The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 412. True Stories From a Soviet Spy ｜ Jack Barsky

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00:00:57.420 Hello, everyone.

00:01:09.780 I had the privilege today to speak with one Jack Barsky, a guy about my age, born in East Germany,

00:01:18.020 raised in the depths of the communist catastrophe, swallowed the propaganda as young man hook, line, and sinker,

00:01:28.740 and was recruited as, while he was pursuing his degree in chemistry, recruited by the KGB to act as a spy in the West.

00:01:39.340 And he recounted his tale in a book called Deep Undercover, which was published in 2017, and shared all that with me today.

00:01:49.960 His double life in the U.S., his eventual abandonment of the communist utopian intellectual project,

00:01:58.640 his conversion, as it turns out, as a consequence of the love of his infant daughter, his work for the FBI,

00:02:06.300 and his current enterprise now serving as a mentor to the young people, to young people who might be attracted,

00:02:14.420 say, by the utopian schemes of the intellectual ideologues.

00:02:20.380 And so we walked through all of that, and that's very interesting.

00:02:25.120 Welcome aboard.

00:02:25.860 Mr. Barsky, I think what came to my mind as the first mystery when I went through your book was

00:02:33.460 the conditions of your upbringing.

00:02:38.120 You know, one of the things that's very mysterious, thankfully, to people in the West is

00:02:43.760 how it was that young people in particular were enticed to swallow hook, line, and sinker,

00:02:52.360 the propaganda coming into Eastern Europe from Russia.

00:02:58.800 Especially because, and I don't know how much of this you knew when you were a child,

00:03:02.700 but especially when there was such a stark difference between the material conditions in the West

00:03:08.080 compared to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and there was some knowledge of that.

00:03:12.620 So why don't you start by telling everyone what you experienced as a child,

00:03:16.880 and how you saw the world, you know, up to the point where you entered, say, entered university?

00:03:23.020 First of all, the communism didn't originate in Russia, as you know.

00:03:29.480 It was a German invention called Marx, right? 0.97

00:03:33.960 And Lenin was the one who actually put this into practice.

00:03:37.540 So there was still communist thinking, residual communist thinking in East Germany,

00:03:44.180 and there were a lot of refugees when Hitler took over that went to the Soviet Union

00:03:51.240 and then came back and sort of took over rather quickly.

00:03:56.220 So how did we buy what they were selling?

00:04:00.080 There was nothing else on the market.

00:04:02.500 There was no free market of ideas.

00:04:04.980 It was a massive, massive brainwashing from kindergarten on.

00:04:11.640 And, you know, I tell people, then, if you, if everybody, you know,

00:04:17.200 that family, teachers, friends of friends, relatives tell you that the moon is made out of cheese,

00:04:23.920 that becomes like part of, you know, part of the foundational knowledge of how the world operates.

00:04:30.640 There was no God, there was just, you know, there was just, you know, there was just the idea,

00:04:35.840 the romantic idea of communism becoming the force that will free all the suppressed nations in the world.

00:04:45.840 And by the way, that is very easy, easy to buy into.

00:04:49.980 And I was 100 percent, by the time I left college, I was still 100 percent a communist.

00:04:55.920 So, and a lot of my generation, too, what the communists in East Germany did very well,

00:05:05.620 they focused on the next generation, us.

00:05:08.820 And particularly focused on the ones that had a really reasonably high level of intellect,

00:05:17.500 because we were going to be the leaders, the leaders of the future.

00:05:22.240 And one more thing about the wealth of the West.

00:05:25.740 Well, we weren't allowed to travel to the West.

00:05:28.120 We sort of knew that, you know, they had a higher standard of living.

00:05:33.260 But this was rationalized very quickly and easily because the, you know, the NATO countries,

00:05:39.840 you know, imperialist countries were stealing the wealth from the third world.

00:05:44.120 Like the United States stole the bananas from Guatemala and so on.

00:05:49.080 Right. Okay.

00:05:49.860 So, let me ask you some more specific questions about that.

00:05:53.820 One of the things that you alluded to was that the idea that you were working for freedom of the oppressed

00:06:02.620 was actually a powerful motivator.

00:06:06.320 And so, I want to unpack that a little bit.

00:06:08.700 I mean, it's obvious when we look at the world, wherever we sit,

00:06:14.820 that some people are more favored than others along any dimension of comparison you can possibly imagine.

00:06:21.820 Now, Marx made the economic comparison primary,

00:06:26.720 pointing out that, well, I suppose that the poor will be with us always, so to speak.

00:06:32.040 But that, and it is definitely the case that that difference in economic security and opportunity exists

00:06:42.800 and is somewhat painful to all observers.

00:06:48.140 I mean, I suppose there are some successful people who pride themselves on the fact that they have plenty

00:06:54.160 while others have none and are pleased at that status differential.

00:06:59.060 But my experience with decent, prosperous people is that even, and most particularly,

00:07:05.400 the decent, prosperous people are still unhappy that there is poverty and suffering anywhere in the world,

00:07:12.080 that there is even relative privation.

00:07:14.400 And I would say it's part of the moral striving that's part and parcel of the human psychological landscape

00:07:21.540 to want to remediate that.

00:07:24.100 And so, if the communists are offering some future vision where suffering is a thing of the past,

00:07:32.000 then, in some ways, they're capitalizing on that longing in the human soul for suffering as such to be dispensed with.

00:07:41.100 And, you know, and so that makes it perfectly understandable.

00:07:43.960 The, I've been writing about this a little bit, the pathological part of it is that, it seems to me,

00:07:49.360 and I want to know what you think about this, is that as soon as you make the assumption

00:07:53.720 that anybody who is more talented or who owns more is more talented or owns more

00:08:02.500 because that's, and that that can only occur as a consequence of injustice and oppression and exploitation,

00:08:10.500 then you're setting up a situation where anyone who has any success whatsoever can be hated and,

00:08:17.040 and, and what would you say, persecuted with a good conscience.

00:08:20.260 And so, I'm wondering, you, you must have thought about this a fair bit.

00:08:24.740 How do you think it's possible for people to separate their moral impulse to aid the oppressed from their immoral impulse to damn the successful?

00:08:36.780 All right.

00:08:37.220 So, you, you raised a highly complex issue, and I, I can only address it as much as I have lived through it, through the situation.

00:08:45.340 First of all, I, we, I grew up in the country, we were all equally poor, and so I didn't really understand the concept of poverty as a young child.

00:08:59.380 And even, even when I went to high school, because there, there, there were no wealthy people around us.

00:09:05.400 And, and with regard to wealth of the West, it was just, you know, it wasn't tangible.

00:09:11.500 So, there was, there was nobody to hate, actually, at that point.

00:09:15.220 We started hating, all of us, when the war in Vietnam got really bad.

00:09:21.300 I mean, I would, I would have signed up and, and, and fought on, on behalf of the Vietnamese.

00:09:26.680 But here's, here's an interesting, an interesting shift.

00:09:31.420 Uh, so I did really, really well in high school, and I did so well in college that I received a, uh, national scholarship that was, uh, limited to 100 concurrent users, uh, holders in the country.

00:09:46.200 100.

00:09:47.280 I, I, I joined the elite.

00:09:49.480 I got it, the, the scholarship paid me as much as, uh, as, uh, my, my salary when I was a, an assistant professor.

00:09:57.500 I was a rich student.

00:09:58.960 And I was, you know, it's probably quite understandable that I was really full of myself.

00:10:05.600 And then everybody admired me.

00:10:08.260 Uh, and so I became, uh, intellectually the kind of a person who will help all the people who need help. 1.00

00:10:18.000 The stupid people. 0.99

00:10:19.780 You know, I would, you know, this is the condescending attitude that, uh, you know, the, the elite has, uh, 1.00

00:10:26.960 a lot, let's put it this way.

00:10:30.080 We have it in this country.

00:10:31.340 We have it in Western Europe.

00:10:33.180 You know, if, if we are up there, like, we look at, down at the little people and said, well, they can't take care of themselves.

00:10:39.100 We got to do it for them.

00:10:40.520 And then, and it, it, it starts with goodwill.

00:10:43.440 And then, uh, very often, uh, degrades into, uh, not so good.

00:10:49.900 Simply because the elite needs to stay where, where it is to fulfill its mission.

00:10:55.360 There's a rationalization.

00:10:57.200 Okay.

00:10:57.640 And we, we live better and we make more money and all this because we deserve it.

00:11:02.320 So, so that's, uh, I, I never had a chance to, to hate the capitalists with a vengeance because I, I didn't know him well enough.

00:11:10.180 It was more theoretical, the exploitation of man.

00:11:12.960 Well, I think your comments on that intellectual presumption are extremely interesting.

00:11:18.860 I mean, I've been trying to work through that dynamic theoretically because there is an association between that intellectual pride and utopian presumption.

00:11:35.400 You know, when you, you just laid out a psychological dynamic, you said you were young, you were celebrated for your intellectual prowess.

00:11:43.320 And you can see that intellectual prowess is valuable personally and socially.

00:11:50.480 And so you can understand that it being valued is appropriate.

00:11:55.460 But then you pointed to the fact that if it's celebrated inappropriately, it tends to produce a kind of intellectual pride and condescension.

00:12:05.200 And then that works in sync.

00:12:07.200 See, it works oddly in sync with the utopian presumptions of communism.

00:12:11.360 Communism is a very intellectual system.

00:12:13.620 And it was designed by someone who had very deep intellectual pretensions, Marx himself. 0.99

00:12:20.280 And it's that, it's that unholy combination of intellectual pride and the proposition that you're acting in that pride on behalf of people who are too foolish or stupid or ignorant or blind or otherwise, uh, what would, incapable of taking care of themselves. 1.00

00:12:41.160 Right? 1.00

00:12:41.600 And then you could say, well, you're doing that for all the good reasons.

00:12:44.240 But you pointed out right away that there was an element of overweening pride in that, that was attractive to you because you were celebrated for your intellect when you were young.

00:12:53.840 Absolutely.

00:12:54.320 And one, one, one other thing, if your frame of reference is mankind, you, you, it's very difficult to, to not be full of pride.

00:13:03.380 If, if you get to a point where you realize that there's this big universe that, uh, was created by some power, whatever you want to call it, then, then, then, then that, uh, that arrogance shrinks very quickly.

00:13:19.040 So do you think that it's possible to not suffer from that arrogance, especially if you're an intellectual or intelligent, if you don't have a reference point outside yourself or outside or even outside of the, of mankind as such?

00:13:38.060 Because you can imagine someone trying to make a moral case that the appropriate level of, of analysis for a properly morally oriented young person is the good of mankind as such.

00:13:54.320 But you could counter that by saying, well, look, what the hell do you know when you're 18 and, you know, maybe you should take care of your own local concerns, like someone who's properly humble, instead of attributing to yourself the ability at such a young age to understand everything that needs to be understood about all the economic and social systems of the world and to bring about with your own efforts and to your own credit, this hypothetical utopia.

00:14:21.000 Yes, but here's the thing, um, I want to just contribute to this.

00:14:27.060 I'm not necessarily, uh, chiming in with what you just brought up.

00:14:31.020 Uh, when, when you are as, as well-meaning as you are, uh, to help the downtrodden and the less gifted, uh, you, you become a member of the elite and, and some people, some people will kiss up to you and then you rationalize.

00:14:48.960 So I remember the CEO of a company that, uh, I worked for, he had a chauffeur chauffeuring him all around all the time and, and the rationalization was his time is too valuable.

00:15:01.240 That is why elite also needs to have private airplanes, right?

00:15:06.680 Because, you know, for, for, and, and, and this, you, you get used to this.

00:15:11.800 You get used to, uh, being adored and, you know, being celebrated and, and it's, it's fundamentally impossible to not become full of yourself.

00:15:22.420 That, there are, I bet you there are some people who, who are humble by nature, but the majority of us are not.

00:15:31.280 Yeah, okay, so the pathway there is that as soon as you have pretensions to operating on behalf of something approximating universal salvation brought into being in consequence of your own intellectual efforts and your beliefs is that the probability that you're going to suffer from inflation of ego is virtually certain at that point.

00:15:54.080 I, I, I am 100% certain of that.

00:15:56.840 It's not just because I went through that, uh, you know, there's a lot of my, uh, my colleagues and, and other gifted people that, uh, you know, joined the cause, the party, the government.

00:16:08.360 Uh, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, the, the, the way communism, uh, is constructed, you know, you, the working class is supposed to rule, but the working class needs a spokesperson or an organization that speaks on its behalf.

00:16:29.140 And those people weren't working class.

00:16:32.160 They were the intellectual elite. 0.98

00:16:34.480 Some of them were pretty dumb, but a lot of them were at least clever. 0.96

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00:18:14.080 Right, so one of the things, you're pointing to two things there, too.

00:18:20.600 You're also making the case, I would say, that even in a society that purports to hope to eradicate the economic elite,

00:18:31.480 elites are likely to arise regardless.

00:18:34.500 And in the country that you grew up in, in East Germany, the economic elites were rapidly replaced by the intellectually pretentious elites, let's say.

00:18:44.800 And then that's like a codicil of the argument you're making.

00:18:48.500 But there's something else that's interesting there, too, because you opened up your argument in two ways.

00:18:53.280 You pointed out that the Soviet propaganda was the water, communist propaganda was the water in which you swam when you were young, and it was everywhere, and that there was really no escaping it.

00:19:07.680 But then you made a secondary argument, which was, yeah, but at the same time, swallowing that propaganda and then operating successfully within that system was something that appealed to your pride,

00:19:20.780 and so that you had a reason, a personal reason for buying into it.

00:19:24.680 It reminds me, no, I've been thinking about the doctrines of power, like the communist and the postmodern doctrines.

00:19:32.340 I've been thinking them in relationship to the story of Cain and Abel, because in the story of Cain and Abel,

00:19:38.360 you have Cain, who's at least regards himself as downtrodden and unfairly oppressed by Abel and by God.

00:19:46.800 He goes to complain to God, and he attributes his failure to the injustice of the world.

00:19:55.740 And God says in response to him that his failure is actually at his feet, and that the thing that's tempting and possessing him, making him bitter and resentful,

00:20:08.980 sat on his door and tempted him, but he invited it in, right?

00:20:14.340 That's a crucial thing, is that so there's a, what would you say?

00:20:19.320 There's a metaphorical equivalence there that I'm trying to tease out.

00:20:22.540 On the one hand, you said you were fed a nonstop diet of propaganda, and I think increasingly that's the case for young people in the West.

00:20:31.260 But on the other hand, you said, well, that also redounded to your advantage, right?

00:20:35.620 Because it put you in a position of elite status and appealed to your pride.

00:20:40.000 So would you say, is it reasonable to say that it was the combination of those two things?

00:20:44.700 Oh, absolutely. Allow me to illustrate.

00:20:48.440 When I was asked by the KGB, after like 18 months of them checking me out, they asked me, so are you going to join us?

00:20:59.480 And I was really torn because, you know, I knew I was going to have to do, take some inordinate risk.

00:21:07.940 I knew I would have to say goodbye to my life that I was very comfortable with, and on and on and on.

00:21:14.380 I knew that I would have to stop playing basketball.

00:21:17.500 That was a passion of mine.

00:21:18.540 But the combination of knowing that I was going to be a hero for the cause and that I would be able to partake of the wealth in the West, okay?

00:21:37.880 I would be able to travel, and I knew I would have a good life.

00:21:41.540 As a matter of fact, they sold me this way, saying, well, you're going to live in big houses and drive fancy cars.

00:21:50.080 My God, that combination, that actually made me say yes.

00:21:55.480 Okay, okay.

00:21:56.340 So now you're bringing an additional element into the equation.

00:22:00.100 So, you know, I was just rereading Goethe's Faust the other day.

00:22:05.420 And Faust is intellectually pretentious and sick of life.

00:22:13.560 And Mephistopheles, the bargain Mephistopheles offers him, is a combination of worldly pleasure and intellectual dominance, right?

00:22:25.920 And so that's why he makes a deal with the devil, so to speak.

00:22:28.680 And so it's interesting that you also bring up the fact that you were being offered the fruit that was forbidden under communism, which was that pathway to an elevated, what would you say, material life in the West.

00:22:45.340 And okay, so this speaks to you being recruited as a university student.

00:22:52.540 Okay, so you're swimming in propaganda.

00:22:54.260 I'm sorry, may I interrupt you?

00:22:56.160 I want to take it one step further because it gets bizarre.

00:23:02.180 In my eighth year of being in the United States as an illegal, I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the second highest declaration of the Soviet Union that had to be approved by the Central Committee of the Party.

00:23:18.160 And, you know, with that came a monetary award of 10,000, not rubles, but dollars.

00:23:24.160 So there was an intellectual discrepancy there.

00:23:31.260 I was being given an award in the currency of the country that we were trying to destroy.

00:23:39.200 So the entire KGB was sort of infused with that dichotomy.

00:23:47.320 Well, I wanted to ask you about moral conundrums, but let's walk through your recruitment.

00:23:53.160 Okay, so you're a young guy.

00:23:54.540 You're smart.

00:23:55.620 Now you're actually being offered a pretty interesting combination of adventures, eh?

00:24:00.760 So you get the material luxury and the excitement of traveling to the West.

00:24:05.700 You get the excitement of acting as a double agent.

00:24:09.000 You can tell yourself and you're being told that you're acting only on behalf of the world's oppressed, right?

00:24:19.480 And you get to join the elite on the intellectual side, right?

00:24:23.280 That's a pretty heady offer.

00:24:24.520 You know, one of the things I do think about in relationship to what young people are being offered in the West is,

00:24:30.260 and this is something the radical leftists are really good at, is that they have this vision of adventure as one of their offerings.

00:24:39.740 You know, the conservatives tend to push back against the utopian presumptions of the left,

00:24:46.040 but they don't offer as well-developed a vision of, let's say, romantic adventure.

00:24:53.120 And so I think they let the young people languish. 0.92

00:24:56.300 Well, you know, you're making the case that you were being offered something that was pretty heady, right?

00:25:01.540 I mean, you got to leave your country.

00:25:03.340 You got to be an adventurer.

00:25:04.800 You got to work for the poor.

00:25:06.220 At least you got to tell yourself that.

00:25:08.360 And that all redounded to your intellectual advantage and to your status.

00:25:14.360 When you were, let's walk through the stages of your recruitment when you were in college and university.

00:25:19.880 And I'm also interested, were you racked with moral conundrums while you were making the decision to work for the KGB?

00:25:30.600 You know, you just told me what they put on offer.

00:25:33.140 Now, had you bought the propagandistic line completely, there wouldn't have been any moral conundrum,

00:25:37.900 because, of course, you would have been working for nothing but the good.

00:25:41.320 But you already told me that you, I don't know if you became aware of this later or at the time,

00:25:46.240 that your motives were contaminated by your own pride and also by your own, say, consumeristic desires.

00:25:52.720 So what did you have to wrestle with morally when you were being recruited?

00:25:59.640 Nothing.

00:26:00.820 And I tell you, had I had a girlfriend, a steady girlfriend or a wife at the time,

00:26:07.420 that would have been something to really wrestle with.

00:26:11.580 I did not wrestle with lying to my mother, because my mother was a very domineering disciplinarian. 0.96

00:26:22.180 And I did not grow up in a loving family.

00:26:27.760 The words, the German words, ich liebe dich, I never heard as a child spoken at one adult to another or one adult to me.

00:26:35.420 So it was all very tough discipline.

00:26:39.140 So I had no emotional tie to my mother.

00:26:44.140 And that would have been the only moral quandary I would have stepped into.

00:26:47.940 Everything were just friendships and relationships.

00:26:50.680 And that was easy to deal with.

00:26:53.900 Okay, so why was that easy to deal with?

00:26:56.380 Why were you willing, was the offer that was at hand clearly attractive enough so that the price you paid in terms of friendships and so forth,

00:27:06.640 leaving your interest in basketball, that all paled in comparison to this potential adventure?

00:27:13.240 Well, it didn't pale.

00:27:14.460 But, you know, when we're talking about a moral quandary, I didn't betray anybody.

00:27:20.020 I mean, had they known where I'm going, they would have cheered me on.

00:27:26.680 So I betrayed somebody down the road.

00:27:31.040 But at that point, that came not into play.

00:27:35.080 Okay, so tell me, what did you study when you were in university?

00:27:38.840 And I believe it was in university when you decided to join the Communist Party.

00:27:43.380 And it was partly because you also knew at that time, like everyone knew, that if you didn't become a member of the Communist Party,

00:27:49.620 your career ambitions were going to be severely truncated.

00:27:53.760 So walk us through that and then also through your training.

00:27:57.320 Not severely truncated, but limited.

00:28:00.220 And I did join the party because that, you know, that was like the right thing to do.

00:28:06.100 You know, pretty much all the smart, ambitious individuals joined the party. 0.77

00:28:10.960 By the way, the party at university wasn't as dumb as, you know, the front page of the Communist Party newspaper.

00:28:20.480 You know, we were pretty open with one another. 0.82

00:28:23.240 And there were people complaining about that our leaders really weren't the right leaders.

00:28:30.080 So there was some openness and some camaraderie that wasn't so bad.

00:28:34.120 And there was some tolerance of things that were forbidden, such as listening to Western radio stations.

00:28:41.980 So the party was not a bad thing.

00:28:45.260 But the funny thing is, you know, I studied chemistry.

00:28:49.120 But here's another piece of irony.

00:28:52.480 We had one course in philosophy.

00:28:59.000 It was called Scientific Marxism-Leninism.

00:29:04.660 And so the thing is, we bought into this idea that Marxism-Leninism was a science just like on par with physics.

00:29:11.360 Because Marx discovered the laws that govern the evolution of human society.

00:29:18.900 And we were just like helping out to bring about the end state, which is, you know, the communist paradise on Earth.

00:29:27.740 So, you know, this was all very consistent.

00:29:31.400 And I had no reason to question, because, again, because of the elite status I had, why would I want to just like question the system that really treated me very well?

00:29:43.300 OK, so you joined the party when you were in college and you were studying sciences and you accepted the rationale that Marxism was a scientific discipline and that its outcome in some ways was not only desirable but inevitable.

00:30:00.460 You were speeding that along.

00:30:01.640 You had your moral rationales for that.

00:30:03.300 Lots of people believed that that was the case.

00:30:05.560 And certainly everyone, almost everyone, at least made that claim in public.

00:30:09.880 How did it come that you started to work specifically for the KGB?

00:30:14.180 How did they find their potential partners and allies in Eastern Germany?

00:30:19.080 I can't.

00:30:20.460 For the life of me, I cannot trace back who actually suggested to the KGB or what suggested to the KGB to get in touch with me.

00:30:28.400 My guess is that they had access to the files that the strategy kept on every adult in the country.

00:30:37.240 And they did the same thing that the CIA has been doing for a long time.

00:30:43.900 They recruited students that were at universities, quality universities.

00:30:52.820 So, you know, that's a targeted search and they come up to my record and say, wow, you know, not only is he academically outstanding, he also is a party member.

00:31:09.660 He plays basketball and he's a student leader who leads the groups of students playing the guitar.

00:31:21.920 So there was something there.

00:31:24.280 I said, we've got to take a look at this guy.

00:31:27.080 And so one day they knocked on the door.

00:31:29.040 You could not reply, by the way, to, we wouldn't, I wouldn't even know where the KGB was situated.

00:31:35.720 There was no phone number.

00:31:37.860 There was no address.

00:31:39.360 So they, they, they see, they, they sought out who they would want to talk to.

00:31:45.060 So, you know, one day that happened that somebody came to visit me in a dorm room.

00:31:50.620 I don't want to make the story too long.

00:31:52.760 It was a German and I thought it was Stasi.

00:31:54.780 But it was not because, you know, after some, some talk, some, he asked me just like one question, whether I, I would be, would imagine, could imagine that one day after I graduate, I would work for the government.

00:32:12.520 And I, and I, and I, I read between the lines and I gave him the answer he was looking for.

00:32:18.000 I said, yeah, absolutely, but not as a chemist.

00:32:20.500 So, so, so, so then he invited me to have lunch or, you know, that's a big meal in Germany at the number one restaurant in town.

00:32:33.220 And as I'm, as I'm, I see him sitting there, I walk into the restaurant, there's another person at the table and I was a little bit hesitant, but he came, my first contact came up to me, led me to the table.

00:32:46.140 And he said, oh, by the way, I'm, I would like to introduce Herman.

00:32:49.720 We are cooperating with our Soviet comrades.

00:32:53.960 And then he said goodbye.

00:32:55.620 And that's how I landed with the KGB because Herman was a Russian. 0.99

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00:34:06.660 So, do you want to tell everybody who's watching and listening the difference between and the similarities between the Stasi and the KGB and also why you ended up working specifically for the KGB rather than the Stasi?

00:34:22.300 Well, I think the KGB got first dibs on candidates that they really wanted.

00:34:29.380 KGB and Stasi were like big brother and little brother.

00:34:33.200 They operated the same way.

00:34:34.500 The KGB was more radical with regard to how they dealt with dissidents.

00:34:39.960 I mean, you know, the gulags, there were millions in gulags.

00:34:43.360 There were thousands and maybe a couple of hundred thousand dissidents in East German jails.

00:34:50.320 But it wasn't quite as oppressive.

00:34:53.800 And obviously, the KGB was much, much, much bigger in terms of numbers, raw numbers.

00:34:59.900 The Stasi was pretty big, you know, as far as when you take into consideration how many people were full-time employees and how many people actually cooperated.

00:35:11.920 And you're familiar with the lives of other that movie?

00:35:15.520 Yes.

00:35:16.000 You know, family members spied on other family members.

00:35:21.220 It was a rotten system.

00:35:23.460 It was a rotten society.

00:35:24.780 And I never had a hint.

00:35:26.960 It didn't happen in my family.

00:35:28.900 And I never had a friend who would talk about something like this.

00:35:33.160 So I had no reason to question that.

00:35:36.740 Well, I was actually curious about that because I was wondering.

00:35:40.280 We know now that about one in three people in East Germany were informing for the Stasi.

00:35:48.240 And they were often informing on family members and friends.

00:35:51.900 And my sense is I can't see how that could possibly be the case without corrupting the culture to a massive degree.

00:35:58.400 You mentioned earlier that you had a rather cold relationship with your mother.

00:36:03.700 And so I was wondering, you know, to what degree were family relationships in East Germany in general fragmented?

00:36:11.880 How much of that had to do with the culture of informing?

00:36:15.620 And were you unaware of the fact that this culture of informing was so deep and had a corrupting influence on the culture at large?

00:36:24.780 I was totally unaware.

00:36:26.520 I lived in a bubble.

00:36:28.540 How do you think it was that you had been protected from that?

00:36:33.700 Well, I wasn't the only one.

00:36:35.340 My best friend, who I still have a relationship with, he lived in the same bubble.

00:36:44.180 Somehow, you see, but now something comes to mind.

00:36:50.020 We had amongst the student population, there were about 80 of us, we had a couple of guys that didn't fit in.

00:36:57.920 And they weren't, they weren't academically that great, but they were like, they were just like a pain in the neck.

00:37:07.500 And, and, and they were eventually eliminated.

00:37:11.720 And nobody would have had a problem reporting on those because they, you know, they were in the way and they could become enemies, right?

00:37:18.200 So, so there's a rationalization going on.

00:37:20.840 So there was, I actually had some exposure to particularly the fate of this one fellow who, who was expelled from university.

00:37:29.420 But I tell you the, and the opposite, I had a roommate, a dorm roommate, who was one of the few people that openly confessed that he was a believing Catholic and he was a good student.

00:37:47.220 And when it, when, when, and I was a leader of the communist, the section of the communist party for the section chemistry.

00:37:56.140 And when it came to a point where the decision was made, who would go on for a doctorate?

00:38:03.780 I thought he was a good guy.

00:38:07.280 He was a smart guy and ask him one question.

00:38:09.340 And I said, if, if, if you had to take up arms to, to defend the East German Democratic Republic, would you do it?

00:38:17.880 And he said, yes, he has a doctorate.

00:38:21.100 So, so there were some things, you know, that, that you could move in the right direction.

00:38:27.240 You have to be in the right environment.

00:38:28.920 And, and university was not as stiff and not as, you know, dogmatic with regard to communism.

00:38:39.340 So, once you had this interview at the cafe and you, how, first of all, what was offered to you at the cafe?

00:38:47.980 And then how did you start working with the KGB?

00:38:51.020 Oh, no, no, no.

00:38:51.820 Oh, sorry.

00:38:54.340 Nothing was offered to me other than let's, let's meet.

00:38:58.260 So then I would, I meet, I would meet Herman for like at least six months just in his vehicle.

00:39:05.100 And we would just talk a little bit and, and he, you know, he, he opened the, the curtain a little wider, a little wider.

00:39:14.900 And I understand that now that I have some, you know, in hindsight, he would go back after a meeting and he would take notes because there, there was a KGB archivist who saw the files on me.

00:39:28.720 There were like several binders, big binders.

00:39:33.500 So, so after six months, he must've decided that I was worth pursuing further.

00:39:39.080 And so we then met in an apartment.

00:39:43.320 Okay.

00:39:44.340 And that's where he gave me some Western literature to, to read.

00:39:47.640 And that's where we talked a little, a little more about, about what it would be like to go to West Germany as an illegal.

00:39:59.500 Oh, just one thing that, that was very important for him to find out.

00:40:04.960 And, and, and my, my situation in life really made that possible.

00:40:10.520 He became an ersatz father.

00:40:13.380 He was about, about 10 years older than me.

00:40:15.960 And my dad was a weak link.

00:40:19.640 You know, he was, he was six years younger than my mother.

00:40:23.940 She was the domineering, the smart one.

00:40:25.860 Uh, and, uh, you know, he couldn't play with me.

00:40:29.320 He had polio and, and he, we never had a father son talk.

00:40:33.580 And eventually he, he got out of that marriage and, and disappeared for my life.

00:40:38.900 So, so I, uh, was grateful that I could talk to an older person, an older man.

00:40:46.720 And I shared everything with him.

00:40:48.520 I still remember, you know what?

00:40:49.760 I said, I'm so shy amongst the girls.

00:40:51.960 And I, you know, I don't know.

00:40:53.780 I just can't talk to the girls.

00:40:55.440 He said, you keep one thing in mind.

00:40:57.860 I still remember that they are looking for men the same way you're looking for a woman.

00:41:04.340 It didn't help much at the time, but, but, but, you know, we had this relationship and eventually

00:41:10.360 he got to a point after 18 months that he had discussed, uh, uh, interviewed me enough

00:41:16.780 and studied me enough that he suggested to headquarters to make me an offer.

00:41:22.080 That's when it happened.

00:41:23.100 It took 18 months.

00:41:24.320 And one other thing, you being a psychologist, you'd be surprised that I never met a psychologist

00:41:31.880 or somebody who studied people who worked for the KGB.

00:41:36.720 The only thing with regard to, uh, people skills and understanding people that was handed

00:41:44.180 to me one day was the, uh, the book by, uh, Dale Carnegie, how to, um, make friends and influence

00:41:51.160 people.

00:41:51.740 It's ironic, isn't it?

00:41:53.280 Yeah.

00:41:53.660 Yeah.

00:41:53.900 That's for sure.

00:41:55.460 Yeah.

00:41:55.660 So do you, do you think that your relationship with him, to what degree was your relationship

00:42:00.420 with him, a genuine relationship of caring and mentorship?

00:42:06.040 Yes, it was.

00:42:07.020 Absolutely.

00:42:08.020 If, uh, uh, I, uh, met only one individual that I interacted with in the KGB who I absolutely

00:42:15.560 didn't like.

00:42:16.900 He was an agent in Moscow and he became my liaison for a while.

00:42:21.700 Well, if, if that person, uh, was Herman or, you know, was, played the role of Herman, I

00:42:30.440 may have thought about the whole situation twice.

00:42:33.620 This guy was a really wonderful guy.

00:42:35.460 Were you excited about the fact that you were having these clandestine meetings in, first

00:42:41.700 of all, a car and why in a car?

00:42:43.560 And then later in the, in the apartment, like, was that part of the adventure and intrigue

00:42:48.400 that was an attractive element of, of what was unfolding?

00:42:53.060 No, that part wasn't that exciting.

00:42:54.900 No, uh, you know, I, what, what, uh, uh, what was, uh, really, uh, good for me that I,

00:43:03.240 that I had a secret, uh, so I, I had a, I was even elevated higher than everybody else

00:43:10.360 knew.

00:43:11.400 So, so the pride increases, right?

00:43:14.000 But, but the, what he gave me, Herman gave me some things to do and they were not necessarily

00:43:20.360 things that I comfortably did, such as, you know, reaching, ringing a doorbell and under

00:43:28.320 some pretense talk with the person who answers the bell to find out something.

00:43:33.240 About a relative of this in, in West Germany, that was hard, but my ambition didn't allow

00:43:39.700 me to fail.

00:43:40.780 I'm, I pulled it off.

00:43:43.120 So, but that, that was unpleasant.

00:43:45.660 It, it became much more interesting.

00:43:48.140 The first time I, uh, uh, had the ability to, uh, go to West Berlin and look around, you

00:43:57.280 know, and this is sort of, you know, the Germans have something in their DNA.

00:44:00.920 It's called Wanderlust, the, uh, the, the desire to travel.

00:44:06.480 And I, that, that was a big desire.

00:44:08.720 I wanted to see, uh, you know, uh, Rome and Paris.

00:44:12.740 I had read about these cities and, you know, West Berlin, that was my first adventure.

00:44:17.380 And then, uh, my second adventure was in Canada, believe it or not.

00:44:22.860 It was a test, a test trip to where I spent a lot of time in Montreal.

00:44:27.480 All right.

00:44:27.900 So you, what happened in, at 18 months, what kind of offer were you made and how did that

00:44:33.580 trend, how was that transformed into this trip to West Berlin?

00:44:37.260 Yeah.

00:44:37.560 So, uh, that, uh, was very interesting.

00:44:40.680 Herman, uh, sent me to Berlin.

00:44:44.440 He didn't tell me, well, by the way, the KGB almost never gave me any background why they

00:44:48.460 make a decision, this, that, or the other.

00:44:50.680 There was nothing, there was no schedule, no planning, nothing they shared with me.

00:44:55.100 It was ad hoc.

00:44:56.400 They probably knew what they were doing.

00:44:57.640 I didn't.

00:44:58.040 So he sent me to, uh, uh, Berlin for some additional training.

00:45:04.580 So, uh, that's when I had my first clandestine meeting.

00:45:08.580 When you, when you go, uh, that was a little bit of an adventure.

00:45:12.320 When, when you go to a certain spot, meet somebody who you don't know, you don't know

00:45:17.440 what they look like and you have, you, you exchange, uh, keywords.

00:45:21.740 And so, you know, you're talking to the right person.

00:45:24.780 Um, and so he gave me some things to do.

00:45:27.700 He gave me, uh, Western magazine, West German magazines to read.

00:45:31.600 And the, the day before my departure back to where I studied, he took me to the Soviet

00:45:41.040 headquarters and Soviet army headquarters in, in East Berlin, and which was also the KGB

00:45:48.560 headquarters.

00:45:49.220 And he took me to, uh, an office and there was this, this small man sitting behind the

00:45:56.160 desk and very unimpressive with the moment he opened his mouth and he spoke only Russian.

00:46:01.620 Uh, there was a phenomenal amount of psych, psychological energy coming at me.

00:46:08.440 You know, he did a little bit of small talk about, you know, how we need to, uh, um, do our

00:46:15.660 best to defeat the evil capitalists and Nazis and so, so forth. 0.92

00:46:19.620 And, and, and then he, 180 out of, out of the blue asked me the question, so are you in

00:46:27.960 or not?

00:46:29.100 I didn't expect that.

00:46:31.780 And I think this was, this was deliberately arranged that way.

00:46:36.300 So, uh, I said, well, I don't know if I qualify and, and, you know, I don't have any training.

00:46:42.320 I, I didn't want to give an answer.

00:46:44.540 I wasn't ready.

00:46:45.080 I hadn't thought about it and, uh, and he said, you qualify and we will train you, but

00:46:52.320 there's one thing, there's one requirement that we only work with people who can make

00:46:56.400 big decisions very quickly.

00:46:59.380 You have until tomorrow noon to give me an answer.

00:47:03.360 Uh-huh.

00:47:04.060 Uh-huh.

00:47:04.600 That, that, that made, that made for an interesting sleepless night.

00:47:09.120 Right.

00:47:09.740 Well, that's also an appeal to pride, eh?

00:47:11.900 Because he's giving you the opportunity to demonstrate that you're one of those decisive

00:47:16.440 people.

00:47:17.900 So, yeah, the, the good, good point, but, but, you know, decision or not, I was an academic

00:47:23.960 and, and I was, uh, it was, uh, learned, I learned how to operate with logic and I tried

00:47:29.760 the logical arguments of this and that and, and, uh, and it came out 50, 50.

00:47:36.660 So, so, so this is when, uh, when, uh, when, uh, it started that in, in my, my life, my

00:47:44.980 subconscious, my gut made the decision and I, and I said, oh yeah, the, there was no forcing

00:47:53.440 argument that says, I gotta go because there was so much good development ahead of me in

00:48:02.660 staying in East Germany.

00:48:03.960 Unfortunately, I would have wound up in the government and I would, would have eventually 0.96

00:48:07.640 become a miserable old communist. 0.85

00:48:10.340 So, so I, I'm very glad I made that decision. 0.88

00:48:13.480 And, uh, and that, that's when I, then I became officially not an employee, but a sort

00:48:20.460 of a, uh, uh, uh, um, a cooperating agent, so to speak, because the employees had to have,

00:48:26.780 uh, Soviet citizenship.

00:48:27.800 So, how long, how long after they took you on board, did you go to West Berlin and what

00:48:35.860 did they have you do there apart from these clandestine meetings?

00:48:39.580 And what did you think when you got to West Berlin?

00:48:43.180 Yeah, let me tell you something, first of all, uh, I, when I thought I was in, so, you

00:48:47.960 know, I packed my bags and wound up in, in, in Berlin, I wasn't in yet.

00:48:52.480 They were still testing me.

00:48:53.840 So, so I meet my new handler and a different guy and I, I'm in his car and, uh, and I expected

00:49:02.360 that I'm going to have a really, really nice apartment because it was the KGB, you know, 0.83

00:49:08.140 I, you know, I, I had lived in a dorm, uh, for, for, for the previous seven years.

00:49:14.280 And, uh, and he, we, we sit down and, uh, Nikolai was his name.

00:49:18.800 He, he turned to me and says, I already have a task for you.

00:49:21.380 I said, what, really?

00:49:23.340 And then he said, you've got to find a place to live.

00:49:28.180 That is in a place where there was a shortage of, uh, of, uh, living space and all living

00:49:34.280 space was, uh, controlled by the government.

00:49:37.400 There was an impossible task.

00:49:39.940 All right.

00:49:40.460 So that was a test.

00:49:41.580 I didn't know it was a test, but, but, you know, I, I responded the right way.

00:49:46.640 I didn't, I didn't, I didn't make a face.

00:49:48.240 I didn't, uh, I didn't make the argument that this is impossible.

00:49:51.680 I just went about and found something.

00:49:53.660 I found the worst place I've ever lived in is like a one room in a concrete structure,

00:50:02.160 uh, that had, uh, running cold water, a chair and a bed.

00:50:08.780 And I didn't, I didn't tell this guy.

00:50:12.960 And I think, I think that impressed him greatly.

00:50:16.020 So if I fail this, I'm out.

00:50:19.160 At that point, when, if you're out, your career is over too.

00:50:23.040 I couldn't have gone back to the university.

00:50:24.860 So I had no idea that I was an endangered species.

00:50:29.440 And, and the West Berlin was the final test.

00:50:32.160 And so the, and they had me go there twice, uh, within East German Passport.

00:50:38.500 And the first time they just said, uh, you know, just walk around, you know, have a beer,

00:50:44.300 take this, you know, look at the stores, like just get, get a feel for the place.

00:50:50.140 And, uh, so as I, um, as I show up and, you know, I, I emerged from the subway and I look

00:50:57.460 around and I'm, the first impression was, oh, I tell, I, um, tell people nowadays, uh,

00:51:06.480 to, to, to make it, to make it clear what the difference was between the East and the West.

00:51:13.380 The West was a movie that was made in color.

00:51:17.460 In the East, it was all black and white because almost our buildings were brown or gray.

00:51:23.540 It was ugly.

00:51:24.600 And there were a couple of nice buildings, but generally it was ugly.

00:51:29.380 So that was very interesting.

00:51:31.200 And I, I, I, I looked at, through the display windows of the department stores,

00:51:36.140 and the beer was better, the sausage was better.

00:51:40.140 But, you know, this all, yeah, on the one hand, you rationalize it away.

00:51:44.620 On the other hand, it says, hey, that's going to be a good life, right?

00:51:48.240 So I, the second visit, I had to pass yet another test.

00:51:52.600 I had to ring the doorbell in an apartment building and make friends out of the people

00:51:58.880 that, that answered the door.

00:52:01.220 And I did good.

00:52:02.680 And the reason I knew for sure that was another test and that, if I failed that test, I would

00:52:08.140 have, my career would have been at an end before it started.

00:52:11.460 I met accidentally a classmate of mine from high school who was going to be an illegal for 0.99

00:52:20.700 the Stasi.

00:52:21.860 And he had to pass the same test and he pooped in his pants and he came back and told him,

00:52:28.020 I can't do this.

00:52:28.940 And guess what?

00:52:31.880 He had a degree in engineering.

00:52:33.540 He never worked as an engineer for the rest of his life.

00:52:37.320 So endangered species, indeed.

00:52:39.160 I had no idea.

00:52:40.320 More endangered than the entire time I operated in the U.S.

00:52:44.740 So why do you think you were wise or canny enough to accept the task of finding an apartment

00:52:52.800 under impossible circumstances and then to accept the apartment you did accept without

00:52:58.180 complaint and with good grace?

00:53:01.120 Okay.

00:53:02.080 Triple answer.

00:53:03.720 First of all, failure was not an option because of the way my mother raised me.

00:53:10.360 You know, I would come home with a B and I would tell her that it was the best grade in

00:53:15.540 the entire class.

00:53:16.520 She would answer, well, did they have A's available?

00:53:20.740 Failure was not an option, number one.

00:53:22.520 Number two, it was instinct.

00:53:24.620 You know, I found out many years later when I came to, when I was confronted with that concept,

00:53:33.780 I'm wired to be very stoic.

00:53:37.140 So I didn't show any emotions when he made that ridiculous order, so to speak.

00:53:47.800 And thirdly, I accepted this because I was used to having lived in miserable conditions,

00:53:56.420 not too good, you know.

00:53:58.440 The college dorms were pretty crummy.

00:54:01.300 There was no privacy.

00:54:02.140 And so it was worse than the dorm, but it wasn't something I couldn't handle, okay?

00:54:11.840 So, and you know, and again, this was an authority figure.

00:54:16.220 Even though I was anti-authoritarian, but I had learned to play with the authority or else

00:54:23.460 because at one time when my anti-authoritarian self ran away with me in high school, I got

00:54:32.040 very close to being kicked out of high school.

00:54:34.460 Severe reprimand in front of the student body.

00:54:37.240 And I realized you got to play ball and you keep your feelings to yourself.

00:54:43.260 Right.

00:54:43.700 Okay.

00:54:44.340 Okay.

00:54:44.600 So how long after that did you end up in Montreal and how did you establish yourself in North

00:54:51.800 America?

00:54:52.780 And oh yeah, that, and also I'm curious about, you know, you, you mentioned that you did observe

00:54:57.680 that life in West Berlin was in color and of a higher quality, but did you depend on that

00:55:04.540 rationalization that all that had been accomplished through oppression and theft essentially, or did

00:55:10.320 you just, how did you deal with that?

00:55:12.940 The, the rationalization became part of my, you know, what I call foundational knowledge

00:55:18.980 about the world.

00:55:19.840 You know, I didn't think about this repeatedly.

00:55:22.640 I took it in and, and I owned it.

00:55:25.240 Okay.

00:55:25.520 So there was no, so with regard to the other thing, the other question, you know, I was supposed

00:55:31.800 to go to West Germany, makes sense, right?

00:55:35.100 And no cultural differences, like no language differences and so forth.

00:55:38.180 But, but I also was required to study another language and they told me everybody has to

00:55:44.380 and I, I picked English and I was really good at it.

00:55:49.680 And one day I had a visitor from, from Moscow at this point, I had an apartment already, but

00:55:56.300 when I got a key to, to the apartment, I was actually officially in, finally, it took about

00:56:03.900 six months.

00:56:05.180 So, so, so, and, and he, he just wanted to know how I'm doing with English.

00:56:09.940 And I showed him a book on a shelf and said, I can read that without the help of a dictionary.

00:56:14.540 And the light bulb went on and within a week, I had a tape recorder and I was asked to say

00:56:24.000 something in English, whatever.

00:56:26.220 And once they had the tape, within a week later, I was on a plane to Moscow, where I was interviewed

00:56:33.820 by a college professor who taught English, a Russian, and an American citizen who had wound

00:56:41.460 up, she fell in love with a Russian somehow, and wound up living in Moscow.

00:56:46.940 And they, they were asked specifically, is he good enough?

00:56:53.560 Can we teach him English so well that he can pretend to have been born in the United States? 0.61

00:57:00.300 The Russians said, the Russians said, no, the Americans said, yeah, I can teach him.

00:57:05.180 You know, American optimism.

00:57:07.640 And so I spent two years in Moscow, where I worked with her, did a lot of phonetic exercises.

00:57:15.100 I worked like a maniac.

00:57:17.120 And I got two points.

00:57:18.220 Yeah, well, you're remarkably accent-free.

00:57:22.120 I hear my own accent when I listen to tapes, but certainly I don't talk like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

00:57:28.760 So, you know, I had this rare talent to acquire another language without a strong accent in my adulthood.

00:57:39.520 Okay, so, and at one point it was determined that I was ready to go, and that's when they sent me to Canada

00:57:47.300 to do two things, you know, just figure out what it's like to live in the United States.

00:57:52.380 We thought, you know, Canada was like a mini version of the U.S.

00:57:57.880 Not quite true, but they didn't know any better.

00:58:02.260 And I was supposed to get a birth certificate of an individual, of a young man who'd passed away at an early age in the U.S.

00:58:10.180 And that was an interesting situation.

00:58:14.460 You know, I can talk all day, and I want to be careful not to go too far,

00:58:19.980 because I want to make sure that we cover all the topics that are important to you.

00:58:25.920 So, bottom line is, I failed to get that birth certificate.

00:58:29.600 And interestingly enough, you know, he is a dead person who is asking through the mail to get his birth certificate.

00:58:38.000 I should have been captured right then and there.

00:58:40.200 I got lucky.

00:58:40.620 And so, after close to a year, a diplomat, a KGB diplomat in Washington, D.C.,

00:58:53.340 found the birth certificate, no, the gravestone of Jack Barsky,

00:58:58.720 who died at an early age, at the age of 11, and he was able to procure the birth certificate.

00:59:04.440 At that point, I was ready to go, and that was in 1978.

00:59:11.020 1978.

00:59:11.940 Okay.

00:59:12.300 So, I was in Montreal not long after that.

00:59:15.320 I moved there in 1984.

00:59:17.480 It was a wonderful place to live, I thought.

00:59:19.500 I really enjoyed Montreal.

00:59:22.280 What was it like for you in Canada, there in Montreal?

00:59:25.480 And how did you set up your North American life?

00:59:29.200 You got your ID.

00:59:30.160 Obviously, that was necessary.

00:59:31.580 And what did the KGB have you do at this point?

00:59:35.200 I mean, they were setting you up so you had a life in North America,

00:59:37.940 and that was working successfully.

00:59:39.260 Well, just to answer to what it was like in Canada,

00:59:45.920 you know, mostly I was a tourist,

00:59:49.220 and I had a bar that I visited a lot so I could talk with people.

00:59:54.440 And I made some friends, a couple of friends.

00:59:56.180 I had a French-Canadian girlfriend.

00:59:59.860 And one thing I got to tell you, I was at the Forum when Guy Lafleur broke the record

01:00:07.360 of most goals scored in a home game at the Forum in one season.

01:00:14.920 And the Forum broke out in spontaneous applause.

01:00:20.360 There was like 15 minutes, there was no game anymore.

01:00:23.960 So that was great, especially since I had learned to appreciate ice hockey while I lived in Moscow.

01:00:30.920 But anyway, I came to the United States in the fall of 78.

01:00:37.920 And my primary task was to take that birth certificate that I had and parley that into bona fide American documentation,

01:00:48.440 primarily a driver's license and a Social Security card, so you could live and work like a born American.

01:00:55.800 And I had a backstory that was yay long that had me live on a farm for a long time and then eventually come to New York.

01:01:04.400 It took close to a year for me to get these documents because the instructions that I got from the KGB did not work.

01:01:11.700 They didn't have a clue how to do this.

01:01:14.440 But, you know, the reason that they picked somebody like me, you know, I was creative.

01:01:18.860 I was able to improvise.

01:01:20.560 Don't want to get too much into details because it gets too long.

01:01:23.380 And so then, and then since I couldn't take my resume with me and I, and my backstory had me like grow up, you know, work on a farm for many years,

01:01:33.780 the best job I could find was bike messenger.

01:01:37.360 I spent four years riding a bike and carrying packages in Manhattan.

01:01:44.640 Well, that must have been exciting.

01:01:47.320 You know, it wasn't that bad.

01:01:48.960 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:01:49.800 Well, by biking in Manhattan, that's no, that's no trivial operation.

01:01:54.240 I'm sure you got to know the city real well.

01:01:56.760 I got to know the city like the palm of my hand.

01:01:59.340 And that's, I also became a street urchin.

01:02:02.580 You know, I, you know, I knocked the ice cream cones out of pedestrians that were in my way.

01:02:06.880 And, you know, I interacted with a lot of like very ordinary Americans that gave me an opportunity to actually become an American because theoretically learning the language and talking to somebody who had lived in the United States doesn't make you an American.

01:02:24.580 You have to watch them, you have to, you know, what they talk about, what's important and, and, and facial expressions and, and, you know, body language and all that.

01:02:38.060 Without that messenger job, I probably would have been busted too.

01:02:41.620 So it was, it was, it was lucky.

01:02:43.240 It was not by, it was by accident.

01:02:46.200 And, and, and interestingly enough, I made enough money because I was not an employee.

01:02:51.020 I didn't get minimum wage as a bike messenger.

01:02:53.240 I got, I got commission.

01:02:54.560 And I had, I made enough money to go get an apartment and, you know, hang out with people and so forth.

01:03:01.740 And, and then without getting into detail, I was supposed to get a passport and then go back to Europe and create, establish a company.

01:03:14.480 And the KGB was going to, and she knew how, they knew how to do this, move money into that company.

01:03:21.860 So that within two, three years, I would go back to the United States with a few million dollars and, and repatriate that money and immediately become upper middle class and, and then become a really, really dangerous agent.

01:03:35.960 Okay.

01:03:36.420 So what were they that?

01:03:37.600 Well, so there's a lot of investment of time that you're putting into this.

01:03:42.820 I mean, obviously, and, and the KGB is actually showing possibly a certain degree of patience.

01:03:48.320 What exactly were they setting you up to accomplish?

01:03:51.440 You said they were going to put you in an upper middle class position now that you had established yourself as American.

01:03:56.300 What were they hoping that you could do for the, for the Soviet Union?

01:04:00.160 They told me that my, finally, my, my task was to operate in the realm of foreign policy.

01:04:11.120 Getting to know people who make foreign policy or at least influence foreign policy.

01:04:16.580 That was only the partial truth.

01:04:19.840 I found out much later there was, because there were the heads of the illegals, the two of them, after the KGB was disbanded, gave interviews.

01:04:29.020 And the number one value that the KGB ascribed to my being in the U.S. was my being in the U.S.

01:04:36.680 And I tell you why that makes sense.

01:04:39.440 Towards the end of the Cold War, there was this, this battle between the CIA and the KGB.

01:04:46.220 And it was constantly, and all the agents were, except for us, the illegals, were diplomats.

01:04:53.440 So, and diplomats were expelled, and then there was retaliation.

01:04:57.360 And they were worried that at one point diplomatic relations would be completely interrupted.

01:05:03.220 And the only ones left behind enemy lines would have been us illegals.

01:05:09.680 And guess what?

01:05:11.020 Who would have run Aldrich Ames and, and I forgot his first name, Hanson, the most dangerous molds in the history of the United States and the most successful spies for the, for the KGB.

01:05:25.940 So they never told me any of that, but, so I knew it was like, I was going to, you know, get to know a member of conservative, members of the conservative think tanks and, you know, the trilateral commission.

01:05:39.920 I don't know what they, what, why they were so obsessed with the trilateral commission.

01:05:45.000 And, and they were very much obsessed with Zvigniew Brzezinski and Columbia Institute for Foreign Relations or whatever that's called.

01:05:52.720 As a bike messenger and student and junior computer programmer, I had no, I had no ability to befriend people like that.

01:06:04.100 But I would have had that ability if I had been able to rise into the upper middle class very quickly.

01:06:11.560 Right.

01:06:12.060 And so they were willing to spend the time and put in the energy to give you that very well-developed backstory in the hope that you would be positioned maybe in a decade or something.

01:06:20.720 It was a long-term game.

01:06:21.620 Yeah, they, they, they were not impatient.

01:06:24.820 They actually were very, very appreciative of the fact that I improvised a lot and, and overcame obstacles.

01:06:31.300 And, you know, you don't get the order of the red banner if you weren't doing really well.

01:06:39.000 Right, right.

01:06:40.000 So they, okay.

01:06:40.780 So they were regarding all your maneuvering and your problem solving in North America as exactly what you should be doing.

01:06:45.900 Now you said, thank God that those plans didn't materialize.

01:06:50.980 Now, so, so how did your career develop after that?

01:06:54.740 And why, and why are you pleased that it, that the goal that was in mind for you didn't make itself manifest?

01:07:01.760 Because, because, because I'm able to talk to one Dr. Jordan Peterson today.

01:07:06.060 My life, my life, my life changed so radically for the best.

01:07:13.140 God forbid, I'm a successful KGB agent.

01:07:16.200 The wall comes down.

01:07:17.400 I'm saying, well, what's going on here?

01:07:19.400 And then the Soviet Union falls apart.

01:07:21.560 Now, I'm stuck.

01:07:23.660 I would not have notified the FBI of my existence.

01:07:30.700 I would have gone back to Russia and I would now live a very miserable life in Russia because I'd never served Russia. 0.96

01:07:39.040 I served not even the Soviet Union.

01:07:41.420 I served the communist cause.

01:07:43.200 So, and, you know, and I learned the truth.

01:07:49.140 And as they say, the truth shall set you free.

01:07:53.060 I'm a free citizen to the extent you still have all the freedoms that we're supposed to have.

01:08:00.300 Right, right.

01:08:01.060 Okay, so let's, let's, now, let's jump ahead.

01:08:05.220 Now, you start working as a coder, if I remember correctly.

01:08:08.780 Yes, sir, I did.

01:08:10.060 Okay, and at some point you come to the attention of the FBI.

01:08:13.640 How does that, how do you start that new career?

01:08:16.320 And how do you come to the attention of the FBI?

01:08:19.940 Well, I came to the attention of the FBI because of a betrayal.

01:08:23.660 And this is another situation where I would, if the person was still alive, I would thank him on my knees for his betrayal.

01:08:33.340 He was an archivist by the name of Vasily Mitrokin.

01:08:37.420 And he was an archivist in the KGB.

01:08:40.820 And he had access to all the records because he managed the records.

01:08:47.140 And he started reading those records.

01:08:48.760 And he found out, like, what an evil organization the KGB was.

01:08:53.540 So he developed a severe hatred of the Soviet system and the KGB.

01:08:58.560 And he figured out the only way to do damage is to copy some information.

01:09:03.920 And over many years, he took handwritten small pieces of paper with handwritten notes on them in his underwear, in his shoes, in his socks, and then transcribed them and piled it all up and buried the material in the dacha.

01:09:21.220 And in 1992, he wound up in Estonia at one of the British embassy, at the British embassy, and told MI6 what he had.

01:09:32.240 And they were able to dig this stuff up and took it to England and eventually shared some of the information.

01:09:43.180 It took a while with the FBI.

01:09:45.320 And amongst that enormous amount of data, there was a couple of sentences.

01:09:53.400 There's a fellow named Jack Barsky, who is an illegal KGB undercover agent.

01:09:58.960 He lives in the northeast of the United States.

01:10:00.940 And it didn't take the FBI very long to find me because, you know, they looked at Social Security data, and there was only one Jack Barsky they found who got his Social Security card at the age of, like, 35 or something.

01:10:16.300 Right. Okay.

01:10:17.060 So when did you—what year did you move to Manhattan?

01:10:20.180 I arrived in New York in 78, and I was in Manhattan in 78.

01:10:23.740 I stayed one year in a hotel.

01:10:25.560 Okay. So you were successfully undercover for at least 15 years, and so you spent a bunch of—

01:10:34.400 Oh, successfully undercover, not detected, was 19 years.

01:10:38.800 19 years, okay.

01:10:40.220 In the service of the KGB, only 10 years.

01:10:44.400 I resigned after 10 years.

01:10:46.600 Oh, okay. So how—okay. So how did the resignation come about, and why?

01:10:51.140 Okay. So—and you will understand that I—I'm given to understand that you have a great relationship with your daughter.

01:11:03.420 So this is what happened.

01:11:05.820 I had a girlfriend in the U.S. who I married, without getting, again, too much into detail, and she decided to become pregnant.

01:11:13.780 And I watched this little girl grow up, and when she turned 18 months, I knew I was in love with this girl, and I was—I was so much in love with her that I could not imagine leaving her.

01:11:35.920 And I tell people, and I tell people, this is when the arrogant adventurer joined the human race.

01:11:44.720 Oh, yes.

01:11:45.460 Because this was an attack of unconditional love.

01:11:49.920 And at that time, the KGB got spooked, and they thought I was about to be arrested by the FBI, and they—we had an emergency procedure.

01:12:04.020 There was—we both knew what to do if there's an emergency, and they activated that procedure with a signal on—at a signal spot.

01:12:15.080 And I—and I walked by that spot every day, and all of a sudden, one day, I see this red dot, and that said, Danger, get out of here immediately.

01:12:26.000 And the—I'm sorry for that bad word, but the—the only—I have to say it because this is what popped into my head. 0.99

01:12:34.220 Oh, shit. 0.99

01:12:35.380 What do I do now? 0.99

01:12:36.280 I want to take—I want to take—I had no idea how to—how to take care of this child, and—and I knew that if I leave her, she would grow up in—in poverty because her mother had only four years of schooling. 0.97

01:12:48.860 Okay.

01:12:50.000 And so I went back and forth, back and forth.

01:12:52.320 I—I played for time, but it got to a point where they were checking on me, saying, What's going on?

01:13:01.400 And they found me, and—so a man came up to me.

01:13:06.860 I was waiting for a subway train, and he sidled up to me, and he whispered with a clear Russian accent.

01:13:13.080 He said, You got to come home, or else you're dead.

01:13:16.760 Now, the point was that they knew that I knew that they knew, because before that, they could—I could have been in a hospital.

01:13:25.240 My—my radio could have been broken, and a lot of things could have been happening to me, and I was not able to comply.

01:13:32.720 Well, so now I had to make a decision.

01:13:37.200 The—do you know what a dead-drop operation is?

01:13:40.580 No.

01:13:41.740 It's an operation where you hand over, not information, but something that has weight and dimensions, such as a passport, money, and so forth.

01:13:51.260 Okay.

01:13:51.560 And you put it in—you put it in a container, and you drop it someplace where somebody else would pick it up.

01:13:58.000 So they—through shortwave radio, they told me to go to a dead-drop operation this one day, and at that point, I went, because I knew there would be money and a passport.

01:14:13.240 So at minimum, I would just pocket the money, right?

01:14:17.160 I had not made a decision.

01:14:18.260 And it was really interesting, because when I went—the dead-drop operation has a couple of signals involved.

01:14:27.440 So the first signal is the person who deposits the container says, I go and get it.

01:14:34.980 Okay?

01:14:35.400 I put it there.

01:14:36.540 So I saw the signal, and I went to the place, and that place was impossible to miss, because I had found it myself.

01:14:43.640 There was a tree with a hollow bottom, and there was no container.

01:14:49.000 There was no crushed oil can, and I just did a double take.

01:14:53.540 I walked around, walked around.

01:14:55.000 Wasn't there.

01:14:56.140 I walk out of the park, and my subconscious again made a decision, and it said, I'm staying.

01:15:06.620 That was an irrational decision, because everything I knew at the time that was good for me was over there in the East.

01:15:16.240 I would have gone back as a conquering hero.

01:15:19.460 I was married in Germany, too.

01:15:22.320 And even if I managed to stay and the FBI doesn't arrest me, if they do arrest me, I'm no good for this child either.

01:15:30.860 So I should have rationalized saying, look, I got to go.

01:15:34.120 I have no choice.

01:15:36.020 My subconscious overrode any of that logical thinking.

01:15:39.840 And obviously, it was a tremendous risk, but I had no choice.

01:15:45.260 It's the power of unconditional love.

01:15:48.360 Yeah, well, that's a very interesting issue.

01:15:50.800 So it sounds to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that what you're relating is that the love that you developed for your daughter,

01:16:01.660 so I would hazard a guess that that was perhaps the first genuine love that you had in your life,

01:16:07.140 and that that was enough to break the grip of your intellectual hubris.

01:16:10.940 It's something like that.

01:16:11.880 Is that correct?

01:16:12.620 100% correct, because there was a point when this girl, she was about five years old,

01:16:21.400 and she wasn't admitted to kindergarten because she was behind in her ability to speak.

01:16:33.100 And I told my colleagues, I said, I think my daughter's a little dummy, but I love her anyway.

01:16:39.660 So intellect to me was not important anymore.

01:16:42.620 So you're right about that.

01:16:45.620 And yeah, the other times I was in love, it was passion, and there was obviously sex involved.

01:16:55.280 There was no sex involved.

01:16:57.020 And unconditional means you can't get anything back but a smile.

01:17:00.820 So how did you actually manage to get out?

01:17:03.260 I mean, that must have been with its—I mean, I can't understand why they let you out.

01:17:09.280 And then, well, and then let's discuss how you ended up working for the FBI.

01:17:14.180 So, yeah, they hired themselves a brilliant guy with a brilliant subconscious,

01:17:23.720 and it popped into my head.

01:17:25.280 I said, oh, wait a minute.

01:17:26.860 I'll just tell him I can't come because I have HIV AIDS.

01:17:29.480 And since I knew to be—have been brutally honest with everything,

01:17:37.560 and since they didn't know that I had a child, I was certain of that,

01:17:41.920 they couldn't think of a reason why I was lying to them.

01:17:45.280 It worked.

01:17:45.880 Okay, okay.

01:17:47.960 And so how did you come to the eventual attention of the FBI,

01:17:53.560 and what did it mean that you worked for them?

01:17:56.400 Okay, so, you know, first of all, I spent another nine years working on my version of the American dream.

01:18:03.960 You know, I moved to the suburbs.

01:18:06.720 We had another child.

01:18:08.500 I moved to another house and eventually wound up in a McMansion.

01:18:13.780 So, yeah, I had checked out of the political thinking, philosophical thinking.

01:18:20.560 I was more into consumerism and doing good things for the family.

01:18:24.600 Oh, and that was disrupted when one day an FBI agent showed up and, again, I'm shortening this,

01:18:37.020 and told him, you know, FBI, we want to have a chat with you.

01:18:41.120 I had forgotten at that point.

01:18:42.980 I had put this in the way back in memory, never to be accessed again, that I once was an agent.

01:18:50.760 So, no, that came right back.

01:18:53.180 Bam! 0.98

01:18:55.440 So, you had fallen right into life as an American at that point and to this new identity.

01:19:00.000 Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

01:19:01.340 And I knew I would never see Germany again.

01:19:03.520 I would never apply for a passport again.

01:19:05.920 I didn't want to risk that.

01:19:08.440 So, I would, you know, live a decent life, have a great, great career.

01:19:12.900 I was making more and more money and retire, play golf.

01:19:17.080 Right, so you joined the upper middle class in any case.

01:19:20.320 Yes, I did.

01:19:22.620 And so, the FBI, how did the FBI find you, and then what did they want from you?

01:19:28.180 Well, what they wanted from me, it wasn't quite clear initially, but they knew that they couldn't,

01:19:36.740 wait a minute, did they know that I was already declared dead?

01:19:39.760 And I can't, but in our first interview, I told them that I don't exist in Germany anymore,

01:19:48.100 so they couldn't turn me, okay?

01:19:51.220 That would have been a great, but, and they also, no, now I remember, they found out after

01:19:57.040 observing me for two years that I wasn't active anymore.

01:19:59.480 So, I was not, I was not a target to be turned, but I was a target to be debriefed in the greatest of detail.

01:20:07.860 I spent hours and hours talking with the agent who interviewed me about every single detail in my life.

01:20:16.260 And apparently, that is very useful because even, you know, the successors of the, of the KGB, you know,

01:20:24.900 who, who were they trained by, KGB agent?

01:20:28.780 You know, there's a DNA that, organizational DNA that's handed down.

01:20:33.400 It was, the information that I gave them was considered very, very useful.

01:20:39.780 And one other thing, at the time when they caught up with me, Hansen and Ames were still operational.

01:20:49.600 No, they had been caught, I'm sorry.

01:20:51.560 But there were concerns that there were other molds and that I might be running one of them.

01:20:56.840 So, sometimes finding out a negative is actually a really good thing.

01:21:01.340 The fact of the matter, the FBI leadership was so impressed with what the FBI team did

01:21:09.540 that the lead agent got a commendation by the head of the FBI.

01:21:16.000 So, it is what it is.

01:21:18.740 You know, I'm not making that up.

01:21:20.560 You ask them, they will tell you it was, that was really good information that I was able to give them.

01:21:25.040 So, what do you think it was that you provided to them that they found so useful?

01:21:30.740 What, what, what makes foreign illegal?

01:21:33.740 What kinds of people the, the, the, the KGB was recruiting?

01:21:38.840 Turns out that CIA is recruiting the same type of people.

01:21:41.980 Right, right.

01:21:42.700 Well, that makes sense.

01:21:43.520 I have, I have, I have friends in the CIA and, and it's almost identical.

01:21:47.680 You know, there's a list of character traits that, you know, things that you're born with

01:21:52.160 rather than you acquire, not skills.

01:21:54.300 Yeah.

01:21:54.500 That, that the KGB was looking for.

01:21:56.900 And I shared that list with a, with a retired CIA agent.

01:22:00.980 And he said, well, that's, that, we have the same list.

01:22:05.200 But, you know, this confirmationism is important for, for counterintelligence.

01:22:09.440 And to what, to what extent, you know, that, that is specifically useful, you know, as far

01:22:15.980 as the psychology is concerned, I don't know that, I don't, I don't, I don't know the details.

01:22:22.660 I was also given a, a, a test by two eminent psychologists in, on a contract with the FBI.

01:22:31.620 And they gave me two, two days of test.

01:22:35.640 And I, the lady who gave me the Rorschach test, her claim to fame was that she also analyzed

01:22:44.060 the Unabomber.

01:22:45.480 And when she was done, she said, when she was done, she said, I have never interviewed somebody 0.99

01:22:52.820 who had that many stories to tell about these damn inkblots. 0.99

01:22:58.680 Right. 0.99

01:22:59.240 So it's creativity, right?

01:23:01.620 I, I had to be creative to, to, to be successful.

01:23:05.460 When you, when you look back over your career, I've got two questions for you.

01:23:10.000 I want to know, when you look back over your, the course of your life, what do you regret

01:23:16.700 and what are you thankful for?

01:23:18.860 And I'm also interested, now you, you had immersed yourself in this value and belief system

01:23:25.880 that characterized communism.

01:23:27.380 You obviously abandoned your allegiance to that in favor of, at least in part, in favor

01:23:34.200 of the relationship with your daughter.

01:23:35.560 But you also make allusions in your book to starting to study other philosophical matters

01:23:41.800 and religious matters.

01:23:42.940 And so first question is what, when you look back on your life and your career, how do you

01:23:49.480 evaluate what you did and where you ended up ethically and morally?

01:23:53.360 And second, how did you, when you abandoned your allegiance to the utopian vision of the communists

01:24:00.340 and you started inquiring philosophically and theologically into other domains, what did you conclude?

01:24:08.800 No, good, very good question.

01:24:10.960 The one thing I regret is that the woman I loved in Germany, when I, when, when I decided not to go back to my

01:24:21.120 German family, it was because of the love for a child, but I abandoned that woman and I loved her and I broke my promise.

01:24:29.940 That, that, that I, that can't be undone and, and that's really what, the most regret I have.

01:24:39.360 I don't regret anything that I did as a, as an illegal agent simply because I was never told whether, let's say,

01:24:48.500 some of the people that I've pointed to for possible recruits were recruited, what happened to them.

01:24:53.780 I have, I have no knowledge of what I should regret if there was, was something else.

01:25:00.000 So, uh, what I really regret.

01:25:02.460 So there's no specific guilts that you carry for the things that you, because, partly because you don't know what the consequences of them were.

01:25:10.020 Yes, they, they, they, they never, they never once, uh, congratulated me on a, on a tip that I gave them.

01:25:16.940 I never got any feedback, period.

01:25:20.240 Okay, that, that, that's one of the weaknesses of the KGB, by the way,

01:25:23.440 because if you have to make, uh, uh, decisions on, on your own all the time and you don't have a proper frame of reference,

01:25:30.760 you wind up making bad decisions.

01:25:32.400 Right, right, right.

01:25:33.280 Without the broader, yeah, well, that's the problem with not informing people, right,

01:25:36.760 is you have no context to guide you when you're making decisions.

01:25:40.680 Yeah, and, and, and that secrecy was rooted in, in, in the revolutionary background of the, of the KGB, you know, the cell structure.

01:25:48.980 You know, you, okay.

01:25:50.640 Okay, so, uh, what I'm grateful for, first of all, I'm grateful, uh, for, uh, living in the greatest country that ever existed on this earth,

01:26:02.600 particularly the country as it was constructed by the, uh, by the founders, simply because I, I, I'm a student of history,

01:26:12.280 and I am convinced that one, one of the, uh, one of the biggest flaws that, that left-wing thinking has is the idea that man is fundamentally good,

01:26:22.140 and all we have to do is, and that communism was the same thing, we have to take the shackles away from them.

01:26:28.160 It's the circumstances, and I know for a fact, you know, you look at history, and, and you, just, there's so much, uh, anecdotal evidence that men,

01:26:38.000 we all have, uh, the seed of evil in us.

01:26:41.020 Many of us, and the majority of us, deal with it very well, but it turns out in history, uh, the, the, the ruling people were mostly evil.

01:26:52.200 You know, you know, and so, and so, and so the constitution is constructed in such a way to, to manage that evil,

01:26:59.400 not eradicate it, uh, manage it by, you know, the separation of powers.

01:27:05.140 And, and the whole idea that, uh, all men created, are created evil and have these inalienable, inalienable rights,

01:27:12.660 that appeals to me, to, to my, that appeals to my anti-authorianism and, uh, and my absolute disgust with collectivism.

01:27:24.260 We are not getting the rights from the buff. We are not getting the rights from, from, from the law. 0.94

01:27:30.920 The, the, the law actually can take rights away from us.

01:27:33.600 Some of them, uh, are necessary to be taken away, such as, you know, uh, you know, to get the funds to, to defend the country and so forth.

01:27:42.280 But most of the laws that we have in this country are taking rights away from us.

01:27:48.720 So, uh, it is what it is.

01:27:50.900 How did you come to the conclusion, or what convinced you of the validity and utility of the doctrine of inalienable rights?

01:27:58.980 Because that's certainly, that's certainly not a hypothesis associated with communist utopianism, for example.

01:28:05.460 Why did you come to that conclusion?

01:28:08.000 That's, that's a good leading question, because I, I became a Christian.

01:28:13.160 And, uh, the, the, the, it was a pretty, uh, slow progress.

01:28:19.040 I became a deist first, because I, after I started thinking about and, and getting exposed to, like, uh, thinkers like C.S. Lewis,

01:28:28.840 uh, I re, I realized when my atheism was an idiotic belief system, you know, to, to, to just believe that, uh, the universe just exploded out of nothing, uh, and then ordered itself, uh, in a way that we have all this complexity that, that makes perfectly no sense.

01:28:49.440 And let's, let's, let's assume, even if, it was already there, you know, it, it, it, it violates the, uh, the third law of thermodynamics, when, uh, when a closed system, which the universe is ultimately a closed system, uh, will tend towards disorder.

01:29:08.760 So, where, where, where does the order come from?

01:29:11.340 So, there was a logic behind me, uh, becoming a deist.

01:29:15.120 And, uh, then, the love word came into play again.

01:29:20.460 Uh, uh, I was evangelized by a woman that I hired.

01:29:25.620 Um, but I didn't become a Christian because I wanted to marry her.

01:29:31.360 She, she, uh, she opened my eyes to the Bible and we, and I started, the first time, uh, she quoted me something out of the Bible, I said, wait a minute, this is the most, I knew that, the most widely read book in, in the history of mankind with no close second.

01:29:50.680 And I don't know anything about it.

01:29:52.320 Mm-hmm.

01:29:52.920 So, we did some Bible study and then she invited me to church.

01:29:56.820 And at that time, the love word came, came back into play.

01:30:01.840 I was in a really, really bad divorce, uh, with, uh, the, the, the woman that I had married and that had the daughter that I was in love with.

01:30:10.720 She, she went mentally ill and it was a lengthy divorce and I was, the only time in my life I was actually depressed.

01:30:17.500 And, uh, uh, this, uh, young lady who I secretly courted, I was, I, I was in love with her.

01:30:27.360 She didn't know that.

01:30:28.340 She invited me to the church.

01:30:30.420 And as it happens so often, when you go to church and you listen to the pastor, you know he was talking to you because he was talking about the love of God.

01:30:40.760 So, why, why do you think, okay, so what do you make of love then?

01:30:45.320 You know, you said that the first time it really transformed you was a consequence of whatever manifested itself to you and your daughter.

01:30:53.920 And this, the, the, the effect of love on your life was, what would you say?

01:30:58.880 It was outside of the domain of mere rationality.

01:31:01.780 And so what do you make of the transforming power of that love?

01:31:05.640 And how do you, how does that fit into your intellectual apprehension?

01:31:11.260 Love to me is, uh, the strongest emotion that, that humans can have.

01:31:17.440 And, and, and, and as I'm, as I embraced the faith and as I realized what, what God did for us, uh, I, I become a real loving person.

01:31:40.880 Loving even the ones that you, that you don't like.

01:31:47.440 Because the love is something that says something about yourself.

01:31:54.820 If you can't love the unlikable, that, that makes you whole, so to speak.

01:32:03.180 And, and, and, and, and, and, you know, the love of, uh, the, the life of Jesus, uh, is so, so phenomenal.

01:32:13.020 The way I would like to, like, be living and be seen.

01:32:20.300 At least I'm trying to get to that point.

01:32:22.700 And I think I've, I've traveled a long way.

01:32:25.060 And, and, and one of the things that, uh, uh, made a huge difference in my life the last year coming to Texas and being, being around a lot of loving, wonderful people and great churches that are not afraid to talk about what's going on in society these days.

01:32:47.260 Not cowardly like many others that, uh, that I've visited.

01:32:51.780 So let me, let me, I'm going to talk for everybody watching and listening.

01:32:56.320 I'm, I'm, I'm going to talk, um, for another half an hour with Jack on the Daily Wire side.

01:33:02.400 And I think we'll probably go deeper into this issue of faith because we've covered a fair bit of his autobiography, which is what I often do.

01:33:08.900 Um, and so maybe we'll close with this.

01:33:11.660 I mean, as you know, um, the power of left-wing utopianism has made itself manifest once again in the West.

01:33:20.700 I mean, I spent a lot of time traveling in Eastern Europe in the last few years, and one of the questions that I was constantly bombarded with in Eastern Europe was, how is it that the West could come under the sway of the ideas that were so destructive to us for so long?

01:33:36.380 And, and what could we do about it?

01:33:37.920 What I would like to ask you is for the people who are watching and listening, like you outlined in some detail what you found attractive about the utopianism that was being, um, offered to you as a purpose for life.

01:33:54.580 What message would you have to young people who were now attracted by that vision of helping the world's oppressed and poor, identifying the oppressors, and, and having the adventure that goes along with that pathway to redemption?

01:34:11.400 I mean, that was offered to you.

01:34:12.720 You followed it for a long time.

01:34:14.280 You eventually rejected it.

01:34:16.380 You found a religious calling instead.

01:34:19.140 You, but you understand why that vision was so attractive.

01:34:22.200 So what, what, what, what can you say that's, that might be of some utility to young people who are attracted by those utopian ideas? 0.97

01:34:32.280 Well, if, uh, I would say if you respect yourself, you don't want to be a fool, do you? 0.96

01:34:41.460 I'm talking to a young person now. 0.99

01:34:43.440 You don't want to be a fool. 0.99

01:34:45.640 So you're being fooled all the time. 0.99

01:34:49.080 I tell you that you need to go check out the truth.

01:34:52.200 And not just take it in as it's being presented to you the same way I took it in.

01:34:58.700 Uh, but the difference is we didn't have a marketplace of opportunities.

01:35:03.180 There, there is a marketplace of opportunities.

01:35:05.960 You can't find out the undeniable truth.

01:35:08.980 You're being lied to all the time.

01:35:11.880 And, uh, that makes you a puppet.

01:35:14.100 And that, that takes it, you're the individual, the individuality out of you, who you are.

01:35:20.520 Uh, you think that's going to make for a happy, uh, fulfilled life?

01:35:25.160 You're meant to be an individual and not a member of a crowd.

01:35:29.560 So what, what is it that you, how old are you now?

01:35:32.760 And first, let's start with that.

01:35:34.720 How?

01:35:35.080 I'm 73.

01:35:36.720 And what do you, what do you occupy your time with now?

01:35:39.340 Oh, you know, you know, I, I am so lucky that, uh, I don't have to use the phrase, uh, thank

01:35:47.840 God it's Friday anymore.

01:35:49.540 I get to create, I write, I do public speaking.

01:35:53.780 And I just, uh, uh, uh, developed a masterclass that I call, uh, applied spycology that, uh, is

01:36:06.000 primarily going to be talking to, uh, young people, mostly men, I think.

01:36:12.140 And I, I think, you know, another, another voice, uh, like, like that, that is sort of, uh,

01:36:18.860 side by side next to you is probably not, not competition.

01:36:23.300 I think it's a, it's a good thing to have.

01:36:26.760 And, uh, uh, with regard to that, um, I am, I'm offering, uh, the, the audience, um, something

01:36:38.580 extra.

01:36:39.680 I'm, I'm assuming there's going to be questions and, and we, we have a, we developed a website

01:36:47.020 where we can, where people can, uh, uh, uh, get to the website and ask the question.

01:36:53.300 And I will answer every one of them personally.

01:36:57.720 The website is called, uh, kgbspycology.com.

01:37:03.180 And we'll have a little bonus.

01:37:05.180 Uh, there's, uh, there's a, there's a, there's a document that I can share as a freebie that,

01:37:09.140 uh, uh, uh, uh, points out how the, how the KGB, uh, uh, uh, uh, operated, uh, in, in the

01:37:17.800 realm of persuasion.

01:37:19.800 That is not necessarily evil, right?

01:37:22.360 Because when you look at what Dale Carnegie taught, it can be used for good and for evil.

01:37:28.240 So, so, so, so that's where I'm at.

01:37:30.440 And this is, this is my, I, I have a, I have a dual mission in life.

01:37:35.960 Mission number one is taking care of my 13 year old.

01:37:38.400 I have a young daughter, uh, and, uh, and mission number two is, uh, to, uh, do what I'm

01:37:47.380 planning to do is work with, with whoever wants to listen to me, but primarily young people 0.97

01:37:52.120 to help them evade a, a destiny that when they become useful idiots, that the useful 1.00

01:38:02.360 idiots will be thrown away, as you know. 1.00

01:38:04.560 Yeah. 1.00

01:38:05.000 Yes.

01:38:05.460 I'm aware of that.

01:38:06.500 Yeah.

01:38:06.840 Yeah.

01:38:07.080 So what do you think that the people that you're trying to reach will learn as a consequence

01:38:11.200 of taking your course?

01:38:13.660 And, and, and you, you're, you're making allusions to psychology.

01:38:16.780 What are you trying to persuade them of, convince them of, teach them about?

01:38:22.880 Yeah.

01:38:23.360 So, so this, this is going to be more or less, uh, infotainment.

01:38:28.120 You know, I'm going to share some things, uh, that, that, uh, are not necessarily in the

01:38:33.980 book, you know, that had to do with my operating as a spy and then, uh, draw some conclusions,

01:38:40.660 uh, where I say, well, this is what, what helped me get out of this mess.

01:38:46.780 And, oh, by the way, you can acquire some of these skills yourself, such as, uh, you know,

01:38:52.100 is, uh, for instance, like develop your subconscious.

01:38:56.640 You know, I studied people all my life.

01:38:58.460 I, I can read people like this right now and it's, it's, it's, it's coming from my subconscious.

01:39:03.740 I'm not, you know, and, and, and there's a few other things.

01:39:07.240 And, uh, also, you know, I wasn't taught people skills, but I acquired them.

01:39:14.880 And, uh, again, I, I can talk about those and, and coming from me, uh, with, uh, with the,

01:39:22.200 the background I have and the fact that I'm still talking to you and I managed to get through

01:39:27.140 all this nonsense that I was in, uh, I think it, it may add value.

01:39:32.580 Um, um, um, you know, I absolutely respect you as an academician.

01:39:38.960 And I have admired you since I found you, uh, you, you, you, you know, having a scientific

01:39:46.000 background, uh, it's, it's great to, you know, have almost synergy with, uh, you know,

01:39:52.640 with what I'm coming up with instinctively with what you come up with, uh, uh, through science.

01:39:58.820 So, um.

01:39:59.860 Yeah, well, it sounds to me like you're trying to offer, at least to the degree that that can

01:40:05.300 be done in a virtual environment, some of the mentorship, even that you found.

01:40:10.440 Yes, sir.

01:40:11.440 Yeah, well, young people, you need, you need, you know, you even referred to this with regards

01:40:16.360 to the first contact you had at the KGB, the fact that he offered himself as a mentor,

01:40:21.840 filled a void in your life.

01:40:23.260 And, and that is absolutely necessary as people need an apprenticeship and a mentor.

01:40:28.400 Definitely.

01:40:28.840 Especially if they don't have it at home.

01:40:31.500 And the other thing that they need is, uh, uh, accountability partners.

01:40:38.140 If they, if they want to make changes happen, they need to have an accountability partner.

01:40:42.220 Right, right, right, right.

01:40:44.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:40:45.420 All right.

01:40:46.200 Well, good.

01:40:47.080 Is there, is there anything else that you'd like to bring to the attention of this, this

01:40:51.060 audience in particular, this more general audience before we go to the other interview?

01:40:55.280 Just, just let me, let me just tell you, tell you one thing.

01:40:58.840 And, and I'm going out on a limb here.

01:41:01.760 When I got the, the email from your producer, I got emotional.

01:41:09.800 I'm not going to go any further.

01:41:10.960 This, this was, this was, this was so important to me to be able to talk to you.

01:41:18.420 And I'm, I'm, I'm so, so glad that that happened.

01:41:21.220 Well, thank you very much, sir.

01:41:23.220 Um, I appreciate also the opportunity to have heard your story and to have the privilege

01:41:30.240 too, of bringing it to the attention of all the people that'll be watching and listening.

01:41:34.120 I'm going to talk to Jack Barsky for another half an hour on the Daily Wire side.

01:41:37.700 I think we'll delve into the philosophical and theological in some more detail on that,

01:41:43.340 in that half an hour.

01:41:44.300 And I'd like, thank you, sir, very much for your forthright comments today and for walking

01:41:49.480 us through the strange transformations of your life and for shedding some light on, well,

01:41:55.860 how one person was pulled into this terrible ideological battle that's been going on for,

01:42:01.540 well, the greater part of the last century.

01:42:03.140 And, and I'd like to thank everybody watching and listening for their time and attention and

01:42:06.980 for the Daily Wire Plus folks for making this conversation possible.

01:42:11.200 Thank you very much, sir.

01:42:12.820 You're most welcome.

01:42:13.700 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 08, 2024

412. True Stories From a Soviet Spy ｜ Jack Barsky

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