In 1970 he was studying to become a chemistry professor when he was approached by the East German Secret Police and asked to be a spy. He accepted, and after training by the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) he was sent to the United States in 1978. His American identity was taken from a child who had died at the age of ten.
His mission was to get a United States. passport, insert himself into American society and "get close to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski".
He was not given very good instructions, and struggled at first. Eventually he obtained a social security card, rented an apartment, and began attending college and studying computer programming.
He worked for Metropolitan Life and was able to provide the Soviets with programming code that helped them compete with the West. Every week he received radio transmissions from the Soviets.
Every two years he returned to Germany and Moscow for debriefing.
His two families did not know about each other at first. In 1988 he learned his cover was compromised. He refused to leave the country because he was concerned about the welfare of his American family.
He told the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) he had contracted the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome virus and needed to stay in the United States.
In 1992 a Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) defector named Vasili Mitrokhin provided information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about Soviet spy operations in the United States., including Barsky"s name. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was able to locate Barsky, observed him for some time, and in 1997 detained and interrogated him.
He was never charged with espionage as the Federal Bureau of Investigation determined that he was no longer an active spy and that he was a valuable source of information about spy techniques. He has since revealed the truth to his family, both in the United States and in Germany.
He is a former employee of the New York Independent System Operator as a Director Of Software Technologies in upstate New New York
He has previously been chief information officer for other energy systems He is not considered to pose a threat to the security of the power grid, but he has been placed on a leave of absence nonetheless. He did not tell his employer about his past when he was hired in 2011, and they learned about it shortly before he was interviewed on 60 minutes in 2015.
He is writing a book about his experiences.
