The Soviet Union began using "illegal" agents, living in Europe under false identities, as early as 1919, Unlike "resident agents", who are in the country legally as diplomats, they are not immune from prosecution if caught, The first illegal was sent to the US in 1921, according to the Mitrokhin archive, Famous illegals include Rudolf Abel, unmasked as a Soviet spy in the US in 1957, and Richard Sorge, who posed as a Nazi journalist in Japan during the war, In 2010, 10 Russian "sleeper agents" on a long-term mission to spy on US policy makers were exposed - including Anna Chapman (pictured). Steve Kroft: But you had been thinking about it all along, hadn't you? After passing a lie-detector test he was told that he was free to go and, even more remarkably, that the FBI would help him fulfil his dream of becoming an American citizen. While living as Jack Barsky, he married Penelope, an immigrant from Guyana, when she became pregnant in 1986. Dyson, who had travelled via Belgrade, Rome, Mexico City and Chicago, "immediately vanished into thin air", having served his purpose. Say that three times real fast. I was born in Orange. The project in Baikonur that he had claimed to be working on for many years had ended in 1978. To begin with Barsky lived in constant fear for his life, remembering that threat on the subway platform. [1] He ignored it for several months, until another KGB agent met him in the subway and quietly told him he needed to follow orders or he would wind up dead. [7] For several years, he led a double life, with a wife and son in East Germany and a wife and daughter in the United States. It's impossible to briefly summarize that life. No. It was called the "Valley of the Clueless.". One morning, on a subway platform a resident agent delivered a chilling message: "You have got to come home or else you're dead.". For the next couple of years, the KGB put Dittrich through elaborate tests and then in 1973 he was summoned to East Berlin, to this former Soviet military compound. As we first reported in May, what makes Jack Barsky's story even more remarkable is he's never spent a night in jail, the Russians declared him dead a long time ago, he's living a quiet life in upstate New York and has worked in important and sensitive jobs. US Election 2020: Results and exit poll in maps and charts, US election results: Trump sues as path to victory over Biden narrows. "I was trying to repair a marriage that was slowly falling apart. "My loyalties to communism and the homeland and Russia, they were still pretty strong. Six feet three and dressed in nondescript clothes, with salt-and-cinnamon hair parted to the side, Barsky both sticks out and blends in. But he also remembered their "morally superior" attitude to the Aids epidemic - their belief that it "served the Americans right" and their determination to protect the motherland from infection. AIDS, Jewish people and Ronald Reagan. And, the reason that the Americans did so well was because they exploited all the third-world countries. These were meant to help Soviet businesses upgrade their systems, but Barsky doesn't know if they were ever used. Jack Barsky: Oh yeah. Joe Reilly: Within, I'd say, the first two weeks that we had microphones in his house, he had an argument with his wife in the kitchen. "I was so lucky and so was my family that the decision-makers were nice enough to say, 'Well, you were so well-established, we don't want to disrupt your life,'" he says. He thought his old life was over and done. On the other hand, the KGB's original plan for him might actually have worked, he says. "Well, I worked on a farm." And I, I told him that this didn't have to be the worst day of his life. Terrified that his cover might be blown, he scooped up any documents with his name on them and marched out of the office in a feigned temper at all this red tape. I need to get clean with the past. And he was taking a bigger chance that the KGB wouldn't retaliate for disobeying an order. Any violence was left to others; in fact he says he never even received weapons training. [2] When Dittrich was 14, he was sent away to boarding school. [4] He established his identity first by obtaining a membership card at the American Museum of Natural History, followed by a library card, a driver's license and finally a Social Security card. But my comeback was, "Yeah, my mother was German and we spoke a lot of German at home.". "This kind of double life wears on you. Jack Barsky: Absolutely not. He arrived in New York in the Autumn of 1978, at the age of 29, posing as a Canadian national, William Dyson. They live in upstate New York where Jack has worked as director of software development for a company that manages New York's high voltage power grid, a critical piece of U.S. infrastructure. “I was a gentleman spy,” Barsky says with a smile. He has even managed to reconnect with the family he left behind in Germany, although his first wife, Gerlinde, is still not speaking to him. '", .css-po6dm6-ItalicText{font-style:italic;}Deep Undercover - My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America, by Jack Barsky and Cindy Coloma, is published next month. Left to his own devices on how to apply for a social number!... as honestly as a bicycle messenger and began attending Baruch College in Manhattan, he! Identity and that was slowly falling apart, otherwise I would n't mind meeting one or two of those I... Ever find out who he really leave his beloved baby daughter Chelsea behind forever case, Tech to spot mood! 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