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Jack Barsky
Jack Philip Barsky (born Albrecht Dittrich, 18 May 1949) is an author, former CIO at a Fortune 500 energy firm and former operative of the KGB who spied on the United States from 1978 to 1988. Exposed after the Cold War had ended, Barsky became a resource for U.S. counterintelligence agencies, and held executive technology roles at major U.S. corporations. He was not charged with any crime and was allowed to remain in the United States. His autobiography, Deep Undercover, was published in 2017, and he frequently speaks on his experiences and as an expert on espionage.
Dittrich was born in Rietschen in Upper Lusatia, and grew up in Köbeln, part of Bad Muskau. His father, a schoolteacher, was a committed Marxist–Leninist. He has a brother, Günther, who is three years younger. When Dittrich was 14, he was sent away to boarding school in Spremberg. Shortly after that, his parents divorced. He graduated from Karl-Marx-Gymnasium (now Erwin-Strittmatter-Gymnasium) and earned a degree in chemistry at the University of Jena.
In 1969, Dittrich was a senior at the University of Jena when he was approached by a member of the Stasi who asked if he was interested in a job at VEB Carl Zeiss Jena. This turned out to be a ruse, however, and he was offered a job with the KGB. The next year, he was studying for a doctorate in chemistry and working as an assistant professor when he was sent to East Berlin for several weeks of training with the KGB. He 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. Intrigued, he decided to join.
In February 1973, Dittrich announced to his family and friends that he was becoming a diplomat and leaving university to move to East Berlin. The KGB taught him Morse code, cryptography and techniques to avoid surveillance, as well as English. He was sent to Moscow in 1975, where his English was evaluated by an American woman who had married a Russian. He underwent two further years of training in the Soviet Union.
In 1978, Dittrich was sent to the United States as an agent. His alias, Jack Philip Barsky, was taken from a child who had died in 1955 at the age of 10, whose name KGB agents had found at a Jewish cemetery in Maryland. He was also given a back story that his mother had been German to explain the occasional accented word. He 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.
Dittrich arrived in Chicago on 8 October 1978, flying in by way of Mexico, using a Canadian passport with the name William Dyson. The KGB provided him with Barsky's birth certificate and $6,000 in cash. His mission was to get a U.S. 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.
Dittrich rented an apartment in New York City and assumed the identity of Jack Barsky. His instructions had been to use the birth certificate to get a passport, but the process proved more difficult than the KGB had anticipated. He 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. He worked as a bicycle messenger and began attending Baruch College, studying computer programming.
Barsky discovered that the people who trained him did not have an authentic understanding of Americans, and he struggled at first with his assignment. While his instructions were to infiltrate political circles and get close to Brzezinski, he was not given specific instructions on how he was supposed to accomplish that. He also learned that while his English was excellent, he was very pushy and argumentative when dealing with people. He was shocked when he was confronted with this fact by a fed-up friend. He realized that he was essentially too East German to fit in.
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Jack Barsky
Jack Philip Barsky (born Albrecht Dittrich, 18 May 1949) is an author, former CIO at a Fortune 500 energy firm and former operative of the KGB who spied on the United States from 1978 to 1988. Exposed after the Cold War had ended, Barsky became a resource for U.S. counterintelligence agencies, and held executive technology roles at major U.S. corporations. He was not charged with any crime and was allowed to remain in the United States. His autobiography, Deep Undercover, was published in 2017, and he frequently speaks on his experiences and as an expert on espionage.
Dittrich was born in Rietschen in Upper Lusatia, and grew up in Köbeln, part of Bad Muskau. His father, a schoolteacher, was a committed Marxist–Leninist. He has a brother, Günther, who is three years younger. When Dittrich was 14, he was sent away to boarding school in Spremberg. Shortly after that, his parents divorced. He graduated from Karl-Marx-Gymnasium (now Erwin-Strittmatter-Gymnasium) and earned a degree in chemistry at the University of Jena.
In 1969, Dittrich was a senior at the University of Jena when he was approached by a member of the Stasi who asked if he was interested in a job at VEB Carl Zeiss Jena. This turned out to be a ruse, however, and he was offered a job with the KGB. The next year, he was studying for a doctorate in chemistry and working as an assistant professor when he was sent to East Berlin for several weeks of training with the KGB. He 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. Intrigued, he decided to join.
In February 1973, Dittrich announced to his family and friends that he was becoming a diplomat and leaving university to move to East Berlin. The KGB taught him Morse code, cryptography and techniques to avoid surveillance, as well as English. He was sent to Moscow in 1975, where his English was evaluated by an American woman who had married a Russian. He underwent two further years of training in the Soviet Union.
In 1978, Dittrich was sent to the United States as an agent. His alias, Jack Philip Barsky, was taken from a child who had died in 1955 at the age of 10, whose name KGB agents had found at a Jewish cemetery in Maryland. He was also given a back story that his mother had been German to explain the occasional accented word. He 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.
Dittrich arrived in Chicago on 8 October 1978, flying in by way of Mexico, using a Canadian passport with the name William Dyson. The KGB provided him with Barsky's birth certificate and $6,000 in cash. His mission was to get a U.S. 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.
Dittrich rented an apartment in New York City and assumed the identity of Jack Barsky. His instructions had been to use the birth certificate to get a passport, but the process proved more difficult than the KGB had anticipated. He 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. He worked as a bicycle messenger and began attending Baruch College, studying computer programming.
Barsky discovered that the people who trained him did not have an authentic understanding of Americans, and he struggled at first with his assignment. While his instructions were to infiltrate political circles and get close to Brzezinski, he was not given specific instructions on how he was supposed to accomplish that. He also learned that while his English was excellent, he was very pushy and argumentative when dealing with people. He was shocked when he was confronted with this fact by a fed-up friend. He realized that he was essentially too East German to fit in.