'I thought I was smarter than almost everybody': my double life as a KGB agent

Raised in East Germany, Jack Barsky abandoned his mother, brother, wife and son to spy for the KGB. In America, he started a second family. And then it all came crashing down...

I ask him what Jack Barsky would say to the young Albrecht Dittrich, if he could go back in time to the moment before the man from the Stasi knocked on his door. He doesn’t hesitate. “Don’t do it. You’re going to mess yourself up. It’s a scheme that is bound to fail, and it has failed in most cases, and the adventure aspect is completely overrated. Being undercover is very often quite boring: it’s 99% waiting and 1% action. It’s lonely.”

Deep Undercover: My Secret Life And Tangled Allegiances As A KGB Spy in America, by Jack Barsky, is published by Tyndale Momentum on 21 March.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/11/thought-smarter-everybody-kgb-spy-jack-barsky