WEBVTT - 3. Two Spies Living Lies 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:09.880 And I already have one cut in sight, which I 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:13.240 got as a suspicious This. 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:15.840 Is Olegg Gordievsky, a Soviet spy. 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:17.280 There's a blue. 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:22.239 I'm not very good at some models, but I sees 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:24.200 a shape and this is a color, and it is 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:24.680 behind us. 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:25.079 Again. 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.440 It's nineteen ninety. He's filming a British TV show called 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:32.519 World in Action, where he's demonstrating how the KGB trained 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:34.360 him how to tell if he was being followed. 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:38.240 The philosophy is not to shake off the surveillance. Maybe 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:41.600 curtius to the surveillance, don't irritate them. 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:44.400 In this video clip, he's wearing a faux goo tea 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:48.360 and a wig as a disguise his short athletic build. 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.360 His sport coat and pants are slightly oversized. In other words, 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:54.240 he looks like every other middle aged man in the 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:58.960 nineteen nineties. He blends in like a spy should. 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:05.000 Now I do absolutely unexpected. I turned right to stay 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:06.880 with me. They have to make the choke, and they 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:11.840 are making the joke. I set a trap for them. 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:14.280 I bet you were expecting something a little more dramatic, 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.919 James Bond style car chase that turns into a motorcycle 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:20.920 chase that turns into a fistfight on a blimp or something. 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:27.120 But no, this is what International Super spiderm really looks like. 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:30.399 An average looking man in a wig and a fake 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.640 go te, hands placed at ten and two, driving just 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:35.000 under the speed limit. 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:38.760 You know, a bunch of ex operations, admitting that the 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:42.800 agents will not take place, but tomorrow we will try again. 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:47.200 But the movies do get one thing right. Spies like 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:52.000 Oleg Gordievski, sometimes the fate of the world does depend 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.120 on them. There's one more thing I should tell you 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:57.800 about him. He's one of the two spies who would 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:02.680 be forced to intervene during an international nuclear crisis in 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:09.120 nineteen eighty three. Listeners, pour yourself up vodka martini, shaken, 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:31.600 not stirred, because today it's all about the spies situation. 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:38.680 Norman Fucko. I'm at Helms and this is Snafu, a 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:42.720 podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On season one, we're 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:47.560 telling you the story of a snaffo that is gigantic, absurd, terrifying. 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.280 It's able Archer eighty three, the nineteen eighty three NATO 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.640 military exercise that almost led to a real nuclear war. 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:00.520 All right, here's where we're at. The Cold War was 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:03.360 heating up or was it cooling down? I don't know, 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:06.680 whatever's worse thanks to Reagan and a drop off and 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:11.440 their teeny tiny inferiority complexes. Well, what did you think 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:13.320 I was going to say? Come on, get your mind 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.800 out of the gutter. Anyway, after a year of name calling, 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.800 aggressive impulses of an evil empire, the announcement of a 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:24.360 very mysterious space project and destroy strategic ballistic missiles, and 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.680 the scheduled deployment of super speedy missiles discouraging two can 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:30.519 fly up to one thousand miles in under ten minutes, 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:34.880 let's just say the Soviets weren't feeling particularly trusting. 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:39.680 The West were wicked. The capitalists were unreliable. They would 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:41.720 trick into sie View as soon as they would look 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:43.880 you in the eye. You know, this was an evil 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:49.680 sort of Western system that these paranoid KGB officials saw 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:50.720 in the West. 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:55.000 This is Taylor Downing. He's an historian and a documentarian, 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:57.880 and boy does he have the voice for it. He 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:00.760 says that a drop Off didn't believe Thatagan's antics were 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:05.240 standard political performance. He thought Reagan was building up to 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.160 something far more sinister. 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:13.520 The fear was that the Americans had some sort of secret, 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:17.240 cunning plan to launch a preemptive strike. Obviously, in the 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:21.360 nuclear era, a surprise attack could be completely overwhelming. 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.400 Overwhelming is putting it lightly. With the new euro missiles 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:29.080 in play, the Soviet Union would need to detect an attack, 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:32.760 get word to the leaders, notify the public, scurry into bunkers, 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:38.440 and launch a retaliation, all within seven minutes. And drop 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:42.039 Off was like seventy years old. You're not exactly sprinting 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:44.360 to bunkers at that age. I mean, your knees are 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:45.480 just not what they once were. 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:49.640 They were determined that they must not ful prey to 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:51.520 a surprise attack from the West. 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:54.919 And drop Off realized the only chance for Soviet survival 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:59.240 was to see an attack coming before it even happened. 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:09.040 So Andrewpov had started this KGB program for its international 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:11.839 residences called Operation Rhyan. 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.800 So Rhon is an acronym, and it actually is spelled 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:19.279 like the name Ryan. You're gonna hear a variety of 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:22.560 pronunciations for this acronym. I'm just gonna go with Ryan. 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:27.440 So what this acronym means is nuclear missile attack. It 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:30.960 was and Dropoff's crystal ball his chance at seeing the 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.640 incoming missiles before a button was ever pushed. Nope, and 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:36.960 drop Off could not see the future. This isn't that 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:39.760 kind of show. But what he lacked in psychic ability 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:42.880 he made up for in espionage. 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:47.679 So Operation Rhiann was telling its agents abroad to look 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:51.480 for signs of the preparation for a nuclear attack. 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.800 And this is where spies like ol Ed Gordievski come in. 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:59.000 Under Operation Ryan, a global network of Soviet spies began 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:02.200 to search for clue that might indicate that an attack 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:03.799 from the West was eminent. 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:06.400 Many of these signs were very sensible. You know, our 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:10.920 hospitals being emptied in anticipation of mass casualties. 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:13.880 Were the missiles getting moved around, were blood banks increasing 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.040 their supplies. You get the idea. Signs that could rationally 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:19.599 point to the fact that the enemy is preparing for war. 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:22.839 But agents were told to look for other signs as well, 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:25.640 signs that were not so sensible. 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:28.280 We're go and count the number of lights on in 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.039 the Pentagon at night or in the Ministry of Defense 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:34.760 in London at night, because if you knew that regularly 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:37.839 there were had one hundred lights on and suddenly there 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:39.880 are two hundred lights on. My god, they must be 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:43.200 planning for a war. So the whole operation that got 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:48.640 crazier and crazier as the leadership became more and more anxious. 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.360 Every two weeks, spies would report back to KGB headquarters 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.200 with a list of all the different indicators they saw. 0:06:56.400 --> 0:06:59.719 Officials would accumulate a tally, and that taally would be 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:02.880 used to calculate when the attack was coming. 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:08.080 I was told that there was this extraordinary perspect screen 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:10.160 in the KGB sentern that dul Bianca. 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:14.200 According to Taylor, the KGB analysts had a giant screen 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:16.760 with a grid on which they would put x's for 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:17.920 each indicator. 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.120 The KGB leaders could judge the overall leftl of tension 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:24.280 simply by looking at the number of crosses on the 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:25.680 big board in the main room. 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:28.560 Once the board was full of axes, that meant the 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:33.320 West was going to attack naturally, then the Soviets could 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:37.960 prepare accordingly, sound the alarms, or worse, they could strike first. 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:42.600 It was like a tic tac toe game of death. 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.360 I mean, this is just so utterly crazy. Stanley Kubrick 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.640 could not invent this elderly savie gentlemen, you know, looking 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.000 at a big board with crosses on it, and it's 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.560 from this that decisions to launch nuclear weapons might be based. 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:01.040 Seems the craziest of satires that you could ever imagine, 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:03.560 But I was certainly told that that's what happened. 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:10.200 Kind of sounds like the world's most fucked up game show. Okay, 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:12.960 you're for the center square. How many lights are on? 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:19.920 It's the pentagon right now? Oh, I'm sorry, it's two hundred. 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:22.040 That puts an X in the center square. 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:25.920 And you know what that means. 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:30.440 That's right, Well, that's our game. I'd say, join us 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:33.199 tomorrow night, But by then all of human civilization will 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:40.560 be buried under a ton of radioactive ash. Good night, folks. Now, 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:43.920 even after a lot of digging, we can't verify exactly 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:47.360 what Ryan actually looked like a Tic Tacto board of death, 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:50.760 or more likely, an algorithm in a supercomputer in a 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.800 basement somewhere. After all, the Soviets did have a habit 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:57.640 of using technology to soothe their nuclear anxiety. But what 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:00.760 we do know is that as spies our the West 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:05.000 for these insane indicators, that data would be input into 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:08.679 Ryan which would then output a measure of the balance 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:12.679 of military power. Some sources say the Soviets believed once 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:16.679 that power balance hit sixty forty in favor of NATO, 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.280 that meant an attack from the West was imminent and 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:26.520 the Soviets needed to strike first. Does this feel crazy 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:30.440 to you? It should, because it is. This is not 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:33.120 a system, this is not science or math. It's just 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:37.959 some made up arbitrary threshold. I mean, I am truly 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:39.520 at a loss for words. 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.720 Here, completely mad, completely bizarre, completely crazy. 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:48.360 Thank you Taylor. That about sums it up crazy or not. 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.880 Operation Ryan would put spies at center stage in our 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:55.960 little Cold War story, more specifically two spies from different 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:58.880 lands who would be put on a crash course with 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:02.520 able archer a where they would be forced to act 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:04.320 to save us all. 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.599 Gordievsky was born in the late nineteen thirties. 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.160 This is Michael Goodman. He's the head of the War 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:19.439 Studies department at King's College, London. He's talking about Oleg Gordievsky, 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.400 our fake goateed spy driving instructor. 0:10:23.400 --> 0:10:26.079 He had been the son of an officer of one 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:29.719 of the KGB's precursors. Something called the NKVD, but fundamentally 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.280 it was the same thing. But in other words, he 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:35.280 was born into the sort of world of secret policing. 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:38.600 I suppose you know, espionage or something which came in 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:39.200 the blood. 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:43.600 You could argue Oleg Gordievski's brother was also a KGB agent, 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:46.600 so for him, becoming a spy was just like joining 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:49.760 the family business. Come on down to Gordievski and brothers, 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:51.280 your friendly neighborhood spies. 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:51.560 Yeah. 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.520 Now, to be honest, his career in the KGB might 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:00.839 have been pretty straightforward if it wasn't. 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:01.120 For this. 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:07.559 B Diomaggio Ripartash Katoribus jell and Zajind's mercy Stay. 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:11.199 It's nineteen fifty three, ole At Gordievski is fifteen, the 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:15.439 perfect age to get into a little geopolitical tomfoolery. He 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:17.880 had learned that he could pick up several transmissions from 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:20.960 west of the Iron Curtain. The KGB, of course, monitored 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:23.479 the radio waves closely, and if they caught a transmission 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:28.280 from the west, they jammed the signal jab seneskot iq 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:33.280 roling by nation Viktata, making the contraband broadcasts barely intelligible. 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:37.040 Western broadcasters would try to dodge the jammers. Eager to 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.080 get their clear message to Soviet citizens, they'd ease off 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:43.839 one frequency and jump to another. The KGB would chase 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:48.120 them down. The result was inevitably a game of free 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:49.520 speech squashing whack. 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:51.280 Them on abrakis busham. 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:53.920 But on this day, with his ear hovering next to 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:58.200 his short wave Baltika radio, the KGB's jamming signal wasn't 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:05.480 strong enough. This mole would go unwhacked. Gordievski was able 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:08.840 to make out a life changing broadcast from Radio Liberty 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:09.240 out of. 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:12.960 Munich boch krofiat krovi. 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:15.480 We're Sardetsky. 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:19.240 I'll translate for you. He was the worst tyrant in 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.520 the history of mankind, the greatest criminal and executioner of 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:27.480 the world has ever known. His victims numbered millions. It's 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.680 March fifth, nineteen fifty three, the day that Stalin died. 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:35.560 I mean, how's that for a eulogy. In his memoir, 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:40.040 only Gordievski recalls listening completely spellbound. He had never heard 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:44.280 the Soviet Union disparaged before. At some level, hearing those words, 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:50.160 he knew them to be true. But despite the nagging 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:53.240 feeling that the Soviet system might be a broken one. 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:57.480 Only Gordievski would go on to join the KGB. You see, 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:00.000 an ordinary Soviet life seemed a little boring to him. 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.480 As a KGB man, he could travel, experience different cultures, 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:06.599 and have adventures. He said it himself, he wanted to 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:08.360 live a magnificent life. 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:13.760 It was exciting, it was thrilling, it was romantic. 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.439 Though I didn't expect it would be as exciting in 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:20.240 my case as it jugged out to be. 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:25.520 That's because all like Gordievski would become a double agent. 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:40.000 Kordievski was twenty eight when he got his first KGB 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:41.800 assignment abroad in Copenhagen. 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:47.920 Kordievsky would have traveled under some form of cover. He 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:50.680 would not have been declared KGB officer. 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:53.439 As he passed through customs, he told the agent he 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:57.079 was a Russian diplomat. Of course he was not. That 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:59.560 was only his cover. In reality, he was a Russian 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:04.079 Internet national superspy. Of course, Danish intelligence was always suspicious 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:05.319 of a new Russian diplomat. 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:07.319 Is he what he says he is or is he 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:07.960 something else? 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:11.840 So the Danish intelligence service would scrutinize his backstory, looking 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.120 for anything that seemed inconsistent. Anything that may reveal Oleg 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:17.000 Gordievski was actually a spy. 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.320 You know where had this Russian served before? They were 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.800 a cultural latasha in Mexico and then they suddenly appeared 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:27.600 in How Sinki is a trade atasha? 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:27.840 You know? 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:29.920 Does that seem a bit old that you'd go from 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:30.480 one to the other. 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:35.240 But Olegg Gordievsky's story was air tight. He was safe 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.840 for now. He hadn't been there but a few months 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:41.720 when he and his wife were invited out to dinner 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.040 by a local police officer. Hey, that's great for them. 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:47.560 It's always so hard to make friends in a new place. 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:53.120 But Olegg must have also gotten some spy tingles. Something 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:55.960 was up. As he left the flat, he placed a 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:58.680 small dab of glue between one of the bedroom doors 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:01.280 and the doorframe. When they came back from dinner, the 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:04.840 bedroom door was wide open. The glue was dislodged. That 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:08.200 could mean only one thing. While they were out, the 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:13.040 Gordievskis had visitors olegs KGB training told them that the 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:16.520 apartment was now bugged. Was the Danish intelligence really so 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.160 sloppy that they would make such an obvious mistake? Well, 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:24.000 documents later revealed what went wrong. When the Danish intelligence 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:27.000 broke into the Gordievski's apartment, they accidentally let out his 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.360 wife's black cat. They chased the damn thing all around 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:33.200 the neighborhood before finally corralling it back into the apartment. 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.240 In the frenzy, they left the bedroom door open. I 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:41.320 can't not picture this scene in cartoon form, but hey, 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:44.400 they did manage to bug the apartment, so mission accomplished. 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:48.880 I guess from this moment on, Danish intelligence would listen 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:52.320 to Gordievsky day in and day out, waiting for him 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:55.960 to mess up, to reveal a vulnerability that they could 0:15:56.000 --> 0:16:00.720 exploit to make Gordievsky work for their side. Of course, 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.400 Gordievsky knew he was bugged, which makes it all the 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.840 more surprising that in short order he gave the Danes 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:10.920 exactly what they wanted. Gordievski's seed of discontent that was 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.840 planted all those years ago was about to be watered 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:15.720 by a fucking monsoon. 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:22.200 It was the check invasion that was the big turning points. 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:25.520 In July of nineteen sixty eight, Soviet tanks lined up 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:28.600 along the border of Czechoslovakia. The Czech leader had been 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:32.320 talking about a freer Czechoslovakia, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:36.440 but the Soviets couldn't have their allies being too free. 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:41.480 Soviet tanks closed in iron fist, hovering. Honestly, kind of 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:46.320 an evil empiry move Gordievski watched the news coverage with 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:48.960 a knot in his stomach. He debated with his colleagues 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.960 at the Russian embassy. Half of them were Stalinists, hardliners. 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.680 They wanted the movement squashed. The other half, Gordievski included, 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:59.400 supported the checks. Maybe it was some naive hope that 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:02.280 a communist nation could actually provide a good quality of 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.639 life for its people. Hope so it, friends, will't press 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:09.800 us to change the way of our policy of the 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:14.720 last months. Gordievski was adamant. He said, surely the tanks 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.040 won't cross the border. They can't. It would be awful, 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:22.800 Oh Kordievski, you sweet innocent espionage agent. He made a 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:24.720 bet with one of the hardliners who thought the tanks 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:27.639 would invade. The loser has to buy the winner a 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:28.720 case of champagne. 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.760 Once again, the Soviet Union, demonstrating a colossal contempt for 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:38.159 the opinion of mankind, has resorted to brute force to 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:42.120 keep a satellite nation under control Russian tanks and infantry. 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:44.960 It was worse than Gordievski could have ever imagined. 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:49.520 Tonight was one of terrors of the patient who expire 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:54.679 the cars, motorcycles, every moving object without warning. 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:58.600 Because he was based in a foreign country, he was 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:01.680 able to see not just how the Russians portrayed this, 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.080 for how the West portray this. And I think this 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:08.040 was really a huge cristical moment in his conversion, if 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:08.359 you like. 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:11.840 For the first time he saw the Soviet Union for 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:16.440 what it was, unobscured by state propaganda. It confirmed what 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:18.600 deep down he had already known. 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:22.840 It was moments like that that he really began to think, 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:25.320 I need to do something about this. I need to 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:28.960 target the Soviet system, undermine it somehow, and try and 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:29.960 damage it somehow. 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:35.120 At that moment, Gordievsky made a faithful decision. It would 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:37.960 put his life at risk, his family's lives at risk. 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:40.879 He went to the phone in the embassy and immediately 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:44.760 called his wife Yolena at home. He sobbed into the phone. 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:49.439 He told her they've actually invaded Czechoslovakia. How could they 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:53.200 do this? It's unbelievable. I don't know what to do now. 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:56.359 He knew his home line was bugged by Danish intelligence. 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:02.119 By making this call, he was sending a deliberate Gordievsky 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:06.320 was ready to flip. He hung up the phone and 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:12.320 bought his colleague a case of champagne. We're going to 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:15.200 say goodbye to Gordievski for now, because another spy in 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:17.840 a different land is traveling on a similar crash course 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:20.719 toward able Archer, and in order to understand this story, 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:22.160 we need to meet him too. 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:28.080 I would just have got feeling this all this society 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:29.919 was rotten. 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.119 Meet rhiner Rup. This audio is from an interview he 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:36.600 gave in two thousand and eight for the documentary nineteen 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:41.479 eighty three The Brink of Apocalypse. Like Gordievski, rhiner Rup 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:44.959 would also become a spy, betray his homeland, and end 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:48.200 up in the middle of a nuclear crisis. Guys, y'all 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:51.360 have so much in common, you should totally be friends. 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:56.119 Only rhiner Rupp's betrayal would happen in the opposite direction. 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:00.760 That's right. He was born in West Germany and soon 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:03.320 he would be working for the East. 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.480 The society didn't suit me in nineties. The more I 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:10.320 learned about it, the more I rejected. 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:14.320 Rhiner. Rupp is a burly sort. He just seems like 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:16.720 the kind of guy who could wrestle a bear into submission. 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:19.200 But maybe I'm just saying that because of his very 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:24.159 impressive beard. He wears those classic Aviator style eyeglasses, and 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:27.760 he fits a lot of German stereotypes, meaning let's just 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.240 say he's not very silly. Rupp was sixteen when the 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:34.520 Berlin Wall went up, creating an overnight barrier between two 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:38.399 very different Germanys. It became ingrained in his mind how 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:40.680 lucky he was to be on the Western side, the 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:43.880 free side. That behind the curtain they were making schnitzel 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:46.920 out of cardboard, or sour crowd out of used diapers 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:51.400 or something. But Rupp knew the West had its problems too. 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:56.239 Nazis were still sitting in positions of power, and all 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:00.520 that reminded us too much of what happened not so 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:02.160 long ago in Germany. 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:06.000 He and his pals were activists. They would famously be 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:08.800 called the sixty eight Ers, a group of students who 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:11.440 were trying to throw the remaining Nazis out of West 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:15.400 Germany in nineteen sixty eight. Not a super controversial take 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:18.960 in my humble opinion, but apparently the larger West German 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:22.720 population found these young students to be a nuisance, even dangerous. 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:27.080 They were anti establishment, and that made them attempting target 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.159 for Communist spy recruiters. 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:32.760 I wasn't a Marxist at the time, so I don't 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:36.640 know what would have happened if I hadn't met by 0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:42.000 Sheia Chance, one of the recruiters. 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:47.920 One of the recruiters for the Stasi, East Germany's spy organization, 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:50.400 very much in cahoots with the KGB. By the way, 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:54.240 I'm sorry, Ryaner, but I have a feeling that it 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:59.280 was not at all by chance. One misty spring afternoon 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:02.240 in nineteen six and the other sixty eight ers found 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:05.800 themselves marching the streets of Mines, a humble little town 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:08.880 in the Rhineland that still bore the scars of World 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:10.240 War two bombing raids. 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:15.240 The crow Bible was was hungry. We were thirsty from shouting, 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:19.160 and so we went to a pup. 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:22.920 They ordered a round of beers and bowls of gulash. 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:26.160 When we paid, we wanted to pay to be literally 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:31.399 a tin tin Finnick, which is nowadays Tincent. I mean nothing, 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:34.240 just didn't have it anymore in our pockets. 0:22:34.800 --> 0:22:37.680 So to the waitress reps like, look, we don't have 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:40.119 money for all these beers and poles of gulage. But 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:42.040 let me back there in the kitchen. I'll do some 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:43.720 washing and work off the debt. 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:48.000 That's how this nice chap order man could have been 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:53.000 my father. Two tables further away, said oh, waitress, I'll 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:56.639 pick up those and bring those young men and another 0:22:56.800 --> 0:22:59.919 round of beers. So he was very welcome in our circle. 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:04.080 Apparently the cost of buying a spy is roughly the 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:07.600 price of gulash. When it came time to leave, the 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:10.840 old man reveals that he, by complete chance lived right 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:13.520 next to Rup. What a small world. 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:17.600 And so we walked back up up the hill to 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:23.080 the rose garden where I lived and talked more. 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:26.240 They're talking politics, the state of Germany, and they discovered, 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:29.600 to the complete surprise of only one person in that conversation, 0:23:30.160 --> 0:23:35.160 that they're totally ideologically aligned. What a kuaki dink, right. 0:23:35.119 --> 0:23:37.800 I old god, it's the first time in my experience 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:41.400 this is an older man could be my father order generation, 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:45.200 and he has same kind of feelings, the same kind 0:23:45.240 --> 0:23:50.920 of views like me, so I wanted to know him again. 0:23:52.000 --> 0:23:57.000 Hook Line and Singer, the nice old Gulash buying Chap 0:23:57.119 --> 0:24:00.800 played the long game. It was an entire year before 0:24:00.840 --> 0:24:02.840 he came back to Rupp and said, Hey, I know 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:05.040 you think the East is bad. You think it's an 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:09.320 evil dictatorship where life is dreary and monotonous, but you're 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:12.240 actually just brainwashed by the West. 0:24:12.720 --> 0:24:15.000