Inside Story with Humphrey

Jack Barsky grew up in the old East Germany and became a Soviet spy living undercover in the United States. No, this is not the plot of a fictional thriller movie. Jack Barsky’s book Deep Undercover: My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America gives us a picture of his austere, but stable childhood in the 1950s in a backward corner of East Germany where summer camps were fun, and the Bible forbidden.  Jack was smart and started a career as a university chemistry and maths teacher. Then, he was recruited by the KGB and, in 1978, went to America under a false identity. His job was to get close to those making American foreign policy, not as easy as his bosses thought. Even so, for the next ten years, Jack carried out spying operations for the Soviet Union. Hear from Jack himself about deception, loneliness, loyalty and how his tangled double and sometimes triple life turned around. He is now an American citizen.  This gripping and emotional story peers beyond the Iron Curtain for a look into the world of a KGB officer illegally living abroad. Join Jack Barsky with Humphrey Hawksley who will also ask what is happening now with the younger generation in Russia and China. Are they, too, being sent to spy on us?  Goldster Inside Story Friday March 17th 2023 at 12.00 London time.