The Spy Who Became Stalin's Greatest | Playdates And A Glock: The Life of a Mom and Spy | 4

0:00Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of The Spy Who ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. I'm Charlie Hickson and this is The Spy Who, an Audible original. Thank you for joining us for our final episode of The Spy Who Became Stalin's Greatest. We've concluded our season on Ursula Kuczynski, better known as Agent Sonja, the German communist activist who spied for the Soviet Union in the build-up to and during the Second World War. As we all know, the life of a spy is chock full of adrenaline secrets and, more pertinently, danger. Three things that tend not to mix well when you're trying to raise children.

0:50But Ursula isn't the only spy who's had to face that tricky dilemma. And my guest today knows all too well that struggle of the juggle, Anne E. Butler. Anne's a fascinating individual who raised five children, all while spending almost 30 years as an undercover CIA officer working across the world. And she's written about that time in her 2024 memoir, Wife, Mother, Spy, An extraordinary life filled with ordinary days. I'll be asking Anne all about these so-called ordinary days, including the unique pressures that come with being a parent and spy. Plus the unexpected perks of being pregnant on the field.

1:34So here's my conversation with Anne.

1:40Ann E. Butler:The Emmy award-winning HBO series Hard Knocks Training Camp brings viewers into the preseason with unparalleled access to the reigning Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. Go behind the scenes with Sam Darnold, Jackson Smith and Jigba, and the legendary dark side defense as they prepare to make another run at the NFL title. See how the best in the world take the hype and pressure head on. Your football fix starts here with the personalities and challenges that define a championship team. Bonds will be built. Bloopers will be captured. Hard Knocks Training Camp with the Seattle Seahawks, Tuesdays at 9 p.m.

2:16Ann E. Butler:on HBO Max. This Is Actually Happening is a podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them in a special six-part series called AI, A New Kind of Being. This Is Actually Happening explores the powerful and unexpected ways artificial intelligence is changing human lives. Follow This Is Actually Happening wherever you get your podcasts. So, Anne, thank you so much for joining us. I know you're coming to us from North Carolina in America, and I only hope that the heat this time of year hasn't been too unbearable as it is here in London, as we're not used to it.

2:53I'm sorry. Wilmington is hot here. It's very hot here, but we're on the coast. Stones throw from the ocean, so it's a wonderful place to be. Well, if you want to swap, just let me know. So here at The Spy Who, we've just concluded our series on Ursula Kaczynski, the Soviet spy and a mother of three who, not unlike yourself, was very much active in espionage while raising her family. And I'm eager to talk to you about that. But first, I'd love for our listeners to learn about your origin story, as it were, and how you came to a life of espionage. So, I mean, when you were growing up, how aware of spies were you?

3:34Not very. Not very. I never looked at the CIA as a possible career path. Nonetheless, I wanted to do something overseas where I could live and work overseas. So I started applying to international agencies, international organizations, international banks, any place that I thought had some kind of international nexus. CIA being one of them. And it was only when I got in, when I started working that I realized how lucky I was, that I was in the exact spot that I wanted to be in. Because the work was, of course, had that international bent. And I was going to be traveling and working overseas. But it was also important and exciting and challenging and different.

4:23Every day was amazing. Having to use your brain to come up with a strategy to get close to somebody. The people I was working with were amazing. And we all had this sense of mission, which was really important to me. But I mean, you must have watched spy films or TV shows. I mean, what thoughts, how did you think of the world of spying? And then I suppose, how different was it when you actually got involved in it? I didn't really think of it too much. Although even now, you know, the movies and the books are all kind of exciting and fun. And I'll tell you, life inside the CIA, doing the real work, sure, it was exciting and challenging and unique, but there were a lot of dull moments when we had to do our accounting, when we had to write up our reports.

5:16And I guess, you know, back in the day, spies were most often depicted as being men in movies and TV and thriller books or whatever. So, was it a surprise to you that you – it sounded like you quite easily got into the CIA? I mean, did that change your view of that world? Well, once I got in, it was clearly a man's world. And in many ways, it still is, Charlie. And I'll tell you why, I think. Most men go on and work – go up the ladder, keep doing the work, the hard work. The women oftentimes have to raise the kids, stay home, do the domestic work because nobody else is there to do it. In my case, however, I knew my work was important.

6:08I knew I could do as good, if not better, of a job than my male colleagues. It only meant that I had to do the job of recruiting spies and being a mom at the same time. I just had to do both. I had to work harder than most of my colleagues. But it was all worth it. And what do you think they saw in you? And was that partly what you were just talking about, about what you could bring uniquely? That's a very good question. What do they see in the candidates? I'll tell you, it's a long process to get in. It's many, many interviews, long, two, three, four-hour interviews. And the reason is because they're looking for people, not just people who can read and write or people who had a particular discipline in college, but people who are committed, who are able to think on their feet, who are able to dodge and weave when the answer isn't clear.

7:08People who are willing to be challenged, people who are able to quickly learn techniques, languages, things like that. Can the candidate make quick decisions, tough decisions quickly to say get out of a predicament? So all these things are important for the agency, the CIA, to determine if that person can actually stand up to what's necessary. And did you enjoy that process? I mean it sounds like – I was going to say, did they do the classic thing of, OK, I'm going to pretend that we're some enemy organization and we've captured you and you've got to talk your way out of it. But that sounds like you were actually doing that kind of thing.

7:57Yes. And in a way, it's fun. And then they're going to say, OK, this person wants to be in a situation like this, isn't panicking, doesn't give up easily. They want to be challenged like this. And so that person will move ahead. The media has a tendency of portraying the world of espionage, as we talked about it before, sort of sleek, sexy and obviously very dangerous work. But I mean, did you have any preconceived ideas about being a spy in that whole world? It was dangerous. I have to say there were moments that were more dangerous than others, of course, depending on where I was in the world, depending on what threats were there, depending on what was going on in the city I was living in.

8:44But I was also trained to stay out of potential problems, counter potential problems. But I'll tell you what was even scarier was the threat, the concern that the agents that I recruited put the threat that they were under. So I was responsible for these people. I had to teach them how to protect themselves, and I had to make sure that all my tradecraft was done in a way that kept them safe because they didn't have any diplomatic immunity. They would be – their careers would be in jeopardy. Their lives would be in jeopardy. Their families would be in jeopardy. So that's – when I consider the dangerous parts, it's when I was putting my agents at risk.

9:36That was, to me, the most dangerous part. And feeling responsible for them. Correct. Now, it's worth mentioning at this point that when you were initially approached to join the CIA, you were already married to your husband, Joseph. I mean, how long had you been married at that point? So I was interviewing before we got married. Right. We started dating in 1984, a million years ago. In 1988, we got married. So I was working for the agency about a year and a half before we got married. And when you were doing those initial interviews, did he know what job you were interviewing for? He knew I was interested in the CIA.

10:19He didn't know. I was looking at a lot of different jobs. Yes. So he was aware, yes. And when you got the job, did you have to tell him at that point? Did you want to tell him what's the protocol? So generally, the CIA is not excited about you telling somebody that you're just dating. However, if you're engaged or certainly if you're married, it's important that the spouse knows what you're doing. It's really essential. I mean, they have to be able to support your life and support your work and support the long nights that you're out. And really understand that it's an important mission. So it's critical that the spouse is aware of everything.

11:00Not everything, but who you're working for. And were you worried at all that he'd react negatively or try and talk you out of it? No, no, I wasn't. I mean, by that time, I knew what he was like and I knew he would support me. You have to have a supportive spouse. It's absolutely essential. They have to be willing to understand that you're going to be gone and there's a way to contact you in an emergency if need be. But generally speaking, you're going to be gone. And many times I'd be gone for certainly all night or a couple days and my husband would not know where I was. Certainly didn't know who I was talking to or what we were talking about.

11:41The spouse has to be able to understand that and realize that the mission is important. How did that work for you? Well, that was exactly the way it was. I never spoke about, talked about work at home. I never talked about work with my kids. I never talked about work with my neighbors, with my friends, because there was many, most of them, most of them, almost all of them did not know where I really worked. And I didn't tell my husband, Joe, where I was going or who I was with, but he understood that. So that was all part of my career. We had other things to talk about that were clearly more important and more interesting than what I was doing in the office.

12:25Than saving the world. Do you think it takes, you know, that only a certain type of person can kind of cope with that, that sort of compartmentalization as a spy who has to keep that part of their life absolutely separate? And that's what people are looking for as well. If you are interested in raising your hand, saying, hey, look at me, look at me, I'm doing this cool thing, then you're not cut out for this business. You have to be somebody who is willing to stay under the radar, not talk about the great things, cool things they're doing, not talk about themselves at all. So the person who does this job and does it well is somebody who can draw that out of other people without giving up very much of themselves.

13:11It's important. Now, you mentioned in there about having kids. How far into your job were you when you had your first kid? Four years. Right. Maybe five. Yeah, we were still in Washington at the time when my oldest was born. And did you have any doubts, concerns about having kids and trying to bring up a family in this world? Well, no, I didn't. And don't forget, that was before we started moving overseas, just before. So I was a working mom with one kid. Easy. So we've talked about you being a spy within the CIA, but what does that actually mean? What kind of work were you doing? I was a female case officer, not a spy per se.

14:02The spies are the people we recruit. You probably know that. But as a case officer working clandestinely for the CIA, it was extraordinary. And so you weren't based entirely at CIA headquarters. That's where I started, of course. Started the training and learned all about CIA, CIA 101. Then started my career going overseas. And in our job, every two or three years we move. We move countries, we move continents, we move cities, depending on where the need is, depending on what abilities I had at the time, whether it was a language or some other kind of training that really set me up for a particular job.

14:48And that was my life every few years moving around the world. And so what's your job to kind of recruit locals, as it were? Not necessarily locals. My job as a case officer is to find, assess, then develop a relationship with those that I think would have access to intelligence and then to recruit them to get them to spy for us. It's people who have access to plans and intentions of their governments that we, the U.S., needs to know for our own security purposes. So it could be Chinese, Russians, Iranians. It could be any country that we feel is a threat to the U.S. We look at the requirements that our administration puts forth as saying this is the information that we need to keep America safe.

15:46Our mission is very specific and we are really good at what we do. So you've talked about what that meant to be in the CIA, and you've made it sound almost like a normal job. But there must have been specific dangers involved in it. The dangers were mainly you were worried about the people, yes, that you'd recruited. But there must have been some times where you had to be in a more dangerous situation yourself. And what sort of precautions did you have to deal with that? So, for example, there was one location where I was serving where several years prior there had been some violence incited by a number of people in the city where I was living.

16:32So I was carrying a Glock as protection and driving an armored car. Do you have any sort of sneaky James Bond ways of concealing your Glock? Well, I actually, I had a bag, a coach bag that I carried to and from work all the time with my lunch and my keys and my notebook. And there were several people who worked in a technical office in my, in our larger office, who they were able to redo my coach bag, create a concealed compartment within the bag in order to keep my Glock. Glock. So that was essential because I could carry my Glock everywhere and at the same time remove it quickly and fire it if I needed to.

17:20So you have a family, you have children. Did that affect ever the type of jobs you might be able to do and where you might want to travel to? In part, yes, because I did not want to leave my children in a boarding school in one country and work in another country. So yes, and did it affect my career path? Perhaps, maybe. But unlike Ursula, for example, I did not want to leave my children in a different country. I did not want to leave them, for example, back in the US. I wanted to be with them. So you never sort of reached a crunch point where you had to choose between the needs of your job and, you know, protecting your country and the needs of your family.

18:06No, no, that wasn't the way I wanted to live my life. It was more important to find locations that were suitable for my family. I had to find a place with good schools, but I was also interested in going someplace where the work was important, and I was able to do both.

18:33OK, so let's flash forward here, Anne. You're working with the CIA. You and your husband have started expanding your family. Can we talk about the reality of being a parent who's in the thick of being a CIA officer? I mean, at this point, your kids, they didn't know you were working in intelligence? Correct. They do not. What did they think you were doing for your work? So my official cover was a diplomat. And really, kids, any kids, they just, do they really care what mom and dad are doing every day, all day at the office? Probably not. So I was going off to work. That's all they knew. And it sounds like you weren't too worried about, I mean, you weren't really deceiving your kids.

19:15I suppose it was just not giving them the full facts. Were you always comfortable with that? I mean, you said, you know, like most kids, they're not that interested. I was very comfortable because, again, they didn't ask questions. And certainly I would be using my family, my kids as needed for work purposes. For example, let's say I was meeting an agent that I had recruited someplace that was outside the city and country where I was living. So we would go on a holiday. The family would go on a pretend holiday. Well, they didn't know anything different. They thought we were going on holiday. But I was actually going there to meet my agent.

19:55So we'd go there as a family. It was a great cover mechanism. We looked like we all were having a great time. But I would slip away for 30 minutes to meet my agent. And my husband knew, obviously, that I was there to meet an agent. So he would take the kids during that moment and keep them occupied. I would go and have my meeting, and I'd come back, and nobody would be the wiser. It was a perfect cover. this happened all the time I was using my kids to get close to somebody if they had friends whose parents I wanted to meet why not have a play date did you ever worry about keeping them so close to your work to what you were doing I mean did you ever fear that agents might approach them to try and glean information about you or anything like that no I didn't worry about that because I knew how to protect them.

20:44I knew where they were. They were all fairly young. They wouldn't disclose anything. They didn't know anything except that their mom was a diplomat. So I wasn't worried that they would speak out of school. And I'll also say that in the intelligence world, really good intelligence services, the Brits, the Americans, the Chinese, there's a kind of an unwritten rule that you certainly don't target the children. You also worked through all of your pregnancies. I did. And I'm curious to know, I mean, did being pregnant in the field present itself with any unique advantages or disadvantages? Well, you sounded surprised that I worked while I was pregnant.

21:25But this job is a job you can't just stop and take a break. You have to keep working, right? There's agents that you're handling. There are people you have to recruit. You can't just take a year off or nine months off and say, I'll come back to it. When I was pregnant, I was still looking for people to recruit. I was still out there finding the people that had the access to intelligence. It didn't matter whether I was waddling to the meeting or waddling around a reception or not. I was still doing the work, looking for those people. I was then, as I said, having to develop a relationship with them.

21:59They may not realize that I was, well, they probably did not realize until I told them that I was intelligence. So why not go out with a pregnant woman for lunch? I mean, it was very non-threatening. And when I was at a reception, at a diplomatic reception, working the room, again, trying to find people that might have access, I was very non-threatening. So it was all good cover. It all worked to my advantage. Yes. Now, I was talking to a few guests on the podcast who firmly believe that women make better spies than men. Do you think women possess certain skills or traits that make them better agents compared to their male counterparts?

22:43Absolutely. Absolutely. Women make better case officers, better operations officers. Maybe not necessarily better, but very, very, very good. And I'll tell you one of the reasons is they can elicit information a lot easier than men can oftentimes. They're also attuned to nuances. I can learn a lot about that person just because I'm more aware of their emotions, more aware of their body language, more aware of what they really mean when they're saying something. I think that's a trait that many women have. So the reality is you as a female spy, you were a mother of five. Were there any moments where it really just the two sides clashed and made things very, very difficult for you?

23:33There were moments, yes. This is what I always think about when I think about the two lives that I had intersecting. It's when I was traveling to meet an agent. I was in Europe and I had a long, long train ride to meet that agent. It was somebody I had recruited, so the meetings were prearranged. Everything was set. I had to stop along the way for a few minutes and make a document exchange to get my alias docs, so I was able to then travel the rest of the way in alias. The problem was that I was about close to nine months pregnant with my number four at this time. So everything was a little bit, not awkward, but I was constantly worried about giving birth.

24:21And this long train ride, there was an overnight train. I was thinking, okay, I have to make the meeting because the meeting's been arranged. I can't leave my asset agent out there wandering around wondering where I am. I can't miss the meeting. But yet I had this, what if I went to labor? I had this baby I had to worry about. If I went into labor in alias, I'd get off the train, go to a hospital, and have this baby in a different name. That was complicated. I obviously didn't have insurance in the alias. So you're asking if there's times when things really clash. This was a perfect example. I'm on this train worried about making the meeting because that was for my agent's safety and because I needed the information that I was planning to get from her to give to our policymakers.

25:11But I was also worried about this unborn baby and what would happen if I went into labor and had to give birth. So all that is to say is that you can't plan for everything. You have to – I thought, well, what if this happens? What if that happens? For example, if I did go into labor and go to a hospital, I couldn't break my cover. I would absolutely have to have the baby in a different name. I would just have to quickly get out of the hospital and figure out how to pay for it with the cash that I had. because that was preeminent. You could not break cover. That would put everybody else at risk.

25:46And luckily you didn't go into labor. Correct. It all worked out. I mean, did you go into labor during a meeting or was that? No, it was a meeting with a colleague. It was not with one of my assets. I was meeting this colleague at the airport and went into labor. So it was a colleague coming in to meet me to take over my cases when I was on maternity leave. So we were trying to plan for a meeting that I was going to introduce him to somebody that I was meeting with the next day. Unfortunately, the baby came a little earlier than I anticipated. And I went into labor at the airport as I was waiting to pick him up.

26:33So we didn't have the meeting. We instead went to the hospital. But again, this goes back to something I had said a little while ago too, Charlie, but the candidates, you have to figure out what happens when things like this arise. I mean, where do you go? Do you turn left? Do you turn right? You have to be ready for any kind of eventuality. You can't plan what to do in every situation, but you have to be able to have confidence that you'll figure it out. Well, it sounds like you had great confidence and you did most of the time. Most of the time, yeah.

27:20So Anne, talking about your kids, we alluded to this earlier, you made the decision, or whether that was CIA policy, to not tell your children what you did. But eventually that plan hit a bit of a snag with your oldest daughter. So can you tell us what happened there? So my oldest daughter was very good friends with my boss's daughter, actually. And they were in middle school, so they weren't too young. And it was just kind of a fluke. My daughter saw a piece of artwork on the wall of her friend's house. It was the same piece of artwork that I have because my boss actually gave it something very similar to me.

28:01And my daughter's friend said, oh, my mom works for my dad. Your mom works for my dad and they both work for the CIA. So that's how she found out. And it was a little bit of a, you know, really, was that necessary? But she kept it to herself, didn't tell the other siblings, her siblings, and went on. Again, I would say probably because it wasn't the most important thing in her life as a middle schooler at the time. How old was she at the time then? Oh, gosh, 13. Right. And so how long after your oldest daughter found out did the rest of your four kids learn what you did? They only found out when I retired.

28:39I wanted them to come into the building to CIA headquarters for my retirement party. So they could walk across the seal and see the big building. And so I told them the night before, the night before my retirement party. And they all came in. It was quite – I thought it was quite impressive. I'm not sure they thought so, but it was – So they didn't think it was really cool. Yeah. I think they did. They were typical teenagers. Yeah, typical teenagers. No, but it was kind of interesting. And certainly now they're all adults and they are very proud of what I did. And, I mean, do they ask you a lot about what you did?