Ex Russian Spy: Dark Reality of U.S, Training, Putin vs Trump & Jail | Jack Barsky | Raj Shamani | FO470

40:25And so next time I met Nikolai, he said, so what about have you found something to live with? I said, yeah. I didn't say a word. I didn't tell him what it was because I had learned not to answer questions that weren't asked. You know, there was a lot of like, and I had also learned not to ask questions that could make my boss uncomfortable. So interestingly enough, you know, I was a contrarian and I never wanted to be told what to do. And yeah, but when it came to the KGB, I was like this. I was instinctively, I was a good boy and a good player. so I just told him yeah and so what what I did you know I slept in that bed but as soon as I woke up in the morning I went you know to Berlin and spent my rest of the day there rest of the day in libraries and studied there and so forth and after about seven eight months I meet Nikolai again and apparently he decided at that point that I passed the test because he handed me a set of keys.

41:45What were the keys? To an apartment. And that apartment was available when I first met him, I guarantee you. He just wanted to test you. That is, and I, you know, this is in hindsight, I came, I realized that this was another test. It makes sense. They did not treat us nicely. It's like, you know, boot camp for special forces. You know, it's torture. And this was mental torture, okay? Physical torture wasn't necessary for me. It was just like, see what you got up there. And once I passed that test, there's the keys, and then he gave me a thousand marks to buy furniture. At that point, I know now I was in.

42:37I was finally in. And, you know, he probably very proudly reported this back to Moscow. We got one for you. But how did they test your loyalty? I was brutally honest. I would admit to my parents. I would admit to teachers. And I would admit to Herman, who initially analyzed me, when I made a mistake that nobody else knew about. Okay. So I was, you know, and I still have this reputation and my friend over there may agree or not agree with me. I have a reputation of being 100 % authentic. That's just the way I behave. I don't know. I give the aura of just always being honest because I sometimes say some pretty critical things.

43:33But wasn't it bad for you and for your job because you were going to be a spy? Yeah. So then honesty would have been the worst trade that you would have. You know, not testing me and just trusting me, isn't that pretty dumb? It's not. I tell you what. But the paradox in intelligence is that trust is an absolute foundation for any intelligence agency. And yet, we don't trust one another. But here's the thing. If they don't trust me, they won't send me because they were sending me to be on my own. And they wouldn't supervise me whatsoever. So they had to trust me. So they took a risk. And if I don't trust them, I don't even say yes to the offer.

44:33So number one, and with regard to the dichotomy of being honest or being a liar,

44:44agents agents like me but also agents who are on a diplomatic cover or goes to another country as business people and so forth are in regular life always honest well we lie about being an agent right And I lied about, you know, my very existence. But inside of that Jack Barsky identity, I was always honest. Okay. So I could be trusted. You know, and if you lie constantly, I think that's kind of productive for an agent. You need to create trust and you can't, you know, the moment, there's a lot of lies that are not necessary. You lie when it really counts. And I lied every time when people asked me where I was born and all this kind of stuff and I had to repeat my back story.

45:55But everything else, I was supposed to live like an American and integrate in society. There was no reason to lie.

46:05Now, yeah, so that's the short answer. And then you were part of the program called the Illegals. Yes. What is Illegals? Well, there are fundamentally three types of agents. The vast majority of intelligence agents that go to another country operate under diplomatic cover. It doesn't matter which intelligence service it is. and they are obviously suspected by counterintelligence and so they're followed they're under observation and they have a hard time really doing a lot of good work they occasionally do particularly when in the country in the United States for instance there is somebody let's say in the CIA or in the FBI who is ticked off at the United States or who needs money desperately, and they volunteer, and they say, you know, how much are you going to pay me for XYZ?

47:16And when they volunteer, they would go to the embassy, right? And then they will get to talk with one of those agents, and the agent becomes a lead for that person, the handler. So that's mostly the value that they have. So that's the ones with the diplomatic cover. The second group is called NOC. That's an abbreviation, non-official cover. So they go to the country where they are deployed with an official cover. As I said, it could be exchange students. Could be visiting professors, could be business people, could be artists, could be ballerinas, anyone. They use their own name and their own skill set, but they do some spying on the side.

48:10Now, when they're caught, they go to jail. And then there are the illegals. The illegals take on a different identity. They don't use their own name. They pretend to have been born in some other country. A lot of illegals for the KGB and even today for Russia get smuggled into getting citizenship in a third country such as Brazil or Canada. That's where it's easy to become a citizen. And then they legally immigrate. Yeah, but people like me were very special. because, first of all, Russians, because I don't know why, but Russians have a hard time getting rid of their accent. You can't train a Russian to speak like I speak the American brand of English.

49:01So I was a rarity. And there were others like me, even the ones that came through Brazil. Now, they had a little red flag attached to them because they came from another country. I did not. I operated with a birth certificate that said Jack Barsky. So, you know what the Manchurian candidate is? That is somebody who—there was a movie about this, I believe. And the Manchurian candidate is a foreign intelligence agent that becomes president of a particular country. right i could have run for congress i would have passed every background check and i did i i passed a lot of background checks with companies that had high security requirements you know i had all valid documentation no forgery involved nothing the birth certificate that i used when i came to the u.s was authentic it was acquired legally how i don't know they just gave it to me.

50:08The illegals. Illegals are on their own. Yeah. They don't have any cover. They're not diplomats. Right. And they're trained for five years, six years? No, I was, I was an exception. Okay. How long are they trained? I was, my base training was two years. Okay. I was supposed to be sent to West Germany. Okay. And it turned out that I have this language talent and that triggered two years of training in Moscow. Because in Berlin, they didn't have a trusted individual that could teach me American English. Okay. So you were sent to Moscow to learn American English. That is correct. And it was altogether maybe two and a half years.

50:56And then... For two and a half years, you learned English? Oh, no. I started learning English when... So, okay, a part of the base training in Berlin was for me to learn another language. They told me everybody has to learn another language, and they asked me to pick, and I picked English because it was really easy for me in high school and in college. And I studied for the two years in Berlin. I studied English like a maniac. You know, I'm a perfectionist. And when I put something, when I take on something, I want to be the best. I learned 200 new words every day. And I counted this. And that was in emulation of Vladimir Lenin.

51:44When he was in exile, he learned German the same way, 200 words every day. And what were you getting trained for? What was the main purpose for building you into something and spending so much money on you and training? The training on surveillance detection, dead drop operations, which is where you hand over objects to another person without being there. Like you put with something like money or passport in a cup and cover it up and throw it someplace in a park. And Morse code was very intense. So you would call this dead drop, right? No, no, no. Putting it a passport and then sending it, putting it somewhere that somebody else can pick it up.

52:34Yeah, they used crushed oil cans. I actually made rocks out of Plasso of Paris. So what do you call this trick? I think CIA calls it dead drops, right? Yeah, they call it dead drops. That's correct. So that was one trick. That was tradecraft. Yeah, tradecraft. Then you were also taught. Word code and also decryption and encryption. Secret writing. What was secret writing? Secret writing is when you take, let's assume that paper that you have lying in front of you is a letter that you just wrote, open letter. And then you take special contact paper and you write, you put it on top and you write something on the contact paper.

53:19And it leaves a trace of a chemical on the open text. And that can be developed. So when you look at the letter, there's nothing to see. And if you don't know what you're looking for, you won't find it. You know, this is only just a trace of a chemical. I've seen the developed end product. It looked barely readable because the reason was just a little touch with this. I had to be really careful not to touch the paper with a hand. There was a lot of training there. I also got trained in photography and developed my own pictures in microdots. You know what a microdot is? No. So let's say you have a sheet of paper and you want that information to go someplace.

54:18You can take a picture of it, and then you use a microscope in reverse. So you shrink, instead of making it bigger, you shrink it really, really small. So it's like the size of the tip of a needle, and it becomes a piece of paper that has all that information on it. And you can place it under a postage stamp and mail it someplace, and there they take a microscope and read it. What do you call this trick? That was just making micro dots. There was a couple of times when I had too much information, so I couldn't put it all in a letter, okay? So I wrote it down on paper and photographed the paper and then handed the undeveloped cartridge over in a dead drop.

55:08So, okay. That was one way for me to communicate. Communicate. and the other one was only through letters and secret writing. There was no valuable information on the outside of that letter. That letter was supposed to be just as innocent as possible. Not even like I was told, be very careful, don't put the postage stamp as an angle or something like that. No, nothing like that. It had to be clean. and that method that you're talking about I'm not aware of it and what else were you taught you were taught micro dots dead jobs communication cryptography and were you taught to kill someone and put it off grid no not even a thought there was also some thought of teaching me some aggressive driving.

56:13But no weapon training. This hand, this is my strong hand, has never touched a weapon in my entire life that could kill somebody. This was supposed to be my weapon. And clearly they had in their ranks killers, but they kept them separate from the rest of the agents. Because that's a different personality that's required, okay? And there's people who just don't have a problem shooting something that's alive. I would have had a problem with it. I would not have signed up. If they told me that I need to shoot to kill somebody, no. The only living beings that I have killed in my entire life are insects.

57:05Were you taught Morse code? Yeah. What was it? It took a while, you know. First, I only learned the digits, no alphabet, no A, B, C, D, E, because everything that I received was encrypted. And you don't encrypt with letters. You know, this is mathematical stuff. You change the, you write down a text, and then you change the letters to numbers, and then you do some mathematics on the numbers. And at the other end, they do the mathematics in reverse, and then they get, and then they do the numbers to letters in reverse. That's how it worked. and there's that's one method when you when you do you develop your algorithm manually and this is how i did it most of the time but there's also a method that is used well internationally everywhere it's called a one-time pad where the the numbers to decrypt are on a little pad notepad you don't see them you need to develop it with some chemical and then they come to and then you see them and then you then you can copy these letters on a piece of paper and then do the math uh to to decrypt or encrypt um that one-time pad last i heard if it's used only once, that's why they call it one-time pad, it still cannot be decrypted, not even by artificial intelligence.

58:51If you use a particular pad multiple times or a particular code, manually developed code, evolved code, then AI will eventually break it faster than prior to AI. and were you taught the dark art of honey trapping somebody i wish

59:22because i heard there was i'm gonna read it because i don't want to get it wrong and i don't want to get words wrong so i'm going to use a lot of references then i was reading that KGB used one of these tradecraft for honey trapping. And they were called swallows and ravins. Were you aware of it? No, no, no, no. So they would use... The swallows were the ladies. Yeah, the swallows were the female agents and the ravins were the male agents. I don't know if the KGB was as good as the Stasi was. Because the Stasi used a lot of good-looking young men to seduce older women who had access to secrets.

1:00:06There was never a thought. Even though in those days, I was a pretty good-looking young man. You know, blue-eyed, blonde hair, tall, smart. No. Are you sad that you were not taught that? No, I'm glad because, you know, there could be a lot of children running around that are mine and I'm not even aware of. So, no, I was very shy. I was a good-looking, shy young man and it took me a long time to get rid of that shyness. No, there was never a thought, you know. It was compartmentalized, you know. They had specialties and special trainings. And these, by the way, these sex operatives, they were trained in groups.

1:00:55My training was all one-on-one. There was never a classroom, not once. So these sex operatives, were they trained in a special school? Yes. Obviously, I didn't know that, but that information came out. There was a particular building just outside of Moscow where they trained them. State school four in Kazan. Yeah. Where they would train them. That may well be. You know more than I know. I'm just quoting what I have read. I have enough contacts in the intelligence world, the people who worked in intelligence, FBI, CIA, and so forth. And when they tell me some things and something like this, something like that existed, say, okay.

1:01:39I don't really have an—I'm not a historian. I'm not doing research. You know, I have done this one book that really helped me a lot to understand how I fit into the intelligence picture is called The Sword and the Shield. I'm digressing again, but you can put it in someplace else. It was written by an archivist in the KGB who had access to all the secret documentation for the first directorate espionage. and he had developed this extreme hatred of the soviet system and he decided the only way that he can do some damage he copied a lot of stuff he's responsible for me uh being discovered by the fbi because amongst that stuff was my name uh and then when after the kgb was dissolved he reached out to MI6 British intelligence agency and told him what he had and uh that some of that made it into a book the sword and the shield and where it talks a little about the illegals and how many illegals they trained and so forth and I through that book I got a better understanding of the things that the KGB never shared with me what happened after training like when you got trained to do all of this intelligence, cryptography, stuff like that, what next?

1:03:07The plan was to now deploy me to the United States. Okay. And next, before I could go there, I needed a birth certificate. So they sent me to Canada. And as a practice, you know, to spend like, I spent three months in Canada to practice my English and interact with Canadians and just like get used to what it's like to be in the United States. But why United States? What was the reason for you to go there? Well, it was the main enemy. What did they tell you? Like just go there and... The glavni pratevnik, that's Russian. The main enemy. No, I mean, anybody that they could send to the United States, like me as somebody who was born there was a huge asset.

1:04:03So they would just develop you and send? Well, this was during the Cold War. But they wouldn't give you any instruction that this is what you're supposed to do there? Initially, the instruction was to just get my documentation. I needed a driver's license and social security card. And then you live like an American. integrate in society and become part of society and and the instructions then were but they are partially false they told me as i said before to get to know as many people as possible they also told me to pay attention to people that are making foreign policy or influencing foreign policy So they were saying like, it would be great if you could, you know, befriend such and such.

1:04:57Now I forgot his name. National Security Advisor. And yeah, that was dreaming anyway. But they had me practice to extract and summarize information that was in the media, in American media. the thinking is that since i lived in the united states i have a better chance of of giving a decent extract as opposed to the soviets who really didn't have any good interaction with americans so they would just copy whatever was in the new york times and say Well, that's my report. So my opinion was valued. And every two, three months, I had to send a report as to what Americans think about events that happened internationally.

1:06:03Got it. Okay. So and also predictions about the elections and stuff like that. that i was told would be my task what i wasn't told was what was the most important thing was for them if i may uh and i found that out again only afterwards and that was in that book that i told the told you the sword and the shield as well as in the interviews that i already mentioned think about this this was the mid to late 80s there were a couple of situations where there we came very close to a nuclear exchange between the soviet union and the united states not because of misunderstandings or or or accidents okay okay there was no no intention by either the Soviet Union or the United States launching an attack.

1:07:04But it was extremely tense, and there was a good chance that war might break out. In that case, there's no more diplomats in the United States. There's no more KGB spies. The only ones that are left over would be us. So we were an insurance policy. And also, before, I mean, in the 80s, there was also this war that the CIA and the KGB were conducting. You know, if the United States found out some diplomats that did some things, the Russian diplomats that did some things that had nothing to do with diplomacy, kicked out of the country. And sometimes teams were kicked out of the country. And then there was retaliation.

1:07:59And the Soviets, just like for the heck of it, sent American diplomats. And that means the number of spies in both countries was reduced. And the head of the KGB at the time, no, he was the head of the KGB at one time. He was the president of the Soviet Union, Andropov. was convinced that diplomatic relations would be completely severed. So there are no more spies in the United States, and except there were two very, very important, the most successful agents for the Soviet Union in the United States during the Cold War were American-born. Aldrich Ames, who was a mole in the CIA, and Robert Hansen.

1:08:54who was a mole in the FBI. They did a lot of damage to the United States, and they were more successful than the rest of us KGB spies. But who did they interact with? The diplomats. If there are no more diplomats, the only ones left were us. And we were never told. I was never told, and a friend of mine who I met who also wasn't illegal, a German illegal in the United States. We were never told that this would have been one of our tasks. But the ideas about weapons that I knew were to find weapons and explosives, none of that was ever mentioned. Who knows? I wasn't trained. Okay. But I was trained to interact with most.

1:09:41I was very good at that. so yeah and and this is this is again this is the bizarre situation that i did a job for many many years not knowing what the what i was supposed to do anyway and and and i gotta i gotta brag about it i did this job so well that i got in 1988 two years before i uh retired from the kgb this is the second decoration of the Soviet Union. Can I see it? That was the Order of the Red Banner that was given out by the government, not by the KGB. And to tell you how important, how much value that is, this was given to some members of the Rosenbergs firing, the most successful espionage operation in the United States by the KGB.

1:10:49And that was the theft of the atomic secret. They gave it to me. So I must've done a pretty damn good job. When you entered USA and you were given these tasks to get close to foreign policymakers, national security advisors, to the president, all of this, this was your major task. Just to go there, live there, understand, observe, and give that information to moscow okay right now you were also given a six page legend which was your background story which is a fake story right yeah so now what about that story was something that you feared that that would expose you what were you scared about out of all that It was really well constructed.

1:11:36First of all, my legalization in the U.S. was based on that birth certificate, right? and any trace that could have been left behind of the real Jack Barsky

1:11:56was not available. And in those days, the places where they, I don't know what they call this, where they keep records on United States citizens' birth and deaths, they didn't cross-reference. Jack Barsky passed away at the age of 11. The KGB was certain that nobody knew that. Nobody in the government knew that. And I was told that it was safe. And then we came up with addresses that existed at one point, but the houses didn't exist anymore. They used like even a company that I started working for when I didn't graduate from high school. So I needed to have an explanation why. Because I had a lot of headaches and I said to heck with it.

1:12:52I don't want to. I finished school. I didn't graduate. And I started working for a company. And I still remember a George Luters and company that made chemicals. chemicals. Well, that company actually blew up. Okay, so there was no... So they did a pretty good job researching. And constructing a good story. The story was then filled out by me, and particularly when I saw the birth certificate, I said, okay, mother's maiden name is Schwartz. That's a German name. Most likely Jewish, but German-Jewish. And so what we did in my backstory, we killed off my father. So I grew up bilingual. I spoke fluent German.

1:13:55And so I had a bit of an accent, right? I had a little accent left over. And when people ask me, so, do you talk a little funny? Are you European? I say, no, it's bilingual. You said somewhere that you're famous, the fish in the aquarium statement. Yeah, yeah. Right, like KGB, Russians, they don't understand what it is like to be America and what it is like to be Americans. 100%. The worst thing in life is not to know what you don't know. If you know what you don't know, you won't touch it, right? Or you learn it. And the diplomats that worked for the KGB were the only Soviets that were in the United States.

1:14:46There were maybe occasionally there may have been an artist or two, but they were in and out. And so they interacted with Americans. They read American newspapers. They watched American television. So they thought they knew everything there is to know. Well, they never knew what it was like to get a job. They never knew what it was like to get an apartment. They lived together in compounds. Some of them had their family with them. So, but they were the experts. Nobody else knew anything about the United States. So they were full of themselves. They said, well, you know, we're going to teach you with this, that, and that.

1:15:26And the instructions that they gave me out of Moscow, how to acquire the documentation and what kind of a job to be looking for, they were all wrong. They were dead wrong. I mean, for instance, for my first job, they said, no, how about taxi driver? No, that would have pretty much – it didn't pay a lot. It was a grind, and it would take pretty much all day, seven days a week to make a living. Or work in the harbor. They said, you know what a stevedore is? It's somebody who loads and unloads ships. And they said, they're good jobs. Yeah, but you had to be a member of the union. and you don't get to be a member of the union unless you become friends with another member of the union so that wasn't a good idea so that's how i wound up operating as a bike messenger so so all the instructions that they gave me were did not work and this is when i what i tell people So I give the picture of an aquarium.

1:16:45Actually, there are some aquariums in this country that are really big. You can just think, it's amazing. You watch the fish, he's swimming. But if you think you know what it's like to be a fish, no. And so they didn't know what it's like to be an American. And again, they didn't know what they didn't know that made them rather dangerous. What was the biggest mistake Russians made about knowing something about Americans? What did they didn't get? I think the biggest mistake was not understanding the individual freedoms that Americans cherish so much.

1:17:33Even if you live in another country as a diplomat, you're subject to the collective always. So there's a limit as to how much in charge you can be in your life. And how much damage do you think Russians cost to America at that time? With all the agents, with all the illegals, with the sort of officials and diplomats? Well, the biggest damage was the theft of the nuclear secret, that's for sure. uh there ultimately i don't believe the well clearly the the soviets lost the cold war so so much no no no matter what damage they they did and they i think the the soviets collected more secrets than the americans collected from the united states and both uh agencies the fbi and the KGB got most out of defectors, out of moles and defectors, not so much from their trained agents.

1:18:43And the same, by the way, in parentheses, happened between West Germany and East Germany. The East Germans won the war, the espionage war, big time, and they lost the Cold War. And then you ask yourself a question, why the heck even then? Do the spying. So you feel even though Russians caused a lot of spy damage and installed like a lot of moles in American system, still it was of no use? They didn't install a lot of moles. You know what you're saying? But they had like an FBI, senior officers in FBI, senior officers in CIA. They weren't installed. They volunteered. They went to the embassy and say, you know, I want to work with you.

1:19:30Why? Robert Hansen was because he felt he was underappreciated. He was pissed off. He was angry, even though he had a pretty high position. But somehow, you know, that's a typical narcissist who knows that they deserve better. Also a little bit of money, but he was not motivated by money. And Alder James was motivated by money. He had a beautiful Brazilian wife that had very, very good taste. And, you know, he needed to get her a nice house and nice cars. So he did it for money. Okay. And there's an acronym that tells you what motivates people to spy for a foreign intelligence service. It's called MICE, M-I-C-E.

1:20:28You ever heard of it? No. Money, ideology. C is for coercion. And E is for ego. There's one thing missing in that acronym. and believe it or not it's called love and i tell you when you find and and and i was looking for people like that when you uh meet somebody who works let's say in the i'm kgb and i meet an fbi agent and he tells me that his daughter is fatally ill and she can't get treatment in the united States and he needs money to send her to another country where there may be a chance. That is the strongest motivator I can think of, but it doesn't fit into the MICE acronym. I just added that.

1:21:27I should copyright it. But then, the other question, why do you think Russians were not able to act on such information even though they had the strongest pi network in the world they had good moles they were at a strong position they were still not able to make use of it and do anything about it no but they didn't they didn't get to uh the super secret stuff and then we're talking about the plans of the american particular the nato military uh the super secret plans i i don't think they got a... Like what? Well, what to do when nuclear war breaks out. The strategies and plan, they had no clue.

1:22:18They may have had some, but it changes all the time. And even Ames and Hansen, and there were a few other agents, they didn't collect enough. And here's the thing, the Soviet Union did the government of the Soviet Union did not plan to attack NATO they planned to undermine NATO and eventually make somehow generate that didn't work by the way let me rephrase it they were trying to stir as much trouble on the inside and like that like the the russians have been doing as well by interfering in our elections that kind of stuff it's called active measures but they were not suicidal okay the soviet none of the soviet government leaders were suicidal and they knew that the nuclear exchange would kill them as well vladimir putin is not suicidal so but uh there was always a chance of a war breaking out because of misunderstandings and you had to be prepared.

1:23:36So I don't believe that, no, these plans never came into play, even if the Soviets had access to them. They were not ready to attack. This was a nuclear stalemate. I need to tell you why all of that was important, because the plan A for me, for them, and that There was a very good plan that failed because I made a mistake. But plan A was get everything that I just told you, the documentation, the job, an apartment, become a legitimate American from all angles. What mistake did you make? Okay, the plan was to get a passport, an American passport, right? Well, I had everything that was needed. I needed to apply for a passport even today.

1:24:29You need documentation. It was a driver's license. You need the proof of birth and driver's licenses or proof of residence. Social security? No, you don't need it. These are the two documents. You need proof that you're a citizen and you need proof of residence. and at one point I had it. And the plan was to get a passport, then move to Europe, to a country where they speak German, Switzerland or Austria, not West Germany, and then open up a business. They didn't say what kind of business, but there's all kinds of businesses. You know, the KGB would have funded this. They know, you know, they were very good at money laundering.

1:25:28So I would have opened a business and then run a business for a while, for two, three years. And then, and they would add some more money. Could be altogether, I could have saved like 10, 20 million dollars. Lots of money in those days. Legitimate, sort of, right? And then I come back to the United States and I declare that money and say, I made this in Switzerland, right? And all of a sudden, I'm wealthy. Now, with my education and my ability to interact with others, I would have become a very dangerous agent. For example, go join a golf club where officers that work in the Pentagon play golf and befriend people that way.

1:26:26And to join a club like that, you didn't necessarily need social standing. You need money. And they only let people with money, and even today. So, yeah, that was a brilliant plan. It failed because I made a mistake. what mistake and i'm so glad that i made that mistake and didn't become a dangerous agent so i went when filling i went to with my documentation and one uh application that i had filled out at home and i didn't want to and i went to the uh the rockefeller center has a a place where you can apply in person, the passport office. I went there. Because the KGB told me to do that, I could have done this by mail.

1:27:19And that was sort of their mistake, but it was exacerbated by my mistake in how I filled out the application. So, okay. So it asks in the application, what's your profession? and honestly and stupidly i told the truth i was a messenger i didn't say bike messenger and i should have actually said contractor but then i'll tell you why there were some other fields that says where where do you plan to travel to what country we plan to travel to and when do you think you want to go they were they were not necessary they were voluntary so i left and blank so now the guy behind the counter happened to be a more of a senior guy because you know he was an in-person kind of guy instead of the people in the back office and he he scanned this thing and i'm now thinking what he's thinking all right so we got a messenger here who makes practically no money minimum wage he doesn't know where he wants to go and he doesn't know when he wants to go there.

1:28:31And he said, you know, I have some doubt about your identity. Oh, that was an interesting remark. But I was still optimistic. I'm an inveterate optimist. And he said, well, here's a, fill out this additional questionnaire to clear things up. and so I went to to the back and looked at the questionnaire at a desk first question that I read knew at that point I knew I was in big trouble it says where did you go to high school I have a high school in my I had a high school in my back office in my back story but no Jack Parsky ever attended I would have they would have found out right so so plan e was not possible anymore but i also had to get out of that dilemma i was in and this is where again the kgb validated my choice because i made a really quick decision to get out of that mess i walked over to the counter uh mumbling a bunch of curse words which I don't want to repeat here.

1:29:51One of them starts with an S. Who needs that, you know, S and blah, blah, blah. I don't want to do this like a car, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Really loud. People were looking at me. And as I'm walking to the counter, the agent still had my application and my documents lying in front of him. I grabbed the stuff and walked out. I didn't run. I walked. now I got lucky either he didn't give a damn anymore because it was time for the end of the work day and he said I want to go home or he or he didn't remember my name and he clearly didn't notify security they should have stopped me but they didn't that's the invisible hand of God this was a that was the worst mistake I made and it was the best mistake that helped you I've ever made because that got me to being able to talk with somebody like you today and make fun of things that were rather serious.

1:30:58But what happened then after you became Mike Messenger for two and a half years? After that, how did you go from there to your eventual plan of becoming friends with President's advisor? Yeah, yeah. How did that happen? For some reason, I forgot his name now. Spigniew Drzezinski. He was, he had dual function. He was in charge of the Institute for Foreign Policy at Columbia University. And he was also a national security advisor. And the KGB thought Columbia was a way for me to get closer to him. But not as a bike messenger. Okay, I had to have a reason to show up at Columbia. So when I couldn't get the passport, plan B was for me to get a college degree.

1:31:58I told the KGB, I can't. I can't go and befriend people like that. I'm busy. And they accepted that. And again, they accepted that because it was more important for me to exist there and integrated as much as possible in American society. So yeah, so then I had a job and I started a career. And then what information you were sending necessarily to Moscow? Well, again, the information that I sent was twofold. The reports about what Americans thought about certain events in the world, I issued those reports periodically. And I profiled a bunch of people that could have been recruited, but I was never told if anybody was recruited, particularly when I was in college.

1:32:55I profiled a lot of students who were likely to get a job in government and who had radical opinions of some kind, not necessarily communist, radically, you know, radically, but pro-Israel, for instance, like ideologically motivated. And that's all the reports that I sent. I once offered a treasure trove of information, and they did not bite. And again, it tells me how inept some of these people were. What information do you have? Okay, so I worked for a company in a department. that was processing group insurance. Group insurance, that means if you work for a company, you get health insurance, okay?

1:33:55That's in the United States, it happens today as well. Most companies at least subsidize insurance. And we had, as customers, companies that were part of the military-industrial complex, like a Boeing or weapons manufacturers. and I had access to all the health records of these people. You know how important that information is? You can find out whether somebody has a drug addiction and is in treatment. And there is a law in the United States that the medical information is to be kept secret. it so you could like use coercion to to get to that person and get that person to cooperate with you or one of those cases where where the daughter uh was denied treatment in the united states uh i offered this i i told him i had access to that information they didn't they didn't react Why?

1:35:03I don't know, because they were stupid. I mean, that did not occur to them. I mean, there were a lot of, I'm sorry to use that word, idiots in the KGB. There were also some really clever people. But overall, I sometimes call the KGB the keystone cops of intelligence because they screwed up so many times. It has something to do with being in a large hierarchy where people that are incompetent can hide very well. And I've seen this in corporate America as well. And it also is the case in the various U.S. governments, state and federal. Large hierarchies allow very incompetent people to hide. and i met quite a few of those the the rules were for recruitment were there's three people participate in in recruiting and and then running an agent the first one is a spotter the person who that was me i was supposed to find candidates the next one is the the recruiter the guy who makes the offer and the third one is the handler the guy who runs the agent and the three don't know one another and neither neither one knows what happened in that pipeline whether they eventually i was never told that they what happened to those people no and they didn't even congratulate me saying well you're doing a good job with this with these suggestions because god forbid i had taken notes and remembered the names right so yeah so then but when you would send all of these information in different forms in either crypto or by dead drops or by morse when you would send no morse code no more you didn't never used it no no no i i used to you know the strings of digits that uh encrypted and okay and only the names for instance like when i wrote letter and secret writing the name names and addresses were encrypted but but no more no morse code going that way no no no no and i tell you why morse code you know where it originates you don't know who's listening to it so for me to listen to it was was safe for me to send it was not okay so that's why that was never a thought but then how would you know that nobody's watching you nobody's spying on you no i had to i had to figure this out myself i was uh like what are the steps like how would you send a message through a dead drop to okay moscow yeah and and still like get to know that nobody's actually watching or looking well it's called surveillance detection there's there's two things that i did to make sure that i am uh actually there's more than two things uh but But on a regular basis, I did surveillance detection.

1:38:16Okay. And I had phenomenal training in Moscow. Surveillance detection means you go outside into the city and go from here to there to there to there. Every place you go to is a public place. You have a reason to be there. and you use public transportation and you really need to know the city very well because if you are under surveillance, there's a team that follows you. Typically the team is seven, eight people and they can never lose sight of you. One of the team has to always see you because if they lose sight of you, you can do something. they're watching you to see if you're doing doing something right and so there are places where they the person the lead person needs to come so close that you can see the face my favorite place there were two of them uh the museum of natural history because you can And without being suspicious, you can go this way and that way and go turn around.

1:39:42And the Museum of Natural History has a lot of hallways. So you will see some faces there. And I had excellent memories for faces. That was my strength. and also large stores, grocery stores, drug stores, where you can go this way and that way and the other way. And you could easily do something in that store. You put a little package and put it over there real quick. They need to see you. So I got this training in Moscow and I was told I was really, really good. So that helped me to know. And I also had one measure in my apartment where I was pretty sure that I would know whether somebody had gone through my apartment and searched it.

1:40:37And this is not, people always think about the hair over the door. No, no, no, no. I had a chest of drawers that had the drawer that came at an angle here. It had an overhang, so to speak. So when you didn't know whether that drawer was completely closed, There was always this, like, you had to actually purposely go and look underneath, okay? So, and I made, every time I left the apartment, I left about eight millimeters not closed. I mean, even counterintelligence team wouldn't think of that. So, and every time I went home, the first thing is when I checked the eight millimeters, and it was always there.

1:41:41So, I was in charge of finding out whether I'm being studied and being surveilled. And there was never a case where I was even suspicious. And there was one other measure when I said two. There was a third one. writing a letter to yourself okay just a regular letter to yourself and and leave when when you close this letter with it's you glue it together you leave maybe a half inch without glue okay so there's a gap Now, at least in those days, people can't open these letters without doing damage to them. They had to use a machine. And the machine automatically glues everything. So when you get this letter that you mail from some other place, you open this and there's a section that has no glue, you know that somebody opened the damn letter.

1:42:57So, yeah, there's some trickery here and there. when you heard like when you were in america doing all these tricks collecting information you would also hear that kgb was able to assassinate certain high profile killings all around the world right would you get that kind of information would you get to know that they must have maybe they killed some french ambassador they killed somebody in did you feel proud when you hear these things about them? I knew about a couple of them and I thought they were

1:43:35justified. Like what? Like, you know, defectors. KGB killed defectors. That actually was known to me. There was some fellow named Kjorgi Markov, who was actually a Bulgarian, who was assassinated by KGB with the famous in London the famous umbrella tip yeah so so I knew all this but were you trained to use Dyson on umbrella technique like that no no no no nothing I told you no no killing no injuring no fighting no fighting with the with the FBI I did get self-defense training but but not to fight but were you aware of all the poisonous techniques and things they would use no no you got to know about them later uh yes and uh did you know about laboratory 12 about what laboratory 12 no a laboratory where they would make it like all of these different kind of poisons which will imitate heart attacks and they would and there was a famous accusation that they tried it on about 200 prison mates just to test it whether this is actually imitating heart attacks or no.

1:44:53And KGB used it all around the world. The more I get to know, it doesn't make that organization more hateful. It was raw evil. But you were never aware or told about wet work they would do? No, not at all. Same way they didn't tell me what my actual task was. I told you, absolute secrecy. Nothing at all. Nope. And then when you were telling me, like when you will hear about these assassinations, you thought it was justified? You never felt proud or sad about it? No.

1:45:34Even the assassination attempt, when they attempted to kill the Polish Pope, well, I hated the guy. I was still a communist in those days, and he was instrumental, not the only key figure, but accelerating the fall of communism. So, and I was still a communist and I softened a little bit, but I was still at least a socialist and I still thought capitalism was evil and America was not the country I wanted to stay in until something happened. but not if I did not if that didn't happen and we're going to get to it eventually I would not have defected or stayed here to live the good life in the United States I was still at least a socialist so what happened then they called you there was an incident that they wanted you back yeah what was that incident the incident was that But it was a signal.

1:46:58We had a set of signals where those diplomats could signal something. They usually were chalk marks. They were very basic. Like, for instance, when I re-entered the country after having been in Moscow for some time, I had to make a mark saying I'm back in the country. Or they asked me to confirm that I received a radio transmission that they sent and I had to make a talk mark. and there could also be a mark that says come to the dead drop operation. We have something for you. It was prearranged. So these were the signals and one of the signals was danger. I mean the danger signal was the most radical that I never wanted to see.

1:47:59All the other signals were little chalk marks and white chalk And this one was going to be a fist-sized red dot. And these signals, by the way, I could set signals for them where they would be going on the way to work. And in New York, they were all going from northern Manhattan with a vehicle to the United Nations. so i i would make a a signal on the path so they didn't have to go out of their way to try to read it and the same way there was a signal where on my way to work and this one was uh on a steel beam that supported the elevated portion of the subway that went from queens to manhattan so in one day i I routinely, I just look at this and I never expected to be anything there, anything major there.

1:49:05And there was a red dot. It was screaming at me. It said, danger. The emergency procedure is in effect. And that meant don't go home. Don't go to work. make a beeline to get the emergency document that you have, that I had some emergency documents in a park, and then go to Canada, go make a beeline to the Canadian border, and go to Ottawa to the Soviet embassy, and we'll get you out of the country. that required for me to constantly have a lot of cash on me because i wasn't supposed to go to the bank i was supposed to i had to just literally not run but purposely make my way to to to canada and uh well i didn't i didn't i went to work why because i wasn't ready i had a 18-month-old daughter at the time in the United States.

1:50:20And you're too young to have a daughter, are you not? I don't have one. One day you will have one. And I loved that child more than I ever loved another woman. That's sort of built into us men. And she was 18 months old. we couldn't even talk yet. She was just, she was very pretty and she looked at me with her big, big brown eyes and she said, and the brown eyes talked to me, Daddy, I love you, I need you. And I was trying to figure out how to support this girl from a distance because my tour of duty was supposed to finish after about 12 years and I was in my 11th year. So I knew her and I couldn't take her with me And her mother had, she was from a foreign, from South America.

1:51:17She didn't have, she had only four years of formal education. If I leave them to their own devices, they grow up in abject poverty. And so I hadn't figured out how can I take care of this child when I leave. And I can't tell the KGB, I can't ask them for help. They would just probably not like it, to put it mildly. They could have possibly even put me in jail for insubordination. That was me having a child in another country? I don't know what they would have done with me or to me. And so I couldn't have asked American friends. They would have said, well, what's the matter with this? So there was no solution.

1:52:03and I was still hoping eventually something will pop up and who knows maybe I win the lottery and give mom a lot of money whatever none of that happened and when that dot appeared I wasn't I wasn't ready I had not decided how how to how to react to something like that and I tell you what and I showed you the order of the red banner everything that was good for me was back behind the wall. The wall was still up. So I would have come home as a conquering hero. I would have lived a good life. They promised me a house. They promised that I had dollar savings in East Germany. So everything that was good for me was over there.

1:53:01when I, if I went home and everything that, the only thing that was good for me is, if I stay and defy the KGB, where everything, the only thing that was good for me, I could take care of Chelsea and her mother. But there was a danger that the KGB was right, that I would be arrested. They had. But then didn't you think that you were going to die, KGB would kill you? Well, the other danger was that if I defy them, if I say I'm not coming or I just don't show up, period. Yeah. If they had interpreted this as a defection, there was some danger, yes. because I knew that defectors they dealt with very radically.

1:54:01So that had to be taken into consideration. But I avoided that by coming up with a great story. What was it? The story was that I had contracted HIV-AIDS. You know what HIV-AIDS was? Yeah. Well, okay. And it was very credible, too. So first of all, the day I saw the dot, I went to work, and I just stared at the screen and did nothing. And then I was thinking, I have a little more time, because there was one time I was sick, and so maybe I didn't read the dot. But, well, so I was still kicking the can down the road until I was approached by an agent while waiting for the subway. And it was dark outside.

1:54:57It was already early winter. And I'm standing there. Not too many people. It was early in the morning. And this short man in a – I will never forget him. I never forget what he said. And he whispered in a strong Russian accent, come home or else you're dead. was that a threat? You had to take it seriously, knowing what I knew. So now, at that point, I had to make a decision. And the decision was just like, it came to me, the only way I can get out of this is if I claim to have a deathly disease. And AIDS was a really good candidate because it was a death sentence. And I knew that the Soviet Union, rightfully so, was very much concerned with regard to letting foreigners that have the AIDS virus into their country.

1:55:57And they had no reason to think that I was lying to them because they knew how much good it was going to be for me to come back home, right? And I made also my explanation very credible in that I told him even who I got the disease from because I was also required to report on anybody who I was close friends with, not just for recruitment purposes. They needed to know. And I had a couple of girlfriends and one of them had an ex-boyfriend who was a drug addict. and i reported that as well so and then i said i got it from her now it was a good liar they believed it then they told my german family that i had died from aids and the interesting thing is today even today albert diddrich remember that's my german name his his uh a file his record in the social register says that he passed away in 1988 as a ex-classmate of mine who worked in the archives saw that so i got away with it they did not come after me and that is when my entire attitude changed because now i had a family i had a daughter and I had a wife to take care of.

1:57:34And that's when I started something I never thought I would, like work on a career and build the American dream and buy a house and another house and another house and make really good money, had a house with a pool. It was amazing. And at one point I forgot that I ever was even a communist or for, you know, a KGB agent. I put this out of my mind. I did not want to say hello to the FBI because I was afraid that might cause damage to me and the family. But then aren't you scared today, now that you're public, and KGB has a saying that we never forget traitors? That's in the movies. Yeah. In reality, it's not the thing?

1:58:23Okay. First of all, there's no more KGB. But now it's FSB. and then there's VU and then there's SVR okay but secondly my case is very old so they don't care anymore even if they do care to do damage to somebody on the territory of a foreign country requires special teams and they don't have so many and then there's evidence of that you remember the the attempt to poison Sergei Skripal in London with Novichok there was a defector who lived in London there was a GRU team put poison on him while he was sitting on a park bench and with his daughter he survived 13 year old daughter oh you know the story Yeah, but go ahead and tell me.

1:59:24Okay. The GRU team was one of the elite teams that they have, and they don't have that many. And they didn't get out of the country without having been known to be intelligence. They weren't arrested, but somehow they left the trail. And so even the top team made a mistake. So why would they squander a team like that on an ancient case like mine? So the bottom line is, and I tell everybody when they ask that question, the bottom line is I am safe in Western countries. I'm safe in Europe. I think I would be safe in India. I clearly would not want to ever. If you offer me$10 million, I wouldn't visit Moscow or St.

2:00:15Petersburg because they have too many windows there that you can fall out of. and and i and i tell you why this is this is actually not just my fantasy you you see vladimir putin one of one of his his strongest weapons is that he likes to scare people you know when he he he's always out to scare people and in a situation like this if if if i have an accident it doesn't even have to be reported in the in the in the russian press it gets reported in the western press and it sends a signal to whom it sends a signal to agents who think that they might want to defect because it says we're going to get you we got this guy so that that is why i wouldn't show up there and wouldn't show up in in other countries that are that used to be former soviet union where there's lawlessness and you can do things like you couldn't do in life, for instance.

2:01:21But how easy do you think it would be for Russia to get somebody killed on an American soil? Very hard. In today's world? Oh, absolutely. Even with the best services, best agencies, best network and money, they can't get it killed. You know, first of all,

2:01:46Let's assume what weapon would you use? Maybe a drone, but then you need to know where that person is at a certain point in time. So you need to do some research. So you need to hang out there someplace. So it is very, very difficult.

2:02:08And the other thing is if you send a person to do the killing, that person needs to have an escape plan. And so he would have to find a spot where he can then wait for the victim so he can get out. Okay. And all of this is a lot of activities that can be noticed. It's very, very difficult. Not impossible. But it's very difficult to do it without a trace. and he you know i never thought about you know the drone thing that and this is a spontaneous answer now but you need to know where they are right because killing means something physical yeah but not even with poisoning one of their drinks or food well they and then they did it with navalny okay but you know he made a mistake and returned to this to to russia and then then I don't know what happened I forgot what happened to him he was jailed there right for a long time yeah he was arrested yeah right and then he died yeah but the bottom line is yeah it can be done sure like with the poison it can be done right because the antidotes is only with that but if hey if it if it is feasible and if it is useful well we would hear more about this kind of stuff right even Putin is not going into the rest of the world, you know, killing one person after another.

2:03:55Do you think America is at fault right now? Of course. And I'm talking about the oligarchs that we have. Who are the oligarchs in America right now? Well, every big IT company, the folks that are working on AI and are the cutting edge of AI in the Western world. Do you think those, who do you think would be more powerful today? The Rockefellers of the world or the IT guys of the world? That's a good question because I was actually thinking about this. there you know there has been some news about the guy who committed the sex crimes Epstein that Epstein was also involved in high finance and this is sort of connected with like the the not the Rockefellers, the big banking family that was big already, like in the middle, maybe a couple of thousand years ago, the Rothschilds and so forth.

2:05:19And so I'm thinking, so yeah, no, who has more power? The Rothschild or? Or I think the guys that eventually control the information. and I think it's the techno-oligarchs. And, you know, the biggest one of them is a guy who's a Tesla guy. Elon. Elon, right? You think? Yeah. Elon's controlling? Are you kidding me? That doesn't mean he's evil, but, you know. He necessarily doesn't belong to the big information technology world. I mean, like he just got in. He's stepping into it. He's just stepping in like a Twitter and X like right now. But the big ones would be your Google and Microsoft and Facebook.

2:06:10Oh, yeah. But we're also talking about things like to connecting the. Neuralink and stuff. I don't follow this very much, but he is now stepping aggressively into AI also. And the power has always been where the information is. But do you think Bill Gates is more powerful or Elon Musk? No, it's Elon Musk now. And Gates actually has stepped back a little bit. But then he still sort of controls, right? Because he still has the controlling share of Microsoft. He doesn't operate a day-to-day basis, but he owns it. And the chat GPT is owned by Microsoft. So the new AI world is led by Bill Gates. All the government, the Pentagon, everything is handled by Bill Gates.

2:07:04Well, but then you have the Google people have their own AI, which is... Yeah, Gemini. Yeah. Yeah, and supposedly Gemini just caught up quite a bit. I used to use nothing but chat GPT, but now I'm occasionally going to the other side. Yeah. And I have found that chat GPT occasionally feeds me some garbage. Okay. True. I agree. And particularly since it does not—so I asked a question about this guy who was assassinated, probably Kirk, about his death. And Chad GPT told me, he's not dead. Really? And we argued back and forth and I said, do you read the Times? Well, yeah, blah, blah, blah, he's not dead.

2:08:04Now, I understand that the chat GPT is trained and fed certain information that cuts off at some point. And it was looking at old stuff. Now, the idiot programmers and the quality assurance people should have put in something like, oh, by the way, I'm looking at old stuff, so, you know, caveat here. No. They argued back and forth. Eventually they said, you know, I'm going to go to Gemini. I'm going to divorce you.

2:08:40I gave my ChatGPT a nickname. My ex-wife with whom I argued a lot, her name is Shauna, and so GPT is Shawnee.

2:08:56So I can argue with her, and she's still nice to me. Oh, I will miss you.

2:09:08It's a scary world that we're entering. I used to read a lot of science fiction, and there's two authors that describe this world that we're having now rather closely, where a lot of robots and, you know, intelligent beings that are not human operate in this world. That was visionary because that's where we're going. All we need now is, oh, did you see the video where the Russians premiered a new robot, a thinking machine? And he goes on stage and he keels over, he falls. No, I didn't see it. I didn't see that. So, you know, Russian engineering has never been top-notch. Yeah. But they've been top-notch in defense.

2:10:08Yeah. Their weapons, missiles, anti-missile systems, planes, all have been top-notch. That's something they've been good at. I'm worried about the quality of the maintenance of the nuclear arsenal. because all I know and personally experience is that Russian engineering was sloppy. But how did they get so good at nuclear and defense weapons and stuff? They had a lot of resources that they could throw at it, and they don't have that many resources now. I mean, the Soviet Union was like, what, seven, eight times stronger than... Most of the strength of the Soviet Union didn't come out of Russia.

2:10:54came from all the republics. Okay, so, and so, you know, Putin is not anywhere near as far as the standing of Russia in the world is not anywhere as near as the Soviet Union. I understand that, you know, the United States has always been considered since the end of World War II as a big bully, even by the Germans.

2:11:28who, particularly the ones that grew up in West Germany, that were saved from communism. And when I went back to Germany after many years, I mean, it was like they favored Putin over the United States, actually, a lot of people. Explain me the rise of Putin. How did he become so powerful from just being an agent? Yeah, and he wasn't even a good agent. You know that. Yeah, I've heard it from you and your sayings. Okay. You've quoted somewhere that he was a mediocre agent. And somebody also, his senior also somewhere quoted that he was not like really great. Well, he spoke German very well. And during the height of the Cold War, they sent him to East Germany.

2:12:25why wouldn't they send him to a country where uh you know where the action was there was no action in east germany not not where he was he wasn't dressed not even in berlin so he was he was a mediocre uh liaison and a bureaucrat so he was in dresden right dresden yeah but then what did he learn in dresden that made him the man he is today nothing how did he become this powerful He became his powerfulist because he was a good organizer. He was a good networker. And when the Soviet Union fell apart, he managed to get hired by a fellow named Sobchak. He was the mayor of St. Petersburg. And he helped this guy with his organizational skills, helped this guy to stabilize St.

2:13:19Petersburg and got a reputation of being a good team player. And he had also like the, and some of the people that, the KGB people that knew how capitalism functions, they became, you know, they became, when they privatized the economy, they knew what to do with these stock certificates and they bought them up and they're rich and Putin had friends amongst them, okay? and uh and sopchak then suggested for to yeltsin to bring him bring bring him on in the central government and yeltsin and putin had a reputation of being just a real quiet nice guy he played his cards really well you know he was not a threat to anybody uh because he knew he couldn't he couldn't be seen as a threat until he had the power.

2:14:19I read quite a bit about him, and this makes all sense. And actually, Yeltsin thought it was safe to announce Putin as his successor because Yeltsin had dirt on his hands. And if somebody else would have succeeded him, he might have actually gone to jail. And he knew Putin was safe. So that's how Putin got... And all the colleagues... What did Putin become? Successor of what? Of presidency. But then before presidency, he ended up becoming FSB director, right? Yeah. So how did that happen? If somebody was an average person... I have a gap there. this is you know this is political this is not necessarily like you you're a great agent it's uh it's if you if you know there's there's um power games are being played at the top there is there's balances to consider there is alliances and and and as you may know that But the same thing in corporate America, the best guy doesn't necessarily get to the top because there's too many people who might be afraid of that guy.

2:15:43So they put a safer guy in there. It could even happen in intelligence. So he was just a safer option. That's why he was made the… Possibly. That's a good guess. I wish I had the luxury to investigate all of this, but the KGB doesn't pay my pension. and I have a 15-year-old daughter who I need to take care of to the extent I can. So I have to work and I don't mind working. This is work too. This is pleasant work. Yeah. And even, you know,

2:16:18having a lot of friends, contacts, networks, and all of this is great for particularly somebody my age because I live alone, but I'm not lonely. You know, I have more friends than I could handle. If I could sell some of my friends,

2:16:40I would make a lot of money. They are really, really, I have a lot of outstanding good friends. They're like, a couple of them are billionaires. You were called back by the KGB and you didn't go. You choose to stay here. Yes, sir. You chose to be here. Then what happened? Did Americans ever find out? Yeah, eventually. And I told you about this Mitrokin fellow who smuggled a bunch of information out of KGB archives. And amongst that information was just very little. There was a person by the name of Barsky. I think they didn't even have the first name. is an illegal living in the Northeast. Now, when that got to the FBI, it wasn't that hard.

2:17:34There are not too many Barskis in the Northeast particularly. So they ran the, also went to the Social Security archives and they found that one Barsky who got his Social Security number at the age of 40 or whatever, that's him. So they had an illegal to investigate, and investigate they did. It took them quite some time to actually introduce themselves. You know why? Why? Okay. At that time, Ames and Hansen had been discovered, okay? And there were moles, and there was now some paranoia, whether they're illegals like me actually might be in the U.S. government. Everywhere, yeah. Yeah, really.

2:18:41And I got this unofficially from the FBI. They couldn't necessarily share all that with me, but in the conversation.

2:18:54And Joe Riley, the lead agent on my case, actually has given interviews and talked about that there was a concern that I was still active. And so instead of coming to arrest me or whatever, they watched me for a long time. Because if I'm still active, I could lead them to moles, right? And it took, I forgot the number of years, but it was at least two years, but it was maybe a little more where they watched me from a distance. and they watched me from a distance because if I am active, I would notice that they're following me because I had survived that long. They knew one thing. I was a really well-trained agent.

2:19:48That's all they knew when they did the investigating, when they started the investigation. So they didn't follow me that far when I drove someplace where I normally wouldn't go, like where it could be that I'm doing surveillance detection. And they even at one point bought the house next door and had some agents sitting there watching me. And the lead agent, Joe Riley, he positioned himself across the street. There was a little hill, and he was sitting on the hill with a book that was about birds, and he pretended to be a bird watcher. And he just watched me from a distance. There was no listening devices, no nothing.

2:20:43They were very, very careful so as to not alert me that I'm being investigated. And I didn't give a hoot. I told you I had sort of forgotten that I was an agent at one point. I was like so safe, like whatever. I played with my children. I had the kids to worry about. I had fights with the wife to worry about. But overall, it was a typical American family life that I led. And that eventually let the lead agent, the Joe Riley character, suggest that I'm not active anymore. And it might be a good idea to say hello to me. and that's what they did. And clearly I wasn't prepared for that. You want to hear about how that happened?

2:21:49Of course. That's one of the more dramatic scenes in my life. So I had a commute from Newark, New Jersey, and I lived in a house in Pennsylvania. I had to cross the Delaware River, and there was a toll to be paid. You had to, in those days, it was with coins. You had to put in a couple of quarters for the gate to open. And so that means I had to slow down and stop. So nothing dangerous, no car chases or anything like that. I had to stop. and they had rented themselves a state trooper in uniform who was positioned right behind that toll gate. And as I was moving out, he waved me by. No big deal.

2:22:48You know, I follow him. And I stop and I roll down the window. I don't know if I said, I don't think I said anything. He said to me, please step out of the car. Routine traffic check. That, if I'm still an agent, I know I pay more attention. That was not a routine check. You know, they don't, routine checks, they ask you for license and registration. That's it. And then you maybe step out of the car if you see something that's suspicious. So I was like, I didn't even think about it. But then somehow I get a sense there's somebody else coming in for me from the right-hand side. And I still didn't know exactly what was happening, but the moment this somebody comes closer and he flips open a wallet, But I knew I was in trouble because I didn't even have to look at the identification.

2:23:57When he said, FBI, we would like to talk to you. At that moment, it's all that suppressed memory that I had somewhere in my brain. You can't wipe it out. It's still there. I just kept it on the lock and key. I never wanted to go there. every time my mind wanted to go there no no it's it doesn't exist so at that point it all came rushing back into my consciousness it was like almost like you're being hit with like 50 gallons of ice water oh i didn't go okay but internally i did and then he said uh as he said we would like to talk to you and then he said, please step in, follow me. They had a car parked a little further away.

2:24:51I walked there. And they were prepared to kind of scare me. So his partner was sitting in the vehicle, and Joe, I can call him Joe now because he's a good friend of mine. I spoke with him actually yesterday. Yep. And he's like in his 80s, and he still skis. And, you know, we played golf a lot. But not, you know, at that moment he was the enemy. He was going to arrest me and do harm to my family and all that. So he opened the door. It was on the right-hand side of the vehicle. And his partner was sitting in the other seat. And he had a gun attached to his ankle visibly. Okay, so that's a sign that says we're serious here.

2:25:49This is no child's play. I was meant to see that. And the first one to open their mouth was me. I had gained my composure to some degree, and I just felt like I was okay. to ask, am I under arrest? And Joe, who was driving at the time, he turned around a little bit and he said, no. And then he said, and that was an overture, he said, this may not be the worst day of your life. Okay. He had convinced his management that most likely I would cooperate willingly because he watched me interact with my family. He knew that I was not active anymore. And he sensed that I was very much Americanized. And I took a few minutes, no, maybe not minutes, It's more like half a minute.

2:27:10And instinctively, I knew without thinking this out loud, my instincts sometimes have rescued me in many instances. I have made a lot of important decisions from here instead of here. And I knew instinctively that for this to work as well as I wanted to work, they need to like me. Makes sense, right? Instinctively. And so I made a joke. I'm known for making stupid jokes all the time. So I asked him, what took you so long? And I saw Joe was grinning a little bit. and then we all went silent they took me to a motel and that motel was a cheap motel but they had rented the entire motel every room and it was an l-shaped and they led me into one end of that L and got me to exactly the middle, the center room.

2:28:28I am sure that the other rooms, they had people there, so nobody could listen to what was going on. And also, as I entered, there was a guard with a machine gun. And then they opened the door to the room. And there was more stuff to scare me, but that didn't scare me at all. That was sort of like out of a cheap movie. They had on the wall cardboard posters, so to speak, with large letters written, some information about me as a spy. My cover name, Dieter, and the name and address of one person I wrote Letters in Secret Writing to, and some other stuff. But at that point, I was already sharp enough to realize this was all old stuff.

2:29:35They didn't know much about me past that period. It was the beginning period. But I didn't let on to that. But what I then did, and in hindsight, I realized as I'm talking about this, I took the initiative away from them because I was the first one to open his mouth. I was the first one in the room, in the hotel room, to open my mouth. And I said, gentlemen, I know one thing for certain, that the only way for me and my family to get out of the situation with the least amount of damage is if I cooperate fully. And I spoke from my heart. And I think that they sensed that. And I said, I'm determined to do so.

2:30:30I will share everything that is important to you and if that's agreeable to you. And so there were some questions back and forth, not a whole lot. They allowed me to call my wife to tell her that I'm delayed from work. And there's some work-related items that I needed to stay longer. And then they allowed me to go home.

2:31:02not without another scare. They introduced me to the head of the team

2:31:14that had secured the hotel and the environment. And this guy, he made a tough face, and he looked at me and he said, if you think you can run, think twice. We got every escape route covered. Where was I going to run? But they didn't know that. Okay. They didn't know that I had broken up with the KGB. They didn't know anything other than I was at one point an illegal and I wasn't active anymore. So I didn't know that. I had no place to run. And I think I could have probably escaped because I had a house that had a back door out of the basement into the woods. I don't know if they had that covered, but I wasn't running.

2:32:09They gave me keys to my car. I drove home. And we made an appointment, Joe Riley and I. And it's not an interrogation. The debriefing started. And Joe Riley spent, I would say, I forget the exact number of weeks, but it was the equivalent of like, I would say, three, three and a half months. We met once a week for about an hour, and he started asking me very, very, very many questions that went deeply into detail of my upbringing, my time with the KGB. From day one, what I remember about childhood, and it was all recorded, and it was all apparently useful because they wanted to know what kind of a person they could expect to be an illegal.

2:33:14And how the training, everything, how the training was and what kind of a person I was, how my childhood was, and on and on and on. And eventually, I think Riley knew more about me than I did myself because he had it all recorded. And then one day, he invited me to play golf with him. But that came a little later. But I saw him play, you know, hit golf balls while waiting for me. There was a driving range. But we got to know each other quite well. and I may have made a joke here and there too and make him smile. But, you know, I shared everything freely, whatever information I had. And then the last thing that was at this point, there was no, this period was the scariest period in my life, by the way, because there was no promise made.

2:34:13I made a promise, but there was no promise in return. In return, they didn't say, okay, if you help us, we will help you and you can stay. None of that. And I was scared out of my mind that, you know, what was going to happen to me but also my kids. See, my wife had come from Guyana and she was illegal when I met her. and she became a citizen based on me marrying her and getting her a green card and eventually she got the U.S. passport, there was a chance that she would get kicked out of the country and my children would become wardens of the state. I was scared more for them than I was scared for me.

2:35:10So I had to pass a lie detector test. That was protocol at the FBI. So they took me to headquarters in Pennsylvania, and I took the test. Now, it was anything but what people see in movies. There was no light in my face. There was no aggressive questioning. I understand there's some lie detector tests are done that way where people yell at you and tell you, I know that you're lying, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Not in my case. And I was told that the examiner was the number one guy in the entire eastern region. So they brought him in.

2:36:04And it was a very friendly atmosphere. I was sitting like this next to you. I was wired up a little bit. But before I was wired up, he read me all the questions, and we practiced the test. And the questions and answers were all whispered. So there was no additional motion, like, is your name Jack? Yes. So the questions were such that there were only yes and no answers allowed, no explanations. Yes, no. And apparently then when you start lying, the instruments are so sensitive that they notice it. So we went through all the questions and then I was wired and we started the test itself. And I felt good about it.

2:36:59There was no reason for me to lie.

2:37:05And the man went back and looked at the printouts, came back with a sad face, and he said, I'm sorry, you failed one of the questions. I said, well, I told you the truth. I mean, I don't even know. Okay. So I asked him, what's the question? And it was a very innocent question. I forgot. He had some control questions in there where they had nothing to do with espionage. But, and then it came to me. I said, sir, the only thing that I can see here is this has a double negative. So in other words, asking, were you born in Germany? we would ask something like were you not born in Germany or something like that where it's like you have to sort of think for a second how to answer the question and he said yeah that's interesting he was playing a game in a second so I had to go back and answer that question again that was then rephrased as a not as a negative and I passed do you think today KGB would be active?

2:38:41not the KGB like any intelligence of Russia in US the way you were do you think there would be people I doubt it very much and I tell you why in the interviews that I told you that the senior KGB officials gave They literally said, we combed through several thousand candidates for this kind of a job to find somebody like me who qualified. And on top of it, these types of agents, once you find a candidate, the training I got, I became a state secret the moment I signed up. So that's why I was only one-on-one, no other agents. So we were very expensive to train, all one-on-one, very expensive to maintain, and high risk.

2:39:43So I doubt that those agents exist today. So now KGB is divided into three parts. Yes. Well, not true. the KGB was split up into the SVR, which was supposed to do for foreign intelligence, and the FSB, which was supposed to be the counterintelligence FBI. The GRU was never dismantled. It's the military intelligence. And it's still GRU. And they are the most effective ones. I mean, the... Why? I don't know. because they never had to rebuild themselves, right? Which one's the more dangerous amongst three? GRU. And the FSB is second piece. The FSB is big. The SVR is practically incompetent. So foreign intelligence for them is incompetent right now?

2:40:43No, the FSB does all of that too. So FSB, GRU, and SVR. Yeah. And FSB is more active. and FSV would have NOx. Yes, correct. And the SVR may have NOx too, but there's an interesting clip that the BBC, okay? So I don't know how the BBC got a hold of a video where Vladimir Putin has a, it's a video of Vladimir Putin and his cabinet. They're sitting around and he's facing all of them. And he is reading the riot act to the head of the SVR. You know, he's treating him like a little child in front of the entire team. And this guy is sitting there like, he's probably peeing in his pants. That is so indicative how weak that part of the intelligence services is in Russia.

2:41:46It's the FSP and the GRU. Interesting. Do you think now Russia has shifted their strategy and instead of using agents, they use a lot of these activists and students to create some kind of ruckus and online illegals of sort to create more ruckus in around the countries? like what's happening in do you remember the paris thing that happened the what thing in paris the activism that happened on the arc de triomphe no the russian activists who paint in red you don't know about that recently in 2022 it happened no no i don't okay so but there are a lot of warehouses which are getting infrastructurally damaged all around the europe in 2016 there were allegations that even American elections were manipulated by Russians somehow.

2:42:46Do you think Russians are doing this right now? Yes. They're manipulating American elections? Yes. And actually, one of my first interviews on TB, I already pointed that out because during the Cold War and even prior to that, within the KGB, there was a directorate that was responsible for what they call active measures. which is spreading lies in the enemy territory, right? And some of the biggest lies that actually worked, most of them didn't work, but that the director of the FBI in the old days was a secret cross-dresser. I forgot his name too now. I'm like name-deprived. and and and that that people still know this today you know what what they did in those days they worked with uh sort of left-leaning uh but still mainstream uh news media particularly news magazines and newspapers and fed them fed journalists these stories and they ran with it And then they were picked up by other media.

2:44:20And before you know it, everybody knew that J. Edgar Hoover was a secret crossdresser. It's not true. It was manufactured by the KGB. The other one that also has stuck quite a bit, that the AIDS virus was developed in a CIA lab and escaped there. So nowadays, with the internet available, these lies are so much easier to produce and spread. And this is when the rumor came about that the Russians were influencing American elections to favor one or the other. And I told them, no, what they're doing is to create discord. They do like what the KGB did when they didn't have the means, active measures.

2:45:27They attach—there was an organization that was called the Internet Research Agency that was headed by one—was it Vladimir Prigozhin? Prigozhin is the guy who died in a plane crash. I wouldn't know. You wouldn't know? He was very much involved in the war in Ukraine, and he wanted to actually stop the war. And he had people marching on to Moscow. You don't remember that, Prigozhin? You know, he was a threat to Vladimir Putin. and uh and once they were friends because he he it was a the internet research agency was in a building outside of saint petersburg where they had a whole bunch of it experts inventing these lies and and attaching uh them and inventing artificial personas that didn't exist, that attached themselves to groups on Facebook and other social media and influenced those.

2:46:50There's actually a situation that was documented by an author who looked at Soviet, no Russian espionage, an instant where one of those artificial personas, this is somebody that you think exists. There's a picture and there's somebody who puts posts and notices on the internet and interacts with you. This internet research agency produced them and produced quite a few of them. And they influenced groups in a certain way. The Russians liked to attach themselves to ideologically motivated groups, right? Left, right, Republicans, Democrats, doesn't matter. and actually radicalize them more. And there's one instance where an artificial persona organized a demonstration.

2:47:54And she had taken the leadership and said, you know, I'm sorry, I'm not really well, but you need to do this, this, and this. And this guy needs to put a poster, and this is what we should put. And there's evidence that this demonstration, it wasn't like destructive, but it was a demonstration that was organized by the Russians. Do you think they have influence today to do all of this? They still do, but we do it too. But do they have enough power, do Russians have enough power to influence American elections as of now? not influence in favor or against somebody else but but what we have now uh we we we have in this country significant doubt that our democratic system still functions well okay and so it doesn't it doesn't there's no democracy left well I wouldn't say that but the democracy is is weak and I think there's a lot of corruption at all levels of government in America in the United States yes why would you say so well follow the money you know what it's the particularly when we're talking about what happened during COVID and who benefited from COVID, it's the pharmaceutical companies.

2:49:29And there were laws and not just laws, but also rules that were issued by the government, issued by Congress that benefited the companies that made the medications. And even though there was science that indicated that these decisions were not based on science. Okay. So how did they come about? That self-interest by the lawmakers, by the decision makers, right? Do you know, here's a good question which is coming in my head. Compare Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to me. They are both political narcissists. There are similarities more than comparisons between them, differences between them? Putin is more of an outright dictator.

2:50:38Donald Trump is not a dictator. He still abides by, you know, every lawsuit that was against him, he still appeared in court. He still follows the fundamental laws. Maybe he would want to be a dictator, but I'm not in his head. Putin is an outright dictator, even though there's elections in Russia. But he is such a great manipulator that the election results are actually pretty accurate. This is not, there may be the numbers are maybe a little bit off, but the Russian people are still behind him. So if I may explain what I mean by political narcissist, they're both narcissists, for sure. They are both convinced that they deserve what they got and deserve even more.

2:51:35okay and but uh they're not the the typical narcissist is not a political narcissist is is a complainer because they didn't you know there's everything is always wrong with me and like you know why you why don't i get this and that and the other i'm a victim uh both uh putin and trump are very rational when it comes to behavior so they they don't allow the emotional narcissism to run away with them. Occasionally, Donald Trump is arguing with a person who really is not anywhere near his level. And I wonder why he would spend presidential energy on those arguments. But you can't claim that either one of them are not very deliberate in the action that they're taking.

2:52:33The part of narcissism that they have embraced is like that they deserve everything they got and then some. But they are very deliberately working on it. Who do you think can be more dangerous just by identifying their behaviors, personality, and mindset? I think with regard to the past, Putin has proven to be the more dangerous. But if you talk about the world stage, I mean, look at what motivates Donald Trump these days. He wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Well, whether he goes about it the right way or not, I'm not the one to judge. Putin hasn't done something like that. they both want to create a legacy they both want to be remembered as the greatest politician who ever lived but Donald Trump wants to do it via the Peace Prize tell me one thing which the world underestimates so let's say one thing about Putin that the world underestimates and one thing about Donald Trump that the world doesn't get

2:53:56it's hard to underestimate both of them I mean they they project strength clearly and they're both clever I think I would rather say that I would think overestimated to some degree they're not as powerful as the world thinks

2:54:26No, they are not as powerful as they think themselves.

2:54:34Like, particularly our president treats politics as if it was a business, and he was very successful negotiating in business. But politics has something that he doesn't have. That's why a lot of people voted for him. He's not a politician. But when you're talking about world politics, he has no experience in that. And he has been trying to, like, for instance, that summit that he had with Putin, that went nowhere. Yeah. And I predicted that. You know, nobody listens to an ex-KGB agent. So, and, you know, I think Putin has this illusions of grandeur. He already is convinced that he is in the footsteps of, yeah, okay, the Great, the Greatest Tsar, Alexander the Great.

2:55:45Okay. So Putin is already convinced that he is in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. Really? He is on his way, and that is, I think, he overestimates his ability to—he needs to have massive victories and build something great that Alexander was supposed to have done, which is actually legend. It's not reality. He built, yes, he built St. Petersburg. And in the process, several thousand people died because they were building this in a swamp in the winter. Okay? So there's a lot of legend in both countries' history, by the way. And I'm talking myself into a big, big pile of trouble here by criticizing both.

2:56:49Right. is it you can criticize anyone in America you have right here of course can't you yeah you can right so you're not going to land in trouble well no no hold it of course there's freedom of speech you can criticize but you can't malign and I don't I don't have knowing what it means to be a Nazi I don't I don't like it when any American politician is classified as a Nazi and police is like the Nazi stormtroopers. That is as far from the truth as you can possibly get because I know I wasn't there, but I know the German history. and you know if you nobody has called Vladimir Putin another Stalin either and they shouldn't do that because he's not you know so what do you think America gets wrong about Putin and his KGB mindset he is just incredibly clever, street smart manipulating that you don't...

2:58:12And do whatever it takes to protect people of his country, whether it's right or wrong. Well, that is actually not the case. He says he's protecting his people from Ukraine. And in the process, he's lost a lot of lives. So there's... Yes, you're right. That's what the philosophy of KGB was, right? No, the philosophy of, let me tell you something, this is something I call the national DNA of Russia. When Russia came into existence in the Middle Ages, it was immediately attacked. It also was quite aggressive and went out and collected more territory to make it Russian. And so Russia was constantly involved in wars.

2:59:06And then it was invaded from the north, from the Vikings, from the east, the Mongols, from the south, the Turks, and did I say from the west? Yeah, from the west. We were talking about Napoleon and Hitler. and so there is this uh mentality uh and amongst the russian people they always look for a strong man to save them from all the evil that's coming in and and putin is playing playing that extremely well he then he says well you know let's look at what's going to happen and we as an america The United States has been quite unaware of that because when American politicians, both parties, by the way, suggested that Ukraine should become a member of NATO, plays right into Putin's, makes Putin's argument.

3:00:15See, they're coming. They're coming to get us. So we need to prevent that from happening. and unfortunately that has never changed this is you know the same way that when the Balkans the nations fight each other and in the Middle East they fight each other there is something that gets handed over from generation to generation and that's what I call the national DNA why do the Balkans fight I mean they're like brothers and sisters, so to speak. And why do the various factions of Islam fight one another when they have more in common than not? It's all this history. And so Putin is using that history.

3:01:12and we are, of course, America is not very historically minded. We barely teach history anymore in our high schools. Do you think the new change of world order is coming where China, Russia, India, they're going to form together and then they're going to challenge the West supremacy? I think this is a marriage of convenience. Ultimately, China is not going to treat Russia as an equal, not going to treat India as an equal either, because they want to be in charge. Yeah. Do you think China will overtake America's supremacy?

3:02:02You know, China has their own problems. Of course they have. Their population is shrinking. and as far as innovation is concerned they copy a lot so it will be a challenge and as I said before he who has knowledge will have the power and China is making some progress on artificial intelligence but right now it's still driven out of the United States so So if somebody gave me some money to bet, not my own money, I would still bet that the United States might survive. But we need to stop.

3:02:57Acting like we're a completely divided nation. See, this is where China has the advantage. so it's a tie with maybe that's an emotional thing because I have children in this country and I want them to live as good a life as I have lived in this country here so I would give the United States a slight advantage but again it's based on my emotions Okay, I have the last three, four questions for you all right one of them i want to understand the rise of poutine and i'll i'll tell you some incidents which i'm sure you're aware of tell me if it's do you think it's true or no okay okay it's like so when poutine for the first time and he became he got into power i think 1999 when the apartment bombings were happened do you remember no so when first he claimed his his position in power only two percent people voted for him and then within few months there was apartment bombings which happened which was through chechen terrorists okay right and then he said we need to fight the terrorism and to go hard at it and against them and then after that 51 percent people actually supported him to become well don't forget that he imprisoned some oligarchs that helped too yeah but do you think that there are there are few people like who i would say some critiques they say that probably few people in FSB did that to their own people in Russia and they orchestrated those terrorist attacks.

3:04:52Do you feel so? I think it's a possibility, but if anybody has proof, they wouldn't dare to come out. Or they would have probably been gone. Yeah, right. So that's now subject to speculation. It's a possibility. I wouldn't deny that Putin might have been able to do something like that. And did you hear about what the Western media calls sudden oligarch death syndrome? Sudden oligarch death syndrome? In Russia. I didn't hear about, but I can understand what they're talking about. You know, if you don't play by Vladimir's rules, he's got the weapons that they don't have. They have only, you know, their weapon is like producing or holding back production, that kind of stuff, but not killing and jail.

3:05:57I mean, oligarchs have to be, well, as I said, he started his career as a president. He put some of them in jail and took all their riches away from them. I don't know what happened to them in the long run, but he's got the power, he's got the military, he's got the intelligence services. So, yeah, have we had situations where oligarchs actually just disappeared? Well, the same as this guy Prigozhin. You know, the guy stepped into a plane without checking his people, having checked whether everything is okay. And then that plane failed and it fell out of the sky. That means somebody had an insider in Prigozhin's team.

3:06:58Pagosian's team. So yeah, that's another situation where Vladimir is like, I believe, scaring people who want to even go away from his directions just a little bit. He's paranoid. you know you in middle of the conversation you joked about there are a lot of windows in in russia why did you say so well because there are a lot of instances where people had there's people actually falling out of windows but then also people have traffic accidents and and and you have to wonder why why is it with people that we sort of know if we do do research And at one point they were like, they had influence, they were powerful, and now they're dead.

3:07:58So that's when you, what do you call this again? Sudden oligarch death syndrome. Sudden oligarch death syndrome. Guaranteed, it's not just oligarchs, you know, that if you're getting into Putin's way, watch out. And so when you ask me the question as to who is more dangerous, on that level it's Vladimir Putin. There's nobody, even on the extreme left, has ever accused our president Trump to have orchestrated an assassination. there's no such accusation flying around so you feel these about more than 70 elite people, oligarchs got killed between 2022 to 2025 in Russia do you think that has to do something with orchestrated assassination by Putin yes all of them I don't know all I mean and what gives you belief that it is orchestrated by Patin because you gotta have the means to do that you know why would and also why would what's the means and you also have to have a motive and so who had a motive you know do you think competition like the the oligarch competition would kill one another I don't know, you tell me I don't see that how capitalists there's nothing that I know in history where capitalism got to a point where the competitors were shooting with weapons at each other and kill the other side CEO

3:09:58and they would and he would just assassinate because they all went against him that's it they may have said something that indicated that they could go against them you know again I refer you to that that tape that the BBC had on YouTube and probably still do where Vladimir scared the shit out of I'm sorry the SVR had sending a message to the entire cabinet And so when people in the U.S. media always speculate that one day there may be sort of a push and somebody else will take over, there will be a conspiracy. Putin is aware that there could be a conspiracy but the people that would have to be involved in the conspiracy know that if they have one bad apple they will all be dead okay just one talks and the one who talks saves his own behind because he's afraid that another guy talks so they don't even go there here's my last question I won't ask for many, but here's the last question.

3:11:29Where do you think Russia is headed today? Where do you think Vladimir Putin is headed today? That's, your guess is as good as mine.

3:11:43He, I do believe that the Ukraine war is still going to go on. And he needs to get out of this war eventually so he can declare some sort of victory. He cannot be seen as a loser. and that requires and right now what he's still insisting on that he gets to keep the territories that he invaded Crimea and the eastern part of Ukraine somehow he needs to save face because there's one thing that Vladimir Putin cannot afford to do is to show weakness that invites opposition. And it also, his legacy, he wants to be the strong man, okay? He wants to be the Alexander the Great, the savior of the nation.

3:12:57So it all depends.

3:13:04And if I'm Vladimir Putin right now, I'm conflicted because this war is really eating up my resources. Right now, the Russian population is still pretty much supporting him because his manipulation skills are outstanding. And he also has arguments that, while not 100 % valid, have some strength. And then because there are ex-Nazis in Ukraine, and they are allowed to operate freely. You know, when Hitler came east, he marched through Ukraine and there were a bunch of Nazis already in existence that cooperated with Hitler. And a lot of them became wardens of concentration camps. And this is where Ukraine really shot themselves in the foot.

3:14:12It's not the current administration. It wasn't Zelensky. But some years ago, there was a fellow during when the Nazis marched into Ukraine. There was a fellow there who led the Ukrainian Nazis by the name of Stepan Bandera. He was a bona fide Nazi. and the Ukrainian government issued commemorative stamps to celebrate this guy's honored birthday. Okay. Would you like to have another present, Mr. Putin? No. And they have not really clamped down on fascism aggressively in Ukraine. Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, I don't see any really good positive figure in all of this, what's happening over there.

3:15:17And the only ones that are suffering are the good people of Russia and Ukraine. Because I know individuals from both countries, and they have so much in common, and it breaks my heart that they're shooting at each other. Well, thank you so much. Famous last words, huh? Thank you so much for spending time with us. Thank you so much. Yeah, you're very welcome. Hello, sir. Oh, all team. Hi, Raj. You're the man. Yes. Okay. Hello. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Raj. Pleasure meeting you. Where did you come from? India. Direct? No, we're coming from New York. Okay, so you have a couple of stops, huh?

3:16:07Yeah, that makes sense. How did you know to eat healthy? On a podcast, I was doing a podcast with a nutritionist. And then just changed my perspective to start eating. We have that in common too. Not a podcast, but I belong to a network. And in that network, I met a nutritionist. And he told me all this stuff that I shouldn't eat anymore. You know, and at my age, I pay attention. And I'm in really good shape. Thank you so much for watching this podcast till the end. Please let us know in the comments, what all did we do right so that we can improve and keep doing that better? And what all did we do wrong so that we never repeat it?

3:16:48And at the same time, please give us suggestions of who's the next guest that you want to see on the podcast. And don't forget to share this episode with at least one person who will get some insights because one conversation is enough to give people enough ideas to change their lives. I'll see you next time. Until then, keep figuring out. And also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel.