The Americans 2013 – 2017 – Fascinating

All clickable links in red

 

 

Genre – Spy Movie

Time:  6 Seasons.

5 seasons x 13 episodes x average 45 minutes.

6^th season – 10 episodes x average 40 minutes

Platform: Disney Hotstar

 

 

Illegals and Russia – a “mini history”: In June 2010, ten Illegals were arrested by the FBI’s counter espionage division in an operation that ran for months. The FBI patiently staked out various people, following them, joining the dots and then catching all the spies in one swoop. Finding one Illegal and arresting him is considered a coup. But Ten Illegals in one swoop? It had America agog. After all, wasn’t the “Cold War” won by the USA in 1989? And here are ten Russians with rock solid American identities caught in one swoop.  They also had a glamorous female spymaster, right out of some Hollywood movie. It all seemed too surreal. Check out this link

 

Russia has a long history of pouring resources into the Illegals program, going back to the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. The results varied. Western Counter Intelligence agencies generally said the program was useless but also admitted that they have not caught all the Illegals and most of them escaped their net, due to their unbreakable identities and solid tradecraft. Most of these Illegals were caught either due to some mistake on their part like contacting a known Soviet agent or standard counter espionage practices like matching birth certificates and death certificates. The highly publicized cases include Rudolf Abel (well shown in the Spielberg film The Bridge of Spies exchange), Gordon Lonsdale , Helen and Peter Kroger aka Morris and Lone Cohen, Richard Sorge a GRU (Russian Military Intelligence – the KGB’s competitor)  Illegal who was closest to the James Bond image with wild high risk lifestyle, fast cars and motorcycles, inveterate womanizing and so on; and many more cases . While these Illegals were all highly publicized cases in North America and the UK, there are far more in Western Europe and ‘friendly’ countries like Japan, Australia , etc.

 

The Illegals program goes back to the early days of the Soviet Union which was being attacked by the Western powers from all sides. The new head of Cheka, the Russian Secret Police, felt that secret agents were more important than any Army or Division. Throughout its history, the Soviet Union considered Illegals as one of the elites of their organisations. Entry into the program was after the candidates had passed lots of secret screening and evaluation. From the Cheka to the current SVR, through the KGB, the names may have changed but the operational practices remain the same.

 

Basically, Illegals are men and women trained for long periods, sometimes years, so as to pass off as the citizen of the target country – eg – USA. They are never sent directly to the USA and usually have a roundabout route via multiple countries, to enter the US legally. One of the neighbours of the arrested ten, said she could never have guessed that they were Russians, as they were indistinguishable from any ordinary American. Check out this video links of what they say and the reference to James Bond which is far from the real world of real spies. 

 

Before the ten Illegals caught in 2010, Jack Barsky was a Russian Illegal who was caught by the FBI, ‘turned’ and then became an American citizen after he gave lots of operational details to the FBI. This short 10-minute video has Barsky talking about how he entered the USA, a journey that took him from his native East Germany, through three different countries and three different passports. The Barsky identity was taken from a headstone of a child who died , whose date of birth was close to that of Barsky.

 

 

 

 

There are many books and case histories of Illegals. Nigel West says categorically that for the money put into it, the Return on Investment was minimal to nil. KGB and KGB Today by John Barron, both written in the high tide of the cold War in 1972 and 1982, have three fascinating case histories of Illegals and how they are patiently infiltrated into the USA.

 

 

 

 

 

The case of Rudolf Hermann is particularly fascinating.(Source KGB Today): Born in 1939, in Czechoslovakia, Hermann was sent to East Germany in 1959, then crossed as a “refugee from Communism” to the West before The Wall came up. Worked a few years in West Germany. Emigrated to Canada. Worked in Canada a few years and got local documentation. Then emigrated to the US in the late 1960s. All the time his wife, a committed Communist and fellow Illegal, was also with him. Their son was ‘unconscious’ and was shocked when the parents made him ‘conscious’ by sharing their true identities to him. Though it is not known, it is suspected that it was the son who told the FBI, though the FBI claims that Moscow Centre made a mistake, by asking Hermann to service a Canadian KGB asset Hugh Hambleton, and that’s how Hermann was caught.

 

 

The story arc of TV Series , The Americans: If we keep the Hermann case in the background, The Americans make great sense. Here too it’s about a committed couple , Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, who are sent ‘blind’ to the USA in the late 1960s , to establish themselves and go about their lives in a routine fashion. The duo set up a travel agency and are ‘sleepers’. Their children are born in the USA which automatically makes them American citizens.

 

They have a new neighbor Stan, who announces openly that he is in the FBI’s spy catching division and the families are friendly with each other right down to Stan’s son and Jenning’s daughter Paige getting attracted to each other at a later stage.  Because of his job taking away a lot from their relation, Stan’s wife leaves him.  Meanwhile Philip suborns a woman Martha working with Stan, in a ‘false flag’ operation and even marries her to convince her of his bona-fide. She is his source for the investigation,headed by Stan, into the whereabouts of  ‘an Illegal couple’. When Martha realizes that Philip is a Russian agent, its too late as she has become emotionally involved with him.

 

At the same time , Elizabeth is also sexually suborning other men with secrets to find out whether the US is really about to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, thanks to Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union an ‘Evil Empire’. (Thanks to British agent Oleg Gordievsky, who later defected to the West in a daring operation – check out Operation Pimlico on Spy Ops in Netflix – who reported that the KGB was convinced about a western pre-emptive strike, Reagan and Thatcher toned down their rhetoric. also check Operation RYAN, the Soviet effort to check for evidence that the US was planning a pre-emptive strike, a highly dangerous example of looking for indicators to fit a preconceived theory)

 

Soon Paige, the Jennings daughter suspects something is seriously amiss as she always sees her parents taking off at all sorts of odd times at night supposedly for clinching deals and meetings. Stan also notices the couple leaving at odd times but Philip’s explanations about being first , taking ‘red eye’ flights to get business , as they are struggling to stay afloat, convinces him that the duo are legitimate. The pressures on the Jennings increases as Moscow, through their handler Claudia, demands more information and even tests their loyalty to check whether they have ‘gone native’ or not.

 

It is Claudia who is somewhat successful in converting Paige with the classic statement. “Do you know how many Americans died in WW2?” Paige “No. Maybe a Million?”  Claudia “Half a Million. And how many in the Soviet Union?” Paige is uncertain and Claudia replies “Twenty two million. Yet the US thinks and propagates that it won WW2”.

 

The series is peppered with such real life stories and incidents, in addition to the fictional stories. There is some amount of James Bond like behavior where the couple change disguises, identities, get into gunfights, kill some people and so on, which is unrealistic and against the rules of being an Illegal. But then – hey – its Hollywood masala and we have to take that in our stride.

 

Barring the masala angle, the series is superb and shows the innate loneliness of the duo.  Even contact with another Illegal couple , cant take away from the stresses of the job. That contact leads to its own set of tragedies.

 

Since the Jennings are portrayed by real life husband and wife Keri Russel and Matthew Rhys, the interplay and chemistry between them is brilliant.  Like the real-life Hermann case, the woman Elizabeth is more committed than the man. Go figure!

 

 

As mentioned earlier, this is over six seasons , each with 13 episodes. Season 1 and 2 are superb. Season 3 and 4 are where Paige is made ‘conscious’. Season 5 and 6 is when Stan suspects that the late night business trips aren’t that at all and something far more sinister.

 

 

Historical Background – 4 out of 5

Script – 4 out of 5

Story – 4 out of 5

Direction – 4 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

 

Total – 4 out of 5