5) Pandora's Box

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Warning, the following episode contains explicit language and sexual themes.

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About four years ago, I received an unexpected offer to interview the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. He wanted to create quote mutually beneficial ties with the US, and someone evidently thought that one way to do that was for me to profile Lukashenko for Rolling Stone magazine.

Belarus quotes between Russia and the European Union has been ruled for decades by autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko FTKL victory in August elections the US said were fraudulent. Huge protests followed, and he moved swiftly to crush them.

They reached out to me, and I told them that if my editors approved the story, I'd be honest in the interview and wouldn't be throwing him softball questions, and they seemed open to that.

He and Russian President Vladimir Putin are two peas in a pod. When it comes to shutting down to scent. So Putin swiftly helped his skiing partner with one point five billion dollars. Months of systematic repression and torture followed, documented by human rights groups.

Then came the emails, ask me what kind of women I liked, asking me to send photos of my type of women, offering to range dates for me when I'm in Belarus. Perhaps they can even throw a party from me, start with beautiful women. I will be set in Belarus for the trip and possibly my life, they said. As a journalist, I knew what accepting favors, whether cash or sex or anything from a subject, can mean the end

Compromat comes from the Russian for compromising material. It means that the Russian Secret State have managed to film somebody having sex with somebody they shouldn't be having sex with. Politicians, diplomats, spies, whoever. A former British spy called Christopher Steele reported that the Russian Secret State had filmed Donald Trump in a hotel room in Moscow. Trump has denied it ever happened but if it did happen, then that was a classic case.

Of compromat.

Sorry, I had to do that.

I got on my duty.

The away that was how my.

God, I got to.

You.

I had to joy.

It, says Sost.

Episode five, chapter eleven, Seduce and Destroy.

I wanted to let you know I was transcribing the interview with the sex buy and I actually have firsthand knowledge of this because in my past life I worked on these black programs in aerospace. Each program had its own security office.

Shockingly, at least to me, the voice you're hearing is that of my audio transcriber. For ten years, she's listened to my interviews and written down the secrets of the famous and powerful, from Tom Cruise to Elon Musk. And this is the first time she's called like this after listening to my first recordings with Alia Rosa. She wants to let me know that she has actually had her own experiences with compromont and sexpionage.

We would actually have meetings where the upper management would inform us about it, and the men who were usually the target had to sign paperwork indicating yes, they had been informed about these women, especially for Brussia.

I had no idea that prior to this, she'd worked at a company that contracted with the military, and that spies like Aleah are evidently a well known threat in the industry.

Wow, it was like part of standard operating procedure.

Absolutely every program I worked we talked about it. I just remember them warning, mostly men about women who might approach them when they're traveling on work or traveling out of town.

And what were the telltale signs of these people.

Oh, if the woman was extremely attractive, you know, definitely, if she was really out of your league type of a woman. And if she came on sexually, you know, too aggressive sexually, or wanted to be alone with you, or wanted to get into your hotel room with you for whatever reason and to watch your drink, they could drug you that kind of thing.

In fact, the government was so worried about compromant that anyone with a secret sex life was considered a security risk.

There were people who openly key it on their wives that everybody knew, and they lost their clearances.

I asked my transcriber for her thoughts in Aliah's story. Since she's listened to the recordings so closely, I.

Think it sounds accurate. Because it was exactly what we were being warned about. She's incredibly attractive, she's charming, she's smart, she's manipulative, she's loyal to her country.

But it all sounds like it worked.

I call a Leah after speaking with my transcriber, and Aaliyah has just returned from a session with a new therapist.

How was your therapy session?

Honestly, not really good.

I mean, I don't know, it's like really difficult to go through that again. It's like it's so so many feelings, you know, so many sensations which are just like disgust me so much.

I feel really.

Guilty, guilty in what way and can very differ like.

In many like I felt like I have done so much that, you know.

Things in my life, like really bad things, Like I've done so many things.

Which I never wanted to do.

The therapist she said that I had to survive, That's why I did it. But it doesn't matter to me, you know, It's it's just like I feel really guilty.

I asked her more about it. Eliah says she was at a friend's birthday and was given a small dose of mushrooms, something she doesn't ordinarily do. These triggered memories that she keeps compartmentalized in her mind. She calls that compartment Pandora's box.

I felt like I saw so many ghosts of those people who who were like were killed or I did unintentionally, or they were affected by my life or something like. I saw them and it was so scary. I felt like I saw they.

Even they faces.

You know.

It's not really pleasant, you know, view and it's kind of like maybe I'm going crazy.

I don't know.

We talk about PTSD and therapy and decide to take a little time off so that Aliah can recover from her experience. She feels that unburdening herself of her secrets will give them less power over her. In the meantime, I tell her about the conversation with my transcriber, So my transcriber called she and we discussed how large this program must have been and how many women must have faced similar traumatic experiences.

You know, Neil, I feel very very very big sorrow and very big sadness when I think about this woman.

I remember my classmates, the old king, so.

Young and fresh and beautiful, and then just in a few months, instead of happy face, instead of smile.

I saw sorrow and helpless and nothing else.

I wonder how many women have done this throughout the history, and how many women are doing this right now in the whole world, even in the United States.

So while Aliah takes some time off, I decided to take some time to find answers to her questions about the program. Since speaking to my transcriber, I've been wondering similar things. Are there other countries also using sex as a weapon of war? And just how big are these operations. I spent the next couple of weeks doing research and interviewing agents and journalists from around the world, and what I find shocks me. First of all, it's not just Russia that does this, it's China.

Chinese intelligence operation on US soil, targeting American politicians with a female operator who had ties to a Democratic congressman and intimate relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors.

North Korea, according to Young, North Korea's honeytrap plan, established by former leader Kim Jong il, was to set up foreign dignitaries with females buys posing as translators or aids.

Pakistan, You're dear, befriended on email and WhatsApp group, etc.

And they get entrapped, and then they emotionally get in.

Trapped, even America, the United Kingdom and so many others throughout history.

We will then Nostellius in a pub and Lisbon a pub frequenc it biof cuity sellers from a nearby army plan and we're here.

This tamply planned opper began.

In fact, even ancient military writings advised weaponizing this weakness in human nature.

If we go back to two and a half thousand years, one of the ancient military writers said that you should trade a martial art warrior to identify an employed four humored weeks. So they were fear, lost, anger, and greed. The certain of these are all used in sexpionage.

This is David Lewis, a psychologist and author of the book Sexpionage, The Exploitation of Sex by the Soviet Union. I called doctor Lewis to find out the kind of impact that this type of spycraft has had on political history and why it works so well.

It's always struck me as a psychologist very straight. So you have people who are immensely powerful, usually highly educated, very wealthy, yet they throw it all away for the sake of a one night stead.

Yet it happens over and over again. And if you think that more people would be smarter, think again. Here's just one chilling example of a target who's literally in hiding from the government, throwing all cautions to the wind for an attractive woman. Mordecai Venunu was working as a technician in an Israeli nuclear facility when he began to have moral misgivings. He gathered evidence, left the country and told journalists for the first time about the extent of

I bought a cigarette that I saw an American woman standing there buying gos a cigarette.

I look at her, she look at me.

You'll notice in this next part some similarities with the lea's training, which is that the agent never approaches the target.

She gets the target to approach her.

You took the initiative to forgive the collequialism to pick up this lady.

Yes, you did it.

If she had tried to pick me up, then I would suspected her. But if I was too with the initiative, I mean, I'm not suspecting it.

She was dragging you into her trap.

No, I was already in her trap.

After a few dates, she convinced Venunu to join her for a weekend in Rome. Despite being a whistleblower who was wanted for treason by the Israeli government. Venunu suspected nothing and flew to room with her. In the car from the airport, she kissed him passionately all the way to the house where they'd be staying, evidently to keep him from thinking with his brain.

When I entered the house, the door opened and immediately jump on me two people and one kick me in the stomach and I collapsed. Another one jump on me, put his hand on my mouth, silencing me. Another woman come and injected me, and then I lost my conscience.

The New New spent the next eighteen years in an Israeli prison, eleven of those years in solitary confinement. And this is just one of many historically significant examples from the Moon Sisters. Two Confederate seduction spies who at one point were engaged to thirty eight Union soldiers. Between them to Ramone Mercator, an agent of Stalin who honeytrapped his way into Leon Trotsky's study, where he executed the famous Russian revolutionary with an ice pick.

Posing as a Trotskyist or Ramon Mercando seduced Trotsky's secretary. Soon he was a frequent visitor to Trotsky's villa and a familiar face to his security guards.

I don't think people really understand the extent to which sexual version has helped shape Western society.

This is historian David Lewis. Again.

I have a specific question that I'm hoping he could answer. How did expionage go from a dirty trick that governments use in a moment of desperation like in the cases we just heard. Twitaliah and my transcriber have been describing to me a factory like training camp that a country uses to turn out sex buys.

We can trace the start of what we might call industrial sexual version back to a woman called Katherine Zabage. She was actually known as Kitty Smith. She started life.

Kitty Smith began running Berlin's most in demand brothel. Then World War II began.

When she saw war was going to be declared after Hitler come to Part thirty three, she tried to flee to England. She was arrested at the border and she was offered a choice. She could either come back and rather her brothels for the government as spy centers, or she could go to a concentration gap. So she decided to set up the brothels for them.

It's all own Kitty Riou's House for Forbidden Pleasures in Berlin under the Nazi.

This was organized by a guy called Walton Schillenberg, who was head of SS counter espionage. Now this was the first time. The girls used were highly trained. They had to be aged between twenty and thirty. They had to be single, they had to be National Socialists snots these other words. When they joined they were inducted into the SS.

Now with the kg be the first ones that then take women, some who'd even had a sexual experience before, and then train them from there versus using sex workers.

Don't know of any other intelligence agency which had done that to that extent.

On the outskirts of Moscow stands the Giant Training Academy of the KGB. Here the uncles as they are called in the espionage business are instructed in how to persuade women to offer sex to foreigners in return for information. These days the organization is called the FSB the Wild The name may have changed. Sexual entrapment using young women is still a priority.

Young women, much like Aaliyah enter classmates.

And they had traders in their kind of total the robes and showed them how to behave and really deprive them of their inhibitions. So they were prepared to go with any bad however disagreeable they found him, or however older he was, or indeed however young he was, in order to extract information problem, and they were taught how to behave that. Actually, although the situation they were in was of course, I any think about.

Natural Chapter twelve, Tools of the Trade. As our time off draws to a close and Leah feels ready to continue her story. I find myself deep down the rabbit hole of Russian espionage. I even managed to find FBI agents and contractors who work to bring down the Russian illegals program. Eleven spies who are working in the US using seduction and other techniques to infiltrate different groups. You did some work with I think you were saying with agents that were still.

Working here, turn it off in the corner.

Most of the people I reach aren't willing to talk about it on the record, not just in America, but even more so in Russia. Or my sources fear reprisals from Putin. Here's a former Russian intelligence officer who is trained at the same academy that a Lea went to, speaking through a translator.

You ever heard of a program like that? With this question, I wouldn't.

I will not be able to reply to respond to this question due to let's say, professional secret.

Many of these sources were willing to speak to me off the record, and a few you'll hear from shortly. We're surprisingly willing to talk openly. And here's what I learned. There are four levels of sexual espionage that are important to know because they'll help explain the next parts of a lea's story, and because they're still going on today. Level one is the most mild, but it's also the most It is everywhere, and unknowingly you may have come

You know. One of their biggest exports of Russia is beautiful women, and they send out an enormous amount of girls into the world.

This is Ina DeSilva, one of the first Russian model agents in New York City during the nineteen nineties.

All these girls were sent out into the world and they were told try to meet important men, try to attach yourself to important men. And they would send back information to handlers that you know, this moment, I'm dating so and so, I've met so and so, and the handlers would decide if anybody was important enough to really put an effort into by maybe recording them or you know, they would be received further instructions.

She mentions a well known Russian model who did this type of work along with her boyfriend who was also her KGB handler.

If you're really going to do modeling, you do not go Moscow to Washington. They lived in Washington for a year, attending daily cocktail parties and ambassies, consulates and stuff like that. And that's like a typical thing. It's pretty unbelievable. I mean, Germany right now is like a rat's nest with all of this.

German intelligence agency has warned against the risk of an aggressive Russian espionage operation.

This comes as West ramps up its support for Ukraine.

They've all been told to penetrate and influence anybody who has decision making powers in Germany, you know, regarding meaning Milly So. I mean, the war in Ukraine is also being fooed by older girls that are all over important cities.

You know.

There's this Russian doll, a doll within a doll within Nadal Kolomatosha. Well, a lot of these girls. That's really what it's like, unless, like any you know, national security agencies, any of these countries gets lucky. I think it's very difficult to keep track of this women.

Level two is pravo kasia in Russian or provocation, and someone who has eyes and ears, if they land the right target, can be moved by their handler into this more prestigious position of influence. One example of this type of agent is Maria Bhutina, who is living in yes, Washington, DC and convicted in twenty eighteen of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia.

She definitely was going into these conservative circles right among mostly the Republican Party, the NRA, these types of places where there is a machismo. And she came in looking sexy, toting a gun, and she used that.

This is Alex Finley, a former CIA officer who was stationed in Europe and the author of the Victor Caro trilogy of novels about the CIA.

The whole point, as an intelligence officers you have to assess your target. What is it that's going to motivate them or what are their vulnerabilities. She knew and understood if I go in in short shorts and carrying my gun, that's going to get me closer to them. Now, separately, she did have relationships with a few different political functionaries right within the Republican Party.

She goes on to mention a prominent figure that Maria Boutina had a relationship with, one who ended up pushing many canspeak theories that may have been planted in his mind by this agent, because the goal of these agents is not just a spy, but to suit as powerful, vulnerable people and influence their thoughts and behavior to help destabilize a country.

So she knew who to target, and she knew how to find the people that were going to have the sympathies that she needed to help push more and more ideas. So you see, it's not always just to I'm going to have sex with you, you'd give me secrets. It can become a bit more complicated.

I ask Alex what she thinks of the statements from Ena de Silva, the model agent, about the large number of low level Russian agents still operating in the US, and she confirms this terrifying assessment.

We went through this sort of kicking diplomats and everything out over the past few years, right, But those are just the people who are declared, So you have to assume that there's still networks of illegals, you know, sort of these sleeper cells who live in live and work among us like normal Americans, but in fact they're Russian agents and then their assets. I'm sure, I'm sure you have been a huge network of them still in the United States doing both collection and also influence operations.

So what happens when these Russian agents get expelled and go home. The answer, they return as military heroes or more accurately, the modern equivalent of that, celebrities.

Bhutnai is on the Russian State TV. Chapman became a playboy model, you know, so they get rewarded.

This women, the other spy, Ina de Silva is referring to is Anna Chapman, who's arrested and deported as part of the illegals program. But it gets even darker. Level three is compromant. This is journalist Mark Collinsworth, the author of Agents of Influence, How the KGB subverted Western democracies.

The term compromat is a Russian term which means compromising information, and what the KGB are now the FSB in Russian intelligence service specializing compromat in terms of finding compromising information about Western politicians, diplomats, spies, officials.

Many believe that Putin, who was formerly director of the FSB, rose to power through kompromat.

Putin is in the intimidation business. When Vladimir Putin met Angela Merkel, he knew her weakness. The German chancellor was afraid of dogs, so Putin whistled in a black labrador just to intimidate it.

What's interesting about Putin is that there's a strong case to be made that he only became President of Russia in two thousand because of a honey trapping compromat operation. And what happened was that in nineteen ninety nine there was a corruption investigation into President Yeltsin's office. Young women were hired to sleep with him and they did the classes.

So rather than defend themselves in this corruption investigation, the Yeltsin government decided to set up a honeytrap for the prosecutor leading the investigation instead.

And then the FSB leaked the videos to Russian TV stations. And the significance of this is that the FSB intelligence officer who was actually seen delivering the incriminating videos to Russian TV companies and holding press conferences about it was Putin. And so basically the consequence of this honey trapping operation was that it helped Putin become the next president of Russia.

After Yeltsin, Yieltsen appointed Putin his successor by twos Yieltsen had resigned and Pousa was president.

The extremes that the Russian government has gone to get compromont even go so far as drugging foreign officials and staging sexual scenes of them while they're incapacitated.

They'll do anything. There were no limits, and they would get you drunk, or they would poison you, or they would hire women or men.

Of course, this type of compromont doesn't always work if a target is single or doesn't have sexual secrets or shame. But compromot can get much more sophisticated than this. Listen carefully to author David Lewis's explanation of this honeytrap, and notice how the target is slowly manipulated deeper and deeper into a web he can't get out of.

An American businessman visiting Moscow or the business trip would be hooked up with an attractive woman who he thought he'd just met by charge. She would be very charming, would go back to his hotel or her hotel, or else. They would be walking back to the hotel when she would start to kiss him. She would then rip her clothes and screen rape, whereupon birdie police officers cover arrest him.

Not only is this incredibly harmful to these men, it's harmful to people who have experienced sexual assault and are not believed. Lastly, Level four is the love trap, or is the FSB calls it quote ESTA an operative relationship,

It was a very organized strategic operation. It was quite sad because, certainly the end of the Cold War, lusis Germans eyes would break off the relationships and the women were devastated because they thought it was a serious relationship, and then they would get into trouble because they had leaked secret documents.

There's one last spy story I studied that shows just how powerful a love trap can be.

It was called the espionage case of the Century. It also became known as a sex for secrets Marine spy scandal of nineteen eighty seven. It involved a marine guard at the American Embassy in Moscow, Clayton loan Tree, who traded secrets for love with sergeon.

Clayton Loan Tree was a marine stationed as a guard at the US Embassy in Moscow, where he began dating a Russian embassy employee who was of course a swallow. He fell in love and was soon giving her plans to US embassies, as well as the names and identities of US agents in the Soviet Union. He was eventually caught and arrested, becoming the first marine convicted of spying

What we had back then was genuine.

I respect her, I forgive her.

And this is the danger of playing with the fourth and darkest level of sexpionage, because love is a lot more powerful, persuasive, and longer lasting than sex. You'll notice that one thing is missing from all this research into the methods and consequences of sexpionage, the perspective of the

She was under orders to seduce an American officer who had access to data secrets. Then she made a mistake, the worst mistake a swallow could ever make. She actually fell in love with her target. She wouldn't put pressure on you because she feared it might end the relationship, and her bosses suspected she's changed sides, so they had terminated with extreme prejudice.

If your body is disposable to the state, so too is your life if you decide you want your body back. This, in the end, is what I learned from my research. No person wins when sex and love are used as weapons of war.

Everyone loses. And this is exactly what a Leah Rosa.

Discovered when she made the same critical mistake and fell in love with one of her targets. The consequences for her would be even worse than death.

So when the criminals find out that I was a mon they put the back into my head. They drove me to the forest, They beat me up, they did terrible things. But that moment, when I was ready to bedad he called them and he gave the order to bring me back to him.

This would come much later in Aliah's career. After being pulled deeper and deeper into a world from which there were few escapes besides death, whether the hands of your enemy, your own government, or yourself. Leah returns in episode six, available now on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Form full credits, check out our show notes