S8 Ep58: Russian Sleeper Spies in Germany with Florian Flade

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised.

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords.

[00:00:12] [SPEAKER_00]: This is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics and intrigue.

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr.

[00:00:37] [SPEAKER_01]: On today's episode we're joined by Florian Flade,

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_01]: who is an investigative journalist for the German public broadcaster ARD based in Berlin.

[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Florian takes us inside the gripping true story of two Russian sleeper spies who lived undercover in Germany for years posing as an ordinary family.

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Drawing parallels to the fictional world of the Americans, this real-life espionage tale reveals the extraordinary lengths which the Russian intelligence services will go to to spy on foreign nations.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Join us as Florian shares insights from his in-depth research for his podcast,

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_01]: The Anschlugs Russian Spies Among Us, which sheds light on one of the most remarkable espionage operations uncovered in recent history.

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Just before we begin, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider supporting us directly by becoming a Patreon subscriber.

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_01]: All you need to do is just go to patreon.com forward slash secrets and spies,

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_01]: and depending on which level you pick, you'll get a free coaster or coffee cup.

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_01]: And also you'll get access to our Patreon exclusive show, Extra Shot, which comes out twice a month after every espresso martini.

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for listening. Take care.

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Of course. My name is Florian Flade. I am what is called an investigative journalism or a national security reporter.

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_04]: I work and live in Berlin, and I started my career about 15 years ago now.

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Back then with the German newspaper Die Welt and the Sunday edition by Tomsontach.

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_04]: And back then I mainly focused my reporting on extremism on terrorism, mainly jihadi terrorism, also right wing violent extremism,

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_04]: but also espionage related issues, cyber crime, organized crime, all these topics.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And in recent years, the focus of my work has been on intelligence related stories, especially with regards to Russia.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And in 2019, I joined WDR, which is part of the big German public broadcasting network IAD, similar to the BBC.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm working in the investigative unit there and yeah, focusing on national security topics.

[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic. Well, you must be a very busy man because all those topics they're very hot and constantly going on.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's a lot going on. Of course.

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Well, we're going to talk about your you got this new podcast which if I got the title pronunciation correctly, it's the Anschlugs Russian spies among us.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And before we can get into the story of the podcast, what drew you to this particular espionage story?

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And how did you kind of go about researching it?

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_04]: This story, the story of the Anschlugs. This is the name of this spy couple, this Russian spy couple has used this first made headlines in Germany when they were arrested in 2011.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And I also did some some reporting on that case back then.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And I was always fascinated by this case, I have to say it was the first time ever heard about this very special and in a way unique form of espionage,

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_04]: the Illegals Program by the Russian intelligence services.

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And if you look at this case, similar to the these illegal cases that popped up in the United States, the year before, this is just fascinating stuff.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, trained spies being sent abroad with these fake forged some cases very well fabricated identities to spy for Russia.

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_04]: They are pretending to be just the ordinary friendly family next door living a normal suburban life.

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Some of them, like the Anschlugs, they have children which have no clue that their parents are spies.

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_04]: That it's just great stuff to work with and not only for Hollywood producers and playwrights.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, of course, some of your listeners will know the series The Americans, but it's also very interesting stuff for journalists.

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, indeed. Well, no, it's fascinating isn't it? It's truly in many ways what we think spies are people who go undercover and funnily enough,

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_01]: when it comes to professional intelligence officers going undercover in that way is quite rare.

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Most intelligence officers recruit other people to get the secrets. They don't kind of go and infiltrate a society and find them themselves.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And I believe it really is mainly the Russians who do that.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not certainly not aware of any Western intelligence services doing that.

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure. I can't speak for Middle Eastern intelligence services, whether they have a similar program, but certainly it does seem to be quite a Russian thing.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it is. And also from a historical point of view, it is a very Soviet Russian thing.

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, but we also heard that there are some countries around the world that have programs that are quite similar to the Russian illegals program.

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_04]: We heard that there is probably something that Israel is a country that is doing this in a way and maybe even China.

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, the stuff that we gathered, I mean, this is probably the most professional illegals program out there.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_04]: And as you said, most people think that this is what spies do. This is how spies work and what they're doing.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_04]: And the reality is it's not that way. It's not happening that someone is just living another life, just a double life for years or even decades.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And I mean, you ask how we researched this case and I would say we did what we do in most of our investigations.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_04]: We started to gather all the available information we could find on these spies and also the illegals program and me and my colleagues.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_04]: We started to go out and then talk to as many people as possible.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_04]: We talked to those that have been part of the investigation.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_04]: We traveled to all the places where the spy couple had lived in Germany.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_04]: We talked to the neighbors, to the former neighbors.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_04]: We traveled to Austria to find out where this story began and to the Netherlands to talk to someone who was recruited as a source.

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Someone who provided the Anschlacks with secret information.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_04]: And we also talked to former spies because we wanted to know how are illegals recruited?

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_04]: How are they trained?

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_04]: What does it mean to be a deep cover spy?

[00:07:30] [SPEAKER_04]: And we also talked to the judge who sent the Anschlacks to prison in the end.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And how did that go?

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_04]: The judge was really open to talk about this.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_04]: She is still very, very fascinated by this case.

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_04]: It was a very special case for her.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_04]: It was her first espionage case, related case.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, I mean it was the only time that an illegals couple was on trial in Germany since the end of the Cold War.

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_01]: It feels like a... the illegals program feels like a very cold war thing.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And if anything, it's probably getting harder to be able to do it now because it's harder to fake biometric data and your IDs.

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And I did notice, well, I think I was correct in noticing this, that they used the South American identity in some aspect of what they were doing.

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Is that right?

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Or have I misunderstood that?

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_04]: So we know that the Anschlacks were recruited in the 1980s probably.

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_04]: And both were in their, I would say early 20s back then.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And there's almost nothing known about their recruitment.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_04]: But there is some suspicion by the German investigators that the two were perhaps already a couple back in these days.

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Meaning that they were recruited as a couple.

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_04]: That is possible but still no proof of that.

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_04]: And what we know is in the 1980s, the KGB created these identities that were then used by the two spies for their mission in West Germany.

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And so the Soviet foreign intelligence services, the service created Andreas Anschlack and Heidern Anschlack and they were created in Austria.

[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_04]: But with a story, a fake story of being of...

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_04]: So that they alleged to be from South America.

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Pretended to be from South America.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and so they had identification from South America, did they?

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean the story how they got their documentation is quite interesting.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_04]: So we found out that in the mid 1980s a Soviet official, a diplomat from the embassy in Vienna in Austria,

[00:09:40] [SPEAKER_04]: he traveled to a small town in the southeast of Austria close to Hungary.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_04]: And this official had previously been to this town several times and allegedly to look after the Soviet Second World War war memorial that was there at this town's cemetery.

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_04]: So this Soviet guy was known in that village and apparently he earned the trust of a local Austrian official working in the community office.

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And at one day this Soviet diplomat appeared in the town again and he asked for a citizenship document for a friend.

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_04]: That's what he said. A woman named Heidern.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_04]: And he said this lady was of Austrian heritage claiming her mother was an Austrian national who had migrated to South America to Peru and married an American.

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_04]: So the Soviet official presented a Peruvian birth certificate stating that this woman named Heidern was indeed born in Lima, Peru on December 4th 1965.

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_04]: And he also handed over an alleged written proof of citizenship, Austrian citizenship of the woman's mother.

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, all these papers were then sent to Vienna to some authorities there and they had nothing to complain apparently.

[00:10:59] [SPEAKER_04]: So the Austrian official in this little town handed out the requested papers.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_04]: That's how the identity of Heidern Anschluck was created.

[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Interesting. Yeah, because at the end of the show bring up the South American connection.

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I know there's been some more recent spy scandals where again identification comes from a South American country.

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_01]: So I find that really fascinating.

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we call these cases in our podcast. We call them the fake Brazilians because many of them pretend to be a Brazilian.

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_04]: There was a guy arrested in Tromso in Norway at the university.

[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_04]: He was working as a scientist.

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_04]: That's what he said as someone looking into the geopolitical importance of the Arctic region.

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_04]: And then there was this the other person who came to the Netherlands just after the Russians attacked Ukraine in early 2022.

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And he had an internship with the International Court of Justice in Den Haik and that person also claimed to be Brazilian.

[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so we call them the fake Brazilians and apparently the Russians and also Soviets back then they like to use

[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_04]: the South American identity.

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Interesting. Yeah, I wonder if it's easier for them to fabricate those kind of identifications or something?

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we were told that there are some countries around the world where it is easier to use the identities of people that have lived but died as children as teenagers.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_04]: Because in apparently some countries in South America also in Africa there is registry for those who were born but they are not connected with the database of the people that died.

[00:12:52] [SPEAKER_04]: So the government or the state authorities they know that someone was born but they don't know that this person also died.

[00:13:00] [SPEAKER_04]: So it was not interconnected at least like few years ago.

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_04]: So it was easier to use the identity of a person that died as a child.

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's classic sort of stuff. I mean goes into obviously it was popularized in Day of the Jack or the movie and book by Frederick Ford.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well fantastic.

[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Well thank you for that. So do we know much about like who the English likes were and how they got planted in West Germany by the Soviet KGB 1988 and kind of and then I suppose what methods they were using to obtain sort of documents and information?

[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so we know that the identities were created in Austria. As I said, officials from the Soviet embassy went to this small town in Austria and got the papers for Heidrun Anschlag.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And in the case of Andreas it was done in a similar way. The Soviets used an old friend, a former agent called Adolf Slavic.

[00:14:02] [SPEAKER_04]: This is a very interesting figure. We talked to Thomas Riegler, a historian and expert on Austrian intelligence services and he said Slavic is probably the most interesting Austrian spy.

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Slavic used to be a fascist. He joined DSS of the Second World War and then he started working for the Soviets and he was involved in arms smuggling in North Africa.

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_04]: He recruited Turkish soldiers as informants, a really wild biography. And this person, Adolf Slavic, he was basically a spy in retirement in the 1980s when he was contacted by the Soviet intelligence service for I would say one last job.

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And that last job was to go to another small town in Austria, befriend with a local community official and then he would tell them I know a guy from Argentina who is willing to invest in the town's tourism industry.

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_04]: This person wants to buy a hotel but what he needs is Austrian papers. He needs Austrian citizenship to do this. That's what this Slavic guy claimed.

[00:15:06] [SPEAKER_04]: So he basically bribed an official, he gave him some money in return. He got these official citizenship documents. So then they also had created the Andreas Anschlag identity.

[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_04]: The couple was telling friends and neighbors later on they said that they met during a vacation in Austria. They said, oh we were both of Austrian heritage but we grew up in South America, one in Peru, the other in Argentina.

[00:15:35] [SPEAKER_04]: And then just by coincidence we met in Austria and then they married. And then shortly afterwards they were sent to Germany and they settled in Aachen, a smaller town, smaller city close to Cologne, in the very, very west of Germany, close to the Belgian border.

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is where Andreas Anschlag enlisted in a university. He became a student, an engineer and they lived the life of a young student couple and so they were then settled in West Germany.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah. And so what kind of careers did they have? Because obviously they're trying to get to secrets about NATO and the European Union and what methods were they using to obtain those documents and information.

[00:16:25] [SPEAKER_04]: It seems like that in the first years they were in Germany back then. Remember it was the time of reunification. The Cold War ended in that time which is super interesting.

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean they were recruited and sent out by the KGB but then the Soviet Union did not longer exist but these two they keep on spying. They just stay where they are and the new Russian Foreign Intelligence Service just uses them.

[00:16:56] [SPEAKER_04]: So they are in Germany, West Germany, they live a normal student life. They have a regular job. They create an identity as just normal, normal neighbor family.

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_04]: They even got a daughter. They had to have a child back then and she was born in the early 1990s which I have to say probably also helps because it's a deeper, even a deeper cover to be a family.

[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah and then they started to be friends with people. They started to go around and join, even join political organizations. They were interested in foreign policy and they were very much interested in politics.

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah so they attended several events that were taking place and I was surprised to see that they even got to know like pretty interesting people like the former head of the German military intelligence for example they met him during an event.

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_04]: And when it comes to the information, the material that they provided to the Russian intelligence service it was mostly one person. We would call it the biggest success of this couple and it's a Dutch diplomat.

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah yeah this Dutch diplomat Raymond Poetrae. I mean what was their relationship with him?

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah so the investigation after the arrest of the Anschlag's led to this man named Raymond Poetrae and he was someone with access to confidential secret and even top secret documents from NATO and EU back then.

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And what the Dutch and the German investigators found out was the Anschlag's they got, they were handed over numerous papers by Mr. Poetrae.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_04]: Poetrae some dealing with EU positions, some dealing with internal discussions about political developments in Georgia or Ukraine for example.

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_04]: There were also documents on new defense strategies within NATO. Some papers contained information classified secret, some even top secret and yeah they were basically the handlers of I mean he was his, their source, Andreas Anschlag met him probably for the first time in the Netherlands and then they met regularly every few weeks and they would pay him.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_04]: So this guy was given money by this illegals couple and yeah he would then provide them with information.

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_04]: And for example there was also a paper about the new NATO member state Albania and it contained information on what Albanian military had to implement and change to meet and to fulfill the NATO standards when it comes to air defense for instance.

[00:19:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Do we know if he knew that they were working for the Russians?

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_04]: At least I mean this, this guy was sent to prison. I mean Mr. Poetrae he got a prison term so yeah the judge in the end said that he knew that he was working for Russian intelligence and there are, there is some speculation about why he did it, about his motivation and to be honest we don't really know.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_04]: We talked to him, he basically said that he was set up. This was all, some of these documents were faked. Some of the documents were not genuine.

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_04]: He said that this was not the material that he provided. He said he was a diplomat, it was his job to get to know different people and yeah.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_04]: But in the end I mean he was sent to prison and the judge said that he was willingly giving away secrets from NATO and to the Russian intelligence service.

[00:20:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no indeed and it's highly likely if he is guilty as he was found that he would deny it because you know yeah not many people who have been convicted of a crime tend to admit it.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah I did it you know. Some do but it's sort of rare. It's a shame, yeah we don't know much more about his motivation.

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah I mean there is, to be honest we don't know. We don't even know the exact date when Mr. Poetrae was recruited but there is some information about possible financial problems about some debts and loans from banks.

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_04]: But in the end we don't know. I mean he was stationed as a diplomat in Asia before he came back to the Netherlands and we know that the Dutch security services later had the suspicion he might have been recruited by the Russians already back then when he was in Asia but again no proof of that.

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_01]: No interesting. Are there any other people the Ashlungs may have recruited that we know of at all?

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_04]: I have to say the investigators don't know anyone that was recruited in addition but there is, yeah there's not much information about the 1990s to be honest what they were doing in the 1990s.

[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean they were arrested in 2011 and they came to Germany in 1990 so I mean we're talking about more than 20 years and there is not much information about what was going on in the 1990s.

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_04]: It is highly likely that there were some other sources that they had recruited but there's nothing known about this.

[00:22:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no fair enough. Can you talk just a little bit about some of the methods they used to communicate and transfer this sort of classified information obtained back to Russia?

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah there were several ways that the Anschlachs communicated with the headquarter of the SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the follow up organization after the KGB was split up.

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And they used for example debt drops meaning places somewhere in parks or forests they used to hide documents or USB sticks or other forms of devices.

[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah pretty old school but this is what they did and they went for a walk for example somewhere near Bonn the former West German capital they had lived in a small town close by in the 1990s.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_04]: They went for a walk and put the material in these debt drops and then a Russian intelligence officer with a diplomatic cover working in the Russian consulate in Bonn he would go out and pick up the material.

[00:23:36] [SPEAKER_04]: In other cases they apparently also used ledger boxes, mail boxes somewhere in Europe that were established and used by the Russian intelligence service where they would just simply send the material via regular mail.

[00:23:52] [SPEAKER_04]: There was one of these spy mail addresses was in Athens in Greece apparently another debt drop was at the Vienna airport the investigator found out.

[00:24:03] [SPEAKER_04]: But there were also other ways they communicated as well the Anschlachs received their instructions via shortwave radio again very old school, very cold war stuff but it worked and it still works today.

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_04]: It's still used today.

[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah still in use massively.

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_04]: So I don't want Anschlach she would sit there at home in front of her shortwave receiver and listen to the coded messages that were sent by the Russian intelligence services and one way to communicate back to Russia was to use an electronic device, a special notebook, so to say which you could use to connect to a specific Russian satellite.

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_04]: And then the Russians, the Anschlachs sent encrypted messages back to the Russians.

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And there's also one very really strange and funny way of communication that was used shortly before the Anschlachs were arrested.

[00:25:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah so called the investigators called it the YouTube method and it sounds very odd.

[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And once you hear it, you think it's a joke but it's not.

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_04]: The Anschlachs had a YouTube user account named Alpenku-Eins meaning Alpine Cow One.

[00:25:19] [SPEAKER_04]: They were posting a comment under a specific YouTube video on a specific day and time.

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_04]: And these videos were videos of the Portuguese football legend Cristiano Ronaldo.

[00:25:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And it was in the early years of YouTube but these videos had millions of views and thousands of postings in the comment section.

[00:25:44] [SPEAKER_04]: The Russian intelligence service was then posting a new comment right under the Anschlachs message.

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And these comments were very simple, irrelevant messages at least to the common eye.

[00:25:57] [SPEAKER_04]: But they were in fact encrypted messages by the intelligence services and despised out there in the field.

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_04]: And by the way, the Russian intelligence service had the user name Cristiano Footballa.

[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_01]: That's so funny.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if that, if you want to scrutinize the football affiliation to their cover whether that would have held up or not.

[00:26:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:26:24] [SPEAKER_01]: There's always little details.

[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And you know what? It's very interesting you mentioned that because there have been some terrorism cases where that communication methods used as well.

[00:26:32] [SPEAKER_01]: And even there've been videos that have like a single frame that if they stop the video at a particular time code, they can kind of catch a message and things.

[00:26:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So no, it's interesting how YouTube sort of being used and the other ones setting up a shared email address but and then writing a draft email.

[00:26:50] [SPEAKER_04]: They're not sending it yet.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Because I think General Petraeus, his affair with his biographer was discovered that way I believe.

[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh really?

[00:27:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:27:02] [SPEAKER_04]: I just heard it was one of the methods that Al Qaeda used basically like terrorism.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Terrorism.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Terrorism.

[00:27:10] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, indeed.

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's very interesting.

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_01]: What were the, so what were the kind of key events that led to their capture and conviction?

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you mentioned communications that also played a role in their arrest.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_04]: It played a role but not a very significant role.

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_04]: So the actual acts were arrested in October 2011.

[00:27:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And we know that the German counterintelligence and German police they were investigating them for just a few weeks before they were arrested.

[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_04]: So we know that the initial information that led to their arrest came from a foreign intelligence service.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And even though this is all more than, this was all more than 10 years ago, still German intelligence is not willing to talk about how exactly they found them.

[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_04]: But we talked, we talked to several people with inside knowledge of the case and it is quite clear.

[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_04]: There was a traitor, a Russian intelligence officer that had provided the CIA with information for almost a decade.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_04]: And his name is Alexander Potayev.

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_04]: And he was recruited by the Americans when he was stationed as a spy with diplomatic cover in the United States at the late 1990s and early 2000s.

[00:28:26] [SPEAKER_04]: And he then went back to Moscow and he rose the ranks of the spy service, so to say.

[00:28:32] [SPEAKER_04]: So Potayev became the deputy head of the directorate S.

[00:28:37] [SPEAKER_04]: So the second highest ranking official in that part of the foreign intelligence service that was responsible for the illegal spies.

[00:28:44] [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, and Potayev gave away information to the Americans about around a dozen illegal spies operating in the US.

[00:28:52] [SPEAKER_04]: That is, yeah, that's what we know.

[00:28:54] [SPEAKER_04]: One of them was the infamous Anna Chapman. Many of you listeners will remember her.

[00:29:00] [SPEAKER_04]: And Potayev fled Russia in the mid 2000s.

[00:29:06] [SPEAKER_04]: Sorry, 2010.

[00:29:09] [SPEAKER_04]: And the CIA exfiltrated him right before this illegal network was busted and arrested in the US.

[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_04]: And we know that Potayev knew the Russian spies operating in North America.

[00:29:20] [SPEAKER_04]: We don't know if he had any detailed information about the Anschlux.

[00:29:24] [SPEAKER_04]: But we were told that he was able to provide information about the ways that the Russians had created the fake identities, just the way they're doing it and the countries they would use.

[00:29:36] [SPEAKER_04]: So the Austrian investigators started to look into these citizenship documents that were handed out in the 1980s.

[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_04]: And then they began looking for Andreas and Heidron Anschlux.

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And what they found was there was no Andreas Anschluck registered in Austria.

[00:29:53] [SPEAKER_04]: So they shared the information with other European countries, including Germany.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, surprise, surprise in Germany there was an Andreas Anschluck living in Marburg, north of Frankfurt.

[00:30:05] [SPEAKER_04]: So this was the trail that they followed to find the Anschlux.

[00:30:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic. Do you know how long the intelligence services were sort of monitoring the Anschlux when they found out about them?

[00:30:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Actually it was only a few weeks.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_04]: It was not more than like six, seven or eight weeks.

[00:30:21] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, they were wiretapping their phones.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_04]: They were watching them.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_04]: They even had some cameras installed around their house where they lived.

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_04]: And they were looking at them.

[00:30:37] [SPEAKER_04]: And we were told by people who listened to this, the wiretap conversations and they said it was very, very strange.

[00:30:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Andreas Anschluck, he lived in the south of Germany and he only was at home in the weekends because his job was down in a southern, southern German town.

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_04]: So he was only there on the weekend and we were told by one of the people who listened to this wiretap conversations and he said that is not the way a normal couple would talk to each other.

[00:31:06] [SPEAKER_04]: So someone having a weekend relationship, they would not talk in that way.

[00:31:12] [SPEAKER_04]: It was more like coded messages and very strange talk.

[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Have you ever seen the film Spy Game of Robert Redford?

[00:31:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, of course.

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Do you remember that sequence where he's talking to his fake wife?

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. He's sort of saying Operation Dinner Outs to Go. I love that bit.

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_01]: And they're all to believe he's talking to his wife.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_01]: So the conversations were a bit like that.

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, probably like that.

[00:31:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Operation Barbecue is a go.

[00:31:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll be right back.

[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_01]: It's probably a good idea to chat a little bit about the German intelligence services because our audience, I don't think we've ever really covered German intelligence.

[00:32:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you could give us a kind of little rough guide to the German intelligence services and then which one in particular was sort of focusing on the angel eggs.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah. Okay.

[00:32:23] [SPEAKER_04]: So we have three big and main federal intelligence services.

[00:32:29] [SPEAKER_04]: We have our foreign intelligence services called BND, the Bundesmaßischen Dienst.

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_04]: And it is in other countries, the foreign intelligence services, services connected to the Ministry of Defense and other countries, the ministry, the foreign ministry.

[00:32:50] [SPEAKER_04]: In Germany, it is part of basically the government, the chance theory.

[00:32:54] [SPEAKER_04]: So this is, yeah, that's the way it's organized.

[00:32:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, the BND is the biggest one with roughly six and a half thousand people working there personally and had quoted in Berlin and it used to be had quoted in Pula south of Munich in the Cold War times.

[00:33:12] [SPEAKER_04]: This is our foreign intelligence service and it's also our foreign military intelligence service.

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_04]: It's the same entity.

[00:33:21] [SPEAKER_04]: And it is a service that is working with human intelligence.

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_04]: It's the service that's working with signal intelligence also doing cyber operations.

[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, so this is this is our big foreign intelligence service.

[00:33:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Then we have our domestic intelligence service called the federal office for the protection of the Constitution or in short version BFV.

[00:33:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And the BFV is, yeah, it's a domestic intelligence service that is similar to the FBI and MI5, but other than the FBI, it is not a service and authority with police law enforcement authorities.

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_04]: So they cannot arrest people.

[00:34:07] [SPEAKER_04]: All they do is monitor and they are looking after extremists, terrorists and also looking for foreign spies and influence activities and malign influence activities.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and yeah, our domestic intelligence services had quoted in Cologne in the west of Germany, but also they have some offices in Berlin.

[00:34:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, they are they are allowed to go around to monitor, to wire tap phones to to observe yet to have human sources.

[00:34:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And they are also, yeah, they also are allowed to watch over political parties.

[00:34:49] [SPEAKER_04]: So if we have a political party that is turning to the more extreme side, then this party is in the eyes of our domestic intelligence service, which is also very special.

[00:35:00] [SPEAKER_04]: It's not the case in many countries, as I understand.

[00:35:04] [SPEAKER_04]: And with the information coming from the domestic intelligence service, the government is also able to ban certain organizations.

[00:35:12] [SPEAKER_04]: For example, just today there was an Islamic, Islamist organization banned with links to Iran, to Tehran.

[00:35:20] [SPEAKER_04]: There was banned because of the information that was gathered by the domestic intelligence service.

[00:35:25] [SPEAKER_04]: We have a short version, short term for that we call it the fafasong shots.

[00:35:31] [SPEAKER_04]: This is what we call our domestic intelligence service.

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And then we have a military intelligence service, but it's it's mainly a counterintelligence service and a counter extremism service.

[00:35:44] [SPEAKER_04]: That is part of the Ministry of Defense.

[00:35:46] [SPEAKER_04]: And it is basically the domestic intelligence service, but just for the military.

[00:35:51] [SPEAKER_04]: So what they are doing is they are looking for extremists, terrorists, spies within the ranks of the military and also during the protection of military installations around Germany.

[00:36:07] [SPEAKER_04]: So these are our three main intelligence services that we have.

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And then because Germany is spread into federal states, all of the federal states have their own regional office of a domestic intelligence service.

[00:36:20] [SPEAKER_04]: These are smaller, smaller authorities.

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Some of them only have like a hundred people working there, some even smaller.

[00:36:29] [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, this is our intelligence landscape, so to say.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well no, that's fantastic.

[00:36:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much.

[00:36:35] [SPEAKER_01]: That was fascinating.

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And with regards to the investigating certain political parties and organizations in many respects in the world that we live in today, that seems quite sensible.

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we've got all sorts of extremist sort of groups who are trying to use the political systems both, you know, Britain, America, Germany and Europe as a whole.

[00:36:55] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of good that Germany have that maybe maybe we can learn some lessons from that.

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, and some some say this is lessons learned from our history and the fact that democracy was used by anti democratic forces to establish dictatorship.

[00:37:12] [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah.

[00:37:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Well thank you for that.

[00:37:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So back to the Anschlug.

[00:37:18] [SPEAKER_01]: What were the sort of legal and diplomatic repercussions following the arrest and then obviously later on their deportation?

[00:37:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And how did their case influence of international relations and espionage practices between Germany and Russia?

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so the arrest made some headlines, some news of course.

[00:37:36] [SPEAKER_04]: And it was the first time Russian spies had been arrested in Germany since the end of the Cold War.

[00:37:42] [SPEAKER_04]: At first, it was not clear if there would be a trial or not because the German government, we were told by several people involved, they offered Putin to exchange the Anschlugs.

[00:37:53] [SPEAKER_04]: So they offered the spy swap similar to what happened in the case of the illegals that were arrested in the United States the year before.

[00:38:01] [SPEAKER_04]: But Putin refused.

[00:38:02] [SPEAKER_04]: He was not willing to swap the Anschlugs.

[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_04]: So they went on trial.

[00:38:06] [SPEAKER_04]: They were sentenced to six and a half and five and a half years in prison.

[00:38:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And in 2015 and 2016, they were released and then deported back to Germany.

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_04]: But to be honest, it is did not end up in any huge disturbances between Germany and Russia, not even on the diplomatic side, which is which is fascinating and very strange.

[00:38:30] [SPEAKER_04]: If you see how the conflict with Russia escalated in the past two years and yeah.

[00:38:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's an interesting time.

[00:38:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, maybe I'm wrong here, but the feeling I get in that period there was a bit of political denial about Russia becoming more, should we say aggressive on the espionage and geopolitical side of things?

[00:38:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true.

[00:38:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Because this was at the time when the Obama administration was trying to do the reset with Russia, which I think was about 2010, wasn't it?

[00:38:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:38:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that there were just a lot of people who were just worried that what were partly worried that oh, this is just Cold War thinking and this is just a minor, minor incident and we don't want to overreact.

[00:39:11] [SPEAKER_01]: But then I think generally they underreacted.

[00:39:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, I mean, even in the case of these Russians that were arrested in the US in 2010, Anna Chapman and the others.

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_04]: We heard that within the US government Obama was against arresting them and making like a huge thing out of this.

[00:39:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And the security services said, I mean, we watched them for almost 10 years.

[00:39:38] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it was a huge counter-terrorism operation.

[00:39:41] [SPEAKER_04]: The FBI called it ghost stories and they said in the end, we have to intervene now.

[00:39:47] [SPEAKER_04]: We have to do something against them.

[00:39:48] [SPEAKER_04]: But we heard that the Obama administration, they were not really keen on arresting them.

[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_04]: As you said, they wanted to have this reset with Russia and similar thing in Germany.

[00:39:59] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, it was back in these days.

[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_04]: It was a different time.

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the arrest of Anna Chapman and the others happened around the time Obama was having some sort of summit with the Russian president.

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I forgot his name.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_01]: That wasn't Putin.

[00:40:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It was the other one.

[00:40:16] [SPEAKER_01]: The brief, what was his name?

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Was it Mediev?

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Mediev.

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they were having this summit.

[00:40:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the arrest happened to take place around the timing of this summit if I remember correctly.

[00:40:29] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah.

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_04]: It took place when Mr. Mediev's plane had just left American airspace.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_01]: That's it, yes.

[00:40:37] [SPEAKER_04]: And then because they didn't want to have him in this strange situation to react to this, but yeah, it happened right after the end.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, quite awkward.

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_01]: So why did the German government decide to release them early instead of having to do their entire sentence?

[00:40:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Or even they didn't even, I don't believe they even swapped them for anybody either, did they?

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_04]: No, they did not swap them.

[00:41:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And to be honest, it is pretty much a common procedure in Germany.

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_04]: Once you have served half of your prison sentence, you can be released early.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And the Anschlag stay well behaved in prison.

[00:41:15] [SPEAKER_04]: We heard allegedly Hightwun Anschlag, she, that's what we've been told.

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_04]: She did some handy crack stuff while in prison.

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_04]: We were told she made some Christmas decoration for the regional ministry of justice's Christmas treats.

[00:41:31] [SPEAKER_04]: So they were very well behaved.

[00:41:35] [SPEAKER_04]: And no, they were not swapped.

[00:41:38] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, the German government wanted them to be swapped against.

[00:41:41] [SPEAKER_04]: We heard they wanted them to exchange them with two or three people that are in Russian prison.

[00:41:48] [SPEAKER_04]: But Putin refused.

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And did the Russians still deny that they were spies?

[00:41:56] [SPEAKER_04]: No, no, no. They don't really deny that.

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_04]: So we heard in the back channel talks that they had with the Russians, the Russian admits that they were spies of course.

[00:42:05] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, so no, no, there's no, there's no deny.

[00:42:08] [SPEAKER_04]: We asked the Russian embassy here in Berlin during the podcast, the making of the podcast.

[00:42:16] [SPEAKER_04]: So we asked them, what can you tell us about this case?

[00:42:19] [SPEAKER_04]: The Russian embassy just said, we are so sorry.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_04]: We don't have any more information on this case and sorry.

[00:42:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Fair enough. No, interesting.

[00:42:29] [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, okay.

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So you're saying sort of more of a standard thing that in Germany, obviously when you serve part of your sentence,

[00:42:35] [SPEAKER_01]: that's it you kind of you can go.

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's nice.

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Interesting because yeah, because when I was reading about that, it just struck me as odd because of the system over here.

[00:42:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So, so yeah, that's fine. That's fine.

[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_04]: So then yeah, I mean, Mr. Mr. Putkoway did the Dutch diplomat.

[00:42:52] [SPEAKER_04]: He served a longer time in prison than the Anschlucks.

[00:42:55] [SPEAKER_04]: So this is also very, this is why he's probably so angry.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is why he, why he told us if I would see Mr. Anschluck again, I would beat the shit out of him.

[00:43:07] [SPEAKER_04]: That's what he told us.

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_01]: That's understandable.

[00:43:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Fair enough.

[00:43:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in your interviews with the neighbors, did you learn anything kind of interesting or unexpected about the Anschlucks?

[00:43:21] [SPEAKER_04]: We learned in particular how normal they were as neighbors.

[00:43:28] [SPEAKER_04]: They acted so normal, like typical neighbors in a mid-sized German town so that only a few people ever had any reason to suspect something strange might be going on there with this family.

[00:43:41] [SPEAKER_04]: We talked to one couple that probably had a pretty close relationship with them and they said they were friendly, really nice people.

[00:43:50] [SPEAKER_04]: They invited them over for dinner.

[00:43:52] [SPEAKER_04]: They sent postcards from their holidays, but something was striking to these neighbors.

[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Something was odd.

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Andreas Anschluck had a very strange accent.

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_04]: And I mean, he said he was Austrian but grew up in South America.

[00:44:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And when he talked, he was not able to pronounce the German H in a correct way.

[00:44:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:44:15] [SPEAKER_04]: He would say Geide instead of Heidi and he would say Gandy instead of Handy, which means mobile phone in Germany.

[00:44:25] [SPEAKER_04]: So apparently he was still using the Russian pronunciation.

[00:44:31] [SPEAKER_04]: And also Heidern Anschluck was not really fluent in Spanish, even though she told the neighbors that she grew up in Peru, but she couldn't speak Spanish very well.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_04]: One of the neighbors told us she even learned some Spanish because she took some Spanish lessons so she could talk to her and then she found out she cannot even talk Spanish.

[00:44:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh no.

[00:44:55] [SPEAKER_01]: That'd be like a spy's worst nightmare.

[00:44:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly a neighbor's learned and the language is supposed to know.

[00:45:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh no.

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh dear, that's hilarious.

[00:45:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my goodness.

[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And what did you learn about the lifestyle on the impact of their lifestyle on their family life and their children in particular?

[00:45:15] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I would say that that is perhaps the most interesting part to me.

[00:45:20] [SPEAKER_04]: How about the children?

[00:45:22] [SPEAKER_04]: The Anschlucks, they have a daughter.

[00:45:24] [SPEAKER_04]: She was born in the early 1990s.

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_04]: She was at home when her mother was arrested in the early morning hours of that day in October 2011.

[00:45:33] [SPEAKER_04]: She was hiding in the closet, probably suspecting robbers when the police unit raided the house.

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And we wanted to know did she know about her parents' real identity and their real job as Russian spies.

[00:45:49] [SPEAKER_04]: And that is something the German investigators were not able to fully establish.

[00:45:52] [SPEAKER_04]: They still don't know.

[00:45:54] [SPEAKER_04]: But the daughter was not willing to talk to us about this.

[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, we tried to reach her.

[00:45:58] [SPEAKER_04]: We sent her a letter asking her to answer some questions that we have but she's not willing to talk to us.

[00:46:07] [SPEAKER_04]: But what we do know is the Anschlucks did not talk during interrogation.

[00:46:13] [SPEAKER_04]: They remained silent for most of the trial.

[00:46:17] [SPEAKER_04]: But shortly after he was arrested, Andreas Anschluck told the investigators,

[00:46:22] [SPEAKER_04]: I know I will be sent to prison but I fear for my daughter's future.

[00:46:28] [SPEAKER_04]: She should be allowed to continue her studies, graduate from university, live a normal life.

[00:46:33] [SPEAKER_04]: That's what he wanted.

[00:46:35] [SPEAKER_04]: And we also heard from the judge that Heidrun Anschluck was basically bursting in tears during the trial

[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_04]: when the birth certificate of her daughter was presented at court.

[00:46:47] [SPEAKER_04]: So, of course there was an emotional connection that was indeed a real family in a way.

[00:46:53] [SPEAKER_04]: Even if the child was also part of the cover story.

[00:46:58] [SPEAKER_04]: What is maybe interesting to you, this is as well,

[00:47:00] [SPEAKER_04]: we know from the investigation files and evidence that was collected by intelligence and police

[00:47:06] [SPEAKER_04]: that the Russian intelligence service told the Anschlucks to get ready to leave Germany

[00:47:11] [SPEAKER_04]: and return to Russia soon.

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_04]: They feared that their cover might be blown after the arrest of the illegals in the United States in 2010.

[00:47:21] [SPEAKER_04]: So, the Anschlucks met with Russian intelligence officers in other European countries

[00:47:25] [SPEAKER_04]: and then they were told that their daughter will be offered a new life,

[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_04]: a new identity in Russia once they return.

[00:47:34] [SPEAKER_04]: That she could meet children of other illegals.

[00:47:38] [SPEAKER_04]: So, she could meet people in a similar situation

[00:47:40] [SPEAKER_04]: and they even told them we will get your daughter into an elite university somewhere in the West.

[00:47:47] [SPEAKER_01]: That must have been a film in that, isn't it?

[00:47:49] [SPEAKER_01]: So, they were the sort of club of children who have grown up in different countries

[00:47:53] [SPEAKER_01]: who all end up in this one strange town in Russia somewhere.

[00:47:58] [SPEAKER_01]: That must be very weird because obviously the children grew up as Germans

[00:48:02] [SPEAKER_01]: and so then suddenly having to go back to Russia must be a mega culture shock.

[00:48:09] [SPEAKER_01]: How old were the kids and what actually happened to them?

[00:48:12] [SPEAKER_04]: So, the daughter was born in the early 1990s.

[00:48:16] [SPEAKER_04]: In the early 1980s, she was around 1920 when there were arrests.

[00:48:19] [SPEAKER_04]: She had just began university back then.

[00:48:23] [SPEAKER_04]: And if you ask me what my...

[00:48:27] [SPEAKER_04]: If I have a feeling about...

[00:48:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Did they tell her about the real identity or not?

[00:48:33] [SPEAKER_04]: I would say they told her.

[00:48:35] [SPEAKER_04]: They told her just before the arrest in some way.

[00:48:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe they had a family trip to Russia.

[00:48:43] [SPEAKER_04]: They pretended to be on holidays so they travelled to Russia.

[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And the investigators believe that this trip was used

[00:48:51] [SPEAKER_04]: so that the Anschlacks were being trained in a new way of communication

[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_04]: by the Russian service in Russia.

[00:48:58] [SPEAKER_04]: And maybe it was this fake holiday trip where they told her daughter,

[00:49:05] [SPEAKER_04]: we are Russians, you are Russian, this is our country and this is our job.

[00:49:11] [SPEAKER_04]: I have no proof of that but this is just my feeling.

[00:49:17] [SPEAKER_01]: What has happened to the daughter now?

[00:49:21] [SPEAKER_04]: She still lives in Germany.

[00:49:23] [SPEAKER_04]: She lives here and she even still uses the name Anschlack

[00:49:28] [SPEAKER_04]: even though it's fake but it's probably her real name.

[00:49:32] [SPEAKER_04]: It's the only name she has.

[00:49:34] [SPEAKER_01]: That must be a weird sensation to discover that...

[00:49:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Your parents are not quite who you thought they were.

[00:49:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Whether she discovered that in Russia or whether it was just through the trial

[00:49:47] [SPEAKER_01]: must be a very strange sensation really because your whole identity is now in question.

[00:49:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know whether that affects her employment prospects etc.

[00:50:00] [SPEAKER_01]: It must be a bit of a difficult one.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_01]: She said she won't probably get a security clearance.

[00:50:04] [SPEAKER_04]: There was also the question of citizenship.

[00:50:08] [SPEAKER_04]: The parents said they were Austrian so is the daughter also Austrian?

[00:50:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Is she German?

[00:50:15] [SPEAKER_04]: There are also all these legal questions that were around there.

[00:50:19] [SPEAKER_04]: In the podcast we tell this story that we heard from the investigators

[00:50:26] [SPEAKER_04]: that when the parents were in prison just right after they were arrested

[00:50:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Andreas Anschlack wrote a letter, sent the letter to the daughter.

[00:50:36] [SPEAKER_04]: She was still out there, she was not arrested.

[00:50:38] [SPEAKER_04]: Of course not, she was still in the parents' house.

[00:50:42] [SPEAKER_04]: He sent the letter and this letter was opened by the investigators

[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_04]: and read before it left prison.

[00:50:49] [SPEAKER_04]: In a secret way of course.

[00:50:50] [SPEAKER_04]: In that letter it was just a regular letter from the father to his daughter.

[00:50:57] [SPEAKER_04]: But there was one sentence which was really really strange.

[00:51:02] [SPEAKER_04]: There was a sentence, take care of the teddy bears.

[00:51:08] [SPEAKER_04]: So the police investigators rushed to the Anschlack's house again

[00:51:14] [SPEAKER_04]: to see if they could find anything in these teddy bears and in these toys.

[00:51:20] [SPEAKER_04]: One of the policemen put out a knife and slit open all these teddy bears

[00:51:26] [SPEAKER_04]: to see if there was something hiding in there.

[00:51:29] [SPEAKER_04]: If the daughter was getting rid of this espionage stuff.

[00:51:33] [SPEAKER_04]: But in the end they did not find anything.

[00:51:35] [SPEAKER_04]: There was nothing in there.

[00:51:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Was it a test to see if his letters were being read do you think?

[00:51:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess so, yeah.

[00:51:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah they should have used an x-ray.

[00:51:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:51:50] [SPEAKER_01]: So have we discovered any more about the real identities in the Anschlack's

[00:51:54] [SPEAKER_01]: and where they are today?

[00:51:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes we did.

[00:51:57] [SPEAKER_04]: We found out their real identities, their real names.

[00:52:00] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean they were put on trial and sentenced under their cover identities.

[00:52:05] [SPEAKER_04]: And we heard that German authorities did not know the real names.

[00:52:10] [SPEAKER_04]: They now know because of our podcast series.

[00:52:14] [SPEAKER_04]: So we found out that their daughter who is still, as I said, still living in Germany

[00:52:20] [SPEAKER_04]: she is travelling to Russia regularly since her parents were deported back to Russia.

[00:52:28] [SPEAKER_04]: We got the information that she travelled to Moscow for example in 2019

[00:52:34] [SPEAKER_04]: and that she had bought some train tickets from Moscow to St. Petersburg

[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_04]: and she bought these tickets not only for herself but also for three other people

[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_04]: including Olga and Alexander Abramovic.

[00:52:51] [SPEAKER_04]: And Olga and Alexander were the names that the German investigators had suspected

[00:52:57] [SPEAKER_04]: that these could be the real names of the Anschlack's.

[00:53:00] [SPEAKER_04]: So for example they found a picture of Heidrun Anschlack that was taken during the holiday

[00:53:06] [SPEAKER_04]: and you can see her standing in front of a boat, a ship, a yacht.

[00:53:11] [SPEAKER_04]: And the boat's name is Olga.

[00:53:14] [SPEAKER_04]: So there were some clues that the investigators thought this might be the real Russian name.

[00:53:19] [SPEAKER_04]: So Heidrun and Andreas Anschlack are really Olga and Alexander Abramovic

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER_04]: and they live in Moscow.

[00:53:26] [SPEAKER_04]: We found out.

[00:53:26] [SPEAKER_04]: We have some pictures of them, pictures showing them both wearing a wedding ring

[00:53:30] [SPEAKER_04]: so there's a good chance that they are still a couple now.

[00:53:33] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, wow, wow.

[00:53:35] [SPEAKER_01]: What have you learned about the Russian Sleeper Spy program

[00:53:39] [SPEAKER_01]: and its operations through your research for the podcast?

[00:53:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, this very, very interesting program.

[00:53:45] [SPEAKER_04]: It's about 100 years old.

[00:53:47] [SPEAKER_04]: It is quite sophisticated and it's very unique I would say.

[00:53:51] [SPEAKER_04]: And we talked to several experts about Russia's intelligence services

[00:53:55] [SPEAKER_04]: especially the Illegals program including Kevin Ryle.

[00:53:59] [SPEAKER_04]: He's a lecturer at the Brunel University London

[00:54:01] [SPEAKER_04]: and he worked for the US intelligence community for many years

[00:54:06] [SPEAKER_04]: and he's a real expert in all this.

[00:54:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And Kevin told us that the Illegals program started in the 1920s

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_04]: pretty much right after the establishment, the birth of the Soviet Union.

[00:54:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Reason being the young Soviet Union back then did not have many diplomatic missions,

[00:54:23] [SPEAKER_04]: embassies or consulates around the world.

[00:54:26] [SPEAKER_04]: Therefore they could not use spies pretending to be diplomats

[00:54:30] [SPEAKER_04]: so they invented the Illegals program.

[00:54:32] [SPEAKER_04]: But back then with the main goal of hunting down

[00:54:36] [SPEAKER_04]: exile, opposition activists and traitors,

[00:54:39] [SPEAKER_04]: this is what Stalin would use his intelligence services mainly for.

[00:54:45] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, the Illegals program recruits and trains intelligence officers

[00:54:50] [SPEAKER_04]: to be sent to a specific country.

[00:54:52] [SPEAKER_04]: These operatives use what is called a deep cover.

[00:54:56] [SPEAKER_04]: They use the identities of people that have existed at one point in time.

[00:55:00] [SPEAKER_04]: And often Soviet diplomatic staff, they stationed in an embassy,

[00:55:04] [SPEAKER_04]: they would go around cemeteries in the country,

[00:55:06] [SPEAKER_04]: in South America for example or Africa wherever.

[00:55:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And where they have many countries have a part of the population

[00:55:15] [SPEAKER_04]: with European and North American heritage.

[00:55:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Then they would be on the lookout for graves of deceased children.

[00:55:22] [SPEAKER_04]: And the FBI called that method tomb stoning.

[00:55:26] [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, then they would use the identity of a dead child

[00:55:30] [SPEAKER_04]: to obtain a birth certificate.

[00:55:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And as I said in many countries,

[00:55:35] [SPEAKER_04]: the registry of newborn children is not connected interlinked

[00:55:39] [SPEAKER_04]: with the database of deceased citizens.

[00:55:41] [SPEAKER_04]: So it is registered that someone was born,

[00:55:43] [SPEAKER_04]: but it's not registered that the same person also died.

[00:55:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is why the Soviet and Russian intelligence

[00:55:50] [SPEAKER_04]: use, this is the way that they use to create fake identities.

[00:55:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And then the spies are sent to a country

[00:55:58] [SPEAKER_04]: to start building up their cover identity.

[00:56:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes they live in one country for some years,

[00:56:03] [SPEAKER_04]: they attend university, sometimes they get into relationships

[00:56:06] [SPEAKER_04]: and they move to another country,

[00:56:08] [SPEAKER_04]: attend a different university, get into a different company.

[00:56:11] [SPEAKER_04]: All that is done to build a real life.

[00:56:14] [SPEAKER_04]: So something people could trace back for years

[00:56:17] [SPEAKER_04]: without becoming suspicious.

[00:56:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, this program, it is run by the director at S

[00:56:24] [SPEAKER_04]: or the line S, it's called the unit,

[00:56:26] [SPEAKER_04]: the section within Russian foreign intelligence service.

[00:56:30] [SPEAKER_04]: It used to be with the KGB, now it's run by the SVR

[00:56:33] [SPEAKER_04]: and Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU.

[00:56:38] [SPEAKER_04]: Many people have talked about the GRU in recent years.

[00:56:42] [SPEAKER_04]: They once had an illegal program back in the 1950s and 60s as well,

[00:56:46] [SPEAKER_04]: but then it suddenly stopped.

[00:56:49] [SPEAKER_04]: But now they are back in the game, it seems.

[00:56:52] [SPEAKER_04]: There are some illegals that were arrested in recent years

[00:56:55] [SPEAKER_04]: that probably belong to the GRU.

[00:56:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's quite a costly way of doing espionage in many respects

[00:57:02] [SPEAKER_01]: because it requires an awful lot of training

[00:57:04] [SPEAKER_01]: and effort to get those identities and people in place.

[00:57:09] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a very interesting tactic.

[00:57:12] [SPEAKER_04]: It's very costly and these people are recruited in certain ways

[00:57:17] [SPEAKER_04]: and trained for a very long time for years.

[00:57:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's very, very costly.

[00:57:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, how do you think Vladimir Putin's admiration

[00:57:27] [SPEAKER_01]: for illegals has influenced Russian espionage tactics today?

[00:57:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, when we made the podcast, my colleague, Polina,

[00:57:35] [SPEAKER_04]: who was working with me on that, she's fluent in Russian.

[00:57:38] [SPEAKER_04]: She was born in Belarus.

[00:57:40] [SPEAKER_04]: She was looking into what Putin has said about spies in the past

[00:57:45] [SPEAKER_04]: and also recently.

[00:57:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And what is striking is he really admires them.

[00:57:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Of course, Putin himself was a spy.

[00:57:56] [SPEAKER_04]: He was KGB and there's the saying,

[00:57:59] [SPEAKER_04]: there's nothing like a former KGB.

[00:58:02] [SPEAKER_04]: But still, it is interesting to see what Putin says about spying,

[00:58:07] [SPEAKER_04]: especially about the illegals.

[00:58:08] [SPEAKER_04]: He admires them.

[00:58:10] [SPEAKER_04]: He's proud of having them.

[00:58:12] [SPEAKER_04]: He says many countries have intelligence services.

[00:58:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Only a few have such a powerful tool as the illegals program.

[00:58:19] [SPEAKER_04]: He even calls them, he uses the German word,

[00:58:22] [SPEAKER_04]: he even calls them Wunderkinder.

[00:58:24] [SPEAKER_04]: So I would say Putin is a supporter of this form of espionage.

[00:58:30] [SPEAKER_04]: He loves this cult like subculture that has been created around these spies,

[00:58:37] [SPEAKER_04]: the movies, the songs and yeah, I mean, frankly, Russia is run by a spy

[00:58:42] [SPEAKER_04]: who loves his spies.

[00:58:44] [SPEAKER_04]: He will use them wherever he can.

[00:58:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:58:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's interesting as well because I don't know how many sleepers

[00:58:51] [SPEAKER_01]: have ended up defecting.

[00:58:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So in many ways, the sleepers almost have to be the most loyal spies

[00:58:56] [SPEAKER_01]: for them to be able to go to a foreign country and not kind of get swayed,

[00:59:01] [SPEAKER_01]: especially during the Cold War where it was sort of Russia that wasn't fantastic.

[00:59:06] [SPEAKER_01]: But then you end up in the West.

[00:59:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I know certain intelligence officers who were under diplomatic cover

[00:59:11] [SPEAKER_01]: were swayed by the West, but the illegals tend to stay in place.

[00:59:15] [SPEAKER_01]: They were pretty, pretty good.

[00:59:16] [SPEAKER_04]: I would say that yeah, there are only a few who have defected

[00:59:21] [SPEAKER_04]: and probably these people are very, very loyal

[00:59:26] [SPEAKER_04]: and believers in back then what was the Soviet course

[00:59:30] [SPEAKER_04]: and what is now a Russian nationalism, whatever you want to call it.

[00:59:35] [SPEAKER_04]: So for example, the Anschlacks, I mean, they were recruited in the 1980s.

[00:59:39] [SPEAKER_04]: They were sent out in the 1980s, late 1980s, early 1990s,

[00:59:44] [SPEAKER_04]: still believing that they would be fighting in this Cold War time

[00:59:51] [SPEAKER_04]: for a better world in their view, like a communist world.

[00:59:56] [SPEAKER_04]: And then the Soviet Union was history and still they kept on spying.

[01:00:04] [SPEAKER_04]: They were still very loyal to their country

[01:00:08] [SPEAKER_04]: and to the next governments that came along.

[01:00:11] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, there are only a few defectors.

[01:00:13] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm very surprised when I heard that Kevin Reil also talked about this

[01:00:17] [SPEAKER_04]: and said they're not that many who defected.

[01:00:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think Putin has a big thing about loyalty.

[01:00:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, of course.

[01:00:25] [SPEAKER_01]: So why is Germany still a target for Russian espionage today?

[01:00:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah, Germany is an important country within Europe

[01:00:33] [SPEAKER_04]: and the Western world I would say it has a strong economy,

[01:00:37] [SPEAKER_04]: still a lot of influence within the European Union.

[01:00:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Germany used to be on the frontline of the Cold War,

[01:00:44] [SPEAKER_04]: with Berlin being the city of spies for several decades.

[01:00:49] [SPEAKER_04]: For Russia, Germany was very, very important when it comes to energy trade.

[01:00:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Nord Stream pipelines were built because the German government wanted cheap Russian gas

[01:01:01] [SPEAKER_04]: to be available for the German economy.

[01:01:03] [SPEAKER_04]: And we also have some unique conditions in Germany.

[01:01:08] [SPEAKER_04]: The country was divided for decades.

[01:01:10] [SPEAKER_04]: There was a communist East.

[01:01:12] [SPEAKER_04]: There are still many people in this country with a very positive attitude towards Russia,

[01:01:17] [SPEAKER_04]: very nostalgic, very skeptical of NATO,

[01:01:21] [SPEAKER_04]: strong what we call anti-Americanism.

[01:01:26] [SPEAKER_04]: Quite a lot of these people that is my impression at least

[01:01:31] [SPEAKER_04]: still feel that they were not liberated in 1989-1990,

[01:01:36] [SPEAKER_04]: but they feel like they were defeated back then

[01:01:40] [SPEAKER_04]: and still have this attitude.

[01:01:42] [SPEAKER_04]: And there is a large community of people of Russian or Soviet origin,

[01:01:47] [SPEAKER_04]: around 4 million in a country of 82, 83 million in total.

[01:01:51] [SPEAKER_04]: It's a large community.

[01:01:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And the Kremlin has set sights on both of these groups.

[01:01:57] [SPEAKER_04]: Moscow sees a good opportunity to target these people

[01:02:00] [SPEAKER_04]: with propaganda, disinformation, information warfare, influence operation.

[01:02:05] [SPEAKER_04]: So this is what I think explains Russia's interest in Germany today.

[01:02:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we've certainly on our espresso martini show noticed

[01:02:14] [SPEAKER_01]: that a lot of spy stories kind of coming from Germany

[01:02:17] [SPEAKER_01]: in the last sort of 18 months there's been a few

[01:02:22] [SPEAKER_01]: high level figures in German intelligence

[01:02:25] [SPEAKER_01]: who sort of turn out to be Russian agents of some description.

[01:02:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the pattern I've noticed with some of the more recent cases

[01:02:31] [SPEAKER_01]: is that the Russians seem to be targeting Germans

[01:02:34] [SPEAKER_01]: who have a slight far right affiliation.

[01:02:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you have any insight on any of that.

[01:02:38] [SPEAKER_04]: This is true.

[01:02:39] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there is a certain part of a German society

[01:02:43] [SPEAKER_04]: that has affiliation towards the political right.

[01:02:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And these are people that are, I mean, the party that we have,

[01:02:53] [SPEAKER_04]: the alternative for Germany, RFP is a pro Russian party.

[01:03:00] [SPEAKER_04]: There are lots of people that are really fans of Mr. Putin

[01:03:05] [SPEAKER_04]: and what he is doing.

[01:03:08] [SPEAKER_04]: Some people that believe that Ukraine is just a Russian issue,

[01:03:12] [SPEAKER_04]: something that we as Europeans shouldn't really care that much about

[01:03:17] [SPEAKER_04]: and also many people that are actively voting

[01:03:22] [SPEAKER_04]: or at least speak against sanctions.

[01:03:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, this is something that the Kremlin sees and these are some...

[01:03:30] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's not surprising.

[01:03:33] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, they have done this for decades trying to influence

[01:03:35] [SPEAKER_04]: the political left and the political right.

[01:03:38] [SPEAKER_04]: And there is even some historical evidence

[01:03:42] [SPEAKER_04]: that the Russians like extreme right more than the extreme left

[01:03:45] [SPEAKER_04]: because the extreme left sometimes for the Soviets

[01:03:48] [SPEAKER_04]: felt more like crazy and ideologically driven crazy,

[01:03:52] [SPEAKER_04]: like anarchists and whatever.

[01:03:54] [SPEAKER_04]: But they became more conservative, the more right wing,

[01:03:58] [SPEAKER_04]: they felt more reliable and you could work with them.

[01:04:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like Gordieffsky talked a bit about that.

[01:04:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, so this is all not really surprising.

[01:04:08] [SPEAKER_04]: But there are also other developments.

[01:04:10] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, they are also on the lookout to influence people

[01:04:13] [SPEAKER_04]: from the, let's say, more centrist, like the parties,

[01:04:18] [SPEAKER_04]: like the bigger ones, they used to be the big parties,

[01:04:21] [SPEAKER_04]: SPD, CDU, the conservative social democrats.

[01:04:25] [SPEAKER_04]: And they are also on the lookout for them

[01:04:26] [SPEAKER_04]: and for young politicians, leaders to be influenced.

[01:04:31] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, as you said, we had several cases recently.

[01:04:35] [SPEAKER_04]: We have someone, an officer of the BND

[01:04:38] [SPEAKER_04]: of our foreign intelligence service on trial right now

[01:04:42] [SPEAKER_04]: for SBNR for Russia.

[01:04:44] [SPEAKER_04]: We had two people arrested that were allegedly willing

[01:04:50] [SPEAKER_04]: to carry out sabotage attacks, like real terrorist attacks

[01:04:53] [SPEAKER_04]: for Russia.

[01:04:54] [SPEAKER_04]: One of them was someone who fought in eastern Ukraine

[01:04:57] [SPEAKER_04]: in the Donbas region, both of them of Russian origin

[01:05:01] [SPEAKER_04]: but German nationals.

[01:05:03] [SPEAKER_04]: We had a suspected Chinese spy that was arrested.

[01:05:07] [SPEAKER_04]: He was a staff member of the European Parliament

[01:05:12] [SPEAKER_04]: of this AFP party.

[01:05:14] [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, there's a lot of spy activity going on right now.

[01:05:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yeah, we sort of got our fair amount going on here too

[01:05:21] [SPEAKER_01]: in the UK and in the US.

[01:05:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So there's definitely no shortage of that currently

[01:05:26] [SPEAKER_01]: for good and bad.

[01:05:29] [SPEAKER_01]: So rounding up with the Anschlag's,

[01:05:31] [SPEAKER_01]: what was the impact of the Anschlag case on the German public

[01:05:34] [SPEAKER_01]: and their perception of Russian espionage directed against Germany?

[01:05:38] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, looking back at the time they were arrested,

[01:05:41] [SPEAKER_04]: I would say there was no impact at all.

[01:05:43] [SPEAKER_04]: It was regarded as some form of curiosity.

[01:05:48] [SPEAKER_04]: It was more like, oh, Russia is still spying on us.

[01:05:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Interesting, but no more than that.

[01:05:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And in German politics and even within the security authorities,

[01:05:59] [SPEAKER_04]: Russia was not treated as a threat that should be reckoned with.

[01:06:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, there was official warning about Russia still spying on Germany,

[01:06:09] [SPEAKER_04]: on EU and NATO.

[01:06:10] [SPEAKER_04]: There were reports about increasing cyber threats coming from Russia,

[01:06:14] [SPEAKER_04]: but it was not perceived like a real ongoing,

[01:06:18] [SPEAKER_04]: even increasing and increasingly aggressive activity.

[01:06:22] [SPEAKER_04]: And that has changed in the past two years, I guess.

[01:06:25] [SPEAKER_04]: More and more spies and agents are arrested

[01:06:28] [SPEAKER_04]: and Russia is now seen as an urgent threat, I would say.

[01:06:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Russian intelligence services are actively involved in operations to influence elections.

[01:06:36] [SPEAKER_04]: They are recruiting operatives to carry out acts of sabotage and state terrorism.

[01:06:43] [SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah, the view on Russia and Russia's intelligence services has changed.

[01:06:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, no indeed.

[01:06:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Boys, yeah, it certainly changed here as well because I think,

[01:06:54] [SPEAKER_01]: because when I started this podcast back in 2016,

[01:06:57] [SPEAKER_01]: even back then, and we had that high level poisoning case with Alexander Litvinenko,

[01:07:03] [SPEAKER_01]: there were still a lot of people who were like,

[01:07:05] [SPEAKER_01]: oh, you know, Russian espionage is just a thing of the Cold War, you know.

[01:07:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And over time, I even interviewed somebody called Edward Lucas back in 2017-18.

[01:07:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And even back then he was considered a bit hawkish

[01:07:18] [SPEAKER_01]: and some people thought it was a bit of a crank,

[01:07:20] [SPEAKER_01]: but now he's become prophetic and very well respected on this topic.

[01:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think people have finally realized that unfortunately,

[01:07:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Russia is very aggressive towards the West and some commentators even said

[01:07:34] [SPEAKER_01]: that Russia is actually at war with the West and the West hasn't realized that.

[01:07:38] [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, it's very interesting.

[01:07:41] [SPEAKER_04]: At least it's a hybrid war.

[01:07:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe it's now even more than a hybrid war.

[01:07:46] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, we have to admit there are certain things happening.

[01:07:51] [SPEAKER_04]: There are attacks being carried out by people

[01:07:54] [SPEAKER_04]: that were recruited by Russia, some of them even Russian intelligence operatives.

[01:08:01] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, Russia is just willing, the Kremlin is willing to escalate the situation

[01:08:06] [SPEAKER_04]: when it comes to the hybrid war there.

[01:08:09] [SPEAKER_04]: And I have a very good source of mind in German counterintelligence.

[01:08:13] [SPEAKER_04]: He once said to me and I think there's some truth in that.

[01:08:17] [SPEAKER_04]: He said, there is this concept and it's a KGB kind of thing.

[01:08:22] [SPEAKER_04]: It's in the KGB handbook apparently.

[01:08:24] [SPEAKER_04]: The concept of what's called reflexive control.

[01:08:28] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's a form of psychology that they use.

[01:08:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And he said, they are very, very good at it.

[01:08:35] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, they convinced us that the Cold War is over.

[01:08:39] [SPEAKER_04]: For them, it just paused for a while.

[01:08:43] [SPEAKER_04]: And then he also said they are even so good at this psychology warfare thing

[01:08:48] [SPEAKER_04]: that they convinced many Western governments and intelligence services

[01:08:53] [SPEAKER_04]: that what they did on the border of Ukraine was just an exercise.

[01:08:58] [SPEAKER_04]: But nothing would happen.

[01:09:00] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, so I would say for Russia, probably the Cold War never really ended.

[01:09:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And with Vladimir Putin, he has done everything in his mind, in his view

[01:09:12] [SPEAKER_04]: to gain the former strength back.

[01:09:15] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, when he was a spy in Dresden, he was stationed in East Germany.

[01:09:20] [SPEAKER_04]: He was a KGB officer in Dresden.

[01:09:22] [SPEAKER_04]: He experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall.

[01:09:27] [SPEAKER_04]: He experienced how this country fell apart basically.

[01:09:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And what he experienced back then was that the communist system,

[01:09:35] [SPEAKER_04]: the system that he fought for was not strong enough.

[01:09:39] [SPEAKER_04]: It did not do what in his mind they should have done.

[01:09:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Shoot at these protests, at these demonstrations and just use violence.

[01:09:49] [SPEAKER_04]: For him, it was just weakness that he experienced.

[01:09:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think this is something that sticks to his mind still today.

[01:09:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I would agree.

[01:09:59] [SPEAKER_04]: It's kind of a trauma for him.

[01:10:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.

[01:10:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's sort of continuing on now.

[01:10:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see the end of Putin

[01:10:11] [SPEAKER_01]: and Putinism for some time.

[01:10:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I think, yeah, it's definitely going to be around for a while.

[01:10:16] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, people ask me sometimes what you think I think is going to happen with Russia.

[01:10:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And I just think in the end when he does finally,

[01:10:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I think you only leave office when he dies and it'll be a bit like when Stalin died.

[01:10:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a comedy film that was made a few years ago in the UK called The Death of Stalin

[01:10:32] [SPEAKER_01]: that takes a satirical look at what happened.

[01:10:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.

[01:10:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Apparently it's banned in Russia.

[01:10:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And I have a horrible feeling it's probably going to be quite prophetic to what happens next in Russia.

[01:10:44] [SPEAKER_01]: But we will see.

[01:10:46] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I heard just was it last I think it was last week from someone who is also has a lot of inside knowledge with NATO.

[01:10:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And he said, you know what our strongest deterrence is?

[01:10:59] [SPEAKER_04]: It's Putin's age.

[01:11:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:11:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[01:11:01] [SPEAKER_04]: He knows that he will die at one point.

[01:11:04] [SPEAKER_04]: And but he has some some business to finish.

[01:11:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, legacy to protect kind of thing.

[01:11:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:11:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my goodness.

[01:11:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, is there anything else you'd like to add that's important to you or any kind of final thoughts before we sort of wrap up today?

[01:11:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know, there's a lot of talk about Russia's increasing spy activities about espionage,

[01:11:26] [SPEAKER_04]: assassination, spy war and whatnot.

[01:11:29] [SPEAKER_04]: And I would say just talk more about the question of efficiency when it comes to Russian spies and intelligence services.

[01:11:38] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, not talk about them like an all almighty force that is out there and doing stuff.

[01:11:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Of course, Russia has powerful security services surveillance systems hackers these illegals and by law they are allowed to do almost anything they want.

[01:11:54] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, as I said, the country is run by a trained spy.

[01:11:59] [SPEAKER_04]: So he's one of them.

[01:12:00] [SPEAKER_04]: But what about the question?

[01:12:02] [SPEAKER_04]: Is that really worth it?

[01:12:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Does it really make a difference?

[01:12:05] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, take a look at what Bellingcat is doing.

[01:12:09] [SPEAKER_04]: The insider is doing crystal gotse and the others numerous Russian spy plots were uncovered.

[01:12:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Dozens of operatives were exposed to recent years.

[01:12:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, just what I want to say is Russian intelligence is making mistakes.

[01:12:23] [SPEAKER_04]: They have done huge mistake by telling the Kremlin that Ukraine can be conquered and occupied within a few days.

[01:12:30] [SPEAKER_04]: And I would like to change the attitude that we, especially we as journalists observe and sometimes look at these services, the attitudes that we have.

[01:12:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, they do try to influence elections.

[01:12:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, they try to disunite Western societies, weekend alliances or whatever.

[01:12:49] [SPEAKER_04]: They have done that for decades, but it's not the Russian intelligence service electing our leaders and it's not, you know, they are not an almighty force out there.

[01:12:57] [SPEAKER_04]: And they make a lot of mistakes and many things go wrong and they are exposed now and out in the open and yeah, have a more realistic view on what they're doing.

[01:13:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely.

[01:13:07] [SPEAKER_01]: We obviously just said we know a lot more now, especially about their tactics and things.

[01:13:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So hopefully that will in a sense weaken any influence they may or may not have had.

[01:13:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.

[01:13:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, excellent.

[01:13:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, where can listeners find out more about you and more importantly about your podcast?

[01:13:23] [SPEAKER_04]: You can find me on X, a former Twitter, I guess that is the easiest way as I post most of my publications there.

[01:13:30] [SPEAKER_04]: You can find me there as Floria and Flada, just one word, so just my full name.

[01:13:36] [SPEAKER_04]: And there's also a link to my blog where I write more detail about security related topics, especially intelligence services.

[01:13:42] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, our podcast, the Anschlugs is available on Spotify and Apple.

[01:13:48] [SPEAKER_04]: It is in German, of course, but maybe there are some fellow Germans among your listeners.

[01:13:53] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm quite sure of that.

[01:13:55] [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, have a look and enjoy the podcast.

[01:13:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, thanks for having me.

[01:14:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no thank you.

[01:14:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's the Anschlugs Russian spies among us.

[01:14:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's right, I forgot to mention actually so the Anschlugs name actually translates as attack that's a bit odd, isn't it?

[01:14:12] [SPEAKER_04]: It is kind of odd.

[01:14:15] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, the origin is Czech Slovak.

[01:14:18] [SPEAKER_04]: They used to be a family with the surname Anschlug.

[01:14:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:14:23] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is what the Russians used and we even were in touch with the real family with the real Anschlugs family, but they were not willing to talk to us.

[01:14:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Sadly, but yeah, we talked to them, but they were not willing to appear in our podcast.

[01:14:37] [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, it's odd.

[01:14:38] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, in German it's also yeah, if you translate it, it's the attack.

[01:14:43] [SPEAKER_04]: So one of the neighbors even told us that Andreas Anschlug because he traveled to the US from time to time.

[01:14:50] [SPEAKER_04]: He had a problem when he entered the United States on the border security just because of his name.

[01:14:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh wow.

[01:14:59] [SPEAKER_04]: After September 11th.

[01:15:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh no.

[01:15:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Awkward surname there.

[01:15:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Brilliant.

[01:15:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Florian, thank you very much. Your time's there. It's been great to have you on.

[01:15:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for having me.