Why KGB Spy Jack Barsky Risked His Life to Stay in the United States | Real Talk | PragerU

How did I become Jack Barsky? I was a highly prized recruit by the KGB. Most likely one of the most highly trained agents that they ever sent out. It was a mission that was bound to fail. Why do you think they chose you to become a spy? I had what it takes to be a lone wolf illegal. Things like fearlessness, the ability to lie at an instant. Putin doesn't mind that you're talking about communism this way? Do you feel like you're in danger? Putin is driven by extreme narcissism. He's obviously raw evil. If you promised me $10 million right now, I would not visit Russia because I most likely would fall out of a window. Do you have any advice for the president on how he should handle our relationship with Russia right now? If that war doesn't stop, we're talking about the end of the world. Jack Barsky, it's great to have you here. I want to share a quick little story with you before we get into this. I started reading your book and my son, who's just about 12 years old, is that he's a pretty decent reader, decided to read the book alongside with me, which on the literacy level, I know that most Americans can't do it, but because the book is so riveting, he could not put this book down. And so I want to thank you for getting my son to read. But also the history that he learned while reading this book is so unbelievable because you learn about communism, you learn about U.S. history, you learn about the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall. And I think most importantly to me, you learn what happens when you have a God size hole in your heart. And so I couldn't recommend your book more than this, because it's great for adults and it's great for for for young adults or or growing teenagers who want to get a good grasp of a very important period of time, even in American history and world history. So thank you for your book and thank you for your courage. And of course, thank you for being here. It's really an honor. Your story is very important. So maybe we can start with those who don't know about your background. Your name now is Jack Barsky, but you were not born Jack Barsky. So who were you born as and how did you assume this name Jack Barsky? Right. So I was I was born in Germany. So I was given a German name, obviously, Jack Barsky. Neither Jack nor Barsky is a German name. I was born and I hate to do this because it becomes it's unpronounceable, this name to to Americans. Albrecht Dittrich. So that's the name I was given at birth. And how did I become Jack Barsky? Do you want the long version or the short version? Somewhere in the middle. In the middle. Well, so, as you know, I was recruited by the KGB, the Soviet intelligence service to operate as an illegal in the United States. Illegal means that you operate under a different name, not your own. And because of my ability to speak English with just a touch of an accent that it becomes explainable, especially in a city like New York, where everybody has an accent. They they I was a highly prized recruit because to to pretend to have been born in the United States that takes any kind of red flag away. Most illegals, if not probably. All the others were smuggled into the United States through another country. And then came to the U.S. legally. OK, for instance, Brazil or Canada were the favorites. So they in that case, you I could have been the proverbial mature Manchurian candidate because. I was born in the U.S., there's no red flag at all, no no reason to investigate. So for that to happen and the Russians still do this today. They the KGB's stole identities, either for of people who were passed away at a young age with no history, having had any kind of like like activity in the U.S. like Jack Barsky himself passed away at the age of 10. And they they made it the the agents in the United States and also in other countries made it a habit to run around in cemeteries and looking for gravestones that showed that a person passed away at a young age. Jack Barsky passed away at the age of 10. And and he was born in 1944. So anyway, a big security hole in the United States that a diplomat with a with a Russian accent was able to get a authentic copy of a Jack Barsky's birth certificate just by paying the fee. Amazing. And it was basically handed to you and you assume this child's identity. That is correct. And when I traveled to the U.S., my my my trip for me to start my career as a spy in the U.S., I had that copy, that birth certificate with me in a secret compartment in my luggage. And so within a couple of days of being in the U.S., I assumed that identity. And in those days, you could travel with you didn't need documentation. You got just got on a plane. You could go to the hotel just by telling telling that your name is John Smith or something like that. Security was extremely loose in those days. And I managed to actually become the person I was supposed to be and morph into the born American. By the name of Jack Barsky, who was born in Orange, New Jersey. When how when was it that you came here to the United States and what specifically were you tasked to do by by, I guess, the KGB? What did they want you to do here? Well, I came here in the fall of 1978. That was when the Cold War started heating up. It was the the next 10 years were the hottest phase of the Cold War when we had were in danger of a nuclear war several times. My task initially was to become an American, like integrate in society and live like a normal American and also do some other things which I failed at and because they wanted me to get in, befriend individuals who made foreign policy or at least influenced foreign policy. I never reached a standing in society to have to credibly mingle with people like like those. They also told me to and this was a mantra every time I I had contact with them, they would always say, repeat the word contact, contact. We need more contacts. Get to know as many people as you can and see if they could be targets for recruitment. So when when I went to college in the US, I singled out a number of students who eventually could wind up in government and they had maybe certain weaknesses or they pursued a certain ideology, whatever. So then they might have, they might be good targets for recruitment. And all of that really became meaningless when I found out after the fact that they really didn't tell me what was most important to them. Which was? Which was that I was in the United States. You see, towards the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States had diplomatic relations. The only agents that the KGB had in the in the United States besides illegals, and I don't know how many others were there like me, not too many. I just know there were 10 of them that they trained and most likely at least half of them, if they were deployed, probably failed. It was a it was a mission that was bound to fail. It was high risk. But anyway, they had the diplomats at the United Nations and they had the diplomats in the embassy and they were all KGB loyal or were KGB agents. All the agents were, besides the illegals, were diplomats. And there was a good chance that their diplomatic relations were going to be broken up. And at that time, the KGB would have lost two of their top agents who happened to be moles in the United States government. A mole is somebody who is employed by an agency, such as the FBI and the CIA or other parts of the government, and worked for the enemy. And they were both in high level positions and were able to do a ton of damage by betraying a lot of secrets. And they interacted with the diplomats. There are no more diplomats. And also, the United States could have kicked out the diplomats that worked in the United Nations. So who would have been left over to carry the secrets out of the country than us illegals? And that I didn't know. I was never told. I found out after the fact. There's a lot of things I found out after the fact. They didn't tell me anything. They just kept me in the dark. Well, they probably kept you in the dark because they knew that if you'd get caught, they don't want you to share any information, right? That's right. And also, if I become really successful in integrating in society, then I become much more of a risk of staying. Which is what happened. And in that case, the less I know, the better, right? Why do you think they chose you when you were young to become a spy? What was it about you that they found? I wasn't that young anymore. When they finally made an offer, I was 24 years old. So what they were looking for with regard to age, they were looking for people who were reasonably mature. So you would already know who they were. As opposed to training young children like they depicted in the series, The Americans. And that's nonsense. So they were looking at reasonably well-formed human beings who had no strong attachment. Okay, so when they looked at me, they knew that my attachment to a mother and father was not existent. I didn't have a steady girlfriend. I wasn't married. But with regard to their decision as to whether they should recruit me or not, they initially just reached out to me. And we interacted in unofficial capacity. I was already at that point an assistant professor at university. They looked at me for a whole lot of other things other than the basics. I had to be a communist and I had to like what I just told you. And they knew that I was smart because I was an A student in college. I was the best of many. But they needed to know whether I had what it takes to be a lone wolf illegal. And that requires things like fearlessness, the ability to lie at an instant to get yourself out of bad situations. They called it comfortable and fluid situations. I found that out also in one of those interviews. And no problems changing countries, leaving history behind, and being very adventurous. And so they figured all of that out by studying me and interacting with me for like 18 months before they made the offer. And when they made the offer, that's when I was like 24, maybe 25. I think it was 24. And so then began a period of five years of a lot of training. Typically their base training was four years. But because of my proven ability to learn English very well, they added another two years. That means in Moscow I got even better training than what I got in East Germany. So I most likely was the most highly trained agent that they ever sent out. It's amazing that you barely have an accent when you speak English like an American, which I'm sure is a gift that you had amongst the other gifts that you had. Can I interrupt you? We talked about this. It's a gift, but it's also hard work. You know how many hours I spent doing phonetics exercises? One of the most boring things you can ever do. You know, you listen to a tape and a native speaker says something and you need to repeat it. For at least a year and a half, every evening in Moscow, I did that. They taught you how to do that? They taught you how to shake off the accent? There isn't much that you can teach. You know, I had a born American female as a tutor. Okay. And we did phonetics exercises as well. But what was critical that eventually they got me in touch with a male born American. Because when you hear the male voice and you want to repeat it, it gets you in better shape. And so I got to a point where when you operate in a place like New York City and you have a bit of an accent, nobody cares. Everybody has an accent in New York. And when there was a situation when some people, and primarily women, and people who had been to Europe, people would say, you know, you have a bit of a European accent. I don't know what it is. Sounds maybe Dutch or Belgian or German. And my pat answer that shot everybody up was, and that was a coincidence, whatever. Maybe it was planned by the Lord that way. The mother of Jack Barsky, her maiden name was Schwartz. So in my backstory, we killed off my dad real early. And I grew up bilingual because Schwartz is mostly Jewish, but it can also be German. Just German and not Jewish. Yeah, you know, I grew up bilingual. Well, enough. Because in New York, there's a lot of Puerto Ricans who grew up bilingual with a stronger accent than I have. Right. So you are clearly a brilliant student. You became probably one of the, you know, uniquely selected possible professors, right? It's not an easy opportunity that was given to you. And you decided to give all of that away, you know, the scientific career that you were training for in order to join the KGB. Were you that passionate about communism? Like what made you so dedicated to communism that you're willing to give that career away and move away for that cause? It wasn't just me who had a passion for communism. If you were my generation, there's a lot of my folks that I grew up with, that I was in school with and in college with, that fell for the same stuff, and it's called brainwashing. And as incompetent some of our communist leaders were, they were really good at infusing us with ideological thinking from kindergarten on. It started with little cartoons. There was this one official cartoon magazine that showed, you know, the fight against injustice. It had nothing, it didn't say communism or anything like that. It just prepared us for the next step. And the next step was, you know, teaching that religion was the most stupid thing that you can be involved in, because it's like fairy tales. And then we expanded this a little bit into talking about, you know, how most people in the world were living in misery because of imperialism. And the imperialism was attached to capitalism. That means capitalism was evil. So that evil eventually needed to be defeated so that all the world can be a happy place. That's a very romantic notion that still plays very well with young people in Western countries nowadays. And to continue with that, I went to high school with the top 10% of middle school students. We were going to be the leaders of the country. And there was a mandate for every junior class in high school to visit a concentration camp. Boy, was that a brilliant move by the communist rulers, because the moment we entered the exhibition hall, we were surrounded by very large pictures of piles of corpses of emaciated people. And it was just horrendous. And two of the worst exhibits in that hall were a couple of fist-sized shrunken heads. They were for real. They were in a glass case. And these were heads that were once sitting on live human beings. And then we went into the gas chamber, and we were told how people were killed there. And eventually we wound up in one room where they executed people without people knowing that the execution was coming. And so they would be, on the pretext that they were going to be measured, they were put against the wall. And that wall could open up at a place, and there was somebody standing on the other side and shoot them in the neck. Boom, dead. This is a historic truth. The leader of the Communist Party in Germany, who was in prison in 1933 when Hitler took power, was Ernst Thälmann. And this fellow was executed like that in that concentration camp that I visited. And the Communist Party was vying for dominance in the Weimar Republic before Hitler came to power. They were fighting in the streets. The communists were fighting the Nazis. So we were the heir of Ernst Thälmann, the Nazi fighters. So we were Nazi fighters. And we knew that, and you add something else to this picture, we knew that in West Germany, there were some Nazis, ex-Nazis in the government. And we knew that West Germany became a member of NATO, and that the United States was very supportive of that government in West Germany that had Nazis in them. The most dangerous one, actually, from the point of view of history, was Reinhard von Gehlen, who was general on the Eastern Front for Hitler. And he was in charge of intelligence on the Eastern Front. When the Allied won the war, Gehlen was not made a member of the folks that were sitting on trial in Nuremberg, right? He and his group were adopted by the CIA as the Gehlen group, because the CIA and apparently the US president, whatever, thought their knowledge was way too valuable to eliminate them because they knew something about the Russian and Soviet army that gave us, the communists in East Germany, phenomenal ammunition. There was also a chancellor, the head of the West German government, who had been a member of the Nazi party. So now you juxtapose, we were the fighters against fascism, Nazism, and Nazis were over there supported by the evil Americans. So that's how they created this picture that the communists were essentially the anti-fascists because the fascists were associated with the West, supposedly. And that's how you grew up hearing all these things. And so there was almost a romantic view of communism for you as an adolescent and a 20-year-old who wanted to fight that. Yeah, and by the way, fascism is not an outcome of capitalism because the fascist state is a dictatorship where the government has control over much of everything, most of everything. So it was all just concocted, but it rang so very true, particularly since there was no marketplace of opinions. There was no other opinion allowed. The churches, to the extent they were allowed to exist, were strictly supervised. There were some pastors who reported on their own congregation because they operated as employees of the, or at least collaborators with the East German secret police, just like the junior KGB. So no other opinions allowed. And West German television was available, but if you put that big antenna up there, your career was at an end because you broke an unwritten law. West German radio, Radio Free Europe, all of that was strongly discouraged. You couldn't shut it down. They couldn't shut it down completely because all of us, even party members, listened to rock and roll and Elvis and the Beatles and so forth. But there were no credible individuals who had an opinion to the contrary that should have been considered. What would happen if a teacher, let's say, would bring a Bible into a classroom or hang the Ten Commandments in a classroom in East Berlin? They would be at least spoken to and given a strong reprimand or possibly fired on the spot. Why do you think communism is so anti-Christianity or anti-the Bible, or possibly even, I don't know if they're anti-Judaism, you can comment on that, but why are they so anti-God? Because for a communist dictatorship to survive, they need allegiance from the people that they rule. And there couldn't be a competing power for this allegiance. And Christians have their primary allegiance to their God. So that's where the danger is. Christians will become automatically dissidents, whether they are vocal or not. And that's the danger to that dictatorship. And it's not just the communists. Other dictatorships also. You want absolute power and you can't have absolute power if you allow for the existence for a God that includes a Jewish God as well. Do you think that by creating a situation where students like you, brilliant students like you, had a God-size hole in your heart, they were better able to control you? Is that what was basically the agenda? They created this vacuum between you and God, between you and your family, and so therefore you had an allegiance to the government and they were able to activate you in that way? The allegiance that I had and most of my contemporaries, once we were in college, wasn't necessarily to the government per se because we thought some of our leaders were pretty dumb. But the allegiance was to the cause. And remember in those days, the United States made one huge mistake, a huge mistake, and that is fight the war in Vietnam. And there was a huge movement, international, everywhere, for people against the Vietnam War. And that was another contribution for anti-Americanism and anti-NATO altogether. Well, you ended up defecting, essentially, from the KGB. Resigning. Defecting implies that you go over to the other side. I went private. Okay, so you ended up resigning from the KGB, choosing to be an American, raising your children here, at least some of your kids, you ended up raising them here in the United States. People can read the rest of your story on why you decided to do that and how that came about. But I am curious from your experience living in a communist country and going through the entire elite education system over there and then raising kids here in the United States, what do you think are the similarities that you see today and the differences between America's education system and what you saw in a communist environment? First of all, I want to say something positive about the communist East German educational system. And ironically, that positive actually wound up being the death knell of the system itself. We were focused on science, other than, you know, the ideology. Everything else, when it came to math, physics, chemistry and so forth, it was hardcore science. And we were taught how to think. Actually, we had tests where we had to write essays. You know, I never knew what a multiple choice or true and false exam was until I came to the U.S. The U.S.-based education has been traditionally on facts and not how to put the facts together and digest something new that comes at you. And when I stated that this actually came back to bite the communist regime and eventually got rid of it, it's because the German people, particularly my generation and maybe younger, never stopped thinking. And at one point, you know, it became critical mass. This is not working here. And then when all of a sudden East Germany exploded and the war came down, spontaneously, because we're still thinkers. Now, in the United States, when I first came here, I said, like, you're not teaching people how to think. Now, this is also a way to create allegiance, particularly for the elite who think or know that they're better than everybody else. It's a power-hungry elite that would not do very well if you have a lot of thinkers and question whether there should be an elite. So the end result is very similar, maybe not as radical, you know, because in this case, what you generate is sheeple instead of people who are easily told to do this, that, and the other and comply because we know better than you. Okay, and this is very unfortunate. Now, there is some rebellion going on amongst young people that sense that something is not quite right. There's a lot of desire in human beings to have some freedom and make your own decisions and go down your own path or whatever path may be selected by God. And they don't like being told what to do at every level, particularly when it gets to a point like what we had very, very obviously was manipulation during COVID when we were told lies and lies and more lies that now have been admitted, okay? Not by the same people who actually propagated those lies. So it isn't just the other side saying, no, that's wrong. So again, the powers that be shoot themselves in the foot and, you know, you think God has something to do with that? It's so interesting to hear a former communist scientist mention God so frequently, which I think is rare because most of the scientists that I know say that you can't possibly be a scientist, a true scientist and believe in God. And so what has happened with you? You were obviously an atheist at one point in your life, but you seem to have a strong walk with God now. I, well, first of all, I didn't get to know God at all. So we had, we celebrated Christmas and I had no clue that the rest of the world celebrated the birth of Jesus. It was a Christmas with a tree and a Santa Claus, but it just wasn't the real Christmas. And we had Easter. It was about the Easter bunny and Easter eggs. And there was no cross in our Easter. I just, I had no knowledge of the existence of Jesus, who he was, what his message was. It was not shared in my family because my father was a party member and Christianity was a no-no. It was not shared in any kind of school. And if you went to a church, you would be reported on. The churches were in existence, but they were tightly supervised. So I had no clue. So there was no exposure that I had to something I might've actually liked, like the 10 commandments or the fruits of the spirit. You know, there's a lot of people who don't believe in Christ who still subscribe to that. So nothing. So it was really easy for me to believe that the story that as a scientist, you can't possibly believe in that fairy tale. And the fairy tale wasn't even told. It was just like, you know, Christians are just like pretty dumb and they use their faith as a crutch because they can't really, they're not that, you know, they're just not that smart. Now, I have to actually flip this upside down. It's no way can you be a good scientist if you don't believe in God. How so? Because you believe in, you have your own belief system that's dumber than the belief system of Christians. And that implies that there's proof there was a big bang that the universe at one point came into existence out of nothing, right? Now that's pretty dumb. And then on top of it, then the universe organized itself in such a way that, you know, the celestial bodies rarely ever run into each other. That there was the conditions on this planet where life could start forming by itself out of dead matter and organize itself to a point where it's so incredibly complex. How did that all come about? And this actually violates one fundamental law of physics. It's called the second law of thermodynamics that says a closed system will tend towards disorder. You know, the universe is a closed system. To have order in that closed system, there had to be an outside force to put it. And so how can you true scientists deny that? Sorry, you know, and I have no problem in stating that what I just explained doesn't necessarily make you into a Christian or in a believer into Jesus, but it must make you into a believer in a God. How did allowing God into your heart change your life? How did it impact your relationship with your family? Because you had a pretty tough childhood with not receiving love from your parents, an environment where there was a lot of coldness, and then you started having children and you started bringing God into your life. This seems quite different from another typical communist story. Yeah, there was no emotional love that all children crave as they're growing up. You know, there was no hugging, kissing, no I love you's period. It was really cold. We were taken care of. You know, the basics, you know, the shelter, the food and so forth to the extent it was available. But it was tough love. You perform and you have to be very disciplined and you get rewarded based on your performance. No love. So I grew up with that hole inside because the vast majority of humans crave love and also want to give love. That's the way we are designed. So when you're talking about love changing how I interacted with the family, now not my German family, and actually it was sort of the other way around. Love was introduced to me by a family. Okay, because initially I had to have a cause as something I could attach myself to something I could love. And that was communism. The romantic notion that I could contribute to building the worker's paradise on earth and help everybody have a good life and experience happiness. How love came to me was when I fell in love with my American-born 18-month-old daughter. And it crept up on me. I wasn't even aware of it. I watched her grow up and I just fell in love with her. And as I said, I was not aware of it until it got to a point where I had to make decisions. And the decision was forced on me by the KGB ordering me back home. They declared that I was most likely going to be arrested by the FBI. And it was an emergency. It was a very strong command. I had to leave and I was supposed to leave right away. But I stalled for quite a while because of love. And I knew that if I could not provide for her mother, they would wind up in a slum because mom had only four years of education, formal education. There's no way that she could earn the kind of money for them to have a comfortable living. And my heart was contracting every time I thought that she would grow up in that kind of a lousy environment. And I would have never been able to get rid of that guilt. On the other hand, there was the KGB asking me, telling me to go back home or else I might get arrested. By the FBI. They thought the FBI was on you. And so the KGB wanted you to go back home to your other life where you had a wife and a child in your whole other homeland. I would have returned to Germany as a conquering hero. I had received in two years prior to that, the second highest declaration of the Soviet Union. That means that was up there, second high. It had to be approved by the top level of the Soviet government. So I would have gone back. They had promised me a house. I had dollar savings in a communist country that I would have been wealthy with a car and a nice family. So everything that was good for me was back there. Yet it didn't matter. It did not. You know, when you look at the scale, you have all this good stuff over there. And then you have a smile over here. How does somebody so scientific, who's so focused on rationality, seem to choose the emotional decision? Actually, eventually the ultimate decision was obviously not based on analysis because the analysis said you got to go. But when I actually made the decision, it was made by my subconscious. So as part of that emergency procedure, I was supposed to pick up, it's called a dead drop operation. You pick up a container that contains something that they want to hand over to you, like a crushed oil can or something like that, in a spot at a park where everybody knows. It was a very highly controlled operation. So the other guy doesn't hand you stuff. You drop the container over there and somebody else was going to pick it up. And so I went to that place where I was supposed to pick up the money and the passport. I had not made a decision yet. I was just going to get the money, just in case. There was no decision. And there was no container. I couldn't find it. And I, what happened here? So I walk out of the park and at the edge of the park, my subconscious fed me three words. I am staying. I know that I'm a believing Christian. I believe the Holy Spirit operates, communicates with me through my subconscious because ever since then, I've become aware that a lot of my decisions were actually made not by rational analysis, but by what they call gut feeling. But this one was just so dramatic. It was inescapable. I had to stay. That was it. How does somebody get to resign from the KGB and still be alive? By doing something that they prized in their recruit. And that's the ability to lie. I lied to them. Obviously, I had to communicate that I was not going home because if I didn't do that, they would look for me and most likely assume that I defected. So I sat down and in my last letter in secret writing, I told them that I had been infected with the HIV virus. And in those days, that was a death sentence. And I told them that I can't come because there may have a chance for a cure. At the time, it didn't exist, but I want to stay in the U.S. for that. And I knew that they were very much afraid of that virus. Last time I was in Moscow, we were talking about this was the capitalist society being victimized by their sinful life, so to speak. We didn't use sinful, but you know what I'm talking about, homosexuality and drug use and so forth. You see? And we can't let anybody like this into our country because it was extremely, and it still is, extremely infectious. So, and I had hopes that they would buy it, and they did. I didn't know that they did, but, you know, I'm still here. How are you able to write a book and come on publicly on shows and travel? They don't mind? I mean, I know the KGB is not the KGB that you work for, but still, Putin doesn't mind that you're talking about communism this way? Do you feel like you're in danger? Assuming that he heard about me, and I would think he did, there's a couple of things that are in my favor. First of all, I didn't betray the motherland. And if I had been born in Russia, that would have been considered a betrayal, punishable by death. And they would most likely have come after me. That's number one. Number two- Because you were born in East Germany. East Germany. I'm a German. I was never an employee of the KGB. I was a contractor. I was not given a rank or a serial number. You had to be a citizen of the Soviet Union. And the other thing is that when my case actually became public, which was with the CBS 60 Minutes interview 10 years ago, it was so old. You know, anybody who had a personal vendetta against me, all my trainers, coaches, and so forth, they were older than me. They're probably not alive anymore. And so if there's a list of people to go after, I'm not anywhere near the top. You're not a big threat to them. No, but I'm a pain in the neck. And that, you know, I got away with something that normally would be punished. But here's another fact that I have to add to this. To go to another country and commit an assassination requires an elite team. And they don't have too many of those elite teams, even though there was this assassination attempt against one Sergei Skripal in the UK. And that was done by an elite team, the GRU military intelligence. And they couldn't leave the country without being known. So assuming that they don't have a lot of quote-unquote elite teams like that, they won't squander them on a real old case. Now, having said that, even if you promised me $10 million right now, I would not visit Russia because I most likely would fall out of a window. And I tell you why that would be very important to somebody like Vladimir Putin, because he likes to scare people. And so if I fall out of a window, no Russian would have to say anything. It would become known in the Western media that there was an accident. And this guy who has written a book and is all over the media fell out of the window. Well, you know what that means. And the message is subliminal. Vladimir Putin sending a message to his agent, if you ever dare to do this defection thing, we'll come after you. We won't forget. Do you have any thoughts about, I know you've been kind of out of the fight for a while, but do you have any thoughts about the US-Russia relations? And what is your general thought about what Putin is doing in Ukraine? Well, I strongly believe that Putin is driven by extreme narcissism, by building for himself a legacy as one of the strongest rulers of Russia, of most likely wanting a monument right next to Peter the Great as Vladimir the Great. You know, his behavior is utterly narcissistic. So that's number one. And that's, by the way, one of the reasons that I believe that he would never purposely push that nuclear button because he knows he's smart enough. He knows that would be the last action that he could ever take. Now, that doesn't mean he couldn't fall ill and become mentally ill and then still do damage. But right now, the way the man he is today, no. Now, he's obviously raw evil. You know, he follows in the tradition of Stalin, even though there's a bit of a fig leaf of democracy there. But, you know, he is a dictator. He rules with cleverness, a cleverness that Stalin didn't have. And he's not as ruthless, but he knows how to get rid of his enemies. And the reason that he has been staying in power for over 20 years in a country where the standard of living has not improved at all. They're still outside, not too far outside of Moscow. There are villages that have no electricity and they have elections. And there is indication that even though there may be some fraud in these elections, that the Russian people are still supporting Vladimir Putin simply because there's something that I call it, Russian DNA, the fear of being invaded. The fear of being invaded because they're, you know, Russia was an expansionary force from the moment they started to exist. And so that's how Russia grew. And that's how the Soviet Union was established with most of the republics not speaking Russian. But then there was the counter-invasion coming. The Vikings came from the north, the Mongols came from the east, the Turks came from the south, and then you had Hitler and Napoleon. So there's this paranoia of being invaded. And the Russians always wanted a strong leader. So the Tsars, you had the Tsars, then you had Lenin, then it had Stalin. And now Putin is the strong man. He's the savior. He protects us all. And that keeps him in power. I was talking about the election. There have been some opinion surveys done by credible companies, western companies, that indicate that the majority of the Russian people support Putin just because they are afraid of the rest of the world. There's a fundamental misunderstanding, but he's writing it to his very end. I don't know if there is a good successor for him because if he were to appoint a successor now, you know what regicide means? The successor might actually want to kill him and take over before it's time. The Roman Empire had something like that. Do you think there is animosity from Russia towards the United States? It's a double-edged sword. I think the Russian people would love to have a little bit of American culture. When the Soviet Union fell apart, American pop culture invaded Russia. And even while I was in Moscow, during the time of detente, when American singers and theater troupes were able to visit the Soviet Union, I forgot there was this very famous country singer, I forgot his name, but these were sold out. And guess who got the tickets? KGB. There was this theater troupe that performed Our Town. I got a ticket and it was easy. So the American culture, pop culture in general, in overall American culture, and the adventurism that goes with being an American, very attractive. A lot of Russians, if they had a choice to come over here, they might think about it rather seriously because they also know that the standard of living is higher. It's interesting how you talk about the infiltration into another country through culture, maybe even education. When we were talking about education in America and comparing and contrasting, in some ways I feel like Russia is doing the same thing to us with our education system, right? With teaching Marxism in our schools, taking the Bible out of our schools. Is it possible that the Russians are behind this? Or is it just bad luck because academia seems to gravitate towards a Marxist ideology? Russia is in support of that movement, but they didn't generate it. That's self-inflicted. I was talking about elitism. The damage is done by the elitist upper crust in the United States. There was this fellow who was a KGB defector by the name of Besmanov, who made a living by going out in public and teaching us how the KGB had a systematic multi-year plan to undermine the United States. That is a bald lie. He made that all up. Simply because if you don't know how a society functions, you don't know how to undermine it. I know that the elite KGB agents that trained me didn't have a clue how America functions. They gave me so much wrong advice. On top of it, Besmanov was not a KGB agent. He was a collaborator, a journalist. He had relationships with the KGB. He operated in India. On top of that, the KGB was paranoid about keeping secrets. You think if they had had a massive plan like that, they would share this with some clown who runs around in India? No. But it was an easy lie for particularly conservative people to buy into because that puts the burden of guilt onto an outside force. Not us. It's childish, but no. Now, having said that, today, there's a massive influencing operation going on, and it has to do with the World Wide Web, where clearly there was Russian interference in our election, not necessarily pro one and against the other, but just undermining the trust of the American people in the functioning of our republic and our democratic principles, how to run the republic. And that is much more dangerous than the way it started because we are now also, through our own fault, more vulnerable to that kind of influencing. And the Chinese are doing the same thing. Do you think the Chinese and the Russians, maybe the Iranians too, are they possibly working together to go after America? Or is it just, again, forces at us in our own bad decision making with our elitists? If there's an alliance, I would think it's a loose one because they're really not very compatible with one another. You know, the Iranians are, you know, Islam through and through, right? Some of the terrorists that operate in Russia are actually Islam-based, you know, Chechnya. So this is a marriage of convenience. And, you know, China is looking for world dominance. And so might be Russia or Putin, but China is much stronger and bigger. So you think they would be equal partners? I doubt that. But yeah, where they see a common enemy, they will collaborate, but not as good friends. Well, it's been fascinating talking to you. Thank you for authentically sharing your story and all the ups and downs and everything that we can learn from you. It's been a great pleasure getting to know you. Yeah, thank you. Same here.