he is an author and i teach specialist and former sleeper agent of the k g b who spied on the united states from one thousand nine hundred seventy eight to eighty eight exposed after the cold war jack became a resource for united states counter intelligence agencies and was allowed to remain in the united states his autobiography deep undercover was published in two thousand and seventeen and he frequently speaks of his experiences and as an expert on espionage welcome jack you know i'm glad to be with you one thing you failed to mention that i worked for five years in princeton oh my god yes i realized you were in princeton as i read something about you somewhere and you met your current wife in princeton right yes that's correct yes so you know exactly where we are saying you were born in east germany after the war and you use wrote the entire trajectory of my life is rooted in the geographic location of my birth so can you say a little bit more about that but i may have to add another piece of information i'm talking about the intersection of time and location yes in a time one thousand nine hundred nine is four years after the war ended location was in the eastern half of germany that was occupied by the russians that determined where that part of the country was going into the future and that's where grew up yes so west german a on the one hand started to arrive in germany did not and yeah that is correct the major difference was that the difference was that the united states invested in west germany and the russians took everything that wasn't securely in the old down out of the eastern part of the country which they could have should have maybe because of reparations but it didn't help was right and you know it occurs to me i who write about it that you know  poverty and you know food a good nutritious food wasn't easily available but that pretty much most people were in the same condition so you didn't perceive yourself as being deprived is that correct that is correct this was post world war everybody pretty much had the same opportunities and it limited choices right yeah you know i grew up in a small village smart and you were taught to be a hard worker and i gather that the one of the things that really made you a good candidate for being a spy was you were also extremely competitive and like to win and do well and it's so you ended up in the university of what i called yanna and you were studying to be a chemistry professor i was studying to get a message degree in chemistry and i absolutely killed it i mean i graduated with a perfect average and i got a national scholarship and it wasn't necessarily because i was the smartest but i was really smart person with good work habits and a good sense of what might come up on a test i was a really really good test takers and really good under pressure that's something that you need to be when you do good work but so there you are and there's something else that you describe that you know your parents took pair of you but they didn't in any way gentle foot and they told me my father had a motorcycle then they told me to walk to the doctor which was about a half a mile away wow so i mean it's shocking to us and i'm sure you wouldn't have your children do it  there you were and again i think you implied that this kind of learning to be self sufficient like nobody's looking out after you really also contributed to bringing something to the secret undercover work it clearly did if i may elaborate a little bit without getting into detail that there was an interview that was given by the next head of the k g b who was asked specifically what kind of characteristics they were looking for in the candidates for this kind of work and he mentioned about ten and i fit easily fit nine out of ten wow and so so it was a real targeted search you know that once dig up with me they really were looking for do i have this this this and this i didn't know anything any of that you know this was all done in the secrecy and right when he told me anything so you were first he and i thought there was a lot it was very close cooperation in the field turns out what i found out much later not not too long ago the cooperation was somewhat limited so he was probably k g b already from the enjoying the company that was such an idiotic question because in those days i don't know what he didn't know but he must not know and much of anything in those days people who graduated from college were assigned  so so there was no there was absolutely no recruiting on going on on campus everybody got an assignment except for the top five percent they had sort of choices like me i would have had a choice but no company ever went  him well just playing for time i knew there was something else coming ok you know i played a game with him i know i knew about more about him than he knew about me already because you his life was just a very awkward and we we we engage in small talk for about ten minutes and then he changed his tune and he said you know what i'm really from the government and ok so now we're going one step further i avoided making him look really foolish by asking by not asking what part of the government i am from so so you know we went back and forth it was sort of almost like shadow boxing and eventually he came out with what he came for and there was whether i would be interested one day and working for the government another sort of awkward question that didn't make much sense but you know i know what he meant and i said yes but not as a chemist that or he wanted to hear we were talking so  more time in a local restaurant and then we had yet another meeting oh by the way i know exactly what i ordered it was the most expensive item on the menu i got it for you and in the second time there was another fellow there and he introduced this guy and the guy opened his mouth and i heard the russian accent didn't take a look in a couple of minutes my friend whom i never knew who'd never introduced himself by name  who are you what do you think you want to do in the future what are your strengths who how do you who do you think you are were your weaknesses could you imagine one day to go undercover and initially the the the target would have been west germany that makes sense because you don't have a language barrier and very little of a cultural barrier and so slowly but surely then he started then you fed me some stuff that i  dress or do they have some relative in the west and so i had to sort of sneak around under cover and tell people something who i was not such as a student who was doing a survey blah blah blah and then you know and strike up a conversation and lead the conversation in the direction that they would spit out the information without knowing that that is what i was after that kind of stuff so what didn't like what we hear perception were you just kind of you know doing what they asked her to do kind of with the idea of let me see where this leads yeah that's a that's a that's a good question that i can only answer with the us curious this and one of the main character traits of mine is curiosity i always when something comes out me person device i always want to look see what they were actually investing in you and wanting you to be a spy well that the whole thing came to a climax when about a already employed by the university how do i take three weeks off he said the don't worry about it we'll we'll arrange it through the military this is a short term assignment you know national security blah blah blah no problem so he sent me to berlin and that's where in berlin when i arrived there i had my first sort of secret meeting all i had was a street address a street corner and  some code words and a couple of things on me that would allow the other person to recognize me recognize each other that was our first secret meeting i'm going to interject something here i want to ask a question because before the wall came down i was in berlin and went to the east side on the west side so not a magic dramatic difference and i had lived in the west but you had not lived in the west at all and i suddenly you go to the west berlin like what was your first no anybody who had cataracts knows that you know you get used to seeing the world in sort of grade and brown and shades and when i was able to look through my new lenses oh my lord there is cooler in the world same thing east to west i mean the east was literally me and you were there it was great and brown to come create a pair yeah apparently they didn't have any paint even the old towns were not really maintained well you you you get into you are given access to a magazine so you're getting a person one thing that's happening on the west but clearly you probably have never seen like a james bond movie so that you know we didn't have the north of the spy i had the myth of the he spied for the k g b in japan and he gave stalin really really good information about you know whether japan would enter the war and when that was st didn't trust him when and when zorra was uncovered by a japanese the russians denied that they had any connection with him and he was executed that part they didn't teach us in east germany yeah because i do remember and i think i hope i'm not getting it wrong but that's when you first watch sesame street now right and that never was before of the when when i finally got an apartment i was i had how to watch western television was a task my goodness you can't you can't have a better job than that i wake up in the morning you know i go across the street get get get myself some some breakfast rolls make some coffee  start eating and turn on sesame street it was the german translation of the of the original it was lovely and but by the way my german wife when i first met her we both  we both agreed to sesame street was one of the best programs ever on t v i think that's hysterical i think it's great yes ok so now let's segue from you're doing this little missions and they're kind of testing you i think one of the things that really became apparent to me is their willingness to invest in a long time absolutely it's huge this willing to wait and see and program and trade and by the wayside for one reason or another and he said you know you send out so many most of them will not be successful but some will be invested a phenomenal amount of money and time into training people like me there weren't that many so then let's jump into at this point at some point they make a decision that you're going to go to america yes but in the meantime had you already met and married to get a linda no i i met her while i was in training in berlin she was a girlfriend and then i was moved to moscow for two years to finish my training that the entire training was about five years laughs it was because of the additional language training and went before i left for moscow i broke up with her because it's you know there was and there was really no future for us but then something went  before my departure for the u s there was a glitch in the whole program and the document that they thought they were going to get we couldn't get so they sent me back to berlin to hang hang in there sort of you know just wait your heels and this is one of the one of the one of the several weird coincidences that happened in my life so i come back to berlin go to my old apartment that i had not occupied for two years that you know in the i had visited once my second day i'm sitting in the apartment there's a knock on the door and i open the door and she stands in front of the do that sort of got lost in the sauce and so we at that point i said ok you know i fell in love with her again i went to the k g b and this is i got this woman here what about it can can i keep her at this point i was the rookie anymore i was a trained agent you know there's no way that you know you invest that much money in time that you want to let somebody go so you try to work with them and initially they thought they would send us as a couple  which they often did but she didn't qualify emotionally psychologically not strong enough so the whole idea was to get married and you know have her as an anchor back there which sort of almost worked with it hadn't been for this absolutely and that's a that's the truth as i said and i'm jumping ahead here but if i didn't this is eighteen month old child here there was no force that would have kept me in the united states no money if they put me in jail i would have waited out because i knew eventually the russians would get you out i would have gone back and what's interesting to me is that she was willing to wait all this time you know you saw her probably once every two years or whatever and she agreed to that goal in mind she this is what she told me she had made up her mind there weren't that there were too many good men around she tried others while i was gone for two years and they all turned out to be dramatic loser a nobody and then when you had a son with her mathias yes so now let's and i'm going to ask you a question here just going forward so we have about five minutes left in this half surveillance detection counter surveillance and them that they decide before you go to america that you have to speak english really well and they invested two years of you living in must right now learn english from an american woman that is correct i had to an american born woman who tutored me for twice a week for just about two years two hours each i know the die was something special because these two guys were like revered how many that didn't work with my goodness you had this there's a there's a program on on public television that profiling the lady and what she did and one thousand percent communist right and didn't know what happened around them in terms of you know the soviet union wasn't really doing as well as they thought so i have two questions quick questions before we end this first half hour one of them is you your mother didn't know what you were up to and one of the things you say is that you learned you well that there was some of it but it wasn't strong enough i i was more attached to my best ball team than to my parents or my brother for that matter now  if a decision time when i had to make a decision as to whether i want to do this kind of work or not if i had had a steady girlfriend someone he was really in love with i probably would have said no and i my best friend german friend was in the same situation and he was already over already married and when he said to and he was recruited by stars when when he asked them where can i ask and discuss it with my wife and they said no you can't  is the end of the first half hour of an interview with jacques barsky former k g b spy in the us and we hope you join us for the second half my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us