Video Transcript

Hello LinkedIn live community. I am so excited today to be here with two incredible guests. My name is Britta Glade and I'm the SVP of content and communities at RSAC and more more importantly for purposes of this conversation a superfan of our two guests today. Doctor.

Meryl Goldberg, a professor at CSU San Marcos and as we'll discuss an amateur super spy. And Vince Houghton, director of the NSA National Cryptologic Museum, former historian at the International Spy Museum, and expert of all things Cold War. Thank you both for being with me today. So glad to be here. Happy to be here.

We welcome all conversation here as we're as we're on LinkedIn. Drop your comments. Drop your questions. We have an interview guide put together today, but really welcome your insights, your thoughts, your questions from these two folks as we, as we talk today about this really great book that is just out from the two of these two of these amazing experts. So let's jump in and get started.

I wanted to, to do some scene setting. So, Meryl, you're a saxophonist from Boston. Young, fresh faced. It's 05/21/1985, and along with three other musicians, you've just crossed into the Soviet Union with sheet music, hiding intelligence for persecuted dissidents. Set the story up for us.

Share the moment. You're standing in Moscow. You know, the KGB is watching when you fully understand what you've walked into. Yes. We we walk in, and we had a little bit of training, you know, what to do.

We went in on tourist visas, but it was a very secret mission for which we had a cipher, which is in music, because we wanted to go meet with these amazingly courageous musicians in Tbilisi, who were using music as a vehicle to get their word out about human rights abuses and just their stories. So, we had... Like I said, we had a little bit of training. Other people had gone in on tourist visas to do exactly the same kind of thing we were doing, which was meeting people and, again, just getting their stories. But what happened to us was somewhat remarkable in the sense that the KGB had already been tipped off tipped off to us.

And so upon our entry, we, endured a rather crazy interrogation. They searched every single piece of our luggage and our beings. And, the coolest thing though is they, went through my music book, and they went page by page by page by page, and then they handed it right back. The cipher that I created, the secret code, which, Vince is holding up right now, looks just like piano music. Even a musician wouldn't necessarily know it wasn't piano music because twentieth century, even twenty first century music, there could be 12 tone music.

And, honestly, it looks like baby Bartok or... You know, it looks a little elemental, but you would never know that it wasn't music. So Yeah. Okay. So they flip through.

They hand it back. Is it a breath of fresh? Is everything okay now? You're you're breathing okay. Everything...

Everything's, you know, rainbow and kittens and and all feels okay now? Where you go? Right after that, they marched me and Rosalie, who was one of... You know, who I traveled together with. We actually traveled separately from our other two musicians, Hankus and Jeff, because we we didn't want to show up with...

I had a saxophone. Rosalie had a guitar. You know, we, we didn't wanna stand out as a quartet that people would say, hey. You should be having a, you know, a visa to play music. Well, anyways, so after our huge search, they march us with military down into the bowels of the Moscow Airport and and proceed to interrogate us in a huge way.

I mean, just screaming and yelling at us in Russian, and then, you know, we're just sitting there like, finally, after they stop the Russian, they begin... There's a guy who we later nicknamed Kevin who starts asking us questions in English. And long story short, they determine, like, we're not terrorists even though they thought maybe we could be. And, and they say, you can you can enter the, you can enter the country, but you have to be good tourists and follow all the rules. So we asked, oh, okay.

What are the rules? And the rules were to be good tourists. And so, ultimate, they did... Ultimately, they let us in, but we decided in Moscow to, keep it kinda cool. Our main goal was to meet people in Tbilisi.

So, we were somewhat good tourists in in Moscow, and we went to the Bolshoi and saw concerts and... But realized right away we were being followed. They were being very obvious about it. Yeah. And your your book revealed a lot of...

I I like to be good tourists. When I was growing up, my parents... Whenever you went out the door, it was, be good and have fun in that order. So we're gonna return to being good tourists. Vince, KGB surveillance apparatus in 1985, Soviet Georgia.

Bugging of rooms, hotel informants, constant tailing. Were there blind spots in their system? And how did this group of four amateur spies... How how how did this happen? How did this happen?

Yeah. No. When I when I first heard the story, I didn't believe it. And then even when I had it confirmed to me, I was still just laughing at the fact that it was 1985 of all years that they decided to do this. Time magazine called this the year of the spy.

This was a a time when the KGB and the CIA and the FBI were flying high, capturing each other's agents and and deporting people and making spy trades. And it was not a good year to do this. They could've... They didn't know, of course, what was going on, but, the KGB is on high alert. And so being tipped off that they were coming, they they were ready to find something.

Right? They they probably fully expected that when the four of them came in, they'd find something that they could pin against them and and kick them out before they even got there. But the blind spot was, you know, failure of imagination. The the idea of would anyone actually hide a, you know, a massive amount of information in sheet music. And and sheet music made a lot of sense for this group because they were musicians.

So it it it kinda stands for reason that it would come in with music. And so they use that against... I mean, it's a concept known as steganography where you're you're essentially hiding the fact that there's a cipher in the first place. In this case, the music was what you would expect from musicians and be... Thankfully, the one of the border guards was not an amateur violinist or something and wasn't able to look at this and go, this music makes no sense because we we had someone play it.

Oh, and it's god awful. In Maryland Oh, yes. You were right. Maryland. Due respect to Beth and try...

Best and try to say stuff like, oh, it's like a tonal, you know, Schonberg. No. It's not. It No. It sounds terrible.

It's alright. Vince. I'm on team Vince here. Yes. We played it.

We played it together. Something. Yes. You would probably use a git mode to, you know, torture prisoners. It's bad.

But, fortunately, it looks like music. And and even when she was able to put little hints to herself and things that were not actual musical notation, they looked close enough to get by. I mean, this is something that was expected. And and so they use that against them. And then they didn't make this up.

I mean, the the idea of putting a cipher in music is is centuries old. You know, Bach used to hide his name inside his pieces, and others did as well. And people have hypothesized that you could do this in kind of an espionage situation, but everyone realized it'd be really hard to do. Because it would be... You know, if you're James Bond and you're going into a situation, you pull out a musical score, people are gonna, what the hell are you doing with that?

Right? But if you're a musician, it's expected. And so, like, the first time operationally, this worked because it was... It fit perfectly to the people who are bringing it in. Hiding in plain sight.

I think, Meryl, you said your dad even as a as a child. That was a that was a term that you had used that he Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, Vince, in the... In your intelligence history work, how does what she did compare to maybe how a trained operative, process... And, actually, I'm thinking here the emotion, the fear, the adrenaline. These four young kids coming in, is this an asset?

Is this a liability? Well, that's... Our first conversations I had with Meryl, I'm like, I feel bad for saying this, and don't take offense at this. But you were you were too dumb to know any better. I know hiding it plain sight, too dumb to know any better, a being a good tourist.

Because if you if you had the, you know, even small modicum of training and understood the situation you had gotten yourself into, you probably wouldn't have done it. And and I think that being young, you know, being full of them and vigor because their mission was so important. Right? They truly believed in what they were doing. This wasn't something they were doing because they're paid to do it or something they were doing because it was just another operation.

They were going in there to help people, and in some cases, to save people's lives. And so belief, youth, and ignorance, were kind of the magic combination of allowing them to have the courage to go through this. Part of them believed, of course, that there's only so much the Soviets could do to them, but that belief actually kinda went away a little bit as that first interrogation took place. And then later on, when they were, you know, treated to some pretty heavy handed, counterintelligence operations, you know, they had to kinda fall back on understanding why they were there and understanding that, you know what? We we...

We're we're ready to sacrifice to do this, because we believe in it. And that was something that I I think you'd... You kinda get trained out of you in some respects when you're doing professional intelligence work because you're constantly thinking I'm a pro. Right? This is something...

You know? The the first... Give you a quick aside. The first interview I did at the International Spy Museum was with Vanity Fair, and I was like, oh, it's Vanity Fair. That was awesome.

And it was one of the Mission Impossible movies that just come out. The the one where in the beginning of a Tom Cruise hang off the side of the airplane. And they're like, how realistic is that? I'm like, that he would be fired the minute, you know, that that mission ended because you don't pay people to hang off the size of airplanes because they're professional assets, and you spent millions of dollars training them. And you don't want them to take risk unless they're very calculated.

There was very little calculation in the risk that Merrill, Hankus, Jeff, and Rosalie took. And because of that, they pulled it off, right, where others may not have. So, Meryl, you can go hang off the side of an airplane, it sounds like, next. For Mission Impossible two, Meryl Goldberg. She will be hanging off the side of an airplane.

Yeah. No problem. Yeah. Nope. You you you got you got...

He's got nothing on you. Right? Okay. So, so take me, Meryl, into a key part of the story and trip was meeting the Phantom Orchestra, and we'll we'll talk a little bit more about them. A group of Georgian refusenecks using music.

The music that you had, you know, you'd encoded, bringing in, tells you who they are, where they live. I know you did a lot of work preparing, memorizing, you know, names, addresses, things like that, but encoded all that in. How did it feel? And, Vince, you just said the human side of this cannot be excused. You were there as a human who cared about humans.

You weren't you weren't performing a professional mission, if you will. How did it feel when you final... And and the words are... Yeah. Again, everyone needs to go buy this book.

Harper Collins came out came out two weeks ago. The words are beautiful. The emotion flows through. Tell us tell us how it felt, how, you know, you're finally meeting these people that you've that you've only heard about at this point. Yes.

So, and and I'll set this up by saying, since we were being followed constantly and once we got into, Tbilisi, it was so clear that they were on top of us, the KGB agents, that we actually nicknamed them Carol for, the Carol King song, You've Got a Friend. And so we came up with this crazy, way, and we separated two and two to go try to find them. And I had to find them by using the the coded... All the stuff coded in the music because they didn't have phones. There was no way to get to them except following these directions and going on subways and walking left and walking right and everything else.

And so imagine, we actually made it to the apartment of the Goldstein's. And to to amazing relief, I mean, couldn't believe we had actually found it, we knock on the door, and first thing we say, Grigory opens the door. Look. We've been followed, You know? And we've been interrogated already.

If you want us to leave, you know, we're here to visit, and we're here to support you, but just let us know, and we will turn around and go back. And he looked at us, and he's like, no. Come on in. You have to come in. This is our protection.

We want you here. And he shows us that there are KGB that did follow us. We thought we had lost them all. And, you know, he he said to us, the KGB what... Does what they do.

We do what we do. And that immediately meeting Grigory and his mom, whose name was Malka, who's like a grandmother to us... Yeah. To anybody. All of a sudden, after all this, you know, interrogation and, you know, what we had gone through in Moscow, it was a sense of huge relief.

And we felt at home, which is the first time since we had been in The Soviet Union. And then later that day, we met, up at the Goudaves apartment, and they started... I didn't have my saxophone with me that day because we didn't want to be super obvious. But we, had the first interaction with the Goudaves and the Goldstein's and the Phantom Orchestra and people who are playing classical violin and folk music and, you know, we were doing klezmer and singing and playing Beatles. It was so remarkable, and we started gaining so much confidence from just being with these courageous, remarkable human beings who were taking such risks to get the word out.

And I I mean, it was a feeling like like you can't recreate. The the next day was just incredible when all four of us went, and we all played together. That was... I I can go into more of that if you want, or you can, can you No. Vince.

Yeah. Vince go in there. I wanna jump in because Merrill is is understating some things about, oh, they're just playing, you know, one person played violin. It was a maestro who was the first chair of the keyboard. Right?

It it was one of the greatest violinists on the planet. And, you know, these were not just randos. Like, there were a couple that were just there because they love the music, but these were some of the best musicians in the world who had come together and using music as as a means of protest. I mean, I think that, you know, we we knew... We understand this, I think, kinda innately in The United States because if anyone at least studied the sixties, I I was gonna say live through it, but I didn't.

Anyone studied the sixties, you realize that music... Yeah, Merrill. I wasn't gonna age you. That, you know, protest music, you know, is just a part of our culture. And so it's kind of easy, at least for me, in in studying that period to understand what they were doing.

And and they said it several times to the to the quartet that was there. It's like music is our escape. You know, it's not a physical escape. Right? It's not gonna magically make us, you know, transport to the West, but it's our soul and our minds and our our spirit is able to be free.

And that was something that wouldn't have happened if it was just a bunch of people plucking away at a keyboard. These were... And I've heard this. Like, they they record it. They were able to smuggle out not...

The group before them was able to smuggle out a cassette tape. And it is incredible. Like, the music is absolutely the best you'll ever hear. Singing, not so much, but the musicianship, fantastic. And I I, again, understand kind of a...

Kind of living viscerally through Meryl's description of this, of how the music was so transformative for these people. And one other quick aside. Meryl and I have done now dozens of interviews before and after the book. And and by the time we're done in a year from now maybe, I will finally get Meryl to say cipher instead of code. Because they created a cipher in the music, not a code.

It's almost a joke now. But one day, Meryl will say cipher without me having to prompt her. That was just me being pedantic, but that's who I am. I'm getting better at it. I am.

A little bit. Yeah. And I just wanted to, to say, like, the next night when all four of us were playing. And and, again, we didn't realize the extent to which the refuse nicks, which means people had asked to leave the Soviet Union had... Were...

And had been refused. And these were Jewish people, Catholic people, dissidents. One of the people turned out when the Soviet Union fell to be the first democratically elected president of Georgia. And, I mean, these were very high level, refusenix and dissidents and poets that, you know, I don't think the West understood quite the extent to which they were important, but the KGB certainly did. And I have to say, the music, not only was it great in terms of getting the word out, but when we played, the playing of music is so transformative.

We were free, and I can't under, you know, score how much that meant to also the refuseniks because here's a place where no matter what the KGB is doing to you, arresting you, beating you, whatever, they can never take away the freedom from your brain, and that is so powerful. And so we gained so much empowerment and so much courage. And, also, you know, we realized just how human everybody was. There's 11 year old Avi to whom our book is dedicated to him and his mom. He's he's now a grown adult.

And, you know, when we arrived there, we... I had been given, some baseball stuff to give to him from his pen pal in Pennsylvania. His pen pal. Yes. You wanna share with us his pen pal?

Yeah. His... Spoilers alert. This story, the layers the layers in here of... Oh, yeah.

By the way. Oh, yeah. By the way. Yeah. Who's who's the pen pal?

Share us. Share it. Josh Shapiro, who's now governor of Pennsylvania. Right. So, you know, I come with...

11 year old Josh sends, you know, bubble gum and baseball and mint and boys, the things 11 year old boys care about. Yeah. Exactly. And we arrive. And and, one of the things that Avi says to us, you know, after I give him all this stuff is, you know, Josh keeps writing about baseball, but what is this game baseball?

And so, you know, just off the cuff, we all went outside. You know, the the four of us, the phantoms, Avi, we go out into the courtyard. We create a baseball, you know, like makeshift plates and and a makeshift bat. And we had a real glove and a real, ball. And we start playing...

We talk about how to play baseball, and we're all playing baseball. And, you know, those moments of such humanity are so, like, heartfelt. And, you know, it was also a really great lesson to us. You know, before you go on some kind of trip like this, you're, yeah, I'm meeting Refusnix. I'm meeting people who are named this.

You know, you're not thinking, oh my god. I'm meeting human beings with this great enthusiasm for life even though they're in this harsh situation and, you know, the joy that can come from meeting everybody. I mean, it was just remarkable, and, boy, did that buoy us into, you know, having a lot of confidence. Yeah. So I've got a few punches jumped on me.

Hey. Cats are good. Cats are welcome too. So you just took me to where I wanted to wrap this, but we're gonna go there and then we're gonna go back because the the word I was not expecting... I've read read through this twice.

My my takeaway in a story like this, you know, there's there's spy, there's intrigue, there's there's all of these things. They're scary. There's there's there's KGB real people scary. But my takeaway... And and probably if we were to shovel this into, you know, a tool to what word is used the most, joy.

That was not where I had started. And this word, you use it over and over and over. And just to see your face, and I love seeing the picture of your mom, by the way. You have her smile. You have the the happiness in her eyes.

It's it's lovely. But joy, you know, a few of the sentences that I had pulled out. The human spirit is and will always be stronger than all forces that try to extinguish it. Small moments of unadulterated joy matter. That was one, you know, big Every day the refuseniks balanced ongoing threats from the KGB with acts of defiance and joy.

It is a blessing how music can transport you to a place of uninhibited joy. So that would... You over and over again intermingled with, oh, yeah. We were followed by this guy. This person, you know, got got beat up and lacerated liver.

But but yet this joy over and over that you found, and obviously, you you and your you and your traveling companions, you made it out. You're here. You went through a very scary thing, but you were an American that carried through things on the back and that helped them. But these people who are facing a a really difficult... And, you know, Vince, like you said, music music transports people to a different place, but joy, take me there.

You know? Yeah. The... Playing music, really is a a powerful kind of thing, and it's something that actually lingers in a way. So one of the things that that happened twice to us is they put us in cars and just drove us away without telling us where we're going and separated us in pairs.

And the second time that that happened to us, I remember thinking, oh my god. Like, we're actually actually really going to Siberia. Yeah. They're gonna put us away for a while. But...

And this is already the KGB had told us that they couldn't guarantee us to do that. Good tourists. No. We were not. And, but I remember sitting there, and then we had gotten some advice from the Refuse Nicks, because I think they knew we were in more trouble than we knew we were.

And so they said, look. If you are arrested, we ultimately were, but, the... It was the driving in the cars that was more scary. Remember that you're not the first. You are part of a long group of people who...

This cat really wants to be on LinkedIn. I'll tell you. Yeah. So you're you're not the first. You're not the last, and, you know, keep that in mind.

And then they said, use your music to, you know, keep yourself calm. You could even sing to yourselves. And and thirdly, you're Americans. They're not gonna keep you, you know, for a very, very long time. And I remember sitting in the car, you know, when, we were being being driven for hours and having this epiphany.

You know what? I've got the power now. I'm free up here no matter what they do to me. And that was just something. And, you know, it was a relief.

It it it felt like kinda joy... Deviously joyful, I guess, you know, in the sense that you can't have power over me. You're not gonna get to me even though you're doing a kinda scary thing to me. So... You know?

And and we use that power, especially when we got back to, you know, to to get other people engaged and and bring in politicians and it worked ultimately. Maybe, Vince, you wanna say more about all of that. Yeah. I mean, I think when you talk about... When I think about, like, the scenes, and I kinda think of them almost as scenes.

You know, when when when I first heard from Merrill about the baseball thing, I'm like, that's gonna make a great scene in a movie. Not that Nice. Not that... But, I'm already, like, scoring it. Like, what's the...

Is it... You put, you know, center field from John Fogarty in the background? But I think one of the the great scenes, talk about joy, is they were locked inside a room with the KGB guarding the door, as they're waiting to essentially be kicked out of the country. And they're like, let's play music, and they did. And they're like, you know, music made them joyful.

And then, you know, I I don't know if it was Jeff who has kind of the... My... In my sense of humor as I would have done this, gleefully decides, and I'm using the word glee instead of joy, same idea, to mistune his instrument and try to play his horrible aversion, a a beloved Russian folk song to try to torture the KGB guards who are forced to wait outside. And and that's to me is just like, I was defying when they were telling me that story. I'm like, you know, hopefully, I can write that on the page into the way that it comes through the way I was fully enjoying it because to me, that just demonstrates, like, music just kinda superseding everything else.

And and I think one last thing I can mention on the music side is a lot of people... A lot. You know? A handful. But, you know, more than just this group had gone to meet the Refuse Mix and and talk to these people in Tbilisi and Yerevan and other places.

But they couldn't connect the way that these four could. And I think the music was the kind of the true human connection because they didn't all speak the same language. You know? There was some really interesting attempts at communication that, you know, didn't work all that well. Right?

They tried some Yiddish because it sounded a little bit... You know, Rosalie spoke some Yiddish, and and so did some of the older Refuseniks. But for the most part, they were kind of talking past each other in some cases. But the music's what brought them together because, you know, it's cheesy to say it's kind of universal, and it is, you know, where they were able to play this stuff together, and it made them a group in many respects. And I think that's what really separated the four of them versus those who had come and those who would come after because they're able to share kinda what...

Was kinda the heart and soul of who these people were. Yeah. And I I like your description of the the, you know, messing around with the music because it it was it was not the first time that the music had been messed with. Right? Meryl, take us back to...

I think it was the first time when you were all meeting with the Phantom Orchestra and you know you're being listened to. You know things are happening and they would say things directly to whomever is listening. There was some messing around with the music then too. Right? When you decided okay this is this is what they wanted to sound like this way which which actually took me Vince to the ciphers that have been written and wondering, oh, is what they're playing right now with this match what had been written in their in their music.

But it wasn't the first time you messed with this music. You had fun. You took the music. You took you you took yourself to a joyful place in being playful with it. And, yes behaving, having some fun having some fun.

Okay. So Merrill, your mission lasted eight days. You left with information that would help some of these families ultimately receive immigration invitations. Your your work, the information reached senator Ted Kennedy. It's it's it's amazing what was accomplished, and and you guys didn't you didn't you didn't give up.

Did did... When you went on 05/21/1985, did you realize the political stakes that were at play, or was this clarity... Did this clarity come later? Oh, this clarity definitely came later. I mean, we knew that it was a little bit risky.

We knew other people sometimes were questioned and... You know? But, like like like this versus what happened to us, which was like this. So like Vince said early on, it's a good thing we really didn't know the extent to which we could have really gotten... Well, we've seen a large amount.

Is that... Those were the three that you gave us. Yes. And, you know, the the the thing is is while we were there, I mean, no one knew about the cipher, Vince. Alright.

No one knew about it. Not the people there, you know, not our friends, no one in The United States. I mean, no one knew about this until just a couple of years ago. But as we were, after our meetings with the Phantom Orchestra and we got information like their stories, and they gave us a little bit in writing too. We would go back to our hotel room and stay up till, like, 03:00 in the morning in in in Ciphering?

Yeah. You got her. There you go. Oh, two. Two.

Yeah. I get more points. Making up for her lost time. Right? I know.

And, you know, making sure that it all got into the music. And then, so we did this night after night, for the... You know, for a couple of nights and and put in as much as we possibly can. And then on the way out, you know, we had... Again, we were...

We had been put under house arrest, and we were, clearly, we were not, you know, in the favor of of the government or the KGB. And... We're not good tourists. No. We weren't good tourists, and they decided they're gonna do, you know, an extra special search of everything of us again.

But, again, they went through the music. And because it looked just like music, they handed it back to us. So by the way, we kept score. KCB, which is Klezmer Conservatory Band versus the KGB. And I will say KCB won.

Well, yeah, in the end, of course. I I think that what we try to get across in the book is that they kind of insert themselves into a a battle, that had been going on for over a decade at that point, longer than that. But, I mean, certainly since the Helsinki Accords in the mid nineteen seventies when the Soviets made a huge mistake of actually acknowledging, you know, freedom of immigration, and then everyone's like, okay. Show it. And they did for a little while when they realized that it could be tied to America doing nice things for them and trade and everything else.

But the numbers dropped to next to nothing. I mean, the year before they got there in 1984, we're talking about handfuls of people who are allowed to leave. And if you look at the years after... And and, you know, you're talking now tens of thousands. And it's not just them, you know, but they're right in the middle of when this is really heating up.

And and and in many cases, they're they're a catalyst because they come back. They're doing concerts on Capitol Hill. One of the main concerts that they do in in honor of the Helsinki Accords has a staffer or member from every single congressional house in the entire country. Right? So you've got everybody who's there.

The Ted Kennedy goes over and meets with the Soviets with a list of names Mhmm. That are supplied based somewhat on their trip over there and then brings people back with them that they had met, which is part of the Phantom Orchestra. And so this attention being paid, was key. And what's what's interesting is, you know, talking to people who were involved with this, there are a lot of people who didn't agree with kind of the methodology. There are people who were very vehement still today about the idea that all anyone did going over there was to bring bad attention on the refuseniks and get them beat up and get them arrested and get them put in prison.

So there's a debate, the state department at CIA in the seventies and the eighties about how much do we engage. Do we want to engage and shine light, or do we wanna let them kind of be so that the KGB isn't, like, killing people because we shine a light on them. And, ultimately, as a kind of a bystander, you know, because I don't have a dog in the fight, but as a historian, I have to go back to what the people themselves said. And the Refuseviks themselves said, you are our lifeline. You are the reason we're still here.

The attention brought by you in the West on our plate is why we're not in Siberia right now. It's why we are actually having an opportunity potentially to emigrate. I mean... And I think it's easy to understand. If you look at, you know, yes, Navalny ended up with, with a pretty terrible ending, but it was all years and years and years that Putin could basically not touch because of all the attention being put upon him by the west.

In the same laid out in what Merrill and crew did for these briefings. The KGB knew that the west was paying attention. And so, you know, as much as they would want to, because like, like, you know, I said, this is a politician that was the future president of Georgia. Right? These are people who are tightly intertwined to people like Natan Stransky and people like, Andre.

Yeah. We'll keep a good going back to Solzhenitsyn, but also to, you know, and other... The people... Everyone's heard of. Right?

These are their friends. These are their colleagues. And so they're not just randos. These are pretty well known refuse mix. AGB did not want to get free because they knew the minute they got out there, they would just torch the Soviet system.

But the attention was what kept them alive. And and that's what they were so thankful for in the end was these attention being brought to them by the four, musicians who went back and raised holy hell, and made sure everyone was listening. I mean, how... I don't remember how many different op eds the four of you wrote and how many different times you did interviews and how many different times you yelled at people on Capitol Hill and how many times you sat outside the Soviet consulate. And, you know, and and so it was it was a process.

It was a process that ultimately ended in victory. Yeah. I can't underscore how advocacy makes a difference. It... You know, it made a big difference on our trip.

And, you know, today, I mean, the lesson is don't give up. Be an advocate. Make a difference. You know? Speak out.

Do something because it matters, and it matters to people. By the way, I wanna give a big shout out to Vince because, he... You know, we wrote this together, and he's got all the background and the history. And we decided it had to... The book had to be in one voice.

So he had to, he had to become me in writing a lot of his work. And, man, he did a pretty good job for, you know, someone, like we said earlier, who grew up in the sixties, and you weren't even around. But, yeah, I mean, Vince did such a great job setting up all the the history as well as the whole story. There was never an issue with not having enough information. I think that was one of the...

The real difficulty was that they had done such an excellent job, you know, Merrill, but also Jeff, Hankus, and Rosalie. It's just an excellent job of writing everything down, you know, to where there are hundreds and hundreds of pages of trip notes and and reminisces and, again, op eds and the stories and everything else where the difficulty was... And and unless we wanted a thousand page book, how do we go about, you know, kinda making this a a narrative that moved along? Because there was just so much great information that, you know, that was available to me. And, you know, so it wasn't hard to speak in Meryl's voice because I had so many examples of what it was.

You know, I I was chuckling in that, like, god. This really doesn't sound like me. Because I... If you read if you read the introduction, joy doesn't pop up a lot in my day. Right.

I wasn't out there. I was going there with her. Not you. Okay. So You're the two I extras.

She's the joy one. Personalities. So I was like, I I wouldn't have handled it that way. I woulda punched the guy. No.

But, so we're... We we... So it was... I had to kinda say, alright. I'm speaking as Meryl.

Alright? We're speaking as Meryl, and she's a nice person. And so she reacts in a very different way than I would have. You know? Oh, go ahead.

I wanted to say that, you know, this whole, like, getting involved in cyber too has been just such a a a surprise to me because, honestly, before the... You know, all of this, I had, like, no clue about this. And in fact, you know, was, sitting at a at a party. In fact, Chuck just wrote something. Indeed.

Yeah. He... You know, like, he tells me about cyber because we didn't know each other at a party, and he just, you know, I'm like, oh, wow. Well, I kinda get it. This isn't cybersecurity, but I've got a story.

Then it turns out... Yeah. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Since then She had a cipher, Vince.

She had a cipher. Go ahead. Yeah. And, at the university... So I teach at Cal State San Marcos, and our computer science folks got interested in all of this.

And our faculty... We actually got an NSF grant where our students are creating ciphers using music. We call it harmony hacks, and their music actually sounds so good because they can use harmony and melody and rhythms and layers and timbres and instruments and everything else. And it's turned into this really delightful hackathon that we've run, I don't know, six times already, with young... Mostly young girls.

It's high schoolers and our college students. NSF demanded this year. They didn't take away our grant, but they demanded we open it up to boys. So the boys did great too, but, that's been a a real learning curve for me and a delight. And, you know, what a tie in to this community that I never would have expected.

But this community is so entrenched in thinking outside the box, being creative, working well with others. I mean, Jen Easterly is all about that, and she and I got to meet that original time, Britta, when you and I were... You know, did that talk. And, I I just think the connections are absolutely astounding and wonderful and surprising and terrific. Yes.

Yeah. No. I I agree. I'm... I wanted to go back to some of what you brought out of your experiences there.

And, Vince, hearkening back to some of the things that that you were pointing to with some of the the messages, the stories, the, you know, was was sharing the plight of the refuseniks good or bad for what was going on? Meryl, I know you you or you and Vince, which which voice it was in here, I don't know. Was it was it Vince being Meryl? Was it Meryl being Vince? But there was a struggle, there there...

Which I... You know, reading some of the things that they went through as a result of meeting with you, clearly, they had made the decision. They they wanted their story known. They kept reiterating that to you. Don't let us be forgotten.

Don't don't don't let our, you know, our plight go unknown. You brought out, and and and one of the chapters in the book is word for word a story, you know, text that was composed by some of these refuseniks. Share that with me. And and you you stayed up late in the night encoding that so that was music that came back out, their words. Share a little bit of that story because that that that was a moment that moved me in a, in a a very visceral way as I was reading about that in the book.

Yeah. So, two of the leaders of the Phantom Orchestra were, the Godava brothers and remarkable people. They both were doctors. They played rock music. And then, in their family, the KGB started just giving them problems around just things in in Tbilisi.

The father started being harassed a bit, and they took it very seriously. And then, you know, things started building up. And, they were Catholic, and I think, you know, the KGB probably thought, you know, the Jewish people have, like, all these people working for them, but, you know, maybe the Catholics, not so much. And so they... The the Gudeva brothers really were under the gun.

I mean, they both were beaten. They both were in prison multiple times. Times. Right? Yeah.

Multiple times. And and, honestly, after we left, the KGB came down on them again, and they were put back in prison again. And, that just hurt my heart in in a way that was it was awful. That was probably one of the lowest moments for me, in, you know, the arc of this whole story. But we were able to get their story out, which described their family and all these beatings and the harassment, including the beating up of their mom and, you know, back into their family history.

And then, like, the Catholic diastasis in Boston took it up. The pilot, which was their newspaper, put in editorials, and the Catholic Charities started working on behalf of them. And so if we hadn't been able to to smuggle out these stories, you know, I don't know that they would have had that support, and I don't know that they would have gotten out. So it was really important that we were able to take that out and share it. And that that was the distinction between this group, the Maryland group, and those that had come before them is the inability of those before to bring out massive amounts of information.

Right? You just didn't have the capability of doing that. You can memorize some stuff and bring out names, other things. As you saw, they were able to bring out pages and pages of an autobiography, essentially. And because they can encipher that in their music and then kind of spit it back out, it could be seen by lots and lots of people, and it had a huge effect.

I mean, you're you're right. I mean, I... It was a wise editorial decision by our editor to pull that out because that was gonna be part of a chapter. So, like, that's... No.

This needs to stand by itself. It... It's so powerful. And, like, of course, you're right. And it is.

And that word for word was enciphered into the music. And it's not like it's the first time it had ever been heard, but it was the first time it could get out because it was the... You know, the the musical encipherment system was what allowed them to get this detail out that had never been brought out before. Yeah. In their words with their...

And I also appreciated... You know, there were some grammar errors. There were some strange uses, but it... It's you you you you hear a voice of a people that you've come to love in an earlier chapter. You've come to see the sparkle in the eyes, the joy, and then to hear what they've gone through repeatedly, like you said.

And then you follow-up with things that had happened with them. So it just... That that that was a, that was a pretty moving, moving part of part of the story that... Yeah. I like that editorial decision.

So so you return to The US. You perform these benefit concerts, all these editor... Before... Did you know that was going to be the after part of this vacation to The USSR? Did did you realize how long this journey was going to be?

No clue. I mean, you know, we never in a million years expected, you know, to be interrogated, to be disappeared, to be put under house arrest, you know, never mind, you know, playing music to the extent that was just like, this is freedom. I've never played music like that before. And it was... I mean, I've played music where you get into kind of a trance and you're like this, but, boy, was that different.

I mean, this was really a sense of freedom. And so, no, in a million years, we thought we would come back and, you know, maybe do a little bit of work, play a concert here and there. But but, boy, we came back with a zeal and a a a real sense of agency and determination that we had to help. We really had to do something. Vince, why did it work?

I I I I think the... One of the great ironies of this is that if the KGB had just let them kinda do their thing and let them fly home after going to, Latvia and Saint Petersburg, they may not have been as successful as they were, but very publicly kicking them out of the country, and that news getting back. And and, again, the news got back because the refuseniks had some contacts in the media in the West and were able to get to Reuters and get a story out there. So by the time the quartet landed back in Boston, there was a hoard of reporters there waiting for them. Right?

So it it was it was so... It's somewhat counterintuitive, and it was very much, as a own goal by the KGB to shed so much light on these four young people, and, you know, show how important what they were doing was. Right? Because they could have come back and been like, oh, it was amazing we met with these people, and everyone would be like, oh, it's kind of interesting. But the fact that the KGB kicks them out and is hounding them the entire time and that story gets out, all of a sudden, people are listening.

And they're listening. They're like, why were you such a threat? And it's like, here's what we were doing. And all of a sudden, there is a huge audience for their story that may... I mean, it's counterfactual to say that it wouldn't exist otherwise, but it it...

It's reasonable to think that they got a lot more attention because the KGB kicks them out of the country. And and so good job, KGB. Nice little own goal there. Go, Kevin. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean... Yeah. Kevin.

I don't think Kevin had a choice. Like, Kevin just wanted to Kevin did. Kevin became human. Right? Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Yes. You know? Cross some layers of humanity to Kevin here. Oh, you know, there were so many layers.

So Kevin was our, you know, translator. I mean, he was KGB. And, he was assigned to us as a translator in that first, interrogation, and then he shows up in in, we didn't know he was with us the whole trip, but he shows up in Armenia. He shows up... You know?

And on the way home, he he he accompanies us back to, back to Moscow, and I end up by lot because, there were three seats together, two seats together. I end up sitting next to Kevin. Kevin whispers to me, if it were up to me, I'd let all the Jews go. The word Jews or Jewish never came up. And then he started talking to me.

We started talking and... Because he was very fluent in English. I mean, that was his job. Right? And he tells me he's reading Time.

He's reading Newsmic... News, Week. He's watching movies like Rocky and Porky's, of all things, and, you know... Fine American cinematography. I know.

And so I asked him... I... You know what? I... We're in this big conversation.

I mean, the the plane ride is ours. And I said, do you ever think about immigrating yourself? I mean, what did I have to lose? Right? And what's he gonna report?

Anyways, and he said to me, I could never. They would never let me. And he showed me pictures of his wife and he said, you know, I... My higher uppers have dachas and, you know, I don't know if I'll ever have that. And I I kind of felt for him.

I have to say, he became human too as someone caught up in a system that he couldn't get out of. He was kinda stuck in this. I mean, Vince is... Vince would really, really, really love to know if, you know, he's out there. I would too.

I mean, if he ever got out and he reads the book and we ever get to meet him, boy, would that be something? I mean, he's only a couple of years older than me. I asked him that too. How old are you? I was 26.

He was 30. You know? So, But they never got it. They they only know him as Kevin. Right?

So I'm sure he told him his real name, you know, but they never... They didn't come out with it. Not not a single one of them remembers. Anyway, it's always Kevin. No.

We nicknamed him because he looked like a guy from Somerville, Mass. Right? You can't hunt him down. I would have loved to have hunted him down, but I... You know, I think...

What's what's also funny is when Meryl told me the story of... On the plane, she's like, have you ever thought of immigrating? What if he had said yes? Help me. You're like He would've you would've written a new song.

You're you're basically trying to recruit a KGB officer. It's a... Like, then, yeah, you could have ended up in Siberia. But, Belief, youth, ignorance fit. She would've gotten Kevin here.

Yes. So, you know, I mean, the call will always be out for anyone who might know who... What poor KGB officer probably got in trouble and got stuck falling around four American musicians back in 1985. Yeah. If you know who it is, let us know because we really wanna have Kevin down.

Right now. Please dial in. Well, no. I... Meryl, you ended up getting film, right, that was confiscated and then came back.

I think it's Kevin. I think Kevin made sure that you got those pictures that came back with you. You know, that was surprising because they confiscated all of our film, you know, pictures, got... You know, photos. And then we thought they did destroy our cassette tapes, but, they ended up not destroying...

They they did get a line in in many of our pictures, but they they did not destroy our photos. And so we ended up being able to take out photos as well. And I I do believe someone was sympathetic. I I think it might have been purposeful. Yeah.

Yeah. So you come at this from different worlds. Jazz saxophonist turned professor, cold war military historian who runs the NSA's Museum. Different perspectives, different backgrounds coming into this. Is there anything that as you developed this that you genuinely disagreed on?

No. Why? No. It's kind of amazing that... Yeah.

I I didn't... You know, I I had just finished, co authoring a book with a guy who I went to, like, elementary school with. So I've known him for my entire life, and that was that that had more disagreements. Not big ones, but that had more disagreements than, you know, Merrill and I where it's just like from the very beginning. I mean, the the way I got pulled into this, was that Merrill had talked about doing a book, and and she had sent me just pages of stuff.

And I and I kind of said, alright. Well, I think if you included a, b, c, d, you know, the... This, you know, 10 different things, then you've got a book out of this. And she's like, why? I'm not entirely sure I don't know the history that well, whatever.

I'm like, well, just find a coauthor who's a historian. And she's like, you're a historian. One. And at that point, I was like, yeah. But I I was in the middle of copyediting, and and anyone's done copy editing for...

It's like, you know, nothing to do with writing or anything. And I'm like, god. How do I pass this up? This is just, like, the perfect story. But from the very beginning, I I thought the only way I agree to do this is is, you know, because Meryl and I just got along.

Yeah. We just did. I mean, like, she she came, to DC, because we... The National Cryptologic Museum had a, exhibit with a lot of her art, like, the notebook and other artifacts. And she came into town, and and she's like, what hotel should I stay in?

I'm like, I got a big house. Just stay with me. And and and it was... You know? And she did.

And it was like, god. We get along really well. Let's see how this works. And and it did. And my coauthor from, my other book, my buddy came over, and I'm like, alright.

Well, you need to let her know how it is to work with me because you're the only one that did. And then... And they got along at the end, and she's like, this is great. I'm like, alright. Let's do this.

We get Of course they did. To know where's to love her. Right? Right. Well, everyone gets along with Meryl, but not everyone gets along with me.

And I think that's the that's the key here. Right? She's easy to get along with, not me, not so much. But, I mean, I think that that, you know, if I didn't care about the story as much as I did, you know, I I think if I didn't kind of embrace kind of the fun, which, again, is not something I do very often, but it... I...

It kinda just... Like, the story is so good. It's just so great. You know, Vince says that, but he's got a really good sense of humor. He's a wonderful writer.

And, you know, like, our stuff just matched really well. Never mind, you know, the two of us. So... And and I think also... I mean, I grew up around music.

I mean, I... I'm a musician. My my sister could have been a professional piano player, which she's a businessy type person. My mom was a professional guitar player, and taught it... You know, she was a music educator also.

And so it wasn't like I'm being thrust into a world I didn't understand. I understood really well. And I'm from South Florida. And even though I'm, you know, I'm Catholic, I went to 47 bar and bat mitzvahs and grew up Yeah. You know, and just surrounded by the Jewish community in South Florida.

And so I had a pretty good idea of that also. And so this wasn't something where I had to teach myself. I I got it from the very beginning, and I I think I probably even went to some bar and bat mitzvahs of my sister's friends when they talked about twinning, which was something that was done to kinda match American Jewish kids going through the bar of bat mitzvahs with a Soviet Jewish kid who couldn't inside the Soviet Union. And so, you know, it wasn't foreign to me. It was something I had grown up kinda understanding.

And so I think that made it a lot easier, than kind of just, you know, being a random intelligence historian and being like, let me tell you about the KGB. And I think I I was able to understand things at a kind of a deeper level than I would otherwise. Yeah. You got more than just a smart guy here, Merrill, as your as your coauthor. So I I...

The spoiler I... That I went to earlier in this was my my takeaway. If I had a single word in this, it's joy, which again was not was not the one I started with. If you had to sum up this story, Vince, I'll start with you because it's it's it's Meryl's story, so we'll we'll leave the last word with her. How would you sum up the story?

You can use more than one word if you want. I'm about to say... Roll it roll it for me. And the one word would be unbelievable, but I think that the the longer word there... The longer phrase, and and I even say this in the introduction is that if you drop this as a screenplay of a fictional account on a, you know, an executive's desk in Hollywood, they would just be like, try again, kid.

It's operation mincemeat. Right? Right. Yeah. No.

I mean, yeah, no one would believe it. And and I think that mean I didn't believe it when I first heard it. And then so I think that, you know, every single time you think that young people can accomplish something, and this isn't like, you know, oh, there's a thousand of them doing... It was four. It was four people that that thought up an idea and said, f it.

You know, that... Let's go do this and see if we can't make a difference. And, you know, I... My cynical self would have said, what are you doing? You know, but I know the end of the story.

So I have to be, you know, kinda put my cynicism aside and say, holy god. They they pulled this off. And it's pretty amazing to me. So it's the word. I'm really hard to amaze, and I'm so jaded at this point.

And and so kind of finding something that is, you know, jaw droppingly insane in all the right ways is is wonderful to me. You know? It brought me... I don't say joy because I'm gonna... As close to joy as I'm gonna get.

I'll take the joy. You'll take the cake. Last word. Yeah. I would just say, you know what?

People can make a big difference and, like, never be afraid to do something. And, you know, you... Like, a a termite might not take down a house, but a whole... Individually, but a whole bunch of them together can bring down Notre Dame. And, you know, little things just every day, you know, trying to...

Especially in the world we're living in right now, speak up. My god. You know, make a difference. We've gotta make the world a better place because humanity really relies on all of us, you know, not just a few people doing something. So, that was a big takeaway for me.

Excellent. Well, thank you for joining. Again, you need to buy your copy. Notes of deception for... On sale now, and we're gonna bring this story to RSA conference twenty twenty seven.

So, tune in. Join us. Thank you both for being here. Vince, thanks for helping, helping to coauthor a beautiful story. Meryl, thank you for being that story and being that inspiration, making a difference in this world.

Thank you all for joining us. Thanks for having us. Thanks.