What was the KGB?

It's a very beautiful little web page and it's got all the information. And if you already pre ordered, can't you just like upload your receipt and get that pre order gift. Yep, you can, and they will mail it off to you and you will get in the mail and say, oh, thank you. Don't mind if I do. And it's a poster that you will love and cherish and possibly pass on down to your children as an heirloom. That's right, everyone, We couldn't be more excited about this book.

It's really coming together. Well, it's us through and through and you can go check out some excerpts at stuff you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should know a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We are comrades in arms here at s Y s K step. You should not let me ask you something. When you were researching this and thinking in

your brain about talking about it, did you get nervous? No? Okay, I guess you did a little bit. What were you nervous about talking about the freaking KGB? Yeah? I was like, and how they just kill anyone that they don't like? Okay, now you know I got the most nervous ever when we we recorded I wrote on and we recorded on Delta Force. Really, I was really nervous. Do you think

they're gonna come kill you? I don't know. I mean they're supposedly, they're not supposed to exist, and we were talking about how they do exist, so I was like, surely not. But no, I know what you're talking about. It didn't happen in this one. So maybe this is the one that will get me because KGB, you know, those are the and it even says in this article, like when you think about the knock on your door

in the middle of the night, come with us. That's KGB ops right there, right, But that was if you were a Russian, a Soviet citizen, which is true. It's something. It's weird because like you you know all about the KGB just having been raised as a Cold War kid, you know. Um, But I never really put two and two together that it was a really all encompassing, um secret police kind of thing that they had going on.

Because not only were they big on spying and getting their hands on advanced weapon technology and running disinformation campaigns around the world and trying to destabilize the United States and it's it's reach around the world. Um, they also were really focused internally and domestically as well, so that they were a secret police force that would come and get two centers and send them off to prison camps

in the middle of the night. They basically did it all, and all of it was geared chuck toward keeping the Soviet Communist Party in power, and they were successful for several decades. Actually yeah, and um, I mean from reading this research, it seems like, I mean, they did do all the things, but their main charge was squashing from within. It seems like squishing your head from within. So KGB stands for I'm gonna try and read this and Russian, Uh commentet that's easy with a k uh ghosts dars

veny be so pass nosty. It sounds like you just raised like an Aramaic deemon and klatu varata, so that means an English committee for State security. Uh. They were headquartered and we're gonna say we're a lot because technically the KGB itself is not around anymore. It's just been renamed though, so same stuff going on. Same place they were and are and are now headquartered under the FSB at lub Janka Square in Moscow, which is where the KGB was, right, Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's where

the headquarters was and still is. And it's this big, you know, beautiful sort of intimidating building right there in the square. And UM, I mean that's just par for the course. The KGB has basically been this entity that's changed names and official titles multiple times since the very beginning of the U S. S r UM, but it's still the same thing and it's there. It's actually really instructive to UM to study it because it seems that they are still very much up to the exact same

things that they've been doing for decades now. And everybody very famously is well aware of UH the g r U, which is military intelligence. But it seems that the g r U, the FSB, UM and another group called the UM s VR, the Foreign Intelligence Service are all basically like the KGB. They're just it's just now been divided

into separate entities, but they're all working together. But after the two thousand and sixteen election, everybody got a pretty pretty obvious taste of what the KGB has long been up to, which is trying to to meddle in American politics and trying to sow discord among Americans and ourselves. UM. And this is nothing new. Apparently they've been doing it since the outset. Uh, well actually since after World War Two at least. Yeah, I mean they've been doing this.

If you talk about sewing discord, UH, there was Operation Pandora in the nineteen sixties, which was basically the Soviets trying to start a race war within the US. UH in filter trading groups like the Clan, the Jewish Defense League, and the African American Militants posing is them making fake pamphlets um from the different organizations and and blasting those out to basically try and start a race war. It

didn't work, but it did create discord. Um. They've also posed as uh, people from Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and they're still doing the same thing today, Yeah, except now they're doing it in this hyper accelerated manner because things can spread so much more quickly on um on social media, and you can turn so many people's opinions on social media so much more quickly as well. So there doesn't seem to be officially any any disagreement, uh

that that the Russians metal in American affairs. And I've I have long been like, well, you know that it doesn't excuse it, but you know, we can't ignore the fact that America medals in other countries affairs too, and has for a very long time too, And that is definitely instructive also in something to pay attention to, but first of all to what about is and but secondly, from what I read, there's this UM scholar who wrote this really really interesting article in the Brown Journal of

Public Affairs I believe is what it was called, Uh yeah, Brown Journal of World Affairs. Guy named Calder Walton wrote this, um this this article on the KGB and it's disinformation campaigns, super readable, really exciting kind of UM. But he basically says, yes, America has done some very very shady stuff in the affairs of other countries and in its own affairs to like, you know, the CIA dosing Americans with LSD to see

what happens kind of thing. Um, But the Americans and the Brits operations just pale in scope and breadth compared to what the KGB has done and what it seems like the FSB is now still doing right now. Yeah. Not not nice guys. So I just want to shout out that, um that that article it's called Spies, election meddling and disinformation Past and present. You should check it out. Yeah. I mean, if you want to look into the KGB and spying and espionage, there are so many great articles

and documentaries on YouTube that you can watch. UM, some a little more fun than other, some very dry. The BBC as a two parter on the KGB that's very dry but very instructive. UM. So the KGB, if you want to talk about that organization, you gotta go back to pre KGB in December nineteen seventeen when Lennon created a secret police agency called the check A c H E k AH. They were the punishing sword of the revolutions. They were known as and this was this was basically

the like you said, it's gone under many names. It was the KGB before it was called the KGB. It was there to keep leadership in power UM, imprisoning, killing opponents both abroad and within the country, keeping people under surveillance, censoring news UH, and basically starting the espionage program on foreign soils UM. The Checker was followed by the O g PU, then the KGB, then the FSB slash SVR.

But from that moment the CHECKO was formed till today there has been a steady, continuous, basically unbroken security apparatus that has been charged with domestic and external UM spying, surveillance, espionage, all that jam UM from from the from the get go. The today, they might still called themselves Checkists within the organization.

It's a it's a name, the Checker that that original name is kind of stuck around if you're sort of on the inside, UH, and they you know, there are many ways that they can get what they want Uh, this one was a pretty interesting example here. UM. At one point there was a group early on in the UH Soviet unions existence where they had some socialists, some anti communists, um, that basically got together and they said, we're an organization now called the Monarchist Union of Central Russia.

And what they didn't know is that the Monarchist Union of Central Russia was actually infiltrated by so many moles. It was a fake organization that real people joined that were socialist and anti communist, but it was all a big set up to get them all in one place basically root out who they were. You know, you gotta know your enemy, know who your resistance is. And they found who they were and they killed them. Yeah, and

that nuts man. That Like, think about the effect that it has, not just in in getting rid of your opposition by forming a group where they all show themselves, but also like that becomes legendary. Like that's one of the first things that this this group, this security group did, and like it basically sends a pretty clear message like don't you can't even trust your own the people you think that that are your allies, you know, just talk

about sewing discord among you know, opposition. That's just and like that was a hundred years ago and it's still like can give you chills just to think about that. Yeah, I mean, you start a group that you think is going to be battling your oppressor and it turns out that group is so infiltrated that it's not even a real group. Well I got the impression that it wasn't even that they were infiltrated, but that the checker or I should say that O g P. You actually started

that group to the detract people, you know what I mean. No, that's what I'm saying. They infiltrated that that circle. Yeah, we started this fake organization. Yeah, that's so nuts man. So one thing that a lot of people forget, and our younger listeners might not realize, is that back in World War Two, the US and the USSR were allies. We weren't like BFFs or anything like that, but we were we had a common enemy in the Nazis, US, the UK, the US, UM and the Soviets and UM.

I read that from this time of basically working with the US and the UK, the USSR saw how good we were at disinformation campaigns, and it had two effects. It taught Soviets how to do these things. It basically said, hey, this is a really good way to sew discord and um to get information, fake information out um like with your enemy. So it taught the Soviets how to do that.

But it also made the Soviets think that they just presume that the US and the UK, we're creating the same operations in the USSR too, So it really kind of hardened the Soviets enemy ship of America. Like it really kind of predisposed the uss are to be enemies with the US and with the u K and with the West in general. Um and it just kind of took off from there. And just to be clear, I

saw a good distinction definition between misinformation and disinformation. Where misinformation is clear where the source of the information is coming from. It's just the information is faulty. So the government, the US government is giving out like bad info about coronavirus or something like that, that's misinformation. Disinformation is where the information is faulty, but it's it's not clear where this the information is coming from or where it came

from originally. It's just popped up as like a rumor or something on social media. But the the information is faulty either way. It's just whether the source is clear who the sources are not. That's that's what disinformation is. So the checker are operating in World War two. Uh, they are spying on our Manhattan projects such that there's one quote in here that said they knew more about the creation of the atomic bomb than Truman did. Uh.

They've really infiltrated things. This gave them a huge leg up in making their own bomb and their efforts to um welcome themselves into the atomic age, like they would have been way way behind had it not been for their espionage efforts in there in America. Uh, there are ways that they did this. There were spies who were um sort of the tried and true ways to pose as a diplomat um and actually get in an embassy

in a different country, but you're really a spy. UM. You could also, if you've seen the movie The America or the TV show The Americans, that's called an illegal when you basically pass yourself off as someone of that

nation's origin. UM. After World War two, in Finland, they would find records of infants who died at birth take that identity and then basically become a finished persons called a legend, and you are essentially living in that country as an American or as a finished individual, but you are really a secret agent for the Soviets, right, And I mean like super duper deep cover UM, so much so that you can expect to go live like a pretty mundane everyday existence for years or decades as an

American or as a fin or something like that, whatever your background wherever it says you're from UM, and then you might be called on to assassinate somebody one day UM or to start UM working sources. And it's not flagrant, it's not obvious. The point is that they make kind of UM contacts and friends with low level people at

the edges of powers, how I saw it described. But I also saw that same person describe UM, who described illegals like that as UM, saying that there's probably more of them in the world today than there was even during the Cold War. That's so scary, isn't it scary? But here's the thing. This is one thing that I've learned about studying the KGB. It's possible there are far fewer illegals in the world today, maybe there's zero in

the US. But the fact is somebody said that, and the KGBS track record is enough that it's possible that's the case. And that's all it takes. Now all of a sudden, people are paranoid and like, wait a minute, you, Tulca Gabbard, are you actually a tool of the Kremlin? Are you a plant by the KGB? Are you a sleeper agent who's running for president? Like, people start to get accusatory, and you can't trust anything anymore, and now you're starting to see your enemies all over the place.

And all it took was a rumor that there's more sleeper agents that are associated with the KGB today than there were in the Cold War. And now everybody's paranoid and the KGB's work is done for the day. And that could simply be disinformation, exactly exactly. But because disinformation can, it takes on a life of its own. That's the point of disinformation that it makes people behave differently than they would if they had not heard that rumor and

started to believe it. Because the other fact about disinformation we should do an entire episode on it, I think, is that it has to have a kernel of truth, Like, like the Black Panthers have to suspect that the Jewish Defense League is um there was prejudiced against them secretly, and so like these documents that that were found or sent to the Black Panther headquarters just proved this suspicion

that they already have or something like that, or vice versa. Um. So it has to have like this kernel of truth for somebody to be like, no, here's the proof, and then it just takes off from there because people love urban legends. I wonder if there's ever been an Army colonel named Colonel Truth. No, No, all right, I think we should take a break and ponder that. And uh well, I'm back and talk about when the KGB was born. Right after this stuff you should know, Nasham shuck stuff

you should know. So the KGB, I promised to tell you, it's the when that little baby was born. That little baby was born in ninety four, when the intelligence agency that it, like I said, long been operating, was reorganized officially finally as a KGB, with that same mission in hand. They were known as this this time as the Sword and the Shield of the Communist Party. And if you're talking about the structure of the agency itself. It depends on who. I mean, there's a lot that we don't know,

but um, it depends on who you're asking. I've seen anywhere from a quarter of a million two seven hundred thousand people on staff if you count the whole extended network of like foreign border guards and stuff like that. Yeah, I think seven hundred thousand's the most I've I've seen, which is a huge, Yeah, huge, huge. Compared to any kind of like CIA or any other countries intelligence organizations,

the KGB is just massive, right. Um. The other thing that I saw about the KGB is that you can make a pretty good assumption that, just especially during the Cold War, UM, that every single one of those agents were loyal to the Communist Party. And one way that they made sure that every single agent was loyal the Commist Party was to basically let them know that the other part other members of the KGB were spying on them. There was um entire sections that were dedicated to spying

just on the armed forces, just on the military alone. Um. And that was one of I think twenty different directorate's um little divisions that were responsible for different kinds of tasks or different specializations. Yeah, the official like if you want to look at the official sort of charge of the KGB, um it is for areas and size. It is the struggle or an organization, I guess, the struggle against foreign spies and agents. Uh, the exposure and investigation

of political and economic crimes by citizens. That certainly comes as a lot uh. Protection of state borders, That's what I was talking about, like the border um guards and stuff like that. And then this is the big one, protection of state secrets, right and then so like those are the big four, but there every like there was another about sixteen of them dedicated everything like making sure that the phone and radio systems were encrypted, um, to

making sure that transportation sector wasn't infiltrated. Like the KGB had its fingers and absolutely everything. There was one directorate that was specifically tasked with surveilling and monitoring foreigners and people who the KGB suspected were um we're potentially dissidents who were Soviet citizens. And they they mostly hung around like Leningrad and Moscow because that's where most of the tourists were. But that was like a whole KGB division.

That's how many people they had and how many resources they threw at keeping tabs on the power structure and making sure that any challenges to the power structure were squashed in the cradle, not even strangled in the cradle, squashed in the cradle. Yeah. And you know, they recruited the best, the smartest people, the brightest people. Um. But like you sort of mentioned, it's not like like the KGB was something to be feared by every uh um citizen of the Soviet Union, I think. But jo joining

the KGB to thwart that was not. It's not like that got you out of any sort of surveillance or and in fact, it may have even put you on or a bigger microscope, who knows. Yeah, I mean they they had every level of the military infiltrated with KGB agents, like every platoon, every detachment. If you were in a group with the military, with the military, somebody was a KGB officer posing as a soldier. That's right in their

own military. It's amazing. Yeah. Uh. By the end, I mean I think it started, like I said, by the end of the nineteen sixties, it was firmly, firmly in place as as the watchdog of everybody in the in the Soviet Union. Um. And I mean again with the like people tend to say, like, well, the the the KGB was the counterpart of the CIA, but I mean in the CIA side some shady stuff, including domestically, but

from from basically all sources. The main point of the KGB was domestic surveillance and domestic control of domestic challenges or dissent toward the Communist Party. That's right, um, spying on people, tapping phone lines, harassing people, arresting people, exiling people. Um. If you were a religious activist, good luck. If you

were a human rights advocate, good luck. Um. If you were an intellectual, if you were just a you know, part of the intellectual um sort of university system of the Soviet Union, you better watch what you say because uh, you are definitely being watched, and every word that comes out of your mouth, even in a classroom, is being recorded. Yeah, and I mean some if you were super high profile, you might make it out with your life and your family might get out alive, but you would be exiled

for criticizing the government. UM. A writer named Alexander soul Ze soul zettiness and even practice that soul Zette souls Zette Nissen. Yeah, I think that's kind of close. He Uh. He was actually I think a science teacher who started writing books about how bad things were in the Soviet Union and uh eventually won the Nobel Prize for literature.

But um, he was eventually exiled. If you were um less of a well known person and you were critical of the government, you were more likely to find yourself in the Goolag, which is a system of prison camps that we referenced earlier, and um souls and souls En it's in. I think I said it right that time. I think that's right. He estimated that um about sixty million people were sent to those camps over the course

of the twentieth century. Yeah, I mean it's it's impossible, literally impossible to put a number on the amount of human lives lost due to the KGB, but there are people that have estimated, uh, like, perhaps tens of millions of people taken out by the KGB over since its history. It's which is Yeah, I mean, I'm no CIA apologist, but I don't think the CIA has that, you know, which again, I mean we we on the outside tend to think of the KGB mostly as like the spy agency.

But yeah, they kept people in mind by killing them or sending them to secret prisons and making them leave in the middle of the night from their homes and never be seen again. Um. It's just it's just completely nuts. And the effects that that has on his societies. Just Clanton, I can't imagine. I can, sadly, but I can't imagine.

I've never lived through anything like that. Yeah. And if you know, um, if you run an organization or a or a country or a nation from fear tactics from the top down, that eventually is gonna bite you in the behind. Because what that does is everyone's paranoid against each other. Um, no one, Like in the case of Stalin, Let's say, if Stalin didn't like what you told him,

he would literally shoot the messenger. Uh, he would execute anyone who told him anything that didn't basically uh support what he thought should be going on, Like it wasn't like, hey, Stalin, Um, we found out some pretty bad stuff that's going on, Like that's a good thing. That means we can root these people out. He it got to a point where they wouldn't want to go to Stalin with bad news and that's that's not good either, No, and they had

to go to him with some news. So what they would do it would just kind of naturally UH inclined towards intelligence that supported their their view rather than um, you know, something that said, hey, there's you're really unpopular and there's there's an uprising potential really coming. They managed to squash anything like that. But in the end, UM this what's called sycophantic UM intelligence, where it's just basically feeding you, telling you what you want to hear, that

that that eventually will run a foul of reality. And that's what people credit UM with the KGB dropping the ball on the fall of the Soviet Union back although as we'll see, there's actually a lot of direct influence that the KGB had on that. But there's this idea that throughout its history there was Stalin kind of kicked off that thing where just tell me what I want to hear or else I'm literally going to kill you um or two, and that that it was carried on

even long after Stalin was gone. That's sycophantic kind of intelligence, which is really surprising because there was a really successful organization externally. UM. It was that they think that potentially, for as as good as they were espionage and stealing secrets, UM, the Soviets were apparently not and I have to preface this, let me just caveat us. This is reading American sources about the KGB. The KGB was really good at keeping

a code of silence. There were especially towards the end of the USSR, more and more KGB agents started to defect. But even when they defected, we weren't sure if they were plants, so there was still like what they said

was taken with a grain of salt. Um. But the the idea that UM that the KGB was was very successful in stealing secrets supports this idea now that the Soviet Union would not have been a superpower um part of this to two superpower polarity that ran the world in the Cold War had it not been for stealing secrets,

which doesn't explicitly say it, but suggests that they were. Um, they did not have the best and brightest as far as technology and science is concerned, which is kind of surprised to me because I've always heard that the Soviets had really really smart scientists in their own programs too. But this researching the KGB made it sound like they wouldn't have been able to keep up had they not stolen advanced weapon technology, um and built their own versions

of it. I'm I'm confused. I have no idea what's true anymore. Yeah, welcome, It's definitely true that they're spying. Efforts in the Cold War, especially when it comes to nuclear armament, were very much ramped up because they were

spying with us. Yeah, but I think that they were saying, um, they were saying, it wasn't just getting the atomic bomb, but basically like all their advanced weapons technology was the result of stealing it, and that the point is is kind of a two handed compliment or backsided compliment, um that they were really good it's stealing secrets, but that they wouldn't have been able to be a nuclear superpower without stealing secrets. I think that was That was what

I was, That's what I found. Well, and it also could have been and I'm just speculating it could have been a thing where that was such a part of the system. Was that is, Hey, we don't need to put resources for steps one through five because we can steal that stuff exactly, and we can just start on step number six or whatever once we have whatever intelligence we need. But what do I know? I'm just a dumb podcast. Do you want to take another break? Yeah,

let's do it. Okay, We're gonna take another break, everybody. That's no secret. Stuff you should know, Gosh, stuff you should know. Man, what is going on? That's wrong? I'm making puns left and right. It's terrible. Can we talk about spies? Sure? Yeah, let's do it. So Uh. I think we did a we did an espionage podcast years and years ago. I think, yes, spies, how spies working? Was it just spies or was it espionage as well? Well?

They go so closely together the same thing. Yeah. Uh. The Soviets were really good at well I don't know about really good because who knows how many times it happened, but they had some very effective moments of turning Americans into double agents. UM. A few notable people over the years. A man named Aldrich Ames Uh. He was a thirty one year CIA officer and for about nine years was feeding the Russians or I guess it was the Soviet

Union at that time. UM, highly classified information from the CIA. His big thing, it seemed like, was outing uh, CIA sources and and stuff like that, like turned KGB agents. Yeah, so, I mean there's all kinds of ways. There are other people that fed documents. We'll get to them in a minute. But he was outing sources and I think his actions directly led to at least that we know of ten

CIA sources being compromised and killed. And then you know, in the hundreds of intelligence operations that he was he was kind of dropping the dime on And that's I mean in addition to the like the loss of life as far as you're the intelligence community is concerned when you when you kill somebody like that, you're killing like decades worth of information that the person has walking around in their head and contacts and just general knowledge of how things work. Um, so it's a really big deal.

In addition to again killing somebody, you're wiping out like the institutional memory that they carry with them too, that's been helping out the other side. Yeah. He is in a medium security prison in Indiana today serving a life sentence. Um, as is Robert Hansen. Uh, he's one that is a little more. I mean he worked up until the I think two thousand one, and they said that his espionage

was possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history. He made about one point four million dollars in cash and diamonds over the years selling classified documents to the kgb UM total double agent caught in two thousand one after the FBI paid seven million bucks to a KGB agent to out him as a mole Um. Very famous case. Yeah, I remember that as well. I remember Aldred James too.

Made it really easy on people, like he was like spending lavishly and was not that well off to begin with, and it was just just being very flagrant about it. I feel like Robert Hansen was a little smarter about it, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, who's the other guy? There was one other guy that basically was spilling secrets about her submarine program. I don't I don't know. There was a There was a naval captain after World War Two. Somebody St. John was that in the sixties that I

can't remember his first name, but someone St. John. He was a naval naval captain. Yeah, there was a trove of kgb UM files from an operation from the sixties that basically confirmed he was indeed a Russian spy. Both of the Rosenbergs were indeed Russian spies. Alder Hiss, who I think went to his grave denying that he was a spy, was in fact a spy for the for the Soviets. So they did have a pretty good success of turning Americans into informants. So did the CIA and

the KGB apparently. But um, this the stuff that they got was was pretty useful. And again it was not limited to advanced weapon designs but also industrial technology stuff that we were saying, there's embargoes on this, you can't export this. They still managed to get their hands on this because of their contacts. Um that they turned in the US. Um just just basically anything you would want to keep your your economy humming along, just from from stealing.

That's how you could That's how you could do that. Yeah. The Navy guy, his was He's the one that volunteered himself basically by because he wanted money. It's like it all came down to greed. He walked into Uh oh yeah, No, I'm talking about John Anthony Walker Jr. That's who I'm talking about. Two Okay, not St. John. Not St. John. He was not a patron saint of hipsters. I don't

know Yeah. John Anthony Walker Jr. Is the one that that wanted money and he volunteered by because it's not like he was anti American who wanted to see the Communist party thrive. He it was all motivated by greed. And he walked into an embassy in the United States with like a a code card or something and said, hey, I'll sell you this for three thousand dollars and they bought it, and he was like, and you know what, that went well, so just put me on the payroll.

And he got his family involved. He had his uh I think he tried to get his father involved, his daughter, his son, his wife, his son's body. Well, at one point the Russians basically knew where all of our submarines were at all times because and his wife was apparently a really bad alcoholic um probably you know, in no small part due to this, and eventually outed him after.

I mean, he was way too uh lucy goosey with who he tried to get involved, Like you can't try and get your whole family involved and then have them say no, I'm not into it and then to be like, all right, well gonna keep doing it. What's for dinner? Yeah, she read it him out though she um would call a bunch of times apparently, and and either chicken out or she was really blitzed and couldn't get across what

she wanted to say. But eventually she did to an office in Boston, and they thought, well, this is just some drunk wife trying to get her husband in trouble. And then eventually though, they did look into it, and they you know, they searched the guy as house and they found like briefcases full of classified documents and it was just I mean, this this went on for twentysomething years,

I think. I think from what I understand, the most damning evidence was he had one of those Russian fur hats with the ear flaps that didn't met so UM. The as good as they were at turning people, at creating illegals, the sleeper agents, which may or may not be all over the world right now. UM. One of the thing things that KGB has long been known for disinformation campaigns, and from reading that, um that that guy's h article spies election meddling and disinformation past and present.

Caller Walton's article basically every every conspiracy theory that I believed as a teenager apparently was a KGB rumor disinformation campaign. I could not believe this as I was reading. It was like a trip through my my, you know, formative years. Basically, the idea that the US government created aids to target developing countries. The idea that um that American tourists used to go down to South America and Central America and adopt kids so that they could harvest their them for

body parts. KGB. Get this, chuck, there's a poll I don't remember when it was conducted, but it was sometime after the Kennedy assassination where more Americans believed that the CIA killed JFK. Then what the Warrant Commission concluded, which was that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. More Americans believed what turned out to be a KGB disinformation campaign than what the Warrant Commission came up with. That they came up with the one that the CIA killed JFK. That

that was the KGB that did that. And you know the friend of your friends, uh mom, who was on the elevator with Eddie Murphy. KGB. That's right. Everything, I mean, all that stuff flasher lights at somebody, and the gang comes and kills you, k um, But it's just so bizarre to think, like what, like no, I thought that I talked to people about that, like late at night,

like we had conversations about this stuff. And when you see that and when you read it and realize that like this has been going on for years, it really puts things into focus. Now. Um, like the two thousand and sixteen election meddling um to the the idea that there's like like g r U agents military intelligence agents who are posing as members of Black Lives Matter or who posed as like Tea Party members during the two sixteen election, like that they um that they were actually

working for the for Russia. The idea that that that's still going on just becomes all the all the more clear when you look at some of their past campaigns. Something I do occasionally, Uh, I don't know why I've tortured myself, but sometimes I will read comments on a Fox news dot com article, right, and someone will say something, and then you can leave a comment about the comment, and someone will comment like, Okay, thanks a lot, Dmitri.

That's funny. But you don't know, man. That's what they do. They infiltrate message boards and they infiltrate social media and UM, like you you never know, like, uh, yeah, it's it's just it's really staggering that this kind of stuff still goes on to this degree and there's nothing we can do about it. Yeah, for real. So so let's um, let's step back for a second, because we kind of hopped ahead. But I want to go back into KGB history.

KGB was around from nine and we said earlier that the UM the KGB had a direct role in the fall of the USSR, and they did because there was a KGB um head who was appointed by garbage Off because he thought that he was an intelligent, moderate person who was open to new ideas, and to turn out, he was and he was part of that same old KGB establishment um who wanted things to say the way that they were. And Um, he actually led a coup

against gorbach Off I did. I was too young to know what was going on, but there was a coup against Corbach where he was under house arrest for a minute. And Um the coup finally failed because it became clear that the military he wasn't wasn't in on it or

wasn't going to take part in it. Um. But It eventually led directly within months to the downfall of the USSR, the breakup of the u s SR, because in the meantime they had elected for the first time a democratically elected president, and when Gorbachof saw that basically this coup was a vote of no confidence in him, he stepped aside, separated the Communist Party from the presidency, and all of a sudden, the USSR wasn't there anymore. It was just

Russia because the satellite states started saying, um, hey, we're independent. Now, we'll see you later. Soviet Union and the USSR fell apart, kicked off by this coup that the KGB initiated. Yeah, and I think yelston uh or yells excuse me, officially split it up, right Yeah, yeah, he he said, KGB, you're dissolved. We're gonna break you up into the FSB and the UM do the same stuff, right exactly, but just do it separately. I figure if I separate you

guys might be less evil. And apparently that was not the case. Yeah. And apparently, uh, not apparently, but very famously Putin came straight out of the KGB. Uh. He was a KGB agent in the mid nineteen seventies. Uh, supposedly because he saw a movie about Russian spies and I guess thought it was awesome. Yeah, I said that I want to do that. There's a picture of him in one of these articles where he's in the seventies wearing like this Newsy cap and just looking super seventies.

But he also looks like Putin man, just complete poker face. He's staring off camera at something. Who knows what he's taken in. It's it's it's a really cool picture. There's another picture, too, supposedly of him posing as a tourist standing next to Ronald Reagan. Oh my god, have you ever seen that picture? Oh? It's nuts. It's just so great. But then you're like, is that Putin? And I went and looked, and it turned out that there is still

disagreement of whether it's him or not. But most people say that that's not him, that he would have been in uh Dresden at the time, he wouldn't have been in the Soviet Union. I'm looking now, Oh my god, that certainly looks like Putin, doesn't it. But the official line is that is not Putin with this little camera around his neck right and so Putin was not just in the KGB. He became the head of the FSB. And this is a real testimony to just how powerful

the KGB and the KGB's remnants or successors remain. He went from head of the FSB to the President of Russia. That was the step that he took. And he was not the first person to do that. Other KGB heads had worked their way up to become the head of the Communist Party and the de facto head of the Soviet Union at the time. So all of this kind of goes to show you that that nothing, even the fall of the USSR, really did anything to slow down the KGB, and that the advent of technology helped kind

of actually speed things up quite a bit. Yeah, and if you think those murders um or a thing in the past, that is certainly not the case. I remember, as I'm sure you do, in two thousand six Alexander uh Littnovinko, Levinenko, Letvinenko, he was the one that was killed by the radioactive uh polonium two tin that was

dropped in his beverage. And uh, they they have a history of doing like that's a really awful way to die, and they have a history of killing people in really awful ways because it sends that message, um that you know, not only can you die, but you're gonna die in a really awful, awful way and everyone's gonna know. Um. Dating back to Trotsky who went to Mexico City and someone came up behind him, Ramon Mercader with a ice axe and sunk it three inches into his brain. He said,

how do you like this projection? Oh my god, was actually so bad. I think that was brilliant. Thank you. I was hoping you come around that it was really good. I got you mergator projection. That's lovely. Um. But yeah, he killed him with an ice axe, but he lived for a day. I thought I'd always heard the story and I always thought that he just like planted him

in the brain and that was it. But Trotsky got up and was like fighting him off, and people came in and kicked this guy's butt and he survived in the hospital for like a full day after this before he died. Well, yeah, Livin Yanko, he survived long enough that he helped solve his own murder. There's a really great guardian art um on it called Alexander Livinnanko, the man who solved his own murder, and h it's definitely worth reading for sure. Yeah, I mean just a couple

of years ago. Uh, what was that guy's name, Screepall, Sergey Screepall. He was he was the one with the nerve poison. He wasn't killed. There was an attempt on his life though, Yeah, but it was just just like every time you think, man, this is cold war stuff, it just pops up in the news again. You're like, man, it's still happening. Yeah, And I mean we should say both of those attacks were in London. Like this wasn't in Russia or Moscow or anything like that. This was

in London. These guys lived in London in exile, and they were still murdered in London through like radioactive material and nerve gas that was smuggling in the country. And that actually is as kind of goes to stand as evidence that there still are these illegals, these um deep cover sleeper agents that are working for what used to

be the KGB and is now the FSB. Yeah, and that's why it's a really big deal, uh, that a president of the United States would want to cozy up to somebody like Putin, who uh is making great efforts to put who he wants in office. Yeah, I mean that's it's just pure and simple, like, that's unbelievable. Absolutely, Chuck Well said, are you got anything else? I got

nothing else but rage. So if this floated your boat, go check out spies, election meddling and disinformation passed in presents, create article, check out Alexander let Vin Yanko, the spy who solved his own murder, the man who'd solved his own check out the Big Think. They had a good one called the History of the KGB and its Legendary Methods. So I think you'll like all three of those. And since I said I think you'll like all three of those, is time for listener mate. Uh, this is about the

heroine lozenges. Remember that when I wondered if they were still around? So this is from Martin. Hey, guys, in the Heroin episode, Chuck was wondering if there are only still uh heroin lozenges lying around somewhere, and Jock Josh quickly refuted, But Chuck, you have been vindicated. I work in an unnamed museum and an unlamed unlamed location in Canada. I'm not even gonna say where in Canada even though he does. And we have four different packages for heroin

lossages from Bear. They're underwalking Key, of course. We received them in a donation from a local pharmacy that closed down in the thirties and they gave the museum a wide array of drugs to add to the collection. Along with the heroin, we also have a bottle of arsenic and two packets of amphetamines. One package has two pills missing. Oh man, I love the show you guys are keeping me saying during quarantine, I steadily make my way through your back catalog. That is from Martin Nice Martin, Um,

that was much appreciated. Thanks for shining some light on that one. Uh And if you want to shine some light forest, we love that kind of thing. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.