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Speaker 1: you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should know a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. We are comrades in arms here at s
Speaker 1: Y s K step. You should not let me ask
Speaker 1: you something. When you were researching this and thinking in
Speaker 1: your brain about talking about it, did you get nervous? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess you did a little bit. What were you
Speaker 1: nervous about talking about the freaking KGB? Yeah? I was like,
Speaker 1: and how they just kill anyone that they don't like? Okay,
Speaker 1: now you know I got the most nervous ever when
Speaker 1: we we recorded I wrote on and we recorded on
Speaker 1: Delta Force. Really, I was really nervous. Do you think
Speaker 1: they're gonna come kill you? I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: they're supposedly, they're not supposed to exist, and we were
Speaker 1: talking about how they do exist, so I was like,
Speaker 1: surely not. But no, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: It didn't happen in this one. So maybe this is
Speaker 1: the one that will get me because KGB, you know,
Speaker 1: those are the and it even says in this article,
Speaker 1: like when you think about the knock on your door
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, come with us. That's
Speaker 1: KGB ops right there, right, But that was if you
Speaker 1: were a Russian, a Soviet citizen, which is true. It's something.
Speaker 1: It's weird because like you you know all about the
Speaker 1: KGB just having been raised as a Cold War kid,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, But I never really put two and
Speaker 1: two together that it was a really all encompassing, um
Speaker 1: secret police kind of thing that they had going on.
Speaker 1: Because not only were they big on spying and getting
Speaker 1: their hands on advanced weapon technology and running disinformation campaigns
Speaker 1: around the world and trying to destabilize the United States
Speaker 1: and it's it's reach around the world. Um, they also
Speaker 1: were really focused internally and domestically as well, so that
Speaker 1: they were a secret police force that would come and
Speaker 1: get two centers and send them off to prison camps
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. They basically did it all,
Speaker 1: and all of it was geared chuck toward keeping the
Speaker 1: Soviet Communist Party in power, and they were successful for
Speaker 1: several decades. Actually yeah, and um, I mean from reading
Speaker 1: this research, it seems like, I mean, they did do
Speaker 1: all the things, but their main charge was squashing from within.
Speaker 1: It seems like squishing your head from within. So KGB
Speaker 1: stands for I'm gonna try and read this and Russian,
Speaker 1: Uh commentet that's easy with a k uh ghosts dars
Speaker 1: veny be so pass nosty. It sounds like you just
Speaker 1: raised like an Aramaic deemon and klatu varata, so that
Speaker 1: means an English committee for State security. Uh. They were
Speaker 1: headquartered and we're gonna say we're a lot because technically
Speaker 1: the KGB itself is not around anymore. It's just been
Speaker 1: renamed though, so same stuff going on. Same place they
Speaker 1: were and are and are now headquartered under the FSB
Speaker 1: at lub Janka Square in Moscow, which is where the
Speaker 1: KGB was, right, Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's where
Speaker 1: the headquarters was and still is. And it's this big,
Speaker 1: you know, beautiful sort of intimidating building right there in
Speaker 1: the square. And UM, I mean that's just par for
Speaker 1: the course. The KGB has basically been this entity that's
Speaker 1: changed names and official titles multiple times since the very
Speaker 1: beginning of the U S. S r UM, but it's
Speaker 1: still the same thing and it's there. It's actually really
Speaker 1: instructive to UM to study it because it seems that
Speaker 1: they are still very much up to the exact same
Speaker 1: things that they've been doing for decades now. And everybody
Speaker 1: very famously is well aware of UH the g r U,
Speaker 1: which is military intelligence. But it seems that the g
Speaker 1: r U, the FSB, UM and another group called the
Speaker 1: UM s VR, the Foreign Intelligence Service are all basically
Speaker 1: like the KGB. They're just it's just now been divided
Speaker 1: into separate entities, but they're all working together. But after
Speaker 1: the two thousand and sixteen election, everybody got a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty obvious taste of what the KGB has long been
Speaker 1: up to, which is trying to to meddle in American
Speaker 1: politics and trying to sow discord among Americans and ourselves. UM.
Speaker 1: And this is nothing new. Apparently they've been doing it
Speaker 1: since the outset. Uh, well actually since after World War
Speaker 1: Two at least. Yeah, I mean they've been doing this.
Speaker 1: If you talk about sewing discord, UH, there was Operation
Speaker 1: Pandora in the nineteen sixties, which was basically the Soviets
Speaker 1: trying to start a race war within the US. UH
Speaker 1: in filter trading groups like the Clan, the Jewish Defense League,
Speaker 1: and the African American Militants posing is them making fake
Speaker 1: pamphlets um from the different organizations and and blasting those
Speaker 1: out to basically try and start a race war. It
Speaker 1: didn't work, but it did create discord. Um. They've also
Speaker 1: posed as uh, people from Antifa and Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: and they're still doing the same thing today, Yeah, except
Speaker 1: now they're doing it in this hyper accelerated manner because
Speaker 1: things can spread so much more quickly on um on
Speaker 1: social media, and you can turn so many people's opinions
Speaker 1: on social media so much more quickly as well. So
Speaker 1: there doesn't seem to be officially any any disagreement, uh
Speaker 1: that that the Russians metal in American affairs. And I've
Speaker 1: I have long been like, well, you know that it
Speaker 1: doesn't excuse it, but you know, we can't ignore the
Speaker 1: fact that America medals in other countries affairs too, and
Speaker 1: has for a very long time too, And that is
Speaker 1: definitely instructive also in something to pay attention to, but
Speaker 1: first of all to what about is and but secondly,
Speaker 1: from what I read, there's this UM scholar who wrote
Speaker 1: this really really interesting article in the Brown Journal of
Speaker 1: Public Affairs I believe is what it was called, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: Brown Journal of World Affairs. Guy named Calder Walton wrote this,
Speaker 1: um this this article on the KGB and it's disinformation campaigns,
Speaker 1: super readable, really exciting kind of UM. But he basically says, yes,
Speaker 1: America has done some very very shady stuff in the
Speaker 1: affairs of other countries and in its own affairs to like,
Speaker 1: you know, the CIA dosing Americans with LSD to see
Speaker 1: what happens kind of thing. Um, But the Americans and
Speaker 1: the Brits operations just pale in scope and breadth compared
Speaker 1: to what the KGB has done and what it seems
Speaker 1: like the FSB is now still doing right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not not nice guys. So I just want to shout
Speaker 1: out that, um that that article it's called Spies, election
Speaker 1: meddling and disinformation Past and present. You should check it out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to look into the KGB
Speaker 1: and spying and espionage, there are so many great articles
Speaker 1: and documentaries on YouTube that you can watch. UM, some
Speaker 1: a little more fun than other, some very dry. The
Speaker 1: BBC as a two parter on the KGB that's very
Speaker 1: dry but very instructive. UM. So the KGB, if you
Speaker 1: want to talk about that organization, you gotta go back
Speaker 1: to pre KGB in December nineteen seventeen when Lennon created
Speaker 1: a secret police agency called the check A c H
Speaker 1: E k AH. They were the punishing sword of the revolutions.
Speaker 1: They were known as and this was this was basically
Speaker 1: the like you said, it's gone under many names. It
Speaker 1: was the KGB before it was called the KGB. It
Speaker 1: was there to keep leadership in power UM, imprisoning, killing
Speaker 1: opponents both abroad and within the country, keeping people under surveillance,
Speaker 1: censoring news UH, and basically starting the espionage program on
Speaker 1: foreign soils UM. The Checker was followed by the O
Speaker 1: g PU, then the KGB, then the FSB slash SVR.
Speaker 1: But from that moment the CHECKO was formed till today
Speaker 1: there has been a steady, continuous, basically unbroken security apparatus
Speaker 1: that has been charged with domestic and external UM spying, surveillance, espionage,
Speaker 1: all that jam UM from from the from the get go.
Speaker 1: The today, they might still called themselves Checkists within the organization.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a name, the Checker that that original
Speaker 1: name is kind of stuck around if you're sort of
Speaker 1: on the inside, UH, and they you know, there are
Speaker 1: many ways that they can get what they want Uh,
Speaker 1: this one was a pretty interesting example here. UM. At
Speaker 1: one point there was a group early on in the
Speaker 1: UH Soviet unions existence where they had some socialists, some
Speaker 1: anti communists, um, that basically got together and they said,
Speaker 1: we're an organization now called the Monarchist Union of Central Russia.
Speaker 1: And what they didn't know is that the Monarchist Union
Speaker 1: of Central Russia was actually infiltrated by so many moles.
Speaker 1: It was a fake organization that real people joined that
Speaker 1: were socialist and anti communist, but it was all a
Speaker 1: big set up to get them all in one place
Speaker 1: basically root out who they were. You know, you gotta
Speaker 1: know your enemy, know who your resistance is. And they
Speaker 1: found who they were and they killed them. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that nuts man. That Like, think about the effect that
Speaker 1: it has, not just in in getting rid of your
Speaker 1: opposition by forming a group where they all show themselves,
Speaker 1: but also like that becomes legendary. Like that's one of
Speaker 1: the first things that this this group, this security group did,
Speaker 1: and like it basically sends a pretty clear message like
Speaker 1: don't you can't even trust your own the people you
Speaker 1: think that that are your allies, you know, just talk
Speaker 1: about sewing discord among you know, opposition. That's just and
Speaker 1: like that was a hundred years ago and it's still
Speaker 1: like can give you chills just to think about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you start a group that you think is
Speaker 1: going to be battling your oppressor and it turns out
Speaker 1: that group is so infiltrated that it's not even a
Speaker 1: real group. Well I got the impression that it wasn't
Speaker 1: even that they were infiltrated, but that the checker or
Speaker 1: I should say that O g P. You actually started
Speaker 1: that group to the detract people, you know what I mean. No,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. They infiltrated that that circle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we started this fake organization. Yeah, that's so nuts man.
Speaker 1: So one thing that a lot of people forget, and
Speaker 1: our younger listeners might not realize, is that back in
Speaker 1: World War Two, the US and the USSR were allies.
Speaker 1: We weren't like BFFs or anything like that, but we
Speaker 1: were we had a common enemy in the Nazis, US,
Speaker 1: the UK, the US, UM and the Soviets and UM.
Speaker 1: I read that from this time of basically working with
Speaker 1: the US and the UK, the USSR saw how good
Speaker 1: we were at disinformation campaigns, and it had two effects.
Speaker 1: It taught Soviets how to do these things. It basically said, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a really good way to sew discord and
Speaker 1: um to get information, fake information out um like with
Speaker 1: your enemy. So it taught the Soviets how to do that.
Speaker 1: But it also made the Soviets think that they just
Speaker 1: presume that the US and the UK, we're creating the
Speaker 1: same operations in the USSR too, So it really kind
Speaker 1: of hardened the Soviets enemy ship of America. Like it
Speaker 1: really kind of predisposed the uss are to be enemies
Speaker 1: with the US and with the u K and with
Speaker 1: the West in general. Um and it just kind of
Speaker 1: took off from there. And just to be clear, I
Speaker 1: saw a good distinction definition between misinformation and disinformation. Where
Speaker 1: misinformation is clear where the source of the information is
Speaker 1: coming from. It's just the information is faulty. So the government,
Speaker 1: the US government is giving out like bad info about
Speaker 1: coronavirus or something like that, that's misinformation. Disinformation is where
Speaker 1: the information is faulty, but it's it's not clear where
Speaker 1: this the information is coming from or where it came
Speaker 1: from originally. It's just popped up as like a rumor
Speaker 1: or something on social media. But the the information is
Speaker 1: faulty either way. It's just whether the source is clear
Speaker 1: who the sources are not. That's that's what disinformation is.
Speaker 1: So the checker are operating in World War two. Uh,
Speaker 1: they are spying on our Manhattan projects such that there's
Speaker 1: one quote in here that said they knew more about
Speaker 1: the creation of the atomic bomb than Truman did. Uh.
Speaker 1: They've really infiltrated things. This gave them a huge leg
Speaker 1: up in making their own bomb and their efforts to
Speaker 1: um welcome themselves into the atomic age, like they would
Speaker 1: have been way way behind had it not been for
Speaker 1: their espionage efforts in there in America. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: ways that they did this. There were spies who were
Speaker 1: um sort of the tried and true ways to pose
Speaker 1: as a diplomat um and actually get in an embassy
Speaker 1: in a different country, but you're really a spy. UM.
Speaker 1: You could also, if you've seen the movie The America
Speaker 1: or the TV show The Americans, that's called an illegal
Speaker 1: when you basically pass yourself off as someone of that
Speaker 1: nation's origin. UM. After World War two, in Finland, they
Speaker 1: would find records of infants who died at birth take
Speaker 1: that identity and then basically become a finished persons called
Speaker 1: a legend, and you are essentially living in that country
Speaker 1: as an American or as a finished individual, but you
Speaker 1: are really a secret agent for the Soviets, right, And
Speaker 1: I mean like super duper deep cover UM, so much
Speaker 1: so that you can expect to go live like a
Speaker 1: pretty mundane everyday existence for years or decades as an
Speaker 1: American or as a fin or something like that, whatever
Speaker 1: your background wherever it says you're from UM, and then
Speaker 1: you might be called on to assassinate somebody one day
Speaker 1: UM or to start UM working sources. And it's not flagrant,
Speaker 1: it's not obvious. The point is that they make kind
Speaker 1: of UM contacts and friends with low level people at
Speaker 1: the edges of powers, how I saw it described. But
Speaker 1: I also saw that same person describe UM, who described
Speaker 1: illegals like that as UM, saying that there's probably more
Speaker 1: of them in the world today than there was even
Speaker 1: during the Cold War. That's so scary, isn't it scary?
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. This is one thing that I've
Speaker 1: learned about studying the KGB. It's possible there are far
Speaker 1: fewer illegals in the world today, maybe there's zero in
Speaker 1: the US. But the fact is somebody said that, and
Speaker 1: the KGBS track record is enough that it's possible that's
Speaker 1: the case. And that's all it takes. Now all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, people are paranoid and like, wait a minute, you,
Speaker 1: Tulca Gabbard, are you actually a tool of the Kremlin?
Speaker 1: Are you a plant by the KGB? Are you a
Speaker 1: sleeper agent who's running for president? Like, people start to
Speaker 1: get accusatory, and you can't trust anything anymore, and now
Speaker 1: you're starting to see your enemies all over the place.
Speaker 1: And all it took was a rumor that there's more
Speaker 1: sleeper agents that are associated with the KGB today than
Speaker 1: there were in the Cold War. And now everybody's paranoid
Speaker 1: and the KGB's work is done for the day. And
Speaker 1: that could simply be disinformation, exactly exactly. But because disinformation can,
Speaker 1: it takes on a life of its own. That's the
Speaker 1: point of disinformation that it makes people behave differently than
Speaker 1: they would if they had not heard that rumor and
Speaker 1: started to believe it. Because the other fact about disinformation
Speaker 1: we should do an entire episode on it, I think,
Speaker 1: is that it has to have a kernel of truth, Like,
Speaker 1: like the Black Panthers have to suspect that the Jewish
Speaker 1: Defense League is um there was prejudiced against them secretly,
Speaker 1: and so like these documents that that were found or
Speaker 1: sent to the Black Panther headquarters just proved this suspicion
Speaker 1: that they already have or something like that, or vice versa. Um.
Speaker 1: So it has to have like this kernel of truth
Speaker 1: for somebody to be like, no, here's the proof, and
Speaker 1: then it just takes off from there because people love
Speaker 1: urban legends. I wonder if there's ever been an Army
Speaker 1: colonel named Colonel Truth. No, No, all right, I think
Speaker 1: we should take a break and ponder that. And uh well,
Speaker 1: I'm back and talk about when the KGB was born.
Speaker 1: Right after this stuff you should know, Nasham shuck stuff
Speaker 1: you should know. So the KGB, I promised to tell you,
Speaker 1: it's the when that little baby was born. That little
Speaker 1: baby was born in ninety four, when the intelligence agency
Speaker 1: that it, like I said, long been operating, was reorganized
Speaker 1: officially finally as a KGB, with that same mission in hand.
Speaker 1: They were known as this this time as the Sword
Speaker 1: and the Shield of the Communist Party. And if you're
Speaker 1: talking about the structure of the agency itself. It depends
Speaker 1: on who. I mean, there's a lot that we don't know,
Speaker 1: but um, it depends on who you're asking. I've seen
Speaker 1: anywhere from a quarter of a million two seven hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people on staff if you count the whole extended
Speaker 1: network of like foreign border guards and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think seven hundred thousand's the most I've I've seen,
Speaker 1: which is a huge, Yeah, huge, huge. Compared to any
Speaker 1: kind of like CIA or any other countries intelligence organizations,
Speaker 1: the KGB is just massive, right. Um. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I saw about the KGB is that you can
Speaker 1: make a pretty good assumption that, just especially during the
Speaker 1: Cold War, UM, that every single one of those agents
Speaker 1: were loyal to the Communist Party. And one way that
Speaker 1: they made sure that every single agent was loyal the
Speaker 1: Commist Party was to basically let them know that the
Speaker 1: other part other members of the KGB were spying on them.
Speaker 1: There was um entire sections that were dedicated to spying
Speaker 1: just on the armed forces, just on the military alone. Um.
Speaker 1: And that was one of I think twenty different directorate's
Speaker 1: um little divisions that were responsible for different kinds of
Speaker 1: tasks or different specializations. Yeah, the official like if you
Speaker 1: want to look at the official sort of charge of
Speaker 1: the KGB, um it is for areas and size. It
Speaker 1: is the struggle or an organization, I guess, the struggle
Speaker 1: against foreign spies and agents. Uh, the exposure and investigation
Speaker 1: of political and economic crimes by citizens. That certainly comes
Speaker 1: as a lot uh. Protection of state borders, That's what
Speaker 1: I was talking about, like the border um guards and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And then this is the big one,
Speaker 1: protection of state secrets, right and then so like those
Speaker 1: are the big four, but there every like there was
Speaker 1: another about sixteen of them dedicated everything like making sure
Speaker 1: that the phone and radio systems were encrypted, um, to
Speaker 1: making sure that transportation sector wasn't infiltrated. Like the KGB
Speaker 1: had its fingers and absolutely everything. There was one directorate
Speaker 1: that was specifically tasked with surveilling and monitoring foreigners and
Speaker 1: people who the KGB suspected were um we're potentially dissidents
Speaker 1: who were Soviet citizens. And they they mostly hung around
Speaker 1: like Leningrad and Moscow because that's where most of the
Speaker 1: tourists were. But that was like a whole KGB division.
Speaker 1: That's how many people they had and how many resources
Speaker 1: they threw at keeping tabs on the power structure and
Speaker 1: making sure that any challenges to the power structure were
Speaker 1: squashed in the cradle, not even strangled in the cradle,
Speaker 1: squashed in the cradle. Yeah. And you know, they recruited
Speaker 1: the best, the smartest people, the brightest people. Um. But
Speaker 1: like you sort of mentioned, it's not like like the
Speaker 1: KGB was something to be feared by every uh um
Speaker 1: citizen of the Soviet Union, I think. But jo joining
Speaker 1: the KGB to thwart that was not. It's not like
Speaker 1: that got you out of any sort of surveillance or
Speaker 1: and in fact, it may have even put you on
Speaker 1: or a bigger microscope, who knows. Yeah, I mean they
Speaker 1: they had every level of the military infiltrated with KGB agents,
Speaker 1: like every platoon, every detachment. If you were in a
Speaker 1: group with the military, with the military, somebody was a
Speaker 1: KGB officer posing as a soldier. That's right in their
Speaker 1: own military. It's amazing. Yeah. Uh. By the end, I
Speaker 1: mean I think it started, like I said, by the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteen sixties, it was firmly, firmly in
Speaker 1: place as as the watchdog of everybody in the in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. Um. And I mean again with the
Speaker 1: like people tend to say, like, well, the the the
Speaker 1: KGB was the counterpart of the CIA, but I mean
Speaker 1: in the CIA side some shady stuff, including domestically, but
Speaker 1: from from basically all sources. The main point of the
Speaker 1: KGB was domestic surveillance and domestic control of domestic challenges
Speaker 1: or dissent toward the Communist Party. That's right, um, spying
Speaker 1: on people, tapping phone lines, harassing people, arresting people, exiling people. Um.
Speaker 1: If you were a religious activist, good luck. If you
Speaker 1: were a human rights advocate, good luck. Um. If you
Speaker 1: were an intellectual, if you were just a you know,
Speaker 1: part of the intellectual um sort of university system of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, you better watch what you say because uh,
Speaker 1: you are definitely being watched, and every word that comes
Speaker 1: out of your mouth, even in a classroom, is being recorded. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean some if you were super high profile,
Speaker 1: you might make it out with your life and your
Speaker 1: family might get out alive, but you would be exiled
Speaker 1: for criticizing the government. UM. A writer named Alexander soul
Speaker 1: Ze soul zettiness and even practice that soul Zette souls
Speaker 1: Zette Nissen. Yeah, I think that's kind of close. He Uh.
Speaker 1: He was actually I think a science teacher who started
Speaker 1: writing books about how bad things were in the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union and uh eventually won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Speaker 1: But um, he was eventually exiled. If you were um
Speaker 1: less of a well known person and you were critical
Speaker 1: of the government, you were more likely to find yourself
Speaker 1: in the Goolag, which is a system of prison camps
Speaker 1: that we referenced earlier, and um souls and souls En
Speaker 1: it's in. I think I said it right that time.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. He estimated that um about sixty
Speaker 1: million people were sent to those camps over the course
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. Yeah, I mean it's it's impossible,
Speaker 1: literally impossible to put a number on the amount of
Speaker 1: human lives lost due to the KGB, but there are
Speaker 1: people that have estimated, uh, like, perhaps tens of millions
Speaker 1: of people taken out by the KGB over since its history.
Speaker 1: It's which is Yeah, I mean, I'm no CIA apologist,
Speaker 1: but I don't think the CIA has that, you know,
Speaker 1: which again, I mean we we on the outside tend
Speaker 1: to think of the KGB mostly as like the spy agency.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they kept people in mind by killing them
Speaker 1: or sending them to secret prisons and making them leave
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night from their homes and
Speaker 1: never be seen again. Um. It's just it's just completely nuts.
Speaker 1: And the effects that that has on his societies. Just Clanton,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. I can, sadly, but I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: I've never lived through anything like that. Yeah. And if
Speaker 1: you know, um, if you run an organization or a
Speaker 1: or a country or a nation from fear tactics from
Speaker 1: the top down, that eventually is gonna bite you in
Speaker 1: the behind. Because what that does is everyone's paranoid against
Speaker 1: each other. Um, no one, Like in the case of Stalin,
Speaker 1: Let's say, if Stalin didn't like what you told him,
Speaker 1: he would literally shoot the messenger. Uh, he would execute
Speaker 1: anyone who told him anything that didn't basically uh support
Speaker 1: what he thought should be going on, Like it wasn't like, hey, Stalin, Um,
Speaker 1: we found out some pretty bad stuff that's going on,
Speaker 1: Like that's a good thing. That means we can root
Speaker 1: these people out. He it got to a point where
Speaker 1: they wouldn't want to go to Stalin with bad news
Speaker 1: and that's that's not good either, No, and they had
Speaker 1: to go to him with some news. So what they
Speaker 1: would do it would just kind of naturally UH inclined
Speaker 1: towards intelligence that supported their their view rather than um,
Speaker 1: you know, something that said, hey, there's you're really unpopular
Speaker 1: and there's there's an uprising potential really coming. They managed
Speaker 1: to squash anything like that. But in the end, UM
Speaker 1: this what's called sycophantic UM intelligence, where it's just basically
Speaker 1: feeding you, telling you what you want to hear, that
Speaker 1: that that eventually will run a foul of reality. And
Speaker 1: that's what people credit UM with the KGB dropping the
Speaker 1: ball on the fall of the Soviet Union back although
Speaker 1: as we'll see, there's actually a lot of direct influence
Speaker 1: that the KGB had on that. But there's this idea
Speaker 1: that throughout its history there was Stalin kind of kicked
Speaker 1: off that thing where just tell me what I want
Speaker 1: to hear or else I'm literally going to kill you
Speaker 1: um or two, and that that it was carried on
Speaker 1: even long after Stalin was gone. That's sycophantic kind of intelligence,
Speaker 1: which is really surprising because there was a really successful
Speaker 1: organization externally. UM. It was that they think that potentially,
Speaker 1: for as as good as they were espionage and stealing secrets, UM,
Speaker 1: the Soviets were apparently not and I have to preface this,
Speaker 1: let me just caveat us. This is reading American sources
Speaker 1: about the KGB. The KGB was really good at keeping
Speaker 1: a code of silence. There were especially towards the end
Speaker 1: of the USSR, more and more KGB agents started to defect.
Speaker 1: But even when they defected, we weren't sure if they
Speaker 1: were plants, so there was still like what they said
Speaker 1: was taken with a grain of salt. Um. But the
Speaker 1: the idea that UM that the KGB was was very
Speaker 1: successful in stealing secrets supports this idea now that the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union would not have been a superpower um part
Speaker 1: of this to two superpower polarity that ran the world
Speaker 1: in the Cold War had it not been for stealing secrets,
Speaker 1: which doesn't explicitly say it, but suggests that they were. Um,
Speaker 1: they did not have the best and brightest as far
Speaker 1: as technology and science is concerned, which is kind of
Speaker 1: surprised to me because I've always heard that the Soviets
Speaker 1: had really really smart scientists in their own programs too.
Speaker 1: But this researching the KGB made it sound like they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to keep up had they not
Speaker 1: stolen advanced weapon technology, um and built their own versions
Speaker 1: of it. I'm I'm confused. I have no idea what's
Speaker 1: true anymore. Yeah, welcome, It's definitely true that they're spying.
Speaker 1: Efforts in the Cold War, especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: nuclear armament, were very much ramped up because they were
Speaker 1: spying with us. Yeah, but I think that they were saying, um,
Speaker 1: they were saying, it wasn't just getting the atomic bomb,
Speaker 1: but basically like all their advanced weapons technology was the
Speaker 1: result of stealing it, and that the point is is
Speaker 1: kind of a two handed compliment or backsided compliment, um
Speaker 1: that they were really good it's stealing secrets, but that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have been able to be a nuclear superpower
Speaker 1: without stealing secrets. I think that was That was what
Speaker 1: I was, That's what I found. Well, and it also
Speaker 1: could have been and I'm just speculating it could have
Speaker 1: been a thing where that was such a part of
Speaker 1: the system. Was that is, Hey, we don't need to
Speaker 1: put resources for steps one through five because we can
Speaker 1: steal that stuff exactly, and we can just start on
Speaker 1: step number six or whatever once we have whatever intelligence
Speaker 1: we need. But what do I know? I'm just a
Speaker 1: dumb podcast. Do you want to take another break? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay, We're gonna take another break, everybody.
Speaker 1: That's no secret. Stuff you should know, Gosh, stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. Man, what is going on? That's wrong? I'm
Speaker 1: making puns left and right. It's terrible. Can we talk
Speaker 1: about spies? Sure? Yeah, let's do it. So Uh. I
Speaker 1: think we did a we did an espionage podcast years
Speaker 1: and years ago. I think, yes, spies, how spies working?
Speaker 1: Was it just spies or was it espionage as well? Well?
Speaker 1: They go so closely together the same thing. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Soviets were really good at well I don't know
Speaker 1: about really good because who knows how many times it happened,
Speaker 1: but they had some very effective moments of turning Americans
Speaker 1: into double agents. UM. A few notable people over the years.
Speaker 1: A man named Aldrich Ames Uh. He was a thirty
Speaker 1: one year CIA officer and for about nine years was
Speaker 1: feeding the Russians or I guess it was the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union at that time. UM, highly classified information from the CIA.
Speaker 1: His big thing, it seemed like, was outing uh, CIA
Speaker 1: sources and and stuff like that, like turned KGB agents. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean there's all kinds of ways. There are other
Speaker 1: people that fed documents. We'll get to them in a minute.
Speaker 1: But he was outing sources and I think his actions
Speaker 1: directly led to at least that we know of ten
Speaker 1: CIA sources being compromised and killed. And then you know,
Speaker 1: in the hundreds of intelligence operations that he was he
Speaker 1: was kind of dropping the dime on And that's I
Speaker 1: mean in addition to the like the loss of life
Speaker 1: as far as you're the intelligence community is concerned when
Speaker 1: you when you kill somebody like that, you're killing like
Speaker 1: decades worth of information that the person has walking around
Speaker 1: in their head and contacts and just general knowledge of
Speaker 1: how things work. Um, so it's a really big deal.
Speaker 1: In addition to again killing somebody, you're wiping out like
Speaker 1: the institutional memory that they carry with them too, that's
Speaker 1: been helping out the other side. Yeah. He is in
Speaker 1: a medium security prison in Indiana today serving a life sentence. Um,
Speaker 1: as is Robert Hansen. Uh, he's one that is a
Speaker 1: little more. I mean he worked up until the I
Speaker 1: think two thousand one, and they said that his espionage
Speaker 1: was possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history. He
Speaker 1: made about one point four million dollars in cash and
Speaker 1: diamonds over the years selling classified documents to the kgb
Speaker 1: UM total double agent caught in two thousand one after
Speaker 1: the FBI paid seven million bucks to a KGB agent
Speaker 1: to out him as a mole Um. Very famous case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that as well. I remember Aldred James too.
Speaker 1: Made it really easy on people, like he was like
Speaker 1: spending lavishly and was not that well off to begin with,
Speaker 1: and it was just just being very flagrant about it.
Speaker 1: I feel like Robert Hansen was a little smarter about it,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, who's the other guy? There
Speaker 1: was one other guy that basically was spilling secrets about
Speaker 1: her submarine program. I don't I don't know. There was
Speaker 1: a There was a naval captain after World War Two.
Speaker 1: Somebody St. John was that in the sixties that I
Speaker 1: can't remember his first name, but someone St. John. He
Speaker 1: was a naval naval captain. Yeah, there was a trove
Speaker 1: of kgb UM files from an operation from the sixties
Speaker 1: that basically confirmed he was indeed a Russian spy. Both
Speaker 1: of the Rosenbergs were indeed Russian spies. Alder Hiss, who
Speaker 1: I think went to his grave denying that he was
Speaker 1: a spy, was in fact a spy for the for
Speaker 1: the Soviets. So they did have a pretty good success
Speaker 1: of turning Americans into informants. So did the CIA and
Speaker 1: the KGB apparently. But um, this the stuff that they
Speaker 1: got was was pretty useful. And again it was not
Speaker 1: limited to advanced weapon designs but also industrial technology stuff
Speaker 1: that we were saying, there's embargoes on this, you can't
Speaker 1: export this. They still managed to get their hands on
Speaker 1: this because of their contacts. Um that they turned in
Speaker 1: the US. Um just just basically anything you would want
Speaker 1: to keep your your economy humming along, just from from stealing.
Speaker 1: That's how you could That's how you could do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Navy guy, his was He's the one that volunteered
Speaker 1: himself basically by because he wanted money. It's like it
Speaker 1: all came down to greed. He walked into Uh oh yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about John Anthony Walker Jr. That's who I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. Two Okay, not St. John. Not St. John.
Speaker 1: He was not a patron saint of hipsters. I don't
Speaker 1: know Yeah. John Anthony Walker Jr. Is the one that
Speaker 1: that wanted money and he volunteered by because it's not
Speaker 1: like he was anti American who wanted to see the
Speaker 1: Communist party thrive. He it was all motivated by greed.
Speaker 1: And he walked into an embassy in the United States
Speaker 1: with like a a code card or something and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll sell you this for three thousand dollars and they
Speaker 1: bought it, and he was like, and you know what,
Speaker 1: that went well, so just put me on the payroll.
Speaker 1: And he got his family involved. He had his uh
Speaker 1: I think he tried to get his father involved, his daughter,
Speaker 1: his son, his wife, his son's body. Well, at one
Speaker 1: point the Russians basically knew where all of our submarines
Speaker 1: were at all times because and his wife was apparently
Speaker 1: a really bad alcoholic um probably you know, in no
Speaker 1: small part due to this, and eventually outed him after.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was way too uh lucy goosey with
Speaker 1: who he tried to get involved, Like you can't try
Speaker 1: and get your whole family involved and then have them
Speaker 1: say no, I'm not into it and then to be like,
Speaker 1: all right, well gonna keep doing it. What's for dinner? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she read it him out though she um would call
Speaker 1: a bunch of times apparently, and and either chicken out
Speaker 1: or she was really blitzed and couldn't get across what
Speaker 1: she wanted to say. But eventually she did to an
Speaker 1: office in Boston, and they thought, well, this is just
Speaker 1: some drunk wife trying to get her husband in trouble.
Speaker 1: And then eventually though, they did look into it, and
Speaker 1: they you know, they searched the guy as house and
Speaker 1: they found like briefcases full of classified documents and it
Speaker 1: was just I mean, this this went on for twentysomething years,
Speaker 1: I think. I think from what I understand, the most
Speaker 1: damning evidence was he had one of those Russian fur
Speaker 1: hats with the ear flaps that didn't met so UM.
Speaker 1: The as good as they were at turning people, at
Speaker 1: creating illegals, the sleeper agents, which may or may not
Speaker 1: be all over the world right now. UM. One of
Speaker 1: the thing things that KGB has long been known for
Speaker 1: disinformation campaigns, and from reading that, um that that guy's
Speaker 1: h article spies election meddling and disinformation past and present.
Speaker 1: Caller Walton's article basically every every conspiracy theory that I
Speaker 1: believed as a teenager apparently was a KGB rumor disinformation campaign.
Speaker 1: I could not believe this as I was reading. It
Speaker 1: was like a trip through my my, you know, formative years. Basically,
Speaker 1: the idea that the US government created aids to target
Speaker 1: developing countries. The idea that um that American tourists used
Speaker 1: to go down to South America and Central America and
Speaker 1: adopt kids so that they could harvest their them for
Speaker 1: body parts. KGB. Get this, chuck, there's a poll I
Speaker 1: don't remember when it was conducted, but it was sometime
Speaker 1: after the Kennedy assassination where more Americans believed that the
Speaker 1: CIA killed JFK. Then what the Warrant Commission concluded, which
Speaker 1: was that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. More Americans believed
Speaker 1: what turned out to be a KGB disinformation campaign than
Speaker 1: what the Warrant Commission came up with. That they came
Speaker 1: up with the one that the CIA killed JFK. That
Speaker 1: that was the KGB that did that. And you know
Speaker 1: the friend of your friends, uh mom, who was on
Speaker 1: the elevator with Eddie Murphy. KGB. That's right. Everything, I mean,
Speaker 1: all that stuff flasher lights at somebody, and the gang
Speaker 1: comes and kills you, k um, But it's just so
Speaker 1: bizarre to think, like what, like no, I thought that
Speaker 1: I talked to people about that, like late at night,
Speaker 1: like we had conversations about this stuff. And when you
Speaker 1: see that and when you read it and realize that
Speaker 1: like this has been going on for years, it really
Speaker 1: puts things into focus. Now. Um, like the two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen election meddling um to the the idea that
Speaker 1: there's like like g r U agents military intelligence agents
Speaker 1: who are posing as members of Black Lives Matter or
Speaker 1: who posed as like Tea Party members during the two
Speaker 1: sixteen election, like that they um that they were actually
Speaker 1: working for the for Russia. The idea that that that's
Speaker 1: still going on just becomes all the all the more
Speaker 1: clear when you look at some of their past campaigns.
Speaker 1: Something I do occasionally, Uh, I don't know why I've
Speaker 1: tortured myself, but sometimes I will read comments on a
Speaker 1: Fox news dot com article, right, and someone will say something,
Speaker 1: and then you can leave a comment about the comment,
Speaker 1: and someone will comment like, Okay, thanks a lot, Dmitri.
Speaker 1: That's funny. But you don't know, man. That's what they do.
Speaker 1: They infiltrate message boards and they infiltrate social media and UM,
Speaker 1: like you you never know, like, uh, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: just it's really staggering that this kind of stuff still
Speaker 1: goes on to this degree and there's nothing we can
Speaker 1: do about it. Yeah, for real. So so let's um,
Speaker 1: let's step back for a second, because we kind of
Speaker 1: hopped ahead. But I want to go back into KGB history.
Speaker 1: KGB was around from nine and we said earlier that
Speaker 1: the UM the KGB had a direct role in the
Speaker 1: fall of the USSR, and they did because there was
Speaker 1: a KGB um head who was appointed by garbage Off
Speaker 1: because he thought that he was an intelligent, moderate person
Speaker 1: who was open to new ideas, and to turn out,
Speaker 1: he was and he was part of that same old
Speaker 1: KGB establishment um who wanted things to say the way
Speaker 1: that they were. And Um, he actually led a coup
Speaker 1: against gorbach Off I did. I was too young to
Speaker 1: know what was going on, but there was a coup
Speaker 1: against Corbach where he was under house arrest for a minute.
Speaker 1: And Um the coup finally failed because it became clear
Speaker 1: that the military he wasn't wasn't in on it or
Speaker 1: wasn't going to take part in it. Um. But It
Speaker 1: eventually led directly within months to the downfall of the USSR,
Speaker 1: the breakup of the u s SR, because in the
Speaker 1: meantime they had elected for the first time a democratically
Speaker 1: elected president, and when Gorbachof saw that basically this coup
Speaker 1: was a vote of no confidence in him, he stepped aside,
Speaker 1: separated the Communist Party from the presidency, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the USSR wasn't there anymore. It was just
Speaker 1: Russia because the satellite states started saying, um, hey, we're independent. Now,
Speaker 1: we'll see you later. Soviet Union and the USSR fell apart,
Speaker 1: kicked off by this coup that the KGB initiated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think yelston uh or yells excuse me, officially
Speaker 1: split it up, right Yeah, yeah, he he said, KGB,
Speaker 1: you're dissolved. We're gonna break you up into the FSB
Speaker 1: and the UM do the same stuff, right exactly, but
Speaker 1: just do it separately. I figure if I separate you
Speaker 1: guys might be less evil. And apparently that was not
Speaker 1: the case. Yeah. And apparently, uh, not apparently, but very
Speaker 1: famously Putin came straight out of the KGB. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was a KGB agent in the mid nineteen seventies. Uh,
Speaker 1: supposedly because he saw a movie about Russian spies and
Speaker 1: I guess thought it was awesome. Yeah, I said that
Speaker 1: I want to do that. There's a picture of him
Speaker 1: in one of these articles where he's in the seventies
Speaker 1: wearing like this Newsy cap and just looking super seventies.
Speaker 1: But he also looks like Putin man, just complete poker face.
Speaker 1: He's staring off camera at something. Who knows what he's
Speaker 1: taken in. It's it's it's a really cool picture. There's
Speaker 1: another picture, too, supposedly of him posing as a tourist
Speaker 1: standing next to Ronald Reagan. Oh my god, have you
Speaker 1: ever seen that picture? Oh? It's nuts. It's just so great.
Speaker 1: But then you're like, is that Putin? And I went
Speaker 1: and looked, and it turned out that there is still
Speaker 1: disagreement of whether it's him or not. But most people
Speaker 1: say that that's not him, that he would have been
Speaker 1: in uh Dresden at the time, he wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. I'm looking now, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that certainly looks like Putin, doesn't it. But the official
Speaker 1: line is that is not Putin with this little camera
Speaker 1: around his neck right and so Putin was not just
Speaker 1: in the KGB. He became the head of the FSB.
Speaker 1: And this is a real testimony to just how powerful
Speaker 1: the KGB and the KGB's remnants or successors remain. He
Speaker 1: went from head of the FSB to the President of Russia.
Speaker 1: That was the step that he took. And he was
Speaker 1: not the first person to do that. Other KGB heads
Speaker 1: had worked their way up to become the head of
Speaker 1: the Communist Party and the de facto head of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union at the time. So all of this kind
Speaker 1: of goes to show you that that nothing, even the
Speaker 1: fall of the USSR, really did anything to slow down
Speaker 1: the KGB, and that the advent of technology helped kind
Speaker 1: of actually speed things up quite a bit. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you think those murders um or a thing in
Speaker 1: the past, that is certainly not the case. I remember,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you do, in two thousand six Alexander
Speaker 1: uh Littnovinko, Levinenko, Letvinenko, he was the one that was
Speaker 1: killed by the radioactive uh polonium two tin that was
Speaker 1: dropped in his beverage. And uh, they they have a
Speaker 1: history of doing like that's a really awful way to die,
Speaker 1: and they have a history of killing people in really
Speaker 1: awful ways because it sends that message, um that you know,
Speaker 1: not only can you die, but you're gonna die in
Speaker 1: a really awful, awful way and everyone's gonna know. Um.
Speaker 1: Dating back to Trotsky who went to Mexico City and
Speaker 1: someone came up behind him, Ramon Mercader with a ice
Speaker 1: axe and sunk it three inches into his brain. He said,
Speaker 1: how do you like this projection? Oh my god, was
Speaker 1: actually so bad. I think that was brilliant. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I was hoping you come around that it was really good.
Speaker 1: I got you mergator projection. That's lovely. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he killed him with an ice axe, but he lived
Speaker 1: for a day. I thought I'd always heard the story
Speaker 1: and I always thought that he just like planted him
Speaker 1: in the brain and that was it. But Trotsky got
Speaker 1: up and was like fighting him off, and people came
Speaker 1: in and kicked this guy's butt and he survived in
Speaker 1: the hospital for like a full day after this before
Speaker 1: he died. Well, yeah, Livin Yanko, he survived long enough
Speaker 1: that he helped solve his own murder. There's a really
Speaker 1: great guardian art um on it called Alexander Livinnanko, the
Speaker 1: man who solved his own murder, and h it's definitely
Speaker 1: worth reading for sure. Yeah, I mean just a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. Uh, what was that guy's name, Screepall,
Speaker 1: Sergey Screepall. He was he was the one with the
Speaker 1: nerve poison. He wasn't killed. There was an attempt on
Speaker 1: his life though, Yeah, but it was just just like
Speaker 1: every time you think, man, this is cold war stuff,
Speaker 1: it just pops up in the news again. You're like, man,
Speaker 1: it's still happening. Yeah, And I mean we should say
Speaker 1: both of those attacks were in London. Like this wasn't
Speaker 1: in Russia or Moscow or anything like that. This was
Speaker 1: in London. These guys lived in London in exile, and
Speaker 1: they were still murdered in London through like radioactive material
Speaker 1: and nerve gas that was smuggling in the country. And
Speaker 1: that actually is as kind of goes to stand as
Speaker 1: evidence that there still are these illegals, these um deep
Speaker 1: cover sleeper agents that are working for what used to
Speaker 1: be the KGB and is now the FSB. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's why it's a really big deal, uh, that a
Speaker 1: president of the United States would want to cozy up
Speaker 1: to somebody like Putin, who uh is making great efforts
Speaker 1: to put who he wants in office. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's it's just pure and simple, like, that's unbelievable. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Chuck Well said, are you got anything else? I got
Speaker 1: nothing else but rage. So if this floated your boat,
Speaker 1: go check out spies, election meddling and disinformation passed in presents,
Speaker 1: create article, check out Alexander let Vin Yanko, the spy
Speaker 1: who solved his own murder, the man who'd solved his
Speaker 1: own check out the Big Think. They had a good
Speaker 1: one called the History of the KGB and its Legendary Methods.
Speaker 1: So I think you'll like all three of those. And
Speaker 1: since I said I think you'll like all three of those,
Speaker 1: is time for listener mate. Uh, this is about the
Speaker 1: heroine lozenges. Remember that when I wondered if they were
Speaker 1: still around? So this is from Martin. Hey, guys, in
Speaker 1: the Heroin episode, Chuck was wondering if there are only
Speaker 1: still uh heroin lozenges lying around somewhere, and Jock Josh
Speaker 1: quickly refuted, But Chuck, you have been vindicated. I work
Speaker 1: in an unnamed museum and an unlamed unlamed location in Canada.
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna say where in Canada even though
Speaker 1: he does. And we have four different packages for heroin
Speaker 1: lossages from Bear. They're underwalking Key, of course. We received
Speaker 1: them in a donation from a local pharmacy that closed
Speaker 1: down in the thirties and they gave the museum a
Speaker 1: wide array of drugs to add to the collection. Along
Speaker 1: with the heroin, we also have a bottle of arsenic
Speaker 1: and two packets of amphetamines. One package has two pills missing.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I love the show you guys are keeping
Speaker 1: me saying during quarantine, I steadily make my way through
Speaker 1: your back catalog. That is from Martin Nice Martin, Um,
Speaker 1: that was much appreciated. Thanks for shining some light on
Speaker 1: that one. Uh And if you want to shine some
Speaker 1: light forest, we love that kind of thing. You can
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.