- My name is Jack Barsky,
I was born and raised in East Germany and was
recruited by the KGB. I am, to the extent I
know, the only existing ex undercover KGB agent
who worked on behalf of the KGB in the United States. I did that for ten years. Today I'm a U.S. citizen and
I'm ready to spill the beans. No-holds-barred, there are no
questions that are off limit. (dramatic music) I was a third year
student in East Germany. I was studying chemistry,
I was an "A" student. I pretty much aced everything not necessarily because
I was the smartest, but I was very hard working. One day, I was sitting in my dorm room. There was a knock at the door. There was no name plate on the door. The fellow obviously knew
who he was looking for. He was looking for me, he asked, "Whether I could imagine myself to one day work for the government. To have a super career, you
would join the government. They ruled everything." So I answered, "Yes, but not as a chemist." I knew deep down inside he was a secret service of some kind. From that point on, I
met him one more time. He then handed me over to somebody with a Russian accent
saying unceremoniously, "Oh, by the way, we're
working with Soviet friends." So this is how I got into
the hands of the KGB. I was delighted to have the attention of what was at the time,
and probably in history, the most powerful, single
organization on the planet. So from the moment they disclosed to me that this was actually KGB. The second thought was,
"And oh, by the way, whatever we're talking about is secret. As long as you're working
with us you are a secret. Nobody, but nobody, not even your mother, will hear anything about
what you're doing with us or anything about our relationship." There was no money, there was no power. There was only service
to the cause, mind you, I was a believing communist. The bait was fundamentally, "You get to help us, the Soviet
Union and the Eastern camp to defeat the evil capitalists and establish a worker's
paradise on the entire planet." But there was a secondary consideration that wasn't really
stated, but it was clear because I knew from
literature and some movies that you get to live the good life. You get to go to the
west to try to overthrow the government be that
West Germany or France or the United States. But while you're doing it, you also get to live the good life. There was no fear, there
was all excitement. At one point, after
about a year and a half of a very loose relationship,
my handler got to know me. I got to know him, a
couple of times he gave me some presents, he gave
me some extra money. He gave me literature to read
that was actually prohibited in East Germany, mainly
West German news magazines. That, again, reinforced
the fact that I thought of myself as somebody special. I was already allowed to
break some laws, woo-hoo! After a year and a half,
they sent me to Berlin. In Berlin, there was my
first clandestine meeting so to speak, I didn't get an address. I got a street corner where
I would meet somebody. I didn't know what he looked like, but we had some distinguishing
marks on ourselves. I forgot what I was carrying. This fellow eventually
took me to the headquarters of the KGB in East Germany where I met one of those agent handlers. He came right down to
it, he said, "Are you in? Answer by tomorrow morning." That was when the game turned serious. Eventually I couldn't help myself. I had to go for the big one,
I had to go for the adventure. I said, "I'm in." Then we worked on what to
tell family and friends. My mother was the biggest "obstacle" because she was the closest to me. I told her, "I was recruited
by the foreign service. I'm going to be a diplomat.
Isn't that great?" She always wanted me to be a professor. "Really?" I said, "This is good! I
get to go see the world!" She understood a little bit of that. The rest of them, I just told them, "I'm going to Berlin. I'm going to join the foreign
service." And that was it. So I packed my bags, I had
a suitcase and a briefcase and that was all my belongings. I get on a train, I go to Berlin and I had to meet somebody there. Again, there was no address given. It was another one of
those clandestine meetings. I meet this guy, we sit down in his car. The first that came out of his mouth said, "By the way, your first task
is to find a place to stay." I went around on the outskirts on Berlin, knocked on doors and asked people and eventually I found
sort of an out building. I succeeded and I would
meet this fellow once a week in his car for a while and
he would give me some tasks. I started training and I started learning some of the fundamentals
of espionage technique. That included secret writing techniques, encryption, decryption, short wave radio, morse code, counter surveillance,
secret investigations, how a Western government
operates, and lastly was language. I was told that every
agent like me had to learn one other language and I picked English. After about six months, all of a sudden they found an apartment for me. So that was an indication
that I was really in. A fellow comes from Moscow
to visit and he asked me, "So, how's your english?" And I said, "It's pretty good. I can read." Then I showed him a novel. "I can read this without the dictionary." He said, "What?" So, they flew me to
Moscow for an interview and one said, "He won't
be able to do this." and the other one said,
"I think he could." So they decided, "All
right, let's give it a try." So they brought me to Moscow for two years and I very, very intense language training and I got to a point where it was decided that I had enough of
American diction in me to explain a residual German accent. The explanation I found was
that my mother was German and we spoke a lot of German. On Columbus Day 1978,
ten days prior to that I entered the United
States at Chicago O'Hare. That trip from Moscow to Chicago was about two and a half weeks. It involved one, two,
three European cities, Mexico City, until I wound up in Chicago. There were three false passports involved, two West Germans and the last one I used was a Canadian one with which
I entered the United States. That was one of the few moments in my entire "career" that I was scared. Somehow I figured that it was
written on my forehead, "KGB" but I got through and after that the tension pretty much dropped off. I tell you what though, I
couldn't sleep that night. I drank a half a bottle
of Johnnie Walker Red to get me to sleep. I had cash and I had a birth certificate. I had nothing else, I
couldn't go get a job. I had no social security card. I had no drivers license, I
had no ID on me, I had nothing. The plan was for the first two years get all the identification that will make you a bone fied citizen. The crowning achievement
would be a U.S. Passport. Establish yourself as an American. There were three places
in the United States where you could have some interaction with somebody from the KGB
and there were the places where they had official representatives. New York, where they had
diplomatic personalities at the United Nations. Washington D.C., obviously
they had diplomats there. And San Francisco, so Chicago
was only a landing point. The final destination was always New York. New York was a good pick
because somebody like me with a little bit of an accent and kind of a weird backstory. However weird you are, there
was always somebody more weird. The idea was for me to get a passport, travel to a Western European country, open up a business there and then the KGB who had really good experience doing that, would funnel a couple of million
dollars into that business and within a year, I'm upper middle class. I can take that money,
bring it back to the U.S. And I would be established to be able to mingle
with interesting people. So that was sort of the fuzzy plan. I also was encouraged,
strongly to go to museums, theater performances, the
opera, ballet and so forth to get a solid background in
culture, literature, so forth in order to be able to mingle
with all kinds of people particularly in an educated
setting with elite society. I had a job as a bike messenger. I go, as planned, to the passport office at Rockefeller Center with
a filled out application with my valid ID. Clerk behind the desk
looks at it and says, "We've got some questions about your ID." Here was somebody applying for a passport who didn't know when he was going, where he was going and
he was a bike messenger, not necessarily somebody
who had a lot of money to go to foreign countries. So that raised a flag with the clerk. So he said, "We have some
doubts about your ID. Could you fill out the
auxiliary questionnaire?" I said, "Sure." I looked at the questionnaire
and I said, "Shit." First question, "Where did
you go to high school?" I had a backstory, I
would have told people I went to Peter Stevenson in New York but there was no record of a Jack Barsky ever having gone to Peter Stevenson so right then and there I
couldn't go through with this. So I ran back to the counter
and I said to the guy, "This is all bullshit.
Give me my paper back and my documentation. I'm out of here." I managed to get out and
I was afraid in going out of Rockefeller Center you
have to go down the stairs and I was worried that some
guard would come after me. I went back to Moscow after two years for some debriefing and they understood that this was a collective failure because we had actually practiced this, how to fill out the
application back in Moscow before they sent me. They relieved me of that
responsibility and said, "Well now, we need to
come up with a plan B." I was at this point a bone
fied established secret agent. I had a working ID. I had survived two years
in the United States. I was a valuable asset,
so what do you do with it? (dramatic music)
Bull shit