Former CIA Officers Discuss the Reel vs. Real of Espionage with Cast, Creator of The Americans

All right, good afternoon everyone, welcome. I’m Kal Raustiala, I direct the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, it’s a pleasure to welcome you today. When the CIA first approached me about exploring the contrasts or similarities between the world of espionage and covert action in real life, and on screen through the lens of “The Americans,” I immediately said yes. Because one, I’m a huge fan of the show as I think many of us are, and two, I think the show does an amazing job of depicting Cold War America, the role of Russia, of course, which has become kind of prescient over time, and it was a great opportunity to kind of think these through with an interesting panel which I will introduce in a moment.

Before we jump in, I just want to flag something for the UCLA community. Tomorrow, in this room, on the subject of Russia, at five-thirty we will have our annual Bernhard Brody lecture on the conditions of peace with Congressman Adam Schiff. So, Adam Schiff will be here again, five-thirty tomorrow. I hope you all will come.

At the Burkle Center, we have worked with the entertainment industry over the years, you know, a host of different ways, but all in the guise of leveraging the power of entertainment as a gateway for people to learn about politics and policy. And this is an example. So many of us learn about espionage, spy craft and so forth from television and film.  And today’s panel, which is jointly presented with the CIA, gives us an opportunity to talk with both real former CIA agents – people who have lived the version of things we see on screen – juxtaposed with those who write and depict it on screen. And the aim of this is to demystify the CIA’s mission and the world of great power espionage generally, by comparing those two and seeing what’s similar and what’s different.

So, if you’re a fan of the show, you know that they excel in “The Americans,” with like wigs and makeup, they’re amazing at that, but they’re also pretty good on the spy craft. And so, we’re going to talk about that today when we get the panel on.

So, I’m going to introduce the panelists in a moment. Let me just lay out a couple of ground rules. So, first of all feel free to take photographs. We encourage you to post them, we encourage you to share them. Use the hashtag that’s up there if you like: #ReelvsRealCIA. As many of you know, we at the Burkle Center often have a wide variety of voices on campus, that’s one of things we do. I believe strongly that a great university like ours should entertain a wide variety of voices in a respectful manner and engage intellectually with them, so I hope we all do that. We do have UCPD here in the event that that doesn’t happen, but I’m confident that everything will go well.

[Laughter]

So, with that in mind, for the Q&A there will first be a discussion amongst the panelists, then it’ll be a Q&A. You all should have a packet and in your classified packet you will have a Q&A card. You can write questions down and pass them to the end of the aisle. They will be collected. Please keep your questions short and to the point. My advice is also write clearly so that they can read them. And then they will be passed up to Joe who will be actually kind of moderating everything.

So, with that in mind, let me introduce our panel. So, first, moderating today’s event someone who has kind of a rare insight into both of the worlds we’re going to talk about. Joe Weisberg is the showrunner for “The Americans.” He is a former CIA officer who served in the Directorate of Operations Soviet and Eastern European division. Joe, when he left the CIA, did not originally plan to write about espionage, but he did eventually. He wrote a novel – some of you may have read that, a TV pilot – and eventually, “The Americans.” So please, welcome to the stage Joe Weisberg.

[Applause]

I’m gonna recommend his novel as well as his show. Novel’s excellent.

A familiar face to audiences worldwide, Keri Russell has started many films and television shows. She currently stars in “The Americans” as Elizabeth Jennings, I think we all know that. For her performance, she received multiple Critics Choice Awards nominations for Best Actress in a Drama Series, multiple Emmy nominations for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an actress in a television series drama. As one of the KGB’s top illegals – or undercover agents living in America and posing as American Citizens – Kerri’s character fights vigorously for her home country, sometimes at significant cost to her family and of course to others: she’s a stone-cold killer.

[Laughter]

Please welcome to the stage, Keri Russell.

[Applause]

Martha Peterson, known as Marty, retired from the CIA in 2003 as a Senior Intelligence Officer with an extensive range of experiences over her thirty-two-year career. She deployed worldwide as an Operations Officer, serving her first overseas tour in Moscow in the 1970’s. Among our operational positions, she was assigned to the Soviet division of the Counterintelligence Center, focusing on analysis and counter espionage, and finally the Counterterrorism Center, where she spent her last five years of her career managing the extensive operations surrounding the 9/11 attack on the United States. For her contribution to the CIA, she was awarded the distinguished career intelligence medal, the CIA’s William J Donnelly Award, and the George HW Bush Award in Counterterrorism. Marty is also the author of the book, “The Widowed Spy,” in which she recounts the first seven years of her career with the CIA. Please welcome, Marty Peterson.

[Applause]

Matthew Rhys has earned rave reviews for his portrayal of Philip Jennings in “The Americans,” which he’s also directed. Rhys has garnered nominations in this role for a Golden Globe Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama. He’s also starred five seasons as Kevin Walker on the ABC series “Brothers and Sisters,” and recently played Daniel Ellsberg in Steven Spielberg’s film “The Post.” On “The Americans,” his character struggles with the role he must play in the fight for his home country and that of the new life he’s made in America with his wife and two kids. Please welcome to the stage, Matthew Rhys.

[Applause]

Mark Hilton is director of MEK & Associates and a retired senior CIA executive with thirty-four years of experience, including more than sixteen overseas. Mark concluded his career as chief of CIA’s Counterintelligence Center. He was awarded the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, the CIA Director’s Award, and the 2015 Presidential Rank Award. Mark is also a regular contributor to the cyber brief. Please welcome to UCLA, Mark Kelton.

[Applause]

And finally, Costa Ronan stars as Oleg Burov on “The Americans.” He grew up in Russia, where he landed his first role at the age of five. He later moved to New Zealand and Australia. He has appeared in the CBS sci-fi thriller, “Extant,” and had a guest role on ABC’s Marvel’s “Agent Carter”. In 2015, he filmed an episode of “Scorpion” for CBS, “The Player” for NBC and “Agent X” for TNT. At the beginning of this final season of “The Americans,” Oleg’s character has left the KGB only to be brought back into the world to possibly fight against it, leaving behind a wife and child he may never see again. We’ll probably find that out tonight. Please welcome to the stage, Costa Ronan.

[Applause]

Joe, it’s all yours.

Thank you very much. Before I start, I want to give you one more reminder to submit your questions for the panelists on the Q&A cards in your packets and I’ll give you another reminder later to pass those down. Let me say first of all, that since I left the CIA about twenty-five years ago, I’ve basically been waiting this whole time for them to call me and ask me to come back for one more mission.

[Laughter]

Admittedly I thought it’d be something a little more dangerous than moderating a panel.

Just you wait.

Okay, we’re gonna talk about three things today. Tradecraft- which is for me probably the best word in espionage, it’s a great word, tradecraft – running assets or agents, and the emotional toll of being a spy. And we’ll look at each of these things from the perspective of how we looked at it on the show, how we depicted it, and how it’s done in the real world. So, to start out, this word, tradecraft – as I said, fantastic word. Mark, can you tell us, can you define it for us? What is ‘tradecraft’?

Yeah, tradecraft is, you know, as a term of art in CIA and in espionage. It’s used by CIA, of course, but other intelligence services, and what it talks about is the means by which we actually conduct our operations or activity in the intelligence world. CIA, of course, does quite extensive training for that if you’re in the operations world. It is very lengthy and very stressful. We try to prepare people for the most stressful environments imaginable and give them the tools because in espionage, as in many things, he who adapts fastest wins and you have to be able to resort immediately to what you know in order to conduct yourself properly when you’re under stress.

Okay so the tools that spies use –  I promise you guys, this will be the only audience participation part of the whole show – but if you watch, “The Americans,” of all the tools that the spies use, what is probably the one that got the most attention on, “The Americans,” that people talked about, laughed about, enjoyed?

Wigs.

Wigs. Thank you very much.

I was going to say great actors.

[Laughter]

So, Kerry like for six years I haven’t asked you this question, but I’ve wanted to know, I’ve gotten kind of mixed messages. You loved or hated the wigs?

I loved them.

You loved them?

Yeah. He’s the one who hates them.

Alright. So, you go first – what was, what did you love about them?

That it’s fun. No, you know the cool thing about getting to do that it’s so much easier to become a different person when you look so wildly different than, you know, putting on a short, boy haircut versus a long blonde wig, people react differently to you, as I found out.

[Laughter]

Why is anyone complaining? What could be bad about it at all?

I think you would complain that it’s hot, right? It gets hot and itchy and, but I don’t know, I succumbed to them.

I don’t know, I find it hard to kick off this panel by complaining about wearing a wig.  It’s really hard wearing a wig, really hard. It’s really stressful actually, what do you think, Mark? Chip in!

[Laughter]

Is this truth though? Like what, does it take a long time to put on? Was it hot the whole day, did it take like four hours to put on, were you sweating the whole time?

Yes, you sweat a lot. They glue the lace, it’s always sticky. Someone’s forever poking your head like, “Is it coming loose? It is coming loose?”

[Laughter]

So yeah, I’m not the most user friendly when it comes to wigs.

Costa, those of you who  did not get to wear wigs, were you always like, “We don’t get to wear the costumes or the disguises” or were you secretly relieved that you didn’t have to sit there in the makeup chair for hours when they got put on and sweat?

Well it’s not entirely – so I did get to wear the moustache. That was that was a lot of fun. And I was, yeah, I was dying to, to get into the wig game but then once we tried the moustache, I thank God that I didn’t get to do it more often. Because it’s kind of like, we tried a few different sorts of versions of the moustache, and most of them were kind of getting into my nose all the time. But it was fun like you were saying, because it’s kind of like, I don’t get to wear it often. And when I was wearing it and I was walking, I remember – we were shooting in a hotel room, a hotel sort of floor, and I was walking down the hallway and, you know, saying hello to all the crew, and people wouldn’t say hello back.

Mm-hm.

And that was incredible. It kind of taps into what you’re saying, like people were kind of just like, I don’t know, “How did he get in here?” So, it was a lot of fun. On one side it was terrific to be able to experience it, on the other side it was even more terrific not to have to do more.

[Laughter]

Hey Marty?

Yes?

We can handle the truth. You’ve seen the show?

Yes.

Our disguises – accurate or ridiculous

They were the best-looking disguises I think I’ve ever seen.

[Laughter]

I could tell it changed you, Keri. It changed your approach to what you were doing and what you were capable of doing as that person-

Right.

Compared to you, right?

Yeah.

That was a little evasive.

[Laughter]

So, it was a ridiculous? That sounded like you were saying ridiculous.

Best-looking. But no, they were excellent, and they really did enhance the show, I think. Yeah.

Mark, when would you actually use the disguise in the field? Why, when…?

Okay, I was gonna comment on the wigs and things. I’ve been watching the show, they were always very well put on – they were too well put on, in that sense. Because when you’re actually working and you’re an officer, you’re putting them on yourself many times, and you’re always worried about the damn thing falling off or your moustache peeling off the wrong time. And yeah so that…but they looked, you looked good in a wig.

Thank you, thank you. My new publicist.

[Laughter]

Can I ask you a quick question?  How close to whomever you were talking to would you go…when you wore wigs and mustaches would it be at a distance? Because if you were talking with someone, and you can spot it, you know, so how close would you let it get?

You don’t want to let it get too close unless, you know, because frankly you appear like you’re in disguise, right?

Right.

It works for people seeing you from a distance, but if you have somebody sitting across the table from you, that’s not sustainable I don’t think.

Six years I said that! For six years I said that, and no one listened to me!

[Laughter]

All right tell us, Mark, tell us about identity transfer. That’s something we could never do on the show because it was too complicated.

Yeah, so you know in the 80s, when I joined CIA in the 80s – and I tell my students, you know, there really was a Cold War, and I lived it – identity transfer or identity change or operating in another identity was less of a problem than it is today. Because back then was the analog era, people would have to look things up by actually going to a library, finding reference material, finding other people to report on you- an agent or something. And so, the facilities that were used by security services and police departments were not nearly as sophisticated as they are today. So, you know, working in a false identity at that time was a little bit easier. Now in the era of biometrics, Facebook, all the rest of that, it’s really hard to sustain an identity. Really hard. The problem is not so much at the point of attack when you’re meeting somebody, it is all the backstory. So today, you know, whatever in talking to students and I tell them, you know, “Don’t put anything on Facebook you don’t want found, because somebody will find it eventually.” But you have to think about five years from now, right? So, you know your reputation is up there, but in an operational sense, you don’t want to give away things about your identity that are going to be a problem five years down the line. So, it’s hard, it’s a big challenge.

Alright, let’s discuss another piece of tradecraft that we did quite a bit of on the show, which is, let’s talk about surveillance, surveillance detection. Two different things, right? Surveillance you’re following somebody, surveillance detection – which you all did all the time in real life and show – you’re trying to figure out if you’re being followed. You can do it in a car, you can do it walking around. I always got paranoid that people found this boring, partly because sometimes people told me they found it really boring, but I could say, “No, nobody’s really done it right on TV, we have to keep tuning scene after scene after scene a bit.” Costa, you did a lot of these scenes, walking down the street, no dialogue, you can’t have any facial expression because you can’t look suspicious. Was shooting these scenes for hours and hours – boring, or was there anything interesting about it?

This is all news to me, I loved it.

Really?

100%, yeah, it’s cause, it’s just like in real life. What happens is you just so withdraw into yourself, into that world, and that is because you can’t have a dialogue with anybody, you cannot express your thoughts, you’re kind of left alone with yourself, and that’s the perfect way to exist in that moment. Just like in real life when we kind of need to be in the moment and collect our thoughts, when we’re kind of like, “I need a moment,” and you walk away and you’re there by yourself, right? So, if you put the camera there, that’s exactly what happens. And those are my…they were terrific, I loved them, absolutely.

Well, if I were smart, I would just stop there, but, what about you? Did you enjoy doing those scenes?

Um, did I enjoy doing them at like three in the morning? No.

[Laughter]

How about noon?

Noon I liked them better. But a lot of spying happens at night, guys. We kept trying to get away from that, but it’s just not as cool.

Marty, how often were you actually followed, or did you detect surveillance?

You know, I was in Moscow from ’75 to ’77, and I can pretty much say unequivocally I was never followed until the day I left Moscow. The KGB in Moscow did not consider women to be a threat. And so, I would go out from my apartment and I would drive away, obviously headed back to the embassy, to a party or something like that, and I would look, and I would listen. We had some very great technical gear that we used to detect surveillance and I never had surveillance. And I’m sure after I was arrested and I had to come home, they went and looked at the big book about, yeah, what has she been doing for the last two years? It was blank.

Huh.

Wow.

And you know, when you’re talking when you were in the Soviet Union, you ran a source there who’s code name was Trigon?

Yes.

And a pretty, you know, crazy but probably not totally unusual thing happened. Which is you were afraid that he may have been compromised because of tradecraft errors that you made?

Absolutely.

But there was no way for you to actually know. Can you explain why that’s a problem with tradecraft? That it’s possible to have that anxiety without ever being able to find out if it’s true or not?

Yes. We make a plan and we follow through on it. And from all appearances, everything we see around us, is as it should be. So you put the drop down or you pick the drop up and you return home, and you have no indicators whether it’s gone well or not, unless the agent makes a signal to you. And so, at the end, when I went to make the drop and the KGB were there waiting for me, I then left and went home without ever knowing why it went wrong. And I spent seven years thinking that maybe it was a gap, maybe it was something that I had done en route to one of the drops, or in fact I had been followed and I didn’t pick up on it. And it wasn’t till after seven years we realized it was an agent who had compromised Trigon. Another agent.

When you were making those drops or picking up drops, can you explain the kind of state you are in?  I mean, were you trying to suppress panic and abject fear or were you very controlled about it all?

You know, I admit it- I’m an adrenaline junkie. And you know, adrenaline is the most wonderful drug in the world because it enhances every bit of your perception. Your hearing, your smell, your sight, movement, everything. You really do see it all. So, my process getting to the site was always full of that perception and understanding. I also knew the city of Moscow better than any city I’ve ever lived in before, or after, because I had to know my operational environment. I had to know what was normal and what wasn’t normal for that area, right?

Right, right.

So, I was never afraid, I was always high on adrenaline.

Wow.

And I was always, you know, looking for what wasn’t right. The abnormal. That would have been my key.

Right.

Mark, what about you? Did you feel the same way? You did this all over the world.

Yeah, sort of working in that kind of environment. I’ve worked in a lot of heavy surveillance environments where I was under a lot of surveillance.

Yeah, so you know for me it was alternately thrilling and terrifying. Thrilling in the sense that you’re beating the opposition in their own backyard when they’re holding all the cards, right, and there is no feeling like that. To actually defeat a very professional opposition. Terrifying, though, in the moments up to the operational activity, and then as Marty says, afterwards. The problem with operations is frequently you don’t know how they end up. It takes a long time for the story to play out. And one thing about if you’re in human operations and you’re dealing with human beings at the other end, you feel a compelling obligation to that person. That person has put everything they are in your hands. I mean, to have someone look at you in your eyes and say, “I’m trusting you with my life. Keep me alive.” And that, that is something that is palpable when you’re out working.

So, when Costa was saying you get into yourself, you do. Actually, when you’re out walking, you’re out working to try to detect surveillance, you do get into yourself, this professional discipline takes over. But just underneath that is fear. And fear, fear can drive you in a positive way, too. You want to make sure you’re doing things right; you’re doing everything that you’ve been trained to do and do it as well as you can.

You just hope that when the time comes, it kind just kicks in on autopilot.

Yeah that’s what you were saying earlier, that all the training comes in handy. Because at some point you can’t just think about what options you have, which is the right one.

But that’s the thing about the show, you know? You all, you’re doing a lot of operations. We would never be able to sustain that pace of operations. It takes hundreds of hours of preparation to do these activities, right? If you’re going to meet an agent that’s going to provide you with crucial information, there’ll be a lot of people involved, a lot of planning and a lot of preparation. And a lot of what-ifs. You know, if this happens, what happens? And a lot of stump the dummy questions. So, he does this, what do you do? Does that, what do you do? Very thorough planning, very thorough.

That’s what I said for six years!

[Laughter]

Well, Mark, let’s talk about those human operations you’re talking about. Can you explain – I’m gonna keep turning to you for definitions – can you explain what an asset is?

You asking me?

Yeah.

Yeah, so, CIA officers, you know we call ourselves officers, case officers if you’re in operations. What is a case officer? An actual operation is a case. A case involves an agent, the file of that agent or case officer, you handle agents. Agents are the foreigners at the other end, the people that CIA has recruited or have come to CIA to work, to ask to work for the United States, that deliver us intelligence. The goal of CIA, of course, the ultimate purpose for CIA existing, is to deliver secret intelligence to the president and leadership, to allow decision-making. And the agents out there are the people that are the instruments through which we do it, and the goal is to keep them alive and to protect them.

So, on the show, we did the same thing, just for the KGB. And the people had all kinds of motivations, the same what they would have working for the CIA. So, you know, Keri – for example, did you find the stories were better if the person was working for you or giving you information because it was for love, for sex, for ideological reasons, for money? Like I was thinking about Young-Hee, she didn’t know what she was doing at all. She really just wanted to be friends. But Don, her husband, was also trapped by you really just for sex. Like did you find stories were richer based on what the motivation of the character was?

That’s interesting. I mean, they were all interesting in their own way, I think. Their levels of need varied, obviously. I mean, I enjoyed them all in their varying degrees that I enjoyed the really involved ones, but I enjoyed the really simple ones, too. And I think, and maybe Matthew could speak a little bit more to this, but it more affected, I think the guilt you sort of have at a certain point in affecting these people’s lives. Especially you know, like with the Martha character. I think that it comes into play a little bit more, but there was not one thing I enjoyed more than the other, it’s all kind of great.

You got to play all different sides.

Yeah.

I mean Martha was literally in love with you and that certainly, that kept going for years.

[Laughter]

Yes, and that, from a human aspect, that’s what was interesting to me. And I’m sure you could speak to a greater effect about when you were using I mean, we’re talking about when you use assets that are, you know, they want to be active or you know, helping, whereas Philip was using someone unbeknown to them. Does that go on?

Right, sure. I mean people will volunteer to come to work, those are easier to deal with, of course. Otherwise you try to manipulate people and that’s part of the job.

Yeah and I think dramaturgically, that was interesting to see someone deal with the guilt of using someone unbeknown to them. I think for drama, it was an incredible vehicle.

The one thing about the show is the sex bit is used a lot, that’s very rare in my experience.

[Laughter]

That’s showbiz.

The reason is, you know, blackmailing people generally is not a good way to have a good personal relationship with someone. Its half joking on there, but if you want somebody to go in and do something very dangerous for you and work with you, and you’re compelling them to do it, that’s not sustainable over time. People resent it very deeply.

Although the U.S. did do it, right? I mean it was done sometimes.

Yes sure, it was done a lot by the KGB, yeah, but I’m talking about the CIA’s posture, it’s a little different. KGB has had a different a different viewpoint on it, and they would use it quite a lot.

Marty, what were some of the reason’s assets fight for you?

Well, Trigon spied – he in fact volunteered for the CIA.  He didn’t like his system, he didn’t like having to follow rules, he really preferred the Western way of life and this was early 1970s when life in Moscow was pretty barren and lacked a lot of the opportunities that he had. He also, I think, appreciated the fact that we appealed to his ego and to what he could provide to us. And that is one of the motivations, you make sure someone trusts you and then you appeal to their desire to be the best, to be better than their boss, who maybe was not approving of their work. And so, I think the positive aspects of attention is often a very clear motivator.

That’s interesting. Jack Barsky, who was an illegal, you know, that’s the exact word he used – is the KGB appealed to his ego in recruiting, and that’s what…

I said why, why did you do all this? And he said, “Cause it was all ego. I thought I was the most special person, the only person who could do this.”

Exactly.

How did you make sure that the person you were running was not working for both sides at the same time? How did you know that when a person volunteers or comes into the party, how do you know that then it’s not like a Trojan horse that’s kind of like, letting you believe that, you know, you’re doing all the right steps in terms of recruiting them and they’re feeding you information that’s gonna mislead you in a way? And it takes maybe years to discover that?

Yeah, you don’t know if someone volunteers to you, you don’t know what their motivation is. So, you begin by testing them. And you direct other information sources you have against them, find out about them. And then you test their activities over time. You look at their information, see if it’s logical, who they claim to be, you know, whether they would have that kind of access to information, how they behave. But frankly you have to do that constantly, there’s no end to it. It never ends throughout the relationship, because after you do a meeting with someone, they could the next meeting…everything could have changed. And it does change.

The ego bit – so we were taught in training – the old school, since I’m part of the old school – was when you’re looking at a target, you look at money, ideology, coercion, and ego. So those are the things that you look at as potential motivators, basic motivators, as to how you’re going to prosecute the target, look at somebody and say, “Okay, do any of these things work?” And ego, I mean money is obviously a factor to lot of people. Ideology in Soviet times was a big one. You had people like Trigon who were essentially ideological defectors. They were disaffected from their own system. But ego is constant in virtually all these things. People that decide to be agents aren’t normal people and they want to see themselves as special – and usually they are special.

Also known as actors.

[Laughter]

Alright, well let’s move on and you know, talk about something very fundamental in the world of espionage, which is really the emotional toll that it takes on people to spy. And let’s start by talking about how you balance the need to lie in a job that obviously requires lying, with fundamentally remaining an honest person. Is that even really possible? You know, in the CIA you lie abroad, you lie in parts of your job, but really you don’t lie inside the CIA, right? That’s the kind of clearly defined boundary. But, you know that there’s also a kind of a gray zone right? You have to lie to friends about what you do, you lie to some people in your family. And I remember when I joined, thinking I was gonna have a lot of trouble with that. And then it was like one day, after like one month in, something just clicked and suddenly I could just do it. Like it became second nature, it wasn’t even like a problem after that. And I was wondering if you guys had any issues with that – the adjustment, having to lie to people when you first joined the agency, was it easy, hard? I’m not talking about your family and your kids – which we’ll get to later – but just friends and suddenly having to lie a lot. Marty, was that hard for you, when you first joined up?

Not really, only because I had lived in the Far East. I had lived kind of a false true life, where I looked like a spouse and worked a job. But when I got back to the States and I had to deal with lying about why my husband died, I had to kind of lie about why we were even in Laos when we were. That was very hard. Because you see, there was an emotion inside of me that was screaming out loud saying, “I just lost someone, I’m twenty-seven, and he died for a purpose and a cause,” and I could not do that. So, I had to kind of downplay that and become, you know, a normal person – even deny that part it was part of my life.

What about you, Mark? What about making that early transition?

I never had any trouble with lying, actually.

[Laughter]

I’m serious about that. When you join CIA, we don’t say it’s a job. For those of my generation, it was a calling and it’s not suitable for everybody. And you go into the organization, you join sort of a secret world, and we don’t lie to each other. But lying for a higher cause is expected and acceptable. And I never had a problem with that. Ethics in espionage, though, is a big issue, right? I mean, because you’re working in a secret world, you have amazing authorities, how you deal with them is something CIA takes very very seriously. How somebody deals with those authorities. What’s not covered in the show is how much even the KGB spent a lot of time documenting their activities. You all would have spent, some of these things that you did, you would’ve spent days typing. I mean, it would have gone on and on. But for a CIA officer, there’s probably no – especially as CIA operations officer – I can’t think of any profession that is actually better documented. You would be amazed at the degree of detail that goes into cables. Self-assessment. If you make a mistake, you’re expected to say, “I made a mistake.” Even if it’s a lethal mistake that caused the compromise of an operation, you’re expected to come back and say, “I made an error.” And we hold people to those standards.

We used to, quite a bit on the show, talk about the fact that it’s possible to relate to these characters for anybody. Because really everybody, all of us in our lives, we think things back, we keep things to ourselves. If we don’t, you know, call it lying all the time, they’re things to relate to. Costa, did playing this part cause you to think of yourself differently, to notice more when you were telling white lies or lying to people or think differently about any of those parts of yourself?

Absolutely. It was interesting hearing you speak right now, because one of the most fascinating things about espionage- and I guess that something kind of like that as actors we discover every single day- is how do you remember who you really are?

Mm-hmm.

You know, with actors we’re kind of like, we know who we are, we’re discovering ourselves as we go through life and we’re learning new things about ourselves. And as we take over the character, we kind of tap into certain parts of ourselves. But with spies and  with that sort of world, secretive world where every single day of days on end you have to kind of pretend you are somebody else, yet remember like in your case, who you really are, and come back home and grieve the loss of your husband and you cannot share it with anybody. And yet the following day, you go out, you put another wig, and you put on another profession, and you go, and you do what you gotta do. Can I ask that question – how do you remember who you really are? That core of who you are, who you were when you joined the agency.

You know, part of it is right-brain, left-brain. That’s how I always pictured it. I kept one side as my secret place and one side was my real place. And when people say, “Well, why didn’t you just blurt out secrets?” You don’t. Because your kind of close the safe at work, you dial the dial, you lock it away, and then you become who you are. And there was a gray area there for me because I really didn’t know who I was when you lose your husband that young. And then you start developing again, you know, your own true persona as much as you can.

Because you know what’s interesting – during the Second World War, a lot of, I guess, Russian female spies got caught- illegals in that respect. This is because when a woman gives birth, she screams in her native tongue. That is how a lot of them got caught. Because they were infiltrated, they had perfect German, everything was nothing, nothing, nothing that would give away. And then they would give birth the way, you know, you would give birth to Paige and Henry, and they were screaming their native tongue. And that’s when you know, they got caught. There’s a number of cases that happened that way, so it was quite interesting to see how it’s done in today’s world, especially being a female in that field.

Yeah, Marty you wrote this wonderful book, to talk about your husband who died, and you talk about the kind of amazing day when you told your kids the truth, the time you really did. Can you tell us that story?

Yes. My children always thought that I worked where their father did, and he worked for the State Department and I never made any comment about it. I got up in the morning, got them off to school, and then I would go to work and then I would come home, and it was daily life for us. Well, the Discovery Channel had developed a new show, and one of the episodes had a picture of me.

Oh my gosh.

[Laughter]

Well, we had just come back from overseas, my children were fifteen and sixteen, and my son was addicted to the Discovery Channel. And I knew one day he’d be sitting there going, “Mom!” So, it was Good Friday, they were off of school, I had to work. So I called them and said – I actually left a note on the counter, “Please meet me at the Roy Rogers restaurant in McLean, Virginia at 12 o’clock today.“ So they drove up-  my son could drive – drove up, got into my car, and said, “What’s up, mom?” And I said, “I have something to tell you.” I said, “I don’t work for the State Department like your dad does. I work for CIA.” And my daughter said, “What’s that?”

[Laughter]

And then, my son said, “Mom’s a spy.” That couldn’t have been scripted. So, I took them into the agency, they stopped at the guard booth, got them visitor badges. See they were so thrilled by this, still unbelievable. And then we went into the agency and walked down to the memorial wall, which was very special to us, and of course my husband – my first husband – has his star there on the wall. And I showed them the star and they held on to my hands and realized the emotion I had, and who I was, and they had not a clue about this. It was the most, really remarkable moment for me with my children. And then I bought them lunch and a t-shirt.

[Laughter]

Marty and I were talking about this on the phone, everybody reacts differently. There’s lot of stories and different kids have very different responses.

So, we just have a couple more questions, before we do them, I want to just remind everybody to pass your cards out to the outside aisles with your questions.

Mark, what about telling your kids?

Yeah, so that that’s a struggle for all CIA parents, right? If they’re in the operational field, they’re in the secret world. At what age do you want to tell your child? And you want them to be mature enough to handle the information. In my case, with my son, we were we were forced into it because we were overseas, and he went to a local school with other American kids. And somebody had told those kids or one of those kids that I did secret work and he was getting questioned at school. So he came back and he’s asking, “The kids at school are saying that dad’s a spy.” So we had to sit down – he was eleven – we sat down with him and my wife explained you know, I do the secret work, we have to keep quiet about it and he works for CIA , but you can’t go around talking about that, and you can’t say anything about that. So, he looks and he kind of hoisted on board and shakes his head. About three months later he comes back, over breakfast, “So what are those three letters I’m supposed to forget?”

[Laughter]

And my wife looked at him and said, “Well if you can’t remember I’m not going to remind you.” But this is the emotional issue, you know, dealing – the people at work at CIA in the secret world, they’re people just like you all. They’ve got families and all, and they have to live their lives at the same time and there is great strain. I think the show depicted a lot of that quite well, you know, the family strains and the difficulty. You have people that are off doing operational things- they can’t explain many times to their spouse and certainly their children why they’re going out every night doing work and why they’re staying so long at the office. And when we started, of course, it was the Cold War. The modern generation since 9/11 have been through incredible stresses since the war on terror, where people are deployed all the time, their families are separated quite a lot. It is a tremendous toll and people are great Patriots that are out doing this. But it does take a toll on families and on them.

You know, Keri, well first of all, I sort of wish we’d done the page scene in Roy Rogers. When Pete did confront you guys that night, and that was that was pretty tough – I’m not saying as tough as the real thing, but it’s pretty tough – has that storyline and everything that happened on the show had any effect on your parenting? I mean in a weird way; it has affected mine.

In what way?

Well I’m infinitely aware of how much I lie to my daughter.

[Laughter]

It turns out I lie to my daughter constantly. I just think if you have kids – I don’t think you can raise a kid, a young kid, especially, without lying to them all the time. Which I didn’t know before this show.

I mean it is amazing also, but I just think they know everything.

Do you?

I do. I mean, I think they’re listening so much more than you really think and I think they are perceiving things. I think they do know. I mean, we had this experience about six months ago. Matthew and I had been discussing something for a long time, this one specific subject. We allow our eleven-year-old to have electronics on the weekend. And he has like headphones, so he gets like special iPad time or something. And we often would have this discussion about this thing that was happening, but he was like in his game or whatever he did. We would be like, “River, River! Take those things off, listen to me!”  You know? So, we were fine, we would have our discussion. And then recently we said something like, “Oh I know but that thing, we don’t know where it is.” And River from across the room went, “I thought it was in Seattle.”

[Laughter]

We stopped dead in our tracks. We’re like, “What? Like how long have you been listening?” So, I do, I think they know everything.

That was always the idea of that storyline, was that the kids know everything. They may not know what exactly literally –

But they’re like feeling it, they smell it. Cause you tell them in other ways, sort of, so maybe that’s why your kids took it so- I don’t know, maybe there was something that they sort of innately knew.

Maybe.

One thing about the show – you know you all are playing KGB illegals in America; you know and conversations in your house, that probably wouldn’t happen in real life.

[Laughter]

Turning on the water, turning on the TV, turning on the radio. Trying to drown it out. No really, it’s an issue with families because you don’t want to, you know, when you go overseas to a really hostile environment, where the adversary has access to your apartment, every – as in my case – every room in my apartment was wired, there was video in my bedroom, all the rest of that. Nothing was private and if you had a conversation it went immediately to the to the adversaries. So, you’d be very, very careful. See that’s an added stress, that really is and it’s something that is very hard to live with.

Can I ask you something? Because I was reading there was a journalist recently, a British journalist who was talking about that, who had been writing there. He was saying you know he lived there with this young child and wife. But so, you’re having sex and they’re listening? Like isn’t that weird?

Yeah.

But like you gotta do it, so you do?

It’s either that or no sex.

[Laughter]

So, I mean, you just sort of enjoy the moment. If they say something, you tell them to send postcards, you know, I don’t know. Really, I mean you got to live your life. But it is it is strange.

And I guess you can’t let anybody know that you know that the place is wired.

No, you can’t. That’s the whole thing. So, what you’ll work out usually is some sort of motions. We’ll go outside in the garden or something and have a conversation or got to go to the embassy and have a conversation, so that kind of thing. You can’t leave like written material or anything around your apartment or your house because that all gets fixed up too. And then you know if you get harassment and people really don’t like you, they can they can make life very difficult.

Alright, well let’s go on and take some questions from the audience. First one is from Christina to Marty. Marty, you mentioned that agent you worked with, Trigon, was compromised. What happened him?

What happened to him?

It’s a tough question, yes.

Well, when he was compromised, the KGB first went into his apartment and put cameras in his bookshelf so they could observe him when he came into the apartment. And finally, they couldn’t act like him, because they didn’t have all the pieces. So when he came into his apartment and he was looking at some of his spy gear, the KGB came through the door and arrested him and said, “Tell us what you’ve been doing.” And he said, “Give me a pad of paper and a pen and I will write a full confession.” And what they didn’t know, of course, was the pen that he had there on the desk had an L pill in it, a lethal pill, poison of sorts. And Trigon had requested this L pill as a way of avoiding a bad end not of his choosing. So, he started to write with the pen and then at a certain moment he put it into his mouth, he bit down and he committed suicide right before him. I mean, I can tell that story very calmly, but I have to tell you when I heard it a couple of years later it went to my heart because I had provided that pen with the poison. And it isn’t a normal activity, it’s certainly not something I was trained in, but I also knew that he wasn’t going to be taken to the basement of Lubyanka and shot in the back of the head, which was what happened to most of our agents who were compromised. So that’s what happened to him.

Keri, your characters choices put her children’s safety at risk. Was Elizabeth right to prioritize her ideals in her career choice or should she have attempted to defect after her children were born?

Well…

[Laughter}

I mean, I’m coming at it from fan of a story you know? But I think she absolutely did the right thing. I mean, one could also argue that she was a really good soldier – by being the best possible soldier, she’s keeping herself and her family safe. By defecting, I mean that’s a different danger, I don’t know. But I think she did what was right for her. And I love the choices she made.

She’s got a whole country to defend.

Yeah, thank you.

I also felt that you played that role so consistently. Your commitment to the motherland was so wrong and it never wavered – except once, when you were in the closet looking at your shoes. I loved it.

[Laughter]

Mark what was it like to leave the CIA and return to normal life? This question presupposes that you’ve returned to normal life.

You see, I’m not sure I knew what a normal life was as an adult. I mean, I went to college, went to University of New Hampshire, then I went to graduate school to Fletcher School. I joined CIA as an analyst, but I never worked as an analyst. I was going to be a Soviet analyst and I was in training and they said, “Would you like to do operations?” I had never been outside the United States much less even considered doing operations. I had no idea what operations were. So, having a normal life presupposes that I’d actually established myself and understood what life was outside of the secret world and I really didn’t. I grew up really and came to full maturity in the secret world and I had to do it quickly. So now I’m leading a semi-normal life, although as a CIA retiree you never really retire, you don’t. I mean, you know, thirty-four years is a long time, it is a very close family and people that have lived and worked together for years and under very stressful was a situation that can’t be duplicated outside and will always be with me.

Marty and other people, you know, we’re always just a very closed fraternity. And I think events like this are good because we can talk a little bit about that to people. The thing that I always tried with my young officers and invariably people don’t realize this, but the people would actually do the work at CIA the bulk of the work are very young.  I talk to them about the responsibilities of serving their country right, and that is the principal motivator for these people. If you ask them, they would invariably come up with that, they want the willingness to serve. So yeah, having a normal life? I’ll never have a normal life; however, you define that, I’ll never have it. And I’m happy with that.

I’m gonna toss this out to Matthew and Costa. Can you guys talk a little bit about the preparation you did for the roles and what you struggled with the most?

You go first.

[Laughter]

No, you go first!

Lots of reading.

What did you read? Do you remember?

So, here’s the thing. Because obviously I wasn’t coming in like you guys doing to do the show, I was coming in to do an episode. What was important to me is to figure out how he thinks and what he thinks about. To understand how the person thinks, you need to know what the person knows. So, you would read the same books as he would read, listen to that music. At that stage, I didn’t have an opportunity to go and talk to anybody, because I thought two weeks and I’m out. Over the years though, as you know, the role progressed, the show kind of kept on going. Obviously, we had an opportunity to go in and talk to the people on both sides here and there, and people who worked for the FBI and CIA here, people who worked for the KGB, people who worked for both.

But what was important to me was to know what he knows and to not know what he didn’t know, and to keep him in that bubble. So, you know, when you have a conversation, you don’t just say what’s on the page, you don’t just say what’s written out. It’s always a response to what you hear. And response is motivated always by what you’re thinking. For me, it was really just like an onion. You have to peel those layers to get to the core, to figure out what the core is, and then build those masks on top of it. So that’s kind of how I approached it. And it’s understanding psychologically why the person does something, that’s what was very, very important.

Did you ever feel like you had a different perspective from everyone else because you’re Russian? And not only Russian, but even from other Russians in a way, you have a different Russian background from the other Russians. Do you ever feel like, ‘My perspective on this is different from everyone else?’

I don’t think that my background is different from any other Russians. I mean, I’m the child of my own generation, a child of my own country, and anybody who’s born in 1979 sort of, you know, in that part of the world, pretty much had to face the same joys and difficulties. We all lived through the ‘90s in Russia, you know, we all remember that. It was kind of that sort of broken generation that was kind of like, we know where it, was we know what it is, and we’re kind of stuck in the middle. The Millennials, the generation who was born sort of in the ‘90s, they have no idea what it was like. They’re all happy listening to sort of western music, whereas our generation remembers ’89, remembers ’91, remembers everything that the country was going through. And I personally was no different. My parents got divorced when I was young, so I had to kind of go out and start working when I was young. So, I remember all that.

To answer your question – yes, absolutely. It’s a huge part of my DNA. And to read the scenes, to approach the character: the reason anybody who can play a Russian like a Russian, or to play a French like a French, or to play a Spanish like a Spanish. I mean, people can try, people can fake, people can get the accent to the T, but at the end of the day, they cannot think the thoughts of the character, therefore they cannot be that character. If you cannot be that character, then get out, give this job to somebody else. That’s kind of how I look at it. We kind of stepped into that common DNA of your people that, you know, when we shot in Moscow for example, we have background actors who are from Russia. You sort of, you take this story where the story took place, and something happens to you. It’s like you just stand there, you don’t need to say anything, you don’t need to do anything, you just stand there and breathe the air that the character used to breathe. That’s what makes this show what it is, this authenticity and this sort of strive to deliver realness versus let’s pretend to be and lets you know…I’ll just leave it at that.

No, I actually found the Moscow scenes very realistic, like the degree of interaction with your family and things like that. What I saw for myself was very well done, very well done.

Well you know, it’s these guys, they managed to find a way to go out there and shoot it. I know it’s been a long dream of yours for a number of years, a number of seasons, and then finally you guys were able to kind of make it happen. And we ran there, and we did it and we were one of the few crews that actually got to shoot there, and by the Kremlin, and by Lubyanka, and standing there on the bridge and overlooking Kremlin – it’s phenomenal. You cannot substitute that for anything. I mean, you can spend huge amounts of money building stages and this and that and the other and you know, fix it in post – you can’t. You can’t. You take actors there for one scene – game over.

Matthew, what about you?

[Laughter]

I struggled, as you may well know, with counter-surveillance. Because arrogantly, for thirty years as an actor, for film or television, an enormous part of your job is to be completely aware of something – the camera – and then to utterly ignore it. So I thought, “Counter-surveillance? That’s exactly what I’ve been doing for thirty years!” But it’s incredibly difficult. Because I remember that time you took us out into the street and you were like, “Nope, sorry, nope, sorry.” One of the biggest struggles for me with the show was landing “The Americans” in a place that was authentic but entertaining. And what happened, so often these directors were briefed so vigorously by you going, “They must get the counter-surveillance right!” Then we’re doing these scenes and the directors like, “I saw you looking, right, okay do it again, do it again.” Then they’re like, “I didn’t see anything,” but I’m like, “Well I did it! You just didn’t see me do it.” Pick one! You can either see me doing the crypto surveillance or it looks like I’m not doing anything but I am. “Well that’s a bit dull.”

[Laughter]

“I don’t know what to tell you!” So yeah, counter-surveillance is always like I’m dead dropped like, “I saw you do it – alright, do it again… I didn’t see anything.”

[Laughter]

And then he became a director like, “I’ll show you how it’s done – step aside.”

Marty, Mark, there’s a lot of violence in the show. Did you ever find yourselves at a dangerous life or death situation, violent situation, what about on the actual streets? We know there’s a lot more in the show than in real life, but did you run into anything?

No, the only violence I encountered was the KGB when I was arrested and that was more violent than I actually remembered. I was watching another show and there was an interview of a KGB officer who had been at the site when I was arrested – and he said that I fought like a tiger. And I go, “I don’t remember it that way.” I remembered kicking a man, he showed me the bruise on his shin. But this man elaborated, and he said, “No, no, she really was fighting for her life and she kicked a man who was then hospitalized and claimed he couldn’t have sex for several months.”

There’s a picture of that in their Museum by the way.

[Laughter]

I would have never guessed that I had…but see I was on the giving end, you know?

Did you receive training?

Not really. I mean, I had taken karate, but it was only for my own entertainment, not for self-protection. I guess it kicked in.

[Laughter]

Mark, what about you?

There’s a lot of shooting on the show. I’ve never fired a weapon at anybody before, thank God. I’ve been shot at, and that was in war zones. So, you know, generally experiences of more psychological tension and strain than physical confrontation. Physical confrontations are very rare, again, in my experience, except war zones.

I think, with Keri I always knew when you were gonna do it.

You’re like stop talking.

Yeah how many notches on your pistol? How many notches on your kill belt?

Okay, I remember you saying that these sides of Elizabeth, you sort of like getting to do that stuff. Because really, you’re pretty nice person, it’s fun to sort of get to do it fictionally.

So fun. My six-year-old can boss me around in life, you know what I mean, then on the show like I attack grown men.

Yeah nobody’s bossing you around on the show.

No one’s bossing me around, yeah. It’s pretty fun.

How accurate or real the Martha storyline is? You guys have heard me answer this one so many times, does anybody want to take this one?

Alright, I’ll do it. Basically, I was just talking to Joel Fields, my writing partner about this one, that we were like, “We think this is the best storyline of “The Americans” because you can’t make up stuff as good as true stuff.”  You just can’t, no matter what you try to do. The KGB, at least a couple times, actually had their officers marry women who had access to secret intelligence, usually secretaries – this only happened in Europe I don’t think it ever happen the United States – but secretaries of men in political positions. And these so-called Romeo spies, they would marry them and then use them to get intelligence. Who’d ever think of that ? You’d be insane to think of that, but the KGB thought of it.

The East Germans used to use it quite a lot. Marcus Wolf who headed East German intelligence the so-called ‘Man Without a Face,’ they made they made a living on that, particularly against the West Germans when Germany was divided.

Well they were known for their charm and romance.

[Laughter]

By the way, a couple of endings of those stories are known. The ones I remember are, in one case, when a woman was confronted with the truth in a police station in West Germany, she literally – the second she found it out – jumped out the window at police station. And then another known case – there was absolutely nothing that could be done, no evidence that could be presented that would get the woman to believe it. It was just too horrifying and painful, she just denied everything and insisted that was false and this man loved her, and she loved him. Tragic, you know, in a different way.

Marty and Mark, as case officers, how do you keep the relationship between assets and yourself from getting too personal –  to the point where you could make a mistake or compromise yourself? What are the barriers or lines that you put up?

Yeah, I mean this is something that it’s, of course, what one worries about. If you’re the recruiting officer, there’s a particular relationship between yourself and the person you’ve actually recruited to run as an agent. Of course, over the cycle of a case, let’s say you have an agent who’s going to work for a decade, hopefully, or more, there’ll be a number of people who come in and handle. And we, CIA, intentionally turn that relationship over to keep that distance. You want to avoid falling in love with your agent, is what we talk about, and that’s actually for the agent’s own good and for the good of the officer. And that doesn’t mean literally falling in love physically, it means being unable to see the flaws in the person in the case because you need to be able to see those in order to protect the case and protect yourself. It is a danger, though, people get too close to their agent, they become advocates for them and that ultimately is a problem if that occurs.

I think there’s a message in Morse code being flash lit, were you? Or were you just playing with a flashlight? That’s the non-member of the intelligence community on this stage, I noticed it!

[Laughter]

You’re diverse, yeah, very good observer.

That is universal signal for that was the last question. So, listen, I want to thank everyone, all our panelists, you guys are terrific, that was a lot of fun. Thank you for joining us here today.

Thanks for moderating, Joe.

Thank you to the audience, was great having you all here today.

[Applause]

Thank you also to the Burkle Center for hosting us. Thanks to FX Network and thanks to the CIA. And please everyone remember to fill out your event surveys and hand them to the staff on the way out. Thank you all.

[Applause]