WEBVTT

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the Team House with your hopes.
Jack Murphy and David bark Hi, Everyone,

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Welcome to episode two hundred and forty
seven of The Team House. I'm

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Jack Murphy here with tonight's guest,
Zach Dorfman. Zach is a national security

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journalist, author of many great articles
in the national security and espionage field,

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and he also recently did the podcast
series Valley of Spies with Project Brazen,

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reporting on previously unknown to the public
Trader in our midst somebody who worked for

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the US National Security Complex in Silicon
Valley and sold secrets to the enemy during

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the Cold War. So we're very
happy to have Zach here tonight on the

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show. Thanks for coming on.
Man, appreciated your patience with us tonight.

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Of course, Man, great to
be back. Absolutely, So,

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you know, just to kick it
off, I mean, talk to us

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a little bit about about your podcast
series, Valley of Spies. I mean,

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before we get into the production of
it. I'd really like the your

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how this story like even came on
your radar because I recently read, for

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instance, there was a journalist who
wrote the book from Warsaw with Love whole

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history about the Polish American intelligence relationship, and I don't recall your story being

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in there. I mean, this
is something that I had never heard of

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before. Yeah, I mean that's
a great book, by the way,

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John Ponferen's book, and I read
that before I started. Yeah, it

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was about the same time I embarked
on the podcast. So basically, Spy

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Valley, the genesis of Spy Valley
was one of those great kind of kismet

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things that you have with your sources, and I know that you know you've

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had this too. I was sitting
with a longtime FBI counter intelligence official from

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San Francisco named Bill Canane, and
Bill was an awesome guy. He got

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out to San Francisco in the early
seventies and were worked Kundter intelligence in San

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Francisco until the mid nineties. He
was one of the capsin in his career.

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Was he was one of the first
FBI attas ches in Moscow after the

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fall of the Soviet unions, so
he was kind of renowned in the bureau.

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I mean that was like his low
was the last thing he did.

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But he spent basically his entire career
working on the Soviet Squad, then the

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Russia Squad, and then in between
what was known was like the East Block

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Squad and the East Block Squad during
the Cold War was you know, every

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communist country in Eastern Europe that wasn't
Russia basically, but it was all the

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satellite states, so the Polls,
the East Germans, the Czechs, the

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Hungarians, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, and you know they weren't as you

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know, big of a deal,
but they're pretty big deal. They're they're

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very, very active in the Valley, mostly for economic espionage. And Bill

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Bill was awesome. He was He
was an Irish guy from Park Slope who

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grew up in Park Slope. Was
a Marine, and then after he got

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out, he ended up in the
FBI. He worked in New York for

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a while and then he moved out
to San Francisco in the early seventies.

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And Bill and I would have coffee
from time to time and we would like,

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we'd hang out, we would chat. He would kind of shoot the

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shoot shit about about like all the
spy you know stuff that he did.

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They kind of you know, spy
hunting he did in the Valley. And

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one day he said to me,
oh, have you ever looked into the

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James Harper case? And I was
like, not really. I heard a

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little bit about it. And he
goes, oh, that should be a

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book. And he said, well, by the way, I was the

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squad supervisor on that case. And
of course, you know, as a

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reporter, you're like, wait,
huh, You're a squad supervisor. You

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oversaw the whole case from the investigative
side. And he said, yeah,

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I'm going to start talking about it, and and I was like, well,

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if Bill says this is a book, there might be a book.

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And so I started reading everything I
could about the case. It was a

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big deal at the time, but
it had been completely memory hold. You

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know. It was one of those
great Cold War stories that, for various

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reasons, had just been completely forgotten, and much of the story had never

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been told because, you know,
the FBI guys weren't talking at the time.

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Obviously, when the case broke in
nineteen eighty three, the prosecutors wouldn't

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have talked. The documents I gotten
wouldn't have been able to get, and

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of course I wouldn't have been able
to talk to James Harper himself. So

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that was the real genesis of the
story. And then that was a twenty

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That was twenty nineteen, and the
story came out in twenty twenty three.

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So it was on and off reporting
the story for half a decade, and

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a book proposal ended up becoming a
narrative podcast. And Bill also has like

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the most FBI voice ever in the
podcast We Arrived, Yeah, we had.

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Yeah, he had just very and
he was funny because he had this

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you know, I think it's this
old I think it was this old school

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Brooklyn Irish had gone on, and
he was so disarming because he was he

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was he was, you know.
But then but then you'd be like,

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oh, Bill, can we meet
for coffee tomorrow? And he'd be like,

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oh, I can't. I got
to go to James Joyce day,

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you know, down at the you
know, he was like a really literary

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guy. He was famous in the
bureau in San Francisco because every morning he

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would get to the office and then
he would go across the street and read

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the New York Times cover and cover
for like three hours. Like he would

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read the New York Times every day. And some of his colleagues were like,

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what's this guy doing. This isn't
his job. But Bill's thinking was

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that, like, to do his
job well, he had to understand what

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the world, how the world worked, you know, in a kind of

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like geopolitical way, not you know, because it's very easy when you're working

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cases just to think about it in
the narrow context. But Bill, to

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his great credit, I think,
understood that you couldn't separate counter intelligence work

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from the larger political and geopolitical situation
that was going on at the time,

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and so yeah, I mean,
once I knew I had the squad leader

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ready to talk, I was like, that's one big piece. Little did

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I know there was going to be
a podcast and bill of the time,

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it was a hardcore like can't record
me, you know, can't record me

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even on background, even to take
notes. Can't record me ever, And

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of course I thought that there was
going to be big problem with this.

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But you know, years went by, and when I came back to him

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and said, hey, this isn't
going to be a book anymore. It's

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going to be a podcast. Would
you lend would you be willing to have

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a microphone in front of you and
talk about this case? He was kind

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of like, okay, maybe it
was COVID, Maybe it was like he

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realized that this was the one this
was the one best shot to have this

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story told. And I was like, look, it's not going to be

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a book and I need it.
It's not as powerful, you know,

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right, you know how this is
right? Obviously it's not as powerful for

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you to narrate somebody else's story.
You want them to be able to narrate

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a little bit. So it was
really special and I think wonderful having people

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like Bill and a lot of his
colleagues in the Bureau who you know,

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were they were long retired at that
point and they were willing to talk about

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the work they did. So,
Yeah, that was really cool. And

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as we kind of like get into
this story itself, can you tell us

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a little bit about the history of
Silicon Valley and why that part of America

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is such a huge target for foreign
intelligence services. Yeah, I mean,

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going back to the post war period, basically the valley always had a take

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connections to the US military industrial complex. You know, got of missile technology

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was being developed both in Silicon Valley
and then down in the South Los Angeles

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area, if you know, there's
a lot of a lot of military,

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very very large military contractors are still
based out there, and then of course

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the valley. By the nineteen seventies, the micro trip revolution entered the picture,

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and computing power became important for everything
from missile guidance systems to tanks,

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to satellite systems to big data analysis
what we call today big data analysis,

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you know power. The idea of
like networked computing was something that obviously had

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civilian importance but was primarily as you
know, like you know, DARPA was

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the Internet was a military project.
You know, it's about military connectivity.

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So as soon as the micro trip
revolution, the semiconductor revolution kicked off by

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the seventies, sixties and seventies,
you know, it became the valley became

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and it still is, but it
really became a central front in the kind

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of Cold War espionage war. Back
then it was primarily the US versus the

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Soviet Union and allies. Now it's
a more complex picture where you have the

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Russians obviously, but you also even
more so probably have the Chinese. The

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Iranians are there. I mean,
everybody's playing around in the valley. And

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I think there's a way in which
people don't necessarily associate it with with being

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rich terrain for espionage, because they
think of espionage as something that happens in

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government buildings, you know, or
at the un you know, places that

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you think of as like seats of
power. There's a lot of power in

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the valley, and there's a lot
of technology that foreign states want to steal

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in order to replicate, to understand
better. And that's always been the primary

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kind of espionage you get in the
valley is that is like tech focused economic

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espionage. You also get political stuff, right because it's California. So you

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can't discount the fact that like foreign
governments want to know what's going on in

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California, I mean, particularly the
Chinese, So that's a part of the

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picture too, But it's really tech
focused here. You're probably the only person

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I know of offhand who's really kind
of pointed out the importance of California and

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specifically Miami as like hubs for intelligence
because of the way the United States projects

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itself out into the world from those
particular parts of America. Yeah, I

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mean the Miami scene, and I
wish there was some if there's somebody out

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there, and I apologize if I
don't know them, but I'm not aware

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of any dedicated full time intelligence reporter
down in Miami. And the Miami Herald

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did amazing stuff back in the day. They did, I mean, they

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used to have. I mean it's
just kind of like how the Yeah,

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it's a longer conversation about the loss
of national security reporting as a as a

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national enterprise as opposed to like nine
percent of people being based in d C.

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I mean, you're even you're in
New York, right, and that's

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that should be the most obvious place
in the world for national security reporters to

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be playing around in. But it's
so DC focused. I mean, Miami

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obviously you have I mean, not
only do you have you have so calm

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in Florida, but you also have
you know, the Cuban and Venezuela and

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Russians and the Russians down in Miami. There's a there's always ton going on

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down there, Ton going on down
there. I mean what I'm more familiar

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with, of course, is that
is the the Bay Area scene. And

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look, you know, there's always
a data point that I was told by

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a former senior intelligence official that always
stuck out to me, which is that

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the MSS. The MSS had a
unit, a political intelligence unit, uh

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for two American entities. One was
Washington, d C. And the other

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one was California. You know,
like they literally set up like a team

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or like a unit to understand politics
in DC. And then they're like,

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what's the only other place that we
carried out? But I mean's not like

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they don't care about what's going on
in other states, but they literally set

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up a unit you know for that, I mean, is it is a

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is a top priority for them,
and it's long been a priority for the

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Russians too. I mean, the
Russians have been mucking around in California for

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a long long time for all sorts
of reasons, and it just never got

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you know. I think that's why. Also, this, this case Despy,

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this the case in Spy Valley,
uh, kind of got forgotten because

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it was a California case, right, And it wasn't It wasn't a it

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wasn't a guy who was It's not
handsOn or Aims, right. It's not

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a guy who was an FBI agent, CIA officer. It's a dude who

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worked in high tech whose girlfriend worked
for a missile contractor you know. So

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it's it. And in a way
though, it's actually more representative of where

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espionage is going or has gone right
where It's like, it may not always

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be that guy in Langley, right, It's probably going to be somebody with

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access to classified information of like a
narrowly tailored type but nonetheless has a crazy

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value you know, for for states. Right. I mean that's that's that's

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the irony, right, is that
you have all these nameless building, these

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nameless companies, these tech firms that
have classified contracts, and they're doing stuff

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that is like wild that nobody really
understands and is kind of a softer target.

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Right. It's much harder to walk
into the Pentagon or to Foggy Bottom

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and like get what you want,
whereas like in the Valley, nobody really

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even like nobody really understands the kind
of geography of the classified world in the

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valley. Right, It's not like
you can point to five buildings and say

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they have these contracts. They I
mean, probably there's a couple of big

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firms, right, but like they're
small firms all over the valley that have

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some overlapping relationship to the Pentagon or
the IC, and it's just nobody really

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understands it. So it's not being
guarded the same way. So tell us

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about John Harper, who was this
guy who's kind of the focal point of

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your story. So James Harper was
a guy who was a native Californian.

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He he went through he was a
he he was trained in electronics by the

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military. He entered the he entered
the military to try to avoid being drafted

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into Korea. So that that places
him in time, right, I mean,

206
00:15:01.559 --> 00:15:05.480
so he graduated in high school in
the early nineteen fifties. He wanted

207
00:15:05.519 --> 00:15:09.120
to basically choose where he would get
routed so he didn't end up like on

208
00:15:09.159 --> 00:15:13.000
the front lines, I guess.
And he had a facility of electronics,

209
00:15:13.080 --> 00:15:18.240
and he was like a kind of
like first generation archetype of a Silicon Valley

210
00:15:18.399 --> 00:15:24.440
entrepreneur. A dude who's like really
really good at math and science, really

211
00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:28.879
ambitious, really greedy, wants to
strike it big. Sees that like there's

212
00:15:28.879 --> 00:15:31.960
this kind of gold rush going on
in San Francisco by the sixties and seventies,

213
00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:35.639
that first generation of like high tech
gold rush guys who were just like,

214
00:15:35.720 --> 00:15:39.159
I can make millions in a few
years, I can like hit it

215
00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:41.799
big, right, This guy thinks
he's going to like make it, and

216
00:15:41.879 --> 00:15:46.360
the process he ends up, you
know, working at these kind of storied

217
00:15:46.519 --> 00:15:48.840
valley firms. At some point he
has a clearance, he's working on missiles,

218
00:15:48.840 --> 00:15:52.639
he's working on missile related technology.
But then he's like he does other

219
00:15:52.679 --> 00:15:56.440
stuff that's not classified. Ends up
in Alaska for a bit working on something

220
00:15:56.480 --> 00:16:02.279
called the White Alice Project, which
was like setting up telecommunityations relays in case

221
00:16:02.320 --> 00:16:07.799
the Soviets shot a you know,
ICBM or something it was this at the

222
00:16:07.840 --> 00:16:11.720
time, the technology required, like
actual physical relay systems from very very rural

223
00:16:11.799 --> 00:16:15.279
parts of Alaska. So he went
up to Alaska for a few years and

224
00:16:15.279 --> 00:16:18.799
did that, and his whole life
was kind of defined by the Cold War

225
00:16:18.879 --> 00:16:22.519
that way, like the intersection between
high tech and the Cold War. So

226
00:16:22.559 --> 00:16:26.360
he does that, and he does
like non classified contracts, but still in

227
00:16:26.360 --> 00:16:32.399
the high tech space. One day
he decides, I want to strike out

228
00:16:32.399 --> 00:16:36.399
on my own. I want to
do something. Apparently he told me he

229
00:16:36.399 --> 00:16:41.799
he had four daughters, and he
told me one day he was watching one

230
00:16:41.799 --> 00:16:45.080
of his daughters at a swim practice
and they saw he had someone had a

231
00:16:45.120 --> 00:16:51.480
stopwatch, and he was like,
why isn't there an electric stopwatch? Oh,

232
00:16:51.480 --> 00:16:55.919
I should invent the electric stockwatch.
So he does. Like the main

233
00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:59.440
spy in this story in Spy Valley, James Harper is like the he is

234
00:16:59.480 --> 00:17:04.319
the ventor of the electric stopwatch,
like the digital stopwatch US. Yeah,

235
00:17:04.359 --> 00:17:07.880
digital, Like it's literally called Acus, but it's a company that still exists,

236
00:17:08.079 --> 00:17:18.119
Digital Stopwatch, I mean, and
he he starts the company up,

237
00:17:18.200 --> 00:17:22.039
starts doing really well. But like
Harper is a man of appetites, right,

238
00:17:22.519 --> 00:17:27.000
he's a cheat. You know,
he was a compulsive gambler. He

239
00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:33.359
he like partied really really, really
hard, and he bezzled funds from his

240
00:17:33.440 --> 00:17:34.640
company, and so he got kicked
out of his company. He got kicked

241
00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:38.400
out of his own company. And
this is by like the early nineteen seventies.

242
00:17:41.200 --> 00:17:44.519
And when he gets kicked out of
his company, he's like, shit,

243
00:17:44.559 --> 00:17:48.359
I gotta find a way to make
more money, and so he starts.

244
00:17:48.279 --> 00:17:52.680
He starts. Basically he hooks up
with the other Silicon Valley entrepreneur named

245
00:17:52.680 --> 00:17:57.319
Bill Hugle. And Bill Hugel was
a you know, a kind of pioneer

246
00:17:57.319 --> 00:18:02.440
of the semiconductor industry in the Valley. And Bill Hugle at the same time,

247
00:18:02.519 --> 00:18:07.079
I had a secret. Bill Hugle's
secret was a basically was an agent

248
00:18:07.200 --> 00:18:11.880
of the Polish intelligence Services, right, like which were then a core ally

249
00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:15.240
of Moscow is literally the Warsaw packed, right, I mean Warsaw. So

250
00:18:15.279 --> 00:18:19.279
like he Bill Hugle was this kind
of proto Valley libertarian guy who was like

251
00:18:21.279 --> 00:18:27.039
free love, like legalized pot out
of Vietnam, but also like free trade

252
00:18:27.440 --> 00:18:30.839
and free trade for Bill Hugle also
meant free trade with the Soviet block because

253
00:18:30.839 --> 00:18:37.400
he just believed like there shouldn't be
any prohibition impediments, Yeah, impediments on

254
00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:40.119
him making money, right, and
just you know, for the you know

255
00:18:40.160 --> 00:18:42.960
your listeners, I mean, given
who they are, they probably know all

256
00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:48.559
this. But like, there's there's
a lot of technology that is that is

257
00:18:48.640 --> 00:18:52.880
export prohibited, right. There's there's
stuff that has dual use, dual use

258
00:18:52.920 --> 00:18:59.039
technology, which means that it has
civilian purposes but also potential military or intelligence

259
00:18:59.039 --> 00:19:06.599
purposes. Things like micro things like
computer systems that would allow American adversaries to

260
00:19:07.440 --> 00:19:11.440
build better and faster supercomputers or missile
systems. I mean, this is going

261
00:19:11.480 --> 00:19:14.119
on today, right, There's like
there's been a real squeeze both on the

262
00:19:14.240 --> 00:19:17.119
Chinese in terms of certain kinds of
like computer technology, but then also the

263
00:19:17.200 --> 00:19:19.440
Russians now, particularly after the Ukraine
War. That's why the Russians are ripping

264
00:19:21.240 --> 00:19:26.839
microchips out of washing machines and refrigerators, you know, because they can't they

265
00:19:26.880 --> 00:19:29.960
can't get this technology other ways.
It's like it's kind of incredible. Well,

266
00:19:30.039 --> 00:19:32.839
those are the same case in the
seventies, right. So Bill Hugle

267
00:19:33.640 --> 00:19:36.559
was not a traditional spy in the
way we think about spies, but he

268
00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:41.039
was an agent of the Polish Intelligence
Services, and the Polls would get lists

269
00:19:41.559 --> 00:19:45.680
of high tech that they wanted from
the KGB. The KGB would pass them

270
00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:48.400
a list. The list would be
like, we want this kind of chip,

271
00:19:48.440 --> 00:19:48.960
this kind of chip, this kind
of thing, this kind of thing's

272
00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:52.160
kind of processing technology, are replicator
of some sort? You know, all

273
00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:56.680
this stuff. In the seventies they
handed to the polls. The Polish Intelligence

274
00:19:56.720 --> 00:20:00.920
Services would then hand those lists out
to their agents. Can you get me

275
00:20:00.039 --> 00:20:03.960
x can you get me wine?
And Bill Hugle was one of those guys,

276
00:20:03.480 --> 00:20:07.359
right, he was like a principal
agent for the Polls. Now,

277
00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:12.680
as a good principal agent, he
subcontract he contracted out to sub agents.

278
00:20:12.759 --> 00:20:18.920
Right. And James Harper enters Bill
Hugle's world and becomes a sub agent.

279
00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:26.119
So he becomes a guy who works
for Bill Hugle finding technology that is technically

280
00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:32.839
illegal to export to the Soviet block. That's how he begins to get in

281
00:20:32.839 --> 00:20:36.000
to Spine again. It's it's interesting, right because it's not how we think

282
00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:40.920
of spies, right, it's adjacent
to Spine. It's certainly it was illegal.

283
00:20:41.319 --> 00:20:45.119
I mean, Hugle knew he was
working for like an adversary intelligence service.

284
00:20:45.160 --> 00:20:48.839
He knew that basically the computer chips
and the material that he was providing

285
00:20:48.880 --> 00:20:52.960
was eventually going to make its way
to Moscow. But it was like different,

286
00:20:52.039 --> 00:20:55.160
right, they looked at these guys
looked at it. It's just another

287
00:20:55.200 --> 00:20:57.279
play, right. It was like
the Silicon Valley idea of like this is

288
00:20:57.400 --> 00:21:03.279
just another way way to make money, to make money, and we're just

289
00:21:03.359 --> 00:21:06.880
we're just we're free traders. We're
just advancing free trade, like we don't

290
00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:10.240
really care, you know, beyond
that. So that's how Hardbery got in

291
00:21:10.279 --> 00:21:12.640
to that world. But of course
it didn't end there. Okay, Zach,

292
00:21:12.680 --> 00:21:15.640
I'm gonna do this ad read real
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293
00:21:15.640 --> 00:21:21.000
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show I and Zach. So that's
a little intro into who James Harper was

318
00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:18.799
and sort of his entry into the
world of espionage. I'm I guess you

319
00:23:18.839 --> 00:23:23.599
know, you know, his his
erstwhile handler had identified him as someone who

320
00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:26.920
would be useful to him. Did
he did he have to pitch him?

321
00:23:27.119 --> 00:23:32.359
Like? How did that work?
Honestly, the way that Harper told it

322
00:23:32.440 --> 00:23:34.880
to me was just that, you
know, Bill Hugle, like, these

323
00:23:34.920 --> 00:23:38.039
these guy you got to step back
to These guys are all just drinking buddies,

324
00:23:38.119 --> 00:23:41.200
right, I mean at the time, at the time the Valley scene,

325
00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:45.839
there was like a couple of bars
down the peninsula from San Francisco in

326
00:23:45.839 --> 00:23:51.240
the heart of the valley that was
where all the entrepreneurs are just hanging out.

327
00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:53.000
And it was like a really boozy
scene. Right. It was the

328
00:23:53.079 --> 00:23:59.039
seventies and eighties, Like everyone was
drinking a lot all the time, right,

329
00:23:59.160 --> 00:24:03.519
and so there was a lot of
like there was just a lot of

330
00:24:03.559 --> 00:24:07.480
like wheeling and dealing that would go
on at these a couple of these bars,

331
00:24:07.519 --> 00:24:10.359
and everybody knew that, like basically
every night of the week, there'd

332
00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:11.960
be people in the scene there,
right, it was a small enough scene

333
00:24:11.960 --> 00:24:18.240
and then for that to happen.
So at some point Bill Hugle, you

334
00:24:18.279 --> 00:24:21.720
know, the semiconductor Pioneer, you
know, the primary agent of the Polish

335
00:24:21.720 --> 00:24:26.960
intelligence Services, the friends Harper at
one of these bars and they just start

336
00:24:26.039 --> 00:24:30.640
talking, they just start shooting the
ship. And that's how it ended up

337
00:24:30.680 --> 00:24:33.200
happening. I don't think it took
a lot of convincing, let's put it

338
00:24:33.200 --> 00:24:37.480
that way. Right, Like he
was not he was knocking on an open

339
00:24:37.519 --> 00:24:40.240
door, you know, he was
like, hey, money, and he

340
00:24:40.359 --> 00:24:41.440
was like and Harbor was like,
yeah, I'd love to make somebody how

341
00:24:41.519 --> 00:24:44.640
and he's like, well, you
got to get some stuff from me.

342
00:24:44.680 --> 00:24:45.920
Oh who is it for? You
know, well it's for some friends of

343
00:24:45.920 --> 00:24:48.640
mine in the Eastern block, all
right, whatever, Like they did,

344
00:24:48.759 --> 00:24:52.720
like they didn't. You know.
It's funny because in the world in the

345
00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:59.440
in the world of the usg right, there's this kind of like there's this

346
00:24:59.519 --> 00:25:03.359
attitude, well you know, these
are they are adversaries. These are you

347
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:07.759
know, how could you betray your
country like that? And it's a valid

348
00:25:07.839 --> 00:25:12.039
perspective, but it's not the way
culture that these guys came up. They

349
00:25:15.240 --> 00:25:21.000
wanted money, they wanted global they
wanted global networks. They were not thinking

350
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:29.079
like their value hierarchy was not like
the idea of like this this competition between

351
00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:32.519
these two global behemoths being the thing
that they woke up every day thinking about

352
00:25:32.559 --> 00:25:36.079
and worrying about. Was like that
was just not there. Well, I

353
00:25:36.119 --> 00:25:40.240
mean I think what really gives away
the banality of it is just how little

354
00:25:40.279 --> 00:25:42.759
money he sold his country out for. It's like this wasn't like a retirement

355
00:25:42.799 --> 00:25:45.400
fund. It's just like chump change. Really at the end of the day.

356
00:25:45.920 --> 00:25:48.279
Oh yeah, I mean the stuff
he was doing for you go finding

357
00:25:48.319 --> 00:25:52.680
the microchips and stuff that was like
a couple thousand dollars each time. I

358
00:25:52.680 --> 00:25:56.000
mean he really was what that was
it? I mean, that was it?

359
00:25:56.119 --> 00:25:59.000
Right? So that's the thing was
that he was just he was making

360
00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:03.240
a he was he was making like
pocket change, you know, rent money

361
00:26:03.279 --> 00:26:07.799
basically, right, low level spine, you know, And in a way

362
00:26:07.839 --> 00:26:11.160
he realized that that wasn't enough.
I mean it's like almost odd like he

363
00:26:11.200 --> 00:26:14.599
did that for enough. He did
that for I don't know, on and

364
00:26:14.599 --> 00:26:21.000
off from roughly nineteen seventy five until
nineteen seventy nine, which is when Harper's

365
00:26:21.039 --> 00:26:26.160
like big scheme begins. And that
was that was like when he discovered that

366
00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:30.720
his girlfriend at the time, whose
name was Ruby Louis Schuler, was working

367
00:26:30.920 --> 00:26:37.720
for a company that was a specialist
in ballistic missile defense. Right, and

368
00:26:37.799 --> 00:26:41.559
you know again, I know your
listenership is like pretty up on this stuff.

369
00:26:41.559 --> 00:26:45.000
But like in the late seventies and
early eighties, was a huge topic

370
00:26:45.039 --> 00:26:48.359
of discussion because it was all about
mutually a sure destruction. It was all.

371
00:26:48.440 --> 00:26:52.519
It was all about, like the
idea of like can we can we

372
00:26:52.559 --> 00:26:56.839
survive a second strike like mister aeb
first strike, and the idea that like

373
00:26:57.440 --> 00:27:03.039
American, like if thisbe it's attacked
first, America might be basically destroyed before

374
00:27:03.079 --> 00:27:07.240
we could you know, we could
counterattack or could we could we actually stop

375
00:27:07.319 --> 00:27:11.440
many Soviet missiles from coming in.
So there was a huge amount of money

376
00:27:11.440 --> 00:27:23.599
and energy and DoD projects put into
trying to somehow destroy Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles

377
00:27:23.640 --> 00:27:29.000
before they reached the US mainland and
Harper's girl friend. Harper didn't even know

378
00:27:29.079 --> 00:27:30.680
this. I mean, Harper was
just like, oh, yeah, cool,

379
00:27:30.759 --> 00:27:33.160
Yeah, you're an executive assistant to
the president of this like this company

380
00:27:33.160 --> 00:27:36.440
down the valley. And she was
like yeah. And he's like, oh,

381
00:27:36.440 --> 00:27:37.079
what do they work on? Well, this isn't this? Oh and

382
00:27:37.119 --> 00:27:41.480
also ballistic missile defense. And it
was kind of like his ears perked up,

383
00:27:41.519 --> 00:27:42.640
you know, and he was like, wait, what you're working on?

384
00:27:42.680 --> 00:27:45.119
What it's like, Oh, like
a classified contract? Oh yeah,

385
00:27:45.119 --> 00:27:48.000
this classified contracts. Well, where
are the classified documents? Started? Oh,

386
00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:51.559
they're in the safe. Oh well
who's access to the safe? Oh?

387
00:27:51.599 --> 00:27:53.920
I do you know? Like that
was literally it. He was like,

388
00:27:55.279 --> 00:27:59.640
I mean it was, it was. It was And most people,

389
00:27:59.720 --> 00:28:02.160
right hear that, You're like,
oh, that's good for you, Like,

390
00:28:02.359 --> 00:28:04.960
you know, that must be interesting
work, right, But his thinking

391
00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:12.039
went right to, oh, I
could steal those cash money, I could

392
00:28:12.039 --> 00:28:17.160
sell them for a lot of money
because the nuclear weapons with documents, right,

393
00:28:17.200 --> 00:28:19.519
this is literally US ballistic missile information, right, I mean that is

394
00:28:19.599 --> 00:28:25.680
like and it's stuff that was like. And Harper was an engineer, so

395
00:28:25.720 --> 00:28:29.440
he was a mathematics. He understood
this. You know, these documents were

396
00:28:30.240 --> 00:28:36.039
These aren't like analytic product products,
right, They're not things that have narratives,

397
00:28:36.119 --> 00:28:42.359
you know. It's literally documents of
like mathematical formulas, right and stuff

398
00:28:42.400 --> 00:28:45.920
about, you know, because missiles
have to go into the atmosphere and come

399
00:28:45.920 --> 00:28:52.000
back down again. It's like they're
highly technical, mathematically oriented. It's a

400
00:28:52.039 --> 00:28:59.480
mathematically oriented field that requires PhDs and
engineers. And so it's like funny because

401
00:28:59.480 --> 00:29:00.839
for most of us it's gobbledygook,
right, I mean for me, it's

402
00:29:00.839 --> 00:29:03.720
certainly it's like I don't you couldn't
hand me a document be like is this

403
00:29:03.759 --> 00:29:07.200
interesting or valuable to you? I'd
be like, I have no idea,

404
00:29:07.240 --> 00:29:11.119
Like why would I know anything about
that? Right? But he knew,

405
00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:18.119
so he started going After the after
hours, he and his girlfriend would go

406
00:29:18.759 --> 00:29:23.799
to their her office, unlock the
safe, look through the documents, take

407
00:29:23.839 --> 00:29:27.279
them back to their apartment, and
photo copy them, and then bring them

408
00:29:27.319 --> 00:29:33.119
back before the end of the night. And that's how they amassed like literally

409
00:29:33.640 --> 00:29:41.519
hundreds of pounds, hundreds of pounds
of missile related documents. Now he was

410
00:29:41.559 --> 00:29:44.279
like, I got to sell these
now, right, I got to find

411
00:29:44.279 --> 00:29:48.359
a buyer. So he went back
to his you know, principal handler,

412
00:29:48.440 --> 00:29:52.279
this guy Bill Hugole, also you
know, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and

413
00:29:52.440 --> 00:29:56.559
was like, can you broker an
introduction to the Soviets or the polls?

414
00:29:56.640 --> 00:30:02.720
And that's how he started. Like
he was fully self actualizing, right.

415
00:30:02.799 --> 00:30:03.599
He didn't have somebody to come up
to him and be like I heard you're

416
00:30:03.599 --> 00:30:07.799
having some money troubles, you know, like or you know what I mean,

417
00:30:07.880 --> 00:30:08.920
or like I heard your boss is
a dick, you know, and

418
00:30:08.960 --> 00:30:11.480
like, wouldn't you like to show
him by giving me some documents? Like

419
00:30:11.519 --> 00:30:17.759
he literally he initiated the entire process. You know, he was a He

420
00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:22.480
was a volunteer if there ever was
when he was a greedy guy who looked

421
00:30:22.519 --> 00:30:26.559
at Spine the way he would look
at any other kind of entrepreneurial Silicon Valley

422
00:30:26.599 --> 00:30:30.599
play. And that's what's what's one
thing that's super interesting about him, Right,

423
00:30:30.640 --> 00:30:33.880
It's like it doesn't mean there aren't
greedy people in DC or New York

424
00:30:34.240 --> 00:30:38.039
or Brussels or wherever, but like
there's something about the culture out here that

425
00:30:38.160 --> 00:30:42.160
he is exemplary of. Right,
Like a guy who was like just viewed

426
00:30:42.200 --> 00:30:48.000
Spine as like basically another kind of
small business or startup. Yeah, he's

427
00:30:48.079 --> 00:30:51.200
not ideological. He's just a tech
bro. Let's make some cash here,

428
00:30:51.279 --> 00:30:52.440
let's do business. Yeah, he's
a hundred percent of tech bro. I

429
00:30:52.440 --> 00:30:56.920
mean he was like he literally was
like a he was a football juck in

430
00:30:56.039 --> 00:31:00.799
high school and he loved like sports
cars, and he was good at math

431
00:31:00.839 --> 00:31:03.160
and science, you know, and
kind of like hands on way as an

432
00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:07.160
engineer, like not a nerd at
all, like big brawny dude. And

433
00:31:08.119 --> 00:31:11.559
it was just a tech bro who
decided again to spine I mean, and

434
00:31:11.599 --> 00:31:15.279
he brought that attitude like kind of
like tech bro, like you know,

435
00:31:18.039 --> 00:31:23.839
like fat frat bro tech bro vibe
to spying. Yeah, and so did

436
00:31:23.880 --> 00:31:30.400
he did he make those introductions for
him to you know, actual intelligence officers

437
00:31:30.440 --> 00:31:36.680
in the Eastern Bloc? Yeah?
So see so yeah, no Eastern Bloc.

438
00:31:36.720 --> 00:31:40.640
I mean Hugle is Hugle. Hugle
new real Jugle, new real players.

439
00:31:40.680 --> 00:31:45.759
I mean, Hugle's main contact was
a very senior Polish intelligence officer under

440
00:31:45.599 --> 00:31:48.599
he worked for the UH. It
was like totally Soviet. He worked for

441
00:31:49.240 --> 00:31:56.640
the Polish UH Ministry of like machine
industry and tools. Extremely extremely like you

442
00:31:56.680 --> 00:32:00.119
know Eastern Bloc ministry title. But
he was a real player. I mean,

443
00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:06.559
this guy was a very senior intelligence
officer who was under undercover as a

444
00:32:06.559 --> 00:32:12.359
as a Polish government official and different
in a different institution. And Hugo was

445
00:32:12.400 --> 00:32:15.680
like basically told Harper, hey cool, I will I'll outbroke the introu but

446
00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:19.960
I want to cut because everyone wants
a cut, right. All these guys

447
00:32:19.960 --> 00:32:22.920
are viewing this again as as a
money making opportunities. So they go to

448
00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:30.960
Europe and they talk it all out
and they you know, Harper brings a

449
00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.920
couple of classified documents with him or
like he actually he brings up he brings

450
00:32:34.920 --> 00:32:39.279
like a a like a couple of
documents, but he kind of makes almost

451
00:32:39.279 --> 00:32:43.759
like a skeleton key of like all
the documents that he has and with the

452
00:32:43.799 --> 00:32:46.000
description of them to be like it's
literally like a would you like this serve?

453
00:32:46.039 --> 00:32:49.359
Would you like this sor would you
like this? Like it's like he's

454
00:32:49.400 --> 00:32:51.279
like, I have all this to
offer you, you know what are you

455
00:32:51.279 --> 00:32:55.359
going to pay for it? And
they make an agreement that Harper is going

456
00:32:55.440 --> 00:32:59.799
to come back with more documents.
So the first the first meetings are happening

457
00:32:59.880 --> 00:33:07.839
in Vienna and in uh and in
Warsaw and that's how he starts. I

458
00:33:07.839 --> 00:33:10.000
mean, that's how I mean.
Literally, you know this, this Polish,

459
00:33:10.079 --> 00:33:14.559
this senior Polish intelligence officer whose name
was Siho Jin says, let me

460
00:33:14.559 --> 00:33:16.359
talk to my people. I got
to talk to my tech, my science

461
00:33:16.440 --> 00:33:20.920
guys, my SNT intel officers,
because I don't know enough about this to

462
00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:22.720
tell you what the value is.
And I'll get back to get back to

463
00:33:22.759 --> 00:33:25.359
them. And they're like, they
said, great, I want you to

464
00:33:25.400 --> 00:33:29.440
bring you know, I want you
to bring all all all of these documents

465
00:33:29.480 --> 00:33:34.960
back. And Harper wanted a one
time payout of a million dollars. This

466
00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:37.680
is nineteen seventy nine, right,
so that's worth about four million dollars today.

467
00:33:37.720 --> 00:33:43.799
So that's a significant sum of cash. I mean it's I mean,

468
00:33:43.839 --> 00:33:46.279
it's not a great, great fortune, you know, but it's a fortune,

469
00:33:46.359 --> 00:33:50.599
especially a guy who was edging it
on being broke. He looked at

470
00:33:50.640 --> 00:33:52.680
it as like this is going to
be my This is like it for me.

471
00:33:52.720 --> 00:33:54.200
I'm gonna move down to Mexico or
do whatever, like I'm gonna I'm

472
00:33:54.400 --> 00:33:58.440
be done, right, I'm gonna
spy one something to be done. But

473
00:33:58.519 --> 00:34:01.400
of course, if you know anything
about intelligence officers. They don't ever want

474
00:34:01.400 --> 00:34:04.359
that, right, They want to
keep you on the hook, you know.

475
00:34:04.359 --> 00:34:06.079
They want to give you a little
bit and a little bit and a

476
00:34:06.119 --> 00:34:07.400
little bit, and then keep tasking
you for more and more and more.

477
00:34:07.480 --> 00:34:13.199
Right, Harper didn't want to do
that, but he was desperate and he

478
00:34:13.320 --> 00:34:15.920
was willing to go along with it
for a little while. Right where you

479
00:34:15.920 --> 00:34:17.039
know, guy says, well,
I'll give you, I'll give you fifty

480
00:34:17.079 --> 00:34:20.559
thousand dollars, and then you come
back again, I give you another fifty

481
00:34:20.599 --> 00:34:23.360
thousand dollars. And that's how the
uh, the polls kind of kept them

482
00:34:23.400 --> 00:34:27.119
on. The kept them on.
They even if I recall, right,

483
00:34:27.119 --> 00:34:29.840
they even kind of like dick them
over on the bill the first time around,

484
00:34:29.880 --> 00:34:32.039
right, Yeah, they did.
Actually they were fake, so they

485
00:34:34.760 --> 00:34:42.760
they they specifically. And I know
this because when I was researching Despy a

486
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:47.159
Valley podcast, I actually worked with
a Polish researcher. And what's really amazing

487
00:34:47.400 --> 00:34:53.039
is that Poland and some of the
other former Soviet block countries allow researchers to

488
00:34:53.039 --> 00:35:00.280
get access to unredacted intelligence documents.
And I managed to find all the files

489
00:35:00.320 --> 00:35:04.760
from this case. I mean,
there was no blackouts, no reactions like

490
00:35:04.840 --> 00:35:14.360
literally the unexpurgated documents, including the
like strategic reports of the Polish intelligence officers

491
00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:17.880
writing about their thinking the case and
like how they were going to try to

492
00:35:17.880 --> 00:35:23.400
play this guy right, And part
of that was them saying, basically,

493
00:35:23.400 --> 00:35:25.480
when we want to go hot and
cold with him, we wanted to,

494
00:35:25.480 --> 00:35:30.400
we want to say we're incredibly interested. And then when he gives us something,

495
00:35:30.760 --> 00:35:31.960
we want to basically say, you
know what, this isn't what you

496
00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:36.280
promised us, this isn't the go
we want, you know what, you

497
00:35:36.480 --> 00:35:40.559
kind of over promised and underdlivered,
and to keep him basically wanting, you

498
00:35:40.599 --> 00:35:44.000
know, in a in a position
of dependency. I mean, it was

499
00:35:44.039 --> 00:35:46.679
like some pretty you know, subtle
psychological games at the polar Planers, good

500
00:35:46.719 --> 00:35:52.199
intelligence work on their part, and
that like made Harper I rate, and

501
00:35:52.239 --> 00:35:53.800
it made him willing. It made
him but it also like made him willing

502
00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:58.960
to like give them more for less, right, because he became so needy

503
00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:00.719
and like did he needed he needed
the money? He was fine, you

504
00:36:00.760 --> 00:36:09.320
know, but then eventually there's like
there's like one major payday that happens where

505
00:36:10.599 --> 00:36:15.239
Harper, Harper leaves right, he
goes he goes back to Warsaw. He

506
00:36:15.719 --> 00:36:21.400
has this blowout argument basically where the
polls are like, We're not going to

507
00:36:21.440 --> 00:36:25.840
pay you. This is garbage.
Harper like goes back to California and he's

508
00:36:25.880 --> 00:36:28.639
like, what am I going to
do with all these documents again? He's

509
00:36:28.639 --> 00:36:32.000
got hundreds of pounds of documents in
his apartment. These are physical documents.

510
00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:36.039
This isn't like stuff on a on
a thumb drive, like it's like stacking

511
00:36:36.119 --> 00:36:39.360
up. He is like, you
know, and so he goes out to

512
00:36:39.440 --> 00:36:44.239
the San Joaquin Delta, which is
just east of San Francisco. He gets

513
00:36:44.280 --> 00:36:49.679
on a sailboat with his best friend
and bury all documents in like a muddy

514
00:36:49.719 --> 00:36:52.400
island in the middle of the delta
to be like, I can't keep this

515
00:36:52.400 --> 00:36:55.360
stuff on me. It's like too
hot, it's too hot. And then

516
00:36:55.400 --> 00:37:01.199
he tries to like get he tries
to get contact again at some point with

517
00:37:01.400 --> 00:37:05.719
the poles because he's desperate. So
he used to go back and dig it

518
00:37:05.760 --> 00:37:08.440
all up again. And there are
are water logs, so he used to

519
00:37:08.519 --> 00:37:14.239
dry out these documents and then literally
and there's stinking water log documents that he's

520
00:37:14.280 --> 00:37:16.599
like basically like hanging up, you
know, all over his clothes pins,

521
00:37:17.039 --> 00:37:21.639
clothes pins, like exactly. He's
like like classified documents, like they're like

522
00:37:21.639 --> 00:37:30.079
they're Christmas ornaments or something. And
he literally stuffs these dried, like moldering

523
00:37:30.199 --> 00:37:36.960
documents in giant suitcases and just walks
into SFO and gets on a plane to

524
00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:42.320
Europe to then go back and resell
them. We you know, like it

525
00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:45.360
was very basic, like there was
no trade craft. You know, there

526
00:37:45.400 --> 00:37:49.760
was really very little trade craft in
this story. It gets back to Warsaw.

527
00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:57.280
He gets spirited out of Warsaw to
this country estate and he provides these

528
00:37:57.320 --> 00:38:01.480
documents to the Poles, who are
like ecstatic because they actually, all of

529
00:38:01.519 --> 00:38:04.440
a sudden we are like, oh, yeah, this is the good stuff.

530
00:38:04.480 --> 00:38:07.679
You know, this is like really
valuable ballistic missile stuff. The Holes

531
00:38:07.719 --> 00:38:16.199
immediately contact their overlords in Moscow.
The KGB flies in twenty science and technology

532
00:38:16.239 --> 00:38:22.880
officers to pour over the documents overnight. They literally spend like an entire day

533
00:38:22.280 --> 00:38:27.119
just laying the documents out, like
one page by the time, and I'm

534
00:38:27.119 --> 00:38:29.960
looking through them and like as as
valuable, as as valuable, as valuable,

535
00:38:30.400 --> 00:38:36.400
And so he gets his big payday. They pay him like like a

536
00:38:36.440 --> 00:38:38.840
couple hundred thousand dollars. You know, this is like his big, big

537
00:38:38.880 --> 00:38:45.320
payday. And then they're like we
want more. But so that's you get

538
00:38:45.320 --> 00:38:49.480
these kind of false starts and stops, but that's the big one. That's

539
00:38:49.519 --> 00:38:54.400
like, that was like the big
one. And so when I was going

540
00:38:54.480 --> 00:39:01.119
through the Polish intelligence files, I
knew Harper's handwriting looked like from other US

541
00:39:01.199 --> 00:39:05.000
cork documents, So I knew what
I was looking at. So I'm going

542
00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:07.400
through it and I'm seeing everything's in
Polish, obviously, right, you're seeing

543
00:39:07.400 --> 00:39:10.480
everything in Polish. It's get it
translated. All of a sudden, I

544
00:39:10.559 --> 00:39:19.480
come across a bunch of stuff and
it's dated. It's dating lines up perfectly

545
00:39:19.559 --> 00:39:24.320
with when I knew Harper was at
this estate, you know, basically under

546
00:39:24.440 --> 00:39:32.039
watched under the watch of the KGB. And it's limericks, like drunken limericks

547
00:39:32.079 --> 00:39:38.159
that that guy that he wrote about
spine and he and he left it there,

548
00:39:38.599 --> 00:39:40.920
he left it there and they put
it in his file, and I

549
00:39:40.960 --> 00:39:46.559
was like, this is the dumbest
man ever. Like literally, the limericks

550
00:39:46.559 --> 00:39:50.880
were like, you know, I'm
sitting here by the fire thinking about spine.

551
00:39:50.960 --> 00:39:53.239
Like it's like I don't remember them
by heart anymore. But like if

552
00:39:53.280 --> 00:39:57.639
you're if people are watching or listening, like listen to Spy Valley of the

553
00:39:57.679 --> 00:40:01.920
podcast, and it's incredible, you
know. He made up limericks about spine

554
00:40:01.960 --> 00:40:04.320
and he left it there, and
I was like, this is the best

555
00:40:04.360 --> 00:40:07.360
blackmail material it's like ever been made. You know. He again he viewed

556
00:40:07.400 --> 00:40:09.480
it as like a lark, right, I mean, he was drunk and

557
00:40:09.559 --> 00:40:13.880
just partying, and like for him, it was just like an adventure almost,

558
00:40:13.960 --> 00:40:20.599
you know, which is incredible how
greedy he was and how incautious he

559
00:40:20.719 --> 00:40:25.239
was about being a spy. And
on the return trip, similarly, it

560
00:40:25.320 --> 00:40:29.079
was like just so half assed,
as I recall, I mean, didn't

561
00:40:29.079 --> 00:40:30.599
he tape some of the money to
his ankles and the rest of it was

562
00:40:30.639 --> 00:40:36.559
just in a suitcase and just whies
back to the United States? Percent he

563
00:40:36.679 --> 00:40:42.079
literally he taped he taped half of
it to his ankles and then he put

564
00:40:42.119 --> 00:40:44.800
the rest of it underneath his shoes. Right, this was way before you

565
00:40:44.800 --> 00:40:46.280
had to take off his shoes at
the airport, right, many many decades

566
00:40:46.280 --> 00:40:50.760
before. He literally was like,
well he tried to put it in a

567
00:40:51.039 --> 00:40:52.800
bank account in France, and they
were like where'd you get this money from?

568
00:40:54.079 --> 00:40:57.639
Like you have like a you have
a paper trail here, because we

569
00:40:57.639 --> 00:41:00.719
can't just take this money without some
kind of receipt, you know. And

570
00:41:00.719 --> 00:41:02.480
and he was like, I can't, I can't provide you with that.

571
00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:06.840
So he just thought, ah,
you know, like whatever, I'll literally

572
00:41:06.880 --> 00:41:09.480
just he literally got duct tape and
just taped it to his to his ankles

573
00:41:09.599 --> 00:41:16.800
and just walked walked onto the airplane
in Geneva and then walked out at JFK,

574
00:41:17.519 --> 00:41:21.639
you know, with one hundreds of
like a hundred and fifty two hundred

575
00:41:21.599 --> 00:41:24.360
ffty thousand dollars taped to his like
his ankles and his feet. So yeah,

576
00:41:24.480 --> 00:41:29.360
I mean again no tradecraft. Like
I know, it's harder today with

577
00:41:29.440 --> 00:41:32.559
like the digital you know, there's
like a more ubiqu with digital trail.

578
00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:37.880
But it just goes to show you
that like if you have the drive,

579
00:41:37.000 --> 00:41:42.519
you have the access, you can
get a lot if people aren't watching.

580
00:41:43.159 --> 00:41:45.239
Yeah, and I mean it could
it could easily happen today. They can't

581
00:41:45.239 --> 00:41:50.320
search everybody that goes through Godstoms,
No, of course not. And you

582
00:41:50.320 --> 00:41:52.280
know, the the thing about him
too is that he didn't have a he

583
00:41:52.320 --> 00:41:53.760
didn't have a clearance at the time, right, he didn't work for a

584
00:41:53.760 --> 00:42:00.840
company that that was there's good plausible
deniability all all around. It was his

585
00:42:00.880 --> 00:42:02.519
girl. It was his girlfriend and
then his wife and he married her over

586
00:42:02.559 --> 00:42:06.960
the course at this scheme from which
lasted from seventy nine to eighty one.

587
00:42:07.119 --> 00:42:09.760
So he you know, that was
part of the issue. When the Bureau

588
00:42:09.840 --> 00:42:15.960
finally started investigating this case, they
were looking for people who had access to

589
00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:20.599
classified documents to their job and he
didn't, you know, and so that

590
00:42:20.599 --> 00:42:23.400
that took effect to that that that
was a stumbling blog for them. So

591
00:42:23.880 --> 00:42:27.880
how did that come about? Because
I mean, what did the Bureau have

592
00:42:27.960 --> 00:42:31.360
some inkling that there was a spy
out there? Did they have some idea

593
00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:37.239
of who they were looking for?
Did they have a defected KGB agent who

594
00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:39.159
gave gave up that there's a spy
somewhere in the United States? I mean,

595
00:42:39.280 --> 00:42:43.719
how did that investigation come about?
So this is actually one of my

596
00:42:43.760 --> 00:42:46.840
favorite parts of the story. And
it's kind of this whole story is kind

597
00:42:46.840 --> 00:42:52.239
of larger than life, and you
know, I can't do it's it's to

598
00:42:52.280 --> 00:42:57.840
hear the people who lived it telling
their own world words. Is I think

599
00:42:57.920 --> 00:43:00.400
gives a lot more vividly than I
can, but I was say this,

600
00:43:00.519 --> 00:43:06.840
like two things happened. The first
thing that happened was that the CIA had

601
00:43:07.079 --> 00:43:13.760
a mole in the Polish Intelligence Service
whose code name was Cariboo. And Cariboo

602
00:43:13.840 --> 00:43:22.079
was one of the most important Eastern
Bloc recruitments in place that the IC had

603
00:43:22.760 --> 00:43:25.920
in the seventies and eighties. Kind
of an unsung guy even to this day,

604
00:43:25.960 --> 00:43:30.480
I mean very little. He's you
know, he comes up in that

605
00:43:30.519 --> 00:43:34.920
book you mentioned from Warsaw would Love
because he was actually critical in busting Marian

606
00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:38.760
Sikarski, who was a Polish intelligence
officer who was an illegal who was operating

607
00:43:38.800 --> 00:43:44.599
down Los Angeles at this time.
I remember that one the offense almost lost

608
00:43:44.639 --> 00:43:46.320
that case, like buy that there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that

609
00:43:46.719 --> 00:43:50.320
dead case came very close too,
I mean, and that was a big,

610
00:43:50.360 --> 00:43:58.320
big, big deal. And so
this guy Cariboo, who he was

611
00:43:58.400 --> 00:44:04.559
a Polish intelligence officer under diplomatic cover
in Chicago in the mid nineteen seventies.

612
00:44:04.559 --> 00:44:10.000
Obviously Poland has a big interest in
Chicago because it has a huge Polish population

613
00:44:10.079 --> 00:44:19.679
there. And at some point probably
he was either fully recruited or his recruitment

614
00:44:19.719 --> 00:44:25.719
began in Chicago in the early to
mid nineteen seventies. He rotates back out

615
00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:30.679
to warsaw because you know, people, that's the whole thing. You rotated,

616
00:44:30.719 --> 00:44:35.440
you rotate out. And he was
also an engineer. He was an

617
00:44:35.559 --> 00:44:40.199
S and T focused spy, science
and technology. And at some point he

618
00:44:40.199 --> 00:44:45.079
gets in touch with his CIA handlers
and he says, this is probably nineteen

619
00:44:45.119 --> 00:44:50.480
eighty or so, maybe nineteen eighty
one, and he says, look,

620
00:44:51.760 --> 00:44:54.840
I don't know the name of this
guy, but you've got a serious spy

621
00:44:55.239 --> 00:45:00.000
in Silicon Valley. I was at
my work. We were having a hollow

622
00:45:00.039 --> 00:45:04.760
a party, I think, and
I was told that we were we were

623
00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:10.239
to come hang out because one of
my coworkers, this intelligence officer named Cihojen,

624
00:45:12.320 --> 00:45:16.360
was getting an award from the head
of the KGB from the head of

625
00:45:16.400 --> 00:45:27.280
the KGB because he had recruited an
incredibly valuable nuclear spot, right yeah,

626
00:45:27.320 --> 00:45:30.239
like right, And he was like, oh, you know, like so

627
00:45:30.360 --> 00:45:31.960
he's there, he's watching this award
being given out, you know, and

628
00:45:34.039 --> 00:45:37.719
you know how compartmentation is intelligence,
So he doesn't he doesn't know the name

629
00:45:37.800 --> 00:45:39.960
of the guy, you know,
the recruitment. He just knows that the

630
00:45:40.079 --> 00:45:46.360
senior intelligence officer named Cihojen has A
has some kind of has some guy in

631
00:45:46.440 --> 00:45:52.199
Silicon Valley who's providing incredibly sensitive nuclear
documents to the Polls, which are of

632
00:45:52.199 --> 00:45:55.480
course going directly to the KGB.
I mean, actually it was very interesting

633
00:45:55.519 --> 00:46:00.840
reading those documents, the Polish Intelligent
intelligence documents. There's a lot of discussion

634
00:46:00.880 --> 00:46:02.119
about who's going to pay, because
they're like, well, this is all

635
00:46:02.199 --> 00:46:05.800
just like the Poles don't care,
like the Poles don't have a ballistic missile

636
00:46:05.800 --> 00:46:07.000
program. This is all going to
the Soviets, right, So it's like

637
00:46:07.760 --> 00:46:10.760
so there's a lot of like back
and forth between them and the KGB about

638
00:46:10.800 --> 00:46:13.800
like, hey, you can't afford
to pay this guy, Like you're going

639
00:46:13.840 --> 00:46:16.119
to pay this guy right and and
and the KGB was like yeah, sure,

640
00:46:16.159 --> 00:46:20.840
we'll do it. Basically, so, I mean, Harper was working

641
00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:25.840
directly for the Polls, but his
payment was coming from the KGB. So

642
00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:36.840
this secret CIA penetration of the Polish
Intelligence Service gets in touch and it is

643
00:46:36.880 --> 00:46:43.440
like that's all I got for you, engineer Silicon Valley nuclear secrets. Oh

644
00:46:43.960 --> 00:46:49.639
and this guy, this this eight
this this this secret source that that we

645
00:46:49.760 --> 00:46:55.880
have somehow is connected to Bill Hugle. Okay, so then the it gets

646
00:46:55.880 --> 00:47:00.280
Bill Hugle's name, see I gets
the basic parameters of what's going on.

647
00:47:01.199 --> 00:47:07.400
They pass it on to the FBI. That's where like Bill Kane and the

648
00:47:07.400 --> 00:47:09.280
rest of that, like they're you
know, like they're like reading. You

649
00:47:09.320 --> 00:47:13.880
get you get this highly classified memoranda
that comes in, right, and it's

650
00:47:13.920 --> 00:47:17.320
like here's what we know, like
you know, uh, it's like a

651
00:47:17.360 --> 00:47:20.880
you know, trusted source. Whatever
says x y and z. You don't

652
00:47:20.920 --> 00:47:22.400
get the name of it. You
don't even get the name of the source

653
00:47:22.440 --> 00:47:25.039
necessarily at the beginning. You just
get information that says x y and z

654
00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:30.519
from somebody that's like considered a like
a very very highly trusted source. That's

655
00:47:30.559 --> 00:47:32.880
the first thing. So the Bureau
of course goes, oh, man,

656
00:47:34.000 --> 00:47:36.760
like we have a real problem,
right, we got Hugele. Okay,

657
00:47:36.760 --> 00:47:38.840
that's a good lead, right,
we know that, like that's been going

658
00:47:38.840 --> 00:47:43.000
on. We've got our eye on
Hugle for a while in fact. But

659
00:47:44.199 --> 00:47:47.679
so they start investigating Hugle, including
like wire taps and stuff like that.

660
00:47:47.679 --> 00:47:52.039
But there's not at this point Harper
and Hulet are falling out. So they're

661
00:47:52.039 --> 00:47:54.760
not they're not they're not getting much
from it, right, they're not getting

662
00:47:54.800 --> 00:48:01.800
much from them. At the same
time this is happening, Harper gets cold

663
00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:07.400
feet about spawning, Like he decides
he doesn't want to be a spy for

664
00:48:07.440 --> 00:48:13.239
the Eastern Block anymore, and he
decides to get in touch with the lawyer

665
00:48:13.719 --> 00:48:16.199
to serve as a go between so
he can offer his services to become a

666
00:48:16.239 --> 00:48:20.639
double agent for the CIA, and
he wants to get paid for it,

667
00:48:20.840 --> 00:48:24.519
right, So like his dude,
they just spent the last three years passing

668
00:48:24.599 --> 00:48:30.800
nuclear secrets to Moscow is now basically
trying to negotiate a get out of jail

669
00:48:30.840 --> 00:48:36.360
free card for himself where he works
for the CIA now against the Soviet Block

670
00:48:36.440 --> 00:48:40.519
and wants to be paid handsomely for
it. To do that, he starts

671
00:48:40.880 --> 00:48:45.960
providing information on himself and his scheme
and what he knows and who he knows,

672
00:48:46.880 --> 00:48:52.199
and of course DOJ and the Bureau
are like, yeah, we're interested,

673
00:48:52.440 --> 00:48:53.280
Yeah, okay, we're interested.
To keep telling us more, keep

674
00:48:53.280 --> 00:48:57.199
telling us, know us more,
right, Like they're like, keep telling

675
00:48:57.280 --> 00:49:00.519
us more. And of course they
never had any England whatsoever that they were

676
00:49:00.599 --> 00:49:05.440
ever going to deal with this guy. They just wanted him to give them

677
00:49:05.480 --> 00:49:08.679
more investigative leads so they could find
him. So these two streams are coming

678
00:49:08.679 --> 00:49:15.400
together simultaneously, right. You have
Harper anonymously through a lawyer diming himself out,

679
00:49:15.519 --> 00:49:20.119
himing himself out, and then you
have the secret source within the Polish

680
00:49:20.159 --> 00:49:23.360
intelligence services. So these two intelligence
streams come together, and that is eventually

681
00:49:23.440 --> 00:49:28.440
how the bureau identifies him. I
mean, it's an interesting question, right,

682
00:49:28.440 --> 00:49:32.400
like if Harper had not if he
hadn't come forward and tried to negotiate

683
00:49:32.440 --> 00:49:36.440
a sweet deal for himself, I
don't know if they would have caught him.

684
00:49:36.960 --> 00:49:38.880
I mean, yeah, I guess. I mean engineer Silicon Valley,

685
00:49:38.920 --> 00:49:43.079
Like that's a pretty wide net.
It's wide, and it's wide. And

686
00:49:43.639 --> 00:49:46.599
again, at that point, Harper
and Hugel were not talking anymore, so

687
00:49:46.639 --> 00:49:51.679
there was no like nothing on an
open line, no mention of it.

688
00:49:51.719 --> 00:49:54.880
I mean, obviously every time Hugle
was like talking about somebody they wheeling and

689
00:49:54.920 --> 00:49:58.119
dealing with, they were like,
we got to check up on that guy,

690
00:49:58.400 --> 00:50:01.000
you know, But Hugo wasn't talking
about Harper at that point. You

691
00:50:01.039 --> 00:50:04.719
know, he will had moved on, he had the other schemes going on.

692
00:50:04.800 --> 00:50:08.320
So yeah, I mean in the
end, it was probably Harper that

693
00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:13.320
that that. I mean, he
never The Bureau definitely had to had to

694
00:50:13.360 --> 00:50:16.559
do some really good, solid investigative
work to make those final leaps. I

695
00:50:16.559 --> 00:50:19.800
mean, Harper was never like,
and my real name is James Harper.

696
00:50:19.880 --> 00:50:22.079
Like they had to figure out who
he was, and they did, because

697
00:50:22.119 --> 00:50:27.199
he started naming all these people that
he knew in the round, right,

698
00:50:27.239 --> 00:50:32.599
and at some point somebody he names
is going like the Bureau would very gently

699
00:50:32.880 --> 00:50:39.400
start interviewing people in a way that
didn't reveal what they actually wanted, right,

700
00:50:39.559 --> 00:50:45.400
because they were afraid of spooking right
the spy. They were like,

701
00:50:45.440 --> 00:50:47.719
we don't know who he is,
and if we make it seem like we're

702
00:50:47.760 --> 00:50:52.320
asking questions about a potential spy,
that guy might you know, take off

703
00:50:52.440 --> 00:50:57.000
and had to head to Moscow and
we'll never hear from him again. So

704
00:50:57.039 --> 00:51:01.320
they very skillfully managed to get the
name Harper out of one of his contacts

705
00:51:01.360 --> 00:51:05.719
in the valley with that, without
that guy in the valley knowing that they

706
00:51:05.760 --> 00:51:07.719
wanted to get in touch with him
because of his spine right there, that

707
00:51:07.760 --> 00:51:12.840
they were identifying him as a potential
lead in that And that's how they id

708
00:51:12.960 --> 00:51:15.800
Harper, and then and then of
course they got to open up an investigation

709
00:51:15.840 --> 00:51:19.719
on him. They got a FAISA, they tapped his phone lines, they

710
00:51:19.719 --> 00:51:24.599
followed him around everywhere. And that
was also hard because they didn't have like,

711
00:51:24.880 --> 00:51:28.880
he wasn't necessarily talking about spying at
that point either, so they had

712
00:51:28.880 --> 00:51:30.880
to build that case against him,
and that was not easy to do.

713
00:51:31.000 --> 00:51:35.960
Actually, And you said that in
the you know, in the interim while

714
00:51:35.960 --> 00:51:40.159
they're listening in on mister Harper's life, that he had a very spicy lifestyle

715
00:51:40.679 --> 00:51:45.480
that he pursued. He had a
very spicy lifestyle. He was he was

716
00:51:45.559 --> 00:51:51.519
a man of I don't know,
he was a libertine, right, I

717
00:51:51.559 --> 00:51:57.719
mean he he he was a total
cheat. I mean he he liked he

718
00:51:57.920 --> 00:52:01.119
liked to like booze it up.
He he would like get into hot tub

719
00:52:01.199 --> 00:52:05.440
parties with like Hugh Gold back when
they were still talking, and they'd have

720
00:52:05.559 --> 00:52:10.880
girls like you know it got it
got. I think that the like there's

721
00:52:10.920 --> 00:52:16.199
a character in this story, and
that character is basically booze, and like

722
00:52:16.800 --> 00:52:23.239
a lot of the story could be
explained or understood the perspective of like dudes

723
00:52:23.239 --> 00:52:29.519
who were just drunk all the time
and like just were like didn't care about

724
00:52:29.760 --> 00:52:34.079
They were just like caution to the
breeze, don't care, Like I'm gonna

725
00:52:34.079 --> 00:52:36.679
go out and find some girls,
I'm gonna go spy for the Soviet block,

726
00:52:36.880 --> 00:52:38.360
like I'm gonna do whatever, you
know, Like they just didn't care.

727
00:52:38.519 --> 00:52:43.199
You know. That was kind of
his attitude. And so that's that

728
00:52:43.239 --> 00:52:45.599
really drove a lot of what he
did, you know, and Hu Will

729
00:52:45.599 --> 00:52:49.880
too. Honestly, I feel like
he's almost like j Edgar Hoover's you know,

730
00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:53.480
caricature of a communist spy, like
just a total genera, even though

731
00:52:53.480 --> 00:52:59.199
he wasn't ideological, I mean,
in fact, yeah, I mean communists,

732
00:52:59.199 --> 00:53:01.360
he was like a he he would
probably think of himself as a as

733
00:53:01.360 --> 00:53:06.199
a as a para, you know, the paradigm of a of a cap

734
00:53:06.320 --> 00:53:08.239
nor. Right. He was like, I'm a I'm here. I'm like

735
00:53:08.519 --> 00:53:10.920
that's what I do. Like I'm
I'm trying to find new angle, I'm

736
00:53:10.920 --> 00:53:15.599
trying to find new new revenue streams, you know, like I'm thinking outside

737
00:53:15.639 --> 00:53:17.800
the box. I'm like I'm you
know, I'm breaking things right, Like

738
00:53:17.840 --> 00:53:22.960
it's that Silicon Valley ethos of just
like yeah, wheeling and dealing, right,

739
00:53:22.880 --> 00:53:25.119
he's got it far from communist.
I mean, that's the irony,

740
00:53:25.199 --> 00:53:32.480
right, These guys, these were
like these were really aggressive capitalists, small

741
00:53:32.519 --> 00:53:37.159
businessman who just viewed spine as another
play, you know. So he was

742
00:53:37.320 --> 00:53:42.039
very much that. I mean,
he's an extreme example of that, right,

743
00:53:42.119 --> 00:53:45.639
Like there are, of course,
the vast majority of people in that

744
00:53:45.679 --> 00:53:49.800
world don't would not end up in
that place, but he's a symptom of

745
00:53:49.800 --> 00:53:57.440
that culture out here. M hm. And so as this investigation is ongoing,

746
00:53:59.079 --> 00:54:01.199
how did they actually start to like
zero in on him to the point

747
00:54:01.239 --> 00:54:05.519
that they're able to, you know, make an arrest. I mean it

748
00:54:05.599 --> 00:54:14.880
was just literally interviewing a guy very
you know, very obliquely, and then

749
00:54:14.960 --> 00:54:20.159
they they tap his stuff, like
I said, and they try to they

750
00:54:20.199 --> 00:54:29.760
try to like they try to get
a smoking gun, and that's like really

751
00:54:29.760 --> 00:54:37.079
really hard, you know, smoking
gun. But they eventually decide that they

752
00:54:37.079 --> 00:54:40.400
have enough evidence to bring it to
trial. You know, they have.

753
00:54:40.559 --> 00:54:45.159
There's a great story that's a near
mists that that Bill Canane told me,

754
00:54:45.239 --> 00:54:51.119
where they're tapping his line and they
get a call. Harper gets a call

755
00:54:51.159 --> 00:54:53.079
from Europe and it's like it's like
at you know, seven eight pm,

756
00:54:53.119 --> 00:54:57.199
at night, gets a call from
Europe and it's a cutout for the Polish

757
00:54:57.239 --> 00:54:59.840
intelligence Service, right. It's this
a woman who's a cutout, who's like,

758
00:55:00.119 --> 00:55:00.880
we miss you, we haven't heard
from you in a while, like

759
00:55:01.559 --> 00:55:05.440
trying to be oblique, but it's
like obviously they're talking spy talk, right,

760
00:55:07.599 --> 00:55:12.119
And Harper's like sloshed, like he
has just drunk off his face.

761
00:55:12.519 --> 00:55:16.119
And so the cut out for the
Polish intelligence services like, here, let

762
00:55:16.119 --> 00:55:21.000
me give you my number, call
me back tomorrow and we'll talk about getting

763
00:55:21.000 --> 00:55:23.639
you back out to Europe, you
know. And Harper says, okay,

764
00:55:23.800 --> 00:55:27.440
he writes down the number. Well, he writes down the wrong number.

765
00:55:28.440 --> 00:55:34.239
Oh, here writes down the wrong
number. So so the bureau is listening

766
00:55:34.239 --> 00:55:37.199
to him write down the wrong number. And the next day he gets up

767
00:55:37.360 --> 00:55:39.960
and he calls the wrong number.
He calls the wrong number, and the

768
00:55:40.000 --> 00:55:44.280
bureau is losing their mind. They're
like, this is it, this is

769
00:55:44.320 --> 00:55:45.960
it, this is the call.
This is him going to be talking about

770
00:55:46.000 --> 00:55:53.599
spine on the phone tapped line,
and he literally does not, And so

771
00:55:53.840 --> 00:55:58.480
he never calls the woman back because
and this so the bureau is like,

772
00:55:58.519 --> 00:56:00.960
how do we get him the number? Get do we enter his apartment and

773
00:56:01.039 --> 00:56:05.880
somehow like put the number on the
table so he'll call back. Like like,

774
00:56:06.000 --> 00:56:07.920
that's I mean, that's the level
that this case was at. What

775
00:56:08.159 --> 00:56:17.280
really led them to decide to arrest
him was that Caribou, the CIA mole

776
00:56:17.400 --> 00:56:22.599
within the Polish Intelligence Service, decides
to defect, like defect for good.

777
00:56:23.519 --> 00:56:30.159
And that is in the summer of
nineteen eighty three. Because the the DOJ

778
00:56:30.320 --> 00:56:34.639
folks are getting a ton of pressure
from the Bureau and the CIA to prosecute,

779
00:56:34.679 --> 00:56:37.400
prosecute, prosecute. The DJ people
are like, we don't have the

780
00:56:37.480 --> 00:56:43.519
evidence, and we don't want to
risk arresting this guy and then losing this

781
00:56:43.599 --> 00:56:45.920
case. That would be a disaster
for us, right, I mean,

782
00:56:45.960 --> 00:56:47.559
it's all where you sit in the
government. Right. If you're a prosecutor,

783
00:56:47.599 --> 00:56:51.480
you want to prosecute. If you're
the FBI, you want to investigate

784
00:56:51.639 --> 00:56:55.840
and make an arrest. If you're
a CIA you're playing the world. You

785
00:56:55.880 --> 00:56:59.840
know, cloak and Daggers, fibers, vibrus the spy. You want to

786
00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:02.480
get an American spy off the streets. It's part of this larger game.

787
00:57:02.519 --> 00:57:06.159
But you have no you know what
I mean, Like everyone was playing their

788
00:57:06.239 --> 00:57:13.559
role right right right. So at
that time, Caribou is out of warsaw.

789
00:57:13.639 --> 00:57:17.039
He is now under diplomatic cover of
the Spine or diplomatic cover in Stockholm,

790
00:57:17.119 --> 00:57:22.519
Sweden, that he escapes with his
family gets exfiltrated out to the US,

791
00:57:22.159 --> 00:57:27.679
and the prosecutors think that, okay, great, Like our star witness

792
00:57:27.719 --> 00:57:30.199
is here. You know, he's
he's gonna se he's gonna appear a trial,

793
00:57:30.599 --> 00:57:36.079
and we're gonna we're gonna you know
where we got this, We got

794
00:57:36.079 --> 00:57:39.199
this unlock, this is this is
now. And Harper gets arrested in October

795
00:57:39.280 --> 00:57:44.920
nineteen eighty three. So now that
this star, this star witness is here,

796
00:57:45.039 --> 00:57:47.480
this star CIA agent is now out
of danger. He's now going to

797
00:57:47.519 --> 00:57:52.400
be resetled in the US with his
family, and we're gonna we're gonna put

798
00:57:52.400 --> 00:57:55.119
Harper on trial. That's that's how
the case all came together was around this

799
00:57:55.320 --> 00:58:01.000
one key witness. Yeah. I
mean, I've read cases and I'm sure

800
00:58:01.079 --> 00:58:05.840
you have as well, where it
seems like a pretty cut and dry,

801
00:58:06.000 --> 00:58:09.480
slam dunk case of espionage that you
think, you know, someone would get

802
00:58:09.679 --> 00:58:14.639
thrown in prison for quite easily.
You know, there's a handoff of money,

803
00:58:14.679 --> 00:58:20.039
there's an exchange of intelligence with a
foreign intelligence officer, but that the

804
00:58:20.079 --> 00:58:22.719
bar to convict somebody of espionage is
quite quite high in the United States,

805
00:58:22.840 --> 00:58:25.599
and you know, the FEDS lose
a lot of these cases, as we've

806
00:58:25.599 --> 00:58:30.679
seen more recently with Chinese espionage.
I mean, how how did this one

807
00:58:30.719 --> 00:58:32.960
play out in a court of law? I mean, what was it?

808
00:58:34.000 --> 00:58:37.039
Was it a slam dunk case or
was it you know kind of uh,

809
00:58:37.320 --> 00:58:39.599
you know h or could it have
gone either way? Well, I mean

810
00:58:39.599 --> 00:58:43.400
it never Well, this is what
is amazing about it is they didn't have

811
00:58:43.519 --> 00:58:45.559
all the information that I'm you know, I've just I've described they didn't have

812
00:58:45.639 --> 00:58:52.239
at the time. They they had
the sketches of it, right, they

813
00:58:52.320 --> 00:58:57.800
knew that Harper was the guy,
I mean, but there was nothing there

814
00:58:57.840 --> 00:59:02.400
was There really wasn't a lot of
hard, tangible evidence that they had.

815
00:59:02.440 --> 00:59:10.280
That was the whole problem is that
they needed this Polish intelligence officer who was

816
00:59:10.639 --> 00:59:15.039
broadly a part of this operation,
or at least was aware of it as

817
00:59:15.079 --> 00:59:22.079
an intelligence officer, to carry it
out to to to bring the case home.

818
00:59:22.079 --> 00:59:25.960
But the problem was was that as
soon as he got to the States

819
00:59:27.880 --> 00:59:32.159
and he started being debriefed by the
prosecutors on the case who I spoke with,

820
00:59:32.320 --> 00:59:36.880
who are great guys who are incredibly
hard working and really wanted to do

821
00:59:36.960 --> 00:59:43.280
this right, The CIA started walking
back their promise to allow him to testify

822
00:59:43.599 --> 00:59:47.280
immediately, like CI was like,
we'll bring him to the country, we'll

823
00:59:47.280 --> 00:59:51.199
get him out, he will testify, We'll put Harper away. They're like

824
00:59:51.320 --> 00:59:54.800
great. DJ was like, great, then we will arrest him on the

825
00:59:54.800 --> 01:00:00.159
condition that this happens. The moment
he got to the States to see I

826
01:00:00.320 --> 01:00:04.000
was like, actually, we're not
really sure we want him to testify anymore,

827
01:00:04.199 --> 01:00:09.880
right, And so that caused a
huge blow up between DJ and CIA.

828
01:00:09.920 --> 01:00:16.320
And if you think about it,
how many times have you heard of

829
01:00:16.360 --> 01:00:22.800
a of a defector from a foreign
intelligence service testifying in a criminal trial for

830
01:00:22.960 --> 01:00:28.480
espionage in the US as a witness. I can't think of any I can't

831
01:00:28.480 --> 01:00:31.960
think of a single time, right, because they don't want they don't want

832
01:00:32.119 --> 01:00:37.000
those folks having any heat or light
on them for some reasons that are good,

833
01:00:37.440 --> 01:00:40.519
right, but they just generally don't
like you know. The way it

834
01:00:40.559 --> 01:00:45.239
was put to me was in the
NDCIA just wanted to stay in the shadows.

835
01:00:45.480 --> 01:00:47.440
That's it like that's their imperative.
That's the way they view the world.

836
01:00:47.480 --> 01:00:54.320
They don't want their agents showing up
in courtrooms pointing to somebody and saying,

837
01:00:54.800 --> 01:00:58.920
yes, that is the man who
passed me the documentary, like they

838
01:00:58.960 --> 01:01:05.159
don't want it. So the prosecutors
felt like they had been lied to,

839
01:01:05.400 --> 01:01:08.880
basically, and there was a big
blow up in Langley where they they walked

840
01:01:08.920 --> 01:01:13.920
into the you know, they walked
into the room the senior CIA operations officer

841
01:01:14.000 --> 01:01:16.039
who offers them a drink at like
eleven o'clock in the morning, and it's

842
01:01:16.079 --> 01:01:19.639
like, please sit down, you
know, and then basically proceeds to tell

843
01:01:19.679 --> 01:01:22.800
them that like, you know,
ain't happening, you know, after the

844
01:01:22.840 --> 01:01:28.400
promise. So the prosecutors are irate, and they're also really scared because they're

845
01:01:28.400 --> 01:01:32.440
like, we were this entire trial
was predicated on this witness, and if

846
01:01:32.440 --> 01:01:36.159
we don't have that, we may
not be able to get Harper, you

847
01:01:36.199 --> 01:01:42.800
know, we might not have enough. So they did they very smartly did

848
01:01:43.000 --> 01:01:47.239
probably they probably pursued their best path
forward, which was leaning on him really

849
01:01:47.280 --> 01:01:52.159
hard to flee, to make it
seem like they had an harp to get

850
01:01:52.239 --> 01:01:55.960
him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what they did. You know,

851
01:01:57.199 --> 01:02:01.840
they started walking in there like all
all you know, pisson vinegar and

852
01:02:01.920 --> 01:02:06.800
telling him like, you're gonna get
the needle for this. We're gonna like

853
01:02:06.920 --> 01:02:10.719
where you're gonna put you away forever
and that's guilty, So you better sign

854
01:02:10.719 --> 01:02:16.119
on the dotted line right now or
like you know you like literally, prosecutors

855
01:02:16.159 --> 01:02:19.559
me like your ass is grass,
You're a dead man. That's it.

856
01:02:19.559 --> 01:02:23.639
It's done, you no, that's
it had. It worked. It worked.

857
01:02:23.679 --> 01:02:27.480
It worked, and it worked because
the prosecutors who worked, you know,

858
01:02:27.519 --> 01:02:30.599
worked the case were very very smart, convincing people. And he's the

859
01:02:30.639 --> 01:02:34.480
kind of guy who saves his own
skin every time exactly. And also he

860
01:02:34.480 --> 01:02:39.519
got it. He got he got
a judge who was a notorious hard ass

861
01:02:39.599 --> 01:02:46.400
who whose name was hanging Sam Conti. He was for basically asking for the

862
01:02:46.440 --> 01:02:52.960
death penalty for everything. He was
like. He was like a truly crazy

863
01:02:52.199 --> 01:02:57.280
old school law and order judge.
It was like Harper could not have gotten

864
01:02:57.280 --> 01:03:00.199
a worst judge. So, you
know, he get he gets is the

865
01:03:00.239 --> 01:03:02.920
courtroom and Sam County's like, what
are you accused of? It's like espionage

866
01:03:02.920 --> 01:03:06.199
and he's like, are you pursuing
the death penalty, you know, the

867
01:03:06.920 --> 01:03:08.760
like no, you know, so
this is this is not the bleeding heart

868
01:03:08.800 --> 01:03:16.000
liberal California legislature we hear about nowadays. This was a This was a wild

869
01:03:16.039 --> 01:03:22.920
West. He was a Nixon appointee. Yeah, Like I mean his nickname

870
01:03:22.960 --> 01:03:27.159
was literally Hanging Sam, like that
was you know, he was a he

871
01:03:27.280 --> 01:03:31.400
was like dude. So when the
prosecutors get this guy, they realize,

872
01:03:31.440 --> 01:03:36.119
like, you know, the judge
is gonna scare Harper as bad as they

873
01:03:36.119 --> 01:03:43.559
could, and Harper, Harper,
please because at that point you can't you

874
01:03:43.599 --> 01:03:49.320
can't get the death penalty for espionage
anymore. Right. But literally, the

875
01:03:49.440 --> 01:03:54.039
judge is arguing with the prosecution about
why he can't for Harper. He's like,

876
01:03:54.239 --> 01:03:57.159
why can't I have that? And
they're like listen, sir, I'm

877
01:03:57.159 --> 01:03:59.239
sorry the Supreme Court and he was
like make sure you know. So,

878
01:03:59.400 --> 01:04:02.079
Like so Harper's just standing there and
it's like, oh god, why you

879
01:04:02.119 --> 01:04:06.000
know, like you're a dead man
walking ex Literally, He's like, I'm

880
01:04:06.000 --> 01:04:11.199
gonna die. So so he decides
to flee out and he pleas out and

881
01:04:11.280 --> 01:04:13.880
he thinks, all right, you
know, I'm gonna avoid the electric chair

882
01:04:14.079 --> 01:04:21.800
and I'm gonna hopefully get a relatively
leaning sentence, but he doesn't. Kanti

883
01:04:21.920 --> 01:04:26.159
gives him the max, of course, which is a life sentence, and

884
01:04:26.239 --> 01:04:29.719
Harper spends thirty three years in prison. He gets out in the mid twenty

885
01:04:29.760 --> 01:04:35.079
tens, and I managed to reach
out to him and get him to talk

886
01:04:35.119 --> 01:04:41.280
to me and tell me his life
story. And for folks interested in listening

887
01:04:41.320 --> 01:04:45.000
to the podcast by Valley, I
mean, that really is the heart of

888
01:04:45.039 --> 01:04:50.440
a lot of the story is hearing
about hearing about an American trader in their

889
01:04:50.519 --> 01:04:55.679
own words. As difficult as that
can be sometimes, it's also a really

890
01:04:56.000 --> 01:05:02.639
valuable and I think fascinating character study
because Harper he didn't lie to me as

891
01:05:02.639 --> 01:05:05.719
far I mean, and I tried
to check every little detail I could about

892
01:05:05.719 --> 01:05:12.519
his case, and everything I could
find was seemed like highly credible based on

893
01:05:12.599 --> 01:05:15.159
other sources, corroborating sources out there. And so he told me his whole

894
01:05:15.199 --> 01:05:19.280
story from the time he was a
kid to his time as a spy.

895
01:05:19.480 --> 01:05:26.960
There's there's a real aspect of like
sociopathy and narcissism, and that he's like

896
01:05:27.559 --> 01:05:30.599
even after all of this, he's
almost like bragging to you about what he

897
01:05:30.639 --> 01:05:31.639
did. I think that's a lot
of it. Yeah, I mean I

898
01:05:31.679 --> 01:05:38.440
think sociopathy is the right word for
it. Extreme narcissism. Also, there

899
01:05:38.440 --> 01:05:42.519
were points Ahart asking questions and you're
right, he he was kind of like,

900
01:05:42.559 --> 01:05:44.440
well I did this, and I
did that, and I got away

901
01:05:44.480 --> 01:05:45.800
with this, and like I couldn't
believe it, and all of a sudden,

902
01:05:45.800 --> 01:05:47.840
I had all this money burning a
hole in my pocket, like he

903
01:05:47.960 --> 01:05:53.400
was. I think crowd of like
cheating the system, right, And I

904
01:05:53.440 --> 01:05:59.079
think that was something that really made
him. I think that made him I

905
01:05:59.119 --> 01:06:02.199
don't know it, even after having
spent thirty plus years in prison. I

906
01:06:02.199 --> 01:06:05.679
think it made him feel good in
a way that he had been able to

907
01:06:05.760 --> 01:06:09.519
cheat the system the way he had. I mean, it's incredible, and

908
01:06:09.559 --> 01:06:13.239
it's he's not a normal person,
right, Like you hear him sometimes you're

909
01:06:13.280 --> 01:06:15.320
like, oh this is like a
good time, good time boy. Really

910
01:06:15.400 --> 01:06:16.480
you can just tell like, oh, he's he's a dude you could like

911
01:06:16.559 --> 01:06:19.360
drink some beers with and he would
like tell dirty jokes and it'd be fun.

912
01:06:20.000 --> 01:06:24.960
And then like it it goes from
that to like much much darker,

913
01:06:25.119 --> 01:06:28.159
you know, like real quick with
him, you know where it's clear like

914
01:06:28.440 --> 01:06:30.960
oh I could see how you could
be kind of like a charming sociopath.

915
01:06:30.280 --> 01:06:33.239
He told me like he was pimping
out his wife at one point or something

916
01:06:33.280 --> 01:06:36.519
like that. Uh, that wasn't
him, that was that was you.

917
01:06:36.719 --> 01:06:42.079
I mean, yeah, he he
wasn't doing that. What Harper did was

918
01:06:42.119 --> 01:06:45.360
I mean when his when his wife, Ruby Leui Schuler was his his co

919
01:06:45.360 --> 01:06:51.480
conspirator and wife, the woman who
who worked for the company with the classified

920
01:06:51.880 --> 01:06:58.719
contracts. She was an extreme alcoholic. She was like basically dying of alcoholism

921
01:06:58.800 --> 01:07:03.440
by her like late thirties, like
bedridden. And he would tell his his

922
01:07:03.599 --> 01:07:06.639
like bedridden co con spirit or wife
that he's going out for a jog.

923
01:07:08.119 --> 01:07:10.320
He'd be like, I'm going up
for a jog, sweetie. And he

924
01:07:10.400 --> 01:07:14.800
had another girl like five blocks away, and he would just jog to her

925
01:07:14.840 --> 01:07:19.719
place and like do his thing,
and then he would like come back all

926
01:07:19.760 --> 01:07:21.880
sweaty and be like, man,
what a great job. You know,

927
01:07:24.599 --> 01:07:27.559
Like that's the kind of level this
guy was like operating at. Yeah.

928
01:07:27.880 --> 01:07:30.440
Yeah, that kind of guy.
That kind of guy. And so what

929
01:07:30.519 --> 01:07:39.440
was his life like after prison?
Uh? Sad? I mean, I

930
01:07:39.440 --> 01:07:42.159
don't know how else to put it. Sad. His life was so uh

931
01:07:42.960 --> 01:07:45.079
he got out of prison. He
was in his mid eighties. He was

932
01:07:45.119 --> 01:07:50.119
a sad He was a sick old
man. Most of his family had long

933
01:07:50.159 --> 01:07:54.320
since dis owned him because he was
not a good He's not a good meat.

934
01:07:54.480 --> 01:07:58.360
He betrayed everybody who was around him, everybody who meant anything to him,

935
01:07:58.360 --> 01:08:00.119
everybody who was close to him.
He betrayed his family, he betrayed

936
01:08:00.440 --> 01:08:04.039
lovers, he betrayed his business partners, he betrayed his country. He was

937
01:08:04.079 --> 01:08:12.119
left with very little. He spent
most of his years in federal prison in

938
01:08:12.239 --> 01:08:16.079
up in Oregon. And he got
out and he ended up chasing some old

939
01:08:16.119 --> 01:08:20.880
flame of his who had since long
moved to Arkansas, and he moved out

940
01:08:20.920 --> 01:08:24.199
there with the idea that maybe he
was going, like, I don't know,

941
01:08:24.239 --> 01:08:26.119
live with her much off or I'm
not sure, but that did not

942
01:08:26.199 --> 01:08:32.119
work out, and he ended up
kind of marooned in northwest Arkansas, California

943
01:08:32.159 --> 01:08:38.079
boy, and was just trying to
get better and trying to kind of live

944
01:08:38.159 --> 01:08:41.159
and eke out a living something.
He wasn't working, but just you know,

945
01:08:41.199 --> 01:08:45.640
living on probably disability at that point, and he wasn't doing much,

946
01:08:45.920 --> 01:08:48.640
you know, And so I think
I found him in the right time.

947
01:08:48.720 --> 01:08:50.520
But he was in a sad state. You know, he was like really

948
01:08:50.560 --> 01:08:53.720
ill, and he was lonely.
You know, he was ill, he

949
01:08:53.760 --> 01:08:58.960
was lonely. It was sad,
it was you know, it was interesting

950
01:08:59.000 --> 01:09:00.119
talking to him then. I mean
he he looked back on his life,

951
01:09:00.119 --> 01:09:04.520
but he never really seemed to exhibit
much regret for what he would go.

952
01:09:05.680 --> 01:09:10.119
And then as as you were,
you know, producing this podcast. I

953
01:09:10.119 --> 01:09:14.279
mean, he passed away, didn't
he He did, Yeah, he actually

954
01:09:14.359 --> 01:09:16.720
well before he passed away, he
stopped responding to me. It was actually

955
01:09:16.800 --> 01:09:27.600
very interesting. He excuse interesting,
sure, uh. He we would talk

956
01:09:27.640 --> 01:09:33.640
a lot and intensively, and he
we have these long conversations. He was

957
01:09:33.680 --> 01:09:41.960
like very very exuberant, and then
he would like just drop a face of

958
01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:44.520
the earth, you know, like
he would talk. I talked to him

959
01:09:44.560 --> 01:09:46.600
like twice twice a week for hours, and then all of a sudden he

960
01:09:46.600 --> 01:09:51.600
was just like stop paying on the
phone. He was a very difficult interview

961
01:09:51.640 --> 01:09:57.560
that way. One day he just
doesn't take up the phone and I don't

962
01:09:57.560 --> 01:10:00.159
hear from him for like a year
and a half, and I'll I was

963
01:10:00.199 --> 01:10:01.720
like, okay, look, he
was in and out of the hospital.

964
01:10:01.800 --> 01:10:04.680
He's in his like late eighties.
At this point, you just kind of

965
01:10:04.720 --> 01:10:10.039
assume, right, like all right, he probably passed, And then out

966
01:10:10.079 --> 01:10:13.000
of nowhere, I got a call
from him and he was like, hey,

967
01:10:13.239 --> 01:10:15.760
just wonder how you're doing, Like
I'm not going to come to California.

968
01:10:15.880 --> 01:10:16.760
Do you want to like have coffee
and keep talking? And I was

969
01:10:16.800 --> 01:10:24.560
like okay, and that's it.
And then I tried to get in touch

970
01:10:24.560 --> 01:10:27.119
with them again and I couldn't and
I couldn't and I couldn't, and I

971
01:10:27.119 --> 01:10:32.000
found out that he passed after some
pretty gruesome health stuff. He never made

972
01:10:32.000 --> 01:10:36.520
it back to California. He died
at age eighty nine, I believe,

973
01:10:36.680 --> 01:10:43.800
And because he had served in the
military, he is buried in a US

974
01:10:43.840 --> 01:10:48.960
military cemetery in Northwest Arkansas, which
is amazing, right, But the guy

975
01:10:49.000 --> 01:10:54.000
who like was a Soviet block spy
just got like because he he used to

976
01:10:54.039 --> 01:10:56.760
be like, I gotta go to
the VA, like do my PT And

977
01:10:56.800 --> 01:11:00.720
I was like what He's like,
He's like, I get VA servis And

978
01:11:00.720 --> 01:11:04.000
I was like, oh yeah,
all right, Like so what a world?

979
01:11:04.520 --> 01:11:06.800
Yeah, what a world? Right? That's like a little irony at

980
01:11:06.800 --> 01:11:10.760
the end of that. So that's
where he's barried that's that's what happened to

981
01:11:10.800 --> 01:11:15.000
James Harper. I and I so
the podcast Spy Valley. I mean,

982
01:11:15.039 --> 01:11:19.199
it's really incredible because you were able
to get the FBI side, You're able

983
01:11:19.239 --> 01:11:24.279
to get these through the archival research, some of the documents from the Polish

984
01:11:24.359 --> 01:11:29.840
Intelligence Service pre uh, you know
Wall coming down, and then you know

985
01:11:29.920 --> 01:11:34.800
the man himself, James Harper.
What was the response when this podcast came

986
01:11:34.840 --> 01:11:39.039
out? I mean, was was
there any interesting feedback you got from it

987
01:11:39.159 --> 01:11:42.680
or any other sources. I kind
of popped out of the woodwork. I

988
01:11:42.720 --> 01:11:45.079
didn't have any sources that popped out
of the woodwork. And that's always what

989
01:11:45.159 --> 01:11:46.680
you want, right as a journalist, is like somebody is like, I

990
01:11:46.720 --> 01:11:50.159
have another amazing story from the right
right, and I will say, like

991
01:11:50.760 --> 01:11:57.600
the the most common response I got
was kind of something you alluded to at

992
01:11:57.600 --> 01:12:00.560
the beginning of the interview, which
is like I have no idea that this

993
01:12:00.680 --> 01:12:03.039
happened, which is always as a
journalist, is like kind of great,

994
01:12:03.199 --> 01:12:08.199
like good, you know, like
yeah, nah, like I've I've opened

995
01:12:08.239 --> 01:12:12.520
up a different world, like I've
I've I've peeled back like this crazy thing

996
01:12:12.600 --> 01:12:15.640
and something you talked about, Uh, maybe before we started the stream,

997
01:12:15.680 --> 01:12:24.199
which was almost the the kind of
like almost comedic like Coen Brothers burn after

998
01:12:25.119 --> 01:12:29.760
the thing, because that's that there
is a real sense of the story that

999
01:12:29.840 --> 01:12:33.640
it's like it's just it's very very
serious, but it's at the same time

1000
01:12:33.960 --> 01:12:39.479
like undoubtedly a funny and bizarre story
of like a guy, like kind of

1001
01:12:39.479 --> 01:12:42.159
a crazy dude that did it crazy. It was a terrible thing what he

1002
01:12:42.199 --> 01:12:45.199
did. But it's also like a
cast of characters that you can't believe are

1003
01:12:45.199 --> 01:12:50.760
real, you know, but it's
like it's a very much a real story

1004
01:12:50.800 --> 01:12:56.800
about real wild people doing some wild
stuff and they you know, they most

1005
01:12:56.800 --> 01:13:00.720
of them face the consequences for it. But that's that was the primary reaction

1006
01:13:00.880 --> 01:13:03.079
was like I didn't know the respine
in Silicon Valley. I didn't know about

1007
01:13:03.079 --> 01:13:06.560
this story, and like I didn't
know that like spic real life spy stories

1008
01:13:06.560 --> 01:13:13.840
could be this funny. Yeah,
well I think it was great. I'm

1009
01:13:13.840 --> 01:13:16.560
glad it worked out, and I
hope people will go and check it out.

1010
01:13:16.720 --> 01:13:23.800
So the podcast is Valley of Spies. You can find wherever Spy Valley,

1011
01:13:24.000 --> 01:13:28.479
wherever podcasts are available. I actually
just listened to it on YouTube.

1012
01:13:28.960 --> 01:13:34.199
Found it on there. Yeah,
yeah, YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts,

1013
01:13:34.800 --> 01:13:39.880
Stitcher, yeah, wherever you get
your podcasts. It's uh, it's

1014
01:13:39.920 --> 01:13:43.119
it's six episodes. Each episode I
think it's like thirty minutes long. So

1015
01:13:43.159 --> 01:13:45.840
I mean you can listen to it
over, you know, in afternoon if

1016
01:13:45.840 --> 01:13:49.279
you want to. It's not like
like like some podcasts like this one sometimes

1017
01:13:49.279 --> 01:13:54.760
where it's like three hour long shows. It's it's very listenable, and I

1018
01:13:54.840 --> 01:13:59.000
hope you guys will check it out. And uh so, I mean,

1019
01:13:59.039 --> 01:14:00.920
while we have you here is I
have to I have to probe the wire

1020
01:14:01.000 --> 01:14:05.159
and see like what's next on the
horizon for you. Oh man, I

1021
01:14:05.239 --> 01:14:10.840
got some stuff, but I can't
talk about a lot of it yet because

1022
01:14:10.880 --> 01:14:15.399
it's not out. But I have
some long form investigative reporting that I've been

1023
01:14:15.439 --> 01:14:21.439
working on for a long, long
time years that is nearing completion, some

1024
01:14:21.800 --> 01:14:30.079
very deep dives into stuff that goes
back a lot of years, kind of

1025
01:14:30.439 --> 01:14:34.960
US intelligence community stories, kind of
back back to the core reporting that you

1026
01:14:35.000 --> 01:14:40.199
know that you and I do.
So I'm really really excited about that.

1027
01:14:40.199 --> 01:14:43.920
I don't want to give too much
away for a whole bunch of reasons,

1028
01:14:44.239 --> 01:14:53.399
but like definitely some revelatory stories from
the world of the post nine to eleven

1029
01:14:54.039 --> 01:14:59.439
post nine eleven intelligence world. That's
great, and I hope you know,

1030
01:14:59.560 --> 01:15:01.640
we will have you on the show
again, you know, a year down

1031
01:15:01.680 --> 01:15:05.439
the line, and we'll have some
more topics to talk about for sure.

1032
01:15:05.680 --> 01:15:10.439
Happy to happy to be here anytime. Is there anything else that you want

1033
01:15:10.439 --> 01:15:16.000
to plug or anything you want to
tease out there? Tell people about where

1034
01:15:16.000 --> 01:15:20.359
can people find you? Where can
people find you online? This point,

1035
01:15:20.399 --> 01:15:24.720
I don't know. I mean,
Zach Astorfman a Twitter, I'm not calling

1036
01:15:24.720 --> 01:15:33.560
it X and Blue Sky standing at
Blue Sky and uh yeah, I mean

1037
01:15:34.000 --> 01:15:36.720
unfortunately, I can't even talk about
where some of these stories are going to

1038
01:15:36.760 --> 01:15:45.640
be appearing yet. But but I
would say Twitter first and foremost and and

1039
01:15:45.000 --> 01:15:49.439
yeah, and we'll all come back
on and we'll talk about some of these

1040
01:15:49.479 --> 01:15:55.840
investigative pieces. Awesome. And so
next week, next Friday, we're going

1041
01:15:55.920 --> 01:15:59.119
to have our first interview. It's
the first of two parts. So on

1042
01:16:00.119 --> 01:16:03.479
December first, we're gonna have Mike
Vickers on the show to talk about his

1043
01:16:03.560 --> 01:16:09.319
career, cot me on before Mike
Vickers. Yeah, hey, man,

1044
01:16:10.039 --> 01:16:14.039
scheduling, you know, we let
them mix it up. So Mike Mike

1045
01:16:14.119 --> 01:16:16.920
Vickers is Next week we're going to
talk about his time in the military and

1046
01:16:17.000 --> 01:16:21.159
his uh stint in c i A, his career there working on the COVID

1047
01:16:21.199 --> 01:16:26.399
action program in Afghanistan, and then
we'll have him back for a second episode

1048
01:16:26.479 --> 01:16:30.600
on December eighth, and we'll talk
about his time at ust I and ASD

1049
01:16:30.720 --> 01:16:33.279
Solick and some of those more like
high level appointments that he had. So

1050
01:16:33.560 --> 01:16:38.640
we're looking forward to doing that.
That's going to be incredible. I mean

1051
01:16:39.039 --> 01:16:42.479
that, I mean, Vickers is
a is a living legend. I mean

1052
01:16:42.800 --> 01:16:45.840
and wow, that sounds amazing.
You're doing a two party with him.

1053
01:16:45.840 --> 01:16:47.800
I'm going to yeah, yeah,
two Fridays, two fridays in a row.

1054
01:16:47.880 --> 01:16:50.760
He's he's been quite generous with his
time, you know, we really

1055
01:16:50.760 --> 01:16:54.239
appreciate that. And uh, he
has a he has a book out.

1056
01:16:54.239 --> 01:16:57.560
I think it's called By All Means
Available I read a couple of months ago,

1057
01:16:58.359 --> 01:17:01.640
worth worth checking out for anyone who
has it yet. So yeah,

1058
01:17:01.680 --> 01:17:05.600
I guess, Zach, barring any
final thoughts, man, I guess that

1059
01:17:05.640 --> 01:17:09.680
wraps it up. Anything else you
want people to know about, or any

1060
01:17:09.760 --> 01:17:13.479
final thoughts about this wild story that
you told or the Coen Brothers working on

1061
01:17:13.560 --> 01:17:17.000
the screen adaptation. No, well, I wish that would be great.

1062
01:17:17.000 --> 01:17:19.760
No, I'm gonna plug you and
I'm gonna plug you and Shawn's work on

1063
01:17:19.800 --> 01:17:23.800
the high Side. Man. Oh
yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's

1064
01:17:23.800 --> 01:17:26.439
stuff. You're that stuff's incredible.
That the story that you did, you

1065
01:17:26.479 --> 01:17:33.960
beat all the major publications on the
the US Special Operations Forces getting ready to

1066
01:17:33.960 --> 01:17:39.039
potentially deploy to NASA and the kind
of back and forth on that. I

1067
01:17:39.079 --> 01:17:42.119
mean, that was that was a
great story and you beat all the big,

1068
01:17:42.840 --> 01:17:45.760
the big papers on that one.
So yeah, thank you. And

1069
01:17:45.840 --> 01:17:49.239
the next story we're working on,
I don't I don't, I don't want

1070
01:17:49.279 --> 01:17:51.960
to. I don't want to get
Sean angry with me, but I'll just

1071
01:17:53.000 --> 01:17:57.359
say it's it's a biographical piece about
someone who's essentially a c I, a

1072
01:17:57.560 --> 01:18:01.439
legend, a legend of the CIA
and this Special Forces community, and we're

1073
01:18:01.479 --> 01:18:05.000
working on a pretty extensive piece about
him. So we're excited to get that

1074
01:18:05.079 --> 01:18:09.399
out, hopefully, you know,
in the next month or so. I've

1075
01:18:09.399 --> 01:18:12.920
heard a little bit about that from
Sean, and without going into any detail,

1076
01:18:12.920 --> 01:18:15.520
obviously, I can vouch that that
is going to be an amazing story.

1077
01:18:15.039 --> 01:18:21.359
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's
a slice of of of an amazing

1078
01:18:21.399 --> 01:18:26.760
person, but also through his own
experiences, it's a slice of history as

1079
01:18:26.760 --> 01:18:30.880
well. It's it's pretty incredible.
So yeah, hopefully I'll be able to

1080
01:18:30.000 --> 01:18:35.520
we'll be able to have that discussion
on another episode. So until next Friday,

1081
01:18:36.039 --> 01:18:40.199
We'll see all you guys then,
Zach again, thank you for you

1082
01:18:40.239 --> 01:18:44.720
know, taking some of your Friday
evening with us, and we will see

1083
01:18:44.720 --> 01:18:46.520
you then. Bye now, thanks
again,