The Spying Game: The Real Americans

Listen to: The Spying Game‍

The Americans’ executive producer Joe Weisberg - a former CIA officer turned Hollywood screenwriter and novelist - knows more than most about deception, disguise, and sleeper spies.

When Weisberg and Joel Fields began shaping their TV series about an FBI agent who moves in next door to two KGB sleeper agents, the 2010 US / Russia spy swap was on their minds. The US had discovered 10 Russian ‘illegals’ embedded in American society, living the dream in suburbia and cities across the nation before they were arrested and deported.
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The real-life KGB drama

The ‘two J’s’ - as the producers were known on The Americans’ set - had no idea that another real-life KGB drama was unfolding simultaneously in Pennsylvania involving former KGB sleeper agent Jack Barsky.

In our SPYSCAPE podcast, The Spying Game, Joe Weisberg and Barsky peel back the Iron Curtain to reveal a fascinating exposé of a life lived deep undercover.
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Becoming an American spy‍

Weisberg became an American spy the old-fashioned way - he looked up the CIA in the phone book and got them to send a 100-page application.

"I joined thinking I would have a lot of trouble lying to people about what I did. And it took about a week for me to get used to it."

Weisberg was only at the Agency for a short period and soon got over the idea that it would be a betrayal of his old friends to write about it. He created a TV series after the 2010 spy swap in Vienna that saw 10 Russians in the US - including Anna Chapman - exchanged for four Moscow prisoners including Sergei Skripal.

Weisberg set The Americans in the Cold War when the stakes were high and the Soviet Union and US nuclear powers posed a persistent threat. “It was a very stressful time in the Cold War… I really went into the CIA because I’d grown up thinking of the Soviet Union as an evil empire and I wanted to do my part to fight it,” Weisberg told The Spying Game’s podcast host Rory Bremner. 

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The Spying Game: A Russian sleeper agent in New York‍

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Jack Barsky, born in East Germany in 1949, is a KGB-trained sleeper agent whose real name is Albert Dietrich. He came of age in the same era as Weisberg: “ I grew up thinking of the United States as the most evil country in the world and that’s why I joined.” 

Barsky’s view was similar to that portrayed by the Russian sleeper agents in The Americans. They saw former President Ronald Reagan as a president overseeing an evil empire.

“The indoctrination that we received was by the system - starting in kindergarten, elementary school, middle school - and then there were all kinds of youth organizations, TV, and radio,” said Barsky. “It was an assault. There was no other opinion allowed.”

“By the time I was recruited by the KGB, I was a 100 percent revolutionary and I was going to help to bring down the evil United States, the evil West Germans, and so forth - and free the world.”

Jack landed in the United States with a false passport having traveled through several countries including Austria, Italy, and Mexico - changing passports along the way - and soon realized some of the Cold War brainwashing wasn’t true. The people at his first professional job as an IT worker at Metropolitan Life insurance company in New York were actually paternal. “They treated us nicely. They gave us free lunch.” Jack found his ideology shifting. 

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So far, things were running smoothly for both men, but it wouldn’t last, of course. Before too long, Jack saw the red splash of paint in the subway, a KGB signal that meant 'Danger'. He was supposed to return to Europe for instructions but Jack had other ideas.

Find out more about Joe Weisberg, Jack Barsky, and how their paths would cross in an art-meets-life moment on the set of The Americans. Listen to The Spying Game podcast on Apple and other podcast platforms.

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Read more about Jack Barsky’s incredible story in KGB Undercover. Jack Barsky can be booked to appear at events or consult on film and television projects through SPYEX.com.