Jack Philip Barsky was born on Albrecht Dittrich, 18 May 1949 and is a German-American author, IT specialist and former sleeper agent of the KGB who spied on the United States from 1978 to 1988.
37 Facts About Jack Barsky
1.
2.
Jack Barsky has a brother, Gunther, who is three years younger.
3.
Jack Barsky graduated from Karl-Marx-Gymnasium and earned a degree in chemistry at the University of Jena.
4.
Jack Barsky was told that the Soviet Union only had use for spies who were willing participants, and thus he was free to turn down the offer, but that he had only 24 hours to decide.
5.
Jack Barsky was sent to Moscow in 1975, where his English was evaluated by an American woman who had married a Russian.
6.
Jack Barsky underwent two further years of training in the Soviet Union.
7.
Jack Barsky was given a back story that his mother had been German to explain the occasional accented word.
Related searches
Zbigniew Brzezinski 8.
Jack Barsky told his family that he was on a five-year mission to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a top-secret facility that was home to the Soviet space program; he wrote dozens of letters to his family in advance that were mailed periodically from Baikonur.
9.
Jack Barsky's mission was to get a US passport, insert himself into American society, to make contacts with foreign policy think tanks and "get close" to President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in order to influence policy.
10.
Jack Barsky's instructions had been to use the birth certificate to get a passport, but the bureaucracy proved more difficult than the KGB had anticipated.
11.
Jack Barsky established his identity first by obtaining a membership card at the American Museum of Natural History, followed by a library card, a driver's license and finally a Social Security card.
12.
Jack Barsky worked as a bicycle messenger and began attending Baruch College, studying computer programming.
13.
Jack Barsky discovered that the people who trained him did not have an authentic understanding of Americans, and he struggled at first with his assignment.
14.
Jack Barsky learned that while his English was excellent, he was very pushy and argumentative when dealing with people.
15.
Jack Barsky was shocked when he was confronted with this fact by a fed-up friend.
16.
Jack Barsky realized that he was essentially too East German to fit in.
17.
Jack Barsky received weekly radio transmissions from the Soviets and at night spent hours decrypting messages.
18.
Jack Barsky noted that the Soviets in the 1980s were trying to recruit right-wing radicals as sources.
19.
However, Jack Barsky never learned of the outcome of this effort as separate agents were responsible for the attempted recruitment.
20.
Jack Barsky married again in the United States in 1986 after a woman he was dating, who was an illegal immigrant from Guyana, needed help to get a green card.
21.
Jack Barsky initially married her as a favor, but after she got pregnant, he tried to make the marriage work.
22.
Jack Barsky later reflected that he kept his two identities separate in his mind.
23.
Jack Barsky had nothing to do with Dittrich and Dittrich wasn't responsible for Jack Barsky.
24.
In December 1988, while Jack Barsky was living in Queens, the KGB apparently believed his cover had been compromised.
25.
Jack Barsky was alerted on his way to work when he saw a small splash of red paint on the subway platform.
Related searches
Zbigniew Brzezinski 26.
Concerned about the welfare of his infant daughter, Jack Barsky decided he could not return.
27.
Jack Barsky ignored it for several months, until another KGB agent met him in the subway and quietly told him he needed to follow orders or he would wind up dead.
28.
Jack Barsky reported him missing and then filed for divorce.
29.
Jack Barsky's mother was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and died without knowing the truth.
30.
The FBI investigation quickly escalated when one day in 1997, during a fight with his soon-to-be ex-wife being recorded by the FBI, Jack Barsky confessed that he was actually a spy.
31.
Shortly after that, Jack Barsky was pulled over by the police on his way home from work and taken into FBI custody.
32.
Jack Barsky shared his knowledge of KGB espionage training and the modus operandi of Russian sleeper agents.
33.
Jack Barsky aided the FBI and the NSA, and in 2014 became a US citizen.
34.
Jack Barsky did not tell his employer about his past when he was hired, and he was fired in 2015 after he shared his story on 60 Minutes.
35.
Jack Barsky became a Christian after meeting his third wife, Shawna, a devout Christian from Jamaica.
36.
Jack Barsky now has a good relationship with his eldest son, Matthias, and through him has a granddaughter, Marlena.
37.
Jack Barsky now resides near Austin, Texas, and is separated from Shawna, and their daughter, Trinity, born in 2010.