"A KGB case officer was a combination of a priest, a therapist, a best friend and also a mortal enemy. He was somebody who was trying to get you to do things that would ultimately destroy yourself whether professionally or personally."
"I always said that to understand the Russian services, it's really a matter of Freudian projection. They always are guilty of doing that which they accuse their opponent of doing."
"It's about reading people, understanding what their weaknesses are, learning how to recruit them, how to get them to do things they otherwise would not be willing to do."
There's a phrase in Russian "working with people" — which is really all KGB case officers. Remember, Putin himself was a KGB case officer, and so when people try to understand his psychology, the way he thinks about geopolitics, he's always looking to manipulate the human side of things. It's about reading people, understanding what their weaknesses are, learning how to recruit them, how to get them to do things they otherwise would not be willing to do. The continuity between the past and the present, I think, is very starkly demonstrated with these manuals. The first batch that I did two years ago, there were things like how to run American agents in the third world, meaning recruiting secretaries from American embassies and consulates; how to recruit Middle Eastern officials who are working for regimes that might be neutral or pro-American; how to penetrate Russian diaspora organizations.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-07-26/learn-how-be-spy-previously-unpublished-kgb-training-manualshttp://www.interpretermag.com/gofundme-lyubanka-files/https://drive.google.com/file/d/16t59k0G381jlasvlZM5i49MZ2wTnwsyA/view
