then I set a signal

someplace else where it says you know I got it and he would check that signal and if it's not there he picks it up and goes home where we came from. So that's, in a nutshell, a dead drop operation. What would be the signal that would be used to indicate that it was there? Oh, it could be just a horizontal chalk mark. Very simple. You know, you pass by something and you're just, in passing, you just, yeah,

everything has to be done mindful that there's somebody following you. And typically, where I set the signals is when I could turn a corner at the building. and so you create a blind spot for they can't be that close to see what you're doing there how would you shake someone that was following you never never practice that never practice that you know I can give you an idea

something like you know you you you wait for the subway and you you stand there and there's maybe multiple trains going in multiple directions. And a train comes in and the door is closed

and you, last moment, you jump in. Because you stand there and it's legitimate because you wait for the other train. Now I just made that up as you were asking the question, but this would work. Same thing with leaving the subway. You're standing just when the door's close. and there's a number of but we never practice that

I see because for an illegal like me shaking a trail would indicate that I'm up to no good you know I would now now I invite them to really investigate me everything that I did had to look very very normal like anything that a normal person

who is just like a normal regular citizen would do and unfortunately surveillance detection I had to do some things that were not entirely normal but because I had to like go through New York for instance for about three hours and go here, go there and go to places where people had to be really close so I can remember their faces

and when I see them again I know that I'm that I'm under surveillance. But, you know, walking, moving around in the city, going to buying tickets, movie tickets, going to an apartment building, going to a museum, doing all these things is not normal.

However, I was told that it is not proof in court that I was up to no good. Okay, it can't be proved. It's like it, yeah, like an agent, but you never know. So I never found that I was being followed while in the United States, and I was really good.

I received like superb training. By the way, this fellow told me, never ever, this is how somebody would detect that you were trained, that you're maybe an agent, never walk towards a display window of a department store so you can see who is behind you. No good. So I got really good training.

I think the guy who trained me was, I know that he was in charge of one of the teams that followed diplomats, Western diplomats and businessmen. And he demonstrated some things to me that I, he told me, I'm not trying to teach you that. distraction walked around and he said follow me for what he had follow me for a while and then after

about five minutes he said did you see something I said no and he walked me back and there was a flower bed you know wooden and in there he had some kind of a cartridge that he had dumped in there I must have looked that way when he did it like a magic trick yeah yeah like like a magician, exactly. So, but I got, we had about a half a dozen practice runs where I was told the same day in the morning my liaison came in or into my apartment and says, get ready, it's time to go check for surveillance. And so I did that in Moscow.

I had studied the city. You got to study the place where you live. It's your playground, okay? And no matter, there's a number of reasons why you do this, but surveillance detection was, and pretty much still is number one, even though nowadays there's cameras all over the place, but the cameras don't see you when you're in their blind spot.

So you need to be prepared differently, okay? I wasn't prepared for cameras. But anyway, so six times it was a contest, because these guys wanted to win. I mean, they were also evaluated, right? And I was evaluated. At the end, it was six me and nothing them. You have, in this particular exercise,

the individual being followed has an advantage. But I was also told that I was one of the best. Again, right? The ego goes up again. So what exactly was the task? Like, they would follow you and try to detect something? Like, how did the training sessions work with these in these six cases?

Their task was to follow me without me finding out that I was being followed. And my task was to find out that I was being followed. And also describe the individual who I knew was following me. And one time I got fooled big time by a really clever guy. So a little background in those days, in Russia's cigarettes were extremely cheap, so it was not unusual to ask a stranger for a cigarette, merely like five copics or something like that,

like the equivalent of a half a cent. So in one time, you know, I chose certain spots where people had to come close enough so they wouldn't lose me, okay, like a bus stop, you know, someplace. a little outside of the city. And I'm standing at a bus stop and somebody asked me for a cigarette. I gave him a cigarette.

Well, my teacher told me that that guy actually made this up on the spot to like pretty much take himself out of consideration of me thinking of him as a candidate for a, to be part of that team. Because it be too obvious. It was just like, yeah. Like what if you're trying to be covertive? Oh, wow. Yeah, it's so obvious.

Yeah, so it was a game, but I didn't detect him. I detected one or two others, thank God. Otherwise, they would have won. And so you were told just to go around the city or you were told to do a specific task? No, no, no. I had to develop my own route. And how long did you have to be out for?

Three hours. So they said, go out for three hours. Yeah. And see if you're being followed. Three hours, roughly three hours. And my favorite, there were a couple of favorite spots where you can, where you force people to get close and department stores, you can go this way

and then turn around that way. You know, you're looking for stuff, right? But my absolute favorite spot was the Museum of Natural History because, you know, there weren't too many people in there. There were hallways. There were, you know, there were rooms. and you could go in and out. So in New York, I thought I was reasonably sure

that I was not being followed and FBI confirmed that way after the fact. But it also helped me to find out that I wasn't being followed or being reasonably sure that the KGB, when they thought I was being investigated by the FBI, I had reason to believe that they were wrong. You know, you're never sure about that, but I couldn't find any signs.

And because I was, quote, unquote, one of the best, I was pretty sure. And so detect that you're being followed, one of the tactics would be go to a sort of large, open, kind of desolate place. Like, what other ways could you detect that you're being followed? Elevators. Escalators. Once you finish up training and you're actually assigned to go to the United States, Yeah. You go through Mexico.

Is that correct? Yeah, that was my last stop before I got on a plane and wound up in Chicago. And what exactly was the assignment and how were you given your alias? Okay. My alias was discovered by one of those diplomats that were actually working for the KGB. He worked in Washington, D.C. and this is what the KGB did and this is how Russian intelligence still works these days

they're looking for tombstones of people that passed away early and they found the tombstone of this guy found the tombstone of Jack Barski who passed away at the age of 11 that means age of 11 there was no real record in society of him he hadn't gone to he may have been in kindergarten in elementary school.

But so, and in those days, and this is one of the things that is typical of United States, we're not very security conscious and very open to foreign intelligence. And nowadays it's via the internet. And in those days, the diplomat was able to acquire a death certificate

and then with that he was acquired to, was able to acquire a certified copy of the birth certificate. He didn't have to show his face. He didn't have to talk to somebody. He didn't have to prove that he was actually somebody who was entitled to this document. Pretty damn bad counterintelligence, right? But the country, you know, we are a very trusting nation.

The reason being that it's in our national DNA. This is what I call this, because the U.S. had never been invaded. the continental U.S. has never been invaded by another country. So when you grow up in Europe, you're always worried about your neighbor because Europe has historically

always been at war, right? And they still are. But so anyway, so I had this birth certificate that I had with me and the moment I, within a couple of days of me arriving in the U.S., I became Jack Barski.

That's the way it worked. Now, why does it have to be a real person? Why is that advantageous? Why couldn't they just forge a birth certificate? The forgeries are detectable. So then when you came through Mexico, did you have a passport? Yeah. And what was the passport?

Canadian. And was it Jack Barski? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That was forged, I'm pretty sure. That was a forgery. William Dyson, it's the only name that I remember. So it was a Canadian passport forged going through? Mexican customs?

No, no. Into Mexico. Yeah, yeah, into Mexico and then also into the U.S. Got it. And this, in hindsight, I actually realize that as I'm standing there in line for customs

immigration, I'm thinking, shit, I don't speak like a Canadian, eh? Because I had been to Canada and I knew that they speak differently. So, you know, I got I got really tense.

There was a tensest moment in my entire life. That moment. Yeah. When I was waiting to be processed and I just made sure that I answered any question with very short sentences. And the guy,

there were a couple of people talking to me. They obviously didn't pay attention. The guy speaks like an American He's a resident of Toronto? Hmm. I got lucky. And that was at Customs in Chicago? Customs, and the first one is immigration.

They didn't look at your passport. Right. What are you, Canada? What are your plans to do? What are you going to do in here? Business. No, I'm just going to visit, you know, check out Chicago. I've never seen Chicago before.

And then that was the end of that. Now, customs could have, was actually more dangerous because it was clear that I came from Mexico. There was a stamp in the passport. And I had very light luggage. There was nothing in my suitcase that indicated that I was on vacation in Mexico. Okay, and I traveled with a shortwave radio.

It was commercially available, but... But had they looked into your bag? Yeah, they did. They did. They looked. They looked for contraband. But they weren't just sharp enough to say that, this is really odd. Let's talk to him a little bit.

I would have flunked the interview like in flying colors. When they were looking in your suitcase, were you nervous? Stoic. You know, that's the only answer. I was nervous when I was waiting. But then I got through the first one and I'm just like, no, what? Que serrat, serra. No choice.

No choice, right. Wow. And so then once you get through, then you get into Chicago. And what was your objective? It was sort of vague, I remember. Well, the number one objective was to acquire bona fide American documents. And before, and I was supposed to make my way to New York. Because in New York, they had lots of KGB agents,

and there was the possibility of communicating via signs and dead drops and so forth. At the time that you were sort of deployed, how many KGB agents could you estimate were also deployed in America? That's a wild guess, but I would say several hundred, a couple hundred at least. You know, there were UN employees and probably the majority of the, the Soviet embassy were agents, or at least subject to KGB supervision, so to speak. So for the next 10 years, you're basically, your one objective is just try to get documents to send back to it. No, no, no, no. This is the part of when people ask me, so what was your real task?

And this is interesting to tell you that I was not told what was the most important thing of me being in the United States and that was being in the United States as a citizen, as a functional citizen. I'm going to go back as to what I had to do first. And I pieced it together in hindsight. First of all, again,

this I found out based on the interviews that these two department heads for the directorate S gave. Towards the end of the 80s, that was my time, mid-to-end 80s, the Cold War heated up significantly.

There was a war between the CIA and the KGB, and the diplomats, when they were caught, they were kicked out, and then there was retaliation. So sometimes there were three diplomats kicked out, and then Moscow kicked out three of us. I say us, by the way. And it was known that Andropov, was worried about the diplomatic relations to be broken altogether.

And, and now they put two and two together, in those days, the most important agents that the KGB had in the United States were moles. One by the name of Aldrich Ames, he was a mole in the CIA, not detected at that time, he was operational, and the other one was Robert Hansen, mole in the FBI. Yeah, according to him. Boy, oh, boy, did they give very valuable information for pay to the KGB and their interface, the people that they interfaced with were all the diplomats.

So what happens if the diplomats get kicked out? You know, there's no way to get the material back to Moscow. And then us, so we were like the insurance policy that, If something like this happened was, we were never told, not even a hint, which is kind of stupid. Because I got no instructions, you know, if something like this happened, this is what we want you to do. There could have been also the possibility that they would want me to go and pick up some explosives and do some damage that way. I don't know. Okay, so this was number one, the number one thing that they wanted me to do.

In that regard, I was very successful. I managed to get a driver's license and a social security card, which was all that was necessary to operate as an American in the U.S. And then they had this wild dream that I could befriend people who make decisions in foreign policy or at least influenced foreign policy decisions like conservative think tanks and so forth. It would be, you need to, you know, befriend people like this. Okay, my first job was take a wild guess.

I was a bike messenger. Well, you know, I couldn't take my resume with me. I couldn't pretend to know chemistry or math. Because where did I... There's no record of you at any college. There's nothing. No, my backstory was I flunked out of high school. on purpose for health reasons.

And then I moved upstate New York to work on a farm. So a farm boy coming to New York. And it was chemistry. No, it was chemistry. Unlikely. So, and I figured out, you know, they really, they thought I should maybe go to work at the docks there in downtown Manhattan. I very quickly found out that these are high-priced jobs and they're highly unionized. You can't get in unless you know.

somebody. And then they figured maybe a taxi driver and that didn't seem to be very profitable. It was very, in those days

you know, you work for the man with a medallion and dangerous on top of it. Well, what I picked eventually was even more dangerous. But, you know, I found I had an idea that

Messenger these were minimum wage jobs and that means most likely you didn't have to show a resume most likely they didn't ask you a lot of questions these were a lot of transients I had watched this

so I figured one day I went to one of those messenger offices and asked them I had an ad so are you hiring? Yeah and somehow as luck would have it the person who talked to me said can you ride a bike?

I said, yeah, you have one? No, but I could get one tomorrow. Okay, show up. And show up tomorrow and we'll tell you where to go. At that point, I didn't even know that yet that bike messengers were paid commission. Half of what the company charged

went to the bike messenger. The reason bike messengers were so important, they were faster than anybody. You know, then because Manhattan traffic moves slow. The trains off schedule. Yes, exactly. And we could just put particular during a strike. My God, we were the only ones who could deliver.

And it was a shortage because this was a crazy job. You had to be nuts to ride a bike. Going through red lights. I never went through red lights. No, I drove smarter. I never went on a sidewalk either. Okay, because you just collide with pedestrians and that's not good for you. either. So I went always

with traffic, never against traffic. You know, I was a smart bike messenger. It probably was one of the best period. I figured out how to get across town the fastest and that requires to understand how the patterns are when the red

lights go on and I managed to, and it was in the high 50s if you go east, I didn't have to stop it any red lights. And the other way was another. So I would go up or down to go that way

because eastern west was the slowest. So anyway, so I show up at that office and the dispatcher explained to me how it worked. And then he says, and here's the ticket. You need to have it signed. And we're going to put it in a bin with your name because you get paid based on the ticket. Oh, nowadays I would say praise the Lord.

But that was just a big piece of luck because after a month I was able to move out of my hotel and rent an apartment and start living as an American. And I did not need any infusion of KGB money anymore. I was able to make a living. We're going to take a break real quick because you have back hair. Yeah. And if you're like any other dude in the world with back hair, you probably have your wife, your girlfriend. your boyfriend, you probably have to ask them, hey, could you get the spot on my back?

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I never will. But if you're looking for the shaver of the future, it's at backscope.com. Let's get back to the show. As a bike messenger, clearly, I couldn't befriend people like those targets. Like, at one point they mentioned national security advisors

Bzzyzinski and so I briefly mentioned that name for 60 minutes and it became an urban legend that it was my task. No, it wasn't. It was just a dream that they had because Bzinski was also

the head of the Department of International Relations at Columbia and they figured maybe I could sneak in there not as a bike message and, you know, I just I couldn't find a real good reason to befriend people like that.

Did you get seduced by American culture at all? Like, did you start to go to bars or go to restaurants or meet American women? Come on. Like pretty immediately, huh? No, I was smart enough to wait because, you know,

and I noticed this, you know, I'm sitting, the first year when I stayed in a hotel, I didn't interact with anybody. My task was to acquire the documents, and that is what I focused on. And secondarily, I got to know the city, and I told you that is very important. So every day I paid my the monthly rent. It was a monthly kind of a hotel in cash.

And I had to give the impression that I had something to do, and this is something that I came up with by myself I can't just stay in in the hotel for days even when the weather is bad so in the morning I left and the evening I came back after hours so to speak and so I took the time to take every train to every station and I knew the city really well so that's why I also was pretty good at surveillance detection

right So... When did you start to dabble in American culture? Okay, so now I start this job and I'm... Making some money. No, hold it. No, no, no, no. I was smart enough to be more cautious.

And I noticed one thing, I'm sitting in the office, in the messenger office, waiting for my next delivery. It was my task to only deliver, not pick up mostly. So the foot messengers would go to the customers that were available. will buy on foot and they would bring it the packages to the office then then the dispatcher assembles a route and then I'm off so I'm sitting there and I'm listening and I realize that I know shit about anything what it means to be an American you know you know what about those Yankees and what about this player and what did we watch last night and what problems do we

I mean I was just listening and I knew that I can't get too close to it to it intelligent beings. So the dating game was off. I was also very much aware that even when I started dating, an American-born woman would still be too dangerous because I still wasn't 100%. The first time I felt really 100% American is when I had my first job at the insurance company.

And it was also comfortable because half the team that I joined was immigrants, you know, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, and Italian and Cuban. But there were other born Americans and I felt comfortable. It took me a while. The first date that I went on was with a black girl because I was actively looking for it.

actively looking for, I put an ad in the newspaper and I was looking for a black woman because I like dark skin. I didn't know that I like dark skin because, you know, there was none available in Germany or in Russia. And it's just like, oh man, they're beautiful. So, and I dated her for a while. And then the second date was very safe because she was in. immigrant from South America and she couldn't possibly know that I'm not 100% American.

And so eventually I was able to date born Americans, but this one actually was the last one I dated because I married her, the one from South America. Yeah. Interesting. And she played a big role in the fact that I'm able to talk to you today. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here today. Why? Because she decided to get pregnant.

Now, first of all... She decided. Yeah. First of all, she didn't tell me right away that she was in the country illegal. No. And at one point, you know, we dated, we cut along very well. She was very pretty, very nice to be with. Where was she from?

Where did she go? From Guyana. Very poor country. Very poor country. She was a flight attendant and one day she decided to stay here. And so after about six weeks of dating and having been intimate, it was fun. You know, after having lived two years like celibate, it's not easy for a young man. And then you meet a Guyanese woman and...

Or hot, Chinese woman. And then one day she asked me this question that was like, what? She says, you know, I'm going to ask you a question. If I get married to another man, can we still see each other? again some cultural ignorance there I didn't even understand what it means to be in illegal and how you become legal

but she explained to me that she was married once already I even remember the name of the last name of that person hack and she paid him some money and then he didn't file for a green card so I felt really sorry for her and I said let me see what I can do you shouldn't

You shouldn't have to, you know, do this again. You know, I was sorry for her, right? And I did some investigation what it takes to make, get a green card for somebody. And at that point, I pretty much knew that I had what I needed to, you know, the ID. I needed a birth certificate. And I needed to have an address. And I had all of that. And I said, I think I can do that for you.

partially was because I was afraid of losing the sex. Partially, you mean fully. It was fully that. This was clearly a stupid risk that I shouldn't have taken. But then she decided to get pregnant to hold on to me because I told her, once we were married and you got your green card, I get divorced again. We get divorced again.

I'm not the marrying kind. She said, yeah, so, and then she did something that is somewhat, It's not rare, let's put it this way. In those, you know, with females who come from poor countries, they make a child to keep the man. Well, she didn't do it alone. No, of course not. But I didn't know I was making a child.

I thought she was on birth control. I see. So she decided to get pregnant. We never talked about it. There was a deception involved. There was, yeah, indirect deception. I talked about birth control, and she was, yeah, sure, and then she stopped doing it.

I see. Now, some women get pregnant on birth control, you know that too, right? South Americans, mostly. Very, very fertile, extremely fertile. Yeah. And so that was the end of dating. Because, you know, I had to take care of the baby. So then you got a green card somehow?

Like, how does that work? If you're also illegally here... No, no, I got her a green card. So you did it for her? Yeah, sure. I didn't need a green card. I was born in the country. Right.

I got my social security card. I was a citizen. I was born in the U.S. And did she ever know that you were a spy at this point? Absolutely not. She found out when the FBI, when I was working with the FBI, they disclosed it to her.

So... Did she ever consider, like, oh, can we get married? And then I can get my green card through marrying? No, no, no, we got married. That was the whole idea. I see. I couldn't spy. I had to marry her.

So you were on the right track, but I invest, she introduced me to a friend of hers who was also illegal, a male, who got married to a female. And he told me what the process was all about. And I said, I can do it. You have to show up for an interview. And most likely you have to prove that you live in the same place. So you are separated. and you have to describe what your living room looks like and so forth what's out of the bed do you sleep on yeah and so I had an apartment and and we spent some time

together living there so we were in in the same space and at that point we didn't have the child yet okay that would have been tough because the apartment was too small and the kid was too loud but so when when we had the appointment for the interview Penny that's her name and nickname was already visibly pregnant and we show up there

and the person that is interviewing people the lady she looked at the stomach said I don't have to talk anymore bam approved wow So we moved in together.

Found a place where I could still do my spy stuff because there was one room that was at the opposite end of everything else along hallway. And I told her that I was doing work for somebody who I befriended in the office so we could make some money on the side. And I couldn't be disturbed. Because you had to be speaking to the KGB at 9.15 p.m. every night. Is that correct? No, on Thursday, yes.

Is only every Thursday? At 8.15. At 8.15. But you got close. So how, how, you justify this to her by saying, oh. Yes, no, you can't disturb me because I need to concentrate. And she was very docile in those days, you know, because she knew she depended on me. And I had told her I'm not the marrying kind, so she was still worried that, you know, the child wouldn't keep me.

Right? but, you know, I already made a step in the direction that, so she really followed all the rules. I said, you can't come in here, and she never did. So I took that risk and it worked. It's another stupid risk, right? It just seems like a hassle. It seems like it just. Of course it was a hassle, but it was, you know, again, I was risking my existence.

And that was, I didn't love her, but I cared for her a lot. Of course. I'm sure you love the baby and you have this child. I didn't know I loved the baby yet, but I learned to love the baby. So you now grow up with a, you know, and I told you before, I don't know if we were taped or not, you know, you're tricking me. That I love women and I love girls. And this girl was so pretty. Oh, she had these curls and the biggest eyes.

She had eyes much bigger than average. and she just kept on smiling at me and loving me without she couldn't talk, right? 18 months, that's when my life absolutely changed. Am I allowed to talk about this now? That is the pivot point in my life. You know, Penelope, who got pregnant, is the reason because the girl isn't responsive,

for her existence, but because of her existence, I'm here now today. So this happened in the fall of 1988. I was already in my 10th year, and there was no indication yet that my stint was coming to an end, even though they indicated that 10 to 12 years, so it got close. But nobody had said anything about getting ready to come home. at the reason that there's a there is a limit to how long an illegal can exist

when you live too long in the other country and you're really successful at your task you're a risk why you could be turned because you're doing the job all of a sudden you become the person you're supposed to become you you change your personality

I dreamed in English I you know I was a Yankee fan. You became who you presented to be. Exactly. And so, and you become comfortable and the life was good. I got raised at work. So I was close to being able to buy a house, which I did two years later. So they knew that. So you would be vulnerable to A, being turned and B, just like disappearing. And did they know that you had a kid? Do they know you have a family?

No, no way. No, I know that... You didn't tell them? No, of course I didn't tell them. Crazy. But why? And they don't check on you? No.

I knew that they wouldn't, couldn't because if they check on me, it's like when you... It's like a waking spider when you touch the web. It's like they aren't. Who could have checked on me were all the diplomats and they were under surveillance. You know, there was never. any physical contact, no meetings. So if a diplomat checks on a spy, then that tips off the FBI to the spy. Yeah, and so they trusted me 100%.

They had no choice. They pretty much had no choice. And the reason that they didn't check on me, I mean, I don't know. I made another mistake when I graduated from college as valedictorian, and I had to give the graduation speech at Massachusetts. Madison Square Garden, 4,000 people there. Which school was it, again, that you went to? Baruch College, part of City University.

That's right. So the KGB paid for you to go to college? No, I was completely independent of KGB money. I took a loan. I had some money and I took a loan. It was pretty cheap in those days, City University. No, no, no, no. They told me to, and I, they were very happy with my financial independence

because every time they would have to shovel money in my way that was somewhat dangerous, right? And what was your degree at Baruch? A degree in information systems. No, the degree was business administration with a major information systems. And you had to give the speech at Madison Square Garden. Yeah, that was pretty stupid too.

Did you know you had to give a speech if you were validatory? No, I had to see there was a last piece of... cultural ignorance. Wow. But I was that much focused on, you know, doing what I told I was going to do. Wow. And KGB didn't get wind of it. I mean, there were journalists were there, parents were there, teachers were there that knew that I graduated in three years instead of four.

and that I was 10 years older than the other graduates and I spoke with a touch of an accent. Somebody should have, nobody, we were hanging out outside and talking with teachers and some other fellow students was in, I think it was in June and it was warm outside and not a single person asked me. And, you know, there was also a danger for the KGB to find out

because they would have read me the riot act. And they never found out either. They didn't find out, no. A KGB spy was validatory enough of an American college, spoke at graduation. I applied for an entry in the book of world records, but I was denied. I forgot what the reason was.

But it's true. There's nobody else who had done this. The most Guyanese women slept with in a year? That might have been the record? Yeah, well, one. Okay, that was enough. But so I was positive that they didn't know about the baby because they... Yeah, if they didn't get pissed about this, then...

Oh, God, yeah. This is much more public than the baby. Or getting married to an illegal. Yeah. And this was all... I mean, it would have gotten me in serious trouble. Yeah. Not just like, okay, we're done with you.

I don't know what they would have done to me since I was a German, but certainly they would have told Estasi to mistreatment. Yeah. So at this point, the 10 years that you're working there, you also had a relationship in East Germany. Is that correct? Yeah, I was a bigamist. Yeah, I was married in Germany. And you had a child there as well? Yes. And did you ever go back during that 10 years? Yes. I was back in Moscow every other year, four times altogether. And sometime in Moscow, and then I got to spend time with my family. and the first visit I fathered my son

and this woman I actually loved more I didn't love the Guyanese I just liked her and you know she would have been a good woman to spend the rest of my life with but not like this deep love the German woman I loved so and I was you know I don't know what the definition of a being veganismist in terms, but I was married at the same time to two women in two different jurisdictions. So either one couldn't have convicted me of bigamy, right?

Yeah. And so how do you do this? How do you get away with this? It's called compartmentalization. And that's why I told you before that I have a hard time translating back and forth between the two languages. English and German. Because they didn't talk to each other. The moment I came here, I rejected everything German and whatever. You know, and so it's still there, but it needs to be reawakened.

So it takes a while when I'm back in Germany to speak fluent German. And I've been told that I now speak German with an American accent. Of course. Yeah. Wow. That's so interesting. And was it difficult going back to East Germany or going to Moscow in the time that you were in America? Like did you have to go out the same route to Mexico and then fly?

No, no, but there was always one stop in between. It was either, they were mostly neutral countries. It was the cities I remember were Helsinki, Switzerland. Now I have a block. But, you know, town in Switzerland, city in Sweden, you know, in Vienna, Austria, like neutral countries where it was pretty safe to get in with a false passport because I traveled with nothing but false passports. And the reentry any of those times wasn't scary or they weren't close calls. You weren't caught.

No, no, no, no. Reentry into the U.S. Let me just finish up. Let's say I stop in Helsinki. I meet an agent there and get another passport, which I would then fly into Moscow. They played it safe that way, okay? No direct, never a direct flight into Moscow once I even went with a ship. What's up guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you need to tell your story. On this show, I talked to some of the most interesting, fascinating people on the entire planet

that have some of the craziest stories that you would not believe. believe. But you know what's actually crazier is that everyone has a story, including you that's watching this right now. And the best way to find out about your story is through a little website called myheritage.com. I went on the website and I was like, all right, let's see what this is all about. Immediately, I was captivated. I filled in all of my personal information. I put in my parents, I put in all my siblings. I kind of just sent it off. And then immediately, my heritage started making all of these crazy connections with other people that are related to me. Distant relatives showed me my whole family history from how long we've been in Montreal and French

Canada for. It showed documents from when we actually got over there. And here's the craziest thing that I don't even know. My great, great, great, great, great, grandfather is fully Romanian. I'm a Romanian man. This is one of the most crazy things ever. I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did. And if you were interested in learning about your family history, I'm telling you, my heritage is the best way to go. They do a bunch of other features, too, that you might not even realize. You can go back through old photos and it can automatically colorize it. My heritage using AI to where they can make the photos actually move so it looks like the person is really with us again. So if you're interested in tracing back your family's roots in the easiest, most effective way possible,

I want you to scan the QR code on the screen right now or click the link in the description to start your 14-day free trial. Start piecing together your family history. Start finding out who you really are. Now let's get back to the show. Going back and forth, you eventually are in America for an extended period of time. Did you have emotional issues having a family in both places? difficult? No, no, not at all. I said, you know, I... Fully compartmentalized.

Fully compartmentalized. And I can, I actually could prove that to me even while I was operational. So when, when I went back to Germany, I was the loving father and husband for a while, as long as I could. And then when I came back to the U.S., when I was in the West and I had my shortwave radio and I could get American news station. I was trying to figure out how the Yankees were doing in the playoffs.

Okay? So there were two personalities in me artificially constructed, but clearly they existed. And, you know, I wish at those days some neurologist had gotten a hold of me and examined my brain in some way

because it might have been interesting. Yeah. Did you ever feel guilt in any way, you know, loving America and liking the Yankees and enjoying American food and American people, but simultaneously working against the American interest and handing over, you know, secrets of

America? No. That's so interesting. No, that did not enter my conscience because I still up until I found out the evil communism was, I still was convinced I was here for a reason

and I was serving a good cause and I got my cake and eat it too. And you're also someone like you just said that once you say you're going to do something. Yeah. You follow through fully. Yeah. And I was not... If it wasn't for Chelsea's existence,

I would have gone back to East Germany or in Moscow and people that are, And I ask us, where would you think you'd be by now if you had gone back? I would be a miserable old coup in Russia. Because when the war came down, the KGB guy, there was no room for them. And my German wife already at one point said, you know, I would move to Russia with you way before there was any idea that, you know, she knew that I was.

going to the United States and I was KGB. But they would have offered me to go to the Soviet Union because Soviet Union still existed. And I knew I would have been treated very well there. And then Russia, no more Soviet Union. I had no allegiance to Russia as a state and certainly not to the kind of state that Russia is today. So everything worked out. when was Putin trained as a KGB agent do you know I think I don't know when but he came to

Germany two years after I went to the US so that was in 1980 I believe so and he probably got similar training as you not at all why no he wasn't a class and and he was trained to you know do teamwork and he he turned out to be and based on one guy

who is still alive and still lives in the D.C. area Um, Oleg Kulogan he was at one point was also no he was he was in charge of counterintelligence for the director at S

and at one point in some capacity capacity uh Putin reported to him. And I met Oleg Kulugan and he told me that he was not impressive as an agent at all. Well, and I tell you, and that's an easy guess to make, because he was deployed into Dresden. That's a big, sizable city in Germany, but that's not where espionage action happened.

And he was very good at languages. He spoke very good German. So if you deploy a good agent into a German-speaking country, you deploy him to Vienna, you deploy him to Berlin, and maybe in Switzerland, but certainly not in Dresden. There was no – so he was – and it's – there's a really good documentary about Putin that shows the path that he took. And that was my guess because he was similar to Herman. You know, he was liaison to the Stasi. He probably participated in the recruiting process. He may have taken some courier trips into West Germany.

But he was fundamentally a bureaucrat, nobody. And when people ask me, so what Putin learned in the KGB, that made him so successful these days. I said, you learn her to lie. Did you see his interview with Tucker? Yeah, I cringed, I'm sorry. Why? Tucker Carlson made a fool of himself.

In what way? Because he sat there like a college sophomore. Huh? He was not prepared. And he never called Putin on one of his lies. And Putin was lying through his teeth. particularly, you know, when he went into the history of Russia and all this. And I mean, Tucker Carlson was unprepared and it was just nuts.

And I was interviewed a couple of times in the media. And I was a contrarian because all the journalists were very much impressed. And they said, I learned something. from the interview. Well, God forbid the information that they learned is available in public. For instance, that the reason that Ukraine has been fighting like crazy is that they hate Russians. Okay? And why did they hate Russians?

Because of the famine that Stalin engineered is called Holodomor. They were all known in the public. And we have so many ignorant journalists and experts that, just need to open their mouth anytime they get a question so they retain their expertise, their expert status, I have no problem saying I don't know. I'm not an expert. I, you know, I make a lot of educated guesses, but they are based on some education. Interesting.

Yeah, I didn't know what to make of it. I watched it and I thought that what Putin was saying, like I thought his demeanor was very, it was very stern, but it seemed very defensive at the same time. It seems like he was explaining a lot. Yeah, but he took over. He didn't allow any more questions. Yeah. You know, he took up all the time.

And in hindsight, he's lying again. I was very disappointed in the interview. Well, yeah, he can't be happy because he has an image to keep amongst the Russians. And the image is that he is Superman. and he is the only person that stands in the way of the United States taking over Russia. And therefore, by logic, he would never, ever collude with an American president. He needs a boogeyman. Yeah.

If you had interviewed Putin, what would you have asked him? I wouldn't interview Putin because I might fall out of a window. But assuming that I have bodyguards with me and I know that I'm safe Let me see what First of all I would have corrected him on some I don't remember all the content But

I would have asked him What made him turn away from communism Or was he ever a communist and does he really believe that the Western, that NATO is about to invade Russia? And how come he became a Christian? I have answers to all questions like that, but that would have possibly put him a little bit off balance.

Why did he become a Christian? Because he's very, because he, One of his strengths is that he reads the Russian nation extremely well. And the Russian Orthodox Church never really died. It was oppressed by under Stalin. It was slightly liberated by Gorbachev. And there was like a need for more spirituality amongst the Russians. Russians are very spiritual people.

So he figured, you know, he will play nice with the Orthodox Church and he becomes a Christian. You know, he's really good. And the other thing that he is doing so well, and I call this part of a national DNA, the Russian, all Russians know that Russia is going to be invaded at any moment because they were invaded throughout history. The moment Russia came into existence, the invasion started. started because Russia has a lot of resources, both in minerals and oil, but also Russian agriculture can be very, very productive. And so invaded by the Vikings from the north, by the Mongols from the east, by the Turks from the south, and then by Napoleon and Hitler.

And so there's this inbuilt fear that we are under siege at all times. And throughout history, Russians had a yearning for a strong man to protect them. The Tsar, Lenin, Stalin, Gorbachev wasn't strong enough. And then his successor, Yeltsin, you know, was a fool. So Putin stepped into that. gap and started building himself as a strong man and he started when he became president indirectly because he else he was appointed vice president because he he he was very good organizationally and and played you know played the he he

played the politics very well so that he was considered a non-threat if if he replaces Yeltsin as president because Yeltsin had become an untenable drunk and he was dying so and the first thing that Putin did he attacked one of the

one of the he attacked the richest person in Russia an oligarch I forgot his name and he accused him of corruption he put him in jail and then Putin sold off

the country sold off this guy's company I forgot the name of the company but it was the biggest most successful company in those days and that made him very popular because

you know the Russians didn't like these rich people where they never did to begin with yeah they took over yeah man you give it to the oligarchs

you're going to help us with you know if the the the neighboring countries want to take us over, and he's built on that and built on that. And that's what keeps him in power. And that's what, even though the most recent election was pretty much a joke,

but with regard to opinion polls, he's still coming out. And opinion polls that are done by Western organizations, he still is over 50%. Really? Yeah. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, no, even in this war, because he was very successful in blaming the West, yeah, we had, we, in the United States, there were politicians who stated publicly that

Ukraine should join NATO. That was really bad because that gave Putin ammunition, right? Yeah. The other thing that he's milking very successfully, he says that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis. Well, where have we heard this before? First of all. East German Communist Act. Yes, if there is a kernel of truth, the same as in East Germany and West Germany, there's a kernel of truth, a lie is much easier to sell.

Okay. Ukraine, during World War II, there were quite a few Nazis and they cooperated with the Germans. A lot of warden's guards at the concentration camps were Ukrainians. It was a Nazi organization that was led by one Stepan Bandera. and it was about 10 years ago and the Ukrainian government the post office was the government issued commemorative stamps for Stepan Bandera

for his 100th birthday Hmm That's not a good look Not a good look And there are Nazis in Ukraine today They are not in they're not governing But there's a party That is allowed to exist

So again you know, this is a huge argument. And none of that's really, this is really like discussed by experts and our highly paid journalists, but nobody ever believes a washed up ex-KGB agent. I want to know ultimately how you were able to pull computer code from the United States and from corporations of the United States and send it to Russia and what exactly were the steps

that you did to acquire the information? And then ultimately I would like to know how you were compromised and how someone gave up your information that led to the FBI finding out about you. You forget to ask one question how I managed to resign from the KGB, right? Well, that's, after you get caught,

I want to know why you're not dead. That's the main question. But we're not there just yet. Okay, all right. But the first thing is, how did you actually procure code? I know in the 60 Minutes interview there was a conversation that you got

code from IBM, which you chose not to speak on. I never said IBM. You never said IBM. And I will not deny or confirm that. Fair enough. But how did you get that information and what was your process

to getting computer code? So in my last visit to Moscow was the first time that they asked me to do a little bit of industrial espionage. I met somebody from a different department, not foreign policy, blah, blah, blah, and he admitted that, you know, the Soviet Union is buying technologically. Can you find a way to get your hands on technology, hardware, software, whatever it is, that is on the do not export list, right? Hardware, I wouldn't know how to get it, you know, go to the store and whatever you

can buy in the store, the diplomats could buy, right? software yeah well I had access to to code that was on the mainframe and not well protected unfortunately it was

execution type code in other words it was written in machine language it wasn't like written in Kobol or Fortran or any one of those languages that you can read and understand now experts can reverse engineer

machine language and so the one program that I thought was worth stealing was a software that is still in use today that is that ran

online interactions via terminals via the mainframe and that was very very popular in those days so I figured okay, I'm going to get that.

It was awkward, let's put it this way. I had to stay overtime. There was no way to get this out electronically. I had to print the code, the source code. And this is at your job at MetLife. Yeah. And so I printed it. I forgot how many pages, maybe it was 20 pages or so.

and then I photographed the pages and then handed over the undeveloped cartridge and a dead drop. That was it. Again, the system wasn't very well secured. I shouldn't have been able to do that even though I am reasonably certain that they couldn't use that software

because this was particularly used to run companies, American companies, all kinds of companies, like, you know, but that were organized based on, you know, how a company needs to be organized to be successful in capitalism. So, you know, but maybe somebody, you know, the, somebody back in Moscow claimed that, oh, look, what we got, and then they handed to the people who should use it and they said, we can't use it. Really?

I'm just guessing. This is not a, was that the most valuable thing that you had procured? No, I think the most valuable thing was. profiles of people that might be good targets for recruitment particularly while I was in college, you know, college students who eventually might wind up in government, college students

who also have certain weaknesses. Maybe they want to get rich. But more importantly, college students who are attached to a, cause you know you could recruit them not communism wasn't a good flag under which to recruit anymore that there was much earlier before when the one world war two ended 50s 60s yeah that went out the window but you know you can recruit under false flag saying you know you you want to get information to Israel or or something you have like radical peace

And so you are working with an international organization for peace and, you know, those kinds of people. Typically, there's an acronym that we use in intelligence that stands for the reason that somebody is recruitable. Mice, money, ideology, corruption. And... Extortion? Yeah, you're right. And ideology is really... And thank you for completing that.

Ideology was preferred. Yeah. Particularly extortion goes only so far. Money, somebody else can pay more. And corruption, yeah. It's not dependable. Not exactly right. ideology, like, that's tough to break, particularly if it's very strong. So I profiled

maybe a dozen candidates, but they never told me. They never even once told me that, yeah, that was not even hinting at the individual, but I was never congratulated for a job well done. I got the second highest decoration of the Soviet Union, but that was for like, whatever. But never once did I get feedback, oh, this was well done. So hypothetically, how would that work?

You would profile the college students say this person has the right ideology and we can potentially use them as an asset. And then you would hand over that information to the KGB. At your 815 on Thursday, they would...

No, no, this would be... Are you doing it through a dead drop? Secret writing. Secret writing. Right. How would that transfer? Through regular mail. There's some type of encryption.

The personal information as the name and address and all that, yeah, that would be encrypted. And then they would receive it, and then they would send a diplomat or some other type of spy to then go and become familiar with them? It's quite likely that the recruitment was done by diplomats because I was never asked to recruit. Right. I imagine they want a compartmental. That is way, yeah, it's compartmentalized. There's three individuals involved. is the spotter, I was a spotter, then there's a recruiter, and then there's the handler that we don't know one another, and the handler doesn't know who spotted in the process, he just gets assigned.

Assigned. That new agent. So the recruiter would go to a college student that's now looking like they're going to have a position in politics and say, hey. And befriend them in some way. Learn their interests, learn what they like, measure their time. temperament. Let's say they go, they, they play chess at the Manhattan chess club and they own, you know, you find ways to make friends if you know what the other person is doing. I, I had to actually, as part of my training, befriend some people where I was pointed out, you know, make a

friend of this person. I had to even find out where she worked initially. What do you mean? Well, somebody pointed out a person who came, entered the subway at a certain spot, and she entered the subway again. So the next time I was waiting for her to exit the subway and then found out she worked at a library. And so eventually I found a way to have an excuse to talk or about books, you know.

Interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, you've got to be pretty inventive. And this is one of the things that I'm pretty sure they teach when they teach classes and how to be a spy at that end. Right. Now, I understand, like, American spies, for example, they might be in Afghanistan or Iraq, and they have a lot to offer to someone that they would potentially recruit, you know, an operative.

They could say, oh, your child is sick. Yeah. We can get the medical treatment in America. Oh, you love sports. We can get you a sign jersey from your favorite football team. There's things that Americans can offer to countries that maybe have lower GDP or less infrastructure. What can you offer to a college student in America? Like, money is only going to go so far.

If you're at Columbia or you're at some Ivy League school in New York City, money is not as important. Ideology seems like the most important thing. Oh, yeah. What would be the ideology that I would have that would make me flip against America? Again, not necessarily against America. Just talk about peace nix. There were like, at one time, there were a lot of demonstrations against nuclear weapons.

Okay? So, and if you say, well, you know, you're working for an organization that wants to make sure that at minimum there will be a nuclear balance or that nuclear weapons will be prohibited. It needs to be a worldwide movement. That might work. You know, if you're really inveterate with regard to your cause, you will go to many lengths.

Some people, some spies, particularly the ones that gave away the atomic secret, they weren't necessarily pro-soviet. Some of them wanted the nuclear balance established. So I tell you one thing, this has been, told me by a friend of mine who at one point was in charge of the behavioral division of the FBI. And he wrote a couple of books. He's very, very good.

He's an amateur psychologist, but better than most trained psychologists. And he will tell you, and he also turned a couple of GRU agents when he was counterintelligence. GRU is the most capable intelligence service in Russia. it's military intelligence. And he says, ultimately, and you actually hinted at that when we talk about Americans in other countries, ultimately everybody will make decisions

that they believe are good for them or the people they care about. Now, for some individuals it might be a whole nation, but for most everybody it's like me or maybe my family first and then me, and maybe some friends, but that's it. And so that's what you need to figure out when you're recruiting. I have never been trained to recruit.

I've never thought about it. This is just the kind of stuff that you learn over time when you interact with a lot of ex-spokes, you know. Would the recruiter or the handler, to your knowledge, disclose that they were KGB? Or would they say, oh, we're part of a, you know, denuclearization committee. Well, it depends. It depends upon the individual. False flag is entirely appropriate and it's used probably quite frequently.

You know, KGB, KGB, in those days, communism wasn't as romantically admired as it is amongst some college student nowadays. So, you know, if you're a Cuban recruiter and you recruit some, you know, people with a, you know, whose parents fled Castro and they're not fighting with their parents and they like communism, you can disclose where you're coming from, sure. Hmm. It all depends. It's very individual. Interesting. So now you do this for 10 years. 88 comes around. you see some red paint

on the ground in front of the subway? Yeah, yeah. What is that about? It's not on the ground. It was on a support beam, a steel support beam, for the elevated seven train in Woodside Queens. And why is seeing red paint on the subway? Why is that significant?

Well, we had a system of signals, very basic signals. And they were. I could put some signals someplace. And the signal was to be put where the individual passes by the spot on a daily basis so they don't have to go out of the way to look for a signal. For instance, one of my signals would be when I come back to the U.S. arrived in the country.

That was another chalk mark, mostly chalk marks. Horizontal, vertical, cross, and it was very basic. Nothing where you have to stand in front of it and make a sign. you have to be able to do this real quick. And the one signal that was not a chalk mark was a red dot that meant for me to like, not miss it.

That was a danger signal. And we had a danger protocol, emergency protocol. If there was danger, I could also set that signal myself if I have strong reason to believe that I'm about to be arrested, I got to run. So I set the signal myself, right? But at this case, they said it. Somehow, and neither the FBI nor I have an understanding

what made them believe that I'm in danger. They were very, very skittish with regard to having somebody like me arrested, not because they cared so much about me, but because if I get arrested, now they have to bend over backwards to get me back. Because if they don't get me back, they don't get another one to take that job. And that getting back is pretty awkward. You know, you have to set somebody up, you have to put him in jail, then you negotiate for an exchange. And It could take a long time and it's a pain in the neck. So if they don't get you back, why can't they get someone else to take your role?

Well, I tell you why. One of the reasons I signed up, even though I knew there was a good chance I would wind up in jail, but I also knew that they would get me out because there was some information that it was out in the public, that there were exchanges. For instance, Rudolf Abel, the nuclear spy. and Gary Powers, a U-2 pilot. And I had some training in Moscow by two members of the Rosenberg expiring that managed to flee, actually, the U.S.,

but then were redeployed in England. They were Mono and Morris Cohen. And they were redeployed in England and then wound up in jail. spent I think eight years in jail and they got them out. So I knew they would eventually get me out and I was reasonably sure as long as I have something to read I could handle jail because I spent two years in Moscow with almost no social interaction. And as a child I didn't have any playmates close by so I played a lot by myself. So that is

So I knew that they would get me out And so if there's a question mark about this You're not joining and the next guy is not joining Yeah, right Again, it's about trust We will get you out I need to trust you for me to take that risk And the risk was not minimal

And you know The risk was enhanced by my behavior, right? And were you receiving KGB money the whole time? No, not at all. You know, I received one infusion of KGB money after two years when I had not enough money to finance my trip back to Moscow.

And after that, I was completely independent. So I get the incentive for the first year, right? So a novel, you get to do something interesting, you get to be a spy in America. It's a huge thrill. You get to serve a country that you enjoy. But by year 10, there's no major compensation. Like, what is the incentive for you by year 8, 9, 10 to keep on going and to keep on risking your life and to keep on risking your freedom? Discipline, not breaking the promise and still knowing that I was serving a good cause.

and I didn't, you know what, in those days I didn't think about it very deeply. I was doing a job. I was doing a job. And that job also eventually promised for me to have a good life when I was done. I think I already told you that there were a lot of promises. You'd be taken care of it. And then I could take care of my family. And they took very good care of my family.

My German wife didn't have to go to work. And she drove the most expensive car, and she didn't have to wait for it. And twice, she and our son were on vacation at the Black Sea with a cook and a chauffeur. I see. Your family's taken care of. It's a part of your duty. Absolutely. So I was looking forward to.

a real good life with a woman that I still loved. We were still young enough to have another child. And, you know, I would have been on cloud, annoying. That was German. I caught you. Yeah, you did. I know you're German now.

I got you. You did. You know how else you can catch me? Could have caught me and I didn't find it out until I watched the movie in glorious bastards. How do you count on fingers? Show me. one two

three four five I can't do the this is too this is too awkward one two that's so funny no one two three

yeah that's funny this is how my dad counts yeah exactly so or he'll say A to Z yeah

yeah but you caught me nine what what would that you're incentive I was on cloud nine for sure

and you're gonna go right off into the sunset absolutely I mean, it couldn't have been any better based on what I knew when I made the decision to stay here. And that's when we want to get back to the red dot. Exactly. Get out of the country because we have reason to believe that you're going to be arrested.

And I just told you what expected me over there if I go back. Pretty good. And what was holding me here? Not the love of the country, not my salary, because I would have been better off over there. are still not highly paid. So you look at this rationally, this is all the good stuff is over there and who, what's over here?

Your baby that you love? Chelsea. That's it. Not even my job, not even my colleagues, Chelsea. And my problem was I would have been somewhat comfortable leaving if I had known a way to support her,

financial her and her mother. because mom had only four years of schooling. And she did some word processing, but the two of them would have lived in poverty. How old was Chelsea in 88? She was 18 months old at that time. And I was just, I knew that she would have grown up in poverty, possibly abject poverty.

And I couldn't find a way to like, you know, I couldn't tell the KGB to help me with money to shove it that way. They would have, like, punished me for that. You know, I wasn't supposed to have done all this. They don't give a shit to you the kid. No, no, absolutely not. Yeah, there wouldn't have been any operational value in that, right? So, and there was no other way that I could imagine.

Even if I could have wired money, I didn't have enough than my German wife would have found out. So I was still trying to figure this. out and was playing for time. And how long did you have? When you saw that dot, were you immediately mind racing? Mind racing, yeah, I ignored it because I wasn't ready to make a decision. So I went right back to work. I was on my way to work.

I was on my way to work. I went to work. And that day, I wasn't very productive. The entire week, I wasn't very productive. I was like, mind was racing here. And there was no solution. My frontal lobe was working really hard, no solution. And I'm sure you were thinking to yourself, did I get caught?

Was I sloppy? Did someone find out? Was I followed? No, that I didn't do, but I took measures to at least find out whether the KGB was right. So surveillance detection. and I had marks in my apartment where I could find out whether somebody actually searched the apartment

both my then wife and I worked so in the morning the apartment was empty and it wasn't a proverbial hair over the door I had a chest of drawers that had an over And, you know, overhang means like you have something like this, and the real chest starts over there.

And if you were standing in front of it, you cannot see the overhang. And if you open it, oops. It moves. Now, how far do I close it? Because I measured how. It was eight millimeters. Every time I went back home, that's the first thing I did. Really?

I wasn't taught that either. I invented that. So you would put on your tie, you'd put on your suit, you'd make sure that the drawer was 8 millimeters. That's correct. And you'd go to work. Yeah. And you'd come home, you'd say hi to your wife,

you'd say how to your baby. And then make sure that I'd take the measurement, and if it's 8 millimeters, it was 8 millimeters. Also, you know, surveillance detection. And one thing that I was taught, I mailed a letter to me. from some address somewhere in Manhattan. And if, and I don't know if they still do it,

but in those days, when letters were opened, it was done by machine. And when I, when I closed the letter, I left about an inch without the glue. So when the machines open this and then they reclose it. They would close it all the way. All the way. Very good.

you're spy material. Maybe I am. Maybe you are. Nobody ever knows. We call this world the world of mirrors because nobody knows what's going on. And I did that too, and I was reasonably sure

that the FBI is not after me, but I was concerned with, if I stay, and at this point I still hadn't made the decision, I was concerned that the KGB would consider this defection and I did know that they don't treat defectors very nicely. So there was still this everything good here and still a lot of danger over there. And I was able to play for time because at one time I had an accident on my bike where I injured my shoulder and I couldn't do

anything. I couldn't write a letter and I couldn't even write down the numbers for the radio cram and when I got healthy again I informed them you know was out for four weeks because I was my my my arm was in a sling sling yeah and so so I had some time to stall but I think about three weeks into my stalling they wanted to figure out you know what's what's with this guy is he in a hospital is he's still operational can we find them and so So one guy showed up in the morning on the subway. They knew where I was how I went to work. It was still dark.

It was early December. It was dark. I'm waiting for the train. And this guy comes up to me from my right. And I still remember a short guy with a black trench coat. And he whispers into my ear with a Russian, heavy Russian accent. You got to come home. What age you did?

Okay. And then he walked. So now I go back. I go to work again, and again, I got nothing done. But now it was time to make a decision because they knew that I knew that they know. It was clarity that I knew that there was a command of the order to come back. And when you went home every day, were you seeing Jelsea? Yeah.

And she was talking at this point, she was walking around? I don't know. She was babbling a little bit. She wasn't a talker, but she was walking, sure. Could she say Dada? Yeah. Oh, sure, yeah. And that was a sweet word, yeah.

And did it melt you? Like, holding her in your apartment and you would look in her eyes knowing they might kill me. You're going to make me cry. Yeah, that was what I now call a highly unexpected, massive attack of unconditional love. I didn't know unconditional love prior to that at all you know this sacrificial type love that no matter whether you love me back or not

whether I'm in danger or not you know I love you I do whatever it takes and there's some people who throw themselves in front of a vehicle to save the child right so something like that attacked me so anyway I did one more thing they called me for a dead drop operation

because what they didn't know is whether I had the money or the passport because I had I had two Canadian one Canadian driver's license and one Canadian passport hidden someplace but and actually it was still there when I went to the with the FBI to it was still there but they didn't know

maybe they they didn't know that I was was possible for me to go to Canada that's where it was supposed to go and so they called me for the drop operation now that the guy had talked to me right and and that drop operation was the only one that was at night it was in a spot in a park on Staten Island

it was a spot that I found it was easy to find and I was always told my descriptions were phenomenal there's no problem finding a spot so I get there I parked the car a little bit away I drove my car and I go to where the

the signal was that you know go and get the container I read the signal yes there I go I had a flashlight that was late and in the day it was dark and it was in December

there was nobody in the park so I go to the spot there was a tree that hollow tree at the bottom really easy to find you can't miss it and I even gave to how many feet, roughly how many feet

from the entrance to the park on the left side. And he made this... So he put something someplace or he stole what he had. Either way. But I wouldn't even think Steele that came afterwards. So I'm going there and there's no oil can

and I'm making a double take and now I turn the flashlight on and go around and maybe he sort of like missed. He threw it away and he missed the spot and it's like spent about and I go a little further nothing spent about maybe 10 minutes I walk out of there

and that's when my subconscious made a spontaneous decision it was not based on any logic I'm staying it's it's just spiritual gut instinct totally irrational fired

nourished by this unconditional love and from then on I was on my way to face the music whatever was going to come I made sure that I wasn't in the same spot

at the same time I changed my route to work and when I left so as to not be an easy target for an assassination is that the first moment you ever made a decision that was spiritual and not rational

well the others were not spiritual, but they were rational because they were based on ego. Yeah, sure. Yeah, the first one. You could justify it. But this one is hard to justify. Not justifiable by logic. As a matter of fact, I could have rationalized this away. Let's say

another person or another me could have said, okay, if I stay here and there's a good chance to KGB is right, I'm no good for. for Chelsea, and just used my other daughter's name. I wouldn't be no good in jail for Chelsea either, so I might as well leave because otherwise we're both damaged, right?

But I didn't. It didn't even occur to me. I didn't think that way. Yeah, it was totally irrational, and I'm so glad that my subconscious eventually took over because it came this this thought is that is not based on logic that comes from back here and it wasn't fear it was the exact opposite so pure love yeah what's up guys we're

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sent directly to your door immediately. Now let's get back to the show. So now that you've made a commitment, effectively, to defect, what was the process of not getting murdered by the KGV? Yeah, I didn't defect, I told you. A defection would have meant to say hello to the FBI. I resigned. Fair.

And I had another inspiration that came out of thin air. I say, okay, how about, you know, if I have contracted HIV AIDS? Sounds like a good idea, because in those days, AIDS was a death sentence. And so I sat down and wrote my last letter in secret writing, and I told him, I understand that I'm in danger, but the danger I'm faced right now may be even bigger. I have contracted HIV AIDS. And to make it really credible, I told him how. I contracted HIV AIDS because in those days it was mostly homosexuals and drug addicts.

So I had this one female friend who came before the one that I married and she told me that she she had a boyfriend who was a drug addict and then eventually she shared with me that he had had come down with AIDS. Now she was possibly a carrier, and this is how I told him, this is probably how I got it. So there was inspiration, but there was also some thinking involved. So to make it credible, and they had no reason to not believe that story because they knew, again,

everything that was good for me was over there. And then staying back, why? You didn't know about the baby. So they, and I found this many years later when my son told me that I asked him also to hand over the money that was on my account, the dollars to my German wife. Apparently she got about half of it. Somebody else pocketed the money, you know that.

In espionage, you know, it's cash, right? There's no trace. You know, I gave it to her. She doesn't know how much she's supposed to get, so I pocket the rest of it. That's crazy. Yeah. So it worked. And I knew that they had read the letter when they stopped sending signals over shortwave.

You would log on at 815. No, I wouldn't log on. It would just, yeah, I would like listen to it. There's a signal that they sent. This was the signal that this is for you, okay? I say log on is modern speak. Yeah, but I didn't listen to it anymore. And then when they stopped transmitting,

I threw the radio in the Hudson River. How did that feel? I feel pretty good with regard to getting rid of the KGB because I knew I was rid of them. And you were no longer afraid that they would come after you or that they would, because even if you had HIV, you might be a risk. No, I was still concerned.

I was still concerned. But like after three months, I was reasonably certain that, you know, I'm home free. And I told Chelsea's mother, who had been asking if we could buy a house, I said, we're now going to buy a house, we're now going to save some money within a year. And then I moved to the suburbs, had another child, and started my version of the American dream.

But now the FBI is on to you. Not yet. I had to that took another it took nine years after my resignation so it was in

88 plus 9 is 97 when they introduced themselves they heard about me in 95 and then they spent two years watching me

the reason they did that all they know about me that I was a highly trained agent because I had survived that many years without being detected. And they got a tip through MI6. Yeah, tip through MI6. That there's this guy Barski in New York you should look after. And I could, I could still be active. They didn't know that I was German, for instance. I could be Russian and still being loyal to Russia. And there was a lot of paranoia amongst the FBI and CIA because the moles hadn't been caught yet. Okay. And or as time passed on, there could be another mole. And they knew that there were moles. They just didn't know who.

Yeah, they figured them, because there were some odd things that happened that you couldn't explain. Anyway, so they were very, very cautious because if they got too close to me, they knew that I would find that out and flee. And so you were never privy to them spying on you for those two or three years? No, two years it was. I was out of the habit of checking. I was home free. I forgot really that I had completely forgotten that I was once a spy.

I was mom. I was dad, mom, two children. Great job, house in the country in Pennsylvania. And more promotions coming. At one point I made with bonus 300. thousand dollars a year and that was like 12 years ago. Mm-hmm. So when does the FBI introduce themselves?

When? I said it was nine years. 97 I think you said. And it was I think in the fall. I was commuting from New Jersey into Pennsylvania and I had to cross the Delaware River and there was a toll gate there. I think it was a quarter or maybe two but you had to pretty much stop. and that's where they had positioned

to state trooper that they rented just to stop me and he told me routine stop which he was pull over and then he walks over there and he says could you please step out of the vehicle

and so the fact that I did not notice right away that this was not routine routine because and that indicates that I wasn't as sharp anymore I wasn't as watchful anymore because normally routine stopped in license and

registration right so I stepped out not thinking anything and then I see this other man coming from my right like the same side the KGB came on the subway coincidentally and he approached me and flipped open this idea and I knew immediately what that was. And the feedback from him

that after we were all done with the interrogation or the interview, whatever you want to call it, it wasn't interrogation. But he was the lead agent on that case. He told me my face went white as the driven snow. And I understand why, because at that moment, my past that I had forgotten came rushing back into my brain and I knew that myself and my beloved

family was in danger now. Yeah, that was an interesting moment. And then he asked me to step into, there was a vehicle parked and, you know, go step in. He said FBI, we would like to have a talk with you. and they had a couple of props to just in case they need to intimidate me his partner was sitting in the back seat and I was going in the backseat and he had a gun strapped to his ankle visibly strapped to his ankle so I could see it I it's serious right he didn't have to do that for me

because I already knew it was serious and then I caught myself and the first question I asked, so am I under arrest? And Riley, the driver, the lead agent, he turned around and he said, no. And this may not be the worst day of your life. Okay, there's a little glimmer of hope. So now I instinctively knew that I had to like him. I'm sorry, they had to like me.

because you treat people differently when you like them instinctively. So I used what I bragged about before my weird sense of humor and I asked them, so what took you so long? And I saw they couldn't suppress a smile. So they took me to a motel about 10 miles north and I just south of Stardsburg, Pennsylvania. And they had rented an entire wing of an elephant shaped motel and more props at both ends there was an arm guard I'm with a with a

with a Kalashnikov type machine gun made you feel at home yeah and and they they had me in the middle room and as I walk into that room there were more props there were some some big cardboard signs with bits and pieces of information like one address that I used to send letters to and my cover name and immediately

I noticed that they didn't know much of anything because it was old information you know so and then I took the initiative I told him I understand what position I'm in here and I know that the only way that I can, me and my family can get away from this situation

with the least amount of damage if I cooperate fully and I absolutely 100% intend to do so. And then we talked for a couple of hours and first they let me call the wife and tell her that I'd be late because something at work or whatever. and so after two hours of interviewing they said now you can go home okay and not before they introduced me to the head of the sizable surveillance group

that was there with armed people who was very sternly said to me and if you think you can run we have every intersection covered and he didn't have to say that where was I going to run? But they didn't know any of that, right? But I knew that any attempt,

I possibly could have escaped through the back. I had a hatch door into the basement. I possibly could have, I don't know if they would have stationed somebody in the dark back there and I could have wandered through behind me was nothing but way. wasteland, but no. I don't remember if I slept well. I probably didn't. And then I spent about six weeks highly anxious because there was no promises made.

When I made my statement, there was nothing came back. They didn't say, oh, if you cooperate, blah, blah, blah. So we spent six weeks. I was being asked about everything that I could possibly remember. including my life, my childhood. You know, the agents that I worked with described them. I couldn't give away any secret, but what I, based on what they told me,

what I told them was very valuable because it gave them information about how the KGB operated. And as you know, that the Russian intelligence services, who were they trained by? You know, whatever KGB was handed down to, to the Russian intelligence and some in those days

some of those Russian intelligence agents were ex KGB anyway so it was very valuable to them and also knowing that there was I wasn't running an agent it's also good because

you know if you if you're dealing with a negative and the negative has proven to not exist that's good so and I had to pass a light detector test that was an absolute rule

and that was an interesting test you know the way they depict light detector polygraphs in the movies is absolutely wrong you know you don't have a light in your face

you don't have somebody asking you aggressively questions so this is what it was the interrogator was sitting behind me he he was both of us were whispering

the only answers I could give were yes and no and he we ran a test so I knew all the all the questions at a time and then we went through this thing

and there was no light in my face it was like all very very calm and I was nervous because I knew I was going and tell the truth. And so yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. He disappeared into a back room and looked at the printouts. He came back and said, I'm sorry, you missed one question.

Many years later, it occurred to me that was a control question, and I tell you why. I went back and forth. I said, I honestly answered, I said, yeah, but look here, this is a spike, something wrong. And I thought about the question, and then I said, that's a double negative maybe that's the reason and you didn't say yes well you

need to come back and answer the same question again phrased as a positive and I passed it and I once spoke at an event where polygraphers were present

they have an organization where they meet them once a year and I asked some of them and they said yeah it was a controlled question he had to be absolutely sure that when there was movement, there was a good reason for the movement, okay? So, and when I passed that question, they told me that there's a path to getting a green card

that was certain and possibly citizenship. So I was out of the dungeon. I was, I never said, I never spent a minute in jail. I spent a minute in jail in Dublin as a tourist, and I have a picture with bars in front of my face. But, you know, I'm German, but I think I may be half Irish. You know, I got so lucky in many respects,

and I'm blessed that I can be able to, that I'm able to talk to you today. and laugh about a bunch of things. So ever since that moment where you took the polygraph, you passed, and you sort of cooperated with the FBI and told them what you knew and you were honest, was there any other recourse from that moment

from your time with the KGB? Were you able just to live a normal or semi-normal life after that? Well, they knew that I was dead. I lived a normal life. And when I... Well, there wasn't KGB anymore. When I went back to Germany after I got my citizenship, I was still not a public figure.

The 60 Minutes interview came after that. And everybody thought it was okay for me to go back to Germany. I was completely out of danger. I was dead, officially dead. And even today, the Social Security Register or whatever you call this, I think they call it Stunders-Ampton. and there's no translation. It's vital records.

They have Albrecht Dittrich, that's my German name, has passed away in 1988. And so a rather tasteless joke I once made was that I'd hold the record of resurrections. You know, we resurrected Jack Barski. The German actually showed up again. And a while ago when Chad GPT wasn't really as good as it is now, So a friend of mine had it write a biography of me

and it had me pass away 10 years ago. So I'm still here. Three times? Three times. You're like a cat? It's a tasteless joke. I won't do it again. I like it.

So did they told your mother and your German wife that you had passed away? After the war came down and I still didn't come home, she wanted to know what happened. And she asked a bunch of East German officials, and wrote a letter to Gorbachev and she passed away without knowing what happened to me. Not guilty with an explanation because now I remember when she passed away, I was still not legal in the United States and I was working with documents that were illegally obtained. And so if I, and I didn't have a passport either, so if I let her know that I'm still alive, that somehow could cause me a lot of trouble in my family.

So I didn't. Quite frankly, I was also a coward. It was really, it was real tough to think about my mother, who I had, who I had lied to and left because I was our golden boy. You know, her other son wasn't. I was also afraid of meeting my son Matthias. Chelsea forced that. She brought him to the U.S.

And then I knew he was here, but he didn't want to see me, but she arranged, she was pretty clever. they met in a restaurant about a five-minute drive from where my house was and she calls me hey Matias is here want to come see him and she tells me and I don't remember that probably my I don't want to remember that she said I hung up the phone didn't say a word

so she called again so then you know one of the worst things that I can imagine it's being acknowledged to be a coward you know like like being irresponsible and being a weasel

and whatever all these bad characteristics so I had to go so I still remember they were waiting just by the reception and he saw me and for like a half a minute

he looked at me like this and then we had dinner and we started talking and the talk went really well and he came to the house and that's how the big that was the beginning of the reunion of the family not with his mother obviously that wouldn't have worked I spoke with her with his mother once on the telephone when I was in Germany and she actually said she would want to meet me but she changed her mind she was

deeply wounded and had never had a liaison with another man. Did you understand her position? Absolutely, of course. You know, I'm the last communication I had with her when I left for my last visit to Germany, I said pretty soon it's going to be up, I'm going to be home. We're going to live a wonderful life. That was the promise. I broke it.

If people ask me, anything that I regret is betraying the love that I had for her. There's no two ways around it. And leaving my son alone, you can rationalize as much as you want. I put myself in that position by my first decision that was, I didn't have enough information to make a good decision, and I didn't have a mentor to make a good decision. And so, but I got to admit that caused me to hurt somebody deeply. Matthias recovered nicely.

He calls me dad. Does he look like you? No, he looks more like his grandfather, actually. My first son, who I didn't betray in the same way, but he is older. He looks like me and quite a bit like me. He was a one-night stand, a result of a one-night stand. And I did what I had to do, paid child support,

and my mother continued paying it. It was silly, you know. It was a girl who threw herself at me. You know, she did. We walked out of a, you know, a student club, and she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. How do you say no to that? And he was raised in East Germany as well?

Yeah, and he, this turned out really well. This lady married a man who was a really, really good father to Genta, that's his name. Did he know that Matthias was his half-brother? He found out. Chelsea made sure that the family got all united. There's a picture of us when I visited Germany where the four of us, wait a minute, one, two, three, four, five of us, you know, standing in front of a train, oncoming train when they say goodbye to me.

Wow. Yeah, that part ended reasonably well. I wish I had time and money to visit Germany more often, but right now I have neither. It'll come. What does Matthias do now? He runs a drugstore. Now in Germany, they don't have these huge chains.

They're all smallish. He and his wife run a drugstore. He has a, without knowing that his father studied chemistry, he studied chemistry and he has a doctorate from an Ivy League type organization the Max Planck Institute very smart guy

but he decided he didn't like the politics in academia you know the wrangling for position so he went small you know he lives the life of a petty bourgeois you know house in the country decent job

loves he had I have one grandchild a beautiful super smart granddaughter I mean the genes are perpetuating themselves because my 13 year old is also she's smarter than me

I know this she has among other things she has perfect memory she can look at a section the written section and not read it and know what's in it, that kind of thing. Wow. Yeah.

And that's your granddaughter or your daughter? No, that's my daughter. My granddaughter is arguably maybe even smarter. I mean, yeah, we, I don't know where there comes from in my family. My mother was pretty smart, but none of the folks that I interacted with were genius level. And so I've been measured genius whoopty-do. That's not a big deal. There's a lot of us.

But when it gets to the next level, then you're... say, whoa. That's impressive. Wow. Yeah. Now, when the 60 Minutes interview came out, I understand that you lost your job. Yeah. I was the next day, it was on a Sunday.

And I had informed senior management that there would be an interview with me. And one of the fellow did Chief Operating Office, I said, oh, wow, this is really great. So that didn't seem to be a problem, but I was concerned. And it came from a source that I had not taken into consideration, the board of directors. They were very much concerned with having had an ex-KGB agent in their ranks and didn't know about it, that their background check didn't catch it. So they were worried about, and this was a company that worked in the electric energy sector with high security requirements.

So that's my question. How did a former KGB agent get a job with the power grid? Because whatever record I might have had was wiped clean by the FBI. I didn't even have a parking ticket. So there's no background check that would have found out where I came from. And your job with MetLife, did you leave that and then go to the power grid? Oh, I had multiple jobs. In between.

MedLife, Prudential, United Healthcare, Carnettism of New York, Energy, Energy, and then the grid, the company I will not name because of non-disclosure. And what was the reason for going to different jobs? Were you just looking for different work? Were you moved out of those jobs because of the investigation? Usually I was hired to do a particular job, and after the first job in MetLife, it was all crisis management. And so when I was able to be my own boss, so to speak, because they had run out of ideas. And so I could just, my boss just like, do what you have to do, you know, just fix it.

And I did. And after maybe two years, I started getting bored and I became a misfit because I now looked for improvements in other areas that threatened my... my colleagues and sometimes higher-ups in one company we had too many meetings and everybody complained about the meetings so I wrote a

I was a second tier executive I wrote a memo to a senior staff and asked them to you know to do the following make it part of a performance plan for each employee to communicate

to their boss, one standing meeting that they won't attend anymore. I didn't even get acknowledgement that I sent them that memo. They were uncomfortable with that because, you know, it's so comfortable, you know. On Monday we do this and on Tuesday. And then we talk about the same thing over and over again, and I became a misfit. Because I'm a change agent, and you know I'm comfortable who's change. I'm seeking change. So every time I had an opportunity to fix another place, I went.

I see. That makes sense. And then I also made more money. And so what compelled you to do this interview with 60 minutes and how do they find you? Oh, yeah, aye, aye. All right, let me take a... It's a little long story. Okay, at one point when I told my children, first Chelsea and then Jesse when they turned 18,

when Jesse, my son... They never knew. They never knew until they turned 18. Correct. Wow. that's pretty remarkable it's a pretty remarkable life what does Chelsea do now Chelsea runs an event venue

I mean that's awesome now everything that we've talked about today all the stories that you've shared you don't have to say what but is there anything that you've lied about I'm still lying about no I stopped lying about it because I'm not living with a family

but I used to hide my cookies that's fair that's fair and And there's at least one thing I typically don't disclose, but it might as well be here because, you know, I think you did a really good job, so you deserve a scoop.

The worst mistake I ever made. And that was, I mean, I should have been caught for sure. So when I traveled back and forth, I always took presents, you know, and that was okay. You know, if you declare them, you go, and particularly when you pass to another country, you don't have to pay the customs fee. But one time, I had started smoking some marijuana. very particularly when I was with my first girlfriend and sex was better when you had a joint. So I figured I'm going to take that home to my beloved wife and let's see what we can do with it.

And I was so certain that I could get through the two borders there because, I wrapped it in a condom, and then I put the condom in a toothpaste, in a big toothpaste, in a tube, with toothpaste in it, and I figured, you know, there's nobody that doesn't smell, right? Well, what I didn't know at the time, the dog smelled through the shit through the toothpaste, and I was at Heathrow Airport, and there was, then God, no dog. If I get caught there, I'm in no man's land because I get caught smuggling in England and the KGB, I wouldn't want to be back home

because they would have, you know what. Let your imagination figure that one out. That would have been the end of a decent life for me. Now they've gone public with their story, you're not worried about the KGB coming for you or finding you now? No, no. I have discussed it with the FBI and they agree with my reasoning. To do damage such as assassination to somebody in a country that is not yours

or is not very friendly requires a highly well-trained, highly talented team. They don't have that many teams. even the elite team that tried to poison this fellow in England and his daughter on a park bench with whatever that poison was. They couldn't get out of the country without

having known that they were GRU. That was arguably one of the, if not the best team. So they may have a 10 or a dozen and not too many people qualified. You have to have multiple talents, right?

Same way with me. And so if I'm on the list there, that Vladimir Putin someplace has, I would be way at the bottom. Yeah. Also, if there was anybody who took my, quote, with trail personally, they don't live anymore because with the exception of one,

he was my liaison in Moscow while I was trained in Moscow he was actually a Maldavian he could still be alive the others don't live anymore you know they could there's no personal grudge

having said that if you offer me a million dollars now for like a one day trip to Moscow I would say thank you no because you know there's lots of windows there and accidents can be arranged

and Vladimir Putin is known for that he delights in scaring people and this would send a message without him saying anything you know we get him no matter when

it seems in your older age you've kind of softened I think your children have sort of softened you in a way that I don't think you even really knew it was possible no you're right

and I'm curious prior to that point do you think that you were a sociopath no you still you still had empathy the whole way. You still had a capacity for love.

So think about it. Why did I marry Penelope when I didn't love her? You know, sex wasn't that strong. I mean, I had empathy for her situation. I said, I marry you because I don't want you to go through the same thing again. Maybe if you were more of a sociopath, you'd been a better KGB agent. Yeah. You're the first person who asked that question,

But, you know, it's, and I'm not offended by it either. Well, Mr. Barkske, thank you so much. I really appreciate this. Your story genuinely is beautiful. It is a true crime story. It's a spy story. But I think more than anything, it's a love story. You're right about that.

And if you allow me to say a few things with what I'm involved in, now what I'm doing to earn a living because the KGB doesn't pay my pension, right? You're a bike messenger, right? you went back No no no I give I give talks in public For pay And I've been very well received

No matter where I show up I recently last year I spoke at a national convention of Mensa And was very highly rated by the audience I you know I always do well Even when I don't do well when I know that I'm not I'm not doing at my best I always talk about my story.

There's other things and that I have like five, six different topics. One of them is called an undercover love story. That's about the role that love played in my life. And it's just about the love that we're talking about. Also, the, you know, starting out not knowing what love is because I didn't see it in my family. And then going overboard with that infatuation with us for a, my first girlfriend, and then the love for communism, and then the unconditional love and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

love for my children. It's, well, it's a short version of this interview. And there's a podcast slash audio drama out there that is a counterpart to my book. It's a 13-episode interview. with, it's really well produced as a narrator and has music and has historic background

and it's available for free is called the agent. And I have some other things going but they're getting too complex to talk about just watch out I'm going to be a lot more active on social media within a month or so. I'm excited to see it. Thank you so much.