The Eric Metaxas Show - Jack Barsky (Encore Continued)

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Jack Barsky tells the real-life spy story of how he came to America as a Soviet sleeper agent for the KGB, but started enjoying his new life in America so much he dangerously chose to leave his old life behind.

Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Eric Mataxis show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments. That's noble gold investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Did you ever see the movie The Blob starring Steve McQueen? The blood-curdling prep of The Plog. Well, way back when Eric had a small part in that film, but they had a cut his scene because the blob was supposed to eat him, but he kept spitting him out. Oh, the whole thing was just a disaster. Anyway, here's

the guy who's not always that easy to digest. Eric the Texas! To continue my conversation with Jack Varski, absolutely fascinating story, the title of the book is Deep Undercover, My Secret Life Entangled Allegiances as a KGB spy in America.

We haven't gotten to that really crazy part of the story yet. Barski, we were talking about your training as a KGB agent. You're in Berlin. They're giving you all these assignments and so on and so forth. And you study English. You choose English. At what point do they realize that they may want to use you? Yeah. I mean, because I still cannot believe that they sent you as a bona fide KGB spy to live in America among us. This is like a Twilight Zone episode. And pretend to have been born here. That is really the amazing thing.

So let's go back. So you're still a KGB agent in training when we last left off? And I study English like a maniac. I threw myself into this. And I didn't know it then, but I know it now. I have talent to acquire other languages. Yes. And so about a year into this study with a couple of successively more demanding tutors,

I was already reading English literates or fluently. We had a visitor from Moscow one day, and he would ask me, so how's your English? And I showed him a book. I read this, no problem. He said, huh? Cut a tape. So I cut a tape. They sent it to Moscow.

What do you mean cut a tape? Have a tape of you speaking English? Me speaking English. Say something. Make a tape, you know, 10 minutes, talk about, whatever. And they flew me to Moscow, and I was interviewed by a. a born American, somebody who had emigrated to Moscow. That's a rarity.

Be honest. Was it Bernie Sanders? Be honest, because this program... It was his wife. Okay. So you know that Bernie Sanders did his honeymoon. Yes, he did. Yes, he did.

Soviet Moscow. You know, that's not a joke. Yeah, I know that. But I think it may have been after my time. Yeah, it was after your time. It was in 82. But anyway, you came here. He went there.

It was a trade. Right. But seriously, you spoke English so well that they knew we can use you in some way. They thought it might be worth trying. At the time, I was pretty good, and they figured there was the American lady and there was also a college professor, and they had a powwow and eventually said, let's give it a try. Now, when you say there was an American. woman here. Now, what is an American woman doing in Moscow working for the Soviets? What's the story?

She was married to a Russian. Most likely, she fell in love with the KGB guy and thought she would follow him into the promised land. The poor woman was miserable. She did not have a good life. And she was, she was, I guarantee a homesick. Anyway, she became my tutor. I moved to Moscow. I met her twice a week for two years. I also had the opportunity to work with two Americans who spied in the 40s and early 50s. They were part of the Rosenberg Network. Holy cow. Atomic spies.

Morrison Lonak Cohen. Wow. And so I had a lot of opportunity to speak, to improve my English. And every night before going to bed, I did phonetics exercises. Boring as hell. It's a half hour. You listen to a word. You repeat it.

You listen. You repeat. I got to a point where I can still hear my accent. But for New York, it was good enough. And particularly since my birth certificate says my mother's name was Schwartz. So the cover story was that, you know, I spoke German growing up and grew up bilingual. Right. And you know something, your accent?

I mean, I have relatives, you know, who grew up in America. And they have a little, if you grow up speaking German, you do have, you can hear something in the background. Okay, so that's going to be your cover story? I hear my own accent in the recording. Yeah, sure. Sure. So what happens? Well, so after altogether five years and, you know, a practice run, I spent three months in Canada, just getting to know.

what it's like to live in junior United States. That's kind of funny. They sent you to Canada. Yeah, well. To prepare you. Right. And eventually it was launch time. A resident agent in Washington, D.C. had found this was typical for the operations.

This is how they stole identities. They would wander around in graveyards and look for gravestones of children who died very early and then acquire birth certificates in those names. And so one of the agents in D.C. found Jack Barski, who was born in 1944 and passed away in 1953. So a kid, a kid who died and they know that they, can use that identity. Yes. It's also amazing to think that their KGB spies hanging out, living in D.C. already.

I mean, I don't want to be naive, but it's an amazing thing when you think that those people were here. Well, they're still here. They're just now FSB and SVR and, you know, this is still Russian. Yeah. That has not changed anyway. So he acquired a birth certificate. And so now we worked on a cover story because I would enter the United States at the age

of like 30 or so. What have I done up to that point? You know, it's six pages worth of like, you know. So they gave you a fake background. This is your pre, or what do they call it? I can't think of you. Your backstory. They made up a backstory.

Yes, what I did get from New York, people who were running around, taking pictures of a factory, for instance, that was in ruins, where I could have worked, schools, where I could have gone to school. but everything else pretty much was my own fiction. You came up with it? Yeah, sure.

So you came up with a plausible backstory, claiming that you grew up in America. Right. And so where did you grow up in America, according to the backstory? Well, I was born in Orange, New Jersey, and then when my father passed away, I was just two years old, we killed him off right away. Yeah.

And then my mother moved to New York, and I grew up in New York City. Where in New York City? Upper Manhattan. I was just going to say, because that's where the Germans said. That's where Henry Kissinger grew up. There was German, you know, they're little oases of ethnic groups, and that sounds quite plausible. So you grew up in, you know, Inman, whatever, that area.

Right. Okay, so this is your backstory, and you have to memorize this and internalize it. Sure. By the way, I never used any of it other than that my mother's, my mother was German. and I grew up speaking German. Everything else I didn't need. But you had to have it just in case. Just in case.

Okay, so you know you're going to be sent to America? I mean, at some point you realize this is my future? Once I made the move to Moscow to learn English to perfection, quote-unquote, perfection. And it was clear that the target had changed from West Germany to the United States. And did you have a choice in this? Oh, I loved it. Oh, you loved it? Oh, absolutely.

Okay. Absolutely. That was enemy number one. Free America. It's a bigger task. Okay. You know, I wasn't very much interested in West Germany. I would have easily gone to Italy or France or even England, but America, that was a big one. Yeah. And also the irony that you're trapped and now you get to escape legally. Right.

Get to go someplace without. Yeah. Okay. So at what point? So what is your job? In other words, before they send you in 1978, behind enemy lines, what is your job, what are you thinking you're going to be sent to do? What's the point of where you're going? Well, I was trained to do political espionage. In other words, what they thought they wanted me to do was to get to know decision makers in foreign policy or influencers. Okay, we're going to go to another break. Folks, this is, what a story. The book is deep under cover Jack Barski, and this is the Eric Metaxa show. Do Not Go Away.

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We need your help. You. Hey, folks, I'm here in Texas show. I'm talking to Jack Varski. An amazing story. The book is deep undercover, My Secret Life Entangled Allegiances as a KGB spy in America.

So it's 1978, and they are going to send you across the ocean to Canada first, and your plan is to end up in Washington, D.C. So how do they make this transition? I need to correct you two things. Canada was a practice trip. I returned to my first.

Moscow. And about several months after I was launched to the United States. Directly. Indirectly through Yugoslavia, Austria, Italy, Mexico, into Chicago and from Chicago to New York and that was where I was going to operate in New York City. From New York. Not in D.C. Wow. So why would they have taken such a circuitous route? to bring you, I mean, to go from Mexico, from all the way, you know, to Mexico. And, I mean, what's the point of that? To cover the trace, you know, you can't follow me back into Moscow. And every new country that I entered, I received another passport with a different name.

So you could not possibly trace me back to Moscow. Oh, wow. And it was super, super, super cautious. I never, never once in my 10 years made a direct trip. between the Soviet Union and the United States. That was a no-no. Okay, so you end up, finally you end up in New York. Right.

And where do you settle in New York? Well, initially, I had nothing. I had the birth certificate, right? So with that, you don't go very far, even in those days. You need some ID. So the only place I could possibly stay was in one of those hotels where you pay by the month. It wasn't very nice.

There was a lot of shady characters. But... Not that you're shady. No, I... A Russian spy. But it's interesting. I would have thought that the KGB could supply you with this stuff, but you're sort of on your own. You've got to figure out.

Absolutely. No, I was completely on my own. I was given instructions and a task, but nobody checked on me. Nobody gave me any help. There were no meetings. I was on my own. I was deep undercover. That's why...

So that's why the book is. title. Correct. So my first task was, and they gave me about two years, to acquire genuine American documentation. Primarily a driver's license and what was really important

to Social Security card so you can get a real job. And I got that and my first job, I worked as a bike messenger in Manhattan. I couldn't take my resume with me. You're not kidding. Yeah. How old were you at that time? When I started as a bike messenger, I was 29.

In 1978, you're driving around Manhattan as a bike messenger. In 79, that's correct. And I was one of the best. Yeah, okay. Wonderful. All right, so you work your way up, obviously. But, I mean, this is just crazy that here you are, do you have any friends? Were you able to make friends? Well, initially, no.

until I had a real job, I stayed away from people. I had to, you know, because the first thing they ask you, so what do you do for a living? Oh, I'm unemployed. Oh, you. Yeah. No. So it was a lonely existence for a good year, a little over a year.

And even as a bike messenger, you know, you've got to be really careful. I didn't fit the profile. You know, it's very hard to hide. Tall German bike messenger. It's hard to hide your intellect. So initially I didn't make a lot of friends, but I went back to college. I went to study at Peru College. And that's when I, you know, collected a lot of friends all younger than me, but, you know.

Wow. And I chased all the girls. Okay. I got none of them. Well, I think you're married now, aren't you? So eventually you got one, but not on the. that side of the divide. All right. So you're undercover, you're working it. What happens? What's the first thing that you're tasked to do? Well, the most important thing, and I was never explicitly

told, but the most important thing for them was the fact that I was here, I lived here as a bona fide American. That means I was able to do things that the diplomat spies couldn't do. They had restrictions as far as how far they could travel outside of D.C. and New York. For instance, one time I had a task to go check on a person in California who I didn't know who he was. I was given a name and they asked me, well, check if he's still there and, you know, what's addressing phone number and so forth. Well, he was a person who had defected from the KGB and was under a death sentence. He, died from natural causes. But, you know, this kind of stuff. Did he actually die from natural causes? Yes, yes, he did. He did. But he defected from the KGB in California. No, no, no, he defected. I don't know when, there was a long time ago.

He defected in West Germany, and then it was to, somebody actually tried to kill him there. He escaped, and then he was exfiltrated into the United States and was teaching. He was teaching, actually, at the University of California. in San Bernardino. I forgot his name just now. Well. But anyway, so I was able to do things like that. Yeah. God forbid they were preparing for a situation when diplomatic relations would be cut off completely. And all the personnel, half the UN personnel that they had here, half the embassy, they were all KGB. They were all be gone.

Who was left? There were 10 of us that they sent. And that's information that was actually obtained from the KGB archives, 10 illegal. that they sent out. And that was the most important value that they still had somebody here. Number one, number two, I was supposed to, you know, get close to, you know, those decision makers

and foreign policy. That was a problem. Because my standing in society was not such that you can just, you know, go up to Columbia University and hang out with people who operate in the Institute for Foreign Relations there, right? Right, right. It didn't work. I did not succeed in that.

Right. So what did you do? You came over in 78. You're a bike messenger in 79. At what point, I mean, your story gets really crazy, and we should probably leave to that because I want to make sure you get to tell the story. But when you decide to leave and the red dot and the whole thing. Right. So let's – I got to just throw one other thing, and that's really crazy because I told you I went back to college. And my ambition ran away with me, and I graduated as valedictorian. Oh, stop.

at Baruch. Yes. A KGB spy is the valedictorian at Baruch College. I gave the graduation speech. What year? What year? It was in 1984. Oh my gosh.

At the Feld Forum. You know, the reason this is funny is that I have to think that you are, even though technically you are a KGB agent, you are also living as an American, and it had to have an effect on you. Of course. There's no way around it. So what happened? Did you begin to see the upside of freedom? Somewhat.

I think when it hit me that capitalism is not such a bad thing is when I had my first job as a professional. I started working at MetLife as a computer programmer, and the people were all nice. And we got free lunch. And they paid me well. And the work was good. And my colleagues were nice. So, you know, I was one. wondering what happened to the evil insurance companies that we were, you know, told.

They you heard about, yeah. Yeah. So I got to a point where I developed sort of a neutral stance, you know, in between. Maybe we can mix it together, you know, get a little better economically and get, but get more freedom in the East. And there was a, there was a strand in the social Democrat movement in Europe. they had came up with that theory, what called convergence theory. And I sort of bought into it, but I was still loyal to my employer. I had no plans to defect. I had no plans to destroy.

That you were the valedictorian. Yes. Yeah, this is hilarious. This is absolutely hilarious. Okay. So what happens after that? When do you start, when do you get into trouble? Okay, so I started working at MetLife.

Yeah, I worked for four years. My career was going really well. I was making good money. But something else happened. You know, I was still a young man. And, you know, you can't live in society and pretend to be one of them and not do things other people do. And, you know, there's biological urges.

So I was looking for girlfriends. and one of them was really, really, really safe, I thought, because she was from South America, from Guyana. And so she wouldn't have figured out that something was not quite right with me. She didn't have a lot of education. She didn't know how the United States worked really well. But one day she came to me and said, hey, would you have a problem if I get married to another guy?

I says, what the heck you're talking about? And then she confided, well, I'm really illegal here. I need to marry somebody to become legal. And clearly that was an indirect question to... Yeah, in other words, I'll give you first dibs, Charlie. Hey, we'll be right back talking to Jack Barski. The book is Deep Undercover. What a story.

I think we're going to... Yeah, keep that in mind, Frank. Hey, folks, it's the Eric Mataxas show. I'm talking to Jack Barski. Former KGB agent. The book is Deep Undercover. Okay. So you fall in love with this woman.

She's from Guyana. She tells you I'm not legal and I need to get married. And she's willing to marry another guy, but she's giving you first dibs. What happened? Sort of she did. And, you know, at that point, I was so convinced that I was invulnerable that I could take the risk and take an illegal and make her legal because I got, I had valid documentation.

And so, and I did some research, you know, you know, how. how it works with INS. And then something else happened. And this was made the interview. You had to show up for an interview. Made the interview real easy. She got pregnant. And when we showed up for the interview,

she was already visibly pregnant, and the interview was not at all hostile. It wasn't about, you know, describe, you know, what your bedroom looks like. And we were prepared for all of this. You know, I was a trained agent. and I knew what to anticipate. None of that was necessary.

So she became legal, really legal, being made legal by an illegal. Huh, sounds like chain migration. All right. So you're now married? I'm now married. You have a child? A child is born. And my plan was still, you know, I have to go back.

Because here's the other thing that I haven't. talked about yet, I was actually married in Germany. Now, wait, you know what? It just figures, Albin. You're talking to a spy. They keep stuff from you. I thought we were friends. Jack, when you say you were married in Germany,

now I'm really confused. When in the world did you get married in Germany? I got married in Germany. When I came back from the Soviet Union, I had this girlfriend who I absolutely loved, but not enough to say, goodbye to the KGB. So when I departed for Moscow, I broke up with her. And then when I came back for a little

while, she found me and the love was rekindled. At that point, I spoke with KGB folks and they allowed me to marry her. Initially, they thought they could send her with me, but she, psychologically, she wasn't capable to handle this. So you're living in America. I live in America. You're married to a woman in Germany. And I have a son in Germany. And you have a son in Germany.

Do you ever see your wife? Every two years. Excuse me, but what kind of a life is that? That's very strange. She was willing to marry you. She was. Even though you're not going to be together. Yes.

Jack, you're a nice guy, but you're not that nice. I was much better looking. I mean, what a crazy thing. So now you're in America, and now you're a bigamist. Yes. You're cheating on your world. wife and then you decide to make it legal and you marry this woman. Now you're married to two women. This is getting very confusing. Mitigating circumstances. I was a bigness with a split personality.

I had really two individuals in here and they didn't communicate very much. Yeah. That doesn't, legally, I was still a big of a miss. Obviously. Yeah. But I mean, if you're living, you know, it's like when somebody's spouse dies or something, you don't see them for years. and they remarried, and then suddenly the person shows up. It's like, I didn't die. You know, these kinds of things happen. It's a strange thing to live all by yourself in a country. You meet this woman, you fall in love.

I mean, I can only imagine how strange it would have been for you. So what do you do now? What happens? Well, what happens now, you know, so now I have a child here and I have a child there, but I clearly was going back home, join my German family. That was the plan. That was your plan. That was the plan. So it's a year and a half after my daughter is born. It's in early December of 1988.

And that's your daughter here in America. My American daughter is now 18 months old. The prettiest thing, you know, big, big eyes, curly hair, started talking already. I was in love with this child, more so than with any other person in my entire life. That is the first time that I felt. felt unconditional love towards somebody. That hit me by surprise. I was not prepared for that. Because I saw this girl grow up from, you know, being a small baby to eventually, you're standing there. Anybody who's had a kid, especially a father with a daughter, it's like going from seeing in black and white to seeing in color. You think, hey, what is this color stuff? It's a completely different universe.

You understand that. When it's your own flesh and blood. It's a beautiful thing. Yes. And so, and this is when the cruxed. crisis came very suddenly. I had to tell the KGB which way I would go to work every day. And we had arranged for a signal spot there, so if I, I don't have to, you know, wander

around someplace else. By just going to work, I would check this one spot, see if there's a signal. Could be a call for a meeting or... What do you mean a signal? What kind of a signal? In this case, they were graphical signals. we decided to make dots with paint. Okay, so a little dot tells you what? Well, little dot could be.

A yellow dot would have come to a meeting. Another one would be confirming the dead drop operation. The red one was, danger, get out. And it wasn't little. It was the size of a fist. Okay. So somebody's painting this. And where was this painted on the subway platform?

The subway and Queens, that's the A-Train, ran elevated, runs elevated for quite a while. Yeah. And it was on one of those posts that supports the tracks. Which station? Sunnyside. 80th and Hudson. Ah, different. Okay. All right.

So one morning, you know, it's early. I go to work. I'm going to have a sleep. And all of a sudden I see this red dot screaming at me. Okay, we're going to have to, we're going to a break, I think. All right. We're going to be right back. This is called a cliffhanger in show business, folks.

Hey, folks, you listen to the Eric Metaxus show, and I don't want to forget to remind you that we're freeing slaves, folks. CSI, we're doing it. You go to Metaxistalk.com. You've got to join us. Please participate. Metaxistock.com. See the banner at the top of the page. We need your help.

Thank you. Hey, folks. It's Eric Mataxis show talking to Jack Barski, deep under, cover is the book. Okay, Jack, you are, it's around 1988. You have a daughter, 18 months old. You're in love with your daughter. You're married here. I mean, it's crazy. And then one day you show up and you see one of these big red dots, which tells you danger. What that said, according to protocol, I was supposed to not turn around, not go back to my apartment, just make a beeline to a place where I had hidden some reserve documents. It was a Canadian

driver's license. Make a B-line to Canada and say hello at the Soviet embassy and get out. That was it. Holy cow. There was no other information other than do that because you know... Except now it means

leave your wife and child. I ignored the dad. I went numb, right? This was decision time and I, you know, I, first First of all, you're on your way to work, right? I'm on my way. I went to work.

You go to work. You're numb because you're thinking, now what, now what, now what? And I sit there in front of the computer monitor completely incapable of doing anything. What did you think it would be? In other words, why would they give you such a dramatic thing? I mean, what did you think was happening? Well, eventually they explained that they thought somehow there may have been somebody who had betrayed me. So you're about to get pinched? Yes.

And they actually, I ignored this. But they didn't know I could have been in a hospital. They didn't know what happened. So now they're sending me the same information. They send me more information through the Morse code, shortwave. And it says, you've got to get out because your cover is probably blown. Okay. Okay.

So I still played for time. They still didn't know I could have been in a hospital. They didn't come check on me. You don't do that. But eventually they did the most radical thing that they could have done. One morning I was standing on the subway platform. There's somebody coming in from the right short guy in a black coat, and he comes really close to me and whispers into my right ear.

You've got to come home or else you're dead. And then he walked away. So now they knew that I knew, that they knew. So everybody knew. it was absolutely decision time. And I closed my eyes, and I said, I got to stay. What I did, then I went home this coming weekend because I composed a letter in secret writing.

It took some time to do that. And I told them that I'm not coming home because I have contracted HIV AIDS and the United States. The only place where I can get treatment, I will not defect. I will not betray you. Brilliant alibi, Jack, way to go. The most brilliant thought I ever had in my trial life.

Because you're not that bright. I know you. That's amazing. No, seriously, that's a brilliant thing. But what do you do? I mean, okay, so you leave this note, and you're assuming that somebody's going to come to your apartment and find the note? No, no, no. This is a letter in secret writing. But you're sent to where? To an address someplace in South America where the person is cooperating with the KGB. Gotcha, got you guys.

Okay, so you send this note. It gets to Moscow. But what is your plan, so your plan is to stay where you are? Yeah. And you keep working where you're working. Exactly. So you know they can get to you. And there was a concern that they might because I didn't know whether they would believe the lie, but they did.

I found out much later. They actually went to my German family and told them that I had passed away. AIDS was a death sentence in those years. But for about three months, I was concerned that they might come. after me. I was also concerned that the FBI would find me. But anyway, I was a sitting duck. Just one thing I made sure that I was not predictably at a certain place at a certain time ever. But didn't you have to show up for work every day? Yeah, I went to work, but I went different routes at different times and so forth.

And I dialed into the radio frequency where I got my transmissions. and it was always on a Thursday night and one Thursday night it was silence. That is when I knew I was not KGB anymore. That's when I went and threw the radio in the Hudson River

and slowly decompressed and knew that I would... So they let you go? They let me go because, you know, I was dead. Who wanted somebody with AIDS in the Soviet Union, right? Amazing. Yeah.

So it worked. It worked. Well, okay, so now you're married, you have a daughter, you're madly in love with, you're in America, and now what? You decide to live that life? Yes, now I'm now concentrating on my career. Oh, by the way, I started a 401k. It makes sense, right? Now you're really American. Yes. Okay, so.

And I bought a house. And you bought a house. Where? About 60 miles north of New York and Washingtonville. Okay, so as far as you're concerned, it's over. Yeah. You're free? Right. And I would never see Germany again, but I live out my life as a middle class, upper middle class American.

And then one day, about nine years later, I'm driving towards home. At that point, I had a house in Pennsylvania across the Delaware River at the toll gate. State trooper waves me over and said, could you please? move over there. It's a routine traffic stop, and I stop, and then the officer says, please get out of the car, get out of the car.

And then I see somebody coming from behind, and I turn around and he opens his credentials. The flap says, FBI, we would like to talk with you. Boom! Hello.

My old life was right back. Yeah. Like an avalan. And the fellow who I'm now good friends with told me that I went white as the driven snow at that point. Because, you know, what's going to happen to me now? Well, they took me to a motel and interrogated me for a couple of hours, and then they let me go. Now, interestingly enough, you know, my sense of humor just didn't leave me. They took me into a car, right? and the partner of the agent who had addressed me first,

he was sitting there and I saw a gun sticking to his ankle. And I knew this was real, right? But within a minute, I had caught myself, and I asked him, so what took you so long? Break the ice. And then the other agent turned around, and he said, you know, this may not be the worst day in your life. That was a glimmer of hope.

Yeah. And eventually after, you know, two months of, of debriefing and passing a light detector test, the head of the FBI, Louis Fried, decided I'd be much more valuable here. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We're going to be right back talking final segment with the author of Deep Undercover, Jack Barski. Right now, women in Sudan are being enslaved just for believing in Jesus.

I've supported Christian Solidarity International for years because they're out there freeing these women and helping them start a new life. This month, we're on a mission to free 100 more. Just $250 rescues one woman from slavery and helps her start a new life. Will you please help us reach that goal? Call 888-2533522 or go to metaxis talk.com and click on the Christian Solidarity banner. Let's set them free in Jesus' name. Yes, I know.

Hey, talking to Jack Farski, last few minutes, Jack, your story. I mean, my gosh, it goes on and on. People have to read the book deep undercover. But you said, you're a free man. Louis Free, no pun intended, who says, you know, we prefer to work with you because you have all this information. So you give your information at this point to the CIA,

and you have no sense of guilt about this. No. The one thing that helped a lot, I had no names. I couldn't give anybody away. Names were kept from me. So you didn't feel the guilt of turning people over. Correct. Correct. But other than that, I sang as much as I could sing.

Because you believed in America. At that point. At this point, you believed in America. That's an amazing thing. And you know why? Because it was after the war came down and the Internet became available and I did research and I was completely relieved from my communist notion. Delusions.

These delusions, correct. Okay. And it's a crazy thing. So the woman that you married, are you married to her today? No, I'm not. So we spent a good 20-plus years together. I was able to raise my daughter. She played Division I won basketball.

It was a great life. We had another son. And then when my daughter moved out and my son was about to move out, I just like, there was an emotional crisis that I didn't anticipate. I had nothing left to live for. You know, the relationship with my wife and me wasn't that great. It wasn't on a solid foundation. And, you know, I wrote a poem, and I called it loneliness. I felt lonely, really lonely for the first time in my life.

You never had faith. No, I had none. I had no spirituality in any way, shape, or form. And what point? We've just got like a minute. At what point did that change? I know we... It changed in that very moment.

I had hired myself in an administrative system. I was a CIO, and she was a hardcore Christian, and she opened the door for me. And the other person who was really, really important in this was Dr. Zacharias. Ravi Zacharias. Ravi Zacharias, who you interviewed. He was just here. Who in his radio program convinced me you don't have to be a dummy to believe in Jesus. Yes. It helps, but you don't have to be.

So you became a Christian. What year was this? That was 11 years ago. You became a Christian 11 years ago. Yes, I was baptized. Who thought that an atheist KGB agent would become a pro-American Christian? And I speak in churches now. And you speak in churches? Yes, sir. Goetzai Dunk. What a story. I mean, honestly, it's so beautiful. I really, I wanted to have you on, Jack, because your story is everybody's story.

How do you discover the truth? What is the path? So many people are in so many different places. People listening to this program right now could be in a completely different place. But, you know, reality has a way of getting to us, and it took some time with you. But you saw the other side, and here we are. And you have to have the courage to face it, because that is the only thing that eventually can result in a satisfactory outcome. I'm sorry we're out of time, but what a joy, Jack, to have you back.

The book, folks, is deep undercover, my secret life entangled allegiances as a KGB spy in America. Jack, thank you so much. Right now, women in Sudan are being enslaved just for believing in Jesus. I've supported Christian Solidarity International for years because they're out there freeing these women and helping them start a new life. This month, we're on a mission to free 100 more. Just $250 rescues one woman from slavery and helps her start a new life. Will you please help us reach that goal?

Call 888-2533522 or go to metaxistocococcom and click on the Christian Solidarity banner. Let's set them free in Jesus' name.