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Warning, the following episode contains explicit language and sexual themes.
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This is a scary case.
Actually tell me what you mean by that.
This is scary because the implications are pretty profound, I think.
So let's assume everything.
This is Robin Drake, who spent twenty two years working Russian counterintelligence for the FBI. You heard from him in the first episode of this podcast. I've circled back to get his thoughts from an intelligence perspective on what he's heard so far.
Let's assume everything Aliah has said is true. That would mean that this country is won by warlords. That each one of these generals is a fieftom under themselves, and they're all serving the greater warlord Putin, and they each have their cadre of enforcers that are in uniform, that are under state kind of control. I'm only analyzing the information she provided, but they're not as a nation state
trying to counter drugs. They as warlords are going after their adversaries, and if it's a general that's at the top of yours, that means a general on the top of another. So in other words, this to me looks like a feudal system of a bunch of fiefdoms trying to take out each other's supply chain and monetary structure.
That's kind of scary if you're thinking about it.
This is actually the truth of how this nation state, a world power is supposedly being run.
So it's either one or the other.
Either she's making all us up, or this country is a country of warlords.
To jolly, I'm really sorry.
How to do jut to? This is.
Episode sixteen, chapter thirty three, down word spiral.
He put me into the car. I drove away, and I felt like something died inside of me. I felt like I just lost him forever. But I was trying to tell myself, no, no, no, I will see him again, But they didn't feel like I will really see him again.
Aliyah had just left the home of Vladimir, her former target and now her ally. He was sending her to Moscow for the time being to hide out until it was safe. She had no idea how long that would be and whether or when she'd hear from the general.
She met with.
The driver. He drove me to Moscow and he opened their apartment for me, quite like small but very clean and nice apartment. The driver brought me some food and then he left, and I remember, I just I just wanted to sleep. I think I slept like a few days straight.
Up.
I drank some water and I just went back to bed, and I was just sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, recovering. You know, sleep was the best recovering medicine. I just wanted to forget everything. I was thinking about the bladder or a lot, about what he's done for me, about Cornell, and about you know, my former commander. Then I didn't go out for like a few days. And then at some point life was starting to come back to me, and I was wondering what's happening outside, And I decided to go
out just to buy some food, buy some newspapers. It was a dark time. I knew that I couldn't contact anyone, but I thought, if I will contact one person, wouldn't be bad.
Leah decided to contact an old high school classmate of hers who had moved to Moscow.
I was just alone, lonely and board.
Her friend invited her to a party, and against her better judgment, A Liah decided to go.
I knew I couldn't do it, but yet I did it. And I remember, like first time, for like so long, I saw so many people in one place and it was so weird. There were like access to drugs everywhere.
Despite everything she'd seen, Leah quickly found herself swept into this culture of drugs. It wasn't because she didn't know how they ruined lives, it was because she did.
And then at some point I just couldn't understand why the vict just was gone in one day. It was just like only one scene club, dog dancing, drugs, alcohol, and it just was like NonStop, and then you come back to the reality and you cannot accept it again and you just go back. I think that time I felt so much guilt. I felt guilt for Vladimir, I felt guilt for Sasha. I felt guilt for my father that I didn't succeed in my career. I failed. The feeling of guilt which was so deep inside of me
that I just couldn't handle it. And I just thought that moment that maybe this will help me to stop this pain when I try that. I don't understand people when they become drug added because they have so much pain inside of them, so much so they just cannot handle it in a normal life. It's like too much. Everything. What Vladimir told me about the big life and the
big world, I didn't see it. And I was still waiting maybe he will come and he will know what to do, because I was completely lost completely.
Unfortunately, Leah never saw Vladimir again.
So his driver, his friend, he called me. He said, do you know what happened? He said, like, no, I didn't know what was happening. I stopped even reading newspapers and I was just in another world. And I asked him, what's happening. Do you know anything about Vladimir? He said, well, he said he is his dad. And for a quite a long time, I was silenced. He's like, are you okay?
Are you okay? And I asked what happened how? And he said, I don't know a lot of details, but he was murdered and I don't know how and where. I just wanted to tell you, so you know, And I said, when it's the funeral and He's like, well it will be soon, like in a couple of days, but you can't come here. Don't even think about doing that. And he switched over the phone. And I couldn't even cry.
You know.
It was almost like the last my hope of the future, the last my connection with the past. It was just gone with him. I found some newspapers, but they wrote like in the very like facts kind of thing, so and so was killed at this place. That's it. And I just took some drugs just to escape because I felt even more guilty. I felt like, now it's time for me to leave the world. I felt so disgusting that I'm not allowed to leave.
Leah soon fell sick, a combination of the psychological toll of Vladimir's murder and the physical toll of her lifestyle.
I have a very high fever. I couldn't walk. It was something really bad. I thought like, this is the time when I may finally die, like I felt, that's so close to me. And I was thinking about my parents, and you know what, I decided to call them. My mom remembers that call still now. She sounded really sad, and I said, Mom, that's me. I just wanted to tell you that I really really love you, and I want to apologize for everything, like everything I've done, and
I'll just try to do my best. And he said, oh my god, he sounds so sick, like where are you what's going on? I said, like, tell my dad that I'm really sorry for everything, and I think this would be my last call. So I just wanted to tell you that I love you and thank you for giving me this life. That's it, and I switched over the phone. I thought like, oh, this is just absolutely pointless life. You know, I live a pointless life. So
I took the raise of blade. I didn't even like write a letter whatever they say lo because sometimes they write a letter, you know. I didn't do anything like that. I just took the lizard and just cut my wrist. I thought, okay, so now I can be free. This is my freedom. Now, this is the end of my suffer, of my guild, of my negative experience. And at some point I just fainted. I woke up. I looked at my wrist and either I didn't do the deep cut either.
My blood it dried so fast, so it's so blood on the floor on my hand, but in my hand, the blood stopped bleeding.
Somewhere in the state being half awake and half asleep, half alive and half dead, Elia saw a vision that to her seemed very real.
It was Vladimir, and I saw him sitting next to my bed and he looked at me and he said, come on, wake up, you have to go. You have to leave. You have to go and live your life. And he told me, do you remember I gave you all these numbers. Call them. They will organize for you everything. Call them. And he was saying it like, come on, stand up, you have to go. You have bigger goals,
bigger mission. And he just disappeared. The next morning, when I woke up, I found a note with all these numbers, all these addresses, names everything, Switzerland, Italy, Fronts, Turkey, Greece, his friends people, He relied on them, He trust them. And I called one number and I said that I'm from Vladimir, and I asked for the help, and then they arranged everything. So I fly away. First country was Turkey, and I had the time. Russian prospered, so it was
very convenient and easier to fly to Turkey. First. I wanted to find the light in this dark tunnel, and Vladimir showed me that light and I stopped doing drugs and alcohol just like that in one day. Where I am right now, it thanks to him, you know. He pushed me and he didn't let me die. Seriously, I feel this way.
While Leah was in Turkey, she discovered the fate of her former superiors, the colonel and the commander who assaulted her and abused her and sent her to die.
So both of them, the coronel and my previous commander, they got retired and it was quite quick of the whole operation was finished. Usually, if you do something bad while your career, but not too bad, then they just read of you like okay, so here's your pension, here's your retirement. Good luck. And it gives me understanding that they obviously lost the income of the bribery and the power which they had while they had high rank.
Chapter thirty four fairy tale endings.
So ninth of July in two thousand and four, according to Regno media, with the few shots to the neck and had the criminal leader, which is in Russian calls of started forty four years old. Vladimir Costin were shot about eleven PM near to the preschool.
Alia Rosa is reading an article on the death of Vladimir. It's still a mystery what happened, but she believes that his former partner and friend had something to do with it. There are a lot of unanswered questions left at the end of Lea's story, so I asked her about a few of them. In the last episode, we discussed your meeting with the general and himself saying take a rest, I have some other missions and things for you, and
the story got a little squarely there. But now that we're talking together, I wanted to get your answer to what happened there.
I okay, So I still, you know, like it's still scared. I mean I was scared a lot of times when I was there, but this was the most scariest meeting in my life, because you I that time, and even now I kind of like, you know, like the power of the person.
Eliah seems to be struggling here.
I try to ask again what really happened at that meeting with the general, why she was allowed to leave the country, whether we had new assignments for her, and whether she escaped the system and how. For the next half hour, I struggled to get a clear and direct answer that makes sense. I'm not sure something is lost in the translation, or if there's something she's hiding and it turns out there is.
Am I free now? Am I free? Now?
Like?
I don't know? Where is the guarantee they will not do anything to me? Oh? My son and I have this the thought every moment I leave, Is it a freedom? Now?
I ask Aleiah why she doesn't feel free and if there's anything she's had to do since.
My general in my new commander, the unofficial commander, gave me a new task to become whom I never wanted to be. And it was low to my pride and betray to my body and my soul. But I don't want to end up on this note because it's such a it's like breaking every hope for every person who listen to that. The life is not like.
You know.
Aliyah trails off here. It's clear that she's conflicted. She wants to be the hero of her own story and she is just for starters. She's here and she survived it, but it's a different kind of hero than perhaps her father raised her to be. This desire to give her story a happy ending for the audience helps explain who
she's become today. Throughout this podcast, some listeners have written in struggling to reconcile the story she's telling with her social media presence, which portrays a lot of red carpets, expensive sports cars, paparazzi, fame and glamour. She wants She likes everybody to see the success, the success.
The final story. Yeah, retail which I create in my in my illusory world which actually fucking doesn't exist. I pretend the Instagram is just all for me. It's like I look at it and I feel better. I want to believe that this is the result which I created for myself.
Do you think part of that illusion also is not just for you? But like showing your dad, even though I didn't choose his path, look at me and look at my life to.
My dad, of course, to show him that without military and without following your order, I still pretend that I'm successful because I feel I feel like it's my armor, and I protect myself in certain ways where I cannot. I don't have power enough to be open and live in real world because it's it scares me a lot.
Let me pause, I said, Okay, if I call Emily. He'd been working with therapeutically. So if I kind of looper around this discussion, yes, okay, heym Lee you're there.
Yeah, I am so.
As I'm sitting here sort of unpacking stuff with Alah, I just thought i'd sort of bring you in and getgains some thoughts. Okay, what I'm learning is I talked to a Liah Moore. Is the happy ending isn't exactly how would you put Aliyah? The happy ending isn't?
There is no happy ending?
To be honest, at this point, I've spent a year and a half with Aliyah an unpacked her story, not just with Emily Maccus, the trauma counselor we're speaking with now, but with Russian intelligence sources and experts. And I could go over at point by point and share what the FBI says was believable, with the CIA says was credible, and so on. But I think we could do that with any story. Every true crime podcast is a collection of narratives that we're trying to pick the best path through.
And I think the path that is best to take with Aleah given everything we've heard, is a trauma informed one. People see Lea's Instagram, and they think of it from an influencer point of view, but I'm curious what does it look like from a trauma point of view.
Part is the association. It's part of her coping mechanism and what she.
It was.
It's involuntary and detachment from reality at times, and it's a way that she protected herself and most of the time is unconscious.
With that dissociation.
When we experienced trauma, some of us want to feel like it doesn't define us, that we're not victims, that we winners, winners.
Trauma does affect the way we perceive ourselves, the way we act and react, because it affected our brain. It affected our nervous system. When you look at the association, it's part of the fight flight response. It's even your memory that can be affected.
I start to understand, as Emily speaks, that after surviving such a disempowering experience, there's a need to find a way to empower ourselves through our narrative. As the author Esactinas and once said, all sorrows can be born if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
And look at even the way Eliir was raised by her father in the military. She was raised not to feel, not to be connected, but she was also raised to be the superhero in the story. I just want to remind you, Aliyah that you can't change your past. You can, but you can't change the narrative of the story. But you are the superhero in your life story.
What are your thoughts on that?
I was thinking that I think this podcast actually gave me freedom because first time in life I started to feel I felt a strong guilt, I felt anger, I felt hate, I felt pain, and then I started to feel love. I started to not to be ashamed of my vulnerability. And first time in life, I noticed that I started to be open to people in general and man especially. And it's very scary, like it's so many fears that I don't know if I can handle it.
But I take a deep breath and try to move on and not to close my heart and continue feeling, which which is so hard.
Epilogue a Russian story.
So I just called to ask, what are your thoughts now that you've heard the rest of e Leia's story.
It took me on a journey, really, and.
The journey that it brought me on was such a conclusion that she is a product of.
A father who's part of the state.
She was recruited and or volunteered into the state system. Her context is then shattered tragically with abuse and rape and then put into this odd school of sparrow training.
Because that is just as we've said before.
Was that a real school, Was it a state spons to school, or was a bunch of dirty old men that were justifying their actions on behalf of the state as an excuse could be all there lies the Russian state at its bedrock.
This is Robin Driek again, former chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis program.
To keep you in a state of chaos personally, emotionally, psychologically, and physically. They traumatize you, They trauma bond you to them.
This is the case where they give you.
A little bit of love bombing, we love you, you're great, you're awesome, and then they beat on your, beat on your beat on your beat on you, and then the beating has become more and the love becomes less, and then you get addicted to that. One time out of a million, you might get a kind word or a promotion or a good posting from someone, or maybe even not being traumatized tonight by someone. This is what they do, and that's what she u is a product of the state.
It is pretty profound that she was able to do what she did to rescue herself, the amount of bravery she had to start recognizing. Basically, it's the matrix. You know that they have to get myself out of this matrix. And that's where therapy comes in, and that's where rescuing ourselves from the trauma with the great healthy relationships we tend forge around us and getting that narrative and that story out there for people to see.
What is a hero? Is it Black Widow? Is it Red Sparrow? Is it James Bond? When I first sat down with Aliyah, that's the type of story I imagined hearing, and I think that's the type of story Aliyah imagine telling. But real life is not so clear cut. And I learned through this process at least three things I will
never forget. The first is that life in a totalitarian system, whether it's a country or one's own family, is a prison with bars made of fear and duty, and even if we manage to gape physically, it's much harder to escape psychologically. The second is that sexpionage is anything but sexy. The third is that most stories of abuse don't have
happy endings. The perpetrators often get away with it, the victims rarely get justice or resolution, and even if they do, the healing process is often messy and incomplete.
All these things in here do happen, and these are the tragic results of them.
So what is a hero in this case and so many others? Does a person who survived to tell their story? Not necessarily the story, their story? And what is healing? It's being heard, So thank you for listening. To Die For is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and written by me Neil Strauss, with additional writing assistants by Tristan Bankston. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. For iHeart Podcasts,
executive producers are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams. Lead producer and editor is Tristan Bankston. Additional editing by Miles Clark and Christian Brown. Supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Consultants include Nushin, Valiza Day, Chelsea Gooden, and Jamie Albright.
Artwork by Byron McCoy.
Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set, mixed and mastered by Dayton Cole. Our theme song is Killer Shangui Law by Psychotic Beats featuring Pattiamore. Special thanks to Aorin Rosenbab and the team at Uta Beck Media and Marketing, Aorn Siegel, Becky Jensen, the Nord Group, Meredith Stedman, Rose Baruch, and Alex Vespustad. Thanks also to additional guests. Robin Dreek, author of the upcoming book and Breakable Alliances, A spy recruiter's
authoritative guide to cultivating powerful and lasting connections. Alex Finley, author of the Victor Caro series. Doctor David Lewis, author of Triumph of the Will, How two men hypnotized Hitler and changed the world. Doctor Joel Dimmesdale, author of Dark Persuasion, A History of brainwashing from Pavlov to social Media. Professor Mark Gailliatti, author of Downfall, Precosion, Putin and The New
Fight for the Future of Russia. Mark Hollingsworth, author of Agents of Influence, How the k g B subverted Western democracies. Doctor Ian Garner, author of Z Generation into the heart of Russia's fascist youth.
Robert J.
Lifton, author of Surviving ar Catastrophes, Resilience and Renewal From Hiroshima to the COVID nineteen pandemic. Amy Knight, author of The Kremlin's News, Putin's bitter feud with the oligarch who made him Ruler of Russia. Yuri Felshtinsky, author of From Red Terror to Terrorist State, Russia's secret service and its fight for world domination. Doctor Joe Sirio, author of Being Resilient Fifty lessons on Leaving chronic Stress behind. Holly McKay,
author of The Dictator's Wife. Emily Machis, author of The Naked Truth of a Healer, The Path to My Authentic Self. Luke Harding, author of Invasion, The inside story of Russia's Bloody War in Ukraine's fight for survival and Setlana Stephenson, author of Crossing the Line, Vagrancy, homelessness and social displacement in Russia. Federico Varez, author of Mafia Life, Love, Death,
and the Money at the Heart of Organized Crime. And Matt Tipton Army r Your veteran and internal medicine doctor trained in chemical and radiological weapons response.
Wow, that was a very Russian story.