In February 1977 a young Polish machine-tool salesman took an apartment in a tennis complex between the beach and the Los Angeles airport, and made a friend on the court: a Hughes Aircraft radar engineer of fifty-seven who was broke. For three years the engineer photographed classified radar documents on his kitchen table with a home-movie camera and the salesman carried the film to Chicago, while the FBI watched both men around the clock and saw nothing it could take to a jury. This is the file: the confession in an afternoon, the tape recorder on a Sunday morning, the trial in the weeks of Solidarity and martial law, the life sentence, and the June day in 1985 when the spy walked across the Glienicke Bridge between Potsdam and West Berlin while the friend stayed in prison. Told from the FBI’s own records, the engineer’s testimony to the United States Senate, the Polish intelligence files read by historians at the Institute of National Remembrance, and the press of both countries.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold Open
1:40 The Court
7:59 The Consultant
12:55 The Ask
13:15 The Film
17:11 Innsbruck
24:28 The Source
30:01 The Tuesday
33:44 The Sunday
40:31 The Courtroom
47:23 The Café
58:00 Memphis
1:02:54 The Bridge
1:12:48 The General
CREDITS
IMAGE CREDITS (via Wikimedia Commons, reused with attribution):
– CC BY 2.0: Darin House from Missouri, USA; Michael Benatar; Piotr Drabik from Poland; Tony Webster
– CC BY 3.0: Gisling; Roland.h.bueb
– CC BY 4.0: Allemarique; Derbrauni; Efi Sharir; Henryk Kotowski (Kotoviski); Kidfly182; Sammlung Risch-Lau, Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek; Willy Pragher
– CC BY-SA 2.0: Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada; Fryta 73; Olivier Bruchez from Lausanne, Switzerland; State Chancellery of Latvia
– CC BY-SA 3.0: Alanscottwalker; Andrzej Iwański; Csouthard; EssensStrassen; Gisling; Jarek Tuszyński; Jochims; King of Hearts; Liberaler Humanist; Martin Janecke; MikeJiroch; Rolf Süssbrich; Sasha Isachenko; Silar; Travis Stoffs; Tubbydammer; Vladimir Fedorenko / Владимир Федоренко; WTStoffs; Yann Forget
– CC BY-SA 3.0 at: Dnalor 01
– CC BY-SA 3.0 de: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1987-0529-047 / Peter Zimmermann; Elke Schöps; FkMohr; Friedrich Gahlbeck; Klaus Franke; Storz
– CC BY-SA 3.0 pl: Adrian Grycuk
– CC BY-SA 4.0: -wuppertaler; Adinfinitum; Burkhard Mücke; Facewizard; Famartin; Hannes Grobe; Isiwal; Jarosław Roland Kruk / Wikipedia; Jengod; JonnyBrazil; Lothar Weber; Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net); Thomas L. McMahon; TLM2TLM
Photographs and film of the United States government (the FBI, the National Archives, the Reagan Presidential Library, the US Navy and Air Force, the Bureau of Prisons, the US Senate) are public domain; press pages and documentary film are used under fair use for commentary.
Footage: Tausche Ostagent gegen Westagent, Teil 1 Endstation Glienicker Bruecke (MDR, shown on phoenix, 2004); used for commentary
Footage: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (NARA): the address on Poland, 23 December 1981, and Bitburg Air Base, 5 May 1985; US Navy films of 7 December 1941 and 1943 (NARA RG 428); United News newsreel, Iwo Jima 1945 (NARA RG 208); US Air Force and Army films via the National Archives and FedFlix; public domain
Photographs: Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Case of the Friendly Neighborhood Spy (2019), evidence photographs; public domain
Documents: CIA CREST reading room clippings of the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and New York Daily News, 1981 to 1982; the Wall Street Journal, 23 January 1984; used for commentary
US Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, hearings on the transfer of United States high technology to the Soviet bloc, May 1982: the testimony of William Holden Bell; public domain
Polish press pages via the Arcanum Digitheca (ADT): Polityka, 17 May 1980; Trybuna Ludu and Radio Free Europe’s monitoring of the PAP communique, June 1985; Dziennik Polski (London), 1985 and 1986; Zycie Warszawy, 1986, 1994 and 1996; Prawo i Zycie, 1993; Perspektywy, 1989; used for commentary
Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate locator records
Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) file signatures quoted on screen, from Wladyslaw Bulhak and Patryk Pleskot’s published study of the Polish intelligence files
Map: NASA Blue Marble, courtesy NASA Earth Observatory (public domain)
3D reconstructions built in Blender by Eastern Files; figures from Quaternius (CC0)
Music: Long Note Two, Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com (CC BY 4.0)
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