self-interest either intentionally or unintentionally these become more the defender of the constitution than his critics. >> to watch the rest of the program visit the website booktv.org. click on the "after words" page to find all previous episodes. ... >> it was my pleasure to get

program started and the executive director for the study of for democracy reliable will be leading today's conversation. >> welcome to everyone from louisiana quite literally the path of the storm quite literally in the eye of the hurricane in a few hours. i hope everything goes smoothly we are excited about today's program. every now and then in my line of work you can interview an author whose work that you respect anything you read every word this might be

difficult but a writer for the times uk of the best-selling author of numerous books the spy will cover the great betrayal of jim that's a great book and operation that i know many of the audience have already read and presented the bbc documentary of his work i guess of espionage history ben mcintyre welcome. >> thank you so much for inviting me i wish i could be there in person one of my favorite cities thank you very much for having me. >> your master of this topic cloak and dagger and agent sonja you showed up in style. let me begin by asking in the standard question. why this book? why this topic?

why now is just the smes the woman not in her professional life to be known as agent sonya. >> it was accidental my discovery of her story. i was researching a completely different story of the oss operation at the tail end of the war when they began to parachute nazi germans for the sabotage information on --dash operations and they began to recruit anti- nazi germans and there was a woman not identified any papers for

providing the names and addresses what they didn't know that in fact all of these characters were diehard communist and being recruited by agent sonya so that was my starting point so looking at the shadowy figure and to find this remarkable character. why now? i have never written for a woman's perspective before somebody who is a committed communist many come from the other end. and it was time and the story is extraordinary as many will know this is a male-dominated world of espionage but a woman

intelligence officers are trained in the way she was trained in the red army i cannot find a single other woman who was written so far and so high. it was time to tell her story. in a way was hidden for too long because she was a woman i'm sure we can get into that shoes for gender to hide her shoes up to but also historians tend to shy away from the women subjects and then to have the incredible friction and with her surviving children they were very generous to allow me access to all of her diaries and letters. there i am is felt she rose

with me in some way guiding me through the story so i have a voice with me that was a great comfort i could not have written the book without it. >> tell us more about her she was a good communist by the age of 17 when she was blue and how did she get to this point? tell us about her family life this german intellectual, circled around her from the early 20th century tell us about was a young woman. >> and to understand the person that became and the grip on the chaos and the.

when economic disaster rose looming and fascism was on the rise on the right and extreme leftism with the german communist party in a way she came from a very intellectual academic family that was very well-off everyone from einstein everybody who was anybody on the left but me as a result of her experience as a teenager to see the degradation in the family leftist leaning she joined the communist party at the age of 17 despite the parents objection and never wavered. she didn't leave her there were moments when the whole communist project is coming

apart in her hand so her qualifications of the nation on - - over the notion of communism that's part of her story she is young when it started an old when the berlin wall came down to expand the heart of communism with that extraordinary events of movement and world history in the 20th century for good and for evil in that extent we could discuss but she certainly had doubts so it's a wonderful way to explore that story but it all starts in germany in the 19 twenties as far as she was concerned every

respectable intellectual position at that point the only people standing up with a communist so it was a migration to the left. >> the soviet union is the future although today not today. >> exactly. core she had never been to the soviet union at that point she didn't know what was or could even imagine what code involved into but many people in the world germany was considered to be the crucible of the next revolution many people believed it would take place in germany and that was a widespread belief we get all

the ideology that went with it she saw that is the future and that for the rest of her life. >> she rose bookish from the bookstores on more than one occasion so it sounds like you start with an idea or are you learning but how do you get into the action? i don't want to get the details away but how does it happen she makes the transition? many idealistic people have thoughts that we outgrowhat but she grew into that. tell us about that. >> she started off as a very gentle sur short stories you

n get much more than that was a picture of her sitting in a tree at about 14 with the book. that's how she was but yet she ended up espousing violence an she got a gun. she was raisewith a very young age to go to war on behalf when she saw what the rise and the brutality she was seeing on the far right. so in a way forhe first half of her lif, she is battling fascism particularly during the war with the allies to defeat the nazis but then of

cour history perverts around her and with the cold war she is against the west she sees no change in her belief but from our perspective she's on the other side of the fence and so for me that is fascinating. that so much of life which is accidental. she goes to shanghai although she did spend a brief period in america in new york a worked at a bookshop in upper manhattan history is a loving relationship but those elements tt she deeply admired. she knew a very young architect o was offered a job in shanghai and she went

along she was only 24 at the time and it was an intoxicating place huge melting pot of different races is and massive chinese poverty on the other side and witness this firsthand and was shocked but with a long forgotten hiory of fascinating woman most of the people in the story by the way have the most extraordinary names. [lghter] >> that is what where do you to the topic but at that point a very successful left-wing novelist seeing a highly successful novel by the time she met agnes in shanghai she

was already recruited by soviet military intelligence to explain shows a communist and longed to do something and the times were shanghai was the birthplace of the chinese communist party but it was undergoing brutal repression under shanghai check shanghai shack but that was a brutal repression. 300,000 people were killed into that attempt and she was recruited by some that was described by ian fleming to be the most formidable spy and he was the key. and the soviets were barolling the communist

underground. >> when you said her domesticity was one of her greatest assets. so leading a double li she has a husband and a child by him so then she leaves to be pretend to be the wife of another man and prend to be a family once one said communistas no private life at the party tells you. >> not quite because one of the things i find so fascinating is the constt attention between what she saw her duty to the cause of her

responsibilities as a wife and a homemaker so these were in constant tension and continues to wonder if she was a good spy and a bad mothe the reality is the courts ruired her to put her family second. sh did it no ubt she was operating in europe ifhe was caught not only will she be murdered but her family as well so shwas putting everybody at risk when she was writing abouthis and said i ll never give up my family again unless the revolution requires that of me. she would have done it. so we fd in the 21st

century let alone a woman with the cause above her family is terrifying. but there is a possible double stanrd because that's not the question we would ever a of a male spy. >> never weould never see you a bad father. that'sot a distinction that we make but it was so central to her core time and again she asks did i do enough? was i a bad mother? it leaves a legacy and when they found out what she'd been doing this and find out themselves untiliddle age they had no idea what her moer was a spy that she had

lived a double life someone completely different that has a very long-term effect on the children. >> you met them as you began your discussion today they hope to to write the book and probably could not have done it without them do you talk to them on this point? >> she had three children had three different men at all different times? >> she had tee children had three different men at all different times. agents and communist spies themselves and espionage is completely i the story. >> and t rules a bit of double standard here to live

theives like james bond but actually she was a woman way ahead of her time in that respect and with the two surviving children only one is still alive michael died earliethis year in his nineties i remember a nversation he was a charming and lovely man. and what is it to discover the secrets he said work i have been married t or three tis. perhaps the problem is because of where he came from i nev knew how to trust anybody that that wasery poignant to hear that from a man nearing the end of his life but he said reading a book he only got

through three quarters now i understa my mother a little bett are toxic and they are addictive is very difficult to give it up buthey are bad for you and i'm fascinated by the world t have a simple black-and-white moral conclusion people damaged by these kinds of stories. >> having read a number of your works but it really does come to a happy ending in a sense you are he were riding off into the sunset utilize your whole life and i want at that moment it's difficult to

remember why you lying at the current time. >> it's easy to tell one my it's difficult to tell compound lies and remember the life of before. spine is such a strange profession but it doesn't make much difference. all balances out but occasionally in history it makes a huge difference. with the deceptions that is another bed ursula affects the core says history.

but to affect the world history. >> y have aoment in t book agent son comes fro upper middlclass background cultured and educated with a communist in nchuria helping them build bombs you have a great story about the ammonium nitrate purchasehat at the dience with n the crucial ingredient so can you relate that quick. >> one of the many things she is trained in words radio technician work how to build a radio but also bomb making

sure is an expert bomb maker one of the things she had to do it occupied manchuria where the japanese moved to manchuria and the court meanest underground was having warfare against them she was providing many going back and forth it was dangerous. women always buying material for the bomb you just can't go into one shop to buy everything that you needed because the japanese secret intelligence would pick it up so she had to go shopping and then she would we will the pram to another hardware store to buy ammonium nitrate because the chinese was so bad she asked for 10 pounds he

misheard her and gave her a hundredweight sack shapes (-left-parenthesis and put the baby on top and issue the need any for a while so i kept them going shoes for the underground you enormous damage as the japanese tried to keep going maybe that had an impact on history. >> and the author's ability i appreciate the the top of the money in a trade with the sabotage to build a bomb that is an astonishing story to want to parent your child at the same time spirits impossible to underestimate the degree of payroll she is in. the secret police were brutal and hily efficient at all over digng out the communist underground b in this

collection you can see the two bamboo one - - the bamboo poles to use the radio transmitter and how she got away with that and how the japanese failed to stop it she was incredibly luc. >> now i would like to turn to urla's activities in the second world war. sonya wartime spying you referred to want to talk us through that it is the meat of the book and the mos interesting. >> she is redeployed to switzerland right at the

beginning way before the war breaks o with the task of running agents t recru peopleo get as much information as they can and sheuilds another radio transmitter and she has a chalet in thswiss mountains and then she sets up with her two children and began running the most important communications network with moscow. she recruited h own. they were producing information that wa a huge importance she brought up other spy networks in a store that is astonishing was the

plot to assainate hitler she came very close to assassinating hitler she recruited to bring communist and then to escape the not see persecution and this was before the outbreak of war is also taylor's favorite restaurant and he would be there every time he was in munich and he e on - - he mentions and says there's an opportunity. she reported bac to moscow so she would build a bomb then there is the partition wh the semirivate dining and they were going to blow him to smithereens and the plot was weeks away. had a good chance o working.

i read about it butt was stopped because of the infamous moment when nazi germany and the communist soviet union struck an alliance of a nonaggression pact not to attack each other and at that moment tha was agreed the saisees all offensive operations against geany social to stop the assassination plot so who knows the future of the world. >>his is munich and his favorite resurant he would have a bite of ravioli or a vegetable on the side. i have been readingy whole life and this is one that i missed that seems the closest to fruitn i ever heard about before. >> i had n either.

and to come very very close d moscow is extremely enthusiastic they were very keen to kill hitler at that point. so that at that point the pact was a tangled allnce between the soviets and the nazis. it was one of the first momentshe began to realize the cause she was following was battling fascism and been caught and the alliance this terrible conscience spirit there is a moment when the alliance suddenly shifts going from an ally of oil into the enemy of another and/or well nailed that moment that were so witnessed. >> i'm sure he was thinking specifically of the pact when

he wrote that. was a terrible moment. of course it was short-lived because of the invasion of the soviet union by hitler's troops and suddenly it all turned around again to be on the right side of history. basically she was put out to dry because of the cause. >> let's hear about operation amber the process decides to parachute german operatives into germany in march 1945 so i hope to recruit them at the ti. every single one of these agents is a communist they are

from circle of friends and fellow agents ideologically like-minded indiduals. do the americans have any id they were a communist? today suspectrsula herself? >>hey never had conct with the saliva she had a middleman to distance yourself. the uss believed they were sending theiown spies i was incredibly brave they believe there were sending in their own spies but at this point that they were in aiance to say i was just hoping the cause and the general allies

but there were voices on the american se fm the cia der ronald reagan and to say have really investigated the baground of these people? ho left-wing are they? and those who were persecuted by the nazi regime gone into exile in britain. to say that they were unionized and already signed up so lose extraordinary moments to pvide the soviet union with the key piece of technology of what would become the walkitalkie named after the girlfriend ofhe girls who invente it has

spies on the ground could commicate in real-time with that revolutionary piece of technology in the rss spies parachuted into berlin in the rss spies parachut into berlin incredible piece of spying technology. in that respect with the atomic weapon all of this was thanks to ursula. >> moving into that the most significant espionage contact of our subject that was made is the famous nuclear spies so tell us about their collaboration and how important was ursula to soviet development of a nuclear weapon?

>> i will give you a picture because switzerland to britain to rejoin her family and in reality become the single most important agent in the country but she lives in a tiny rural hamlet very peaceful and very quiet. she w has three childn who is also an agent it would be in an ordinary refugee woman in the countside in fact in the back of the was a the toilet she built a very powerful radio tnsmitter she was sending secrets to moscow she was running aome network of spies with each of t britisatomic weapons program so often she was transmitting

know a a german citizen and talented also communist who believed it was unfair britain and america was developing atomic weapons but not sharing it with the soviet union a very naïve philosophy that he was handing over the crown jewels sometng like 570 pages of documents related of the blueprints of how to build the atom weapon. so complicated they could i ev called them should take them and put them at the se job site which was a hollow tree thr trees beyond the crossroads of the village with their they would be picked up by her soviet handler who was a dlomat. and when, a lot of them moved

the manhattan project in america. and en to hand them over to another controller in new york. when the soviets donated their bomb in 49 to the astonishment of the west and e consternation of washington that was with one of the most extraordinary aspects of that story. >> so it goes over to handler in america, and new york and of course that's how americans plan to th case. >> absolutely. e ramifications continue still. the running of the spies it was a disaster for the rest. it was extraordinary on both

sides of the atlantic. that willo so. eventually have developed their n weapon? my suspicion is they would ha done so. they were quite advance i'm absoluly convinced they would have. and we can to be forever what the long-term implications of that word. but by stealing the atomic secrets fromne side getting together they made the world safer and created a balance of power between theast and west that neither side would usthe atomic weapon. but there were voices and administration like the mayor arguin the american atomic weapon was devoped and then once used on japan is raised

of the soviet uni it is a one-sided were bad imagine what the web would have been like if that happened. we talk about america first is the only atomic per in the world. i'm not sure how comfortable that would be not a suort for communism but that mutual destruction may behat keeps the world safer. >> the last question i like to k you this is like a book in prress sometimes you are rooting for her when she spies

on the japanese and germans. sotimes you find yourself turned around spying on e british and americans. at one point s seriously considers murdering her lifeng nanny, the obama and who has served territorial for decades because she found out too much of her activities. so did ursula change? what did she stay the same while the world around her changed? >> a bit of both. she remained committed to the cause although she had serious doubts about it later life but then she felt changed we all do. and willie the moment with her primary emotional and personal life and political and secret life collided head on because that has come across to

achieve exactly what she was up to and with issues about to be band and she was the only person in ursula's life and then it was an agonizing moment her husband was a tough cookie. they discussed whether or not they have to liquidate the nann nanny. she had a gun and knew how to use it but she would have been at the forefront. but left and look at history and expected to produce moral conscience like it is a black-and-white moral fable though there are good and bad and somehow as a lesson in civics.

but is not like that. history is made up of fascinating shades of gray. she is not a female james bond and the product of history. i wanted to write a book that tried to explain what communism was like to experience rht to the chaotic end. >> again the book is agent sonya recommended to the person listeni it is a wonderful book. let's go tms q&a and i will take the opportunity to ask

questions myself. has russia acknoedged agent nya? were has done anything to deny her activities? >> on the contrary. they are right. she did write a memoir her own which will is presented to the sassy and they said you cannot possibly publicist it is far too honest it ys too much about your love life so they took out all the most interesting stuff and told her to publish what remained wa

really a proganda exercise but in that manuscript. with which they have access to. so wasn't during her lifetime then to published in the seventies but after her death they emerged to say thi woman was a heroin of the soviet uni union. so they had begun to acknowledge her and celebrate h wch was a huge surprise to me.

so there is a complicated portrait. so yes they did acknowledge not to allow free and unfettered access to her archives that could come soon. >> richard ramsey has another good question. what was her life like after the war? i felt bad to be fascinating. >> astonisngly there is a moment of escape. and then t arrive in east germany the soviet spies are

hard to get into the hardeto get out of. she st wash your hands of it. i want notng more to do with it. they did spy on her she survived all of that and she completely reinvented herself. she adopted a pen name and began to write novels for children. children's fiction and highly successful hundreds of thousands of copies. and then bame more famous as a children's novelist than she ever became as a spy. to invent and reinvent herlf

there were several events that to place in the discovery of the purpose a the sheer scale of the economy many of the people that she knew and loved most and that was a terrible moment that sheaid and still saying that i believe in that cause even in her ninetieshe looks back is

no the fault of communism but those to come about in the wrong wa so that was the defense they comep with. >> at the time ideologically committed to say things yo can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs with two or 3 million victims. >> they cld come to a realization later in life. >> and to feel deeply troubled the fact that she survived e had a certain survival skill but how and why when so many others haven't.

as a jew and the ses she was triple suspect but is fascinating i did she not onl denounce anyone ee who with that survival to say i'm innocentut my brother-in-law or myamily she never did with that extraordinary loyalty. >> we have a question from facebook available spies you have written about which was the most cver for your

favorite? and she loves your writing. >> which was mfavorite? eddie chapman the proper kirk and then to be highly trained and immediately went to the british in a tremendously a bad person but a wonderful charte charaer.

>> and then to be pretty good at this. and then to remember compound lies and was really good at it and then to put your mily at sk that is a raw type of courage but the soviet kgb officer inside the soviet machine knowing that atny moment that you would be arrested and tortured and killed for sheer bravery. >> we have a question from richard how much did

intelligence contribute to the red army victory? if you wish to broaden that you said ursula's intel was valued dedicate down to the level of the operation in the field on the battlefront? >> it's a really good question to the extent to which the soviet system inside in germany with that in the battlefield and i'm not really an expert on that the gathering this information she was transmitting this information not actually gathering at herself she was

the only radio operator i think she did really and i would argue that yes they did have an impact and with the military forces and that disposition that is incredibly useful intended to disbelieve as an extraordinary person to display the intelligence he was receiving those who ended up in japan he just didn't

trust spies and one of the greatest example with that extraordinary amount of material before and after the war and such a quality that stalin and the analyst believed that it wasn't true and the greatest in history. >> how was that contact made? >> it is fascinating. one is in his eighties and one was in his nineties but i found this book and i approach

with trepidation and the elder son early twenties came later and then to join the communist party they were very proud of their mother. and wondered how welcoming they would be to a british writer to turn up i will write about your mother's life. and they were understandably initially very suspicious knowing what was going on and to meet both of them. and they turn out to be those wonderful sources.

and then turn up with boxes of material. and that factual mistake and now most descendents want to control and have their own family stories about what happened and we look back on our lives and frame them in a certain way to tell the stories eventually it was it willingly but that isn't quite the way that it happened. and then to tell you what the truth was.

that is incredibly generous. >> i will be quoting that for the st of my life we have william wherehey all based on social political ideals where did she get paid for her spying? very interesting. but is based on money and ner camecross a spy who said i'm doing this for a higher calling b also it is much more mixed than that. but that is the reality.

so money is what wheels the wheels of the operation. that she was paid enough to allow her to keep going and wartime itain. and at one point they stopped paying her. beuse they got the wall and - - the wrong drop site and the wrong many in the wrong tree but she never profited. question she did not do for material gain did she use it or need it? undoubtedly but didn't make her rich? certainly not.

>> you talk about her sons what about the other members of the extended faly? did they survive? and with those thousands of articles in the course of his life. >> and then and the mother took the girls. but they became british. most of the family married and they were in london while talking to you from.

and also a petty soviet agent. and with the soviet union right from the beginning including some important information on the strategic bombing survey. and did that to the end of his life and ending up in east germany. and great pillars of the communist world. and there is a very tragic public story rounded up and murdered.

and that determination to battle fascism cam from what is happening to her family. >> and other readers everywhere will love this book this is where spies really do pull out that incriminating piece of paper and swallowt.