The Team House - Former KGB Agent | Jack Barsky | Ep. 307

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseJack Philip Barsky is a German-American author, IT specialist and former sleeper agent of the KGB who spied on the United States from 1978 to 1988. Exposed after the Cold War, Barsky became a resource for U.S. counterintelligence agencies and was allowed to remain in the United States. Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 50% OFF!!!Fabric Gerber Life Insurance ⬇️https://hello.meetfabric.com/term-life-insurance-partner-teamhouse?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=premium_podcast_vanityurl&utm_content=teamhouse____________________________________Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#kgb #cia #espionageBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. This is episode 307 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. And our guest on tonight's show is Jack Barski. He served as an illegal undercover KGB agent in the United States, originally from East Germany, now an American citizen.

And he is the author of Deep Cover, his memoir, that I hope you guys will go and check out. We're going to get to Jack in one second. I just want to tell you guys about the sponsor of tonight's show, which is Fabric Life Insurance. So I have life insurance. I don't tell my daughter how much it is. because I don't want to get knocked off, but I carry life insurance, and you may want to as well.

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prices subject to underwriting and health questions. And the second thing I want to tell you guys about is my book, We Defy, the Lost Chapters of Special Forces History, coming out December 9th. And I will be doing an event in conjunction with Triple Aut design, the clothing company that makes this shirt and a lot of the stuff you see me wearing on here. The event is going to be in Hackensack, 92 Kennedy Street, on November 9th. Start time is at 11 a.m. I hope to see many of you guys there. I'll be talking about the contents of the book, some really cool stuff. So I hope to see many of you there. So Jack, back to you. Thank you for joining us tonight.

Well, let me tell you something. 300 episodes. And I, I, poked a little bit around of what's available on YouTube. I'm very honored that you actually invited me. I think it's going to be good, but based on what I know about you. And so I think we're going to get along fabulously.

And I should point out that this is a very unique opportunity for us that we very rarely have these opportunities to talk to somebody who came from the other side, so to speak. So that's a very rare opportunity. And we plan to take full advantage. of it. We appreciate that. Yeah, you're coming here. You would spend a Friday night with us. Yeah. Well, you know, so to speak. No, I did come from the other side. I came here to help

destroy the country and bring communism into world domination. And then somehow, you know, the country, the United States, has destroyed my communist police. USA. USA. Well, let's start at the beginning, Jack. Your birth name is not Jack Barski. Tell us how you were born, what your name was, where you grew up. Yeah, my name is, I hate to say this in front of Americans because you guys can't pronounce it. By the way, my daughter, the older daughter, didn't like, you know, that I'm

operating under a stolen name. So she changed her last name to my German last name, which is Dittrich, and she can't say it. I was born as Albrecht, Dittrich. I never liked that name. So, you know, Jack is okay. Barski is a little odd because it indicates there's some Jewish blood in there. and actually Jack Barski, whose identity we stole, was born to Jewish parents. The father most likely was an Orthodox Jew because his first name was Elisha Lee. So was Jack Barski actually a name and identity that was given to you as an alias? Not an alias. I became Jack Barski.

So this is how this happened. And that speaks to the phenomenal security hole that the United States had at the time. By the way, that is how even the Russian intelligence operates today stealing identities. It's not as easy as it used to be, but this is what they do. They wander around in cemeteries and look for tombstones of somebody who passed away at a young age. Jack Varski passed away in 1944 at the age of 11. And some diplomat who operated out of Washington, D.C., found Barski's gravestone in a Jewish cemetery. And somehow, and they never told me the mechanics, but I was just told the steps.

He was able to acquire Varski's death certificate. and then somehow just by paying by asking for it writing writing in writing out the form and paying the fee got got a bona fide copy of jack barski's birth certificate now mind you that was a that was a diplomat a russian diplomat he spoke with an accent so how in the world was did what did nobody was nobody uh educated that that you know handing out these birth certificates to perfect strangers from another country is not a good idea. Yeah. To back up a little bit, Jack, tell us about growing up in East Germany and how you got recruited. All right. So I was born in 1949, and that was four years after the end of World War II.

And I was born in the furthest eastern section of all of Germany, which borders both on Poland and on Czech. Slovakia, the Czech Republic now. Born, thank God, I was born and raised, it was the countryside. Because the cities, the big cities were destroyed. It were full of rubble. There was no living space.

I mean, people just really, really had a hard time making ends meet. There was no food. At least, I always had a roof over my head because the village that I, up in the small town that I lived after the village, they were not destroyed at all. The Russian army just went through there. And there were peasants around, so there was always, we could always eat, get potatoes to eat.

I mean, I can't remember having been hungry, but we were malnourished. I got a picture of myself when I was 11 years old. I was thin as a rail. I also was, my internal organs didn't grow. They didn't keep up with my vertical growth. I was not allowed to play soccer for a while because my heart was weak. And the medical system was horrendous. You know, I was always sick.

You know, every other month, I came down with something and there was no medication. As a result, you know, this untreated strep throat eventually, the bacteria that do this to spread to your throat. they settle on your heart valve. And eventually, many, many years later, that heart valve had to be replaced. So it was no fun. And the doctor, I mean, this was tough love. The doctor hurt me three times as a child very badly.

One time when he pierced my eardrum without telling me what's going to come. Secondly, when he pulled my foreskin back, which that hurt like hell and the third one was when i i had a wound in my left foot in the soul of my left foot it was pretty deep i had stepped into some some glass and he had this fat nurse sit on me so so that i couldn't move and then he quaderized that wound with silver nitrate you know how much that hurt and then he told me walk home that was That's, I'm speaking of telling me to walk, when I came down with appendicitis, which can be very painful and mine was, so I couldn't, I couldn't, I was at home and I couldn't stand straight anymore.

And so my mother said, well, this doesn't look so good. Go to the doctor. So actually, I had to walk to the bus stop, take the bus, and then check myself into the hospital. this was normal. It wasn't, nobody thought that this was, you know, child abuse. It was pretty bad, but here's the thing. It also toughened me up and prepared me for what I did when I did it, so to speak. So, you know, you went very far into the future from that point on.

Do you want me to talk about recruitment? Yeah, tell us a little bit about recruitment. And as you're getting older-ish, You know, you're becoming a young man. Did you have any sort of like political leanings at that time? And I'm just kind of curious about why they reached out to you. Yes. I was a very good student.

When I started, you know, in elementary and middle school, I didn't study. I just did the homework. And I ran about a B plus, A minus average. But when it really counted in high school, I studied and I aced everything. I graduated first in class. And that's at the age of 18 I graduated. And I went to a top college and I graduated as valedictorian there. But here's the thing.

And we were taught art science. The curriculum and I have the curriculum of my last year in high school. Half of it was math. and science and there were no electives. So that was a pretty good part of the education. But with regard to history, with regard to literature, with regard to what's that called, civics, it was nothing but brainwashing from A to Z.

I mean, there was only one opinion allowed. It was only Marxism, Leninism that was taught We didn't even have a academic subject that would have said something like the religions of the world. Generically, they hammered Christianity, like, you know, the Marx called it the opium for the people. And I grew up knowing that Christians were all dumb people who used religion as a crutch. and if there were Christians I didn't get to know them because they sort of didn't admit that there were questions

very rare my mother once told me that she had to resign from she she grew up in a Christian household I know this for a fact our parents have had three girls and they were named Eva Ruth and Judith and then she told me that she

just after the divorce she just She joins the local church and she sang in the choir. And she had to resign from the choir because my father was a party member and he wanted to have a career. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And so I never got to know Christianity whatsoever, not at all. And I, you know, my, I just knew that Marxism was a science.

Marxism, Leninism, because we took a course in, and, um, knowledge was called scientific Marxism-Leninism, where we were taught that Marx and Engels particularly had discovered the natural laws that govern the evolution of the human race, starting with, you know, hunters and gatherers and the Stone Age going on to the, you know, the empires, the Greek and the Roman empires, and feudalism, capitalism, socialism, socialism, communism. So that was a law. If there's no contrary opinion available,

you believe in that stuff. And it was really well done from a delivery perspective because it started in kindergarten. And even though the little puppet on the TV were somewhat ideological. And so the brainwashing started very, early and that that holds extremely well. I had another thought that I just, let me see.

Oh, yeah. And since I believed in this and since I wanted to, my father had a good career, I wanted to have a good career. In my first year of college, because I was an outstanding student, I was recruited by one of the party members of the section chemistry. And I was flattered and I joined the party. And then I was also recruited to become a leader in the youth movement. Initially, I was just leading a small group.

Then I was leading the entire class of whenever my class, which was about 60 people. Then I was promoted to leading the, all the the folks were called young the organization was called

young young communist youth the entire communist youth group of the section chemistry which was several hundred people

so and I was known to be a very effective communist I was an intellectual communist I wasn't one of those stupid ones

yeah okay so so I did some things that you shouldn't that you were really allowed to do. I give me one example. You know, like everybody else, I loved rock and roll. You know, it started with Elvis and then went on with the Beatles. I taught myself guitar in high school. And I listened to Western radio stations, which that was a no-no. Now, one time I was caught

at the dorm that had very thin walls. I was listening to some Western music. And my neighbor was one of those dumb communists who he denounced me. Listen to this. The party secretary of the section of the section chemistry called me into his office. And he said, close the door. And then he said, next time you turn the volume down. You know what that meant? Yeah, see no evil.

Yeah. Jack, we're there. Exactly. You know, and this is the same guy when he and colleague, both party members, had a business trip. Occasionally, those trips were allowed, if you were at the right level, and if you were a Communist Party member, to London, England. And the first thing that they shared with everybody was that they attended a Rolling Stones

concert. So there was some hypocrisy involved, but we all pretty much believed in the cause. When I signed up, I was a flaming communist. I always thought, you know, our leadership, like at the very top, wasn't very good. And like these guys that I was just telling you about the more intelligent people also were hoping for a more intelligent leader. Because we had two leaders that, you know, they couldn't talk. Yeah. They may have been clever, but they weren't highly educated and they weren't really smart.

but it doesn't matter. The cause was still the cause. Was there a culture of like purity test and snitching on somebody for not doing the right thing? Was that sort of ingrained in the culture or no? I know this in hindsight. I am not, I was not aware that I snitched on nobody. I wasn't asked to snitch. These were different types of people that were running around and just watch.

the population. But typically they were not very likable. There's one guy in high school that I absolutely hated, and I beat him up once because he just misbehaved, and he attacked me, so I beat him up. So I just hated him, and he was one of those guys who volunteered. No, actually he became an employee of the Stasi,

and he just spotted him. He just spied on internally. Yeah. You know, I lived in a bubble where people just didn't do that. Because, again, you know, Estasi used the more intelligent people to do intelligence work. All right. And the intelligence work that they did in West Germany was outstanding. I mean, they had several hundred Estasi agents in the West German government.

And Marcus Wolfe, as you probably heard his name, the man without a face, he became legend. But he had an easy job, you know. You know, you take East Germans, you move him to West Germany. There's no culture difference, no language difference. So it's much easier to infiltrate West Germany than it was to infiltrate for the Russians to infiltrate the United States. So I'm going to stop talking now. Tell us about how the country. KGB approached you.

Yeah. So first of all, and this is an educated guess, but I think in hindsight, I know this is how this transpired because I know how they were looking for people to

operate as illegals. And I don't have to explain to you what illegals are, but I may want to explain that to the audience. So there are three types of agents. The first type the safest job that you can have, you operate under diplomatic cover. And if you're caught, you're expelled from the country.

That's all you get. You can't be arrested. You're under diplomatic immunity. The second one is called non-official cover. There's people that use their own names. And they use whatever they do as cover. They could be businessmen or they could be artists or exchange students. whatever, they are at risk of being caught and imprisoned, but they don't have to pretend to be

somebody else. The pretension of being somebody else requires a certain set of character traits. And I know, and I found that out after, when I, when I chanced upon interviews that were given by two different X heads of the directorate S. that was the illegals directory. So the third type is the illegals. And they actually, in the interview, both of them said that they were combing through thousands of records to find people that A, were ideologically sound, and then approached

them, and then they were looking. They tested me for 18 months after they said hello. To see if I fit the profile that they were looking for, I give you some. some tidbits out of that profile, a very quick decision maker, never having a problem with change, changing circumstances, fearlessness, no problem with being alone, lonely. And my favorite is a tendency to force a well-controlled adventure. And so after 18, first, this is they introduced themselves. And I'm pretty sure they found me.

And at the time in my, the Dostazi kept records of a lot of citizens. And particularly the ones that eventually would, you know, were students and would, you know, have positions at a higher level in the country. And my file said, he has nothing but A's. I had at the time received the second, no, the highest scholarship in East Germany. There were two other students out of 20,000 at that university who had that. I got it. And I was a youth leader.

I was a communist. So they had to talk to me, right? So one day I got a knock on the door on a Saturday. By the way, in hindsight, I pieced all these things together. So our dorm rooms didn't have names on them. And I had a roommate. How did the guy who knocked on the door know that I was there by myself? And I was behind that door.

Well, in hindsight, we had a neighbor who was a Russian who studied at our university. He must have been KGB, right? So, you know, I didn't have a clue. So in comes a German guy, and he was, I mean, he was the biggest idiot that I have met amongst KGB folks. He was not a KGB employee. He was a collaborator. And they sent the German, I don't know why. That makes sort of sense.

But he came at me. First he asked me, are you always? Did he say, I said yes. He said, okay, I'm from. Carl Ciciena, that was a factory and still is a very well-known optics company that even then made outstanding products that could be sold to the West. So this would have been a place where a graduate might find gainful employment, and he pretended to sort of recruit me for the future. and the reason that I'm saying he was an idiot and I can give that to you in writing

he didn't know how our own country worked the companies did not recruit you were either assigned or you had the chance if you were near the top 10% to stay at the university to get a doctorate and maybe we get a career with a doctorate at university teaching so that was such a stupid lie in me

Immediately I thought, oh, he's Stasi. It didn't bother me at all because I had no reason to be afraid of Stasi. I was an excellent standing. So I guess, again, that he probably was buying to recruit for the Stasi. And if it had been about watching other East German citizens, I would have said flat out no. but I expect that, you know, this would be interesting. So, you know, I talked with him and I talked with him, a little small talk.

And eventually he changed his tune and he said, you know, I got to confess. I got to confess something here. I'm not really from Kodzijina. I'm from the government. So another stupid thing. I mean, he set himself up for me to ask, what part of the government? But, you know, I played along. I just wanted to find out what's going on.

And so he asked this one question. He said, can you imagine one day to work for the government? And I said, yeah, but not as a chemist. So he had answered to the question that he didn't dare ask. Right. That's exactly what he wanted. So he invited me for a luncheon, which, as you know, in Germany is the big meal, at the most expensive restaurant in town a few days later

and as I show up there, there's another man sitting at the table and I was a little bit hesitant, but this guy who, by the way, never introduced himself by any kind of name, not even a cover name, he gets up and he says, well, come on, come on over here. I want to introduce you to Herman.

We're working with our Soviet comrades. And then he excused himself and said, you know, I got to go. So here I'm with Herman. And I knew that Herman was KGB, obviously, because he spoke with an accent. He wasn't Herman. He was actually, and he got pissed off when I asked him once, is your real name Germain? That's the Russian version of Herman.

He got very annoyed because we did not, when we interacted, we used cover names. And very few people knew my real name. I am 100% certain that when I started working with the KGB, I became a state secret of the Soviet Union. Because illegals, as I already indicated, were very hard to find. Those types of people that fit the bill. They were also hard to recruit because not everybody was stupid enough for me to take on something that would have pretty much, but have me wind up in jail. Right.

And then very difficult, expensive to train, because all the training was one-on-one, and expensive to maintain. So you don't want to put these individuals at risk. So I guarantee you the person who made decisions on my behalf in Moscow Center did not know my name. He didn't have to know it. So he couldn't give me away.

You know, he knew my cover name, that was Dita. So Herman was Herman, okay? But whatever. You know, I didn't really care about all of this stuff. You know, I just wanted to do a good job and I played along. You know, it was like I didn't even think it seriously that one day I'm actually going to be recruited. I was just like, you know, meeting with Herman every other week.

And he became like the father figure to me. My father had left the family, and he was about 10 years older. So we had nice talks about everything in life. I shared everything with him. He gave me some tasks that are close to what people in intelligence do, such as knocking on the door and introducing yourself onto some kind of a pretext and then having a conversation and finding something out about a relative in the West. I hated that, but I did it.

And, you know, we had some, we did a little bit of, you know, clandestine meetings, exercises and stuff like that, but not a whole lot. And so this is when the recruitment happened. It was 18, oh, the one thing I think that impressed them tremendously. And this, we're talking about, you know, the, you know, the, the tendency to be adventurous. In my junior year in college, my friend and I,

hitchhight, all the way from East Germany through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria to the Black Sea. Wow. Very few East Germans did that because, you know,

we had to go through countries where you didn't speak the language. You only had limited money available for each and limited time in the country. countries that you passed through. And you, all we had was maps. And, you know, a train that took us from East Germany to Czechoslovakia. And then it was just waving and hoping that, you know, somebody would take you someplace where there is a structure where you can sleep. We slept in the fields several times. And when I told him that, I think he liked this a lot. Right, right.

Because that was just like, never mind, you know, he can do this shit. He can find his way. And, you know, my first trip from Moscow to New York actually confirmed that they picked the right guy because that trip was even harder. But anyway. Let me toss it over to Dave for a minute to do this ad read. Okay. And then we'll get right back. Yeah, we just want to say thanks to our second sponsor of the evening.

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Again, that's ghostbed.com slash house with code house at checkout to save whopping 50%. Check out their pillows, check out their covers. You too can be a sleeper age. So, Jack, one thing. I mean, I want to talk a little bit about your training and then that first trip to New York. But one thing to just kind of maybe shape that conversation a little bit, I think it's fascinating that they built your cover out of whole cloth. That this is my American mind thinking.

If I'm in director at S, I'm going to look for somebody who's a dual citizen, somebody who has one American parent, somebody who already speaks fluent English. You know, those are the types of attributes I would be looking for. you know, somebody who has a foot in the door already, but they really found a German and grew an American out of you from the ground up. Yeah. I'm going to chime in with this, but I got to tell you how I was recruited.

Yeah. Yeah. That after 18 months, Herman decided that it, he already, I guarantee you, he reported his findings back to Berlin where the headquarters were for the KGB in East Germany. So, and they decided to invite me to Berlin under the pretext that I needed to get some more training.

So I was there for three weeks and I got some better training than I got in the university town where I lived. And on the next to last day of that visit to Berlin, I was taken to headquarters. and I guarantee you the person who talked to me was the head of the KGB in East Germany because his office was phenomenal I mean it was very rich expensive furniture and like decorated very nicely and when he started he spoke only Russian

I understood some of it and some of it was translated it was a bunch of BS small talk and and without warning he asked the question. So what? Are you in or not? I was not prepared for that. Okay?

This is another one of, you know, when they were talking about making decisions rather quickly. So I stole it. And I think that maybe it was okay. I said, well,

I don't, I can't make a decision. I don't know if I'm qualified and I don't have any training yet. And he said, don't worry about it. We're going to train you. and we know that you're qualified.

So I expect your answer by tomorrow noon. You know, that made for a sleepless night, speaking of sleeping. You know, because now I was faced with reality that I had never really considered. So, you know, I knew that I had a phenomenal career ahead of me. I was on path to become a tenured professor, like a member of the quote-unquote ruling class, or maybe joined the government. So, you know, the legit government, not espionage. And then here was the adventure and the flattery that the mighty KGB was after me.

Yeah. My God. And what really moved the needle, it was very close, but what moved to me, because the other thing that held me back in East Germany was my basketball team. I was, I mean, I was married to my basketball team. I didn't have a steady girlfriend at the time. Basketball was my life, which was more important than anything else. So, but what moved the needle was I was going to be able to move, to, to travel to the West, you know,

and, you know, visit countries that otherwise were not accessible and have the good life of an East Termin. James Bond. Because we had our own James Bond and that guy was hunting down Nazis, but he had the good life. He had the fancy cars. They lived in nice homes. And he had several girlfriends in a row. So, so. What is that, is it 17 moments in spring? No, no, this is the invisible visor in translation. Okay. It was a series with, with an actor, the only used to an actor who made it in Hollywood by the name of Amin Miller-Stahl. He's still alive. He's in his late 80s. Fascinating.

Yeah. I never met him, but yet this is what I knew about. They didn't, you know, they actually sort of hinted at the stuff when they were telling me, well, you've got to think big, you've got to think, you know, you're going to be in big, you know, a big car. And none of this

none of this happened until after I quit the KGB and had a career in corporate, right? That's when it happened. I mean, there was a lot of sacrifice that I did for the cause. But anyway, so I had to share that with you because there's so many ironic aspects to my life. But it says, my God, this is ridiculous. And the irony also is that as a sleeper, I'm not, I'm not sleeping very well these days.

So that is your solution. Tell us about the training and the building of your cover to get you prepared for this mission. Yeah, okay. Now, first I was trained to be deployed in West Germany. But as part of the training, they told me to pick a language, learn another foreign language. So I picked English because English was really easy for me in high school and in college. And so I got a tutor and I started studying English from scratch, studying English from scratch. And when I want to do something, I do it 110%.

So I threw as much into the studying of English as I could. I started reading materials initially just newspapers, every word that I didn't know. I wrote down and learned every single word. I read novels eventually. I raced through the high school program in about a month. And then I got myself another tutor with whom I had conversations. And then after a year of training, I had a visitor from Moscow. and we were meeting in my apartment and he asked like just one of the things he asked so how's your

English going and I said I pulled a book out of my shelf and I said I can read that without a dictionary he said ha so a week later I had my my my handler in Berlin gave me a a the German word popped into my head and that usually very often blocks my English, a recorder, a tape recorder. And they told me, just tape something, say something. Well, there's one thing I knew I was pretty damn good speaking with less of an accent than all the other people that were learning English, you know, my contemporaries. I have a talent to imitate languages. I can also do a very pretty good English and Indian accent, you know.

So, sorry, the comedian in me. No, that's great. But anyway, and a week later, I was on a plane to Moscow because somebody had this idea, man, perhaps this guy can be trained to learn English so well that we can put him into the end. United States as a born American, you know why this is so inviting, is because if I'm born in the United States, there's no red flag associated with my existence. Right.

There is no other nationality involved. I didn't come through another country. I was just like, hey, was born in New Jersey. Right? So they had this dream. And so when I, when I appeared in Moscow, they had. They had me talk with two English-speaking individuals. One was a Russian English teacher.

That was a cover story. She taught English at Moscow University, but she was KGB. And then a born American, a woman who had married a KGB agent and emigrated, that poor thing made a real bad decision because I worked with her for two years. She was as miserable as can be. But so, and then when the women were done talking, they gave feedback to the decision makers. And the American said, I can work with them. I think he can do it. The Russian was a little bit concerned, but, you know, wishful thinking took over.

And that's how I wound up in Moscow, working on my, primarily working on my English, but also being taught phenomenal tradecraft. The Berlin teaching wasn't that good. I was trained in Moscow, I was trained one-on-one. And what also happened, in addition to interacting with my tutor, the American woman, once, twice every week, I also had the opportunity for about six months to work with a fellow whose name you may know,

Morris Cohen. Morris Cohen was a member of the Rosenberg spiring, him and his wife, Lana. They managed to not get caught. They were born Americans. And so what was good about this, at this point, I could interact with a male voice. and imitate the male voice rather than just a female. And Morris and Lana were actually redeployed after they wound up initially in Poland and the Soviet Union, redeployed in the UK, spent some time in jail and were incarcerated.

They were caught in the UK, but were exchanged and wound up living the rest of their life, very, very highly regarded and very well kept. in Moscow. And they died believing in communism. Jack, out of curiosity, and I know that the whole program, like you probably don't have insight because of the compartmentalization.

But ever since, you know, like the 70s or 80s, there's been that media, the Hollywood idea, that Russia trains at sleeper agents by having them live in small communities, raising kids, learning English, things like that. Was that something that you were aware of, or did it seem more like taking on people like you who just had a knack for it?

That is total BS. Okay. And I tell you, first of all, you don't recruit children. You don't. Yeah. You don't know what you have. Right. What they were after, and the CIA is doing the same thing.

They were recruiting primarily in, in colleges. They were looking for people mature enough when you know what you're dealing with, what kind of a personality you're dealing with, but not old enough to have ties, strong ties back home. And so like the Americans where they were supposedly recruiting young kids, that doesn't work. Right.

And I was never aware that there was anything like a Potemkin-type village. where we were learning how to mow the lawn out front with a white picket fan watching American I tell you what I was the illegals particularly somebody like me

who was smuggled in as a born American we were the elite of the elite and my liaison once told me how he envied me because you know they admired us we were at the top I got

in two years years before I resigned from the KGB, I got the second highest declaration of the Soviet Union that will tell you something. You think they would have thrown everything that they have in training me? You think so, right? Yeah. Nothing. What, what the folks that trained me with regard to, not language, language was good and tradecraft was good. Everything else was, was substandard. the folks that tried to tell me what it was like to live as an American didn't know what they didn't know. They had lived in the United States as diplomats, and they all lived in the northern part of Manhattan. You know where that is, where they had a Soviet compound.

When they were done with their day job and maybe some spying, they went home and lived with their families. They didn't know what it was like to live like an American. and have a job to, I mean, nothing. They gave me advice that didn't work. Right. So I don't want to, I don't want to like skip too far ahead in your story, but just in a general sense, when you did come to the U.S., were those cultural gaps of saying you grew up here but not growing up here?

Did those cause issues for you? Like general cultural references and things like that? I was smart enough to know that I didn't know. So I, and I tell you why. And this is one thing that they did something good. They had me go on a practice trip to Canada for three months with a German identity. So I mingled with Canadians that we all thought were very much like Americans. Well, yeah, sort of, but not really.

They say A a lot, eh? So anyway, but I realized. that, you know, this would be a task that I have to be very careful with. Now, one thing I did during that trip, just to check if my language, my ability to speak English with a sort of an American accent was working with Canadians, I was once sitting next to a bar in Windsor, Ontario, which is right on the other side of Detroit. and my neighbor was an American. And I spoke with him about them, the Canadians, as if implicit that I was an American.

And he had no problem with that. I was very proud of that. But I did know that there were a lot of things I had to learn by observing. And I got really lucky in one sense because my first job was as a bike messenger in Manhattan. And, you know, I spent quite a bit of time waiting for deliveries in an office. And I was able to just listen to what the other messenger talked about, how they behaved, watched them. They didn't care about me. These were all transients.

But I was able to absorb, you know, things about, you know, who's on the Yankees? Who do we hate? Oh, we hate the Boston Red Sox and so forth. I watched a lot of television, and I managed, I was very careful getting very close to individuals, in particular women, because I was concerned that, you know, because women are more intuitive. And instinctively, I knew this. So my first steady girlfriend was an alien. She was from South America. With her, I could be more intimate.

She couldn't figure it out. So it took me about six, seven years to, no, yeah, six, seven years to become comfortable. I went, after three years of messenger work, I went to college in the U.S. And it was in New York City, it was Peru College. In those days, it was like the United Nations. So I felt really comfortable interacting with everybody. And when I had my first job, I felt too comfortable. And this is where a Cuban national helped me out.

This is what happened. So one day, we were good friends. He was very smart. We worked together on the same team. We got along phenomenally well. And one day, he gave me some advice. He took me into a room and he said, Hey, Jack, you know, I like you a lot.

You're a great guy. You're smart. You're good to work with. But there's one problem. Everybody thinks you're an asshole. And then, and I asked him, really? And then he told me,

you were so aggressive. You're so negative. You're rude, man. And I realized, my God, I got to change that. And then then I paid attention to how everybody else communicated. And Americans typically, unless

they're aggressive New Yorkers maybe, but most Americans really are not super critical and particularly critical and saying critical things without being asked for an opinion. So that's when I

mellowed and I changed and I paid more attention how others communicate and interact with one another and by the time by the time the FBI caught up with me, which was at that point, maybe like 12 or 13 years later, I was very much Americanized, even though there's still some residue where I can get very blunt, but I keep that to a minimum and only when it counts.

Jack, you mentioned you were a bike messenger for a number of years and you went to college. what is the point of an illegal what is you know these sleep rage is like what is the point if they don't have access because that's normally what we think about no yes good question and i'm going to answer this the the plan a was brilliant plan a was for me you know first of all i had to acquire documents that made me an american you know the birth certificate wasn't good enough i had to get a social security card and a driver's license. In those days, that was enough. And then Plan A said,

so once you got your driver's license, your Social Security card, you have a job, you have an apartment with an address rather than living in a hotel, and you have a real job, then you apply for a passport. And the idea was, once you have that passport, you're going to emigrate.

You go as an American to Switzerland or Austria, and then you start a company there. And then we put money into that company, and two years later, you go back to the United States and repatriate all that money. And you don't have to tell anybody how you made that money. You said, like, you know, I was a bookseller or whatever. or I consulted and nobody will dig any deeper. So at that point, immediately,

you know, I could have mingled with people of interest that was like maybe join a country club near the Pentagon. Fascinating. The plan was brilliant. However,

I made it a big mistake. So we actually practiced And I think they made a mistake too, by the way. But we practiced to filling out the form. So I was very familiar with the application form. And they told me to apply in person, not by mail. Okay.

So I took the form and I took the documentation that I needed. I took it to Rockefeller Center. I don't know if they still have a section of the State Department where you can get a passport in person, I don't know. And, you know, I lined up and handed in my documentation and my application. And the guy behind the counter told me, well, if you could step aside, I'm just going to check your stuff and then I'll call you. And when he called me, oh, so now I tell you what the mistake I made.

I filled out everything honestly. So when I filled out the what the job you have to your profession I wrote messenger I should have

written contractor it didn't occur to me I was a messenger I didn't say I didn't even write bike messenger so that was a mistake number one mistake number two

was there were two fields that were not mandatory when I you're planning to travel and where you're planning to go. I left those blank. So I go back to the counter and the guy says, you know, Mr. Barski, there are some doubts about your identity. Would you please fill out this auxiliary questionnaire? He gave me the questionnaire.

And I was still confident, you know, I'm going to fill this out. And the first question was, where did you go to high school? I am. At this point, I was bus. it. Yeah. Because there was no record of Jack Barski having attended high school. I knew that Jack Barski was a very rare name. So there's no way that another, you know, like a Jack Smith attended high school or something like that. So the high school, and my back story was Peter Stuyvesant, which, by the way, was also a mistake because there was a school for the gifted.

And my backstory had me grow up in the country. So I wasn't really smart. Yeah. So, so anyway. So my ability to make a quick decision saved me from truly being busted. I just walked back to this was instinct. I walked back to that window and I was cursing him out and I said, well, who needs all that BS? And I grabbed the documentation and my application that was sitting in front of him and walked out.

And another security hole, the guy should have remembered my name and reported me. Didn't. Yeah. But that busted plan A. So I, and I felt like a total failure. In a sense, I was. You know, I hadn't thought this true.

You know, whenever as smart as I am, I'm still pretty smart and I still make a lot of dumb mistakes. So that one was very costly. And I'm really glad I made this because I could have done a lot of damage to this country. and I could have run up in jail as well so never mind but you know I'm very glad that this failed

so well now plan B you know I'm back in Moscow and I told him this is what happened and at that point they had to keep me because I had proven I had done something that was very difficult they were so impressed with me

like finding When I told them how I had to work hard to get around the obstacles to get the documentation, to get the driver's license and the Social Security card and how I had to improvise because their instructions didn't work. And then I got a job where I could actually finance myself. I didn't need any money from the KGB to exist once I have the job. I mean, they knew they had a good guy, and they wanted to figure out how can we continue using him? And there's one other thing that I found out that nobody ever told me that became clear to me in one of those interviews, where the head of the director at S stated quite clearly that the most value that it ascribed to us illegals in the U.S. without us being in the United States.

And you put two and two together. We're talking about the late 80s. Who were the most dangerous and most damaging spies for the KGB in the United States? And you know those names, Alder James and Robert Hanson. And who did they interact with? The diplomats. So, and there was, and Andropov was very much concerned that diplomatic relations could broken because there was this CIA versus KGB war going on in a lot of kicking out, you kick

out my spies, then I kick out your spies. And he was worried that no more diplomatic relations, there were no non-official cover people there to the extent I know. Us illegals would be left over to communicate, to keep that chain of communication going. So they wanted me back there. And then they said, well, now, okay, you know, plan B, this is the long game. They didn't tell me about what I just told you. They kept that a secret.

No, no instructions, nothing. I had no idea. This is compartmentalization to an extreme. And that was bad because, you know, for me to make good decisions all by myself, I needed to have some background for crying out loud. So anyway, so I went to college. and graduated in three years as valedictorian.

That was another mistake. There was a last vestige of cultural ignorance when the dean called me into his office and asked me what my topic for the graduation speech might be. And I said, what graduation speech? Well, you're the valedictorian. I said, huh? And, you know, he,

He talked me into it. I didn't want to do it, but whatever. I got lucky again. I could have been busted there. So, but, you know, and they asked me to, you know, study economics and maybe get a job on Wall Street to be rich. But I really liked information technology, and I changed my major, and I told them that, and they were okay with that because they knew that that would make me pretty valuable down the road. Jack, I'd like to ask you, you know, you talked about building up your cover. First off, what was your COVCOM plan with KGB?

Like, how did you get in touch with them and communicate with them from the United States? And if we can start to talk about some of like the operational taskings that they had for you. Yeah. So let's start with the operational criminal taskings. What I was told initially, I was prepped to, to befriend people in government who are in charge of foreign policy, or at least people in think tanks that influence foreign policy, such as the Hudson Institute and a few others. And that's all I knew.

And, of course, there was always as many contexts as you can make to, you know, I was to operate as a spotter. Okay. There were no other specific pasts that I was given. Until the last two years, they also asked me if I could get a hold of some information technology that was on the do not import list. So the only success I might have had is that they may have recruited some people, particularly students who I fingered as being good targets for recruitment possibly because they were pretty smart, but they had, they were, in those days we recruited based on ideology primarily.

And you know the mice acronym, the I was still number one. But ideology, not necessarily communist ideology, just like radical right or even. you know, fanatical supporters of Israel to record on a false flag and so forth. So I don't, they never told me. They never once told me good job, not even in general. They just didn't let me know. They just gave me that decoration that indicated that I was doing a good job. So that's all I can tell you.

It's very surprising when people asked me. So what did you really do? I never touched any document that had secrets. one thing and and this is this is a another educated guest but I believe that they were considering me as a go between between either Ames or Hansen because in 1986 that was my last visit to Moscow they gave me a task to find a a a a spot or a drop operation in yes a drop bed dead drop operation in new hampshire someplace in the wilderness and they told me that would have to be a spot where you can deposit something that has

size like a small suitcase and uh i found the spot and and oh and they asked me if i was willing and this was the only time to ask me if I was willing to do a job that would increase the danger to my existence in the United States. Well, guess what? Carrier and getting stuff from Ames or Hansen, and then interacting with diplomats, because at this point, I was very good at surveillance detection. knew I was never followed. Okay, and they knew that I was good at this because I had a lot, very, very good training.

So, so that was, they were considering it and they pulled it back for some reason. You know, it's interesting to me that, you know, you mentioned like the issues with the passport as your failure, but really that feels like a failure of the KGB because they know espionage, right? They know that covers need to be backstopped, right? That things need to happen. And I can't believe for a second that they didn't have low-level assets in the State Department that could have rubber-stamped things like that. There was no backstop.

I had to do it all on my own. That's crazy to me. What they did do, they did research for my cover story. So they found the school where I went to elementary school. school and middle school. They picked the high school that they didn't know what's the wrong high school, Peter Stuyvesant, I believe. Then they did something really good. They had me quit high school because of migraines. They also had my father die because my mother's maiden name was Schwartz. And so I grew up bilingual. So this way I could, if somebody asked me about,

the touch of an accent that I still had. I said, yeah, yeah, I grew up a in New York that's the end of that question. So, and then they had me quit ice. My father died. I woke up with my mother.

They had me quit heist. My mom, actually dad, I died from a heart attack and my mom died pretty young in a traffic accident. And I was like grief-stricken and quit high school, I was at migraines, and I started working in a chemical factory. George Luters and Company, I still remember, and George Luters and Company had exploded,

so it didn't exist anymore. And then they had me go to an upstate farm in New York City. That one wasn't backstop, but, you know, so I, and when I came to the United States, you know, I was a country boy who was going to try to make. make it in New York. It was okay, but it wasn't backstopped at all. Yeah. And then the communication with the KGV. Communication was the hardest part of it.

So every Thursday night, I got a radio gram, Morse code, shortwave, double-encrypted. it every Thursday for 10 years at 945, I had to dial my frequency and listen to the radiogram. And sometimes it was pretty long. And then I had to sit down and decipher it. For most of my years, I had to use a manual algorithm, no one-time pad. So that took quite a while. And you have to, you had to really double up on the. on developing the

second set of numbers to make sure that you didn't make a mistake, right? So very often, you know, on Thursdays, I was not available socially. I complained about that because that's a pattern. You don't want to have a pattern as an agent.

You know, what's wrong with this guy? What is he doing on Thursday? And they said, there's nothing we can do about it. My conclusion is that they rented time out of Cuba because initially when I first went to the U.S.

they told me to go to a hotel that has southern exposure. So bingo. So anyway, sometimes it took me until about three in the morning to decipher the radiogram and I got really pissed off when I got

sometimes they started with something. Congratulations, Comrade Deeder on May 1st, the international a holiday for the workers. What the heck are you giving me that kind of BS? And it takes you like an hour to decipher all of that. Exactly.

So, you know, I call, as clever some of these people were, but I call the KGB, as I experience it, the keystone cops of espionage, okay? The other thing, the way I communicated back to them, it was wise of them for me not to use Morse code because you know where it comes from. You don't know where it goes, short way, but you know where it comes from. So I had to do secret writing. And I had two addresses, someplace in the Western world. One was initially in Berlin, then one was in Austria.

When I was a bike messenger and I couldn't socialize and I couldn't watch TV all night, I taught myself Spanish. And so eventually they found an address someplace in South America. I was limited to two pages per letter and one letter per month. to each one of the addresses, no more. So two pages. You can't fit a whole lot of information onto two pages. And so on top of it, I hit, so, and this, this was a lengthy operation.

It took pretty much almost all of my Saturday when I did this on a Saturday. first of all, you have to prepare the surface. You have to clean everything very well. You have to put gloves on. You have to, you use either a mirror or a glass, a sheet of glass to operate on that had to be cleaned up. Then you clean up the paper you're using with, you've got to wash your hands and you clean that up before you put the, the gloves on. Then you devise the open text.

You write this down someplace else, and then you copy this in the, you know, in, not in handwriting. What's the other one? You're like, you,

I forgot the word. In a typewriter? Yeah. And then you take your contact paper out, which was a sheet that was in a notebook. that was a, it had a trace of a chemical on it. And the first 10 pages of a notebook, they bought this at a Walmart and then

pregnant this with some chemical that you can't, you can't find unless you know what you're looking for. So, and then, then I did this, you know, with the help of that page, I put the secret writing on the letter, the paper that went into the letter. and then I put a hair dryer. I used a hair dryer to smooth out and everything so you don't see any imprint, right? Nothing. I had to also use, you know, be used, I had to, I practiced this in Moscow to make sure that I don't leave too much garbage and the imprint is not too strong.

So, so this was, this was, this training was really good. And then I was required to go on surveillance, on a surveillance detection route for three hours before mailing this thing in, you know, putting it in a mailbox. Wow. So that took care of most of my Saturday, every other Saturday. So again, I was not available to socialize on Saturdays. It was horrible. And here comes my biggest complaint that I never, that I never voiced. but I've heard the FBI complaining about bureaucracy

and this was entirely bureaucratic. Once a quarter, I had to use a valuable real estate for secret writing to issue a finance report. Okay? How much money I spent because they paid for my, the rent for my apartment, they took care of my medical expenses and they paid for half of when I had a vehicle for half of my car expenses so I just they didn't give me the money so but I had to write down what it was to send it in

that was idiotic they spent so much money on training me so much money on on maintaining me and and and they they they had me account for a few hundred dollars every quarter. So, again, you know, there's nothing but complaints. But that one I didn't put, I didn't complain about simply because they promised me that this money that they didn't have to send me was, that was saved up for me and my family. And they did save, save some, at least. I don't know if they saved everything, but they gave my, my German family some of the money

that I asked them to hand over. I asked them to give them everything. I don't know if they did. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So this was the communication. One other means of communication was dead dropped. So for instance, when I got a passport, I always traveled when I went back to Moscow.

And I went back to Moscow four times every other year. I went back with a forged passport. I think they were mostly German, and they were not American. They may have been Canadian, but not American. The rule was not ever to use a passport, a forged passport in the country where you operate off that country, you know. So for traveling back, they had to give me some money, some travel money and a passport, and that was done by a debt-drop operation. and occasionally when I had too much information that you know length of report occasionally they asked me to write down you know what Americans think about certain occurrences in in the world such as the shooting down of the South Korean airline and so at that point I you know I put my foreign policy hat on and I wrote some

that was too long to put in a letter. So that I photographed and put in a container and asked for a dead drop operation. That happened about two or three times. By the way, just to

add something interesting, in that particular report, I hammered them. I told them, what the heck were you doing? This raised the level of anti-American tremendously has put a lot of strain and it's endangering the negotiations that

Gorbachev already had with Reagan. I hope they listened. Jack, how was your ideology holding up? You know, like, you know, you grow up with one idea of the West. Then you moved there. You're a bike messenger for seven years, you know, you go to college. Like, were you still kind of vaccinated? against it or was like living in the land of the big PX sort of like, or, you know, the Walmarts,

was that starting to infiltrate your thinking? Good question. The vaccine held up for a while. First of all, I already expected after I had this practice trip to Canada that, and I know even West Germany there would be wealth. And we were rationalizing the wealth that the NATO states, had one word imperialism. They stole all the stuff, the good stuff from the third world.

Some of it is true, but clearly, once I had a job in corporate, I realized that a lot of that wealth was generated by hard work, by comparison in East Germany. You didn't have to work hard if you didn't want to. Everybody got paid the same. There wasn't a pay for performance. and maybe collectives occasionally would get an award

if they did a good job but that was not the rule so and I and I was also looking for the evil capitalists my first job was with a with an insurance company

and in those days they were extremely paternalistic and it felt like going home it's like working working in and you know for a big company in east germany you know you you get tired and they promised you a job for life we had free launch and you know and my bosses were all nice so i couldn't find the evil capitalists you know i was looking for them but they weren't they weren't very visible so so here here's how i morph from from communism into what what happened to other people as

well. And it's called the conversion theory. So that that was actually developed by socialist parties in Western countries, in NATO countries, so that the good parts of capitalism and socialism will be joined to create some kind of a welfare state. I thought it was a good idea. And guess what? The fellow that picked me up in Moscow with a limousine, the KGB agent who picked me up, volunteered. He talked about, without me even saying anything, he talked about convergence theory.

And this guy was not a very bright guy. So if he said that, he heard it from the top. Right. I think it may have taken hold within the KGB itself. I'm pretty sure it did. So I wasn't a communist anymore, but, you know, convergence theory seemed to be a good idea. But this is when my world fell apart.

So I resigned from the KGB in 1988. In 1989, the wall came down. Right. And I was sitting in my apartment in Queens, and I watched this on TV, and I said, that can't be. because nobody expected that, not the KGB, not the CIA, not the Stasi. Clearly not I.

I thought, you know, East Germany was still on path to overtake the Western part and create a great economy, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all of a sudden it fell apart. So now I had to find out what happened there. And because of the availability of the Internet, I could find out. rather quickly that I had been lied to in spades from day one, but including also the scientific Marxism-Leninism thing. And I got my hands on original writings of Vladimir Lenin, who was my hero, because he implemented the Marxist theory in reality. He created the communist Russia and then created the Soviet Union.

And he was a hero because he gave his life for it. And he, you know, he died as a result of weakening after having been subject to an attempted assassination. So in my hero, I knew that Stalin was bad, but my hero turned out to be just as much more than as a killer than Stalin was, because there were passages in his writing, unredacted writing where it stated, and I forgot what the title of the book was, it may have been one step forward and two steps back, but it doesn't matter. He gave instructions to Felix Jasinski and the cohorts of the Chekha. That was the forerunner of the KGB. To you, you can't. You can't

You've got to hang some cool, some cool,cks, the rich peasants, by the road, hanging from trees so they're visible to give people an idea that, you know, having great wealth is not very, it's not a very good thing for your health, or might actually wind up in death. That is what Lenin said. That's it, man. Now, I now became secretly an anti-communist. Now I'm opening an anti-communist because I also had the opportunity to learn about the United States and how it was formed by the founders.

I took an online course several years ago. And 7-Eleven made me emotionally an American. So there's nothing left. But it was a very, very long transition. You know, when I resigned from the KGB and I just got, I stepped out of, you know, political thinking, policy thinking, I just dedicated myself to my family. And, you know, I became, you know, I was into consumerism, you know, buy big houses.

and I could at that point, two cars for the family, my two wives that I had, my two wives that I had in my entire life, American wives never had to work one hour in their life. So I became a consumer, and that was my focus. But, you know, 7-11 made me an emotional, an American. and then I became intellectual and American truly because when I took that course on the American Constitution

I said yeah that's the only way to deal with the evil that we have experienced throughout history and it's still in existence so this is this was my journey if I may add to this my friends who I studied with

and particularly the ones that became party members and were active in the youth movement, such as my best friend, who actually wound up in the Stasi, but he was as a chemist there. He actually wound up heading the forgery department of the Stasi. So, and those, when the wall came down,

that was just as surprising for them. And all of a sudden, it hit them hard. It hit them hard. because now you cannot absolutely believe that you, that you serve the wrong cause. So they were all miserable. And when I met them, they were complaining, you know, we had the wrong leadership,

you know, the communism is still a good cause. And, you know, we were not wrong, but they also had their pensions cut in half. And just like they were full of complaints and were miserable. So again, I got kind of, lucky to decontaminate very slowly because I don't know what it would have happened to me. Let's say had I followed the KGB when they told me when I had listened to them and they told me to go back because we may want to come to that yet.

And I would have wound up living my life out in Russia after the war came down. It would be miserable as hell. Can you tell us a little bit more about like the unraveling about how you were exposed as a KGB officer in America. And I have to imagine that the FBI was all over you for many, many years. Actually, not true. I got to tell you that I first resigned before the FBI found me. Yeah.

What led to your resignation and did that, were you afraid that they were going to kill you? Yes, I was concerned. Okay. What was led to my resignation was a four-letter word, L-O-B-E. I, unbeknownst to them, I was married to this young lady who was originally from South America, and she became pregnant on purpose because she, I just wanted to date her and didn't want to marry her. And I told her, I'm not going to get married to you, but then she said to me, you know, I'm illegal. can you help me get married?

And so I could get a green card. And I said, I did some research and I figured, yeah, that'll work. And so here's an illegal making another illegal legal legal. He became a citizen because he was married to me. And at that point, I was still illegal. Bizarre. And she became pregnant on purpose because that's something that women who came, who came from other countries did when they found a real good man.

And I didn't fall in love with her. I liked her a lot. She was good company, very beautiful. But I loved the little girl that grew up in 18 months. And, you know, when this is, I don't know if you have children or particularly girls, most men can relate to that. I watched this baby grow up and unbeknownst to me

I had an attack of unconditional love it was so strong and was much stronger than any feeling I had towards a woman it was it had no desire of getting anything back the only desire was to serve this girl and help her and just be there for her and love her to people

So it was in the late fall of 1988 when the KGB somehow got spooked when somebody must have whispered something into somebody's ears where they had some reason to believe that I might be in danger. And the last thing they wanted me to be in jail. And I tell you, most people don't understand this, but you do. They weren't so worried about me. They were worried about me being in jail because I would cause them headaches. Because if I wind up in jail, they have to get me out. Otherwise, they can't recruit somebody else.

Okay. And I knew they would get me out. That's what they told me. And they got the Coins out. I had evidence that they would keep their word. So they wanted to avoid that headache. So they called me back. And so we had an emergency process.

Cedar that they activated with a graphic signal, a red dot on my way to work. They knew I had to tell them which way I was going to work, so there could be some, there was a graphic signal spot that I could, should check

every day. Graphic signal. And now I had a problem because I hadn't figured, I wanted to figure out how could I support this girl and her mother remotely? I had no idea. After some, you know, I stalled initially because maybe I was sick.

There was a situation where I was sick and I could not, I was not operational for a month. I had, as a bike messenger, I had busted my right shoulder and I couldn't do anything. So, and they knew about that. And so I could have been sick. and my radio could have not functioned and so forth. So I bought myself a couple of weeks, maybe three weeks, but three weeks later they did something that was unusual. They wanted to figure out, am I still around?

And so they sent one of their diplomats to check on me. And he found me when I was waiting for the A train going from K. Queens into Manhattan. He found me waiting for that train and was still dark. And he came to me from my right. I can remember this like it was yesterday, a short guy in a dark coat. And he came really close to me and whispered into my right ear, where else you're dead.

And that was stated with a very strong Russian accent. All right. You have to take that seriously. Yeah. On the one hand, because he spoke such bad English, I thought he may have just, you know, used the wrong word. Maybe he wanted to say you busted and you didn't have the vocabulary. That threat had to be taken seriously. So the only thing that I could think of is changing my daily routine, going to work,

at a different time, taking different routes, taking different trains, making sure that I'm not reliable in the same spot at the same time. Now, in the long run, that wouldn't have worked. I am now certain that they bought the lie that I've fed him, so they weren't after me, but I didn't know that. Right. That's a pretty brave thing to do, and that's why I'm saying nowadays, I love conquer as all. I just could not leave this kid. Yeah. And then I took, you know, I went on, you know,

surveillance detection routes and mailed myself a letter to determine as to whether, you know, the letter was open. There's the technique that I was taught. And also, what was the other thing I did? Oh, I had, in my apartment, I had two spots that where I, I absolutely knew that if somebody actually went through my apartment, I would know. And I tell you, one was my favorite. I had a chest of drawers where one of the drawers had an overhang.

So when you look at the drawer front, you did not see that the door closed actually more. When you closed the door, it was further in than the way I left it. every night when I went home, I checked that this gap was 8 millimeters. This I was pretty certain about. And because there's one time when I was burglarized, that gap was gone. The people opened the thing and then they closed it again. It doesn't matter what. Nobody would go down.

I mean, who knows, maybe some really, really good people, but they don't have that much time to go lie down. on the floor and look at everything from the bottom. Right. So I was pretty certain that this was okay. So eventually I resigned from the KGB, and the people always ask, how do you resign from the KGB?

There's a famous line in a James Bond movie that says, nobody resigns from the KGB. Well, I didn't. And the reason I got away with it, I sent in my last letter in secret writing, I told him I'm well aware that I'm in danger and that I might be arrested. I would love to come home, but I really can't.

I have HIV AIDS. And in those days, that was a death sentence. And I knew because I had conversations in Moscow with a couple of my handlers, how they were so glad about AIDS having invaded the United States as punishment for that lifestyle, that sinful lifestyle that was rampant in the U.S., and they didn't want that deadly disease back in their country. So they absolutely had no reason not to believe me. They had absolutely no reason had they known that I have a child.

That would have been a different story. Right. But none of that became known to me until I reconnected with my. my German family. And when I went back to Germany after I became a US citizen, they did give my German family a portion of my dollar savings and told him that I was dead. And even today, the German registry that keeps track of births and marriages and divorces as Albrecht Dittrich as passing away in 1988.

Wow. So I didn't know any of that until I was able to go back to Germany. And so the FBI didn't know about me until about seven years after my resignation. And that was because of a betrayal. There was a fellow, and you must have heard about it, this fellow by the name of Vasily Matroken. The name does not ring a bell to me. Matroken was an archivist.

He was actually, at one point, the chief archivist in the, in the, not the library, in the archive of the first directorate espionage. So he oversaw the move from the Ljubljanka, where the original headquarters of the ADB was to Yassinogo, the more modern place outside of Moscow. And I believe the reason that he started hating the Soviet system, his son was very ill. And the only place where he could get treatment was someplace in the West, and they didn't allow him to go to the West. And so he started thinking of how he could damage that hated organization. And he started reading this stuff.

And then his hatred was extended to hating the entire system. And so what he did over the years, he smuggled out in small pieces, on small pieces of handwritten notes with some bits and pieces of information. And then he transcribed this stuff with a type of. writer and buried whatever the resulting pages in his dacha. And I don't know exactly when he started this. You can probably read up on this. He co-wrote a book with a British author called The Sword and the Shield and the Shield.

I'm sorry. This is the Bible for anybody who wants to know what the espionage that the KGB did. and that includes also active measures. So, and when the Soviet Union finally fell apart, he felt it was time to reach out initially to the American embassy and tell him what he had. And the CIA officer who he talked with told him we're not interested. Wow.

because he thought, you know, it was old stuff and maybe a dangle. That was a career-changing or ending move by that officer. So the fellow went then to the British embassy, and MI6 was very welcoming, welcoming, and they managed to get this stuff. several boxes of material out of this guy's Dachan and get it over to England where they eventually changed some of the information

that was irrelevant with the CIA. And that is how the FBI was notified about my existence. And all they know was that there's a Jack Varski who is an illegal. who went to the U.S. at a certain time and he lives in the Northeast. Now, all the FBI had to do is look for Jack Barski.

There are not so many. And the one that the Social Security card at the age of the I was in my mid-30s, must have been it. And then they spent two and a half years watching me because they knew that I was highly trained because I survived like altogether 17 years up to that point without being detected. So they were afraid that I might be running a mall or two. And also they were afraid to get too close because as a highly trained agent,

they would have endangered their secrecy. You know, I could have found out that they're watching me. You mean that the woman with the stroller and the guy with the newspaper on the bench and the street sweeper all putting their finger to their ear would have given them away? You bet. And again, this was instinctively the right thing to do. Because, again, you know, because I survived that long. Yeah.

And they may have caught others, and there may have been other illegals who were busted and none of them I'm aware of that but there may have been some that managed to flee or whatever or they were busted I'm sorry they were busted

and wound up in what is that when they put criminals into witness protection program right? I'm getting a little tired I'm talking too much so they did the right thing

and and And literally, oh, there's one, two things, they bought the house next door. I had a house in the country. And when the house next door, there was only one house next door was available, they bought it. And they put a couple of agents there to watch me. And there was no indication that I was active. And then they had another guy.

The lead agent actually was across the street on a hill, and he pretended to be a bird watcher. And he just watched me interact with my children. and he came to the conclusion that I would cooperate and his judgment was correct and that is when they decided to say hello. So how did that encounter go? That was very well orchestrated and it was a big surprise for me.

They obviously knew that I was commuting. They had people watching me but not following me So they sort of knew that I worked in New Jersey, and I was commuting back and forth between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. So they rented themselves a state trooper, and he positioned himself at the bridge over the Delaware. and there's a there's a there's a there's a toll this is a toll bridge where you in those days you had to put a quarter in to get through that means you have to slow down and the the police officer positions himself in uniform in front of me and they told me this is a routine traffic stop would you please pull over and then he did something that should have like made me suspicious because routine traffic stops typically don't tell you to step out of the vehicle. But I was like so unprepared and I was so not watchful anymore. I have forgotten that I was once a spy.

Okay, you know, like so many years, you know, I had compartmentalized this away. I didn't want to think about it. So stepping, I stepped out of the vehicle, not thinking anything. And then there's, again from my right comes another guy. And he was in civilian clothes. And before I could even think, what's this? He flipped open an ID, and without even looking at it, I knew, this is a big problem. And the agent, his name is Joe Riley.

Everybody knows about him because he wrote the afterword in my book. And we became really good friends. the agent told me much later that at that moment my face went white as the driven snow because all the blood exited my head

but it didn't take me very long to recover and that's also confirmed by him so he had me step into the car, his car that was parked at a place where I couldn't see it coming into the bridge. And there was a partner of his sitting in the back seat and he had a gun strapped to his ankle very conspicuously. I think that was a message. And man, I knew that I was in deep shit.

And I knew that there was a good chance I would. wind up in jail that my family would be moved out of the house, my ex-wife would be deported, and my kids would become ward of the state. What a horrible outcome. And this is the instinct that I didn't think about this, but I sort of instinctively knew that I had to make these people like me. And so I did a, I told it a very, very innocent joke. And I asked him, so what took you so long. And, you know, one of the guys whose face I could see couldn't suppress the smile. So then they took me.

Oh, and then I asked another question. I asked, then I asked a question. I asked them, am I under arrest? And they said, no. And then Joe Riley, the lead turned around and told me, this may not be the worst day of your life. All right, that gave me some hope. And that triggered me volunteering once they took me to a motel where they had, it was extremely well guarded.

They had rented one entire ground floor of an L-shaped motel. And at both ends, they had an armed guard. And they put me in the middle of the floor there, the ground floor. And so probably that nobody could listen in at one end, who knows. And they did something that I realized right away was trickery. They had some items on the walls where there was written some information that, like, for instance, my cover name, one of the convenience addresses that I used, and some other stuff. And I realized all of that was from my very early years.

So that wouldn't have worked. But I just started saying, listen here, I am fully aware that the only way for me and my family, by the way, come away from this with the least amount of damage is if I cooperate fully and I have every intention to do so

so this what could have been an interrogation was more of a talk you know we spend two hours you know back and forth talking and I know that

nowadays I know that I I come across very authentic even when I'm lying though I still could have lied but but I told him and it was very believable incredible you know I want to save my family for crying out loud

and so they allowed me to call my wife who was at home because they told me to tell her I'm delayed because of work and then they allowed me to go home not

without introducing me to the head of the team that took care of security. And he told me if you think you can run, you can't. We got every intersection covered. There's no way out. You've got to go home. And I said, you know, okay. I didn't, you know, I had no place to go.

They didn't know that yet. And then we spent about, six or eight weeks debriefing where I met Joe Riley once or twice a week and he got to know me as well as anybody he asked me everything that could be found out about my life from from like birth like childhood everything everything everything because they wanted to know and I think in hindsight it was very important information for the for the FBI to have

to figure out you know other illegals right some way right it was to me I concluded it was important because Riley got commendation from Louis Free the head of the FBI in those days for a job well done

and I couldn't give away any any secrets other than what I did right okay and the other thing that was probably valuable the knowledge that I wasn't running an undercover agent and you know a mole in the US government there's always good to know you know to find out something that something that you can't prove you when you want to prove a negative you can't so that was a little bit of relief in that way so and one other thing I got to tell with you because you you are familiar

with all of this stuff that before And at one point, I was told there is a way that eventually I'm going to get a green card and possibly even citizenship. But that took several weeks. And during those several weeks, I was still very stressed. I was still thinking, oh, my God, oh, my God, I don't know. I don't know. But when they eventually told me, yes, you will be able to get a green card, but you must pass a polygraph. So, and I think you know that most people don't know this, but, you know, in the movies, polygraph tests are aggressive questions and answers where you have a face in light in your face.

No, the polygrapher, who I was told was the best in the Pennsylvania area, he was sitting behind me. and the questions were told me ahead of time. So we actually practice this. We practiced without the devices, the device connected to me. He sits behind me and whispers the questions, and I had to whisper back, yes or no, nothing else was allowed.

So, and then he wired me up, and we did the real. So it was just a formality. The FBI already had the answers they wanted. No, and I tell you why it was not a formality. Because when he was done, he withdrew into his office and reviewed the results. And he showed me that there was a printout and he said, there's something here where you didn't tell the truth.

I don't know. Maybe you didn't tell the truth. But he's a spike. And that shouldn't be. So I asked him, what was the question? And he told me the question. I forgot because I forgot to what the question was. And I'm thinking, I answered the question honestly.

You said, but it spiked. I cannot certify that you told the truth, period. And then it occurred to me, this question was phrased as a negative, a double negative. And I said to him, so maybe it's because it's double negative and it made me think? He said, I don't know. Let's just do it again. I had to retake that question once. And, you know, I spoke at a convention of polygrapher's, and I told them a couple of them. I said this was probably a control question for him.

I had to fail that test for all the answers to be valid. And they told me that's correct. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So he already knew I told the truth, but he had to prove it. Okay. You had to do it by the book.

So, and that's, I started my way on real citizenship, operated with legally, acquired documents for a number of years, which really still put me in danger of being fired from the job by operating with false documents, particularly because I worked for a company that owned a nuclear plant. Another lack of security. This is just really bizarre. And I'm very annoyed. American security is, even today, so full of holes, it bothers the heck out of me. And nowadays, it's all cybersecurity, mostly cybersecurity. So this is what happened.

They allowed me, the FBI allowed me to retain the Jack Barski identity simply because changing it would have been really, really tough on the family, We would have to move out of the area, mostly like witness protection program. And I was already so well established in the U.S., they figured they'd keep the ID. They asked Jack Barski's mom and dad if that was okay with them. They were still alive. And they said, it's okay. The one thing I had to do is change my birth year, not my birth date at first.

because if I had kept the 44 birth date, I would have been able to get Social Security before it was my time, which would have had the FBI helped me commit a crime, right? Yeah, I think that's almost the most interesting part about this whole story is that Jack Barski starts off as your cover identity, but then you have literally become that person, and that's your name now. Yeah, yeah. So now what we came up with, you know, if I changed the year, I have to quit my job because, you know, to get social security.

I had, you know, I had to have a record on file, right? So to get whatever for employment purposes. So they told, we decided, let's just change the year. So, all right, this made me really nervous because I had to. to tell HR to change my birth year. I had to change it, right? Otherwise, I'm committing fraud. So she, I said to her, I said, I need to talk to you. I think there's something wrong in my file. I think my birthday is wrong. Now, this is an HR person who operates HR in a company that co-ons a nuclear plant. And she didn't realize that this is a really interesting situation. After having worked in that company for a year to figure out

there's something wrong in the files, and it's my birthday, you must be suspicious at that point. No, she wasn't. She pulled out the file and she said, well, 16 here. I said, this is your birthday. I said, well, you know, here, this is my driver's license. So how did you, do you sign this thing and said, I don't know what I was thinking, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't clearheaded. I made a mistake, sorry. Yeah. So she went and corrected the year to 1949 without reporting that incident. Wow.

Pretty bad. I actually visit, I visited that nook, okay, while I was still operating with that false ID. We do. So, Jack, we have some viewer questions, but real quick before we get to those, because you had mentioned before the show that you wanted to talk a little bit about, like, what's going on in the U.S. and the world right now as somebody who came from a, from the Soviet Union. Can you sort of opine and give us your opinions? Well, it looks like the entire world is not going necessarily towards communism, because even China is not a full-fledged communist country, because communism requires that the state owns all the means of production.

And that has been proven to not really work very well. So it looks like the entire world is going at different... at a different pace towards oligarchy. I mean, we have oligarchs in this country. I mean, these are people who have so much power because they have so much money, you know, particularly the folks who are in information technology, they can hold on to their power and they can influence what's going on in the country. Some do and some don't.

But there's a danger there. But we have an oligarch functioning oligarch. and Russia, for sure. It's not, you know, when I have a problem when otherwise credible right-wing commentators talk about that there's communism coming in the United States. This is an exaggeration. Just tell the truth. The danger is really, and I don't like collectivism, and I don't like elitism, and I don't like elitism.

elitism, and this is all associated with an oligarchy. I can't stand it. I've always been an anti-authoritarian. I've had to suppress that while growing up under communism. My children are like that. They wouldn't do very well. And if we don't get a grip on AI, we might wind up being pets to artificial creative personas.

So all of this is a specter. I am hopeful that this can be reversed. I am hopeful that I am personally surrounded with a lot of, a lot of good, good people who still know how to think and who still have common sense in them. And I think what needs to happen is we need to make some changes in our education system. And there are some people who have influence who actually think that, for instance, AI could make a difference. And so we could help our students to learn how to think again. having also said that, I'm currently working on a project with Gen Z.

And, you know, those people still know how to think. Not all of Gen Z is like La-D-Dade-Dah and play with their cell phone all day. Yeah. So never give up hope. I don't, you know, I think the doomsday is not just around the corner. If in the United States or in the Western world, you know, I have knowledge that in Germany, the direction is very similar. And but, you know, if we give up hope, then, you know, then it's over.

And, and I think, I think if this happens, it's not going to happen in my lifetime, but it may happen while my children are still alive. And I'm praying that this, this is, this can be, It can be prevented. And there have been crises in the United States, particularly the Civil War, that looked like they're meant to be the end of the world. And there was a time when communism was quite popular, and the communist spies did a lot of damage. So we are a country of survivors And I believe that the

The spirit of the The folks that came to the United States The adventurous spirit is still alive Even among illegal immigrants A lot of them come here because they want to do something with their life So I think if we can tap into that spirit we can prevent becoming pets to artificially created personas. Out of curiosity, you know, like the fall of the Soviet Union, nobody saw that come, right?

You mentioned the, you know, that that happened, I think, by and large, you know, for economic reasons, political reasons, but also by the will of the people. You know, if we look, and I don't want to get political, but if we look at like Trump, his brand of authoritarianism, but also on the left, we have more not individual authoritarianism. moral authoritarianism towards the government and corporatism. How do the people just, like who, how do the people ensure their future, so it's not an individual or the government, but the people? Well, I wish I had that recipe.

You know, it's, it's a, it's got to be grassroots base, grassroots based movement supported by people like Elon Musk. And also people like, and he's a politician, but he's doing something that will appeal, and he may be doing something if Trump gets elected, that may appeal to people of all political stripes and may bring health back into the country. Our country is slowly dying from, from bad nutrition and ill-managed medical services. And that's not in question anymore.

I mean, you know the data. We're the fattest country on the planet. Being fat is not good to your health and not good for your life. Most people that died from COVID were overweight. So that's, yeah. There are things and also the trend, And the forced mutilation of children without parental consent is another thing that pretty much unites the country.

The majority of people, no matter what political party they belong to or whether they're independent such as I am, can't stand this. So there are still things that unite us that provide some of the glue that some commentators things think has disappeared. And I'm not, I'm not one of those doomsayers. That's just my opinion. No, I think that you probably have better insight than, you know, 99% of the people in the U.S. in terms of seeing that kind of system. Because even like you mentioned, like the KGB agent that picked you up in the limousine, like the idea of communism or the idea of the guy of everything always being equal, like it doesn't exist. It. It,

never exists. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, yes, for what it's worth, but, you know, don't ever call me an expert in this, because once you take on the expert label, you have to make things up because experts are supposed to have an opinion about everything. And I have no problem saying, answering a question, but I don't know. You have not answered a question like that yet. Yeah.

So Chief Justice Keefe, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Mr. Barski, what was the most memorable and or funny time while going through KGB schooling, whether that will be operational or going through training, also an honest take on Russian stereotypes? The most funny time. Well, you know, funny in a sense when I messed up. Well, that's in hindsight. funny

I can't really recall funny this is all when I look back and say my God I can now relate all the mistakes that they made and I made that can be looked at as a joke but funny while it was operational let me think here now you ask me a question I can't answer

it's okay yeah we'll move on and then if something comes to you while we're talking about other stuff. Just chime in. Taylor, thank you very much. What's your thoughts on George Kisavalter and the recruitment of Popov?

So now you ask me another question that I can't answer. Who's Popov? I don't know. Yeah. M. Corby, thank you very much. In what ways were the KGBs training better than the Stazis? Also, any thoughts on

Vatali, Yerchenko's returned to Russia. Yerchenko is an interesting situation. This has not been resolved. You know, he's the one who escaped his two CIA guards, right? I don't. I can't. I'm not familiar. Yes, he is.

And I actually am friends with a guy who was working for an ins and. N-CIS in Italy, who was the first Westerners that Juerchenko actually talked with. I would guess that he was most likely a dangle. And, you know, the fact that he, now there's some speculation. He wanted to go to the United States because he wanted to connect with his old flame. That is not proven. And when he found out that the flame didn't want to have anything to do with him, he just disappeared. I don't know.

I don't know how he could have disappeared like that and wound up back in Moscow. He had to have somebody to help him. Yeah. M. Corbyn, thank you very much. How many high-ranking officials use the illegals program to steal or launder money? How many high-ranking officials? Say that again, because I wasn't aware that you actually taking. that's why I ask you questions back that you're taking questions from the from the listeners.

So say it again, please. How many high-ranking officials, I assume it means like Russian officials, use the illegals to program to steal or launder money? That's a very good question because it's very easy to do so. Like, for instance, you know, when they, when some guy, because in espionage cash is king, right? So when you have a debt drop operation and they never told me how much money I was getting, I got enough money to travel to Moscow. So maybe there was $10,000 and I found only $5,000. Right.

Okay. There's no, somebody could have taken that money. The guy who made the container, obviously. And, you know, when I told him to hand my savings, to my family, I guarantee you the courier took some of that money because my family didn't have a clue how much thing. Yeah.

Now, can you do a lot of stealing that way? You know, illegal, the way I know, illegal existence didn't handle a lot of money. So now if they, like for instance, if I had to, this is going to be now interesting, if I had to interact with Ames or the other fellow and give them money, I could have stolen some, or the person who handed it to me could have stolen some. But, you know, it's massive money laundering is not possible that way. Yeah.

It's too awkward and not enough money involved. Yeah. R.S. Thank you very much. Spasiba. R.G., thank you. Mr. Barcy, what do you think about communism today? And why do so many young people nowadays favor this ideology?

And he puts some stuff in German in there that I'm not even going to attempt to say. But that is one of the things we see that common with like kids, not super common, but with kids, it stays like communism works. It just hasn't been done right. Yeah, I've heard this over and over again. So here's the thing. I'm glad you asked that question because I'm perfectly prepared to answer that question. In the history of the world, there have been 27 communists slash socialist revolutions.

Some of them started out honest, with honest leaders. I believe that Fidel Castro was an honest communist. And guess what? Every one of them wound up in a dictatorship. Because a revolution means you have to use violent means. You can't get to power in a democratic way. So once you start with violence, how do you protect the power that you have gained? And you still do this with good intention.

You need to stay in power. like the revolution in October revolution in Russia was followed by the red terror. This was violence. So you build up a structural that needs to be maintained violence, which is a dictatorship. Every communist state that started has become some kind of a dictatorship. Now, second part of the question, so why is communism still? so attractive because

there's this romantic notion that all men are good all men and women were all born and innocent little babies and the only reason that we go bad is because we are

growing up in bad circumstances in poverty and and being exploited and all this stuff so it

that turns some of us bad. Well, that's a romantic notion. There are people who are born bad. A sociopath doesn't evolve out of, there's bad genetics. And

there's people who turn bad. If you look at the history of mankind, there was not a single century where man didn't do evil things to men. So and so even in classless societies right you know interestingly enough. Yes. And and so that romantic notion it is it is what it is very attractive. Can't we all get a law for crying out loud? All we have to do is like you know make make the outcome equal. Well,

that doesn't work but because there will be some people who will take advantage of that opportunity because there's always evil around. You cannot, and this is what the Constitution is, is the most brilliant document with regard to government that I've ever been exposed to. You cannot eradicate evil. You can manage it, but you cannot get rid of it. And so that is, that is why communism is an, is a non-starter. It won't work.

Yeah. You made me think of animal farm and the idea that all animals equal, but some are more equal than others. Like, that will always happen, right? Exactly. I forgot that I once read that book. Yeah. It was very, it was very much anticipating the kind of stuff that we're seeing now and that we're talking about. Yeah.

M. Corbyn, thank you very much. Would you say that kleptocratic oligarchies are a trend? Yeah, I think I already stated that it is a trend. Yeah. It is a trend because it sort of combines some features of capitalism. There's some competition. There is, you know, you need to perform to do something pretty well and get paid well. And yet the decision makers are a couple.

a dozen, maybe plus a handful, and maybe one guy at the top, like in China and in Russia, and also in Iran. Absolutely. Any state where everything is hierarchical doesn't function very well. So you need to have some cooperation of the very wealthy, knowing that they need to get along to some degree or else there's going to be just one ruler and the whole damn thing will fall apart outside of outside of AI what do you in other tech trends what do you think of things like google where they basically control the information or tell people where the information is that they're looking for and based on whatever their political leanings are whatever um they can decide what information people have have access to yeah and and i i i

said early on when I've talked about oligarchs in the US you know the folks that that aren't that running the big information technology companies you know Microsoft to Google Oracle and Facebook and Facebook so far they have tremendous power and The only way that this, I don't even know how you can like supervise them because they have all the means to evade that supervision in some way. This is where X, the X Twitter comes along where there is no censoring and where you can actually go and engage in free speech. and not be silenced. But you know

they are censoring. Like if Pakistan comes to them and says, we don't like this content, take it off your website. They're doing it. Oh, okay, sure. Yeah. Well, this is again, there's this you know, there's a well-meaning

elitism sometimes underneath. You know, I know better than you guys and I know how this country should go forward for everybody to do well. I'm not thinking they're all evil, not at all. Right.

They just know better. Right. And that's very annoying. I'm a pretty smart guy and I don't know better. Yeah. Anything else for Jack? That's it from chat. Did we?

Oh, and somebody said that the message was just, somebody said that the message was well wishes from Germany. Oh, right. Dee, was there anything on Patreon? Jack, anything else before we get going for tonight, is there anything else you want to tell people about, anything that you have to promote, or anything that we failed to ask that you'd really like to get into?

Thank you for giving me that opportunity. First of all, I was wondering if I could get, you know, I'm a sleeper who doesn't sleep well, if I could get a free mattress from that ghost bed, if I, you know, do use my social media to make, make some propaganda for them. Yeah, yeah. Send it out, man.

We might be able to make that connection. Yeah, Dee will reach out to them for you. I'm honestly, I'm not exaggerating. I don't have the money right now to buy a mattress, and I need one desperately. And I know that when I wait, I'm in pain only in the morning during the day I'm not.

Yeah. Because I'm in a lousy mattress. That's no more. The sleeper agent needs to sleep. I think that's a great marketing. Do you like more firm mattresses or softer mattresses because softer mattresses actually put me in more pain, I think, because they don't support, like, my arthritis and stuff, like my joints and things like that. I would say moderately firm, not like a board.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, not like a Japanese tatami mat or anything like that. Anything else other than the ghostbed, Jack? Yeah, and so some of the answers that I gave you have something to do with I had, I had, thought about all of these issues for quite a while. I'm just in the process of editing my masterclass, which is

that goes under the name practical spikology. Get it? Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. And this master class is going to be given away as part of a spikology project, which involves

gathering a community and working with that community under the heading of let's figure out how we can live our best lives. And I will be the facilitator and the head of the community. And there's going to be a whole lot of things happening over time as we grow the community. But I won't be the teacher. I won't be the professor. I won't lecture people because I'm still my most important instruments on my eyes and my

ears, which is taking in information. and but but based on my background I I would I would make a really good facilitator and you know this is this is the reason I get up in the morning these days this is my purpose I want to I have mentoring and tutoring and my blood my parents were both teachers I was going to be a professor I have I have mentored graduate students in the U.S and and I'm going to see if I can make a difference with as many people as possible and and help my 14-year-old daughter to get a good start in life in this process. Where can people go to find this class when it's released? It will be on social media. We will run an ad campaign. Tell the folks out here listening, like, is there a website or something? And what are your social media handles?

No, we're going to advertise in social media. Okay. It's going to social media, you find me on LinkedIn. Okay. I find that we will be on Facebook. We will be on Instagram. We will be on TikTok, not on X. That's the decision that my team has made.

They have experience, and I don't know why. And I didn't answer, but we're going to be on all social media. And the announcement will, and all you have to be on social media, there will be paid advertisements as well. you can also if you will search for me you Google my name and something in Google will show up

because on a daily basis Google sends me information about for instance me being on your show and that kind of stuff Jack when you guys launch it let us know what all the handles are and we'll plug them on the show for you guys oh that's awesome

yeah I also want to remind our listeners about your memoir, Deep Cover, which is available now. People can go out and find it and find out lots more about you and your experiences. And there's something else out there that gives you a shortcut. By the way, my first interview in the U.S. was done by CBS 60 Minutes. That can be found on YouTube by just typing in 60 Minutes and Barski. And you get to that.

But there's also a, I call it audio drama. It's like a non-fiction, a documentary without pictures that's out there on streaming media, Spotify, Apple, music, whatever. It's called The Agent. Okay. If you look for the agent, you need to add entertainment. No, hold it, not entertainment. You just need to add my name to it.

Okay. Because otherwise you find too many things that have agent in their name. But the agent is a 13-episode production that was extremely well-made. Cool. Its value is that it has not just interviews with me, but it also has interviews with the lead agent who investigated me, FBI agent who tells me, who tells folks what it was like to be on the other side. Oh, fascinating.

That sounds really good. Oh, yeah, it's excellent. And, you know, it also has an interview with a love interest that my publisher told me to write down because there were too many women. So, but she tells, she tells everybody who listens that we felt instantly in love with each other. And that's the reason I learned Spanish, by the way. That's fantastic. So folks out there next Friday, we'll have Hugh on the show. He was a British para, paratrooper.

Excited to have him on the show. And please subscribe to Eyes On. There'll be some links down in the description. Our sister podcast with Andy Milburn and Jason Lyons. And also subscribe to our Patreon if you haven't already. and when you do you get access to all of these episodes, both AISON and the Team House totally ad-free, and we really appreciate your guys as support out there.

Thank you. And Jack, thank you again for joining us tonight. Yeah, let me tell you something. I got exactly what I expected. So this was the first interview that was primarily focused on espionage. all angles of it. And it was quite demanding, you know, for, I was very intense.

I made a good decision to go for a run first. I deteriorated a little bit towards the end, but, you know, I was stumbling a little bit. Now. I know. No, no, no. You were a great, Jeff. In the beginning, I was pretty good. So, guys, we will see you next Friday.

Take care out there. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. Thank you so much. I absolutely adore you guys. Okay.

Thank you. Same.