- My name is Jack Barsky. I am a retired and reformed
ex-undercover KGB agent. I spent 10 years working
on behalf of the KGB. Tried to like disappear. I resigned with a letter
in secret writing. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] In 1989, Jack
had been living undercover in the US for two years. The KGB's first plan to get
him a US passport failed. This was their backup plan. - Plan B was get a degree
and that way you'll become a professional and then you can enter the straight on society,
where you could do some significant damage. So we decided on City University, which had a very low tuition
and I still worked part-time as a bike messenger. I took overloads. It took courses in the summer. I raced through the
program in three years. Through some hard work,
brains and some negotiation I did three classes. I negotiated the grade up
from an A minus to an A. I was really proud of myself, and then I get called
into the Dean's office, and I go in there and he says, "You need to prepare your
speech for graduation." I says, "What?" "Well you're the valedictorian." I said, "Oh shit." This is the last thing I
wanted to be, right in front of about 4,000 people giving a speech. I was supposed to be
undercover, lying low. There was a chance that
even the newspapers might pick something up, that the
Russians might find out. They would have really
read me the riot act, and I tried to weasel out of this. I couldn't, and I got away with it! I have one picture of me
doing this and that picture is so bad, you wouldn't know that it's me. There was no recording. There was nothing in the newspaper. Once I had a degree, their idea was now, go to work, become a professional which will allow you A, to make more money and B, to make contact with people that are of interest to us directly. So I took a job as a
programmer with MetLife and this was one of those
bad insurance companies that we were always
told were really, really the epitome of evil
capitalism, and the exploiters of the workers and all that, and at the time, I still
believed in that crap. Then I started working there
and it was really nice. It was so nice I fell
in love with the job. That was the beginning of
my slow conversion away from believing in the Communist ideals. The thing about somebody
who lives undercover in another country,
particularly in another system, there's a shelf life. One establishes relationships
and all of a sudden it's a possibility that
one likes a new life better than the old life. The Soviets were well aware of that. What they were not aware
of was that I was even more established than they
could possibly have feared. I had a child in this country. She was born in 1987. She was the prettiest little
girl with the biggest eyes, and I bonded with her. When they decided to
terminate by assignment and called me back to the
other side of the Iron Curtain, I was torn because I had
this little girl here that I loved a whole lot. But I also had a lot of
reasons for going back. Well they claimed that the
FBI was about to arrest me. The other thing is I would have gone back to a hero's welcome. I had just received the
second highest decoration of the Soviet Union, the year before. I would've lived a good
life and continued to live sort of outside the law and above the law in East Germany in the Soviet Union. That little girl kept me here. It was a phenomenal attack
of what I today call, a phenomenal attack of unconditional love. So I decided I wouldn't go back. I came up with this brilliant idea, and everybody's who's ever heard it, agrees with me that it is brilliant. And I told them that I had
contracted AIDS, A-I-D-S. In those days it was a
death sentence pretty much, and the last thing they wanted is to have somebody in their country
who had that infectious and very feared disease. So they bought it, and they
told my family in East Germany, that I actually had died from AIDS. So for about three to four
months I was pretty much concerned about my well-being. Nothing happened. The FBI didn't find me. The KGB didn't come after me. So, I would now blend
into society and become a bonafide American middle-class citizen, and lived the rest of my
life pretty much undisturbed with a family and a house
in the country and so forth. About six months after I put
a down payment on a house, we moved into the suburbs. So the mother of this child
and I, we were married. I went to the INS with her
and here's one illegal, making another illegal, legal. And I made a decision. Let's, you know, live the American dream. Buy a house. We bought a house, about
60 miles north of New York. We had another child within about a year. And that was the good life. We eventually moved to Pennsylvania, to a house in the country. Nine years after the
KGB, I was at the time, low-level manager. I had a mortgage. I had bills to pay. I had to kids to deal
with in terms of school. My daughter started playing basketball. It was just a good American life and one day special agent FBI
shows up at a traffic stop and says to me, "FBI, we
would like to talk to you." My face went white as a sheet. He made me step into his car which was driven by another agent. I saw he had a gun strapped to his ankle so I really knew he was serious. It was not some kind of a nightmare. First question was, "Am I under arrest?", and the answer was, "No." I said, "So what took you so long?" (laughs) They took me to a motel
and I was debriefed for a couple of hours, and then they actually let me go home, not without warning me though. The warning was, "Hey listen,
if you think of running, "we got about 50 agents. "We have covered the entire area. "There's no way that you can escape. "We want all the information
that you could possibly "have retained in your head, "and you can't keep anything from us. "If we sense that you are holding back, "and you are somewhat insincere, "you're going some place
where you don't wanna be." Interestingly, all they had on me that they could have proved was that I was illegally in the country. They had no proof of espionage. If I had still been active
they would have tried to turn me and made me
into a double agent. Obviously, that was too late. I had given the KGB the big lie and for me to come like Lazarus, who rised from the dead
and tell the Russians, "Hey I'm back, can we
do something together?" That wouldn't have worked. I did operate as a trusted
source for many years. - [Narrator] Did you every
tell your wife or daughter about working for the KGB? - I told both my wife and
my daughter about my life as a spy at different moments. Another twist in this
story is that my wife and I had started fighting a lot, and was trying to like
make this marriage work, and at one point she was at it again, and I sat her down and I
said, "Hey listen honey. "Let me tell you what I
did, what I risked to stay "with you and Chelsey, our daughter." And I told her about my
past as a Soviet spy. Well that backfired in two ways. A, she immediately
said, "Oh wait a minute. "If you're not legal, then I'm not legal!" The FBI had listening devices in my house. The FBI had my confession on tape, and within a couple of weeks
they introduced themselves. My daughter had to wait
until her 18th birthday. I waited for her to be an adult. It told her I was going to jail, and I risked possibly being
killed to stay with you. She cried. (suspenseful music) What better indication of a
parent love can a child have? And we still have a really,
really good relationship. - [Narrator] Do you regret
working with the KGB? - I have no regrets
having worked for the KGB. Am I proud of it? Absolutely not. This is one of the most
murderous organizations in the history of mankind, even though I didn't
know that at the time. I got out of it and eventually I wound up in this great country here. I grew up in a country
where emotional love was not the order of the day. It was a matter of survival. It was just have World War II. We were poor. It was about getting enough food, having a roof over your head
and have clothes to wear. And I grew up very
selfish, not loving myself. I was not emotionally living person. And then this little
girl came into my life and she woke up something in me that makes me now say, when I'm asked, "What is the biggest lesson "that you've learned out of your life?" Nevermind the espionage,
love conquers all. With that I've become a whole lot more loving parents, husband. I've become a lot softer. That was not the way I started. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] To learn
more about Jack's story, read his memoir, Deep Undercover. (suspenseful music)
