Danny Jones Podcast - #130 - Former Russian Spy Exposes Nuclear Secrets | Jack Barsky

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Jack Barsky is a former KGB Russian sleeper who spied on America for a decade. help us make more money: https://bit.ly/koncretepatreon sponsors https://masterworks.io - Go to masterworks dot io and use promo code: Koncrete https://liquiddeath.com -  Use code KONCRETE at checkout to get a free koozie 2-pack with a 12-pack purchase. danny https://www.instagram.com/jonesdanny https://twitter.com/jonesdanny Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, Jack, thank you for coming. For people who don't know who you are, you are a former KGB sleeper agent who worked for the KGB for 10 years spying on America and eventually worked with the FBI. Correct. So how does a guy go about being recruited to the KGB? Unlike the CIA, where you can actually apply,

the KGB, you could not. they would recruit you. I wouldn't have known where the office was. They weren't in the phone book. And anyway, I would never have thought of applying because, you know, like everybody else or like most people, you know, spy stories are very interesting. We had our own spy stories.

We had our own James Bond, communist James Bond. But that was all. in the realm of fiction or in the realm of adventure, that wouldn't be me. I was going to be a college professor. That was my dream. But that changed one day when the KGB knocked on the door. I was in my third year studying chemistry,

sitting in my dorm room on a Saturday, doing a little bit of studying. And in those days, almost all the students that could would go home over the weekend. I couldn't and it was too far. So I was alone in my room. My roommate wasn't there. And that's interesting to note because the person who knocked on the door knew this, knew that,

must have known it. The person also knew which room behind which door to find me. There were no nameplates on the door. So after many years it occurred to me, I had a neighbor in the next room. There was a Russian exchange student with whom I had some interactions and talk back and forth. I guarantee you he was the one who fingered me. Why do you think they chose you? I was, as you probably know in those days, DeStasi had files on everybody. and they apparently gave access to those files to the KGB

or maybe they gave the KGB some hints that, look, you want to talk to this guy. If you systematically went through files for students, you know, the future intellectual elite of the Communist Party, the society and so forth, I was a standout. You would shake this a little bit and my file would come out for two reasons.

I was an active party member. It was active in the communist youth movement of the university. But the standout entry was that I had just received the Karl Marx scholarship. Oh, wow. Karl Marx scholarship was very rarely given. It was limited to 100 concurrent holders in the country. 100 concurrent. In other words, if you get a new one to go over,

in, somebody else has to be out. And so they were looking, like the CIA, they're looking for the best of the best. And I was a good candidate on paper, right? So the fellow, I get this knock on the door. And we had a custom at college, at the dorm, that when you went to visit another student in another room, you knocked and you walk in. The knocking was just telling them that somebody's coming.

After the knock, the door didn't open, so I knew this would be a stranger. I'd say, come on in, and indeed, it was a stranger. The fellow was entirely unimpressive. He was short. He had his right arm in a cast. And he was just not likable.

He was one of the few KGB guys. that I didn't like. He was German. So right off the bat, I figured he was probably Stasi. When you say Stasi, what does that mean? East German secret police. Statschijit, that's an abbreviation for security police. Okay. Okay. And then he came up, he asked me whether I am, I Brechteditre was my name.

And he said, yes, what can I do for you? And then he came up with the dumbest statement I've ever heard the KGB agent give in my entire 10 years working with a couple of dozen KGB agents. He said, well, you know, I'm from Carl Saizhiena. There was a firm that was very well known not only in Germany, but in the world it made high. quality optical instruments. And then he said, you know, I just want to find out, do you have any, what are your plans after you graduate? Now, the reason it was dumb because in those days, the entire time while East Germany was in existence, when you graduated from college, you didn't have the freedom to choose. You were assigned. So in other words,

companies did not recruit. Never happened. That guy didn't even know how. his own country worked. So when he said that, I knew immediately that he's making it up and he's probably secret police. Now, I wasn't at all concerned that this would be bad.

It had to be something, let's say, interesting. So we talked a while, you know, I played along with him, some, you know, small talk and, you know, what it's like to study chemistry, which was pretty hard because this is

one of the subjects where you have lab. So you spent... They wanted you to make poisons? Every, no, every afternoon, after you have your lessons and your seminars, every afternoon you spend four hours in the lab, then you have to write lab reports. And then you have self-study.

So my day started at six and it ended at ten. There was no play during the week. On Saturday, the morning, was lab. Saturday afternoon, that's when I went for recreation. I went to a soccer game,

and then I went dancing, trying to pick up girls in a student club. I usually went home by myself. I was not as charming as I think I am now. Too late. And I was very shy, actually, still. Anyway, so that's what we were talking about. And then he,

abruptly changed his tune. He did a 180 and he said, you know, I got to admit to you. You know, this was just a way to come in here. You know, I made that up. I'm really working for the government. I could have made him uncomfortable by asking what part of the government. I didn't want to do it.

You know, I just wanted to hear what he has to say. And he came right out with it. He said, well, can you, could you imagine one day to, work for the government. And I said, yeah, but not as a chemist. So, do you think maybe they wanted you to work as a chemist in the beginning? Like maybe you make poisons and stuff like that? You know, my best friend from college actually did work for the Stasi as a chemist. He wound up as the head of the forgery department. And he told me that the passports, West German passports, he forged, they sold to the KGB.

It is quite likely that he made a passport that I used to travel with. Oh, wow. So, yes, I think he really recruited me because of what happened next. He recruited me for something, not science, because he was a German who was a volunteer collaborator with the KGB. Wow. Right? I didn't know this. When he said government, I thought it was still secret police. He's German secret police. So the bottom line is he had asked the question. He came to ask before, even though not in so many words. And I answered him probably exactly, gave him the answer that he wanted to hear.

So he invited me to have a meal. When I say dinner, it's inaccurate. It's all in Germany that big. meal is at lunchtime. So in the most expensive restaurant in town, I still remember what I had. It was my favorite meal. But as I walk in there, he was already sitting there in the back of the table, and there was another man at the table, which made me a little bit cautious because in those days it was not unusual for strangers to share tables because there were very often not enough seats. So I just approached the table slowly, but my man who never, by the way, gave me his name,

not even a cover name, he came up to me and walked me to the table and he said, I would like to introduce you to Herman. We are working with our Soviet comrades. So it was clear that it rhymes. That's what I'm going to say. At one, two, three, I was with the KGB. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Masterword. Did you guys know one of the most brazen art heists in history happened only three years ago in Russia? A man named Dennis Chupakov calmly walked into a crowded Moscow gallery, lifted a million-dollar painting right off the wall, and walked right out the front door. Of course, this didn't end well for Dennis, who was caught after trying to sell the painting online for only $37,000.

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to add, past performance does not guarantee future results. Still, 30%? That's crazy. And now, concrete subscribers can skip the wait list to join over 350,000 people on Masterworks. Just click the link in the description box below. Back to the podcast. Wow. So my German introducer said goodbye. That was it.

Never saw him, never heard from him again. And from that point on, I was working with Harmon. Wow. And it was a 15 months getting to, know each other. Uh-huh. We talked about life. We talked about what, at this point, it became clear that, you know, they were thinking

of preparing me for espionage in West Germany. How old were you? At that time, I was 21 or between 21 and 22. Wow. And that was interesting. We talked about, you know, the espionage about what's going on in the world. And I, I, from early on, I showed my, how honest I am. You know, I told him about some weaknesses that I thought I had,

shyness with the girls, stuff like that. And then he started giving me some tasks. So, for instance, he would drive me to a building and point to it and say, see if you can find out what organization is in there. There was no nameplayed, no nothing. So I had to, like, you know, make friends with some people who walked out the door after work ended. I also, one time, was asked to knock on the door of a family and have a talk with somebody who opens the door to find out about the relative in the West. And so that's sort of false flag interviews.

So I pretended to be a sociology student and came with a survey. I asked them, could you answer some survey questions? Pretty innocent, but sounded good. And as we were talking, somehow I find a way to sort of talk about West Germany and make it into a little bit of a social conversation. And you wouldn't believe how easily people volunteer stuff that you want to get out of them. So I didn't like doing this because, you know, my shyness got sort of in the way, but I couldn't fail. You know, failure was not an option for me.

So over, and I believe, you know, this Herman guy eventually determined that I am a really good candidate. So he got in touch with Berlin, the headquarters of KGB in East Germany, and they invited me for a three-week visit to Berlin. That was my first, you know, trip as a would-be agent, because I was given a code name, a code phrase, a time, and a place where we would meet. And so I would go find that place in Berlin and meet. my new friend who introduced himself as Boris. I worked with Boris for about three weeks.

He gave me tasks to do. And he also gave me West German literature to read. Der Spiegel de Sten. You know, the things that were forbidden. You were not allowed to have them and almost nobody did. So that made me feel good because, you know, I was already, I had one foot outside the law. And, but, you know, having always been a contrarian,

wanted to be different from everybody else, that was very flattering. How long did your spy training last with them? And then at what point, how long did it take for you to be deployed to the United States? Okay, so the base training was two years. That was their standard training period. I was already working as an assistant professor in college

when they finally made me the offer. On the last day in Berlin, I got the offer. And within a month, I quit the university and moved to Berlin. By the way, that will be interesting to know. In those days, East Germany, good apartments and nice houses to live in were where. So here I am, you know, I'm now in the KGB. I go to Berlin. I would expect the key to a nice apartment. So I meet my new handler, the boss that I had for the two years in Berlin, and his name was Nikolai. Interestingly, he was Ukrainian. And we talk in his car and then he says,

I have a task for you. That's your first task. Find yourself a place to stay. Now, he knew and I knew, everybody knew, that all apartments and houses were under the control of the government. There was a waiting list up to 10 years to get an apartment for a couple with a child. It was impossible to just go and rent an apartment, so I could have failed. This was a pass-fail task. if I can't find an apartment if I can't find a place to stay

they don't want me I needed to show my ability to improvise I did and I figured the further away from Berlin I get the law for chance I have

I drove I took the city train to the last stop to a town called ACNA and knocked on doors and asked if somebody had had a room eventually I found a place it was an outbuilding

it was made out of brick and it had two rooms one had a bed and a chair and the other one had a wood-burning stove and running cold water and that's where I live for six months wow yeah so the training

after six months I think Nikolai determined yeah this guy is a keeper so he gave me a key an apartment. So the training in Berlin was two years and I was going to be departing for West Germany

after two years. One of the things I was required to do, everybody they told me everybody has to learn a foreign language. All right? And they gave me a choice. I said, oh, I pick English. English was easy for me in school.

I was straight A's without studying. And like with everything else, I threw myself, I gave myself 100% into learning English. I mean, I became a maniac. And within like seven, eight months, I had enough of a vocabulary to be able to read English novels without a dictionary. Every word that I, when I read stuff, every new word I wrote down and I learned. It came to about 100 words a day. I counted them.

And so one day, some guy from Moscow comes to visit, and he asked me, I was your English? And I said, well, I pulled a book out and said, I can read that, no problem. And he said, what? All right, we're going to get you a tape recorder and you just tape a message. You can talk about anything you want. So a week later, I get the tape recorder. I give it back to Nikolai.

He sends it to Moscow. A week later, I was on a plane to Moscow. because they had heard enough to think that there's a possibility that I have enough talent to learn American English well enough to have nothing but a slight accent left that can easily be explained. So in Moscow I met with a college professor, a Russian who taught English and a born American. and we talked for about two hours. And afterwards, they discussed it between the two of them, and it was uneven. The Russian figured, nah, he can't do it.

And the American typical American optimism, I can teach him. So, bingo. Now, they had a potential asset. Somebody they could put into the ranks of the main adversary. That's what the KGB called to the United States as an illegal. So I was moved to Moscow to get another two and a half years training. And then before they could launch me with the right documentation, it took another half year. So I spent five years in training.

Wow. Yeah. What was the perception once you were in the U.S. for so many years undercover? You know, you had obviously a preconceived notion of what? the U.S. was from, you know, being overseas. Was it accurate? And how did your perception change once you were in the U.S. for a certain amount of time? Well, you probably know half the answer.

Of course, it wasn't accurate. I came to the United States knowing, in exclamation, and not knowing what it would call air fingers, right? knowing that the United States was a dangerous enemy and had to be defeated because the U.S. and NATO was in the way of the master plan that was creating the workers' paradise on Earth. There was no exploitation.

There was no poverty. Everybody got along. It's a pipe dream, obviously, but that's what I believed in at the time. Slowly, I got disabused of some of the strongest communist beliefs. When I had my first job, professional job, at MetLife as a computer programmer, we were told in the East, we were told there were like three types of companies that were the worst in the United States. It was the military-industrial complex type companies.

the Wall Street investment companies and insurance companies. And I started working at an insurance company. And they treated us very well as workers. We were paid well. We got free lunch. And we were even like pretty much promised a total job security. And I was constantly looking for the evil bosses. You know, there were some bosses who you didn't like,

but there was no systematic exploitation. there was no systematic what you would call unfairness. You know, based on your performance, you could go up the ladder and make a lot more money. So this was all pretty good. So part of my ideology melted away rather quickly. I was still still at heart a communist. I just thought just maybe there's a way to combine the good parts of, capitalism with the dream of a communist egalitarian society and get everybody happy.

That was actually a theory that was called convergence theory. It was developed by Social Democrat parties in Europe. And it was popular for a while. And I thought that might be a way out. Anyway, so we were misled. But here's an interesting statement. It is much easier to believe a lie if it has a kernel of truth.

When you know something, when you can relate to something that is true, then everything else that you're being told that you don't know about you think it's true too. Example. We knew, for a fact, that in West Germany, there were some ex-Nazis

who made it all the way up to the top in the government. We called them neo-Nazis. At one point, the West German Chancellor, by the name of Kortgeorg Kisinger, had been a member of the Nazi Party. And the head of the Bundesnachacherdin-Dienz, which is the equivalent of the CIA, was a fellow by the name of Reinhard Geelan, who, under Hitler, was in charge of espionage on the Eastern Front.

so we knew that there were Nazis in the West German government we figured they would eventually come attack us and unite Germany and sort of recreate the Third Reich with the support of the United States and that was the reason given why East Germany built the wall in 1961 and I believed in that too you know these Nazis that were going to come over and, you know, conquer us.

And another lie, we didn't know that there was a kernel of truth, but we clearly didn't know that it was a lie that the fact that the standard of living in the West was significantly higher than in the East was explained to us that, you know, the imperialist, the evil imperialists, were stealing all the wealth from the third world countries,

like natural resources, fruits and vegetables and stuff like that. I had not really shed that belief because I had no information to the contrary. So now vice versa. So fundamentally, one more thing here, fundamentally nobody in the East, no high-level communist parties, members, no philosophers, no not the folks in the KGB really knew how the United States functioned

didn't know, were ignorant because clearly they believed in their own lives and here's the problem if you want to deal with an enemy and you don't know how the system works you are you're missing a joker in your deck vice versa

the CIA had no clue what was going on in the USSR. And I give you a very interesting example. I met the fellow who was in charge in the CIA for Eastern Europe, all of Eastern Europe. So he was a direct report to William Colby. And he wrote a book. And his book is the most telling sentence

and sort of funny. It goes as follows. I'm citing from memory. And so I sat in my office, he writes. I sat in my office and watched the only credible source of information about the Soviet Union CNN. And this was in the context of, you know, what happened when the Soviet Union fell apart. Nobody knew that. the same way when the wall came down

the CIA had no clue what was going to happen. Neither did this stasi. Nobody. There was stuff that just happened. And when the Soviet Union fell apart, the CIA was caught by surprise. Wow.

So it was a lack of understanding, cultural understanding and an economic understanding and it had a lot to do with being lazy and not really trying to get into it and believing in your own prejudice. Going back to what we were talking about before, you said that during your time

there was maybe a max of 10... Yes, there were 10. 10 undercover KGB agents in the USA. I don't know if they made it. There were 10 that were trained and sent out. It is quite likely that quite a few of them actually had to abort. But when I look at the danger points that I passed,

there were at least a half a dozen where I could have been caught, where I could have blown my cover, the other guys were faced with the same problems. It's not easy to show up and say, hey, I've always been here. Right. Right.

I told you how I was so careful with my integration in society so as to not betray the ignorance that I came. here with. Now how did Moscow, how are they able to make sure that you weren't losing sight of the grand vision of all of this? Making sure, did they do anything to make sure that you didn't lose sight of the goal here? Because obviously it's such a long play. Like you were doing this for so long. Well, they didn't do much of anything other than that every two years I was back in Moscow and I have to tell you I also was married in Germany I had a wife and a son so that was an anchor you know there was uh I mean you know it's kind of hard to defect if you know if you know you're

endangering your family and I wanted to go back and live with them the other thing is the KGB trusted me their trust appeared to have been limitless now this kind of a relationship is based on trust right if they don't trust me they don't send me out and if I don't trust them I'm not leaving I'm not going because you know they promised that they would take care of me but I had established a reputation and I didn't do this on purpose that's the way I am

I have never been afraid to admit mistakes. So even during my training, there's some things that happened that were only known to me, but I told my boss, I did this and this wrong. So I guarantee you in my file there was sort of an entry that says he is aggressively honest. and so they probably also didn't quite understand that over time, you know, changes will happen

whether you want them or not. But there was no attempt made to ideologically train me again, retrain me or give me a boost. In those days, there was always this danger lurking about potential nuclear. a war. And it was mostly during Reagan's presidency that we were really concerned that Ronald Reagan was a madman and he would blow up the earth. He was a Christian and apparently at least once he cited some passages from Revelation. And again, he has ignorance. The Russians thought that Reagan

thought of himself as the man who would be used as a tool by God to bring about the end of the world. Revelation isn't meant that way for Christians, but, you know, again, we didn't have any understanding of Christian religion. So we were literally very much afraid of Ronald Reagan. at that point do you think how do you think there was a number of u.s. CIA undercover spies in moscow no no maybe maybe not Americans you know no what American in his right mind would do what I did going to the United States because you know you don't want to live in squalor you don't want to live in in near poverty. That is a huge sacrifice. And on top of it, it's very difficult. It was a close society. How do you get in there? So is the process different? Do they would they recruit people who are

already on the inside there? Yes. To the extent they, they had success. That's how they did it. And the most successful ones were volunteers. Were like Russian, a high level general, even members of the KGB who knocked on the door with the CIA and said, you know, I'm not happy with what's going on here. They were typically not for money. They did it because they wanted to, A, save the world from a nuclear war, and B, they were pissed off at what was going on in Soviet society. Who do you think was the more elite spy agency, the KGB or the CIA?

That's a good question. They were both rather ineffective in the long run. The United States had their most, I already said that the United States had their most success working with volunteers, the Soviet Union also. There's the two spies that did the most damage to the United States and it caused quite a few assets, CIA assets, within the Soviet Union killed were Aldrich Ames. He was a CIA employee.

Aldrich Ames was actually in the department that spied on the Russians. So he gave away information and named names. And Robert Hansen, who was, had a similar function, counterintelligence in the FBI. Both of them did it for money. Both of them volunteered. both of them are still alive but they're rotting in jail wow

and how how was it that you eventually got caught how did you eventually get into trouble that took a long time so I come here in 1978 I make my way into a professional

I work at Midlife and so I'm in the country for eight and a half years when I made a mistake. I had a steady girlfriend who was a citizen of Guyana. She came here illegally. And one day she confessed to me that she was... Closing up a little bit closer.

You can move it to its... She confessed to me that she was in the country illegally. And she asked me if I could help her become a citizen. And after some analysis, I figured I could do that. And it worked. So here's one illegal who made another illegal legal legal. But then the mistake was that I wasn't aware that this was... It's very typical for West Indian ladies,

want to move up, they catch themselves a man and then get pregnant. She got pregnant. And she gave birth to a girl in 1987 in the month of June, 1st of June. And that changed my life. I was not prepared for that. seeing this little girl grow up. I watch her, you know, take her first steps. And, you know, she had the biggest eyes and nice curls.

A very, very pretty girl. And I've always had a great liking for pretty girls. This was my daughter. And without really being aware of it, I fell in love with her. A big time. It was,

I think at that point, that was the point when I became a human being, you know, because I, up until that point, I was very much of an egomaniac, even though I wanted to help the world, but it was really all about me, you know. I'm the special guy. You know, I get to do things that almost nobody else can, and I'm eventually going to have decent money and have a good life. It was all about me. I mean, I left my dad. I mean, I left my job. German wife to spy in the Soviet Union I could have at that point could have said

maybe I shouldn't so I fall in love with this girl and she was 18 months old when the KGB was spooked somehow they got some information through some channel that indicated that I

was in danger of being caught and they decided to implement the emergency procedure. So there was a particular plan that we had in case I had to run. Either I find out myself that I'm in danger or they're telling me. The procedure was as follows. I had emergency documents, a driver's license.

It may have been a secondary document, Canadian, that I buried in a park in north of Manhattan in some place. I was supposed to retrieve the documents and make a B-line to Canada going across the, I think it's called the Friendship Bridge at Niagara Falls.

I had tested, they asked me to test how easy it was to cross. And in those days, you didn't even have to show documents. He just walked. And then make my way to Ottawa, where I would get in touch with a diplomat there, a KGB agent, and they would extricate me out of Canada. Straightforward, right?

Wow. Now, that was, so, and I would have to set a signal telling them that I'm starting the emergency procedure. We had two signal spots. One was for me to put a signal. That was someplace in Manhattan. and it was under a bridge, and it was next to a highway. When the Soviets lived in the north of Manhattan,

and they would drive to work a certain road, and they would pass by that spot every day. So if I place a red dot, you know, a paint red dot on that spot, that means they would be alerted that I'm on the run. The other spot was for them to put signals there and for me to read, and that was on my way to work, on a support beam for the A-train that ran above-ground in that part of town. And one morning, it was in December. When I was going to work, it was still dark.

So I go there and, you know, as usual, I just take a peek and not expecting anything, and there was this red dot. May I use the S word? Yeah, oh, yeah. Because that is what popped into my head. Oh, shit. See, at that point I was still trying to figure out, one day I need to go back. They will call me back.

How do I take care of this girl? So that was what that red dot meant. The red dot made emergency. You're out. Yeah. Actually, if you read this, you just don't go home. Don't pack your bags. Just make a bee line collect the documents and get out of there.

Wow. Yes. And you had documents buried in a park? Yes. Actually, after, and that was then nine years later, when the FBI, when I started working with the FBI, we went and I found the documents who were still there. Oh, my God. It wasn't really buried.

There was a park bench that was broken, and, you know, the concrete things on both ends that hold the board. There was one of those concrete elements that was still standing there without anything. So I pulled it back and put the document underneath, and nine years later were still there. Wow. That helped with my credibility with the FBI, you know. So you saw this red dog.

Yeah, and I said, oh, shit, and because I wasn't ready to go. I had not found a way to take care of this girl who I loved dearly. Your daughter. Yes, her name is Chelsea. She's 34 now. Yeah, same year. She was born a month before me. Oh, really?

So, and her mother was poorly educated. She had, I think, four years of formal education. Chelsea would have grown up in poverty, no doubt in my mind. And I couldn't stand that thought. So I just decided to ignore the dot. I told you, I was always a risk taker. Obviously, it was a risk if the KGB was right. And I hang around for some more days,

the FBI will come knock on the door and I wound up in jail, right? Right. So I go to work. That day, I really didn't get anything done. I was just staring at my computer monitor and do nothing. And then I go home and I didn't sleep well. And I was just still thinking, what do I do, what do I do? So I play for time.

And so the dot was on a Monday. On Thursday was my regular, there was a regular day when I listened to Shortwave. transmission every Thursday for 10 years in 915. Okay. What was the purpose of this? Well that was when that was how they communicated with me. Oh, okay.

I never met another agent I never met my handler in the United States. You know, you see that in the movies didn't happen with us. It was forbidden. It was too dangerous. Anyway, so I'm dialing the frequency. I'm

listening. I decrypt the message and it says in so many words, we have reason to believe that the FBI is investigating you, you know, start emergency procedures immediately, blah, blah, blah, and that was the end. Okay, so reason to believe, they weren't really convincing. They didn't tell me exactly what the reason was. So I thought there was some hope, and I was still paying for time. I was still trying to figure out what to do, what to do. and I also started some to take some measures to find out whether I'm being under investigation.

There's some ways some things that you can do in your apartment where you, when something is moved, that people, when they look through stuff that is not in the same space anymore. And stuff that you were trained? No, no, I made that up, you know. Okay, okay. But I was trained to do one thing, and I did that too, to find out how your mail is being opened. So you write a letter to yourself with a fictitious address and write something in there. And when you close the envelope, you leave blank spaces in the glue.

So you close it, but there's a couple of spots, maybe an inch each. where it isn't glued because generally mail is opened by machines and then it's closed automatically with machines. So when you get this letter and it's fully glued, you know you've got a problem. Wow. Okay?

Wow. And one other thing is I did, you know, I was extremely well trained to find out whether somebody's following me. So I took a day off and I was wondering and wandered around in New York City and I saw absolutely no sign that anybody was following me and because I got feedback in my training in Moscow

from the head of this department, a guy was really, really good. He said he gave me a compliment. He said I was one of the best he ever worked with. So that gave me more certainty that they may be wrong. So at least gave me more time to, to play for time because at this point the KGB didn't know that I received the messages.

I could have been in a hospital, right? Or my radio was broken. Because one time I actually had an injury and for like three weeks I could not do anything because my right arm was in a sling. But then they went to the extreme and did something that they normally wouldn't do. So on my way to work, again, it was a dark summer, winter morning.

I'm waiting for the A-Train on the elevated platform. And from my right comes a short man in a black trench coat, and he comes really close. There weren't too many people around. It was early in the morning. And he whispers in my ear, you've got to come home or else you're dead. And then he walked away.

Now, people think it was a threat, maybe 20%, but 80% chance was that, you know, he was a Russian, he spoke with an accent. He didn't quite understand what that phrase means. You're dead. You don't say it in this context because then it could be taken literary. I can say to you, you know, if you do this, you're dead. It means you could lose your job, right? It's a metaphor, whatever you want to call it. It seems like you just didn't want to.

believe you just didn't want to believe that this was a threat it could have been but whatever but here's the point now they knew that i knew so there was no more playing for time uh in the next radio in the next radio transmission they uh called me to uh implement a dead drop operation that's when when somebody drops something over there that has maybe money or a passport in it, some kind of a container, and you will pick it up. That's the real short description.

Right. And they were actually, they changed the emergency procedure. They were going to me to give to me in a rusty, rusty old oil can travel money and a passport to get out, still across to Canada. I still hadn't made a decision,

but at least I was going to get the money, right? And then I knew I would have to make a decision rather quickly. So here's what happened, which is the most odd thing in my entire career as an agent. The operation was in a park in Staten Island. The spot where the container was to be placed I found, I described, I knew he, exactly how to go there. I knew, and I was told with regard to these

types of operations, I was also very good. They actually used some of my descriptions to teach others how to describe a spot so it can be found. So, and it was, this was in the dark, for some reason, it's the only time we did this in the dark.

And I go to Staten Island and there was a spot where a signal was to be that told me you can go and get the container. I did it. I put it there. The signal was there, so I walk into the park, and it was supposed to...

What type of signal was it? It's a chalk mark. Okay. Real simple. Okay. And I get to that tree with a hollowed bottom. It was really, really easy to find, and there was no oil can. I said, what the heck's going on here?

I did a double take. wandered around a little bit maybe he just like dropped it and it it was gone i couldn't i couldn't find the container so as i walked away from from that uh failed operation it said in here i'm staying really you see this how how uh imbalance this was because obviously there was i was in danger in some way. And if I disobeyed the command from the center, I could have been in danger through the

KGB, right? Because they, I knew they did not treat defectors very well. And, you know, all the good things for me were back behind the iron curtain. The wall hadn't come down yet. Then took another

year. I just knew that I had a lot of dollar savings and I had a wife and a child and the Russians even promised me once I'm done, they promised to give me a house which was a rarity in the communist world.

So everything good was over there and everything not good was over here. The only thing that was the counterweight was a smile of an 18-month-old girl. And in here, it said, I'm staying. And so now the people always

asked how did you, how did you do this? How did you manage? You know, brilliant. It's another thing that just popped into my head. Oh, yeah, I'm making up a story. So I sat down the next day I wrote a letter in secret writing and told them, unfortunately, I can't come because I have HIV AIDS. And that was as good a lie as I could have come up with because they believed it.

Really? They had no reason to not believe it. They didn't know I had a lot. child. They didn't know I was married in the United States. They didn't know any of this. They didn't know what has what's going on in my head. They all, all they knew this, yeah, man, I get to go back and, you know, be celebrated as a hero because my 10 years were considered a success. I, the year before, I received the second highest declaration of the Soviet Union. Wow. Yeah. So, they believed it. They believed it so well that they went to my German family and told them that I had

passed away from this dreaded disease. Wow. I didn't know that they believed this until I was able to reconnect with Germany. That's when I was told what happened. So for the next three months, I was very careful not to be predictably in the same spot at the same time. So I would go to work at different times. I would go zigzag.

You know, just like was unpredictable. And after, I had already decided that the FBI wasn't coming after me. And after the three months, I said, I'm in the clear. Now I'm going to live out my life as an American with this new family over here. And a year later, I bought a house, and then we had another child. So that was, my future was, I was going to have a nice career in information technology. and then retire, play golf, but never go back to Germany for sure, and never be able to travel outside of the United States

because the one thing I would have avoided is to apply for a passport again. So you were okay with not seeing your original wife and your first child? Yes. I had this really artificially split personality. When I was here, I was Jack Barski. So I really, there were no thoughts about Germany, left in me. And when I was back home, I was

Albrecht Dittrich. It's really weird. And that's when I told you that occasionally when a German word pops into my head, I can't find the English because there is no real good connection between the English and the German in my head. Wow. So, yeah.

And so and then nine years after I resigned, the FBI found me. And so that's, that changed my life again. How did that happen? Well, there's this fellow there was an archivist in the

Get this thing a little closer to you. You can scoot it. There was an archivist in the KGB who was in charge of moving the archive from the Red Square from Lubyanka to a new facility outside of Moscow. And as he

was doing this, he had access to all kinds of secret documents and he was pissed off at the Soviet Union. He really wanted, he was trying to find a way to do maximum damage. So he copied, hand-copied notes over many years, smuggled them out in his underwear and his socks, buried them in his dacha, eventually transcribed them, and one day he showed up with five suitcases worth of documents at the British Embassy in one of the Baltic republics that was after the soviet union had collapsed but you know if they the russians had found him

they would have given him the death penalty and amongst those documents there was a brief note that there was an illegal by the name of jack barowski living in the northeast of the united states and since barsky is not a very common name the FBI pretty soon figured who that was it was me And I think the confirmation that they received was, yeah, the fellow got his social security card when he was in his mid-30s. So, yeah, that's him. It took him three years to actually introduce themselves. And I understand why. Because all they knew, they said, I wasn't illegal.

And I was extremely well trained because I had survived in the United States. 19 years without being caught. So the concern was that I was still active or I was at least still a sleeper who could be woken up any time. That was at the time when I was telling you about Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen,

the two very dangerous and damaging agents that were in the CIA and the FBI. They were concerned that I might be running yet another one of those agents in the U.S. government. So knowing that I was very well trained, they kept away. They watched me from a distance. They didn't really come close except for coming to my house at night and taking the garbage out and replacing it with other garbage and then going through my garbage.

And at one time when I left. we left a house of family to go to Toronto to visit my wife's brother. They installed a listening device in my kitchen. And this was the moment when I got busted. So one day my wife and I had an argument in the kitchen and she was really, you know, she treated me as if I was an enemy as is why I wanted to do harm to her. I don't want to get into the psychological background.

It was just an argument back and forth, and I decided to use the nuclear option. I said to her, listen, I'm 100% on your side. I'm as supportive as anybody could be. I took a significant risk by staying here because I used to be a Soviet agent and I was called home and I decided to stay because I love you and Chelsea.

So the FBI listened to that confession. They had it on tape. Oh, my God. Right? And as far as the nuclear option, it backfired, because now my wife was thinking to herself, I can't trust this guy at all. He was a secret agent, right? so that didn't work very well

oh she didn't even know no she didn't oh no i kept it from her as a matter of fact when we when we moved in together i found an apartment where there were three rooms and a kitchen were at one end of a of a corridor and at the other end there was one

one room and i said to her this is my office when i'm in here I cannot be disturbed because I'm doing like complicated stuff on the computer. And she observed that. This is where I did my spy work while she was in the other end of the same apartment. Wow.

So how long did you take the FBI to confront you? After they, from the moment they found me that they knew that is the guy that we were after about three years. And that came pretty soon after they got. the confession on tape. And the fellow who is now a good friend of mine convinced headquarters that he had seen enough. He watched me from a distance, and he had seen me interact with my wife.

He had seen me interact with my children. And he came to the conclusion that I loved my children. There were some problems between me and the wife. And he figured that because of the love for my children, I would absolutely cooperate. And he convinced the headquarters. And so they said, say hello and he was 100% right.

After the first surprise, you know, after they say FBI, you know, we want to talk with you. Oh my God. I caught myself rather quickly though. And I told them when we sat down in a motel, the first thing that I told them says, I am fully aware that the only way out of this for me and my family is if I 100% cooperate, I have no reason to lie.

and I will cooperate and you can give me a lie detector test and you can double check some of the information that I give you I will not lie to you. And I have a pretty convincing way of communicating what I think and that was a good start. And then we did like six weeks' worth of debriefing sessions.

Eventually there was a polygraph test and I failed one question. Really? Yeah. Which question? I don't remember the question, but, you know, when the guy who ran the test, he took the material and, you know, they have all these little graphs that they look at. He went to a room and a half hour later he said, you know, it looks pretty good, but you failed this one question. And I said, which one?

And I forgot the phrasing. It wasn't so much the phrasing. At one point, a light went up here and said, this has a double negative. He said, oh, oh, oh, oh. So I had to go back another day, answer the same question without the double negative. And many years later, it occurred to me.

That was a test of the validity of the entire, procedure. Because I had to fail that one. And the polygraph is so damn sensitive. And I ran this by some of my... Kind of like a baseline. Yes. Some of my FBI friends and he said, yeah,

he wanted to he, that was a check on his own judgment. And it was true, you know. Now during, now what year was this that you finally got caught by the FBI and cooperated? 88 plus 9, 97.

Okay. 97. So during your years when you were still working with the KGB, did you ever have any communication or any kind of run-ins with Vladimir Putin? No, no. Vladimir... Was he working in Germany at that time? Yeah, he was stationed in Germany in a city that was, is about 60 miles from where I grew up.

I grew up in a small village, but that was one of the closest. cities. He got there in 85. I was already here for in 85. Okay. So you never had any sort of communication. But just to volunteer some information about what he did there, he would have been the kind of person that, let's say, if I study in Dresden, it's a good possibility that he would have been the one who I would be working with. Because the fellow that worked with me was a generalist, you know. They, in these outposts, they didn't do a lot of espionage work.

It was East Germany, who you don't spy on the East Germans, right? You maintain a relationship with Estasi. You may meet somebody from West Germany who comes to visit, or you may actually, you know, operate as a courier for a little bit. But most of the work was maintenance, bureaucratic work, and working with trainees like me. Right.

And so this is what Putin did. I guarantee you. He was mid-level. He wasn't even in charge. Right. And so the myth that is floating around about Putin, the 10-foot-tall KGB agent, is exactly that. It's a myth.

Unfortunately, a lot of Americans have brought into this. A lot of top-level politicians and journalists. When I first got interviewed about this Ukraine thing, the interview always started so how did the KGB the time in the KGB enabled Vladimir Putin to do what he's doing now and my answer is

not at all the only thing that helped him having been a member of the KGB he networked with people who when the Soviet Union went bust and when the industry was privatized

and when there was politics that you could get into guess who had the best chances because KGB hired nothing but you know the top top people, the elite and KGB actually a lot of KGB knew how the West functions

and how you can become a capitalist or an oligarch so this network there's still residues of that network that works with Vladimir but all the other stuff that his ability to manipulate and play chess and intimidate and be brutal, that's,

that didn't, that was not developed in the KGB. Do you think it's possible that the person that Vladimir Putin is today is, do you think it's possible that that's a result of the United States constantly trying to destabilize Russia since, you know, for decades? and constantly, you know, antagonizing Russia and doing all the things that we've done, you know, you could talk about like the coup in the Ukraine and, you know, putting anti-ballistic missiles or defense missiles that could easily be transitioned into offensive missiles all throughout NATO and pushing them and push backing him into a corner, so to speak.

Do you think it's possible that who he's become today is an effect of all of the that history? It's an excellent question. First of all, just to lay the foundation, in the Russian national psyche, there is a lot of paranoia about being attacked, because Russia, since its founding, has always been attacked from the north, the Vikings, from the east, the Mongol hordes, and from the west, Adolf Hitler, the south, there was always war. And so there is a reasonably based fear

amongst Russians, and most likely Vladimir Putin, of, you know, being under attack. Vladimir Posner, I don't know if that name rings a bell, He's a bilingual. He's actually trilingual. He speaks fluent and almost accent-free Spanish, French, German, and no, Russian and French, Russian and English. He, during the time of the Cold War, he ran a program on US television with a very, very famous talk show host whose name, I can't remember. Vladimir Posner

knew his stuff and he knows his stuff and he is not necessarily Russian, Russian and he's not anti-American. He has a higher level view. And he gave a lecture at Harvard University maybe three, four years ago and I watched it on YouTube,

and he points out that yes, there is at least there's at least part of what's going on right now can be attributed back to the actions and the words of the United States.

Now, I also believe that Putin may not necessarily believe the entire story, but he's using it because his people believe it. You know, you have you know, the NATO expanded right into

the border of Russia. And we're not really admitting this right now in the open. I don't know, I haven't heard any American politician to even address this in some way. I am thinking it is not, it was inevitable. I'm thinking it contributed and I'm thinking again it had something to do with the lack of understanding how Russia operates and the Poznor pretty much made the same case in his, in his addressed to Harvard. And another interesting, like I mentioned to earlier,

watching the six hour of sit-down interviews between Vladimir Putin and Oliver Stone, is it seems like he does have the best interest for Russia, like whether he's putting on a tremendously, a tremendous act, and being a tremendous, you know, being unbelievably deceptive and manipulative and putting on a show. you know, if that may be the case, then, you know, it is what it is. But it seemed like I was convinced that, you know, he does have the best, the best in mind for Russia. And again, talking about his perspective of the United States,

it seemed to be sound for what it's worth. It seemed like it was very logical. And, you know, he's a guy who has to deal with a new president every four years. And he watches this cycle happen every four years. And his perspective on every, you know, during every U.S. election cycle, they have to demonize Russia. It's what they do. We're used to this from the United States. And it just seems kind of like, it seems kind of silly in a sense.

Like, from his perspective, looking back at the United States, as kind of like they're just, they're playing games. I'm trying to run this country as it, you know. as it should be. But again, you know, that's only one perspective. There's a lot of thoughts that came to my mind as he was speaking. First of all, he's not stupid. And unless he ignores history, he should know that the United States,

other than in Vietnam, has not been an aggressive country. We went into Kuwait and withdrew. we went into Iraq and withdrew we didn't take any oil out so when you're talking about playing games

yeah he should know that these are games right and that American politicians have a big mouth and they always want to blame Russia and paint Russia as the main enemy which is not the case anymore by the way now everybody pretty much agrees that China is

the biggest adversary So there's some cynicism, I believe, in Vladimir's head. Also, one other thing I want to say, regardless of what the contribution of American foreign policy and military policy was, this does not excuse Mr. Putin going after a sovereign country and killing innocent civilians. and by the way, if he really is so concerned about a Russian people, you know, he's killed quite a few Russians in the Ukraine, for sure. And his, I didn't watch the interview, but there is an article that he wrote.

It probably didn't write it, but he put his name under it, where he clearly lays out what his goal is in life, and it is rebuilding greater Russia, uniting all the Russians that originally were part of, you know, when Russia was formed, it was the organization was called Rus, R-U-S. And they had Ukrainians and Russians and other nationalities mixed in. And then throughout history and with all these wars,

you know, they split up. And then the Soviet Union came back and united them all by force very often. And then the Soviet Union collapsed. and now what Vladimir Putin wants to do is recreate a cultural unified

Russia a paradise for the Russian Orthodox sort of religion and culture and make it all good for all Russians but

there's obviously there's a strong personal impetus at work here he also wants to build for himself a monument that could be put next to Peter the Great. He wants to recreate the Soviet Union, right? I say Russia, greater Russia, not the Soviet.

Because in the Soviet Union, there are about a handful of Asian republics that have an Asian population. He's not so much interested in the Asians, and that possibly would create a conflict with China anyway. But, you know, we're talking about, you know, the Baltic Republic's word once part of Russia. And they have quite a few Russians still living there. You know, the Ukrainian language is very close to a Russian language.

I understand sometimes when they talk to Ukrainians. I understand what they're saying. And the culture, they have the same Orthodox religion. Poles, you can count into that group. and he wants to create the Russian Empire. In that article, the focus is on Russia, Russia, Russia, not so much getting bigger and like occupy the world and making greater Russia the third big power on the planet,

the way the Soviet Union was the second. Let me ask you this. If you're the United States, why not let, why not encourage Ukraine to make a deal with Russia and give Russia half of Ukraine? Or at least, why not let Russia take Ukraine? Wouldn't Russia make, if Ukraine was part of Russia, wouldn't it make Ukraine more stable? Well, the concern is that if you allow Putin to take over without taking any losses, that he would then have an appetite

and the ability to go further. And then we got, you know, NATO countries in play. Right. Isn't that sort of his buffer? Isn't that Ukraine sort of his buffer between NATO? In a nuclear age, it doesn't make a difference, I think.

You know, this is, I think it's vastly exaggerated. You know, whether you, you know, you can fire intercontinental missiles from the United States and hit Moscow. True. You don't have to be in Kiev. I, yeah. I've had the same thought.

You know, we need to, the most important thing, and I agree with the Biden administration policy in this respect, the most important thing is to avoid a nuclear disaster. Right. Because that would, there's no good solution, but this one would be the worst, right? And I'm concerned that there is a real danger that it might happen. not necessarily because somebody purposely launched a nuclear weapon.

When everything is in high alert stage, when emotions are high. And mistakes can be made. And I have no real information about it, but I'm concerned about how well-maintained the Russian arsenal is. Really? I've lived in Moscow for two years. the Russians, as far as industry, do not produce quality, no matter what they touch.

Even their... Don't they have, like, the biggest nuclear submarines in history of the world? Yeah, but they are not necessarily all high quality. Right. They're spaceships. They're not excellent. They function, right? So I'm I would I would I would that. It's my guess that

The American nukes are much much better maintained and less prone to potential Accidental misfiring. What do you think? I mean he's already killed a handful I mean a thousands of thousands of people in the Ukraine I mean including his own armies there's been thousands of Russians that have been killed You would it wouldn't be much you can't I don't don't imagine it would be that far of a stretch for him to drop like a tactical nuke that would kill 100,000 people. I have no idea what, oh, sorry, that's my phone. I mean, what do you think would happen?

What would be the next, if that was to happen? I don't know. I have no idea how many lives and tactical nuke could destroy, but let's just assume whatever it is, you kill 100,000 people. I'm afraid I pass. This is a wild guess. Because now if you're the decision, and who is the decision maker? Is it the American president or is it NATO commando?

There are multiple decision makers. Would they decide to wipe out Russia? Would they let it go? Or would they just shoot one? missile at one of the big cities in Moscow and then send an urgent message if we've got to stop it now. I don't know. If that starts, I don't know how to stop it. And that's a scary scenario, but possible.

I just hope and pray that somehow Zelensky will give enough for Putin to be able to go back home and declare victory. Because right now he doesn't look so good. You know, because it's not going as well as he thought it would be going. And there's a good chance that five generals were already killed. There's a good chance that the military is not happy with him. So, you know, dictators are not immortal. I mean, if you could imagine,

like put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine that the Russians install some sort of leader in Mexico and they all of a sudden start funneling a billion dollars of weapons and jets and stuff. We didn't install Zilinski, okay. But the guy before Zolensky. No, they're all homegrown.

They were all homegrown dictator types. Very similar to the ones. The system, was very similar to the one in Russia and at the time when people were talking about it honestly more corrupt

it was a model of corruption and with regard to the industry the percentage of the gross national product that is controlled by oligarchs is very similar in Russia and Ukraine

even though Russian economies 10 times bigger but they're both oligarchies even today This was not the United States doing And the whole idea of bringing Ukraine into NATO Let's say war is over And they want to be a member of the NATO

We can't have an oligarchy and dictatorship As a member of NATO That's a misfit And how Zelensky eventually will turn out Leading a country in peacetime We don't know we don't know are you familiar

with after the 2014 revolution or coup or whatever you want to call it there was a recorded phone call with Victoria Newland and another high up senator or something in the US there was a recorded phone call between them

and Victoria Newland is talking about two people and who would be the best fit to be the president of the Ukraine next and she's basically saying, yes, I think we think this guy's the best fit. We just need to sign off from Biden. Who was Victoria Newland? Victoria Newland is the lady who was just interviewed in front of Congress the other day by, I think it was Marko Rubio, talking about chemical weapons being in the Ukraine.

She's been deeply involved with the Ukraine for a very long time. Neoconservative. Her husband's a neo-conservative. her husband is Robert Kagan. And there was a recorded phone call with her talking about who would be the next best fit for president of the Ukraine after that coup. Well, okay, but that's talk. And I don't think it is possible for the American government

to install a president in a country like Ukraine. Do you think during that revolution, when the opposition was going up against the police force of the Ukraine. Are you aware like the snipers and all the people that were getting killed? Oh, sure. The war was ongoing. And I told you about the journalist who told me who was in charge, who was the correspondent for the Guardian.

He wrote a book is called The Long Hangover, and that has a lot of stuff is in there about the ongoing back and forth between Ukraine or within Ukraine and Russia and so forth. And it was deadly for a long time. There is no hint in his writing that Americans had really anything to do with it. The guy is really good.

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts. If we could find it, Austin, could you find the YouTube video of the recorded phone call with Victoria Newland talking about the next leader of Ukraine? She mentions Biden. No, Biden was not in the picture. He was the vice president. Obama was the president. He was the vice president at that time.

Okay. And Biden was in charge of Ukraine. Yes. Yes. Yes. I remember that now. And then he had his son. His son was a board member of one of the big energy companies that was formed in the Ukraine.

So fast forward and... There was a phone call. There it is. Okay. Full screen it. The assistant secretary of state for European affairs, Victoria Newland. And the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Piat. Questions of credibility are being raised after a private chat between two top U.S.

diplomats was leaked online. I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the guy, you know, what he needs is Cleach and Tony Book on the outside. I just think Cleach going in, he's going to be at that level working for Yatsunuk. It's just not going to work. Yeah, no, I think that's right. Okay. Good.

Well, do you want us to try to set up a call with him? There's the next step. Sullivan's come back to me, the VFR, saying, you need Biden. And I said, probably tomorrow for an add-a-boy and they get the deeds to stick. So you had this remarkable phone call where you have these two senior officials of the U.S. government apparently talking about a coup or how they were planning to restructure the government in Ukraine. Fuck the EU. No, exactly. I'm not saying the whole, fuck the EU deals that way.

There is division on this, but the neo-conservative element wants very much to change the strategic dynamic in Eastern Europe. By the way, this documentary was just banned from YouTube. last week. This was an Oliver Stone documentary. Oh, really? Yes. So, you know, when I hear neocons being involved, the whole story has

more credibility because the neocons, and I think they're not they weren't, they're not all Republicans. Right. No, yeah, Hillary Clinton. Yes, they're warmongers on both sides and they're hawks

and they're irresponsible. And you want to something crazy about that lady victoria newland her husband if you could google her husband robert kagan one of the biggest advocates of the iraq war so anyways the documentary is fascinating and it goes into the whole the whole thing and they talk about agent provocateurs being a part of that revolution in ukraine killing cops and killing ukrainian cops and killing um parts of the resistance that that sounds very similar to some of the worst uh The activities that was conducted by the CIA, for instance, in Chile.

Right. Yep. I mean, that was horrendous. It's the CIA playbook, right? Yes. And that was not supposed to be repeated. Now, if this grows, this could become one of the biggest scandal in history of the United States. But we don't have enough to go by as to whether they actually followed through on the talk.

there's the you know signals yeah and then Biden Biden was in charge of Ukraine but but Biden was never a hawk was he I don't think so yeah Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and you don't know whether

Barack Obama had an an independent opinion whether they saw eye or eye on these things hey you're scaring me but I'm at the edge of my sandbox that says competence.

Right. Well, in the interviews, you know, he talks, he discusses this with Putin, and Putin is very much aware of all of it. And he says, you know, this is what we're used to. This has been going on forever. During that revolution, he let the, forget the name of the current president that was there.

He let him go to Russia. And the EU back president came and then took over took over Ukraine. Anyways, and then, you know, it's scary. It's, it's, it's dark. But then you take the article that he was, it's about 6,000 words.

It's a pretty lengthy, rather elaborate article about his plans. That doesn't say anything about, you know, responding to the evil United States. It says, this is my, vision. Right. So that vision was there before. True. And even if we monkeyed in the Ukraine, that still does not excuse what Putin has done to innocent women and children. Right. There's

no justification for that. Now, we're doing, what are, what is the U.S. doing specifically, like seizing the yachts of these oligarchs and going after the oligarchs? How does that cripple, or how does that hurt Putin? The oligarchs, well, yeah, they become somewhat feckless once they all leave the country if they are actually in opposition to the war. They may lose control of what they currently still control in Russia. I think what hurts more is limiting the ability of Russia to, be involved in international commerce.

I mean, they already have shortages all over the place. Right, right. And no Wi-Fi. I mean, they can't go to the grocery store. They can't watch Netflix. Can't go to McDonald's? Yeah, well, this is inconvenience.

But I don't know if the entire SWIFT system has been Russia has been locked out of that. If so, they can't do any commerce. Because, you know, have you ever made money? abroad? No. So I have euros, right? So you need to get a SWIFT account to get money transferred from there to here. So this is, SWIFT is the system that enables international commerce.

And I think at least partially it has been blocked to the extent the Europe still buying gas and oil that may still be working, but the Russians are feeling it. And in, in his most recent speech, Putin has acknowledged it, and he said, well, yeah, we're going to have this, this and this is all going to be pretty bad, but we need to get through this to, it's for the greater good of the country. And believe it or not,

most of the Russians are behind him. So people think, you know, oh, yeah, there's mass demonstrations, and he will be toppled by an angry populace. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. Because there has been too much propaganda, whether that is right or has roots in reality or not. The majority of the Russian people believe in the propaganda that comes out of Putin's government.

And it's an ideology. It's called Russian nationalism. And he's been pursuing that ever since he became the head of state. Where does in this, as far as this history between the United States and Russia and the Ukraine, where does George Soros fit into all of this? I don't know. Has it he's funded many NGOs that have been involved in the whole, in the conflict in the Ukraine. as well as media companies.

And, you know, Soros to me is an evil man who wants to, you know, change the world to his image, sort of unified to some degree, but he won't be able to see it because he's so damn old. I mean, you know his history, right? you know, then he was... To an extent. He was a young Jewish man who cooperated with the Nazis,

and when he was asked about whether he has any regrets, he said, no, I had to do this to survive. It's a cold-blooded individual, and it's raw power. I thought what he's after is uniting all of the Western world in a sort of a collectivist-type system. What rule Russia and even China

is playing in his scheme? know. You did a lot of homework. Well, I mean, I used to always think you'd always used to see, you know, I would hear people talk about, oh, George Soros is behind, you know, when you would see like the BLM marches and stuff like that, you'd hear people talk about, you know, George Soros is behind this, you know, trying to get people to cause violence. And then when I started watching these documentaries, seeing how he actually did create NGOs and fund media to create dissent in these other countries like the Ukraine, it starts to get deep.

dissent as far as pro-Russian descent? Both ways. You don't have to create it. It's there. I mean, not necessarily. Historically there. Right. There's a lot of Russians living there.

And remember, I don't know if I told you in this interview, the hatred that Ukrainians have for Russians is based on Stalin's action. when he starved four million Ukrainians to death in the 30s okay

because in those days Ukraine a lot of Ukrainians didn't want to be part of the Soviet Union and particularly the somewhat wealthy peasants

didn't want to be collectivized so this is what Stalin did you know he took the grain away from them and so the national conscience of

Ukraine, of the Ukrainians that consider themselves as, you know, as part of a Ukrainian nation, has this incredible hatred for everything Russian. That happened to me when I was still a Soviet agent and I met some Ukrainians while studying in college. And I was blown away by when we talked about the Soviet Union, how much hate came out of them. So I had to stay away from Ukrainians. and where was I going with this? And there are Russians living in the Ukraine.

So that conflict was there before Putin invaded, as been going on since the Soviet Union fell apart. And there are some Nazis still living in Ukraine. Quite a bit, actually, right? I can give you one proof. I know I need only one piece of information. You know who, I forgot his first name, Pandera, Bandera, was a Ukrainian Nazi? There's like statues of him, right?

Stepan Bandera. Yes. Okay. Stepan Bandera was born in 19. Big anti-communist. Yes. Anti-Semite. And he led to a bunch of folk.

I mean, the Ukrainian Nazis were as murderous, even. even more so than the Germans, and they participated in pogroms and killed Jews and all that. Bandera was born in 1919. In 2019, the Ukrainian government issued a commemorative stamp to honor Stephan Bandera. Enough said. Isn't that when Zelensky was? Zelensky was not yet in power. No, he wasn't.

It was not yet. But somebody high level enough thought it was a good idea to honor this Nazi killing machine. I mean, it's crazy. It's the amount of power, some of those, I don't know what you would call them, Nazi militias in the Ukraine that are currently there. It's like the equivalent of, it'd be like the equivalent of the KKK having its own sort of military power in the U.S. Yeah. And so what we're talking about right now is it cannot be found in United States media because it's too complicated. It is too complicated.

I think the entire Ukraine has been a hornet's nest forever and it would have probably been a good idea for the Western world not to meddle in this because it just isolate and let it play itself out because no good will come of it. But then you see, you know, what's the incentive for the Western world to meddle? and what you do see is you see, you know, the stocks of companies like Raytheon going through the roof and then you see, you know, people that are in government investing in those stocks before this whole thing happens. Yes, and, you know, remember President Eisenhower, a military man warned of the power of the military industrial complex and that's apparently at work here. You know, we send a bunch of arms over there.

They need to be replaced, right? The arms are, the money that we give away is taxpayer money, yours and mine. And, you know, the weapons manufacturers make more money. Yep. And it's very often when people say follow the money, that's ultimately, that dictates where people are going, you know. Right. Well, I mean, it's hard to predict where it's going to go from here.

Obviously, you know, it's definitely becomes a lot more sensitive when we're almost kind of in another Cold War. Are you familiar? I'm sure you are with the story of the Russian submarine commander. Yes. Who was, I believe he was off the coast of Cuba. Right. And it was, he was given the command to strike. Yes.

Right. and he said that we're misinterpreting this. Yes. What is that? How does that sort of go? There were supposed to be three individuals who have to agree, two out of the three. No, three, generally three. But in this case, the commander had override power over the other two.

The other two were going, they voted yes, and he says, I'm not doing it. And this was officially set up that way. I don't know exactly the background. And yes, that could have started World War III. This one man could have prevented the nuclear apocalypse. That is correct. And we might well be in a similar situation going forward here. It's frightening.

Yes. Terrifying. Yes. Well, Jack, I appreciate you coming and giving us your insight. Tell our people listening and or watching where they can see what you're doing as far as your own podcast or where they can find the books that you've published. Okay. Or whatever you're,

what else, anything else that you're doing now? Thanks for giving me the opportunity. My website, there's quite a few, quite a bit of material on the website, lots of videos and some writing. It's jackbarski.com, real simple.

If you, if you can't remember, it's just Google my name. It's all over the place. I, the book that was published five years ago is called Deep Under-Denberg. cover. I don't

care about the subtitle. And last December imperative productions issued, released a podcast, 12 episode podcast, which is about my life, but it's narrated and it has a lot of voices

other than mine, it's interviews who will talk about, you know, how they related to me and how they saw my situation. It is very well made. It has, it as Alden Erenreich, an A-list actor as a narrator, and professionally composed music, we've got nothing but great reviews for it,

can be found on all major audio streaming platforms free of charge. That's it. That's incredible. Well, thanks again. I very much appreciate it, and I'll include links to your stuff below in the show notes. Thanks again, Jack. Okay. Goodbye, World.