Sleeper Agents!

Today, Natan Sharansky is a prominent Israeli politician, human rights activist, author and the head of the Jewish Agency, a quasi governmental institution based in Jerusalem. But between 1977 and 1986 he was a high profile political prisoner in the Soviet Union. His ordeal ended in a dramatic exchange on the Glienicke Bridge, then separating East and West Germany. To free him, the West gave up two high level spies. A husband and wife team: Karl and Hana Koecher.

He was a linguist, a brilliant academic, and a master spy. She was a seductive blonde beauty, dressed in minks and diamonds. Karl Koecher is the only known intelligence agent from the Soviet Bloc who succeeded in penetrating the CIA. He and his wife Hana spent twenty years leading a double life as “sleepers”, Soviet moles building up a carefully designed identity. They led another secret life, it seems, as swingers; trading partners and attending orgies in the swing clubs of Washington D.C. and New York City. They may well have collected deeper secrets still from members of the American military who shared their beds. Koecher was suspected by both sides, betrayed, and placed in mortal danger. We have exclusive interviews with Karl and Hana Koecher, Vladimir Kruchkov, the former head of the KGB and Alexander Sokolov, the former head of Soviet Counterintelligence. They tell a story of cross and double-cross, secrets revealed, and of a terrifying brush with a full-scale nuclear war.