Kind: captions
Language: en
something happened
where
they forced my hand it's the only time
that the soviet agent was anywhere near
me
on the territory of the united states
so i'm waiting for the a train on a dark
morning still in queens and
there's this uh
man in a black trench coat
comes up to me from my right
and he whispers into my ears
you gotta come back
or else you're dead
the following is a conversation with
jack barsky a former kgb spy author of
deep undercover and the subject of an
excellent podcast series called the
agent
there are very few people who have
defected from the kgb and live to tell
the story
it is one of the most powerful
intelligence organizations in history
and this conversation gives a window
into its operation both from an
ideological and psychological
perspectives
but also it tells the story of a man who
lived one heck of an incredible life
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's jack
barski
let's start with a big basic question
what is the kgb committee
right so that is the committee of uh
state security yeah there's an
apostrophe
threat okay and bs means this without
right
and i guess that directly translates to
security without threat so and
don't don't exist anymore it was
disbanded when the soviet union fell
apart and
the successor agencies were are now the
svr and and the fsb
fsb supposedly the equivalent to the fbi
and svr the cia but
the svr is is relatively weak
and the fsb has has taken on a lot of
espionage and
you know
active measures and they're much bigger
and stronger but the most
capable intelligence agency in russia is
the is the gru military intelligence
then nobody knows very much that's right
i when i was in the kgb i had no idea
that there was military intelligence
nobody ever mentioned anything like that
and by the way i recently had a
the pleasure to give a talk at the dia
when they reached out to me i didn't
know they existed either interesting
yeah that's always the question if you
want to be an intelligence agency should
the world know anything about you
because in some sense
you want to create the legend in order
to attract
uh great competent individuals to work
for you
but at the same time
you want it to be shrouded in complete
mystery if nobody knows you exist you
might be able to operate
well as an intelligence agency that that
is fascinating but fsb is the thing that
carries the flag right of
of kgb kgb being
probably one of if not the most
sort of infamous famous infamous and
powerful intelligence agencies
in history yes ever absolutely 100
it was founded in 1954 after the death
of stalin you've uh in writing your book
looked back at the predecessors of the
history right is there some way in which
the kgb
is grounded
in um
the culture the spirit the soul
of its predecessors oh absolutely they
just changed names and they changed
uh personnel rather
frequently and that had had something to
do with uh stalin's paranoia
from between
1923 and i don't remember what
i think it may have been the nkvd at
that time it started as a chika and then
it became the
the gepe gpu the
three or four letters
yes
but with those name changes you also had
changes at the top
between 1923 and 1953 when stalin died
that is uh 30 years they had eight
heads of uh intelligence
and of of those eight
six were executed when they were
replaced so that's an um
that's an indication that uh you know
this was an organization that ate itself
from the inside
the soviet union was the only
dictatorship in history that did not
rest its powers on the military they
rested its powers on the intelligence
apparatus and that thing was unstable
so you know
where that leads eventually if you rest
your power on something that is made out
of bricks that don't hold a lot of load
it will it will fall apart
on sand yeah why was it unstable would
you say what what of human nature
or what does that mean
it's the paranoia it's a you know stalin
was always worried about
uh you know what the the most powerful
people coming after him
so he proactively killed off heads of
the kgb and uh and he had this great
purge where he got rid of a lot of his
generals you know really capable
generals
uh and uh that that cost him dearly when
world war ii started because you know he
he started off with uh
with a uh a force that wasn't as capable
as it could have been uh was it paranoid
at all levels i believe so i believe so
it it comes from the top and so if the
top doesn't trust you
uh you always have to worry about
um
your peers
snitching on you
yeah okay so so and and i think
we have a very similar situation in
russia today
uh and uh and and in this in in this
kind of atmosphere
um the truth
will never get to the top so no matter
what moral rules the organization
operates under trust is fundamental to
its uh
competence oh absolutely and i want to
extend this to my own existence
um
and this is kind of strange it's it's
almost dichotomous uh
because you know i was
running around lying to everybody and
you know i couldn't fundamentally be
trusted but the relationship that i had
with the kgb was based on trust if they
don't if they don't trust me they don't
send me out and if i don't trust him i'm
not going
and i eventually broke that trust and
they knew there was always that danger
they knew that because something about
you
or just something about human beings no
there were
there were hints about uh
you know how long
my assignment would be so 10 to 12 years
and you see
it makes sense all right i was becoming
an american and over time i would become
more and more american and there was
always a chance that i liked it more
here than there that that i was really
successful in what i was supposed to do
and it sort of happened but in my case
it happened because of i fathered a
child who
who i didn't want to leave when they
wanted me back so love always screws up
oh
your employment competence yes you're
absolutely right
yes so that but they thought you know
that
i had an anchor at home because i had a
wife and a son at home which
uh you know you've got to worry about
them if you defect
uh because
in the past the kgb was would go after
after family
ruthlessly
including perhaps violence yeah this is
a hard question about the kgb because
it's one of the most ruthless
organizations but in general
are there lines
kgb
agents
at every level of the hierarchy
uh
that they would not cross
political legal ethical
or does anything goes to achieve the
goal
i was only
uh
in touch with the two types of agents as
well
the technical experts the ones that
taught me tradecraft
and they were like engineers and uh you
know they were in charge of the secret
writing and the uh
uh
the morse code shortwave radio and
reception uh decryption encryption
and that kind of stuff um
those were just doing their job
all right
and the others the ones that trained me
that uh
prepared me for life in the united
states
they were nice people
they were elegant people
i i i don't think they that they would
not uh
um
fit into the stereotype of the ruthless
gun carrying agent
is it possible
that you would not be aware of the parts
of the kgb
i mean it's very modular would you yeah
it's possible that you're not aware the
parts of the kgb that that are the
quote-unquote muscle oh
i didn't know i would find out
afterwards after i you know retired and
then started doing some research i had
no clue you're kind of operating in a
bubble oh we very much so i mean this is
what the kgb did really really well
compartmentalization
uh and and that
was based on
you know the communist movement while it
was still underground
you know the the cells were very small
and the so that maybe there were three
four members in one cell that knew one
another
and then they had a liaison to another
cell so with
the bottom line is if if you got one one
of those folks were caught
they could maybe betray four people or
three something like that and in the kgb
continued with that tradition
uh i have reason to believe that the my
handler the person in moscow that sort
of directed me and made decisions uh
what to do and where to go
never met me personally
there's no reason to right why wouldn't
so uh and and this this uh actually
uh was a big advantage uh over other
intelligence services because you know
you look at what the cia does everybody
blabs
there's a lot of leaks coming out of
american intelligence i don't think
there's as many leaks coming out of the
mossad strong words from jack barsky
so i mean that is a question i want to
ask a little more systematically is
there something unique about the kgb
compared to the other intelligence
agencies let's let's talk
uh british intelligence mi6
mossad cia
is there unique cultures spirits souls
of the different organizations that
maybe somehow connect to the structures
of government connect maybe the
the values of the people those kinds of
things
i believe we were all pretty much uh
strong uh believers in communism in the
future of the world being in kgb yes i
think that that unified us uh to a large
degree even the technicians so even
it wasn't
something like yeah yeah the
the parents believe this thing
but we know the truth you really believe
the story of conor absolutely did and it
and you need to look at the time frame
uh
the soviet union uh after world war ii
made uh quite a bit of progress in uh uh
influencing the third world and i still
remember uh in when i was in middle
school
we had a map
on the map of the world and it was
color-coded
so red was communism that was the soviet
union and then the the eastern states
and then blue was uh capitalism and then
then we had green which were the third
world countries and the green
slowly turned pink because a lot of
third world governments like i'm looking
at uh angola i'm i'm looking at uh um
vietnam
a lot of these countries uh were uh very
sympathetic to to uh the soviet union
and so we
sort of knew that this would go on like
that and eventually we would take over
and and you know pretty much uh uh
overtake
that was that that was the the myth
overtake the united states
not only militarily but also
in terms of industrial production and
and so forth
that was a stupid pipe dream the
military
it was a standoff as we know
well
uh stupid pipe dream
um hitler had a
stupid pipe dream yeah that he executed
it exceptionally effectively and on
if not for
uh
a handful of military mistakes the world
could look very different the biggest
one being invading
the soviet union particularly at the
time that he did it because he ran into
the same thing that
napoleon ran into general winter
well
within so operation barbarossa within
that
he could have made different
decisions
yeah for example uh
attacking
skipping kiev and attacking moscow
directly overthrowing the government so
marching i guess that that would be
learning the lessons from napoleon as
opposed to um
as opposed to a different kind of
distribution of forces and then getting
bogged down in the winter but the point
is
these ambitions sometimes do
you know the ambitions of empire
sometimes do materialize in the growth
and the building and the establishment
of those empires and those empires write
the history books
in such a way that we don't think of
them as as empires or we certainly don't
think of them as the bad guys
they write the history books therefore
they're the good guys and right now
america has effectively written the book
about the good guys i happen to believe
that book
but
it's we should be humbled and
open-minded
to realize that uh that is in fact what
is happening is effective empires
write the history books and tell us
stories and tell us propaganda and tell
us narratives that we believe because we
are human beings and we love to get
together and believe ideas we love to
dream of a beautiful world and try to
build that beautiful world together in
the united states that's a beautiful
world the freedom
of respect of human rights
of all men are created equal yes
pursuit of happiness
you know it always sounds good if you
look at what the the dream of communism
is it sure as heck
uh in its words on the surface sounds
good respect for the workers yes the
working class the lower classes that
have been trodden on that have been
stolen from by the powerful they deserve
to have the money the power the respect
that they have earned through their hard
work sounds great and everybody gets
along and we just have to you know uh
and all men are
wonderful people and if they if they go
bad it has something to do with the fact
that they have they have been oppressed
right
and uh that dream just never worked out
and even even it is when you think about
it
and i didn't think about it when you're
young you know you just emotionally you
accept it but when you think about it
somehow
that new wonderful organization has to
organize itself
even though lenin predicted that the
state eventually would go away
how does how does that work then you
have like anarchy right you have to have
an organization
and the only way to really
organize a large number of people is
with a hierarchy
so and who gets to the top
the the ones that are that want to go to
the top the ones that believe in
themselves the ones the ones that know
better than everybody else
and once you have that hierarchy
established there is no guarantee that
it doesn't that that it won't go bad and
actually when you look at history
every such hierarchy has gone bad you
know
you look at cuba for instance i believe
fido castro was a an honest
revolutionary
i do believe that
and so what did cuba turn into
yeah there's something about when you
speak about vladimir putin in this way
but let's step away from that for a
second
is there something about being an honest
revolutionary that wants to do good for
their country
and you start to believe
that you know better than everyone else
how to do good on the country
and you very well might first
but then
somehow that grows into uh
a distortion field where you know you
keep believing you know what's right
and all the people who disagree with you
you stop seeing them as having a point
you instead
see them as like uh
um evil manipulators of the truth that
are actually trying to hurt people for
their own greed for their own power and
you will protect the people because you
know what's good in the case of stalin i
i mean i don't know
but it seems like he really believed
that communism would
bring about a much better world i mean
there is a sense
the you have to crack a few eggs to make
an omelet
right this idea that um
sacrifice is necessary to bring about a
greater world
and then the other aspect is
um
sort of
ruling by terror creating terrorism
justified
political mechanism to achieve a better
world so it wasn't i mean perhaps he had
to do that to be able to sleep at night
with the atrocities he's committing he i
think he believed he will bring about
another world and by the way the tarot
didn't start with stalin it started
right after the bolsheviks took over
when uh
lenin
uh told uh mr jaczynski commodore
trezinski to build the chicago
and then uh
execute
the
this is what he called it the red terror
so
so at that at the birth of the soviet
union there was already terror
and it was deliberate and it uh
it also was
it wasn't just focused on the enemies it
was focused on whoever
you didn't like there was there was no
rule of law there was no
uh there were there was no no court
cases you know people were just pulled
out of their apartments and shot on site
yeah
and
the this was done by
con revolutionaries who were convinced
that eventually you know that these
sacrifices had to be made and eventually
that would lead to a much better planet
and the populists believe this
too that those sacrifices in part yes
this is such a dark thing about
dictatorships is
you
believe it
but you're also too afraid to question
your beliefs like
you're not directly afraid but almost
like um
i don't know what that is that's almost
like a subconscious fear
like don't there's a dark room with the
locked door don't look in that door
don't check that door and there's
something about the united states that
says
uh especially modern culture so go to
that door first and sort of question
everything kind of uh that's the power
of the freedom of speech and the freedom
of the press but you can
get um
almost become too critical and too
cynical of your own culture in that way
so there's a balance of strike of course
but
man
is if that's if communism is not a
lesson of human nature i don't know what
it is but you believed
without thinking too much about it you
believe right in the story of khan what
did you see just
you know i came from the soviet union
what did you
maybe feel
that's
right and good about communism about the
vision of communism do you remember like
i think the
biggest impetus and me believing in
communism was that
com the communists when when
just before hitler took over
the communists were the only force
in germany that fought the nazis
in the streets
and that's a historic truth yes and and
communists were
hunted down by the nazis killed
uh put in concentration camps
and
so what we knew
when what we were taught and i think
that was a huge unforced era by the
western countries particularly the
united states that there were ex-nazis
in the government in west germany
yeah and
the most famous one was uh
reinhard galen
who was in charge was the general in
charge of uh
uh
the
intelligence on the eastern front under
hitler
and when
the
the allied won the war
it was decided that galen was too
important uh with his knowledge of the
his and his organization was too
important to uh
to
not use so he was co-opted by the cia
and eventually wound up
being the head of the bundesliga
the cia of west germany
that gave us
us when i say us you know the east
german
party a huge propaganda victory
i wanted to because
his um the emotional aspect of this was
as follows
when we uh we were in uh
uh
juniors in high school
uh and uh and though in those days uh
when you
you were only allowed to go to high
school if you were in the top 10 of
students okay so this was going to be
the
next set of ruling elite in the country
we were sent
we were required to visit a
concentration camp
and
if you know what what we as as 17 year
olds were made to look at
it was gut wrenching
how can men do something like that to
men
piles of corpses
lamp shades made out of human skin
because
they
that skin had tattoos on them and a
shrunken head so heads like the size of
my fist
and i mean the girls all cried
and it would have made a huge impression
and that was the
that was the nazis yeah and then yes the
communists i mean the united
states course you know in in hindsight
if the communists had come to power it
would have been just the other way
around as we know
uh given the example of stalin and mao
right so but we didn't know that
right from the russian soviet
perspective uh the communist regime
banded together
to
win the the great patriotic war and that
was the the second one you know the big
brother the
the soviet union
uh i mean when when i was approached by
the kgb that was like oh i felt so
honored
so we should say um
that we're talking about east germany
that you're from east germany
can you describe you were born
four years and
what is it yeah four years ten days yeah
sort of very good
after uh
unconditional surrender in world war ii
so
what is east germany what is west
germany what is east and west germany
what is that what's the difference
what's this the historical context here
what is world war ii again and then
let's do
for uh we don't have to go to uh
world war one which uh the result of
which actually ceded world war ii in
some respects yes um there's a long
history yes uh but let's start with
world war ii so uh
uh when hitler came to power he he and
his uh his uh leadership decided that uh
uh the germans needed more what they
call laban's rom
that means room to live
so uh and they would you know they would
start expanding uh at uh and they went
into france uh
they they took belgium the netherlands
uh
uh they annexed uh
uh austria
and uh and got a piece of the of
czechoslovakia
and then they decided to
uh march into the soviet union and uh
after after they took poland uh
uh
cut up cut up poland together with the
soviet union yes they were friends yes
they were uh no there was a
non-aggression pact but between that was
signed by robin trump and molotov right
i think both parties knew that
eventually they would fall apart but at
the time
uh it gave the soviet union
a little more a piece of poland
and a little more time to prepare what
they
thought might happen down the road
and and the german the germans
had you know
the the time and
the in the ability to pretty much
conquer all of western europe do you
think stalin really knew that it's gonna
fall apart why would somebody like
stalin trust somebody like hitler but
why did he blunder so bad not to
um read the intelligence that was coming
his way oh his troops are amassing on
the border of the soviet union he didn't
trust his own intelligence apparatus
here's one one example uh
um there was a german communist um who
uh
who went on the ground when hitler took
over and he would he went to japan as a
journalist his name is richard zorger
and godzilla had really really good into
intel
about what the
japanese would do and not do
and it i forgot exactly what it was but
uh it was it came to moscow and stalin
totally totally ignored it
and and when zorga was uh uh captured by
the
uh by the japanese uh the soviet union
denied that uh
he was one of there so he was executed
uh that the paranoia again
uh
does a lot of damage we when you don't
when you don't believe your own
intelligence apparatus why
why bother having one
yeah i mean there
but i'm sure there's contradictory
information coming in from the
intelligence apparatus so it's difficult
i mean first of all nobody likes to be
disagreed with especially when you get
become more and more powerful and then
the intelligence apparatus is probably
giving you information you don't like
but it's often
negative information about yeah uh
basically information that
says that the decisions you made in the
past
are not great decisions and that's a
difficult truth to deal with yeah
so there you know in the modern times if
we hop around briefly is uh vladimir
putin
has been
um not happy with the intelligence of
the fsb thereby at least if you read the
news right uh choosing
uh to put more priority to the gru for
the intelligence in ukraine right
but i guess i suppose the same story
happens there as it dis throughout
history is paranoia i i give you an
example that
that comes
from a very reliable source
uh
and that my my best german friend
uh worked as a chemist in the
anastasi east german intelligence
and uh
he
eventually uh he he rose to the rank of
major and was in charge of
the forgery department
it's very likely that he made passports
that i used to travel
he was aware that there was intelligence
that that was uh that was collected to
start he was really good they had about
a thousand people in west germany
undercover agents
uh some of them in government and the
central committee of the party and the
decision makers ignored it because it
didn't quite fit in their world view it
didn't quite fit into their plans
so uh and and one one delicious uh
uh thing that i just want to add on to
this when when gorbachev uh
um wrote his book about perestroika and
glasnost
uh the
the east german uh rulers did not like
it they were much much more orthodox so
they had to print the books in
translation
guess where they wound up
they were in the host they piled up in
the hallways of the stasi
they they bought the entire
print run
it's fascinating uh so but let's
backtrack so operation barbarossa
invasion a hit right to the soviet union
and then hopefully that leads us all the
way to east germany west germany right
after the end of the war so what
happened was that the soviet union
rolled into the eastern part of germany
and the the western allies uh took
a larger chunk
which was
eventually it was occupied by the three
allies the french the
the english and the americans
and the eastern part was occupied by the
by the soviet troops
and the soviet
uh troops actually
uh conquered berlin yeah but as a and
and
as an in a contract they uh decided that
berlin would be ruled by the four allies
and they all had you know had free
access to uh
that city
i was born in the east german part which
very quickly became uh
ruled by
communist socialists the the communist
party in the socialist party united and
but the leaders of that new party for
all communists it's nevertheless called
democratic
yes the german democratic republic which
was formed a couple of months after i
was born
i was born into a the remote
southeastern corner uh of of east
germany
and uh interestingly enough uh
genetically i'm only half german
the the other half the other half is
czech and polish nice because
uh where i grew up you know we i could
walk to the nicer river which was the
uh
border with poland and and it was only
about an hour by bus to get to the czech
uh border so that's why i'm a mix
so okay so east germany after the war
was
communist socialist yeah then the west
germany was
representing the western world with the
right democracy and what the united
states did when this was
really really very uh
forward-looking very strategic the the
marshall plan
to rebuild the economy in the west
as compared to what the soviet union did
they whatever they hadn't destroyed on
the way in
they took with them uh
on the way out for reparations because
you know they had every right to do that
but it was uh not a good idea because
you know east germany was always behind
in economic development uh to to their
western counterpart
so when you're young
as today but when you were young you
were clearly an exceptional student yeah
you're a brilliant academic
superstar
let's go to your childhood
what's a fond memory
from childhood that you have
in being woken up to the beauty
of this world and sort of
being curious about all the mysteries
around you that i think ultimately lead
to academic um success
or was it
the fondest memory that comes to mind is
my first kiss
how's that
do you want to go to the details of that
what uh
what what what what'd you make of that
would you make that guess what what
would that
teach you about yourself and human
nature and all that it taught me only in
hindsight at the time i was just like
my god i was
head over heels in love i was 16 years
old yeah
and
i
i knew in those days i admired girls i i
knew that girls were like
uh sort of um
uh magical beings they were not capable
of doing evil things
they were beautiful and they had to be
adored and one of them
actually
loved me too she came after me
initially right and that was like that
was that too was magical for you oh my
god yeah
uh and i
literally i
uh dedicated that's when i started
studying up until that point i just like
did whatever i had to do to be in a
minor students and that's when i started
studying in every a that i got i
dedicated to her sometimes explicitly
because i knew i was going to take care
of her you know when as i grow up so
you're going to have to work hard in
this world to be somebody that could be
adored by the by those you lost yes
you're right
you know that that case
the next day i was running around in
school with a grinnell in my face
and maybe that
in some way that grin never fades so um
what about the heartbreak that followed
the heartbreak surely
but
just to uh
expand on this a little more yes because
that that passion that i had
was an indication that eventually love
would play a big role in my life
i wasn't aware of it i was just directed
at this one girl but uh
but that you understood that that
feeling oh my god that taught you
something like that you're somebody that
can feel those things absolutely and
there's that's a strong
part of who you are and therefore it
will also be a part of directing your
life trajectory
yeah so we we were an item for two years
uh i lost my virginity
congratulations she was not a virgin at
the time
she see my my my competitor was uh
there always is a competitor
isn't that how it works he studied
medicine in in college already in which
ways was he better than you uh he wasn't
he was older and he was more experienced
yeah and he was going to be a doctor and
i but you know i was there and he was
not
ah the you know presence wins yeah but
you still had big dreams you wanted to
be a
a 10-year professor yes yes so you you
still want to outdo that guy oh yeah and
she he eventually told me that uh
you know he was he was not in a picture
anymore
so it was back and forth back and forth
and uh
the
our senior year we were an item and uh
and i was just dreaming of uh you know
the future but sort of we didn't figure
out that
you know in those days if she went to
college in berlin and i went to college
in yena and
the the distance
to uh between the two cities was too
it was too much to
for a weekend visit you know public
transportation
was very slow and nobody had cars and
so
uh
so the circumstance of life you just
yeah and so we interacted
with a couple of letters and then i got
the goodbye letter
oh my god that hurt
i can still feel it
[Laughter]
you know when that's that's a good thing
that you could feel that pain
that's still part of love that's that's
that the pain of loss is still part of
love and then you kind of
change that you shape it and you give
that love in deeper more profound ways
to future people very well put but at
the time it emptied me out yeah if if i
had
uh a tendency uh to you know
to have suicidal thoughts i might have
killed myself it was so you
would you say that was one of the darker
moments of your life um
let me see
yeah as a single moment yes so you know
i'm i still remember
uh
we had a
mail slot in the front door
and i
i was expecting a letter any day and
there was the letter i go upstairs into
my uh my bedroom and i open it and i
read it
and
i was just like the life went out of me
you're just there alone and you have to
experience this pain alone so but now
you're deeply alone in this world yes
because i didn't have a
there was no emotional
relationship with my parents
um i i literally had nobody so this love
you have in you had no
had no place to go it was choked off all
right so
uh but i
uh what i did was i
um i i wanted to go on right
and so i
threw myself
into the study of chemistry i outworked
all of my fellow students in a big way
i just like i worked my ass off and
since i was pretty smart too i just aced
practically everything
and for the first
two years in college and look we go to
college there all these pretty girls and
their dances and everything we had this
this great student club where
uh i i didn't look at any girls like
eventually i knew i was going to
you know want to have female
companionship but love uh-uh no more
than hurts
there's a song that goes love hurts yeah
yeah i know that one
that's true there's actually many songs
that have a similar message yes
um
so during that time during your
excellence
just being an exceptional student
of chemistry
let's go to your story so um
in your book deep undercover my secret
life entangled the allegiances as a kgb
spy in america and in the really really
excellent podcast series that i've been
listening to it's people should
definitely listen to it's called the
agent
you document your time as a kgb spy
before during and after
can you tell the story when you first
were contacted by the kgb those
how you were
in invited the offer to join was made
well
it was a big surprise and i i never
thought of myself as uh as a potential
agent you know i i was going to be a
tenured professor
and joined the ruling elite because in
in in europe tenured professors are few
it's not like in the united states you
know anybody who teaches at colleges as
a as a title of professor easy now
it's true yes that's not a criticism
so we should also clarify that to any
professor or not
it is a very prestigious position
throughout history of europe
and i would say especially communist i
don't know actually know the full
landscape of the respect but at least in
the soviet union where i grew up it's
a prestigious position absolutely was uh
and the the town of yena had about a
hundred thousand people live there and
um
i would it's a wild guess but maybe 30
tenured professors and they were part of
the ruling elite i was
trying to do it as much as i can to live
the good life right you know
you know have access to things that uh
that are nice
yeah but i think
the powerful thing about
being a professor in that context of
east germany
is the prestige and the feeling of
superiority
you know i i was full of myself
you know when when when you are the best
of the best and i and i in my third year
i received a scholarship
uh the karl marx scholarship uh that was
limited to 100 concurrent recipients in
the country
so my god no i i was full of myself i i
believed in myself hook hook line and
sinker and and and i was also
uh
uh this uh
i got a lot of
accolades from
teachers and
fellow students they were feeding the
ego the old
i mean yeah you have to believe in
yourself uh often when you're young to
truly
try to excel and and you sure as heck
did
but you know as a balance you need a
mentor somebody who
puts things in perspective and i didn't
have one
my father was a non-entity and nobody
else they they all looked up to me yeah
i was an up-and-coming guy right so
there's no father figure that put you in
your place not at all and i give you one
extreme example it was down the road
when i
fathered a child out of wedlock
that was in my fifth year i believe
the the communist party in east germany
was uh very moralistic if you did that
they would have a talk with you and
give you whatever a severe reprimand
nobody even mentioned a word about this
so yeah so this is this is how this ego
gets gets nurtured but anyway getting
back to
how the kgb uh
uh came in contact so they most likely
got uh
knowledge of me by you know looking at
the stasi
uh records this stuff what's stasi oh
that was east german secret police stat
zika height
security for the state
there's that word security again
[Laughter]
and that they pretty much kept the
record uh on on everybody in the country
and um
so when you when you look through this
in and and this is what the kgb was
looking for they were looking for
candidates
particularly for this kind of job that
they had in mind for me for candidates
uh
who were not you know in their mid 20s
uh who were not fully developed yet but
mature enough
to to get there
uh
and and and still young enough right
because because at that level of
maturity you can test whether they can
handle this kind of yes absolutely right
so and uh
one day i got a knock on my door and my
dorm room door was on a saturday
and
they knew
that
i was by myself how did they know it
uh we had a
i pieced this together
and we had an
exchange student from the soviet union
and he was next door
and to me
and he
you know he
he befriended me so he got to know me a
little bit
and and
the pattern was that my roommate would
always go home for the weekend
and of course they also knew which door
to knock on even though there were no
name plates right so
somebody knocks
uh and uh i knew it was a stranger
because if if it had been a student
the the pattern was that we would knock
on the door and then go in
we wouldn't wait for somebody to to let
us in
so i didn't i waited for 10 seconds and
i
and he didn't come in i knew that it was
a stranger i said come on in
and then came a person
uh who spoke fluent german so that was
not a kgb guy there was a collaborator
uh when and so he started making a bunch
of small talk he introduced himself as
the
as a representative of called seize yana
which was the
optics uh um
um
company that made that was made really
really good optical instruments
was one of the best in the world
so it's it's like though you know
the the super prestigious company in
that place right and he said you know
that he was a representative of that
company
and he
would just want to find out if what my
plans were after graduating from college
and at that point i knew he wasn't from
cause i sana
because in those days there was no
recruitment
you when when you were done
if you were in the top
10 of the graduates
you
would most likely pick to stay and get a
doctorate right
and the rest of them were assigned you
know where you had no choice
so so that guy was
an idiot
he he didn't know the basics
about you interviewed him a little bit
to understand like oh sure you know i
you know i started like feel out is this
guy full of shit
because yeah there's a stranger showing
up to your dorm room and i knew that
at that point i know he was stasi which
was wrong but it doesn't matter because
it was german and i had no idea that the
kgb would be involved so i'm sorry to
pause briefly
did you have a sense
did people know that there's a stasi
type of organization
that there is
a large number of people doing this kind
of work in east germany
in order for you to make that guess
yeah we we we knew that the stasi
existed uh
we we even had our uh james bond you
know we had a series
uh called the invisible visor where and
a stasi employee in east german would go
into west germany and hunt down nazis
yes so yes the stasi was was known to be
there and admired in part
or feared or both i i thought they were
necessary and uh i admired them uh james
bond the read yes the reason
i did so because i had no information to
the contrary
i never knew
anybody
personally or even you know
somewhat removed who was uh
uh
followed by the stasi uh uh was uh
you know put in jail
uh i had no clue i i had no clue that
they did a lot of damage and that they
were like
doing a lot of surveillance of of the
east german population the same way the
kgb did for for the soviet union so for
me to
be talking to somebody from the stasi it
was uh it um
it raised my interest i was curious what
comes next because i sort of knew
something interesting would be coming at
me and i i had no i had no other
thoughts about that at that point so
when when he was finally when he uh
he went and he went for the kill by uh
reversing himself he said you know i
gotta tell you that i really i really am
not from cal size you know i'm from the
government
okay thank you for pointing that out and
then
he asked this question he says can you
imagine to one day work for the
government
and so i
gave a pretty clever answer i said yes
but not as a chemist
so
we i answered the question that he
didn't ask
i helped him out
so we made an arrangement to me meet for
uh
lunch which in germany is the main meal
at the number one restaurant in indiana
you know i still remember what i ate uh
what was that rum steak with uh
with butter on top
and french fries was my favorite
anyway um so
when i get to the restaurant uh
i saw this fellow sitting in the back
there at the table and uh there was
another person at the table so i was a
little bit hesitant because in those
days
uh it was not unusual for for perfect
strangers to share a table because there
wasn't wound enough uh tables and chairs
and so forth so i didn't know if i could
approach him but he he got up and came
to me and he took me to the table and he
said
uh i want to introduce uh
uh herman we work with our
soviet comrades
aha kgb and then he he disappeared he
says i got something else to do i never
knew his name
i he just handed me over to the kgb
what was the relationship between the
kgb and stasis as uh
collaborators close collaborators or
just distant associates uh they were
pretty close collaborators as i told you
that uh you know they they they bought
uh forged documents that the germans
made because the germans were better at
forgery
uh they also exchanged information but
they didn't trust each other 100 and and
and i and i tell you why i know that
so they recruited me to send me to west
germany
as i already said east germany had a
thousand agents over there why would
they have to want to have their own
yeah yeah okay this is a fascinating
internal and external dynamic
of distrust yeah okay so there you are
uh welcomed by the kgb when did the
offer the invite come well that took a
while so herman
and i uh had an unofficial relationship
for
about a year and a half
i would meet him uh
maybe once a week once every two weeks
initially in his car but then uh
uh he uh
he um he took me to a
conspirational flat this was a an
apartment that was
uh occupied by
a a party member a lady single lady when
we came in she would leave she left us
tea and cookies and then we could freely
talk he also
at that time gave me some
west german literature magazines to read
which was of course forbidden
so already i'm starting to feel somewhat
special
and as we were talking about
what they had in mind for me in general
i knew that i was going to be even more
special because
i would be above the law
i would i would operate outside the law
of the countries i would go to as well
as
east germany because you know that
the magazines and uh and eventually when
when i joined up
they told me i had better watch west
german television which was also
not explicitly prohibited but it was uh
uh
something that could get you in trouble
so on many levels you're super special
you're the gym
yes yes so what was that
recruitment testing process like
testing whether you
are you have what it takes to be a kgb
agent first of all um
we had very in-depth talks on
herman and i
uh about life
and i
i was i still am
very honest and
sharing my feelings
uh philosophical or personal personal
personally i even i even told him that i
was shy around the girls
uh
he was giving you a relationship advice
or what
how old was he so what was the dynamic
can you tell me was it a father
son no older brother older brother
brother yeah he was uh maybe in his uh
early to mid 30s and i was maybe 10
years younger and what languages did he
speak oh you speak german he spoke
german pretty well oh but he's
originally from ohio yeah with a russian
accent
so i got in trouble one time with him
when when i asked him is your real name
german
he didn't like that he didn't like it
what was he good with girls was was no
no he just you know
i remember what he told me he says you
know you got to understand one thing
they're looking for guys too
that's that's all you know
oh uh girls are looking good
yeah it's right it's
a competitive game yeah yeah don't don't
don't worry about it you know don't be
so shy so that little flame of love that
we talked about yeah in all the shapes
that it takes in our life
did he talk to you about that that that
could be taken advantage of that that
could be used or was it implied
yeah but not in
it was not very focused not in great
detail so let's uh so we talked about
personal stuff and
you know like dislikes he gave me tasks
for instance uh when
my friend and i hitchhiked from from
east germany all the way down to
bulgaria
he told me to write a report about it
what i saw so
fundamentally he wanted to see how well
i can uh i can write
and how well i can report how well i
observe
uh he also asked me to write some
profiles about fellow students i don't
believe that was for them to give him to
the stasi it was just like
how well do i characterize people what's
that that's important when you're
talking about uh
when i was in the u.s
active in the u.s i operated as a
spotter so i did exactly that i wrote
profiles about people
uh he also gave me some tasks to do that
were
rather unpleasant
um
what uh
he would give me an address and the name
of uh
the people who lived at the address
and he told me to
go there
ring the doorbell and find out something
about a relative who lived in west
germany
uh that is undercover exploration right
so you go you you make up a story and
somehow
win the confidence of your target
to tell you something that you want to
know
was that did that come naturally to you
no no i hated it the charisma involved
uh which part did you hear charisma i
think i didn't know that i had it
it took you some time to discuss because
you know i was i always was and i still
am to some degree a bit shy
uh i lost a lot of the shyness after
moving to the south because uh here in
the united states because
uh you don't have to be shy you know
you can
let your love shine that's exactly right
so but anyway i i hated doing that but i
i did it well i still remember so i in
those days i had a i had a beard
i i
i rang the bell and tall handsome fella
yeah and uh and i i looked the part i
said i'm i'm a sociology student
and i'm i'm doing a survey and i asked a
whole bunch of questions can would you
like to answer the questions
no problem
and then i directed the conversation to
the lady's private life and
and she actually gave me information she
volunteered information
that i wanted to know
beautiful i did well and the other one
that i didn't like but i also did well
with when when herman
drove me
around the city and showed me a building
and he said find out what organization
is in there what they do
uh maybe get to know some people and i
did that pretty well also
you know
you have to be inventive you know to
to come up with a cover story and and
i've always been quite uh
uh inventive uh you know i'm a
storyteller
and at heart and that i didn't know it
then but you know but there was still
something unpleasant about it yes yes
which part was well
the shyness and then you know
you know i wasn't very comfortable lying
i became comfortable down the road but
you know i i was
brutally honest
uh and never
never hid anything of me
but
you know over time
you lose that
that
uncomfortable feeling
and you rationalize that you got to do
it there's only one way right and you're
serving a good cause so you were talking
to herman for a year and a half year and
a half and then how did that progress
yes so he said he finally i guess he
sent a report to headquarters in berlin
and then he sent me uh on a three-week
quote-unquote practice trip to berlin
this was the first time when i had an
and like a con conspiracy conspiratorial
meeting where i would i had an address
in a time and a code phrase and i met
another agent
his name was boris
these names me were meaningless they
were all like cover names right and so
what was the code and the meaning what
was then what can you give a little more
code i don't remember no but not the
code but like what do you mean by code
oh i tell you my the
the code we used when i when i met while
i was active
i would approach the other person who i
thought maybe the the person i want to
meet we both had
some something to
with us or on us to make us more likely
to be the right person
so and i would uh i would ask him the
following questions
excuse me or
i'm looking for susan greene
and he's and he would answer yes you
must be david
stupid if if i
if i ask a stranger they would look at
me
how could i help you so yeah no one's
the wrong guy yeah it's just a low
probability that that the right thing
would be so it's absolutely nice
and it seems like a safe statement yes
if it's not the right person exactly
right you'll just come off you're absurd
or crazy or whatever you you would have
you would have made a good secret agent
you you i know i'm not
this is this is
we'll discuss this
uh
i'm dressed like one
actually yeah where there's any dress
code
no just fit in
fit in no matter what and then be
creative
yeah figure out ways to ride
so anyways he give me some tasks and we
and he and since i i had rented a room
in a house he gave me uh
western literature to read
and we spent time together
um
and
there was
a practice run
to west germany actually there were two
and that was very important in hindsight
i figured that out
uh so
i traveled to west germany
you know not to west berlin with an east
german passport that was stamped that
that individual was allowed to go to the
west
and
there was a
a part of the
border that was
only
guarded by soviet troops
and that's where they
smuggled me into west germany i got on
the subway uh and
and then uh
uh appeared in in west berlin no no no
americans no birds no french knew that i
had entered uh forged documents or not
no no no this was a
an east german passport it was real okay
okay so uh and uh the first trip all
they wanted me to do is just walk around
you know smell the air
you know have a beer or whatever and
eat a sausage and then come back
the second trip i had a task
very similar to the one that i had
back in yana
to ring the doorbell someplace and uh
talk to some people and that worked very
well as also
i i should mention that you talk about
that you know eat a sausage drink some
beer i suppose that's a good test too to
see how you behave under western
like when first introduced to the
western college like uh this is why i
might not make a good
agent
is when i first
came to the united states and the
supermarket
oh like bananas as many bananas as i
want to eat
that i think i would that i think that
would break me
it's just just it's a shock to be uh to
have access to western culture you're
getting very close to the reason they
actually made me do this these two
practice trips the
when i first emerged on west berlin
territory
i felt highly uncomfortable
that was the enemy right yeah and i saw
the cops everywhere and even those
those cops had like light blue uniforms
nothing they weren't standouts so i was
wondering you know if they knew that you
know i had like kgb
yeah on my forehead you were paranoid
that they would know they would see i
was scared but i i overcame that so
that's can we just linger on that
because
i suppose that's a natural
like if i give anybody on the street the
mission to do the mission you have to do
is they would be paranoid that's the
natural human
feeling is a