Former KGB Agent | Jack Barsky | Ep. 307

That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers, but this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to, and we really appreciate that, So go and check us out at patreon dot com, Slash The Teamhouse.

as well. We think we're taking care of our kids buying rolling them in after school lessons, or buying them birthday presents or fancy trips, but another important way to take care of them is with term life insurance policy in case the unexpected happens and you're not around anymore. And that's where Fabric comes in. So if you have anyone relying on your income, then you should seriously consider

having life insurance. It's as simple as that. A term life insurance policy from Fabric can help give you peace of mind that the people depending on you will have some financial support if something unexpected happens. So Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance. You can get it done right here, right now. You could be covered right from your couch in under ten minutes with no extra health exam required. So if you've got kids, and especially

if they're young or you're young and healthy. The time to lock in low rates is right now. Even if you have life insurance through your employer, it may not offer enough protection for you and your family, and it may not follow you if you leave your job. Fabric has flexible, high quality policies that fit your family and your budget, like a million dollars in coverage for less than one dollar a day, and you can do it all online. So join thousands of parents who trust Fabric

to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meat at meetfabric dot com slash Teamhouse. That's Meetfabric dot com slash Teamhouse. Me e t fabric dot com Slash Teamhouse. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Insurance Company. Not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and

health questions. And the second thing I want to tell you guys about is my book We Defy the Lost Chapters of Special Forces History, coming out December ninth, and I will be doing an event in conjunction with Triple at Design, the clothing company that makes this shirt and a lot of this stuff you see me wearing on here. The event is going to be in Hackensack, ninety two Kennedy Street on November ninth. Start time is at eleven am.

I hope to see many of you guys there. I'll be talking about the contents of the book, some really cool stuff, So I hope to see many of you there.

And actually Jack Barski, who whose identity restole, was born to Jewish parents. Ye know, the father most likely was an Orthodox Jew because his first name was Elisha Lee.

at a young age. Jack bart He passed away in nineteen forty four at the age of eleven, and some diplomat who operated out of Washington, d C. Found Barski's gravestone in a Jewish cemetery and somehow, and they never told me the mechanics, but I was just told the steps. He was able to acquire Barski's death certificate, and then somehow, just by paying by asking for it, writing, writing and writing out, filling out the form and paying the fee,

got a bona fide copy of Jack Barski's birth certificate. Now, mind you, that was a that was a diplomat, a Russian diplomat. He spoke with an accent. So how in the world was what did nobody was nobody educated that you know, Hanging out these birth certificates to perfect strangers from another country is not a good idea.

making ends meat. There was no food at least I always had a roof over my head because the village that I grew up in was a small town that I lived there after the village, they were not destroyed at all. The Russian army just went through there and and there were peasants around, so there was always we could always eat, get potatoes to eat. I mean, I can't remember having been hungry, but we were malnourished. I got a picture of myself when I was eleven years old.

I was thin as a rail. I also was my internal organs didn't grow, they didn't keep up with my my vertical growth. I was not allowed to play soccer for a while because my heart was weak. And the medical system was horrendous. You know. We I was always sick. You know, every month, every other month, I came down with something, and there there was no medication as a result,

you know, this untreated strep throat. Eventually, the bacteria that do this to your throat, they settle on your heart valve and eventually, many many years later, that heartwell had to be replaced. So it was no fun. And and the doctor, I mean deep, this was tough love. The doctor hurt me three times as a child, very badly. One times when when once when he pierced my ear drum without telling me what's going to come. Secondly when uh he

pulled my foreskin back, which that hurt like hell. And the third one was when I had a wound in my left foot, in the soul of my left foot. It was pretty deep. I had stepped into some some glass and he had this fat nurse sit on me so so that I couldn't move, and then he quaterized that wound with silver nitrate. You know how much that hurt? And then he told me walk home. That was that's I'm speaking of, telling me to walk when I came down with h appendicitis, which can be very painful, and

mine was so I couldn't. I couldn't, I wasn't home and I couldn't stand straight anymore. And so my mother said, well, this doesn't look so good. You go to the doctor. So actually I had to walk to the bus stop, take the bus, and and and then uh, check myself into the hospital. This this was normal, and there wasn't Nobody thought that this was you know, child abuse. It was. It was pretty bad. But here's the thing. It also toughened me up and prepared me for what I what

I did, uh when I when I did it? So to speak, So, uh, you know you you went very far into the future from that point on. Do you want me to talk about recruitment.

top college and I graduated as valedictorian there. But here's the thing, and we were taught art, science the curriculum, and I have the curriculum of my my my last year in high school, half of it was math and science and there were no electives. So that was that was a pretty good part of the education. But with regard to history, with regard to literature, with regard to what's that called the Civics, it was nothing but brainwashing from A to Z. I mean, there was only one

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

admit that there were Christians. Very rare. My mother once told me that she had to resign from she she grew up in a Christian household. I know this for a fact. Her parents have had three girls and they were named Eva, Rude and uh and Judith uh so. And then she told me that she u just after the Wars, she she joined the local church and she sang in the choir and she had to resign from the choir because my father was a party member and

he wanted to have a career. Yeah. So interesting, Yeah and so so I I never got to know Christianity whatsoever, not at all. And I, you know, my I just knew that Marx Marxism was a science Marxism Leninism because we we we took a course in college was called scientific Marxism Leninism where we were taught at Marx and Angels particularly had discovered the natural laws that governed the the evolution the human of of the of the human race.

Starting with uh, you know, hunters and gatherers and the Stone Age going on to the you know, the the empires, the Greek and the Roman empires, and feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism. So that was a law if you, if you, if there's no contrary opinion available, and you believe in that stuff. And it was really well done from a from a

delivery perspective. It because it started in kindergarten and and even though the little puppet on the TV were somewhat ideological, uh and and so the brain was started very early, and that that holds extremely well. I had another thought that I just see, oh yeah, and since I believe than this, and since I wanted to my father had a good career, I wanted to have a good career.

In my first year of college, because I wasn't outstanding student, I was recruited by by one of the party members of the section chemistry, and I was flattered and I joined the party. And then I was also recruited to become a leader in the youth movement. Initially I was just leading a small group. Then I was leading uh the entire uh, the entire class of UH. When when whenever my class, which was about sixty people. Then I was promoted to leading the all the the is. The

folks were called young. The organization was called Young Young Communist Youth, the entire Communist youth group of the Section Chemistry, which which was several hundred people. So and I thought I was known to be a very effective communist. I was an intellectual communist. I wasn't one of those stupid ones. Okay. So so I did some things that you shouldn't do, that you weren't really allowed to do. I gave you

one example. You know, like everybody else, I I loved rock and roll, you know, started with Elvis and then went on with the Beatles. I taught myself guitar and in high school, and I listened to Western radio stations, which that that was a no no. Now. One time I was caught at the dorm that had very thin walls. I was listening to some Western music and my neighbor was one of those dumb communists. He denounced me, and

I listened to this list. The party secretary of the Sex of the Section Chemistry called me into his office and he said close the door, and then he said, next time you turned the volume down. You know, what that meant.

I always thought, you know, our leadership, like at the very top wasn't very good and like my like these guys that I was just telling you about, the more intelligent people also were hoping for a a more intelligent leader because we had two leaders that you know, they couldn't talk. They may have been clever, but they weren't highly educated and they weren't really smart. But it doesn't matter. The cause was still the cause.

him up. So so, uh, I just hated him. And he was one of those guys who volunteered and no, actually he became uh an employee of the Starzi, and he just spied on internally. You know, I lived in a bubble where people just didn't do that because the again, you know, the Starzi used the more intelligent people to do intelligence work, all right, and and the intelligence, the intelligence work that that they did in West Germany was outstanding. I mean they had they had several hundred Starzi agents

in the West German government. Marcus Wolff, as you you probably heard his name, the man without a face. He he became legend. But he had an easy job. You know, you know, you take East Germany, can move him to West Germany. There's no cultural difference, no language difference, so it's much easier to to infiltrate that West Germany. Then it was to infiltrate for the Russians to infiltrate the United States. So I'm going to stop talking now.

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

don't have to pretend to be somebody else. The pretension of being somebody else requires a certain set of character traits and I know, and I found that out after when I chanced upon interviews that were given by two different X heads of the director at s That was the illegals directory. So the third type is the illegals.

And they actually in the interview, both of them said that they were combing through thousands of records to find people that a were ideologically sound and then approached them and then they were looking what they tested me for eighteen months after after they said hello to see if I fit the profile that they were looking for. I

give you some some tidbits out of that profile. Very quick decision maker, never having a problem with change, changing circumstances, fearlessness, uh no, no problem with being alone lonely, and my favorite is a tendency to to force for well controlled adventure. And so after eighteen first this is how they introduced themselves,

and I'm pretty sure they found me. And at the time, in my the di Stazi kept records of a lot of citizens and particularly the ones that eventually would you know with students and would you know have position at a higher level in the country, and my file said he has nothing but age. I had at the time received the second no, the highest scholarship in East Germany. There were two other students out of twenty thousand at that university who had that. I got it, and I

was a youth leader. I was a Communist, so they had to talk to me, right. So, and one day I got a knock on the door on a Saturday. By the way, you know, in hindsight, I pieced all these things together. So our dorm rooms didn't have names on them. And how did the and I had a roommate, how did the guy who knocked on the door know that I was there by myself and I was behind that door. Well, in hindsight, we had a neighbor who

was a Russian who studied at our university. He must have been KGB, right, so you know, I didn't have a clue. So it comes a German guy and he uh, he was. I mean, he was the the the biggest idiot that I have met amongst KTB folks. He was not a KGB employee. He was a collaborator and they sent to German. I don't know why yet that makes a lot of sense, but but he came came at me first. He asked me, are you always did I

said yes? He said, okay, I'm from card Size. He know that is A was a factory and still is a very well known optics company that that even then made outstanding products that could be sold to the West. So this would have been a place where a graduate might find game call of employment. And he pretended to sort of recruit me, you know, for the future. And that the reason that I'm saying he was an idiot, and I can give you give that to you in writing.

He didn't know how our own country worked. The companies did not recruit. You were either a sign or you had the chance, if you were near the top ten percent, to stay at the university to get a doctorate and maybe you know, get a get a career as a you know, with a doctorate at university teaching. So so that that was such a stupid lie. Immediately I knew, I thought, oh he's he's Starzy. It didn't bother me at all because I had no reason to be afraid

of Starzi. You know, I wasn't excellent standing. So so I guess again that he probably was trying to recruit for the Starzi. And if it if it wasn't if it had been about you know, watching other Easterman citizens. I would have set flat out no, but I expected, you know, this would be interesting. So you know, I talked with him, and I talked with him a little small talk, and eventually.

the table, and I was a little bit hesitant. But this guy, who by the way, never introduced himself by any kind of name, not even a cover name, he gets up and he says well, come on, come on over here. I want to introduce you to Herman. We're working with our Soviet comrades. And then he excused himself and said, you know, I gotta go so here. I'm with Herman, you know. And I knew that Herman was

KGB obviously because he spoke with an accent. He wasn't Herman, he was actually and he got pissed off, and I asked him, once, is your real name, Geraman? That's the Russian version of Herman. He got very annoyed because we did not when we interacted, we used cover names and in very few names, very few people knew my real name. I am one hundred percent certain that when when I started working with the KGB, I became a state secret

of the Soviet Union. Because illegals, as as I already indicated, were very hard to find, those types of people that fit the bill. They were also hard to recruit because not everybody was stupid enough for me to take on something that was with a pretty much but have me wind up in jail right and then then very difficult to expensive to train because all the training was one on one and expensive to maintain. So so you don't

you don't want to put these individuals at risk. So I guarantee you the person who made decisions on my behalf in Moscow Center did not know my name. He didn't have to know it, so he couldn't give me away. You know, he knows you know, my you know, my coment name, and that was Deta. So Herman was Herman. Okay, but whatever, you know, I didn't I didn't really care about all of this, you know, I just I just wanted to do a good job, and I played along.

You know. It was like I didn't even think it seriously that one day I'm actually going to be recruited. I was just like, you know, meeting with Herman every other week, and he became it like your father figured to me. My father had left the family and he was about ten years older. So we had nice talks

about everything in life. I shared everything with him. He gave me some tasks that our work close to what people in intelligence do, such as knocking on a door and introducing yourself onto some kind of a pretext and then having a conversation and finding something out about a relative in the West. I hated that, but I did it, and you know, we had some you know, we did a little bit of you know, clandestine meetings, exercises and stuff like that, but not a whole lot. And so

this is when the recruitment happened. It was eighty Oh. The one thing I think that impressed them tremendously and this we're talking about, you know, the the tendency to be adventurous. In my junior year in college, my friend and I hitch height all the way from East Germany through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria to the Black Seat. Wow. Very few East Termans did that because you know, we had to go through countries where you didn't speak the

language you had. You only had limited money available for each and limited time in the countries that you passed through. And you all we had was maps and you know, a train that took us from East Germany to to Czechoslovakia. And then it was just waving and see hope, hoping that you know, somebody would take you someplace where there is a structure where you can sleep. We slept in

the fields several times. And and when when I told him that, I think he liked this a lot, right right, that was just like, never mind, you know he can do the shit, he can find his way and and you know, my first trip from Moscow to New York actually confirmed that they picked the right guy, because that trip was even harder. But anyway, let me.

American parent, somebody who already speaks fluent English. You know, those are the types of attributes I would be looking for, you know, somebody who has a foot in the door already.

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

It was a bunch of BS small talk, and and without warning he asked the question, so what are you in or not? I was not prepared for that. Okay, this is another one of you know, when they were talking about making decisions rather quickly, so I stoleed and I think that was maybe it was okay. I said, well, I don't I can't make a decision. I don't know if I'm qualified, and I don't have any training yet.

And he said, don't worry about it. We're going to train you and we know that you're qualified, so I expect your answer by tomorrow noon. You know, that makes for a sleepless night, speaking of sleeping, you know, because now I now I was faced with reality that I had never really considered. So, you know, I knew that

I had a phenomenal career ahead of me. I was was on path to become a tenured professor, like a member of the quote unquote ruling class, or maybe joined the government, so you know, the legit government, not not espionage, and and then here was the adventure and the flattery that the mighty kg Me was after me, my god, and and and what what really moved the needle? It was very close. But what moved because the other thing that that helped me back in the East Germany was

my basketball team. I was I was, I mean, I was married to my basketball Bowl team. I didn't have a steady girlfriend at the time. Basketball was was my

life was more important than anything else. So but what moved the needle was I was going to be able to to move to to travel to the West, you know uh and you know, visit countries that otherwise were not accessible, and to have the good life of an Easterman James Bond, because we had our own James Bond, and that guy was hunting down Nazis, but he had the good life. He had the fancy cars, they lived in nice homes, and he had several girlfriends in a row. So so what is that? H is it?

the cause. But anyway, so I had to share that with you because there's there's so many ironic aspects to my life. But he says, my god, this is ridiculous. And the irony also is that as a sleeper, I'm not I'm not sleeping very well these days.

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

the things, he asked, so, how's your English going? And I said, I pulled a book out of my shelf, and I said, I can read that without a dictionary. He's a hat. So a week later, I my my my handle in Berlin gave me a The German word popped into my head and that usually very often blocks my English. A recorder, a tape recorder, and they told me just tape something, say something. Well, there's one thing

I knew. I was pretty damn good speaking with less of an at speaking with less of an accent, and all the other people that were learning English, you know, my contemporaries I had. I have a talent to imitate languages. I can also do a very pretty good English an Indian accent. You know, so sorry the comedian and mean, no,

that's great. But anyway, So and a week later I was on a plane to Moscow because somebody had this idea, Man, perhaps this guy can be trained to learn English so well that we could put him into the United States as a born American. You know why this is so so inviting. It's because if I'm born in the United States, there's no red flag associated with my existence. There's no other nationality involved. I didn't come through another country. I was just like, hey was born in New Jersey, right.

So they had this dream. And so when I when I appeared in Moscow, they had me talk with two English speaking individuals. One was a Russian English teacher that was a cover story. She she taught English at Moscow University, but she was KGB and then a born American a woman who had married a KGB agent and emigrated. That poor thing made a real bad decisions because of decision because I worked with over two years. She was as

miserable as can be. But so and then when when the women were done talking, they gave feedback to the decision makers, and the American said, I can work with him. I think he can do it. The Russian was a little bit concerned, but you know, wishful thinking took over. And that's how I wound up in Moscow working on my primarily working on my English, but also being taught phenomenal trade craft the Berlin. The Berlin teaching wasn't that good. I was trained in Moscow. I was trained one on one.

And what also happened in addition to interacting, you know, with my tutor, my the American woman once twice every week, I also UH had the opportunity for about six months to work with a fellow whose name you may know, Marris Cohen. Mars Cohen was a member of the rosenbergspiring him, him and his wife Lana Uh. They managed to not get caught. They were born Americans, and and so what

was good about this? At this point I could interact with a male voice and imitate the male voice rather than just a female And and Morris and uh and uh Lana were actually redeployed after they wound up initially in Poland and the Soviet Union, redeployed in the UK, spent some time in jail and were incarcerated. They were caught in the UK, but were exchanged and wound up living the rest of their life very very highly regarded and very well kept in Moscow. And they died believing in communism.

supposedly recruiting young kids. It doesn't work. Uh and and I was never aware that there was anything like a potempting type village where we were learning how to.

so right, yeah, nothing? What what the the folks that trained me with regard to not language language? What good was good in freight craft was good. Everything else was was substandard. The folks that tried to tell me what it was like to live as an American didn't know what. They didn't know. They they had lived in the United States as diplomats, and they all lived there in Upstate and in the northern part of Manhattan, you know where

that is where they had a Soviet compound. And they when they were done with their day job and maybe some spying, they went home and lived with their families. They didn't know what it was like to live like an American, to have a job. Yeah, I mean nothing. They gave me advice that didn't work right.

One thing I did and during that trip, just to check if my language, my ability to speak English with a sort of an American accent, was working with Canadians. I was once sitting next to a bar in Windsor, Ontario, which is right on the other side of Detroit, and my neighbor was an American, and I spoke with him about them, the Canadians, as if you know, implicit that I was an American, and he had no problem with that.

I was very proud of that, but I did know that there were a lot of things I had to learn by observing so and I got really lucky in one sense because my first job was as a bike messner in Manhattan, and you know, I spent quite a bit of time waiting for deliveries in an office and I was able to just listen to what the other messenger talked about, how they behaved, watched them. They didn't care about me these were all transients. But I was able to absorb, you know, things about you know, who's

on the Yankees, Who do we hate you? We hate the Boston Red Sox and so forth. I watched a lot of television and I managed. I was very careful getting very close to individuals, in particular women, because I was concerned that, you know, because women are more intuitive and instinctively. I knew this. So my first steady girlfriend was an alien. She was from South America. With her, I could be more intimate. She couldn't figure it out. So it took me about six seven years to know.

But yeah, six seven years to become comfortable. I went when I after three years of my messenger of work, I went to college in the US and it was in New York City. It was Beru College. In those days, it was like the United Nations. So I felt really comfortable interacting with everybody. And when I had my first job, I felt too comfortable and I get and this is this is where a Cuban national helped me out. This is what happened. So one day we were good friends.

He was very smart. We worked together on the same team. We got along phenomenally well and one day he gave me some advice. He took me into a room and he said, hey, Jack, you know, I like you a lot. You you're a great guy, you're smart, you're good to work with. But there's one problem. Everybody thinks you're an asshole. And and and then and I asked him pot really, and then he told me you were so aggressive, you're you're so negative, you're rude man. And I realized, my god,

I got to change that. And and then then I paid attention to how everybody else communicated. And Americans typically, unless you know their aggressive New Yorkers, maybe, but most Americans really are not super critical and particularly critical and saying critical things without being asked for an opinion. Right. So that's when I when I mellowed and I changed, and I paid more attention how others, you know, communicate

and interact with one another. And by the time, by the time the FBI caught up with me, which was at that point maybe like twelve or thirteen years later, I was very much Americanized. Even though there's still some residue where I can get very blunt, but I keep that to a minimum and only when it calends.

wasn't enough. And then Plan A said, so, once you've got your your your driver's license, your social Security card, you have a job, you have an apartment with an address rather than living in a hotel, and you have you know, you have a real job. Then you apply for a passport. And the idea was, once you have

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

with people of interest. That's like maybe join a country club near the Pentagon fascinating. The plant was brilliant. However, I made a big mistake. So we we actually practiced, and I think they made a mistake too, by the way, but we practiced a fill filling out the form. So I was very familiar with the application form, and they told me to apply in person, not by mail. Okay. So I took the form, and I took the documentation

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

I filled out everything honestly. So when I when I filled out the what the job you have to your profession, I wrote messenger. I should have written contractor it didn't occur to me. I was a messenger. I didn't say I didn't even ride bike messenger. So that was a mistake number one. Mistake Number two was there were two fields that were that were not mandatory. When are you planning to travel and where you're planning to go? I

left those blank. So I go back to the counter and the guy says, you know, mister Barski, there are some doubts about your identity. Would you please fill out this auxiliary auxiliary questionnaire. He gave me the questionnaire and I was still confident, you know, I'm going to fill this out. And the first question was where did you go to high school? And at this point I was busted because there was no record of Jack Barski having

attended high school. I knew that Jack Barski was a very rare name, so there's no way that another, you know, like a Jack Smith attended high school or something like that. So the high school in my backstory was Peter Stuyvesant, which, by the way, was also a mistake. Because there was a school for the gifted, and my backstory had me grow up in the country, so I wasn't ring that mat Yeah, so anyway, so uh, my my ability to make a quick decision saved me from from true truly

being busted. I I just walked back to This was instinct. I walked back to that window, and I was cursing him out and said, well, who needs all that bs And I grabbed the documentation and my application that was sitting in front of him and walked out and another security hold. The guy sort of remembered my name and reported me didn't but that busted by an A. So I and I felt like a total failure in a sense. I was you know, I hadn't thought this true. You

know whatever. As smart as I am, I'm I'm I'm still pretty smart, and I still make a lot of dumb mistakes, though that one, that one was very costly and and I'm really glad I made this because I could have done a lot of damage to this country and I could have run up in jail as well. So never mind, but you know, I'm very glad that this failed. So well. Now plan B. You know, I'm back in Moscow, and I told him this is what happened.

And at that point they had to keep me because I had proven I had done something that was very difficult. They were so impressed with me, like finding when I told them how I had to work hard to get around the obstacles to get the documentation to get the driver's license and the Social Security card, and how I had to improvise because their instructions didn't work. And then then I got a job where I could actually finance myself. I didn't need any money from the KGB to exist

once I had the job. I mean, they knew they had a good guy and they wanted to figure out how can we continue using him? And is one other thing that I found out that nobody ever told me. That became clear to me in one of those interviews where the head of the Director of the S stated quite clearly that the most value that it ascribed to US illegals in the US was out us being in the United States. And you put two and two together.

We're talking about the late eighties who were the most the most dangerous and most damaging spies for the KGB in the United States. And you know those names, Aldo James and Robert Hansen, and who did they interact with the diplomats? So and there was an Andropook was very much concerned that diplomatic relations could be broken because there was this CIA versus KGB war going on in a lot of kicking out, you kick out out my spies, did not kick out your spies. And he was worried

that no more diplomatic relations. There were no nonofficial cover people there to the extent I know US illegals would be left over to communicate, to keep that the chain of communication going. So they wanted me back there. And then they said, well, now, okay, you know when Plan B this is the long game. They didn't tell me about what I just told you. They kept that a secret. No, no instructions, nothing. I had no idea. This is compartmentalization

to an extreme. And that was bad because you know, for me to make good decisions all by myself, and I needed to have some background for crying out loud. So anyway, so I went to college and graduated in three years. That's valedictorian. That was another mistake. There was the last vestige of cultural ignorance when the when the team called me into this office and asked me what my topic, what the graduation speech might be. And I said,

what what graduation speech? Well, you're the valedictorian, has it, and you know, he talked me into it. I didn't want to do it, but whatever, I got lucky. Again, I could have been busted there. So but you know, and then and they asked me to, uh, you know, study economics and maybe get a job on Wall Street

to be be rich. But I really liked information technology and I changed my major and I told him that and they were okay with that because they knew that that would make me pretty valuable down the road.

last two years. They also asked me if I could get a hold of some information technology that was on the do not import list. So so the only success I might have had is that they may have recruited some people, particularly students who who I fingered as being good targets for for recruitment, possibly because they were pretty smart.

But they they had, they had they were in those days, we recruited based on ideology primarily, and you know, the myce acronym the the I was still number one, and but ideology not necessarily communist ideology, just like radical right or even you know, fanatical supporters of of Israel. To record on a false flat and so of course, so I don't They never told me. They never once told me good job, not even in general. They just didn't let me know. They just gave me that decoration that

indicated that I was doing a good job. So that's all I can tell you it's very surprising when people asked me, so, so, what did you really do? I never touched any document that had secrets. One thing and this is this is another educated guest. But I believe that they were considering me as a go between between either Aims or Hansen, because in nineteen eighty six, that was my last wizard to Moscow. They gave me a

task to find a spot for a drop operation. Drop in yes, drop operation in New Hampshire place and in the wilderness. And they told me that would have to be a spot where you can deposit something that has size like a small suitcase. And I found the spot and and oh and they asked me if I was willing And this was the only time they asked me if I was willing to do a do a job that that is more that would increase the danger to

my existence in the United States. Well, guess what courier and handing and getting stuff from Aims or or or hands and and then interacting with diplomats because at this point I was very good at some ins detection. I knew I was never followed, okay, and they knew that I was good at this because I had a lot very very good training. So so that was they were considering it, and they pulled it back for some reason.

was Schwartz, and so I grew up bi lingual. So this way I could somebody asked me about the touch of an accent that I still have. I said, yeah, yeah, I grew up at lingual in New York. That that's the end of that and that question. So uh, and then they had me with I my father died, I grew up with my mother. They had me quit high my mom actually the dad I died from a heart attack and my mom died pretty young in a traffic accident. And I was like grief stricken and quit high school.

I was at Migraines and I started working in a chemical factory. Uh, George Luterson Company, I still remember. And George Ludison Company had exploded so it didn't exist anymore. And then they had me go to an upstate farm in New York City. That one wasn't backstopped, but you know, so I and when I came to the United States, you know, I was a country boy who was going to try to make it in New York. And then it was okay, but it wasn't backstopped at all.

to sit down on and decipher. And for most of my uh my years, I had to use a manual algorithm no no one time pad, so that took quite a while, and you have to you had to really double up on the on developing the the second set of numbers to make sure that you didn't make a mistake right. So so very often, you know, on Thursdays, I was not available socially and complained about that because that's a pattern. You don't want to have a pattern as an agent. You know, what's what's wrong with this guy?

What is he doing on Thursday? And and they said there's nothing we can do about it. My conclusion is that they went a time out of Cuba because initially, when when I first went to the US, they told me to to go to a hotel that has southern exposure, so Bingo. So anyway, sometimes it took me until about three in the morning to decipher the radiogram, and I got really pissed off when I got Sometimes they started with something congratulations comrade theater on May first, the international

holiday for the for the workers. What the heck are you giving me?

someplace in the Western world. One one was initially in Berlin, then uh Then one was in uh In in Austria. When I was a bike messenger and I couldn't socialize and I couldn't watch TV all night, I taught myself Spanish and so eventually they found an address someplace in in South South America. I was limited to two pages per letter and one letter per month to each one of the addresses. No more so two pages. You can't fit a whole lot of information onto two pages and

so uh. And on top of it, I had so and this this. This was a lengthy operation. It took pretty much almost all of my of my saturday when I I did this on I did this on a Saturday. Uh. First of all, you have to prepare the surface. You have to clean everything very well. You have to put gloves on you you you have to you use either a mirror or a glass, a sheet of glass to

operate on. That had to be cleaned up. Then you clean up the paper you're using with with you gotta wash your hands and you clean that up before before you put the gloves on. Then you devise the open text. You write this down someplace else, and then you copy this in the in uh you know, in in not in handwriting. What's the other one? You look? You I

forgot the word yeah? Uh? And and then you take your contact paper out, which it was a sheet that was in a in a in a notebook that was it had a trace of a chemical on it and with the first ten pages of a notebook. They bought this at a Walmart and then pregnated this with some chemical that you can't you can't find unless you know

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

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

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

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

But they gave my my German family some of the money that I asked them to hand over. I asked them to give give them everything. I don't know if they did so, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So this was the communication. One other means of communication was dead drops. So for instance, when I got a passport, I always traveled. When I went back to Moscow, and I went back to Moscow four times every other every

other year, I went back with a forts passport. I think they were mostly German, and they were not They were not not American. They may have been Canadian, but but not American. They the rule was not ever to use a passport, a forged passport in the country where you operate off that country, you know. So so for for traveling back, they had to give me some money, some travel money and a passport, and that was done

via dead drop operations. And occasionally, when I had too much information that you know, lengthy report, occasionally they asked me to write down, you know, what Americans think about certain occurrences in in in the world, such as the shooting down of the South Korean airline. And so at that point, I, you know, I put my foreign policy hat on and I wrote something that was too long to put in a letter, so that I photographed and put in a a container and asked for a dead

drop operation. And that happened about three or two or three times, by the way, just yeah, to to add something interesting in that particular report, I hammered them. I told him what the heck were you doing this? This raised raised the level of anti Americanism tremendously, has put a lot of strain and and it's in danger. During the negotiations that Gorbachev already had with with with Reagan, I hope they listened, Jack.

hard work, by comparison. You know, in East Germany, you didn't have to work hard if you didn't want to. Everybody got paid the same. There was no pay for performance. And maybe maybe collectives occasionally would get an award if they did a good job, but but that was not the rule. So UH and I and UH, I was also looking for the evil capitalists. You know. My first job was with a with an insurance company, and in those days they were extremely paternalistic and it felt like

going home. It's like working working in you know, for a big company in East Germany. You know, you you you get tired, and they promised you a job for life. We had free life lunch and you know, and my bosses were all nice. So I couldn't find the evil capitalists, you know, I was looking for them, but they weren't They weren't very visible. So so here here's how I morphed from from communism into what what happened to other people as well. And it's called the conversion UH theory.

So that that that that was actually developed by socialist parties in Western countries and NATO countries, so that the good parts of capitalism and social socialism will be joined to create some kind of a welfare state. I thought it was a good idea. And guess what the fellow that picked me up in Macco and with with with a limousine, the KGB agent who picked me up a volunteered he talked about without me even saying anything. He talked about convergence theory. And this guy was not a

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

resigned from the KGB in nineteen eighty eight. In nineteen eighty nine, the wall, the wall came down, and I was sitting in my apartment in Queens and I watched it on TV and I said, that can't be because nobody expected that, not the KGB, not the CIA, not the stars. He was clearly not I thought, you know, East Germany was still on path to overtake the western part and like create a great economy. Blah blah blah, blah blah, and all of a sudden it fell apart.

So now I had to find out what what what happened there, And because of the availability of the Internet, I could find out rather quickly that I had been lied to and in spades from from day one, but including also the mark the scientific uh, scientific Marxism Leninism thing. And I got my hands on the original writings of Vladimir Lenin, who was my hero because he implemented the Marxist theory. In reality he created the Communist Russia and then created the Soviet Union, and he was a hero

because he gave his life for it. And he you'll know, he died as a result of the weakening, after having been having been subject to it and attempted assassination. So in my hero, I knew that Stalin was bad. But my hero turned out to be just as merciless a killer than Stalin was, because there were passages in his writing, unredacted writing where it stated uh, And I forgot what the title of the book was. It may have been one step forward and two steps back, but it doesn't matter.

He gave instructions to to Feelings Jasinski, and in the Cohorts of the chi Ka that was the forerunner of the KGB. To uh you got to hang some some culos, the rich rich peasants by the by the road, hanging from trees so they're visible. That to give people an idea that you know, having great wealth is not very uh, it's it's not a very good thing for your for your for your health might actually wind up in death. That is what Lennon said. That's it man. Uh. Now

I now became secretly an anti communist. Now now I'm opening an anti communist because I also had the opportunity to to learn about the United States and how how it was formed by the founders. I took an online course uh and several years ago and uh and and in seven eleven made me emotionally an Americans. So so there's there's nothing left. But it was a very very long transition. You know, when when I resigned from the KGB and I just got I stepped out of you know,

political thinking, policy thinking. I just dedicated myself to my family, and you know, I became you know, I wasn't into consumer rism, you know, great by big houses and I could at one point two cars for the family, My two wives that I had, my two wives that I had in my entire life. In American wives never had to work one hour in their life. So I became

a consumer and that was my focus. But you know, seven eleven and eleven made me emotional an American, and then I became intellectual an American truly, because when when I took that course on uh on the American Constitution, I said, yeah, that's the only way to deal with the evil that we have experienced throughout history and it's still in existence. So this, this is, this was my journey.

If I'm add to this, my friends who I studied with, and particularly the ones that became party members and were active in the youth movements, such as my best friend who actually wound up in the Starzi, but he was as a chemist. He actually wound up heading the forgery department of the Starzi. So and those when when the wall came down there that was just as surprising for them, and all of a sudden it hit it hit them hard. It hit them hard because now you cannot absolutely believe

that you that you served the wrong cause. So they were all miserable and when I when I met them, they were complaining you know we had the wrong leadership. You know, the communism is still a good cause, and you know we were not wrong. But they also had their pensions that caught in have and and just like

they were full of complaints and were miserable. So again I got lucky to decontaminate very slowly, because I don't know what it would what it would have happened to me had I, let's say, had I followed the KGB uh when they told me, when I had listened to them and they told me to go back because we may want to come to that yet, and I would have wound up living my life out in Russia after the wall came down. I would be miserable, as ol.

I figured yeah, that that will work. And and so he has an illegal, make making another illegal legal. She became a citizen because she was married to me, and at that point I was still illegal. Bizarre. So uh. And she became pregnant on parma is because that's something that women who came from other countries did when they found a real good man. So and I didn't fall in love with her. I liked her a lot. She was good company, very beautiful. But I loved the little

girl that grew up in eighteen months. And you know when this is I don't know if you have children or particularly girls, most men can relate to that. I watched this baby grow up and unbeknownst to me, I had an attack of unconditional love. It was so strong and was much stronger than any feeling I had, and to towards a woman it was it had no desire of getting anything back. The only desire was to serve this girl and help her and just just be there

for her and love her to pieces. So it was in late fall of nineteen eighty eight when the KGB somehow got spooked when somebody must have whispered something into somebody's ears where they had some reason to believe that I might be in danger. And the last thing they wanted me to be in jail. And I tell you most people don't understand this, but you do. They want

to worried about me. They were worried about me being in jail because they would cause them headaches, because if I wind up in jail, they have to get me out otherwise they can't recruit somebody else, okay. And I knew they would get me out, That's what they told me. And they got the coins out and I had evidence

that they would keep their word. So they wanted to avoid that headache, so they called me back and so they we had a and an emergency procedure that they activated with with a graphic signal, a red dot on my way to work. They knew I had to tell them which way I was going to work, so so there could be some There was a graphic signal spot that I could should check every day, graphic signal. And now I had a problem because I hadn't figured I wanted to figure out how how could I support this

girl and her mother remotely? I had no idea. And after some some uh, you know, I stalled initially because maybe I was sick. There was there was a there was a situation where I was sick and I could not I was not operational for a month I had as a bike messenger. I had busted my right shoulder and I couldn't do anything. So uh, and they knew about that, and so I could have been sick and my radio could have not functioned and so forth. So I bought myself a couple of week weeks, maybe three weeks.

But three weeks later they did something that was unusual. They wanted to figure out am I still around, and so they sent one of their diplomats to check on me, and he found me when I was waiting for the a train going from Queens into Manhattan. He found me waiting for that train and was still dark, and he came to me from my right. I can remember this like it was yesterday. A short guy in a dark coat, and he came really close to me and whispered into

my right ear, you gotta come home. It's dead. And that was stated with a very strong Russian accent. All right, you have to take that seriously. Yeah. On the one hand, because he spoke us bad English, I thought he may have just, uh, you know, used the wrong word. Maybe maybe he wanted to say you you busted, and he didn't have the vocabulary. That threat had to be taken seriously.

So the one the only thing that I could think of is changing my daily routine, going to work at a different time, taking different routes, taking different trains, making sure that I'm not reliable in the same spot at the same time. Now, in the long run, that wouldn't have worked. I am now certain that they they bought the light that I fed him, so they weren't after me.

But I didn't know that, right. That's a pretty brave things to do, and that's why I'm saying nowadays, love conquers all I just I could not leave this kid. And then I took you know, I went on you know, Surveillius detection routes and mailed myself a letter to determine as to whether you know the letter was opened. There's the technique that I was taught. And uh, and and and also what was the other thing I did? Oh?

I had in my in my apartment, I had two spots that where I absolutely knew if somebody actually went through my apartment, I would know. And I tell you one was my favorite. I had a chest of drawers where the one of the drawers had an overhang, so when you look at the drawer front, you did not see that that the door closed. Actually more ah, that when you closed the door it was further in than the way I left it. Every night when I went home, I checked that this this gap was eight millimeters. This

I was pretty certain about. And because there's one time when uh, when when I was burglarized, that gap was gone. The people opened the thing and then it closed it again. It doesn't matter what nobody will go down. I mean, you know, it's maybe some really really good people, but they don't have that much time to go lie down on the floor and look at everything from the bottom right. So I was pretty certain that this was okay. So eventually, I uh, I resigned from the KGB. And the people

always ask, how do you resign from the KGB. There's a famous line in James Bond movie that says nobody resigns from the KGB. Well, I did, and I the reason I got away with it. I sent in my last letter and secret writing. I told him I well aware that I'm in danger and I'm that that I might be arrested. I would love to come home, but I really can't. I have HIV AIDS, and in those

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

believe me that they had absolutely no reason. Had they known that I have a child, that would have been a different story right, But none of that became known to me until I reconnected with my German family. And when I went back to Germany after I became a US citizen, they did give my German family a portion of my dollar savings and told him that I was dead. And even today the German registry that keeps track of births and marriages and divorces as Abrich Dietrich as passing

away in nineteen eighty eight. So I didn't know any of that until I was able to go back to Germany. And so the FBI didn't know for me about me until about seven years after my resignation, and that was because of a betrayal. There was a fellow, and you must have heard about this fellow by the name of Vasili Mitrocanu.

that he started hating the Soviet system. He his son was was very ill and the only place where he could get treatment was someplace in the west, and they don't they didn't allow him to go to the west, to the west. And so he started thinking of how he could damage that that hated organization, and he started re this stuff, and then his hatred became was extended

to hating the entire system. And so what he did over the years he smuggled out in small pieces, on small pieces of hand handwritten notes with some bits and pieces of information, and then he transcribed the stuff with a typewriter and buried whatever the resulting pages in his doctor and I don't know exactly what he started this, Uh you you you can probably read up on this. He co wrote a book with a British author called The Sword in This then The Shield and the Shield.

I'm sorry, this is uh this is the bible for anybody who wants to know what the espionage that the KGB did, and that includes also active measures. So he and when the Soviet Union finally fell apart, he felt it was time to to ah reach out initially to the American embassy uh and and and tell him what but he had and the CIA officer who he talked with told him, we're not interested because he thought, you know, it was old stuff and radiat danglemo. That was a

career changing or ending move by that officer. So then so the fellow went then to to uh the British embassy and m I six was very welcoming, welcoming, and that they managed to a get the stuff, the several boxes of material out of this guy's datcha and get it over to England where they eventually changed some of the information that was irrelevant with the CIA. And that

is how the FBI was notified about my existence. And all they knew was that there's a Jack Barski who is an illegal who went to the US at a certain time and he lives in the Northeast. Now that all the FBI had to do is look for Jack Barski. There are not so many and the one that the social Security card at the age of I was in

my mid thirties must have been it. And then they spent two and a half years watching me because they knew that I was highly trained, because I survived like all together seventeen years up to that point without being detected, So they were afraid that I might be running a moll or two. And and also they were afraid to get too close because as a highly trained agent, they they would have endangered that their their secrecy. You know, I could have found out that that they're watching me.

I'm getting a little tired. I'm talking too much. So they did the right thing. And literally there's two things. They bought the house next door. I had a house in the country. And when the house next door, there was only one house next door was available, they bought it, and they put a couple of agents there to watch me, and there was no indication that I was active. And

then they had another guy. The lead agent actually was across the street on a hill and he pretended to be a birdwatcher and he just watched me interact with my children and he came to the conclusion that I would cooperate and his judgment was correct, and that is when they decided to say helone.

a toll. This is a toll bridge where you in those days you had to put a corner and to get through that means you had to slow down. And the police officer positioned himself and in uniform in front of me, and he told me, told me, this is a routine traffic stop. Would your police pull over? And then he did something that should have like made me suspicions, because routine traffic stops typically don't tell you to step out of the vehicle. But I was like so unprepared,

and I was so not watchful anymore. I had forgotten that I was once a spy. Okay, you know, like so many years, you know, I had compartmentalized this away. I didn't want to think about it, so stepping, I stepped out of the vehicle, not thinking anything. And then this again, for my right, comes another guy and he was in civilian clothes, and before I could even think, what's this, he slipped open an idea and that without even looking at it, I knew this is a big problem.

And the agent, his name is Joe Riley. Everybody knows about him because he wrote the afterword in my book. So and we became really good friends. So the agent told me much later that at that moment, my face went white as the driven snow. It was all the bloody exited my head. But it didn't take me very

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

think there was a message. And man, I I knew that I was in deep shit, and and I knew that there was a good chance I would wind up in jail, that my family, uh would be would be moved out of the house, my ex wife would be deported, and my kids would become wards of the state. What

a horrible outcome. And this is the instinct that I didn't think about this, but I sort of instinctively knew that I had to make these people like me, and so I did a I told it a very very innocent joke, and I asked him, so, what took you so long? And you know that one of the guys whose face I could see, couldn't suppress the smile. So then they took me oh, And then I asked another question. I asked Then I asked a question. I asked them,

am I under arrest? And they said no. And then Joe Riley, the lead turned around and told me, this may not be the worst day of your life, all right. That gave me some hope, and that triggered me volunteering. Once they took me to a motel where they had it was extremely well guarded. They had rented one entire uh the ground floor of an L shaped motel and

at both ends they had an armed guard. And they put me in the middle of the floor, the ground floor, and so probably that nobody could could listen in at one end, who knows. And they did something that I I realized right away was trickery. They had some some items and on the walls where there were there was there was written. There was written some information that like, for instance, my my cover name, one of the convenience of dress is that I used, and some other stuff.

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

an interrogation was more of a talk. You know. We spent two hours, you know, back and forth talking and I know that nowadays, I know that I come across very authentic, even when I'm lying, though I still could have lied, but I told him and it was very believable and credible. You know. I want to say my favor for crying out loud. And so they allowed me to call my wife, who wasn't home because they told

me to tell her I'm delayed because of work. And then they allowed me to go home, not without introducing me to the head of the team that took care of security, and he told me, if you think you can run, you can't. We got every intersection covered. There's no way out. You got to go home. And I said, you know, okay, I didn't you know I had no place to go. They didn't know that yet. And then we spent about six or eight weeks debriefing, where I met Joe Riley once or twice a week, and he

got to know me as well as anybody. He asked me everything that could be found out about my life from from like birth, like childhood, everything, everything, everything, because they wanted to know. And I think in hindsight, it was very very very important information for the for the FBI to have, uh, to figure out, you know, other illegals. In some way it was to me, I concluded it was important because Riley got the accommendation from Louis Free, the head of the FBI in those days, for a

job well done. And I couldn't give away any any secrets other than what I did, Okay, Yeah. And the other thing that was probably valuable that the knowledge that I wasn't running an undercover agent and in you know, a mod and in the US government, there's always good to know, ah, you know, to find out something something that you can't prove when you want to prove a next if you can. So that was a little bit of relief in that way. So and one other thing I got to tell with you because you you are

familiar with all of this stuff before. And at one point I was told there is a way that eventually I'm going to get a green card and possibly even citizenship. But that took several weeks, and during those several weeks, I was still I was still very stressed. I was still thinking, oh my god, oh my god, I don't know. I don't know. But when when they eventually told me yes, they but yes you will be able to get a

green card, but you must pass a polygraph. So and I think you know that most people don't know this, but you know in the movies polygraph tests or aggressive questions and answers where you have a face ENLiGHT in your face. No. The polygrapher who I was told was the best in the Pennsylvania area. Uh, he was sitting behind me and we the questions were told me ahead of time, so I I we actually practiced this. We

practiced without the devices, the device connected to me. He sits behind me and whispers the questions and I had to whisper back yes or no. Nothing else was allowed. So and then he wired me up and we did the real one.

what the question was. And I am thinking, I answered the question honestly, you said, but it spiked. I cannot I cannot certify that you told the truth. Period. And then it occurred to me this question was phrased as a negative, a double negative. And I said to him, so maybe it's because of double negative, and it made me think. He said, I don't know, let's let's just do it again. I had to read take that question once.

And you know I I spoke at a convention of poligraphy and I I told them, a couple of them. I said, this was probably a control question for him. I had to fail that test for all the answers to be valid. I mean, I told me that's correct. So so he already knew I I I told the truth, but he had to prove it. Okay, you had to you had to do it by the book. So and

that's uh. I I started my way on real citizenship, operated with illegally and acquired documents for a number of years, which really still put me in danger of of being fired from the job by by you know, operating with post documents, particularly because I I worked for a company that owned the nuclear plant. Another another lack of UH security when when listen this, this is just the really bizarre and it's and I'm very annoyed. American security is

even today so full of holds. It bothers the heck out of me. And nowadays it's all CyberSecure, or mostly cybersecurity. So this is what happened. UH. They allowed me, the FBI allowed me to retain the Jack Barski identity simply because changing it would have would have been really really tough on the family. We would have had to move out of the area, mostly like witness protection program, and I was already so well established in the US. They

figured to keep the idea. They asked the Jack Barsky's mom and dad if that was okay with them. They were still alive, and they said it's okay. The one thing I had to do is change my birth year, not my birth date at first, because if I had kept the forty four birth date, I would have been able to get Social Security before it was my time, which would have had had the FBI helped me commit a crime. Right.

I was, I'm committing fraud, so she I said. I said to her, I said, I need to talk to you. I think there's something wrong with in my file. I think my birthdate is wrong. Now, this is an h operas who operates HR in a company that co owns a nuclear plant, and she didn't realize that this is a really interesting situation after having worked in that company for a year. To figure out something wrong in the files and it's my birthdate, you must be suspicious at

that point. All right, No, she wasn't. She pulled out the file and she said, well does she seeing here? I said, this is your birthday? I said, well, you know here this is my driver's license. So how did you do you sign this thing? And said, I don't know what I was thinking. You know, I wasn't. I wasn't clearheaded. I made a mistake. Sorry. So she went and corrected to hear to nineteen forty nine without reporting that incident. Wow, pretty bad to actually visited. I visited

that nuke. Okay, yeah, while I was still operating with that with a false ID.

all the guards in this country. I mean with just these are people who have so much power because they have so much money, you know, particularly the folks who are in an information technology they can they can hold on to their power and they can influence what's going on in the country. Some do and some don't. But it's there's a danger there. But we have an oldi functioning oligarchy in Russia, for sure. It's not when you know,

when I have a problem. When otherwise credible right wing commentators talk about that there's communism coming in the United States, this is an exaggeration. Just tell the truth that the danger is really And I don't I don't like collectivism, and I don't like elitism, and this is all associated with an oligarchy. I can't stand it. I'm I've always been an anti authoritarian. I've had to suppress that while growing up and under communism. My my children are like that,

they wouldn't do very well. And you know, and and if you if you if we don't get a get a grip on AI, we we might wind up being pets to artificial creative personas. So so all of this is is a specter. I am. I am hopeful that this can be reversed. I am hopeful that I am personally surrounded with a lot of a lot of good, good uh people who still know how to think and who who still have common sense in them. And I think what needs to happen is we need to uh

make some changes in our education system. And there there are some some people who have influence who actually think that, for instance, AI could make a difference and and so we could help our students to learn how to think. Again, having also said that, I'm currently working on a on a on a project with gen Z and you know, those those people still know how to think. Not not all of gen z is like Lordie, don play play with their cell phone all day. So so never give up, hope.

I don't you know, I think the doomstate is not just around the honor if if in the United States or in the in the Western world, you know, I have knowledge in that in Germany the direction is very similar. And but you know, if if if we give up hope, then you know, then it's over. And and I think, I think, if if this happens, it's not going to happen in my lifetime of but it may happen while my children are still alive. And I'm praying that this this, this is, this is can be uh, it can be

I don't know, prevented. And and there have been prices in the in the United States, particularly the Civil War, that looked like that they're meant to be the end of the world. And there was a time when communism was quite popular and and the communistie did a lot of damage. So so we are a country of survivors. And I believe that the the the spirit of the the folks that came to the United States, the adventure of spirit is still alive, even even among illegal immigrants.

A lot of them come here because they want to do something with their life. So I think if we can tap into that spirit, we can prevent becoming pets to artificially creative persons.

medical services. And that's not that's not in question anymore. I mean, you you know the data, we're the we're the fattest country on the planet. You know, being fat is not good to to to your health and not not good for your life. The most most people that died from COVID were overweight. So that's there are things. And also the the the trend, the the forced uh you know, mutilation of children without parental consent is another

thing that pretty much unites the country. The majority of people, no matter what political party they belong to or whether they're there are independent such as I am can't stand this. So so there are still things that unite us that that that that provide some of the glue that that some commentators things I think has disappeared. And I I'm not I'm not one of those doomsayers. That's just my opinion.

And and you know the fact that that he now there's some speculation he wanted to go to the United States because he wanted to connect with his old flame. That is not proven, you know, And when he found out that the flame didn't want to have anything to do with him, he just he just disappeared. I don't know. I don't know how he could have disappeared like that and wound wound up back in Moscow. He had to have somebody help him.

that money. The guy who made the container obviously. Uh. And you know when when I told them to hand my savings to my family, I guarantee you the courier took some of that money because my family didn't have a clue how much think Yeah, now can you do a lot of stealing that way? You know illegal the way I know illegal existence didn't handle a lot of money. So now if they, like, for instance, if I had

to this is going to be now interesting. If I had to interact with Aims or the other fellow and give them money, I could have stolen some or the person who handed it to me could have stolen some. But you know it's it's it's massive money laundering is not possible that way. It's too awkward and not enough money involved.

every one of them wound out in a dictatorship. Because a revolution means you have to use violent means you can't you can't get to power in a democratic way. So once you start with violence, how do you protect the power that you have gained? And you still do this with with good intention, you need to stay in power. Like the revolution in October revolution in Russia was followed by the Red This was violence. So you you build up a structure that needs to be maintained violence, which

is a dictatorship. Every communist state that started has become has become some kind of a dictatorship. Now, second part of the question, so why is communism still so attractive Because there's this romantic notion that all men are good, All men and women were all born and it's innocent little babies. And the only reason that we go bad is because we're we are growing up in in bad circumstances, in poverty and and and being exploited, and all this stuff.

So that's that turns some of us bad. Well, that's a romantic notion. There there are people who are born bad. A sociopath doesn't evolve out of there's there's bad genetics, and there's people who turn bad. If you look at the history of mankind, there was not a single century whether when men didn't do evil things to other men. So and and.

cannot eradicate evil. You can manage it, but you cannot get rid of it. And so that is that is why communism is is a non starter. It won't work.

function very well. So you need to have some uh some cooperation of the very wealthy knowing that they need to get along to some degree or else there's going to be just one ruler and all them damn things will fall apart.

evade that supervision in some way. Uh. This is where X the X Twitter comes along, where there is no censoring and where you can actually go in and and and engage in free speech and not be silenced.

I won't be the professor. I won't lecture people because I'm still my My most important instruments are my eyes and my ears, which is taking in information and and But but based on my background, I I will I would make a really good facilitator. And you know this is this is the reason I get up in the morning these days. This is my purpose. I want to I have mentoring and tutoring in my blood. My parents were both teachers. I was going to be a professor

I have. I have mentored graduate students in the US and and I see if I can make a difference with as many people as possible and and help my fourteen year old daughter too to get a good start in life.

as well. You can also if you search for me, you're gonna Google my name and something in Google will show up because on a daily basis, Google sends me information about yep, for instance, me being on your show, yeah, and and that kind of stuff. So it's jack.

thirteen episodes production that was extremely well made cool. Its value is that it has not just interviews with me, but it also has interviews with the lead agent who investigated me, with an FBI agent who tells me, who tells folks what it was like to be on the op.

appreciate your guys' support out there. Thank you and Jack, thank you again for joining us tonight.