YouSaid · the spoken record

Jack Barsky

lines on the record: 235
first: 2022-07-09
most recent: 2022-07-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We're talking in the realm of KGB. When the wall came down, and he was in an office, a KTB office in the city of Dresden. Besieging Stasi offices and they also dropped by the KGB office and it was pretty threatening. It looked like they weren't actually storm the office and get the documents and stuff like that. And initially the first demonstration was Was told that if they come any closer, weapons would be used. So they disappeared and then they came back. And I don't know somebody in that office called Berlin and said, what are we going to do? Are we allowed to use force? And the answer came back to Gorbachev said, absolutely not.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you just said the keywords. I would ask, without giving away anything, you know, just being high level, your biggest success and your biggest failure.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there could be many more. And there probably are. Because the world, again, there's a whole lot more travel going on, a whole lot more interaction studying abroad, doing business. And there will be attempted espionage probably one every minute in this country. That doesn't mean they would be successful? No. But there is a cottage industry now that is doing quite well, that teaches companies how to fortify themselves against industrial espionage or also foreign actors spying. It's all over the place.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And yeah, for instance, this lady, I forgot her first name, Butina, she was a rank amateur. She used social media to communicate with Moscow. She had no training, but she was reasonably successful. I mean, she difference between, let's say, the current Russian intelligence and the KGB Vladimir Putin and his henchmen are okay with people being caught. Because, and every time I go and give a talk someplace, I'm always asked this question, how many Russian spies do you think we have here? Because it scares the people, right? And Putin likes to scare people. The KGB was very solicitous of their agents. They didn't want any of them caught. So that's a big difference.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not thousands like I used to operate. We are too hard to train and we weren't that successful to begin with. But particularly Russians and Chinese, both governments know who is going abroad. And I guarantee you there's a lot of amateur spies being asked to help us out, do something for the motherland.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The folks that you're interacting with have a responsibility not to tell you what they shouldn't tell you, right? So and most of them probably won't. And I'm guessing occasionally they will say, well, I can't go there, right? So what you are aware of is sort of public. And what you're doing is you collecting it and you... You editing it to some extent, you're not changing the verbiage. Just repeat what they say. So from that angle, you're not privy to any revealed secrets. What you have possibly that could be of use is you learn to get to get to know the person. So I'm thinking as a good possibility if you get the interviews in the East that somebody may actually approach you and ask you what's your opinion?”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you don't know that you haven't been contacted, but certainly not I think you never had a conversation related to intelligence in any way, shape or form, right?”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also experts in the culture of the target country. And nowadays the world is different. There's a whole lot more fluidity. There's a whole lot of more people that, like, say Russians, for instance, study in the United States, Chinese, an army of Chinese studying in the United States, they have a lot more knowledge of how we function than the KGB did. And it's vice versa. Not as many Americans in Russia, but we have some. But the Chinese and the Russians have an advantage here.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They have been doing quite a bit of damage, and I am now familiar with the world of enhanced artificial persons. These are the avatars on Facebook and Twitter and so forth that look like real people. And there are quite a few of them. And I have a good friend who operates in that realm. He uses, for instance, facial recognition when he thinks that there's a suspicious character, say, on LinkedIn or on Facebook. And very often he finds out that that person exists, but it's not the person who It pretends to be.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, let me give you another argument why I think that Besmanov was a fraud. I have Metrokin on my side, and my personal observation of the incompetence that I witness. I mean, they really, really didn't know what they didn't know. So now Besmanov was KGB. Where was he stationed? In India. He was a low level agent in India. And I told you one thing that the KTV was really good was compartmentalization. How does Besmanov in India find out about this massive plan that should have been super secret, right? He made it up And you know why he got away with it? Because Americans eat that up. Because it's not our fault. It's like the damn Russians that doing all that bad stuff. Speaking of the damn Russians doing all that bad stuff, you know about the Internet Research Agency.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But this kind of a massive, well thought out campaign to destabilize the United States, I don't believe the KGB was capable of doing that. Metoken seems to agree with me. I was trained, I would think, you know, I was one of the crown jewels of the agent. One would think that they used the best that they had to help me how to become an American and they didn't have a clue. So how did they cut, if you don't know how a country operates, how do you come up with this kind of a very detailed long-term plan that's also timed two years this and one year that and all that?”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now there were some successes like one of the two most famous successes that I'm aware of is that the Conard that the AIDS virus was concocted in a CIA lab. A lot of people around the world believed that. And the other one was that Jad Cahoo was a secret cross dresser. That is still known by a lot of Americans who are of a certain age that this was the truth. But Mitrokin actually traces it back to a story that was placed in a sort of left-wing but close to mainstream French magazine and it was then taken up by more large newspapers and well-established papers. So they had some successes.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good argument, let's put it this way. First of all, we know that the KGB was involved in active measures, which is, you know, you can call it Fake news. A seeding fake news into countries that are your adversaries. And the Russians have been doing this lately by meddling in our election and focusing on the left and the right fringe and influencing them to become more left and no more right. And Vasily McTroken in one of his books, he has a whole chapter about active measures. Okay, so what he has to say about the department, and I forgot what department that was, was the one department that was the least desirable for KGB agents. Because these were desk jobs for people who had to come up with fake stories in countries where they didn't quite know too much about the country.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By lying and influencing that something that is a significant talent and ability that an agent must have, that helps you. As a politician”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because he was a good politician and he made a lot of good connections within the KGB. Allow me to say something. You just taught me a lesson. And the lesson I should have figured out myself because I keep on telling people that in the intelligence world, you never know the truth 100%. So when you said, oh, I could make that up, of course he could have. But you get to a point where you're forced to make a decision or have an opinion and then you use your best educated guess. So I'm going to take the certainty of the statement that I made back. Because it's quite possible that you're right.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, you know, he could still make it up because he had this big ruckus when he was in parliament and called Putin a war criminal about the war in Serbia.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Olek Calugan, you know who Oleck Kalugan is, and he's still alive. He was at one point the head of counterintelligence for the first directorate espionage, right? And Putin was in the first directorate and reported to Cologan for a while. And Oleg told me to my face that Oleg was not an oppressive agent trainee or agent.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I got to tell you one thing. He had a different type of training than I did. Mine was one on one, and he went to school, so to speak. But fundamentally he was not a top agent. This is very simple to, there's only one thing you need to know. He knows German pretty well. So where was he deployed in East Germany? Not in West Germany, not in Switzerland, not in Austria, that's where they sent the best, right? One would think.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep, and a good organizer. He was known as a really, really good organizer. When Yeltsin hired him as prime minister, He cleaned up the mess because Yeltsin was it under Yelton, Russia deteriorated tremendously and it became sort of a mix of an oligarchy and a criminal enterprise and chaotic.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's go back to the law of hierarchy. The government is the biggest hierarchy there is. And so invariably politicians find their way to the top. And once you have politics dictating substantive decisions, they're going to be weak or wrong. I don't know how this could work any other way. Right now we have some functional idiots in the United States government.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I don't know the exact protocol that needs to be followed To launch a nuclear strike from NATO's end because we have several countries in NATO that have nuclear weapons. So let's say for France to fire a nuke, does the United States have to agree? I don't know how that works.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And it's the situation as dangerous as I have lived through in my entire life, I believe. And because it's not necessarily at the highest point of escalation, but it will be, in my view, a protracted crisis. And the longer that crisis lasts, the more of a chance there is of an accident.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Europe. There are two peas in a pod. One is bigger and one is, in this case, the aggressor. Now, you know, two peas, the aggressor is still ultimately.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The world the way we are. And that's the romantic side and the sort of honest side, but it doesn't work. It failed every time, right? You know, Afghanistan is a royal mess and would never become a functioning democracy. I don't know if Ukraine can become a functioning democracy.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Applies to Russia. Agreed. Two thoughts, if I may. First of all, one does not hear the term military industrial complex in the public discourse these days. Eisenhower warned about it. Eisenhower was a capitalist. He was the president of the United States. So it exists and it is very powerful. The more weapons you can sell, the more you have to replace them or send over you have to replace them. So yes. The other thing is there's also a messianic streak that powers American foreign policy. We want to make the world just like us. Why don't they get it? Because they don't want to. It's almost like it's not communism, but it's a very similar romantic idea that we can make the world in fashion.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was pretty clear, and they said, I think two years ago, there was an essay published by Putin, whether he voted or not doesn't matter, but that was also out in public, where he was, again, quite clear what he was going to do. Now, how do you do this? With force and the sins committed by the American government was that we ignored it. We were engaged in wishful thinking and we didn't stop it with sanctions before the shooting started.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was more than one question. Let me just give you the basics about this Savvy observers. Saw this coming, there were very small minority because Vladimir Putin was pretty open about what he told the world his mission was, was the reestablishment of a strong Russia, the reestablishment of something like the Russian Empire to unite all the Russian-speaking people under one country. The world ignored him. I mean, he was open. Was that at a conference in France, I believe, when he set this out in the open? And then what we had in the United States, we had wishful thinking. Obama had this reset with Russia. You know, we all get friendly. And then when Putin invaded Crimea, we did nothing. And it just escalated slowly, but surely.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the act itself, the poisoning of Litvinenko, and then the assassination of the Bulgarian Markov? With the umbrella. And they all directly traced back to Russian Soviet intelligence. And so that's enough to be feared, right? My answer that I gave you as an educated guess, I can't pretend to know this for sure”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's a phrase that I'd like to say in response to called plausible deniability. I don't think Putin gave a direct command as they do that. He would just maybe muse. It would be nice if something were to happen. And then somebody picks it up and does it.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think none of these agencies have the ultimate line, I think. Eventually, the last line will be crossed if they believe it's necessary.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did and there's a famous case of one, I think it's Vasily Kuklov, who defected, he was a killer, he was a trained killer, and he had done assassinations in other countries. He was sent to West Germany to kill a defector, a KGB defector, and he decided not to do it. He talked to the guy and he said, I'm supposed to kill you, I'm not. And then he eventually wound up in the United States. I have a connection to this fellow because the KGB once asked me to go to California and see if the guy still lives and works there. I found him and we looked at each other So he was an active KGB agent looking at a man that he didn't know was the KGB defector looking at each other. Neither one knew who the other one was. I found out later.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would think so. And I also believe it exists, but it's not as prevalent as not every conspiracy theory pans out, and most of them don't. They're just damn rumors, but it doesn't mean they don't exist. I guarantee you they exist. There's collusion, there's people getting together. And not necessarily preparing a specific action, but more sort of a plan to go forward and maintain the position or even strengthen the position that they already have.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, power is also knowledge, I understand. and a position in society, in the military or in intelligence, but I don't think it's a straight one way that all the intelligence agencies control the powerful people in their country. You see what's happening in Russia. I mean, Putin dominates his intelligence agencies, right?”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not one way I think there's collusion, there's collaboration, but I would think that for instance some folks in the CIA and the FBI are being used by the ones that are really in power. Power is money. Power is wealth. I know Paul is”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Much, much deeper. And understanding that Ronald Reagan was not a warmonger, but he was talking about the end times because he was a Christian.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They didn't know what they didn't know. And by the way, this was mutual. Do you think the CIA had good knowledge of the Russian culture? Uh-uh. Same thing. And so there was a lot of lack of understanding because good intelligence could have possibly avoided some of the high tension that situations that we had in the 80s. We got close to nuclear war.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, none of these guys had operated as illegals. They were outsiders to American society. They had interaction with Americans, but they all lived in New York. They lived in a compound in northern Manhattan where they all lived together with their families. And most of the time they spent interacting with themselves, with their own people at work.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was no plan B for Chicago at all. That's an oversight. I shouldn't have gone to Chicago. They could have shipped me into San Francisco or Washington, D.C. because both of them had Soviets. My end goal was to go to New York. Fine. You know, I would have been a really, really dangerous agent if I had gone back and worked with a KGB because I could have told him all the things how to do it right.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so presence of mind, I threw this thing in the toilet and then took out a pair of scissors and cut it into small pieces and flushed it down. That smoke alarm goes off, I'm busted. If some criminal steals, I had $6,000 on me in cash steals either my passport or my money or both know”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I was so damn tense, I just wanted to sleep. I wanted to get into a coma. Which I did. Yes. And next day I woke up with a head that was twice as big Felt twice as big, but I was prepared. I had aspirin with me. I killed a headache and went outside to see if I can get something to eat. So I was ridesmack in the middle of the south side of Chicago. I didn't know that the south side of Chicago existed. I found later, I found out where I was. So it was time to go very quickly. Go up there. And at that point, I decided I would register at the next hotel on the Jack Barski. So I went to the bathroom and I tried to kill off Mr Dyson by burning his passport Unfortunately, I was not trained in how to train passport, how to destroy passports. So I tried to burn it, and these things were flame retardant.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not having enough background, I didn't know that this was unusual. All I knew that there was a lot of crime in the United States. So I thought maybe every hotel was like that. So I go up into my room and drink half a bottle of Johnny Walkert.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I got to tell you another funny story So it's another, there's two things that happened that could have ended my career as a spy right then and there. So I'm arriving in... Chicago in the evening is already dark. I had no idea what kind of a hotel to take. I picked one out of yellow pages and got a taxi. When I gave him the address, he looked at me like a little funny, whatever, what do I know? Keep on going. I need to get sleep because I was... Extremely tense, having gone through customs and border control. And we are going in the southern direction, and I noticed that the neighborhoods became less and less inviting. Didn't know what that meant either. entered the hotel. It was a five-story brownstone, and something else looked funny. So the reception desk was protected by plexiglass.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I came, where did I land? An American Airlines flight from Mexico City to Toronto, but they made me deplane in Chicago. I have no idea. I think this was over engineering that didn't make any sense to me. You know, why can't the Canadian just take a flight from Mexico City? With this stopover, this kind of nonsense.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“French Canadian, and she gave me a book, Winnie the Pooh, because we went to see the movie, and then she wrote the dedication. She says, to the nicest German I've ever met.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A bit. And other than that, the trip to Canada was a big success because it Gave me the culture shock. That I needed to not be blown out of the water when I get to the United States.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know that there was trouble, so my counter-surveillance route didn't discover anything. So I kept on going. I had to visit two more cities. And they were always one step behind. What is interesting to me is that they didn't catch me on the way out. You have to show your passport to the airline. I mean, I was known by name because I had to give that to the hotel, right? And I escaped with that.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went to a couple of other cities I should have left the country. But I know that the royal mounted police was following me. I was given that information by the FBI later on.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eventually I got annoyed and I must have the courage to call them up from a pay form. I called up the office registrar or whatever they were called in this town in California and I yelled at them. I said, you got my money. Where's my birth certificate? Well, a couple of weeks later it came. So I see the envelope. This is Henry Van Randall, yes. I had prepared the caretakers of the hotel that I'm expecting a letter from my friend. So I went up to my room. I opened it and I was like, yes, yes, this is success. And I opened this thing and it was a copy of a birth certificate, but it was stamped with big letters across and red, deceased. Think about it. So here's the dead people who was asking for that person who was asking for birth certificate. I had the presence of mind to leave”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You see the humor Okay, so here comes something quite humorous in hindsight at least. One of the tasks that I had in Canada was to acquire a birth certificate. But the name was Henry Van Randall, who was born so Saying I'm Henry Van Randall, please send me a copy of my birth certificate if he is enclosed. And I lived in a small hotel, so the return address, it wasn't visible that it was a hotel. That was important. And it took three weeks and I got nothing. Four weeks, I get nothing.”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing in between, I had a three months practice trip To Canada That was that was a good idea. And I got to tell you this one thing that happened there. So, because one thing that I like to tell people nowadays is one of the secrets to happiness is the ability to make fun of the worst situations that you're in”
2022-07-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #301 – Jack Barsky: KGB Spy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source