- I'm Jack Barsky, and I'm a retired,
perfectly reformed, ex-undercover KGB agent.
And today I'm going to watch a TV Show about Russian spies.
We'll make some comments,
and tell you what's real and what's not.
And you get it from the horse's mouth.
(suspenseful music)
There's nothing real in James Bond,
to the extent I've watched it.
Ian Fleming, who came out with the James Bond character,
he was British Intelligence,
but he turned into an entertainer.
And I don't think he ever pretended
to tell a story of what it's like to be a spy.
So there's this fundamentally distorted notion
in the public as to what a spy is and how they operate.
And that helps, actually, wannabe spies,
or people who want to spy,
because they're more normal people than you would imagine.
They're not superheroes, and they don't run around
shooting up places or people.
They're very normal, they're the spy next door.
(suspenseful music)
- Super-secret spies, living next door,
they look like us, they speak better English than we do.
They're not allowed to say
a single word in Russian once they get here.
- [Woman Off Camera] Oh hi, you came.
- Just for a second to bring over brownies
and welcome you to the neighborhood.
- What do you do, Stan?
- I'm an FBI agent.
- Interestingly enough, this is sort of art imitating life,
because the FBI, when they investigated me,
they had actually bought the house next door,
and had a couple of agents live there for six months
to keep an eye on me.
The folks next door to me never talked to me.
The idea was, maybe that they would
strike up a friendship with my wife,
but they sort of dropped the idea.
They were just there, looking at me, pretty much.
- Scott.
(gasping and moaning)
- Also, quite realistic.
The East Germans were notorious and really good at this.
They're called Romeo Spies.
East Germans, good looking young men,
were sent out in droves to befriend
lonely, middle-aged, maybe plain women,
without male attachment,
who worked in the West German Government,
and became their lovers.
In some cases, even married them,
and then pretended to work for some kind of,
like here this man says, "I work for Sweden",
for some kind of a World Peace Organization or whatever,
"I need your help, I need your help".
After the Berlin Wall came down,
there were about 50 or so women prosecuted
for doing this kind of work this young lady
depicted here is doing.
Working for a foreign agent,
either the East German Stasi or the KGB,
without knowing it, as a love interest.
So, quite realistic.
- [Agent Amador] A year from now, and he's done.
- It was a lateral move.
- They can cut your balls off, stuff them in your mouth,
tie you to a radiator in the basement,
and then call it a lateral move.
Bartholomew took the fall for Timoshev.
- Counter-intelligence, the FBI's,
has always followed as many diplomats or
employees of the Soviet Union,
and D.C. or they, the folks in New York
that work for the United Nations,
and they're following, what I think is a secretary,
and seeing what she's up to.
- [Phillip] Three days?
- When he said things would get riskier,
I guess this is what he meant.
- Well, no, this is isn't risky, this is insane.
We'd need six months for this at least.
- Phillip. - What, no.
I'll send a flash tonight
saying it's operationally impossible.
- These are orders, Phillip.
- Yeah, and they'll listen to us
because we're the ones on the ground.
- Here is an order that was given,
where the couple has difficulties
buying into that order.
I cannot recall one order, they were all requests,
that was given to me.
They would always, sort of, ask my okay for things.
And sometimes I would override them
because I was the man in the field,
I had a better idea of understanding risk
and what's feasible and what's not.
So this is dramatically enhanced.
- Where did you get that?
- The mall.
It's just a bra, mom.
I'm 13.
- Exactly.
- Mom, things are different than when you grew up.
- I actually was worried about,
if the FBI catches me, oh my goodness,
and everybody gets deported,
and my daughter would be a warden of the state,
but my wife would be kicked out of the country.
This is a realistic conflict, she's worried about,
"What will happen to my children when we get in trouble".
That can squeeze a parent's heart.
I see a lot of foundation in real espionage.
Obviously they need to enhance it in some way,
they need to compress it.
It is unrealistic that all of that
could have happened to that couple in that time frame.
In totality, it's entertainment,
but it has decent foundation in reality,
as far as the depiction of the
psychology of being undercover.
I would give it an eight to nine.
When it comes to real espionage, and what people do,
I'd say I'd give it a five,
simply because, yeah, there are bits and pieces of reality,
but as they are put together
they become entirely unrealistic.
Being an agent is probably 95% waiting and 5% action.
There is no real one movie that I say that
I could recommend, as far to reality of espionage.
I think the TV series, The Americans,
comes closest to all of them.
But if you really want to
know what it's like to operate as a spy,
you need to read memoirs,
or you need to read something written by John le Carré,
who was a British author who was,
I think, MI5 or MI6, but he was British Intelligence.