Jack Barsky is the host in the video above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barsky
In December 1988, while Barsky was living in
Queens, the KGB apparently believed his cover had been compromised. He was alerted on his way to work when he saw a small splash of red paint on the subway platform.
[3] The red paint was a predefined signal of the highest emergency, ordering him to immediately report to the
Soviet Embassy in Canada to return to East Germany.
[3] Concerned about the welfare of his infant daughter, Barsky decided he could not return.
[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.
[3] He falsely told his handlers he had contracted
HIV and needed to stay in the United States for treatment, relying on the KGB's fear of
HIV/AIDS being spread in the Soviet Union. He promised them he would never defect.
[8][1] They either accepted his lie or were unable to extract him.
[2]
Meanwhile, the KGB reportedly told his German wife, who knew he was a spy, that he was dead.
[1] She reported him missing and then filed for divorce.
[4] His mother, who last saw him in 1986, truly believed he had gone missing in the Soviet Union. For years, she desperately searched for him, contacting the German embassies in Moscow and even writing to Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1996, investigators with the
German Foreign Office determined that the story he had told his mother was a lie. The project in Baikonur that he had claimed to be working on for many years had ended in 1978. His mother was diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease and died without knowing the truth.
[4]
In 1989, the
Berlin Wall began coming down, followed by the
collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. In 1992, a KGB defector to Great Britain named
Vasili Mitrokhin provided information to
MI6 about Soviet spy operations around the world, including the name "Barsky" in the United States.
[1]
The
FBI located Barsky in 1994 and observed him for three years, bugging his house and even buying the home next to his in Pennsylvania. An FBI agent moved into the house next door and monitored Barsky's every movement to determine whether or not he was still an active agent in a
sleeper cell. The FBI contacted the elderly parents of the real Jack Barsky, who had died as a child in 1955, out of fear they would happen to discover their dead son's
identity had been stolen and would alert local authorities. Although upset, the Barskys agreed not to disclose the information.
[5]
The FBI investigation quickly escalated when one day in 1997, during a fight with his soon-to-be ex-wife being recorded by the FBI, Barsky confessed that he was actually a spy.
[4][7] Shortly after that, Barsky was pulled over by the police on his way home from work and taken into FBI custody. During interrogation, Barsky quickly confessed his real identity and that he had stopped spying in 1988. He shared his knowledge of KGB espionage training and the
modus operandi of Russian sleeper agents.
[4] The FBI determined that he was no longer an active spy and found him to be a valuable source of information about spy techniques. He was never charged with any crime.
[1]
