Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living Associates have been committed to creating a vibrant culture and delivering exceptional services, making Brightview a great place to work and live. If you're looking for a rewarding opportunity to serve your local community and grow, we want you to join our team. Brightview Senior Living is growing and actively seeking vibrant associates to join our community teams, including directors, healthcare, activities, hospitality, and dining. Apply today at careers.brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal employment opportunities.
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This is Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet spy.
I'm not very good at models, but I see the shape and I see the color, and it is behind us again. It's 1990. He's filming a British TV show called World in Action, where he's demonstrating how the KGB trained him how to tell if he was being followed. The KGB's philosophy is not to shake off the surveillance. Be courteous to the surveillance. Don't irritate them. In this video clip, he's wearing a faux goatee and a wig as a disguise.
He's short, athletic build, his sport coat and pants are slightly oversized. In other words, he looks like every other middle-aged man in the 1990s. He blends in, like a spy should. "Now I do something absolutely unexpected. I turn right. To stay with me, they have to make the turn, and they are making the turn. I set a trap for them."
I bet you were expecting something a little more dramatic. A James Bond-style car chase that turns into a motorcycle chase that turns into a fistfight on a blimp or something. But no. This is what international super-spidem really looks like. An average-looking man in a wig and a fake goatee, hands placed at 10 and 2, driving just under the speed limit. We are now abandoning the operation. Meeting with the agent will not take place. But tomorrow, we will try again.
But the movies do get one thing right. Spies like Oleg Gordievsky, sometimes the fate of the world does depend on them. There's one more thing I should tell you about him. He's one of the two spies who would be forced to intervene during an international nuclear crisis in 1983. Listeners, pour yourself a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred, because today it's all about the spies. ♪
Situation normal. All fucked up. I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On season one, we're telling you the story of a snafu that is gigantic, absurd, terrifying. It's Able Archer 83, the 1983 NATO military exercise that almost led to a real nuclear war.
All right, here's where we're at. The Cold War was heating up. Or was it cooling down? I don't know. Whatever's worse. Thanks to Reagan and a drop-off and their teeny tiny inferiority complexes. Well, what did you think I was going to say? Come on. Get your mind out of the gutter. Anyway.
After a year of name-calling, the announcement of a very mysterious space project, and the scheduled deployment of super-speedy missiles, let's just say the Soviets weren't feeling particularly... trusting.
The West were wicked. The capitalists were unreliable. They would trick and deceive you as soon as they would look you in the eye. You know, this was an evil sort of Western system that these paranoid KGB officials saw in the West.
This is Taylor Downing. He's an historian and a documentarian. And boy, does he have the voice for it. He says that Andropov didn't believe that Reagan's antics were standard political performance. He thought Reagan was building up to something far more sinister. The fear was that the Americans had some sort of secret, cunning plan to launch a preemptive strike. Obviously, in the nuclear era, a surprise attack could be completely overwhelming.
Overwhelming is putting it lightly. With the new Euromissiles in play, the Soviet Union would need to detect an attack, get word to the leaders, notify the public, scurry into bunkers, and launch a retaliation, all within seven minutes. Andrompov was like 70 years old. You're not exactly sprinting to bunkers at that age. I mean, your knees are just not what they once were.
They were determined that they must not fall prey to a surprise attack from the West. Andropov realized the only chance for Soviet survival was to see an attack coming before it even happened. So Andropov had started this KGB program for its international residences called Operation Riyan.
So, RIAN is an acronym, and it actually is spelled like the name Ryan. You're going to hear a variety of pronunciations for this acronym. I'm just going to go with Ryan. So, what this acronym means is nuclear missile attack. It was Andropov's crystal ball, his chance at seeing the incoming missiles before a button was ever pushed. Nope, Andropov could not see the future. This isn't that kind of show. But what he lacked in psychic ability, he made up for
in espionage. So Operation Ryan was telling its agents abroad to look for signs of the preparation for a nuclear attack. And this is where spies like Oleg Gordievsky come in. Under Operation Ryan, a global network of Soviet spies began to search for clues that might indicate that an attack from the West was imminent.
Many of these signs were very sensible, you know, our hospitals being emptied in anticipation of mass casualties. Were the missiles getting moved around? Were blood banks increasing their supplies? You get the idea, signs that could rationally point to the fact that the enemy is preparing for war. But agents were told to look for other signs as well, signs that were not so sensible. You can count the number of lights on in the Pentagon at night or in the Ministry of Defense in London at night.
Because if you knew that regularly there were, I don't know, 100 lights on, and suddenly there are 200 lights on, my God, they must be planning for a war. So the whole operation got crazier and crazier as the leadership became more and more anxious.
Every two weeks, spies would report back to KGB headquarters with a list of all the different indicators they saw. Officials would accumulate a tally, and that tally would be used to calculate when the attack was coming.
I was told that there was this extraordinary per-spec screen in the KGB center in the Lubyanka. According to Taylor, the KGB analysts had a giant screen with a grid on which they would put Xs for each indicator. The KGB leaders could judge the overall level of tension simply by looking at the number of crosses on the big board in the main room. Once the board was full of Xs, that meant the West was going to attack, naturally.
Then the Soviets could prepare accordingly. Sound the alarms, or worse, they could strike first. It was like a tic-tac-toe game of death. I mean, this is just so utterly crazy. Stanley Kubrick could not invent this. Elderly Soviet gentleman, you know, looking at a big board with crosses on it. And it's from this that decisions to launch nuclear weapons might be based. Seems the craziest of satires that you could ever imagine. But I was certainly told that that's what happened.
Kinda sounds like the world's most fucked up game show. Okay, Yuri, for the center square, how many lights are on at the Pentagon right now? Uh, 100? Oh, I'm sorry, Yuri, it's 200. That puts an X in the center square, and you know what that means. New Year's winter! That's right. Well, that's our game. I'd say join us tomorrow night, but by then all of human civilization will be buried under a ton of radioactive ash.
Good night, folks.
Now, even after a lot of digging, we can't verify exactly what Ryan actually looked like. A tic-tac-toe abortive death or, more likely, an algorithm in a supercomputer in a basement somewhere. After all, the Soviets did have a habit of using technology to soothe their nuclear anxiety. But what we do know is that as spies scour the West for these insane indicators, that data would be input into Ryan, which would then output
a measure of the balance of military power. Some sources say the Soviets believed once that power balance hit 60-40 in favor of NATO, that meant an attack from the West was imminent and the Soviets needed to strike first. Does this feel crazy to you? It should, because it is. This is not a system. This is not science or math. It's just some made-up arbitrary threshold.
I mean, I am truly at a loss for words here. Completely mad, completely bizarre, completely crazy. Thank you, Taylor. That about sums it up. Crazy or not, Operation Ryan would put spies at center stage in our little Cold War story. More specifically, two spies from different lands who would be put on a crash course with Able Archer 83, where they would be forced to act to save us all.
Gordievsky was born in the late 1930s. This is Michael Goodman. He's the head of the War Studies Department at King's College London. He's talking about Oleg Gordievsky, our fake goateed spy driving instructor. He had been the son of an officer of one of the KGB's precursors, something called the NKVD. But fundamentally, it was the same thing.
But in other words, he was born into the sort of world of secret policing, I suppose. You know, espionage or something which came in the blood, you could argue. Oleg Gordievsky's brother was also a KGB agent. So for him, becoming a spy was just like joining the family business. Come on down to Gordievsky and Brothers, your friendly neighborhood spy shop. Now, to be honest, his career in the KGB might have been pretty straightforward if it wasn't for this. We're giving a radio report.
It's 1953. Oleg Gordievsky is 15, the perfect age to get into a little geopolitical tomfoolery. He had learned that he could pick up several transmissions from west of the Iron Curtain. The KGB, of course, monitored the radio waves closely, and if they caught a transmission from the west, they jammed the signal. Making the contraband broadcasts barely intelligible.
Western broadcasters would try to dodge the jammers, eager to get their clear message to Soviet citizens. They'd ease off one frequency and jump to another. The KGB would chase them down. The result was inevitably a game of free speech squashing whack-a-mole. But on this day, with his ear hovering next to his shortwave Baltica radio, the KGB's jamming signal wasn't strong enough. This mole would go unwacked.
Gordievsky was able to make out a life-changing broadcast from Radio Liberty out of Munich. I'll translate for you. He was the worst tyrant in the history of mankind, the greatest criminal and executioner the world has ever known. His victims numbered millions. It's March 5th, 1953, the day that Stalin died. I mean, how's that for a eulogy?
In his memoir, Oleg Gordievsky recalls listening completely spellbound. He had never heard the Soviet Union disparaged before. At some level, hearing those words, he knew them to be true. But despite the nagging feeling that the Soviet system might be a broken one, Oleg Gordievsky would go on to join the KGB.
You see, an ordinary Soviet life seemed a little boring to him. As a KGB man, he could travel, experience different cultures, and have adventures. He said it himself. He wanted to live a magnificent life. It was exciting. It was thrilling. It was romantic. Though I didn't expect it would be as exciting in my case as it turned out to be. That's because Oleg Gordievsky would become a double agent.
For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living Associates have been committed to creating a vibrant culture and delivering exceptional services, making Brightview a great place to work and live. If you're looking for a rewarding opportunity to serve your local community and grow, we want you to join our team. Brightview Senior Living is growing and actively seeking vibrant associates to join our community teams, including directors, healthcare, activities, hospitality, and dining. Apply today at careers.brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal employment opportunities.
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The 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe. Want to bring the family to the mountains with the Santa Fe's available H-Track all-wheel drive? Well, it's got standard third-row seating and available dual wireless charging pads for the kids who just want to stare at their phone and not talk to you. You know what I mean. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. Hyundai, there's joy in every journey. ♪
Gordievsky was 28 when he got his first KGB assignment abroad in Copenhagen. "Gordievsky would have traveled under some form of cover. He would not have been a declared KGB officer." As he passed through customs, he told the agent he was a Russian diplomat. Of course, he was not. That was only his cover. In reality, he was a Russian international super spy.
Of course, Danish intelligence was always suspicious of a new Russian diplomat. Is he what he says he is or is he something else? So the Danish intelligence service would scrutinize his backstory, looking for anything that seemed inconsistent, anything that may reveal Oleg Gordievsky was actually a spy. You know, where had this Russian served before? They were a cultural attaché in Mexico and then they suddenly appeared in Helsinki as a trade attaché. You know, does that seem a bit odd that you'd go from one to the other?
But Oleg Gordievsky's story was airtight. He was safe, for now. He hadn't been there but a few months when he and his wife were invited out to dinner by a local police officer. Hey, that's great for them! It's always so hard to make friends in a new place. But Oleg must have also gotten some spy tingles. Something was up. As he left the flat, he placed a small dab of glue between one of the bedroom doors and the doorframe.
When they came back from dinner, the bedroom door was wide open. The glue was dislodged. That could mean only one thing: while they were out, the Gordievskis had visitors. Oleg's KGB training told him that the apartment was now bugged. Was the Danish intelligence really so sloppy that they would make such an obvious mistake? Well, documents later revealed what went wrong. When the Danish intelligence broke into the Gordievskis' apartment, they accidentally let out his wife's black cat.
They chased the damn thing all around the neighborhood before finally corralling it back into the apartment. In the frenzy, they left the bedroom door open. I can't not picture this scene in cartoon form. But hey, they did manage to bug the apartment, so mission accomplished, I guess.
From this moment on, Danish intelligence would listen to Gordievsky day in and day out, waiting for him to mess up, to reveal a vulnerability that they could exploit to make Gordievsky work for their side.
Of course, Gordievsky knew he was bugged, which makes it all the more surprising that in short order, he gave the Danes exactly what they wanted. Gordievsky's seed of discontent that was planted all those years ago was about to be watered by a fucking monsoon. It was the Czech invasion of
that was the big turning point. In July of 1968, Soviet tanks lined up along the border of Czechoslovakia. The Czech leader had been talking about a freer Czechoslovakia, freedom of speech, freedom of movement. But the Soviets couldn't have their allies being too free. Soviet tanks closed in, iron fist hovering. Honestly, kind of an evil empire-y move.
Gordievsky watched the news coverage with a knot in his stomach. He debated with his colleagues at the Russian embassy. Half of them were Stalinist hardliners. They wanted the movement squashed. The other half, Gordievsky included, supported the Czechs. Maybe it was some naive hope that a communist nation could actually provide a good quality of life for its people. I hope our Soviet friends won't press us to change the way of our policy of the last month.
Gordievsky was adamant. He said, surely the tanks won't cross the border. They can't. It would be awful. Oh, Gordievsky, you sweet, innocent espionage agent. He made a bet with one of the hardliners who thought the tanks would invade. The loser has to buy the winner a case of champagne.
It was worse than Gordievsky could have ever imagined.
The night was one of terror. Occupation took fire, the cars, motorcycles, every moving object without warning. Because he was based in a foreign country, he was able to see not just how the Russians portrayed this, but how the West portrayed this. And I think this was really, you know, a hugely critical moment in his conversion, if you like.
For the first time, he saw the Soviet Union for what it was. Unobscured by state propaganda, it confirmed what, deep down, he had already known. It was moments like that that he really began to think, I need to do something about this. I need to, you know, target the Soviet system, undermine it somehow and try and damage it somehow. At that moment, Gordievsky made a fateful decision. It would put his life at risk, his family's lives at risk.
He went to the phone in the embassy and immediately called his wife, Jelena, at home. He sobbed into the phone. He told her, they've actually invaded Czechoslovakia. How could they do this? It's unbelievable. I don't know what to do. Now, he knew his home line was bugged by Danish intelligence. By making this call, he was sending a deliberate signal. Gordievsky was ready to flip. He hung up the phone and bought his colleague a case of champagne.
We're going to say goodbye to Gordievsky for now, because another spy in a different land is traveling on a similar crash course toward Abel Archer. And in order to understand this story, we need to meet him, too. "I just have gut feeling this society was rotten." Meet Reiner Rupp. This audio is from an interview he gave in 2008 for the documentary 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse.
Like Gordievsky, Reiner Rupp would also become a spy, betray his homeland, and end up in the middle of a nuclear crisis. Guys, y'all have so much in common. You should totally be friends. Only Reiner Rupp's betrayal would happen in the opposite direction. That's right. He was born in West Germany, and soon he would be working for the East. The society didn't suit me, and the more I learned about it, the more I rejected it.
Reiner Rupp is a burly sort. He just seems like the kind of guy who could wrestle a bear into submission. But maybe I'm just saying that because of his very impressive beard. He wears those classic aviator-style eyeglasses. And he fits a lot of German stereotypes. Meaning, let's just say he's not very silly.
Rupp was 16 when the Berlin Wall went up, creating an overnight barrier between two very different Germanys. It became ingrained in his mind how lucky he was to be on the western side, the free side. That behind the curtain, they were making schnitzel out of cardboard, or sauerkraut out of used diapers, or something.
But Rupp knew the West had its problems, too. Nazis were still sitting in positions of power. All that reminded us too much of what happened not so long ago in Germany. He and his pals were activists. They would famously be called the 68ers, a group of students who were trying to throw the remaining Nazis out of West Germany in 1968.
Not a super controversial take, in my humble opinion, but apparently the larger West German population found these young students to be a nuisance, even dangerous. They were anti-establishment. And that made them a tempting target for communist spy recruiters. I wasn't a Marxist at the time, so I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't met by sheer chance one of the recruiters.
one of the recruiters for the Stasi, East Germany's spy organization, very much in cahoots with the KGB, by the way. I'm sorry, Reiner, but I have a feeling that it was not at all by chance. One misty spring afternoon in 1968, Rupp and the other 68ers found themselves marching the streets of Mainz, a humble little town in the Rhineland that still bore the scars of World War II bombing raids.
They ordered a round of beer, some bowls of goulash.
So to the waitress, Rupp's like, "Uh, look, we don't have money for all these beers and bowls of goulash, but let me back there in the kitchen. I'll do some washing and work off the debt." That's how this nice chap, an older man, could have been my father, two tables further away, said, "Oh, waitress, I'll pick up those and bring those young men another round of beers." So he was very welcome in our circle.
Apparently, the cost of buying a spy is roughly the price of goulash. When it came time to leave, the old man reveals that he, by complete chance, lived right next to Rupp. What a small world. So we walked back up the hill to the rose garden where I lived.
and talked more. They're talking politics, the state of Germany, and they discover, to the complete surprise of only one person in that conversation, that they're totally ideologically aligned. What a coinkydink.
Hook, line, and singer.
The nice old goulash-buying chap played the long game. It was an entire year before he came back to Rupp and said, hey, I know you think the East is bad. You think it's an evil dictatorship where life is dreary and monotonous, but you're actually just brainwashed by the West. So he said, come have a look for yourself.
So he did. Rupp visited East Germany, and let's just say he wasn't turned off by it. So he agreed to help them out a little. At first, Rupp was tasked with documenting Nazi activities within the West German government. Truly, and I think we can all agree on this, fighting the good fight. But slowly, Rainer Rupp began to see the West in a very dark light. As greedy, exploiting the working class, and on a quest for world domination,
And that's when Reiner Rupp fully flipped. He committed to being a full-fledged agent in the Stasi, which, ironically, was itself a very dark, repressive, even torturous organization. Now, with a new mandate, Rupp's target shifted. It was no longer the Nazis. It was NATO. NATO was my enemy, and I went in to destroy it. Well, that got intense very fast.
Now Rupp needed an in. But you can't just waltz into the NATO office and apply for a job. What do you think this is, Jamba Juice? And what's he going to say in the interview? Hi, I'm Reiner Rupp. I want to destroy you from within. I mean, you don't hire that guy. So he started by enrolling at a local university. He hatched a plan. He could make contacts and eventually infiltrate the enemy. But then he met Anne Christine.
and Christine Bowen, and they met in 1917. This is Florian Chimakowski. He's head of collections at the German Spy Museum in Berlin. And she was actually totally unpolitical, and he was very political at that time. And she kind of took over his opinions bit by bit. And Christine Bowen was British. She was a student alongside Rainer Rupp at the university. She was also a secretary at NATO.
You might know where this is going. The spy who wants to get into NATO conveniently meets a young woman who works at NATO.
— I don't know if you're familiar with the term "Romeo agent." It's what the English call it, honey pot, honey trap. Because they frequently send out good-looking men to get in contact with secretaries of governmental institutions in order to spy on those people and to get these secretaries to spy for them. — But Rupp swears — he has always sworn — this is not that.
He loved Anne-Christine. They ended up getting married. In fact, they're still married. No honeypot, no manipulation. This relationship is the real deal. And maybe to prove his affection, or maybe because he's a reckless romantic, he does exactly what he's not supposed to do. He tells her, "'Hey, by the way, darling, mind shots. I'm a spy.'"
And the Stasi was shocked, as you can imagine. They were quite kind of angry with him, so to speak, because they really, really said, you shouldn't have done that. What do we do? We don't know anything about that woman. For God's sake, she's English. We don't know where her loyalties lie. She calls fries chips and chips crisps. They're like, what are we going to do with you now? Fire you? So Rupp is pretty scared from getting his ass handed to him by his Stasi handlers. And he goes back to Aunt Christine and he says, can I trust you? And
And she assured him she's not going to tell anyone. Not only is Anne Christine not going to tell anyone, she's so smitten with Rupp that she even agrees to help him. So he actually convinced her, you're a secretary at NATO headquarters. That means you've got position to documents and you can do something for the good cause. So she started smuggling out documents for Rupp in her handbag.
Come on, that is so romantic. If only Hallmark made cards for spy lovers. You smuggled my heart out. There are so many treasons why I love you. I got a million of these. Hallmark, give me a call. For the Stasi, having an agent inside NATO was a goldmine. It was a clear look inside the minds of the West. If NATO attacks, and they were convinced NATO would attack, the Stasi would see it coming from a mile away. But Anne Christine's access was limited.
They wanted to be deeper. And that's when a job vacancy opened up in the economics department of NATO. They were looking for a candidate with language skills, someone who spoke French, German, and Spanish. Reiner Rupp was the perfect candidate. So I guess in the end, he did just waltz into NATO and apply for a job. My apologies to Jamba Juice.
For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living Associates have been committed to creating a vibrant culture and delivering exceptional services, making Brightview a great place to work and live. If you're looking for a rewarding opportunity to serve your local community and grow, we want you to join our team. Brightview Senior Living is growing and actively seeking vibrant associates to join our community teams, including directors, healthcare, activities, hospitality, and dining. Apply today at careers.brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal employment opportunities.
Text BVJOBS to 97211 to apply. Hey, this is Jodi Sweetin from the podcast How Rude, Tanneritos. As a nostalgic voice from your past, I'm here to remind you that amongst the stressful and chaotic existence we live in 2024, you deserve to get away. It's time for a vacation, no matter when you're hearing this. And let me tell you how you'll get there.
The 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe. Want to bring the family to the mountains with the Santa Fe's available H-Track all-wheel drive? Well, it's got standard third-row seating and available dual wireless charging pads for the kids who just want to stare at their phone and not talk to you. You know what I mean. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. Hyundai, there's joy in every journey.
The fall season. We don't have to let it happen yet. Because summer doesn't stop in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. You can still get out and enjoy 60 miles of beaches, eat in the South's newest foodie haven with over 2,000 restaurants, and have endless fun at hundreds of attractions. Hold on to that sweet summer feeling a little longer at the beach. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Plan your trip at visitmyrtlebeach.com. That's visitmyrtlebeach.com.
All right, let's go check back in with our other pal, Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviet spy who has just made the fateful decision to become a double agent and help destroy the Soviet system. You'll recall he had just given a dramatic performance on a bugged line when he called his wife after the Czech invasion. So now Gordievsky expected a visit from Danish intelligence, but they never came. They didn't hear his signal.
Not that the phone wasn't bugged. It was. I don't know, the dude listening must have taken a break to eat some Schmader bread. That's an open-faced Danish sandwich. You should really try one sometime. Regardless, the Danes didn't get the message. So, not realizing that he was fully prepared to be flipped, they fleshed out their own plan to flip him. And they believed they had some leverage. Here's nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis. Do you know the Danish gay bookstore story about Gordievsky?
Oh boy do I, Jeffrey, and it's a doozy.
One day, shortly after his arrival in Copenhagen, Oleg Gordievsky was strolling through the red light district, as one does when you're getting to know your new home. And Gordievsky, who is just a weird dude, walks by a gay bookstore, or maybe it was just a pornographic bookstore. It was a sex shop. And he just can't believe that the West is so open and free that such a thing can exist. So he goes in and he buys two pornographic magazines that are gay themed, right? Yeah.
And takes him home to show his wife, to be like, can you believe how free this country is? Here is some hardcore gay pornography.
And I don't know what her reaction to this is, but, you know, it's probably like, "Ah, that's great, Oleg." But the Danish intelligence services immediately decide Gordievsky must be a closeted gay man. In the 1960s, a gay KGB agent? That was definitely something to exploit. And they see this as like a way that they could recruit him, right? They could blackmail him and recruit him. And so they try to set up a honeypot where they get, you know, an attractive young man to kind of flirt with him at a cocktail party.
But Gordievsky being straight doesn't realize that that's what's happening at all. And it doesn't work. Oleg probably went home and told his wife all about that nice guy he met at the party and how people in the West are so interested in his stamp collection. But like, that's Oleg Gordievsky for you, right? Like the kind of guy who would do something like that. In the end, treason finally found Gordievsky on the badminton court, as it's found so many of us.
It was 1973, a tall English diplomat walked onto the court, interrupting what I can only imagine was a riveting match. Gordievsky was in all likelihood donned in sweatbands, short shorts, and tube socks. The Englishman invited him to lunch. He said, "Somewhere we won't be overheard." You can kind of fill in the blanks on that conversation. Gordievsky agreed to flip. And thank Christ he did.
It's kind of fortuitous, and it was also sort of calculated. Gordievsky was now a double agent for MI6, which is basically the CIA of the United Kingdom.
Now MI6 wanted to help Gordievsky climb the ranks in the KGB. The higher up he was on the Soviet side, the better intelligence he'd be able to feed them. And they wanted him close, where they could be in touch with him more freely. So MI6 set a plan in motion to get Gordievsky a new job in London. The opportunity would finally come in 1981, some eight years after Gordievsky was first approached on that badminton court.
MI6, as we now know, helped ensure that someone in the embassy was sent back to Moscow to record sort of slightly in disgrace and so that an opening came up. All of a sudden, the Soviets had a diplomatic opening to fill in London. Pack your bags, Gordo. You're going to London town.
And it was at that point that really he began to provide the best sort of intelligence there was. Just to recap, Gordievsky was in London on official business as a Russian diplomat, but he was sent by the KGB as an undercover agent. But he was actually set up by MI6 to be placed there by the KGB to pose as a diplomat. Are you following me? Because I'm barely hanging on and I'm like the host here.
Listen, the point is being a double agent is a dangerous and confusing job. If being a regular secret agent is like juggling knives, then being a double agent is like juggling knives while double-dutching through jump ropes made of knives in front of a crowd who is also throwing knives at you. It's a lot of knives.
Even had Gordievsky known something, he couldn't necessarily have passed it across straight away. Of course, even if he could pass across intelligence straight away, how the West dealt with it had to also be very cleverly and carefully handled. Because if you're suddenly told something which you have no other means of knowing and you somehow reveal that, then of course, to the other side, it will then post questions, well, how did they know that?
"This whole world of cat and mouse becomes absolutely fascinating because you have to try and conceal how do you know you know that." The KGB kept detailed records of which agents knew which pieces of information. So when secrets inevitably leaked to the other side, they could trace the breadcrumbs of treachery back to the source. And once they did, can you guess what happened? Execution.
But that wasn't the only danger. In Gordievsky's capacity as a double agent, he may also feed completely false information back to the KGB. And if they found out he was lying, he could be executed. And even if Gordievsky was extremely careful, there was always the possibility that his new employers had a mole of their own. He could be ratted out. And then he'd be… say it with me…
Executed! See? Knives everywhere. I'm bringing all this up not just because it's fascinating, fun, spy tradecraft. I bring it up because it's utterly terrifying, arguably completely unacceptable, that this intelligence that was at best convoluted and at worst completely fucking false could sway the decisions of world leaders to, I don't know, maybe launch some nukes during a NATO military exercise?
I mean, the lives of the entire human race depended on analysts accurately detangling this muddy espionage web, knowing what was legitimate and what was not. Meanwhile, moles, traitors, and defectors were deliberately just trying to confuse everyone. When you really think about it, it's kind of insane we didn't have a nuclear war like every other month. And the problem was about to get a lot worse.
They started to panic, and they developed a concept of how the Americans will prepare to a sudden nuclear attack. This is Gordievsky again from an interview he gave in 2008. He's talking about Operation Ryan. They needed to know the time of the preparation to the attack in order, probably, to carry out a preventive attack. So we will remain the winners.
The beginnings of Operation Ryan date back to 1981, but according to Gordievsky, things got a bit more urgent in 1983. That's when it became clear that the Euromissiles were, in fact, going to be deployed in Europe. Oh yeah, and it's also when Ronald Reagan publicly called the Soviet Union the source of all evil in the world.
Every two weeks, agents were to go look for these indicators, no matter how ridiculous they seemed, and write a report to be sent back to Moscow. But here's the thing: the West wasn't planning an attack. So there were no actual signs. — What should we do? To write there's no signs? You will get such a blow to your head if you write such a thing. The message was clear: don't come back empty-handed. Find some signs. And if they're not there, find them anyway.
No agent is going to stand up and say, well, look, I'm in London or I'm in Washington. There's absolutely no sign here of preparations for a nuclear war. You're daft. Don't be silly. You know, that way would lie the end of a career. The way to advance your career was to find signs and send them into the centre. It became totally self-fulfilling. A series of paranoid leaders ask agents around the world to report information
if they see anything suspicious happening, as soon as they report it, it makes the KGB Centre even more paranoid, even more anxious, even more nervous about what's going on.
If you look up lose-lose in the dictionary, there should be a really big picture of Operation Ryan right next to it. If the Soviet agents reported what they saw, which was nothing, they could be risking their lives. And if they reported back fake intel, they could effectively accelerate a nuclear war, leaving us all dead. See? Lose-lose. My boss was head of the station. It was a big, fat, pompous station.
Damn, Gordy, tell us how you really feel. And while Gordievsky's boss may have been stupid, he wasn't stupid enough to defy the KGB.
And we understood that he didn't believe it. Nobody believed it. Like T.S. Eliot said, this is how the world ends, not with a bang, but with a Soviet middle manager browbeating his department to reach its monthly quota. And then, sure, with a bang after that. And if any was left, then a whimper. Were you surprised when you were told to look out for the NATO plans for a surprise attack? Yes and no.
This is Reiner Rupp again. I mean, I can understand why they were scared, because from the outside, it really must have looked bad. Last we saw Rupp, he had just accepted a job at NATO. He would now have access to NATO's precious war plans. He was a major asset for the Stasi and, by extension, the KGB. And so, of course, he'd get a dope codename. He'd be called Agent Topaz.
Does the word Topaz mean anything to you? What is Topaz? The story of espionage in high places.
Now, it turns out there's a 1969 Hitchcock film by the same name. In the movie, there's a NATO official who is working for the East. And believe me when I tell you that I have no idea if Reiner Rupp, a.k.a. Agent Topaz, picked his codename based on that movie. But let's just say the similarities are a little uncanny. Apparently, the Topaz film was an utter failure. Critics were like, Hitchcock, time to retire, buddy. Kind of harsh. Presumably, Rupp and his comrades disagreed. They loved the film.
Or they just figured nobody saw it. But still, it seems like kind of a risky move to hang a lantern on yourself like that.
Reiner Rupp went to work each day in the economics department in NATO. He had a teeny tiny little camera that he would sneak into the office stashed in the handle of his umbrella or squash racket. And then he would photograph secret NATO documents to send back east. I did it with the door open. Pretty bold. And I was sitting not then at my desk, but I had an additional work desk in a corner and I was sitting there over the documents.
and I was taking the pictures. With the door slightly ajar and a file cupboard rolled just in front of it. So when a colleague walked in, the door would hit the file cabinet. And if the bang came, I just put the camera down here. Whoops, sorry about that, Francois. What can I do for you? So that happened quite occasionally, yeah.
So, Rupp was now one of the most valuable agents the East had. He was in the NATO inner sanctum, photographing classified documents for the Stasi who would then pass them on to the KGB. Meanwhile, Gordievsky is passing Soviet intel to the West. Both sides are using this intelligence to gain the upper hand in an arms race that is spiraling out of control. What could go wrong?
Next time on Staffu. One story dominates the free world news media tonight. The killing of 269 innocent people aboard a Korean jumbo jet that drifted into Soviet territory. The United States reacts with revulsion to this attack. Loss of life appears to be heavy. We can see no excuse whatsoever for this appalling act. The Soviets saying now they were only trying to help the plane out of their airspace.
Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis, associate producer Tori Smith. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. This episode was written by Sarah Joyner with additional writing from me, Elliot Kalin, and Whitney Donaldson.
Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis, who is just a weird dude. Olivia Canney is our production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Additional research and fact-checking by Charles Richter. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and sound design by Dan Rosato. Some archival audio from this episode originally appeared in Taylor Downing's fantastic film, 1983, The Brink of Apocalypse. Thank you, Mr. Downing, for permission to use it. Special thanks to Allison Cohen and Matt Eisenstadt.
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Text BVJOBS to 97211 to apply. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Old Man. The hit show returns starring Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow. The former CIA agent sets off on his most important mission to date, to recover his daughter after she's kidnapped. The stakes get higher and more secrets are uncovered. FX's The Old Man premieres September 12th on FX. Stream on Hulu.