WEBVTT - Episode 5: A Different Set of Rules 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:15.880 Pushkin previously on Hot Money. I don't know. It's a 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:20.759 kind of almost like a Sharon Stone moment from Basic Instinct. 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:24.639 You know the plot of Basic Instinct where she she 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:28.760 murders her husband. But that's also the plot of the 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:30.920 book she's written, so it couldn't possibly be true. 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:35.760 Do you know about this life sized Trump figure in 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:41.519 the office and his marshal's office and his altar of 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:47.720 Russian officers kept Yeah, those heads. 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:48.280 Yeah. 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:52.839 I think the biggest tragedy of Jan Marzialek is he 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:57.680 probably could have earned millions gazillions with his charm and 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:02.480 his wit and his business cumin and his skills, that 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:04.040 he didn't need to be. 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:06.440 What he turned out to be. 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:19.920 This is Porta Cule, which is the kind of marina 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.679 in the center of Monaco, just below the ward of 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:25.400 Monte Carlo. The hills kind of rise up on either 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:27.920 side around it, the casino on the left and on 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:29.760 the right up there as the old town and the 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:33.559 royal palace, and all along the edges of the marina 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:39.200 here are huge boats. I'm in Monaco on the Codazure 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:42.240 in the south of France. You're not spotting with my 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:46.360 former editor Paul Murphy. Yeah, that's a big one. 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:47.119 I know. 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:51.720 It's a big s Yeah, that one's really that must 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:57.480 be sixty or something. Yeah, well then okay, yeah, this 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:02.200 one is a small cruise ship. Paul covered finance in 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.400 London for years and he knows this part of the 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:08.720 world pretty well. A sunny place for shady people. You know, 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:10.920 you come here because this is sort of a nowhere 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:15.360 place in a way. You know, it's a fantasy world playground. Well, 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:17.799 there are specific reasons people do come here. 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:17.960 Up. 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.720 You know, there's text, right, because there isn't any income 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:26.480 text right, There's security is quite important. 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:30.680 Security because they won't be snooped on or I think 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:33.440 that's what I but also just kind of old fashioned. 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:36.200 Won't get robbed, right, won't get in there. 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:37.280 Yeah. 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:42.440 I mean it's just a place where money talks, isn't it. 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:45.639 It's also been in recent years the place where wealthy 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:49.000 Russians come to summer, even now with most of the 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:54.959 country's oligarchs under European sanctions, it's packed full of Russian visitors. 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:57.040 Not that you'd be able to tell that from the marina, 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.520 where on a balmy June evening super yacht after super 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:03.280 yacht is lined up getting hosed down by its crew. 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:07.080 Almost all of them are flying a Maltese flag, not 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.240 because they're from Malta, but because you can register ownership 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:14.480 of your yacht there anonymously. This is a place where 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:17.760 the super rich can remain under the radar and live 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:22.040 by their own rules, which might bring someone to mind. 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:22.840 You know. 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:26.720 On the three occasions I had lunch with Yan Marslek 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:30.480 in London, well, first two in London, the third one 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:35.360 in Munich, he would always choose the most expensive lunching venue. 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:40.440 Marslik is attracted to kind of over wealth, displays of 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:45.560 over wealth. It clearly is always liked to rub shoulders 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:48.720 with the super rich, and this is a great place 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:52.200 to do it and as such a natural place for 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:53.560 the Marslek to appear. 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.280 And before the collapse of Wildcard, Yan Masslek was here 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:05.440 on the Kuda's often socializing, carousing and hanging out with 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:08.880 lots of Russians. There's one year during this period in 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:12.760 his life that seems to have particular relevance twenty fourteen, 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:16.640 the year Russia first invaded Ukraine and the year some 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:19.440 say a transformative thing happened to Marcelect down here in 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:22.880 the sun. The most significant and secretive thing that can 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:26.000 happen in the life of a spy the moment he 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.839 may have chosen to really dedicate himself to serving Russia's interests. 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.279 At the time, most Europeans were growing more afraid, more 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:38.080 wary of Russia's intentions, more skeptical of the Kremlin's interest 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:43.480 in peace. But Marcelek, a young, talented and successful European businessman, 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:47.760 went the other way. I think some people end up spies, 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:52.120 traitors against their better interests. They get tricked into serving 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:56.000 someone else's cause. Some spies get seduced into it, and 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:59.960 some spies get blackmailed, but some they do it beca 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:03.400 because they want to, because they believe in something, a 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:11.120 loyal to something, and they are the perfect spies. I'm 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:14.159 Sam Jones and from the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:19.039 This is Hot Money, Agent of Chaos, Episode five, A 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:31.440 different set of rules. The most widely reported story of 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:34.440 how Marslek was recruited by Russia is set just a 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.719 few miles away from Monaco in the Port at Nice. 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:41.520 It's a moment that could reveal some clues as to 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:44.520 why he chose his path so I went to see 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:47.600 the spot. I mean, we're standing just like meters from 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:52.680 the stern of one of these yachts, and could have 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:54.279 just been one like this where they would have just 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:56.960 been sat there, you know, around a table, having drinks 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:03.240 or whatever. Talking for Natalia's thirtieth birthday. Natalia's lobina, a 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:07.240 glamorous woman Jan Maslek was dating while also dating his 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:11.960 long term girlfriend in Munich. Natalia is Russian, there isn't 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:15.440 too much information available about her. Many of her records 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:19.159 have been blanked from Russian state databases. One thing I 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.960 can say about her is that in her youth she 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:25.919 appeared in a schlocky semi pornographic lesbian vampire flick called 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:30.719 Red Lips two Bloodlust, and in this film, Natalia plays 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.039 the role of a KGB assassin who murders her victims 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:38.400 with a deadly nerve agent, which, apart from the murdering, 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:42.159 is perhaps a particularly curious case of art prefiguring life, 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:46.320 because by the time her thirtieth birthday rolled around, she 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:53.919 had developed close connections to Russia's intelligence services. It was 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:57.919 a warm July evening in twenty fourteen a port camera 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.760 captured Marcelek striding to warwards a mega yacht, where he's 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:04.640 greeted by Natalia before they climb on board to join 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.320 a group of men. We know all this thanks to 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.320 an article from a consortium of journalists that was published 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:14.720 in Germany's Deshpiegel and other outlets in twenty twenty four, 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.000 and although there are differing interpretations of what exactly happened, 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.560 the setting and who was there are known thanks to 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:28.000 that camera footage and from people who attended at this party. 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:33.760 Natalia introduces Marcelek to a man named Staz Staz Pittlinsky, 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:37.560 a Russian military man who has connections to the gru 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:41.840 Russian military intelligence and the agency we understood Marcelect be 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:46.240 working with in Libya. And what some reporters say happened 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:49.960 is this on the yacht, Stas recruitian to work for 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.520 Russian intelligence. They quote a source who witnessed the early 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:57.160 days of Marcelec's friendship with Staz. They say, you can 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:02.880 see Marcelek from two perspectives, Marcelect before Stas and Marcelek 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:09.480 after Stas. This possible moment of Marcelec's recruitment is fascinating 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.480 to me, partly because it's a story we've all heard 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:15.960 a version of before. It's that old tale of doing 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.960 a deal with dark forces, the Faust legend, a fable 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:22.640 that's been told over and over again in different forms. 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:26.320 That's one reason why recruitment has this mythology around it. 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.000 But actually it's a little unhelpful to consider it as 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.680 just a handshake with the devil, because recruitment almost never 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:38.400 happens in a single moment. It's a process. I needed 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:40.760 to speak to someone who could tell me more about 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:44.560 how that works and understand the significance of this moment 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:48.680 in Nice because we know already that Marcelek did say yes. 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:57.040 What we still don't know is why Hi Boris Hiatleo Sam. 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:02.599 This is Boris Boris Voladavski today. He's a historian specializing 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:07.040 in Cold War spying and a filmmaker. Everything went well 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:08.079 with the filming. 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:11.640 Absolutely absolutely, We're finishing, but still working at day and night. 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:16.680 He's seventy and has a mildly exaggerated anglophile pose to 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:19.920 his dress, low ties and waistcoats and umbrellas and so on. 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:25.559 Boris's film is a semi dramatized documentary. It's called Spy 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:31.360 Capital two and it's all about Jan Marcelek. So like me, 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.560 Boris has been spending a lot of time trying to 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:38.400 get into Marcelek's head. But I'm not actually interested in 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:42.120 speaking to Boris just because of this film. I'm interested 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:46.640 because Boris is himself a former Russian intelligence officer. 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:52.600 It's very simple concerning my rather short participation with Russian 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.080 special forces, which I was an office of spetsnaz what 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:58.600 is called normally into worst sleeper agents. 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:02.600 So if anyone is going to be able to credibly 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:18.720 interpret mas Lex recruitment, perhaps it's Boris. In the nineteen eighties, 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:21.880 Boris was fresh out of university with a bevy of 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.520 European languages under his belt. That's when he was drawn 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:29.320 into an elite cadret of three hundred Russian special agents 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:33.800 whose mission was to infiltrate European states and wait for 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:37.880 an expected war between the USSR and the West. Do 0:10:37.920 --> 0:10:40.400 you know where they would have sent you? Was it 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:43.120 Germany or Austria? Did they disclose that? Oh? 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.920 Yes, I know, definitely. The first destination should have been Germany, 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:50.720 and we studied Germany in every detail, and from Germany, 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.320 after a couple of years in Germany, it was to 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:54.600 be a transfer to England. 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:00.760 Boris spent six years training for this mission, turned into 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:03.000 a lethal secret machine. 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:10.559 There were very interested in linguistic exercises, psychological linguistics, practical linguistics, 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:15.280 phonetics and other things. And toward the diving, mountaineering, parachuting, 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:18.360 martial arts or all those sorts of things. We were 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:22.800 to handle, all sorts of handguns, submachine guns, pistols, all 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:24.559 those sorts of things. That was interesting. 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:27.400 This is a bit of a funny question, but did 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:30.600 you believe in what you were being trained to do? 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.720 What was your sense of loyalty? 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:33.960 Like? 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:36.199 Was it too Russia? Did you believe in the purpose 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:37.080 of what was going on? 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:42.200 It was much less a kind of ideology or propaganda, 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.920 but more of fun and interest in what you were 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.360 going through and how you were trained. 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:54.680 Boris didn't recruit new agents, but he did know a 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.360 lot about how the GIU worked. So I asked Boris, 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:01.959 how would the GIU you go about recruiting someone like 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:02.840 Jan Masselek. 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:08.800 There's a long check, there's a so called development of 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:12.600 the target in order to know him better, to know 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:15.160 whether he is inclined in this or that way, to 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:20.800 collaborate with foreign intelligence service, whether he is inclined to 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:28.800 provide information that is needed from him. And if Moscow decides, 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:32.480 and it is always Moscow who decides. If Moscow decided 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:36.480 that this person can be and should be recruited, then 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:39.800 they work out ways of how to recruit this person. 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:43.800 So initially you'd have someone that would identify a potential target, 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.160 and then you'd have a period of development where you 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:50.880 would watch them, maybe test them a little bit, sort 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.800 of introduce figures into their life, see how they respond, 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:56.559 see if they're suitable as an agent to recruit. 0:12:57.200 --> 0:12:59.960 That's correct, Yes, and even in the so called easy 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.040 cases that might go one for three months, six months, 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:04.520 for a year, or even longer. 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:11.000 Right, And what kind of things would a GIU officer 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:15.440 be looking for, I mean psychologically, what kind of person 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:19.720 or profile might they see as somebody that's vulnerable to recruitment. 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:24.040 A person that should be judged vulnerable for recruitment is 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:27.880 somebody who has something negative like here is very much 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:33.160 interested in money, in women and getting promotion, in getting business. 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:35.319 Somebody who is interested in something. 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.640 And of course that kind of weakness isn't only found 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:40.679 in greedy businessmen. 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.360 If we are talking about recruiting a journalist, for example, 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.720 it would be somebody who would get access, suddenly, get 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:53.920 access to information sensitive inside information, would be admitted, for example, 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.600 to some Kremlin Kremlins briefings, or get access to some 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:01.720 persons within the Kremlins, and imustration from my chair something. 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:05.640 Now. I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:07.880 when I used to cover defense for the Ft, this 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:09.760 kind of thing happened to me. A couple of times 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:13.400 I got offered access that seemed too good to be true, 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:16.360 though not with the Russians. And to be clear, I 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:20.200 wasn't recruited, and maybe I was just being hypervigilant, but 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:23.520 even at the time, I remember thinking something felt slightly off. 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:26.800 And it reminds me a little bit too of Marcelek 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:30.000 giving Paul the k Novechok document. One way I see 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:32.960 that is as an enticement, a suggestion that if Paul 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.080 played ball, there might be more juicy information to come. 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:40.080 When I think about marceleg and Nice, I can tick 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:42.800 off a lot of the factors that Boris mentions. By 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:46.360 twenty fourteen, he'd been traveling to Russia for years, so 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.320 he was almost certainly on the radar of Russian intelligence. 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:52.960 He was evidently interested in money. His whole lifestyle was 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:56.200 fueled by it. He had a weakness for attractive women, 0:14:56.840 --> 0:15:00.400 and of course he had another big weakness too, he 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:04.280 was a fraudster. So one way you could interpret that 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.840 day is like this. Here was Jan Marcelek, by this 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.480 point already secretly breaking the law, partying on a yacht 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.600 with a Russian fem fetale who wasn't his long term girlfriend. 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:20.080 A perfect set of opportunities for blackmail. And yet Boris 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:25.600 believes that there's much more to it. Boris says he 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:29.720 has directly spoken with Stas Polinski, the supposed GRU agent 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.480 who was on the yacht. We haven't been able to 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.600 get in contact with him ourselves, Boris says. Staz is 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:39.200 in Moscow and keeping a low profile. He says Staz 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:42.840 probably spoke to him so freely because they're both Russians 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:47.040 and both from an intelligence world. And Stas told him 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:49.400 he didn't recruit Marcelek. 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:53.280 He had never recruited Marsalk as presented in this in 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:56.200 the media in most of the newspapers, because this was 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:56.840 not his job. 0:15:56.920 --> 0:15:59.240 So, just to be clear, Boris, you had a long 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:03.600 conversation with Stas by phone at you reached him in Moscow, 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:08.000 and based on that, you're very clear that he is 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:10.520 not a person who could have performed that function of 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:11.360 being a recruiter. 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:14.280 Absolutely in our way, Absolutely in our way, a recruiter 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:17.280 is a very specific job, and if we were talking 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:21.000 about somebody or would be sent to recruit a person 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:24.600 like Marsalk that would be a specially trained recruiter. But 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.440 that definitely not happen, So we are absolutely sure that 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:30.320 Petinski did not recruit Marsalic. 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:36.640 I have some questions about Boris's conversation with Stas. I 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:40.400 think any intelligence officer would deny recruiting an asset, and 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:43.760 I wonder if Boris's view of recruitment is perhaps a 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:46.960 bit outdated based on his own experience from his time 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.040 in the GIU in the nineteen eighties, because, as I 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:54.480 understand Russia's modern intelligence agencies, their activities can be much 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.920 less formalized, much less constrained in who they engage with 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:03.320 to work for them. I'm also thinking Boris is a 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:07.960 trained undercover intelligence officer formerly of the same service Marcelek 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:11.800 is alleged to work for to play Devil's advocate. I 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:15.960 suppose people might say, well, you know, Boris, you're former 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:19.600 GIU officer. Maybe you're just saying that too, because that's 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:23.080 what the Kremlin wants you to say to minimize this scandal. 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:25.040 What's your response to that. 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:27.400 I am response to that that I have not been 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:30.720 a JIU office in the past thirty years the country. 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:34.040 I am an intelligence historian who is writing books that 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:39.000 are very very much unliked in Russia. I am doing investigations. 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:44.680 I'm identifying Russian agents. I am identifying in my books 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:49.200 how Russian intelligence services work. I show their weak parts, 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:53.320 I show their strong parts. I explain how the structure operates. 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:57.520 I am giving plenty of interviews, writing plenty of articles myself, 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:02.520 doing films that, of course are very much negatively viewed 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:06.720 at by Moscow by the Kremlin. So no way that 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.960 I have been corroborating with them since I left the 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.240 country voluntarily more than thirty years ago. 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:18.040 That's fair, I think, although it does strike me that 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:20.520 his answer sounds like it could be a little bit rehearsed, 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:25.439 but then he's probably been asked this question before. Setting 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.280 these downs aside, I'm still intrigued by the thrust of 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:31.080 what Boris is telling me. To be clear, Boris isn't 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.080 saying Marcelec didn't work for the Russians. He's just saying 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:39.160 it's more complicated than that. Boris's interpretation is that Marcelek 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.359 is not an agent, but what he describes as a collaborator, 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:46.520 a kind of top tier freelancer. He thought that he 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.800 could set up his own private. 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:53.840 Business intelligence organization to do jobs that he thought would 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:57.439 be interesting for him and for the Russians, because he 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:02.080 was quite obviously pitching this that kind of operation to 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:04.800 the Russians, and the Russian said, yes, we might be interested. 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:07.800 On oh, this is not interested for us at the moment. 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.120 I think there's something in this idea. I don't get 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:14.959 the impression that Marcelek is just someone taking orders from 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:17.440 the Russians. I think he has his own agency in 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:21.560 all of this. There are tantalizing digital traces of Stas 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:24.719 and Yan's friendship over the years. One I've got in 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:27.679 my mind in particular sticks out. It's a picture from 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.160 a birthday party Stas's. I think he's got a cake 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:33.600 in front of him, a huge grin on his face, 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.400 empty wineglasses dot the table, and Yanis sat right next 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.520 to him, leaning towards him. There's an intimacy to it. 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.760 This doesn't seem like the kind of relationship you'd have 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:47.119 with someone who has blackmailed you or coerced you in 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.520 some other way. So I asked Boris. If Marcelek is 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.840 a freelancer, why might he have wanted to work with 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:55.520 stas with Russia. 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.800 He would probably be interested to take the Russian side, 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:06.600 because for him, Russia would be acting properly and more 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:10.280 correct than the West, for example. And if he were 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:13.600 offered an offer whether to offer his services to the 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:18.560 British intelligence or to the Russian intelligence, he psychologically, politically 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:24.480 and ideologically would probably choose Russia rather than Britain. Why 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:27.720 do you think that is he was a free, truly 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:30.240 free man in Russia, or at least that's what he 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:33.000 thought he was, or he is in Russia while he 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:36.399 was there. It's not freedom as we understand it. They're 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:39.600 thinking that living in Moscow, in Moscow specifically, not in Russian. 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:42.959 In Moscow, they live in an absolutely free society. They 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:43.640 do what they want. 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:46.920 It's a sort of freedom of privilege. It's a freedom 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:52.159 to break a few rules and not be put in jailtely. 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:55.520 Absolutely correct, absolutely correct, and specifically, when you collaborate with 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.960 intelligence services, you understand that you belong to the elite 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:01.840 of the society, can do you want and nobody can 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:02.879 do anything against you. 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:07.439 Mulling over what Boris has said, the zill lanes in 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:11.400 Moscow come to mind. They are segregated lanes in Moscow's 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:15.080 big arterial roads, reserved for the use of the nomenclatura, 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:18.919 the most important people in the ruling administration. They're a 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:21.840 symbol of what being in the intelligence and government elite 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:27.840 in Russia means a different set of rules. Russia is 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:31.680 still a kind of feudal society where power doesn't flow evenly. 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:37.159 It coalesces around people, not institutions or laws. And I 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:40.720 think that's the point to grasp. Marcelet could always operated 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:44.399 by different rules his own, where he could rules that 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:47.800 don't constrain his image of self, his freedom and ambission. 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:50.520 All of this reminds me of what I heard from 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:54.199 Marcelec's old classmates in Kloster Neuberg. Sat in school in 0:21:54.240 --> 0:21:56.760 the library, in front of that computer whenever he could 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.280 be there, excusing himself from lessons others had to sit through, 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:04.720 maybe because he was already more capable. There's a big 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:07.399 gap between leaving home in nineteen ninety eight and fleeing 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:11.320 to Moscow in twenty twenty years a fugitive though twenty 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:15.119 two years, and a big psychological jump, because many of 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:17.479 us have become more afraid of Russia in this period, 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:22.520 convinced of its malign intentions, unsettled by its persecution of 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:26.800 dissidence at home, its throttling of democracy, and its hatred 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:31.600 of liberal values like sexual tolerance, and its actual warmongering. 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:35.080 For a long time, I struggled to understand how Marcelect 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:37.760 could have been drawn to all of that. That is, 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:40.879 until someone got in touch, someone who opened up a 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:43.800 whole new perspective on where Marcelect's affinity for Russia might 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:45.080 have come from. 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:48.840 I was struck because there was one dimension missing here. 0:22:51.040 --> 0:23:10.200 That's coming up after the break. After the Ft first 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:13.560 outed Marcelek as a Russian asset, I got an interesting 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:18.639 email from an Austrian historian, Thomas Riegler. Thomas wrote to 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:21.000 say he'd found an element of the Marterlek story that 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:22.159 no one else had noticed. 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:22.560 So far. 0:23:23.760 --> 0:23:28.119 Everybody was like reporting, okay, Jan Marshalik is so fond 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:34.720 of James bond Jan Marshalik likes military stuff and everything, 0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:40.040 and he really enjoys being an operative in this secret struggle. 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:43.679 Where does it come from? And here I think his 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:46.320 personal history comes into play. 0:23:47.400 --> 0:23:51.520 Thomas's passion is spending time in the archives researching spying, 0:23:52.000 --> 0:23:55.160 a subject close to him because it dominates the history 0:23:55.160 --> 0:23:57.560 of the city and the country he lives in. 0:23:58.359 --> 0:24:03.400 There was always this topic of Vienna being a spy capital, 0:24:03.720 --> 0:24:09.399 but nobody actually could say what that meant. Yeah, and 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:12.280 so my research was always to get to the bottom 0:24:12.320 --> 0:24:16.399 of this. Why is actually Vienna being referred to as 0:24:16.440 --> 0:24:17.360 a spire capital. 0:24:20.760 --> 0:24:24.160 In Austria, spying is basically legal as long as you're 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:29.640 not doing it against the Austrian state itself. Since it's independence, 0:24:29.920 --> 0:24:34.000 Austria has considered itself a neutual country. A huge debate 0:24:34.119 --> 0:24:37.560 still rages about what that actually means, but one thing 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:40.760 it's led to is Austria applying an extremely light touch 0:24:41.000 --> 0:24:44.040 when policing the activities of other powers on its own soil. 0:24:45.000 --> 0:24:47.360 It's exactly for that reason that there are so many 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:50.919 spies in Vienna, because it's the safest city in Europe 0:24:50.920 --> 0:24:53.760 for them to operate in, and there are a lot, 0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:58.760 particularly Russian ones. That's also partly because of where it is. 0:24:59.400 --> 0:25:03.119 Vienna is in the very center of Europe. Atlantic countries, 0:25:03.280 --> 0:25:06.440 the core of that idea we call the West, sometimes 0:25:06.520 --> 0:25:08.719 have a bit of a mental block in grasping this. 0:25:09.720 --> 0:25:12.679 Austria tends to intuitively get labeled as a kind of 0:25:12.760 --> 0:25:16.800 mini Germany, but Vienna, the city that invented the Croissant, 0:25:17.320 --> 0:25:22.480 is closer to Ukraine than it is to France. During 0:25:22.480 --> 0:25:25.720 the Cold War, politically Austria might have been relegated to 0:25:25.760 --> 0:25:29.600 the minor league, but under the surface, Vienna actually became 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:33.080 a new center of the great hidden geopolitical games of 0:25:33.119 --> 0:25:36.520 the time, and for Russia in particular, it was a 0:25:36.560 --> 0:25:38.119 crucial window into the West. 0:25:38.720 --> 0:25:42.480 It's the kind of a launching pet for operations beyond 0:25:42.640 --> 0:25:46.920