Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to
go in rate this podcast. Let the Team House know how you think we're
doing. Go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on,
whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out
and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what
you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like
to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support
the stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes.
Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do.
And if you're going to give us ant secret view, why don't you just
send us an email and we'll talk about special operations. Obert ask me an
the Team House with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David bark Hi, Everyone,
Welcome to episode two hundred and forty seven of The Team House. I'm
Jack Murphy here with tonight's guest, Zach Dorfman. Zach is a national security
journalist, author of many great articles in the national security and espionage field,
and he also recently did the podcast series Valley of Spies with Project Brazen,
reporting on previously unknown to the public Trader in our midst somebody who worked for
the US National Security Complex in Silicon Valley and sold secrets to the enemy during
the Cold War. So we're very happy to have Zach here tonight on the
show. Thanks for coming on. Man, appreciated your patience with us tonight.
Of course, Man, great to be back. Absolutely, So,
you know, just to kick it off, I mean, talk to us
a little bit about about your podcast series, Valley of Spies. I mean,
before we get into the production of it. I'd really like the your
how this story like even came on your radar because I recently read, for
instance, there was a journalist who wrote the book from Warsaw with Love whole
history about the Polish American intelligence relationship, and I don't recall your story being
in there. I mean, this is something that I had never heard of
before. Yeah, I mean that's a great book, by the way,
John Ponferen's book, and I read that before I started. Yeah, it
was about the same time I embarked on the podcast. So basically, Spy
Valley, the genesis of Spy Valley was one of those great kind of kismet
things that you have with your sources, and I know that you know you've
had this too. I was sitting with a longtime FBI counter intelligence official from
San Francisco named Bill Canane, and Bill was an awesome guy. He got
out to San Francisco in the early seventies and were worked Kundter intelligence in San
Francisco until the mid nineties. He was one of the capsin in his career.
Was he was one of the first FBI attas ches in Moscow after the
fall of the Soviet unions, so he was kind of renowned in the bureau.
I mean that was like his low was the last thing he did.
But he spent basically his entire career working on the Soviet Squad, then the
Russia Squad, and then in between what was known was like the East Block
Squad and the East Block Squad during the Cold War was you know, every
communist country in Eastern Europe that wasn't Russia basically, but it was all the
satellite states, so the Polls, the East Germans, the Czechs, the
Hungarians, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, and you know they weren't as you
know, big of a deal, but they're pretty big deal. They're they're
very, very active in the Valley, mostly for economic espionage. And Bill
Bill was awesome. He was He was an Irish guy from Park Slope who
grew up in Park Slope. Was a Marine, and then after he got
out, he ended up in the FBI. He worked in New York for
a while and then he moved out to San Francisco in the early seventies.
And Bill and I would have coffee from time to time and we would like,
we'd hang out, we would chat. He would kind of shoot the
shoot shit about about like all the spy you know stuff that he did.
They kind of you know, spy hunting he did in the Valley. And
one day he said to me, oh, have you ever looked into the
James Harper case? And I was like, not really. I heard a
little bit about it. And he goes, oh, that should be a
book. And he said, well, by the way, I was the
squad supervisor on that case. And of course, you know, as a
reporter, you're like, wait, huh, You're a squad supervisor. You
oversaw the whole case from the investigative side. And he said, yeah,
I'm going to start talking about it, and and I was like, well,
if Bill says this is a book, there might be a book.
And so I started reading everything I could about the case. It was a
big deal at the time, but it had been completely memory hold. You
know. It was one of those great Cold War stories that, for various
reasons, had just been completely forgotten, and much of the story had never
been told because, you know, the FBI guys weren't talking at the time.
Obviously, when the case broke in nineteen eighty three, the prosecutors wouldn't
have talked. The documents I gotten wouldn't have been able to get, and
of course I wouldn't have been able to talk to James Harper himself. So
that was the real genesis of the story. And then that was a twenty
That was twenty nineteen, and the story came out in twenty twenty three.
So it was on and off reporting the story for half a decade, and
a book proposal ended up becoming a narrative podcast. And Bill also has like
the most FBI voice ever in the podcast We Arrived, Yeah, we had.
Yeah, he had just very and he was funny because he had this
you know, I think it's this old I think it was this old school
Brooklyn Irish had gone on, and he was so disarming because he was he
was he was, you know. But then but then you'd be like,
oh, Bill, can we meet for coffee tomorrow? And he'd be like,
oh, I can't. I got to go to James Joyce day,
you know, down at the you know, he was like a really literary
guy. He was famous in the bureau in San Francisco because every morning he
would get to the office and then he would go across the street and read
the New York Times cover and cover for like three hours. Like he would
read the New York Times every day. And some of his colleagues were like,
what's this guy doing. This isn't his job. But Bill's thinking was
that, like, to do his job well, he had to understand what
the world, how the world worked, you know, in a kind of
like geopolitical way, not you know, because it's very easy when you're working
cases just to think about it in the narrow context. But Bill, to
his great credit, I think, understood that you couldn't separate counter intelligence work
from the larger political and geopolitical situation that was going on at the time,
and so yeah, I mean, once I knew I had the squad leader
ready to talk, I was like, that's one big piece. Little did
I know there was going to be a podcast and bill of the time,
it was a hardcore like can't record me, you know, can't record me
even on background, even to take notes. Can't record me ever, And
of course I thought that there was going to be big problem with this.
But you know, years went by, and when I came back to him
and said, hey, this isn't going to be a book anymore. It's
going to be a podcast. Would you lend would you be willing to have
a microphone in front of you and talk about this case? He was kind
of like, okay, maybe it was COVID, Maybe it was like he
realized that this was the one this was the one best shot to have this
story told. And I was like, look, it's not going to be
a book and I need it. It's not as powerful, you know,
right, you know how this is right? Obviously it's not as powerful for
you to narrate somebody else's story. You want them to be able to narrate
a little bit. So it was really special and I think wonderful having people
like Bill and a lot of his colleagues in the Bureau who you know,
were they were long retired at that point and they were willing to talk about
the work they did. So, Yeah, that was really cool. And
as we kind of like get into this story itself, can you tell us
a little bit about the history of Silicon Valley and why that part of America
is such a huge target for foreign intelligence services. Yeah, I mean,
going back to the post war period, basically the valley always had a take
connections to the US military industrial complex. You know, got of missile technology
was being developed both in Silicon Valley and then down in the South Los Angeles
area, if you know, there's a lot of a lot of military,
very very large military contractors are still based out there, and then of course
the valley. By the nineteen seventies, the micro trip revolution entered the picture,
and computing power became important for everything from missile guidance systems to tanks,
to satellite systems to big data analysis what we call today big data analysis,
you know power. The idea of like networked computing was something that obviously had
civilian importance but was primarily as you know, like you know, DARPA was
the Internet was a military project. You know, it's about military connectivity.
So as soon as the micro trip revolution, the semiconductor revolution kicked off by
the seventies, sixties and seventies, you know, it became the valley became
and it still is, but it really became a central front in the kind
of Cold War espionage war. Back then it was primarily the US versus the
Soviet Union and allies. Now it's a more complex picture where you have the
Russians obviously, but you also even more so probably have the Chinese. The
Iranians are there. I mean, everybody's playing around in the valley. And
I think there's a way in which people don't necessarily associate it with with being
rich terrain for espionage, because they think of espionage as something that happens in
government buildings, you know, or at the un you know, places that
you think of as like seats of power. There's a lot of power in
the valley, and there's a lot of technology that foreign states want to steal
in order to replicate, to understand better. And that's always been the primary
kind of espionage you get in the valley is that is like tech focused economic
espionage. You also get political stuff, right because it's California. So you
can't discount the fact that like foreign governments want to know what's going on in
California, I mean, particularly the Chinese, So that's a part of the
picture too, But it's really tech focused here. You're probably the only person
I know of offhand who's really kind of pointed out the importance of California and
specifically Miami as like hubs for intelligence because of the way the United States projects
itself out into the world from those particular parts of America. Yeah, I
mean the Miami scene, and I wish there was some if there's somebody out
there, and I apologize if I don't know them, but I'm not aware
of any dedicated full time intelligence reporter down in Miami. And the Miami Herald
did amazing stuff back in the day. They did, I mean, they
used to have. I mean it's just kind of like how the Yeah,
it's a longer conversation about the loss of national security reporting as a as a
national enterprise as opposed to like nine percent of people being based in d C.
I mean, you're even you're in New York, right, and that's
that should be the most obvious place in the world for national security reporters to
be playing around in. But it's so DC focused. I mean, Miami
obviously you have I mean, not only do you have you have so calm
in Florida, but you also have you know, the Cuban and Venezuela and
Russians and the Russians down in Miami. There's a there's always ton going on
down there, Ton going on down there. I mean what I'm more familiar
with, of course, is that is the the Bay Area scene. And
look, you know, there's always a data point that I was told by
a former senior intelligence official that always stuck out to me, which is that
the MSS. The MSS had a unit, a political intelligence unit, uh
for two American entities. One was Washington, d C. And the other
one was California. You know, like they literally set up like a team
or like a unit to understand politics in DC. And then they're like,
what's the only other place that we carried out? But I mean's not like
they don't care about what's going on in other states, but they literally set
up a unit you know for that, I mean, is it is a
is a top priority for them, and it's long been a priority for the
Russians too. I mean, the Russians have been mucking around in California for
a long long time for all sorts of reasons, and it just never got
you know. I think that's why. Also, this, this case Despy,
this the case in Spy Valley, uh, kind of got forgotten because
it was a California case, right, And it wasn't It wasn't a it
wasn't a guy who was It's not handsOn or Aims, right. It's not
a guy who was an FBI agent, CIA officer. It's a dude who
worked in high tech whose girlfriend worked for a missile contractor you know. So
it's it. And in a way though, it's actually more representative of where
espionage is going or has gone right where It's like, it may not always
be that guy in Langley, right, It's probably going to be somebody with
access to classified information of like a narrowly tailored type but nonetheless has a crazy
value you know, for for states. Right. I mean that's that's that's
the irony, right, is that you have all these nameless building, these
nameless companies, these tech firms that have classified contracts, and they're doing stuff
that is like wild that nobody really understands and is kind of a softer target.
Right. It's much harder to walk into the Pentagon or to Foggy Bottom
and like get what you want, whereas like in the Valley, nobody really
even like nobody really understands the kind of geography of the classified world in the
valley. Right, It's not like you can point to five buildings and say
they have these contracts. They I mean, probably there's a couple of big
firms, right, but like they're small firms all over the valley that have
some overlapping relationship to the Pentagon or the IC, and it's just nobody really
understands it. So it's not being guarded the same way. So tell us
about John Harper, who was this guy who's kind of the focal point of
your story. So James Harper was a guy who was a native Californian.
He he went through he was a he he was trained in electronics by the
military. He entered the he entered the military to try to avoid being drafted
into Korea. So that that places him in time, right, I mean,
so he graduated in high school in the early nineteen fifties. He wanted
to basically choose where he would get routed so he didn't end up like on
the front lines, I guess. And he had a facility of electronics,
and he was like a kind of like first generation archetype of a Silicon Valley
entrepreneur. A dude who's like really really good at math and science, really
ambitious, really greedy, wants to strike it big. Sees that like there's
this kind of gold rush going on in San Francisco by the sixties and seventies,
that first generation of like high tech gold rush guys who were just like,
I can make millions in a few years, I can like hit it
big, right, This guy thinks he's going to like make it, and
the process he ends up, you know, working at these kind of storied
valley firms. At some point he has a clearance, he's working on missiles,
he's working on missile related technology. But then he's like he does other
stuff that's not classified. Ends up in Alaska for a bit working on something
called the White Alice Project, which was like setting up telecommunityations relays in case
the Soviets shot a you know, ICBM or something it was this at the
time, the technology required, like actual physical relay systems from very very rural
parts of Alaska. So he went up to Alaska for a few years and
did that, and his whole life was kind of defined by the Cold War
that way, like the intersection between high tech and the Cold War. So
he does that, and he does like non classified contracts, but still in
the high tech space. One day he decides, I want to strike out
on my own. I want to do something. Apparently he told me he
he had four daughters, and he told me one day he was watching one
of his daughters at a swim practice and they saw he had someone had a
stopwatch, and he was like, why isn't there an electric stopwatch? Oh,
I should invent the electric stockwatch. So he does. Like the main
spy in this story in Spy Valley, James Harper is like the he is
the ventor of the electric stopwatch, like the digital stopwatch US. Yeah,
digital, Like it's literally called Acus, but it's a company that still exists,
Digital Stopwatch, I mean, and he he starts the company up,
starts doing really well. But like Harper is a man of appetites, right,
he's a cheat. You know, he was a compulsive gambler. He
he like partied really really, really hard, and he bezzled funds from his
company, and so he got kicked out of his company. He got kicked
out of his own company. And this is by like the early nineteen seventies.
And when he gets kicked out of his company, he's like, shit,
I gotta find a way to make more money, and so he starts.
He starts. Basically he hooks up with the other Silicon Valley entrepreneur named
Bill Hugle. And Bill Hugel was a you know, a kind of pioneer
of the semiconductor industry in the Valley. And Bill Hugle at the same time,
I had a secret. Bill Hugle's secret was a basically was an agent
of the Polish intelligence Services, right, like which were then a core ally
of Moscow is literally the Warsaw packed, right, I mean Warsaw. So
like he Bill Hugle was this kind of proto Valley libertarian guy who was like
free love, like legalized pot out of Vietnam, but also like free trade
and free trade for Bill Hugle also meant free trade with the Soviet block because
he just believed like there shouldn't be any prohibition impediments, Yeah, impediments on
him making money, right, and just you know, for the you know
your listeners, I mean, given who they are, they probably know all
this. But like, there's there's a lot of technology that is that is
export prohibited, right. There's there's stuff that has dual use, dual use
technology, which means that it has civilian purposes but also potential military or intelligence
purposes. Things like micro things like computer systems that would allow American adversaries to
build better and faster supercomputers or missile systems. I mean, this is going
on today, right, There's like there's been a real squeeze both on the
Chinese in terms of certain kinds of like computer technology, but then also the
Russians now, particularly after the Ukraine War. That's why the Russians are ripping
microchips out of washing machines and refrigerators, you know, because they can't they
can't get this technology other ways. It's like it's kind of incredible. Well,
those are the same case in the seventies, right. So Bill Hugle
was not a traditional spy in the way we think about spies, but he
was an agent of the Polish Intelligence Services, and the Polls would get lists
of high tech that they wanted from the KGB. The KGB would pass them
a list. The list would be like, we want this kind of chip,
this kind of chip, this kind of thing, this kind of thing's
kind of processing technology, are replicator of some sort? You know, all
this stuff. In the seventies they handed to the polls. The Polish Intelligence
Services would then hand those lists out to their agents. Can you get me
x can you get me wine? And Bill Hugle was one of those guys,
right, he was like a principal agent for the Polls. Now,
as a good principal agent, he subcontract he contracted out to sub agents.
Right. And James Harper enters Bill Hugle's world and becomes a sub agent.
So he becomes a guy who works for Bill Hugle finding technology that is technically
illegal to export to the Soviet block. That's how he begins to get in
to Spine again. It's it's interesting, right because it's not how we think
of spies, right, it's adjacent to Spine. It's certainly it was illegal.
I mean, Hugle knew he was working for like an adversary intelligence service.
He knew that basically the computer chips and the material that he was providing
was eventually going to make its way to Moscow. But it was like different,
right, they looked at these guys looked at it. It's just another
play, right. It was like the Silicon Valley idea of like this is
just another way way to make money, to make money, and we're just
we're just we're free traders. We're just advancing free trade, like we don't
really care, you know, beyond that. So that's how Hardbery got in
to that world. But of course it didn't end there. Okay, Zach,
I'm gonna do this ad read real quick before we move on to the
next point. Thank you to our sponsor for tonight's show. It's a Factor.
So this holiday season, you might be looking for nutritious, convenient meals
to keep you energized on jam packed days. Factor America's number one ready to
eat meal delivery service, can help fuel up your breakfast, lunch, or
dinner and chef prepared, dietician approved ready to eat meals delivered straight to your
door. You'll save time, eat well, and stay on track with your
healthy lifestyle while tracking all your holiday to dos. Too busy with holiday plans
to cook, but you want to make sure you're eating well. With Factor,
skip the extra trip to the grocery store and the chopping, prepping and
cleaning up too, while still getting the flavor in nutritional quality you need.
Factors Fresh never frozen meals are ready in just two minutes, so all you
have to do is heat and enjoy. Skip the stress of meal prepping over
the holidays. With Factor, choose from thirty five weekly flavored, flavor packed,
fresh, never frozen meals that support healthy lifestyles and meet your meal preferences,
all delivered right to your door, ready to eat in two minutes,
so you know you'll enjoy the any With Factor, you can rest assured you're
making a sustainable choice. We offset one hundred percent of our delivery emissions and
source one percent renewable electricity for our production sites and offices. And this November,
get Factor and enjoy eating well without the hassle. Simply choose your meals
and enjoy fresh, flavor packed meals delivered to your door, ready in just
two minutes, no prep, no mess, So head to Factor meals dot
com slash Teamhouse fifty and use the code Teamhouse fifty to get fifty percent off.
That's Teamhouse fifty at Factor Meals dot com slash Teamhouse fifty to get fifty
percent off of your meals. So thank you to the Factor for sponsoring the
show I and Zach. So that's a little intro into who James Harper was
and sort of his entry into the world of espionage. I'm I guess you
know, you know, his his erstwhile handler had identified him as someone who
would be useful to him. Did he did he have to pitch him?
Like? How did that work? Honestly, the way that Harper told it
to me was just that, you know, Bill Hugle, like, these
these guy you got to step back to These guys are all just drinking buddies,
right, I mean at the time, at the time the Valley scene,
there was like a couple of bars down the peninsula from San Francisco in
the heart of the valley that was where all the entrepreneurs are just hanging out.
And it was like a really boozy scene. Right. It was the
seventies and eighties, Like everyone was drinking a lot all the time, right,
and so there was a lot of like there was just a lot of
like wheeling and dealing that would go on at these a couple of these bars,
and everybody knew that, like basically every night of the week, there'd
be people in the scene there, right, it was a small enough scene
and then for that to happen. So at some point Bill Hugle, you
know, the semiconductor Pioneer, you know, the primary agent of the Polish
intelligence Services, the friends Harper at one of these bars and they just start
talking, they just start shooting the ship. And that's how it ended up
happening. I don't think it took a lot of convincing, let's put it
that way. Right, Like he was not he was knocking on an open
door, you know, he was like, hey, money, and he
was like and Harbor was like, yeah, I'd love to make somebody how
and he's like, well, you got to get some stuff from me.
Oh who is it for? You know, well it's for some friends of
mine in the Eastern block, all right, whatever, Like they did,
like they didn't. You know. It's funny because in the world in the
in the world of the usg right, there's this kind of like there's this
attitude, well you know, these are they are adversaries. These are you
know, how could you betray your country like that? And it's a valid
perspective, but it's not the way culture that these guys came up. They
wanted money, they wanted global they wanted global networks. They were not thinking
like their value hierarchy was not like the idea of like this this competition between
these two global behemoths being the thing that they woke up every day thinking about
and worrying about. Was like that was just not there. Well, I
mean I think what really gives away the banality of it is just how little
money he sold his country out for. It's like this wasn't like a retirement
fund. It's just like chump change. Really at the end of the day.
Oh yeah, I mean the stuff he was doing for you go finding
the microchips and stuff that was like a couple thousand dollars each time. I
mean he really was what that was it? I mean, that was it?
Right? So that's the thing was that he was just he was making
a he was he was making like pocket change, you know, rent money
basically, right, low level spine, you know, And in a way
he realized that that wasn't enough. I mean it's like almost odd like he
did that for enough. He did that for I don't know, on and
off from roughly nineteen seventy five until nineteen seventy nine, which is when Harper's
like big scheme begins. And that was that was like when he discovered that
his girlfriend at the time, whose name was Ruby Louis Schuler, was working
for a company that was a specialist in ballistic missile defense. Right, and
you know again, I know your listenership is like pretty up on this stuff.
But like in the late seventies and early eighties, was a huge topic
of discussion because it was all about mutually a sure destruction. It was all.
It was all about, like the idea of like can we can we
survive a second strike like mister aeb first strike, and the idea that like
American, like if thisbe it's attacked first, America might be basically destroyed before
we could you know, we could counterattack or could we could we actually stop
many Soviet missiles from coming in. So there was a huge amount of money
and energy and DoD projects put into trying to somehow destroy Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles
before they reached the US mainland and Harper's girl friend. Harper didn't even know
this. I mean, Harper was just like, oh, yeah, cool,
Yeah, you're an executive assistant to the president of this like this company
down the valley. And she was like yeah. And he's like, oh,
what do they work on? Well, this isn't this? Oh and
also ballistic missile defense. And it was kind of like his ears perked up,
you know, and he was like, wait, what you're working on?
What it's like, Oh, like a classified contract? Oh yeah,
this classified contracts. Well, where are the classified documents? Started? Oh,
they're in the safe. Oh well who's access to the safe? Oh?
I do you know? Like that was literally it. He was like,
I mean it was, it was. It was And most people,
right hear that, You're like, oh, that's good for you, Like,
you know, that must be interesting work, right, But his thinking
went right to, oh, I could steal those cash money, I could
sell them for a lot of money because the nuclear weapons with documents, right,
this is literally US ballistic missile information, right, I mean that is
like and it's stuff that was like. And Harper was an engineer, so
he was a mathematics. He understood this. You know, these documents were
These aren't like analytic product products, right, They're not things that have narratives,
you know. It's literally documents of like mathematical formulas, right and stuff
about, you know, because missiles have to go into the atmosphere and come
back down again. It's like they're highly technical, mathematically oriented. It's a
mathematically oriented field that requires PhDs and engineers. And so it's like funny because
for most of us it's gobbledygook, right, I mean for me, it's
certainly it's like I don't you couldn't hand me a document be like is this
interesting or valuable to you? I'd be like, I have no idea,
Like why would I know anything about that? Right? But he knew,
so he started going After the after hours, he and his girlfriend would go
to their her office, unlock the safe, look through the documents, take
them back to their apartment, and photo copy them, and then bring them
back before the end of the night. And that's how they amassed like literally
hundreds of pounds, hundreds of pounds of missile related documents. Now he was
like, I got to sell these now, right, I got to find
a buyer. So he went back to his you know, principal handler,
this guy Bill Hugole, also you know, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and
was like, can you broker an introduction to the Soviets or the polls?
And that's how he started. Like he was fully self actualizing, right.
He didn't have somebody to come up to him and be like I heard you're
having some money troubles, you know, like or you know what I mean,
or like I heard your boss is a dick, you know, and
like, wouldn't you like to show him by giving me some documents? Like
he literally he initiated the entire process. You know, he was a He
was a volunteer if there ever was when he was a greedy guy who looked
at Spine the way he would look at any other kind of entrepreneurial Silicon Valley
play. And that's what's what's one thing that's super interesting about him, Right,
It's like it doesn't mean there aren't greedy people in DC or New York
or Brussels or wherever, but like there's something about the culture out here that
he is exemplary of. Right, Like a guy who was like just viewed
Spine as like basically another kind of small business or startup. Yeah, he's
not ideological. He's just a tech bro. Let's make some cash here,
let's do business. Yeah, he's a hundred percent of tech bro. I
mean he was like he literally was like a he was a football juck in
high school and he loved like sports cars, and he was good at math
and science, you know, and kind of like hands on way as an
engineer, like not a nerd at all, like big brawny dude. And
it was just a tech bro who decided again to spine I mean, and
he brought that attitude like kind of like tech bro, like you know,
like fat frat bro tech bro vibe to spying. Yeah, and so did
he did he make those introductions for him to you know, actual intelligence officers
in the Eastern Bloc? Yeah? So see so yeah, no Eastern Bloc.
I mean Hugle is Hugle. Hugle new real Jugle, new real players.
I mean, Hugle's main contact was a very senior Polish intelligence officer under
he worked for the UH. It was like totally Soviet. He worked for
the Polish UH Ministry of like machine industry and tools. Extremely extremely like you
know Eastern Bloc ministry title. But he was a real player. I mean,
this guy was a very senior intelligence officer who was under undercover as a
as a Polish government official and different in a different institution. And Hugo was
like basically told Harper, hey cool, I will I'll outbroke the introu but
I want to cut because everyone wants a cut, right. All these guys
are viewing this again as as a money making opportunities. So they go to
Europe and they talk it all out and they you know, Harper brings a
couple of classified documents with him or like he actually he brings up he brings
like a a like a couple of documents, but he kind of makes almost
like a skeleton key of like all the documents that he has and with the
description of them to be like it's literally like a would you like this serve?
Would you like this sor would you like this? Like it's like he's
like, I have all this to offer you, you know what are you
going to pay for it? And they make an agreement that Harper is going
to come back with more documents. So the first the first meetings are happening
in Vienna and in uh and in Warsaw and that's how he starts. I
mean, that's how I mean. Literally, you know this, this Polish,
this senior Polish intelligence officer whose name was Siho Jin says, let me
talk to my people. I got to talk to my tech, my science
guys, my SNT intel officers, because I don't know enough about this to
tell you what the value is. And I'll get back to get back to
them. And they're like, they said, great, I want you to
bring you know, I want you to bring all all all of these documents
back. And Harper wanted a one time payout of a million dollars. This
is nineteen seventy nine, right, so that's worth about four million dollars today.
So that's a significant sum of cash. I mean it's I mean,
it's not a great, great fortune, you know, but it's a fortune,
especially a guy who was edging it on being broke. He looked at
it as like this is going to be my This is like it for me.
I'm gonna move down to Mexico or do whatever, like I'm gonna I'm
be done, right, I'm gonna spy one something to be done. But
of course, if you know anything about intelligence officers. They don't ever want
that, right, They want to keep you on the hook, you know.
They want to give you a little bit and a little bit and a
little bit, and then keep tasking you for more and more and more.
Right, Harper didn't want to do that, but he was desperate and he
was willing to go along with it for a little while. Right where you
know, guy says, well, I'll give you, I'll give you fifty
thousand dollars, and then you come back again, I give you another fifty
thousand dollars. And that's how the uh, the polls kind of kept them
on. The kept them on. They even if I recall, right,
they even kind of like dick them over on the bill the first time around,
right, Yeah, they did. Actually they were fake, so they
they they specifically. And I know this because when I was researching Despy a
Valley podcast, I actually worked with a Polish researcher. And what's really amazing
is that Poland and some of the other former Soviet block countries allow researchers to
get access to unredacted intelligence documents. And I managed to find all the files
from this case. I mean, there was no blackouts, no reactions like
literally the unexpurgated documents, including the like strategic reports of the Polish intelligence officers
writing about their thinking the case and like how they were going to try to
play this guy right, And part of that was them saying, basically,
when we want to go hot and cold with him, we wanted to,
we want to say we're incredibly interested. And then when he gives us something,
we want to basically say, you know what, this isn't what you
promised us, this isn't the go we want, you know what, you
kind of over promised and underdlivered, and to keep him basically wanting, you
know, in a in a position of dependency. I mean, it was
like some pretty you know, subtle psychological games at the polar Planers, good
intelligence work on their part, and that like made Harper I rate, and
it made him willing. It made him but it also like made him willing
to like give them more for less, right, because he became so needy
and like did he needed he needed the money? He was fine, you
know, but then eventually there's like there's like one major payday that happens where
Harper, Harper leaves right, he goes he goes back to Warsaw. He
has this blowout argument basically where the polls are like, We're not going to
pay you. This is garbage. Harper like goes back to California and he's
like, what am I going to do with all these documents again? He's
got hundreds of pounds of documents in his apartment. These are physical documents.
This isn't like stuff on a on a thumb drive, like it's like stacking
up. He is like, you know, and so he goes out to
the San Joaquin Delta, which is just east of San Francisco. He gets
on a sailboat with his best friend and bury all documents in like a muddy
island in the middle of the delta to be like, I can't keep this
stuff on me. It's like too hot, it's too hot. And then
he tries to like get he tries to get contact again at some point with
the poles because he's desperate. So he used to go back and dig it
all up again. And there are are water logs, so he used to
dry out these documents and then literally and there's stinking water log documents that he's
like basically like hanging up, you know, all over his clothes pins,
clothes pins, like exactly. He's like like classified documents, like they're like
they're Christmas ornaments or something. And he literally stuffs these dried, like moldering
documents in giant suitcases and just walks into SFO and gets on a plane to
Europe to then go back and resell them. We you know, like it
was very basic, like there was no trade craft. You know, there
was really very little trade craft in this story. It gets back to Warsaw.
He gets spirited out of Warsaw to this country estate and he provides these
documents to the Poles, who are like ecstatic because they actually, all of
a sudden we are like, oh, yeah, this is the good stuff.
You know, this is like really valuable ballistic missile stuff. The Holes
immediately contact their overlords in Moscow. The KGB flies in twenty science and technology
officers to pour over the documents overnight. They literally spend like an entire day
just laying the documents out, like one page by the time, and I'm
looking through them and like as as valuable, as as valuable, as valuable,
And so he gets his big payday. They pay him like like a
couple hundred thousand dollars. You know, this is like his big, big
payday. And then they're like we want more. But so that's you get
these kind of false starts and stops, but that's the big one. That's
like, that was like the big one. And so when I was going
through the Polish intelligence files, I knew Harper's handwriting looked like from other US
cork documents, So I knew what I was looking at. So I'm going
through it and I'm seeing everything's in Polish, obviously, right, you're seeing
everything in Polish. It's get it translated. All of a sudden, I
come across a bunch of stuff and it's dated. It's dating lines up perfectly
with when I knew Harper was at this estate, you know, basically under
watched under the watch of the KGB. And it's limericks, like drunken limericks
that that guy that he wrote about spine and he and he left it there,
he left it there and they put it in his file, and I
was like, this is the dumbest man ever. Like literally, the limericks
were like, you know, I'm sitting here by the fire thinking about spine.
Like it's like I don't remember them by heart anymore. But like if
you're if people are watching or listening, like listen to Spy Valley of the
podcast, and it's incredible, you know. He made up limericks about spine
and he left it there, and I was like, this is the best
blackmail material it's like ever been made. You know. He again he viewed
it as like a lark, right, I mean, he was drunk and
just partying, and like for him, it was just like an adventure almost,
you know, which is incredible how greedy he was and how incautious he
was about being a spy. And on the return trip, similarly, it
was like just so half assed, as I recall, I mean, didn't
he tape some of the money to his ankles and the rest of it was
just in a suitcase and just whies back to the United States? Percent he
literally he taped he taped half of it to his ankles and then he put
the rest of it underneath his shoes. Right, this was way before you
had to take off his shoes at the airport, right, many many decades
before. He literally was like, well he tried to put it in a
bank account in France, and they were like where'd you get this money from?
Like you have like a you have a paper trail here, because we
can't just take this money without some kind of receipt, you know. And
and he was like, I can't, I can't provide you with that.
So he just thought, ah, you know, like whatever, I'll literally
just he literally got duct tape and just taped it to his to his ankles
and just walked walked onto the airplane in Geneva and then walked out at JFK,
you know, with one hundreds of like a hundred and fifty two hundred
ffty thousand dollars taped to his like his ankles and his feet. So yeah,
I mean again no tradecraft. Like I know, it's harder today with
like the digital you know, there's like a more ubiqu with digital trail.
But it just goes to show you that like if you have the drive,
you have the access, you can get a lot if people aren't watching.
Yeah, and I mean it could it could easily happen today. They can't
search everybody that goes through Godstoms, No, of course not. And you
know, the the thing about him too is that he didn't have a he
didn't have a clearance at the time, right, he didn't work for a
company that that was there's good plausible deniability all all around. It was his
girl. It was his girlfriend and then his wife and he married her over
the course at this scheme from which lasted from seventy nine to eighty one.
So he you know, that was part of the issue. When the Bureau
finally started investigating this case, they were looking for people who had access to
classified documents to their job and he didn't, you know, and so that
that took effect to that that that was a stumbling blog for them. So
how did that come about? Because I mean, what did the Bureau have
some inkling that there was a spy out there? Did they have some idea
of who they were looking for? Did they have a defected KGB agent who
gave gave up that there's a spy somewhere in the United States? I mean,
how did that investigation come about? So this is actually one of my
favorite parts of the story. And it's kind of this whole story is kind
of larger than life, and you know, I can't do it's it's to
hear the people who lived it telling their own world words. Is I think
gives a lot more vividly than I can, but I was say this,
like two things happened. The first thing that happened was that the CIA had
a mole in the Polish Intelligence Service whose code name was Cariboo. And Cariboo
was one of the most important Eastern Bloc recruitments in place that the IC had
in the seventies and eighties. Kind of an unsung guy even to this day,
I mean very little. He's you know, he comes up in that
book you mentioned from Warsaw would Love because he was actually critical in busting Marian
Sikarski, who was a Polish intelligence officer who was an illegal who was operating
down Los Angeles at this time. I remember that one the offense almost lost
that case, like buy that there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that
dead case came very close too, I mean, and that was a big,
big, big deal. And so this guy Cariboo, who he was
a Polish intelligence officer under diplomatic cover in Chicago in the mid nineteen seventies.
Obviously Poland has a big interest in Chicago because it has a huge Polish population
there. And at some point probably he was either fully recruited or his recruitment
began in Chicago in the early to mid nineteen seventies. He rotates back out
to warsaw because you know, people, that's the whole thing. You rotated,
you rotate out. And he was also an engineer. He was an
S and T focused spy, science and technology. And at some point he
gets in touch with his CIA handlers and he says, this is probably nineteen
eighty or so, maybe nineteen eighty one, and he says, look,
I don't know the name of this guy, but you've got a serious spy
in Silicon Valley. I was at my work. We were having a hollow
a party, I think, and I was told that we were we were
to come hang out because one of my coworkers, this intelligence officer named Cihojen,
was getting an award from the head of the KGB from the head of
the KGB because he had recruited an incredibly valuable nuclear spot, right yeah,
like right, And he was like, oh, you know, like so
he's there, he's watching this award being given out, you know, and
you know how compartmentation is intelligence, So he doesn't he doesn't know the name
of the guy, you know, the recruitment. He just knows that the
senior intelligence officer named Cihojen has A has some kind of has some guy in
Silicon Valley who's providing incredibly sensitive nuclear documents to the Polls, which are of
course going directly to the KGB. I mean, actually it was very interesting
reading those documents, the Polish Intelligent intelligence documents. There's a lot of discussion
about who's going to pay, because they're like, well, this is all
just like the Poles don't care, like the Poles don't have a ballistic missile
program. This is all going to the Soviets, right, So it's like
so there's a lot of like back and forth between them and the KGB about
like, hey, you can't afford to pay this guy, Like you're going
to pay this guy right and and and the KGB was like yeah, sure,
we'll do it. Basically, so, I mean, Harper was working
directly for the Polls, but his payment was coming from the KGB. So
this secret CIA penetration of the Polish Intelligence Service gets in touch and it is
like that's all I got for you, engineer Silicon Valley nuclear secrets. Oh
and this guy, this this eight this this this secret source that that we
have somehow is connected to Bill Hugle. Okay, so then the it gets
Bill Hugle's name, see I gets the basic parameters of what's going on.
They pass it on to the FBI. That's where like Bill Kane and the
rest of that, like they're you know, like they're like reading. You
get you get this highly classified memoranda that comes in, right, and it's
like here's what we know, like you know, uh, it's like a
you know, trusted source. Whatever says x y and z. You don't
get the name of it. You don't even get the name of the source
necessarily at the beginning. You just get information that says x y and z
from somebody that's like considered a like a very very highly trusted source. That's
the first thing. So the Bureau of course goes, oh, man,
like we have a real problem, right, we got Hugele. Okay,
that's a good lead, right, we know that, like that's been going
on. We've got our eye on Hugle for a while in fact. But
so they start investigating Hugle, including like wire taps and stuff like that.
But there's not at this point Harper and Hulet are falling out. So they're
not they're not they're not getting much from it, right, they're not getting
much from them. At the same time this is happening, Harper gets cold
feet about spawning, Like he decides he doesn't want to be a spy for
the Eastern Block anymore, and he decides to get in touch with the lawyer
to serve as a go between so he can offer his services to become a
double agent for the CIA, and he wants to get paid for it,
right, So like his dude, they just spent the last three years passing
nuclear secrets to Moscow is now basically trying to negotiate a get out of jail
free card for himself where he works for the CIA now against the Soviet Block
and wants to be paid handsomely for it. To do that, he starts
providing information on himself and his scheme and what he knows and who he knows,
and of course DOJ and the Bureau are like, yeah, we're interested,
Yeah, okay, we're interested. To keep telling us more, keep
telling us, know us more, right, Like they're like, keep telling
us more. And of course they never had any England whatsoever that they were
ever going to deal with this guy. They just wanted him to give them
more investigative leads so they could find him. So these two streams are coming
together simultaneously, right. You have Harper anonymously through a lawyer diming himself out,
himing himself out, and then you have the secret source within the Polish
intelligence services. So these two intelligence streams come together, and that is eventually
how the bureau identifies him. I mean, it's an interesting question, right,
like if Harper had not if he hadn't come forward and tried to negotiate
a sweet deal for himself, I don't know if they would have caught him.
I mean, yeah, I guess. I mean engineer Silicon Valley,
Like that's a pretty wide net. It's wide, and it's wide. And
again, at that point, Harper and Hugel were not talking anymore, so
there was no like nothing on an open line, no mention of it.
I mean, obviously every time Hugle was like talking about somebody they wheeling and
dealing with, they were like, we got to check up on that guy,
you know, But Hugo wasn't talking about Harper at that point. You
know, he will had moved on, he had the other schemes going on.
So yeah, I mean in the end, it was probably Harper that
that that. I mean, he never The Bureau definitely had to had to
do some really good, solid investigative work to make those final leaps. I
mean, Harper was never like, and my real name is James Harper.
Like they had to figure out who he was, and they did, because
he started naming all these people that he knew in the round, right,
and at some point somebody he names is going like the Bureau would very gently
start interviewing people in a way that didn't reveal what they actually wanted, right,
because they were afraid of spooking right the spy. They were like,
we don't know who he is, and if we make it seem like we're
asking questions about a potential spy, that guy might you know, take off
and had to head to Moscow and we'll never hear from him again. So
they very skillfully managed to get the name Harper out of one of his contacts
in the valley with that, without that guy in the valley knowing that they
wanted to get in touch with him because of his spine right there, that
they were identifying him as a potential lead in that And that's how they id
Harper, and then and then of course they got to open up an investigation
on him. They got a FAISA, they tapped his phone lines, they
followed him around everywhere. And that was also hard because they didn't have like,
he wasn't necessarily talking about spying at that point either, so they had
to build that case against him, and that was not easy to do.
Actually, And you said that in the you know, in the interim while
they're listening in on mister Harper's life, that he had a very spicy lifestyle
that he pursued. He had a very spicy lifestyle. He was he was
a man of I don't know, he was a libertine, right, I
mean he he he was a total cheat. I mean he he liked he
liked to like booze it up. He he would like get into hot tub
parties with like Hugh Gold back when they were still talking, and they'd have
girls like you know it got it got. I think that the like there's
a character in this story, and that character is basically booze, and like
a lot of the story could be explained or understood the perspective of like dudes
who were just drunk all the time and like just were like didn't care about
They were just like caution to the breeze, don't care, Like I'm gonna
go out and find some girls, I'm gonna go spy for the Soviet block,
like I'm gonna do whatever, you know, Like they just didn't care.
You know. That was kind of his attitude. And so that's that
really drove a lot of what he did, you know, and Hu Will
too. Honestly, I feel like he's almost like j Edgar Hoover's you know,
caricature of a communist spy, like just a total genera, even though
he wasn't ideological, I mean, in fact, yeah, I mean communists,
he was like a he he would probably think of himself as a as
a as a para, you know, the paradigm of a of a cap
nor. Right. He was like, I'm a I'm here. I'm like
that's what I do. Like I'm I'm trying to find new angle, I'm
trying to find new new revenue streams, you know, like I'm thinking outside
the box. I'm like I'm you know, I'm breaking things right, Like
it's that Silicon Valley ethos of just like yeah, wheeling and dealing, right,
he's got it far from communist. I mean, that's the irony,
right, These guys, these were like these were really aggressive capitalists, small
businessman who just viewed spine as another play, you know. So he was
very much that. I mean, he's an extreme example of that, right,
Like there are, of course, the vast majority of people in that
world don't would not end up in that place, but he's a symptom of
that culture out here. M hm. And so as this investigation is ongoing,
how did they actually start to like zero in on him to the point
that they're able to, you know, make an arrest. I mean it
was just literally interviewing a guy very you know, very obliquely, and then
they they tap his stuff, like I said, and they try to they
try to like they try to get a smoking gun, and that's like really
really hard, you know, smoking gun. But they eventually decide that they
have enough evidence to bring it to trial. You know, they have.
There's a great story that's a near mists that that Bill Canane told me,
where they're tapping his line and they get a call. Harper gets a call
from Europe and it's like it's like at you know, seven eight pm,
at night, gets a call from Europe and it's a cutout for the Polish
intelligence Service, right. It's this a woman who's a cutout, who's like,
we miss you, we haven't heard from you in a while, like
trying to be oblique, but it's like obviously they're talking spy talk, right,
And Harper's like sloshed, like he has just drunk off his face.
And so the cut out for the Polish intelligence services like, here, let
me give you my number, call me back tomorrow and we'll talk about getting
you back out to Europe, you know. And Harper says, okay,
he writes down the number. Well, he writes down the wrong number.
Oh, here writes down the wrong number. So so the bureau is listening
to him write down the wrong number. And the next day he gets up
and he calls the wrong number. He calls the wrong number, and the
bureau is losing their mind. They're like, this is it, this is
it, this is the call. This is him going to be talking about
spine on the phone tapped line, and he literally does not, And so
he never calls the woman back because and this so the bureau is like,
how do we get him the number? Get do we enter his apartment and
somehow like put the number on the table so he'll call back. Like like,
that's I mean, that's the level that this case was at. What
really led them to decide to arrest him was that Caribou, the CIA mole
within the Polish Intelligence Service, decides to defect, like defect for good.
And that is in the summer of nineteen eighty three. Because the the DOJ
folks are getting a ton of pressure from the Bureau and the CIA to prosecute,
prosecute, prosecute. The DJ people are like, we don't have the
evidence, and we don't want to risk arresting this guy and then losing this
case. That would be a disaster for us, right, I mean,
it's all where you sit in the government. Right. If you're a prosecutor,
you want to prosecute. If you're the FBI, you want to investigate
and make an arrest. If you're a CIA you're playing the world. You
know, cloak and Daggers, fibers, vibrus the spy. You want to
get an American spy off the streets. It's part of this larger game.
But you have no you know what I mean, Like everyone was playing their
role right right right. So at that time, Caribou is out of warsaw.
He is now under diplomatic cover of the Spine or diplomatic cover in Stockholm,
Sweden, that he escapes with his family gets exfiltrated out to the US,
and the prosecutors think that, okay, great, Like our star witness
is here. You know, he's he's gonna se he's gonna appear a trial,
and we're gonna we're gonna you know where we got this, We got
this unlock, this is this is now. And Harper gets arrested in October
nineteen eighty three. So now that this star, this star witness is here,
this star CIA agent is now out of danger. He's now going to
be resetled in the US with his family, and we're gonna we're gonna put
Harper on trial. That's that's how the case all came together was around this
one key witness. Yeah. I mean, I've read cases and I'm sure
you have as well, where it seems like a pretty cut and dry,
slam dunk case of espionage that you think, you know, someone would get
thrown in prison for quite easily. You know, there's a handoff of money,
there's an exchange of intelligence with a foreign intelligence officer, but that the
bar to convict somebody of espionage is quite quite high in the United States,
and you know, the FEDS lose a lot of these cases, as we've
seen more recently with Chinese espionage. I mean, how how did this one
play out in a court of law? I mean, what was it?
Was it a slam dunk case or was it you know kind of uh,
you know h or could it have gone either way? Well, I mean
it never Well, this is what is amazing about it is they didn't have
all the information that I'm you know, I've just I've described they didn't have
at the time. They they had the sketches of it, right, they
knew that Harper was the guy, I mean, but there was nothing there
was There really wasn't a lot of hard, tangible evidence that they had.
That was the whole problem is that they needed this Polish intelligence officer who was
broadly a part of this operation, or at least was aware of it as
an intelligence officer, to carry it out to to to bring the case home.
But the problem was was that as soon as he got to the States
and he started being debriefed by the prosecutors on the case who I spoke with,
who are great guys who are incredibly hard working and really wanted to do
this right, The CIA started walking back their promise to allow him to testify
immediately, like CI was like, we'll bring him to the country, we'll
get him out, he will testify, We'll put Harper away. They're like
great. DJ was like, great, then we will arrest him on the
condition that this happens. The moment he got to the States to see I
was like, actually, we're not really sure we want him to testify anymore,
right, And so that caused a huge blow up between DJ and CIA.
And if you think about it, how many times have you heard of
a of a defector from a foreign intelligence service testifying in a criminal trial for
espionage in the US as a witness. I can't think of any I can't
think of a single time, right, because they don't want they don't want
those folks having any heat or light on them for some reasons that are good,
right, but they just generally don't like you know. The way it
was put to me was in the NDCIA just wanted to stay in the shadows.
That's it like that's their imperative. That's the way they view the world.
They don't want their agents showing up in courtrooms pointing to somebody and saying,
yes, that is the man who passed me the documentary, like they
don't want it. So the prosecutors felt like they had been lied to,
basically, and there was a big blow up in Langley where they they walked
into the you know, they walked into the room the senior CIA operations officer
who offers them a drink at like eleven o'clock in the morning, and it's
like, please sit down, you know, and then basically proceeds to tell
them that like, you know, ain't happening, you know, after the
promise. So the prosecutors are irate, and they're also really scared because they're
like, we were this entire trial was predicated on this witness, and if
we don't have that, we may not be able to get Harper, you
know, we might not have enough. So they did they very smartly did
probably they probably pursued their best path forward, which was leaning on him really
hard to flee, to make it seem like they had an harp to get
him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what they did. You know,
they started walking in there like all all you know, pisson vinegar and
telling him like, you're gonna get the needle for this. We're gonna like
where you're gonna put you away forever and that's guilty, So you better sign
on the dotted line right now or like you know you like literally, prosecutors
me like your ass is grass, You're a dead man. That's it.
It's done, you no, that's it had. It worked. It worked.
It worked, and it worked because the prosecutors who worked, you know,
worked the case were very very smart, convincing people. And he's the
kind of guy who saves his own skin every time exactly. And also he
got it. He got he got a judge who was a notorious hard ass
who whose name was hanging Sam Conti. He was for basically asking for the
death penalty for everything. He was like. He was like a truly crazy
old school law and order judge. It was like Harper could not have gotten
a worst judge. So, you know, he get he gets is the
courtroom and Sam County's like, what are you accused of? It's like espionage
and he's like, are you pursuing the death penalty, you know, the
like no, you know, so this is this is not the bleeding heart
liberal California legislature we hear about nowadays. This was a This was a wild
West. He was a Nixon appointee. Yeah, Like I mean his nickname
was literally Hanging Sam, like that was you know, he was a he
was like dude. So when the prosecutors get this guy, they realize,
like, you know, the judge is gonna scare Harper as bad as they
could, and Harper, Harper, please because at that point you can't you
can't get the death penalty for espionage anymore. Right. But literally, the
judge is arguing with the prosecution about why he can't for Harper. He's like,
why can't I have that? And they're like listen, sir, I'm
sorry the Supreme Court and he was like make sure you know. So,
Like so Harper's just standing there and it's like, oh god, why you
know, like you're a dead man walking ex Literally, He's like, I'm
gonna die. So so he decides to flee out and he pleas out and
he thinks, all right, you know, I'm gonna avoid the electric chair
and I'm gonna hopefully get a relatively leaning sentence, but he doesn't. Kanti
gives him the max, of course, which is a life sentence, and
Harper spends thirty three years in prison. He gets out in the mid twenty
tens, and I managed to reach out to him and get him to talk
to me and tell me his life story. And for folks interested in listening
to the podcast by Valley, I mean, that really is the heart of
a lot of the story is hearing about hearing about an American trader in their
own words. As difficult as that can be sometimes, it's also a really
valuable and I think fascinating character study because Harper he didn't lie to me as
far I mean, and I tried to check every little detail I could about
his case, and everything I could find was seemed like highly credible based on
other sources, corroborating sources out there. And so he told me his whole
story from the time he was a kid to his time as a spy.
There's there's a real aspect of like sociopathy and narcissism, and that he's like
even after all of this, he's almost like bragging to you about what he
did. I think that's a lot of it. Yeah, I mean I
think sociopathy is the right word for it. Extreme narcissism. Also, there
were points Ahart asking questions and you're right, he he was kind of like,
well I did this, and I did that, and I got away
with this, and like I couldn't believe it, and all of a sudden,
I had all this money burning a hole in my pocket, like he
was. I think crowd of like cheating the system, right, And I
think that was something that really made him. I think that made him I
don't know it, even after having spent thirty plus years in prison. I
think it made him feel good in a way that he had been able to
cheat the system the way he had. I mean, it's incredible, and
it's he's not a normal person, right, Like you hear him sometimes you're
like, oh this is like a good time, good time boy. Really
you can just tell like, oh, he's he's a dude you could like
drink some beers with and he would like tell dirty jokes and it'd be fun.
And then like it it goes from that to like much much darker,
you know, like real quick with him, you know where it's clear like
oh I could see how you could be kind of like a charming sociopath.
He told me like he was pimping out his wife at one point or something
like that. Uh, that wasn't him, that was that was you.
I mean, yeah, he he wasn't doing that. What Harper did was
I mean when his when his wife, Ruby Leui Schuler was his his co
conspirator and wife, the woman who who worked for the company with the classified
contracts. She was an extreme alcoholic. She was like basically dying of alcoholism
by her like late thirties, like bedridden. And he would tell his his
like bedridden co con spirit or wife that he's going out for a jog.
He'd be like, I'm going up for a jog, sweetie. And he
had another girl like five blocks away, and he would just jog to her
place and like do his thing, and then he would like come back all
sweaty and be like, man, what a great job. You know,
Like that's the kind of level this guy was like operating at. Yeah.
Yeah, that kind of guy. That kind of guy. And so what
was his life like after prison? Uh? Sad? I mean, I
don't know how else to put it. Sad. His life was so uh
he got out of prison. He was in his mid eighties. He was
a sad He was a sick old man. Most of his family had long
since dis owned him because he was not a good He's not a good meat.
He betrayed everybody who was around him, everybody who meant anything to him,
everybody who was close to him. He betrayed his family, he betrayed
lovers, he betrayed his business partners, he betrayed his country. He was
left with very little. He spent most of his years in federal prison in
up in Oregon. And he got out and he ended up chasing some old
flame of his who had since long moved to Arkansas, and he moved out
there with the idea that maybe he was going, like, I don't know,
live with her much off or I'm not sure, but that did not
work out, and he ended up kind of marooned in northwest Arkansas, California
boy, and was just trying to get better and trying to kind of live
and eke out a living something. He wasn't working, but just you know,
living on probably disability at that point, and he wasn't doing much,
you know, And so I think I found him in the right time.
But he was in a sad state. You know, he was like really
ill, and he was lonely. You know, he was ill, he
was lonely. It was sad, it was you know, it was interesting
talking to him then. I mean he he looked back on his life,
but he never really seemed to exhibit much regret for what he would go.
And then as as you were, you know, producing this podcast. I
mean, he passed away, didn't he He did, Yeah, he actually
well before he passed away, he stopped responding to me. It was actually
very interesting. He excuse interesting, sure, uh. He we would talk
a lot and intensively, and he we have these long conversations. He was
like very very exuberant, and then he would like just drop a face of
the earth, you know, like he would talk. I talked to him
like twice twice a week for hours, and then all of a sudden he
was just like stop paying on the phone. He was a very difficult interview
that way. One day he just doesn't take up the phone and I don't
hear from him for like a year and a half, and I'll I was
like, okay, look, he was in and out of the hospital.
He's in his like late eighties. At this point, you just kind of
assume, right, like all right, he probably passed, And then out
of nowhere, I got a call from him and he was like, hey,
just wonder how you're doing, Like I'm not going to come to California.
Do you want to like have coffee and keep talking? And I was
like okay, and that's it. And then I tried to get in touch
with them again and I couldn't and I couldn't and I couldn't, and I
found out that he passed after some pretty gruesome health stuff. He never made
it back to California. He died at age eighty nine, I believe,
And because he had served in the military, he is buried in a US
military cemetery in Northwest Arkansas, which is amazing, right, But the guy
who like was a Soviet block spy just got like because he he used to
be like, I gotta go to the VA, like do my PT And
I was like what He's like, He's like, I get VA servis And
I was like, oh yeah, all right, Like so what a world?
Yeah, what a world? Right? That's like a little irony at
the end of that. So that's where he's barried that's that's what happened to
James Harper. I and I so the podcast Spy Valley. I mean,
it's really incredible because you were able to get the FBI side, You're able
to get these through the archival research, some of the documents from the Polish
Intelligence Service pre uh, you know Wall coming down, and then you know
the man himself, James Harper. What was the response when this podcast came
out? I mean, was was there any interesting feedback you got from it
or any other sources. I kind of popped out of the woodwork. I
didn't have any sources that popped out of the woodwork. And that's always what
you want, right as a journalist, is like somebody is like, I
have another amazing story from the right right, and I will say, like
the the most common response I got was kind of something you alluded to at
the beginning of the interview, which is like I have no idea that this
happened, which is always as a journalist, is like kind of great,
like good, you know, like yeah, nah, like I've I've opened
up a different world, like I've I've I've peeled back like this crazy thing
and something you talked about, Uh, maybe before we started the stream,
which was almost the the kind of like almost comedic like Coen Brothers burn after
the thing, because that's that there is a real sense of the story that
it's like it's just it's very very serious, but it's at the same time
like undoubtedly a funny and bizarre story of like a guy, like kind of
a crazy dude that did it crazy. It was a terrible thing what he
did. But it's also like a cast of characters that you can't believe are
real, you know, but it's like it's a very much a real story
about real wild people doing some wild stuff and they you know, they most
of them face the consequences for it. But that's that was the primary reaction
was like I didn't know the respine in Silicon Valley. I didn't know about
this story, and like I didn't know that like spic real life spy stories
could be this funny. Yeah, well I think it was great. I'm
glad it worked out, and I hope people will go and check it out.
So the podcast is Valley of Spies. You can find wherever Spy Valley,
wherever podcasts are available. I actually just listened to it on YouTube.
Found it on there. Yeah, yeah, YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts,
Stitcher, yeah, wherever you get your podcasts. It's uh, it's
it's six episodes. Each episode I think it's like thirty minutes long. So
I mean you can listen to it over, you know, in afternoon if
you want to. It's not like like like some podcasts like this one sometimes
where it's like three hour long shows. It's it's very listenable, and I
hope you guys will check it out. And uh so, I mean,
while we have you here is I have to I have to probe the wire
and see like what's next on the horizon for you. Oh man, I
got some stuff, but I can't talk about a lot of it yet because
it's not out. But I have some long form investigative reporting that I've been
working on for a long, long time years that is nearing completion, some
very deep dives into stuff that goes back a lot of years, kind of
US intelligence community stories, kind of back back to the core reporting that you
know that you and I do. So I'm really really excited about that.
I don't want to give too much away for a whole bunch of reasons,
but like definitely some revelatory stories from the world of the post nine to eleven
post nine eleven intelligence world. That's great, and I hope you know,
we will have you on the show again, you know, a year down
the line, and we'll have some more topics to talk about for sure.
Happy to happy to be here anytime. Is there anything else that you want
to plug or anything you want to tease out there? Tell people about where
can people find you? Where can people find you online? This point,
I don't know. I mean, Zach Astorfman a Twitter, I'm not calling
it X and Blue Sky standing at Blue Sky and uh yeah, I mean
unfortunately, I can't even talk about where some of these stories are going to
be appearing yet. But but I would say Twitter first and foremost and and
yeah, and we'll all come back on and we'll talk about some of these
investigative pieces. Awesome. And so next week, next Friday, we're going
to have our first interview. It's the first of two parts. So on
December first, we're gonna have Mike Vickers on the show to talk about his
career, cot me on before Mike Vickers. Yeah, hey, man,
scheduling, you know, we let them mix it up. So Mike Mike
Vickers is Next week we're going to talk about his time in the military and
his uh stint in c i A, his career there working on the COVID
action program in Afghanistan, and then we'll have him back for a second episode
on December eighth, and we'll talk about his time at ust I and ASD
Solick and some of those more like high level appointments that he had. So
we're looking forward to doing that. That's going to be incredible. I mean
that, I mean, Vickers is a is a living legend. I mean
and wow, that sounds amazing. You're doing a two party with him.
I'm going to yeah, yeah, two Fridays, two fridays in a row.
He's he's been quite generous with his time, you know, we really
appreciate that. And uh, he has a he has a book out.
I think it's called By All Means Available I read a couple of months ago,
worth worth checking out for anyone who has it yet. So yeah,
I guess, Zach, barring any final thoughts, man, I guess that
wraps it up. Anything else you want people to know about, or any
final thoughts about this wild story that you told or the Coen Brothers working on
the screen adaptation. No, well, I wish that would be great.
No, I'm gonna plug you and I'm gonna plug you and Shawn's work on
the high Side. Man. Oh yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's
stuff. You're that stuff's incredible. That the story that you did, you
beat all the major publications on the the US Special Operations Forces getting ready to
potentially deploy to NASA and the kind of back and forth on that. I
mean, that was that was a great story and you beat all the big,
the big papers on that one. So yeah, thank you. And
the next story we're working on, I don't I don't, I don't want
to. I don't want to get Sean angry with me, but I'll just
say it's it's a biographical piece about someone who's essentially a c I, a
legend, a legend of the CIA and this Special Forces community, and we're
working on a pretty extensive piece about him. So we're excited to get that
out, hopefully, you know, in the next month or so. I've
heard a little bit about that from Sean, and without going into any detail,
obviously, I can vouch that that is going to be an amazing story.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a slice of of of an amazing
person, but also through his own experiences, it's a slice of history as
well. It's it's pretty incredible. So yeah, hopefully I'll be able to
we'll be able to have that discussion on another episode. So until next Friday,
We'll see all you guys then, Zach again, thank you for you
know, taking some of your Friday evening with us, and we will see
you then. Bye now, thanks again,