Darknet diaries ep 99: the spy episode Show Notes

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DARKNET DIARIES
EP 99: THE SPY
Episode Show Notes
[START OF RECORDING]
JACK: 
I love a good spy story. It’s 
so intriguing for me to think that 
someone among us might not be who we 
think they are. They’re fake in their 
name, their background, and their 
purpose trying to get information of 
some kind. It’s always interesting to 
see what kind of methods these people 
use to communicate right in plain 
sight, but to the untrained eye, you 
have no idea that a message was being 
sent. Like, for instance, there’s 
been times when spies would tie their 
shoelaces in a specific way to 

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communicate certain things. So like, 
if your shoelaces had extra knots in 
them, it could mean something like 
don’t approach me, or if the shoe was 
tied with laces crossed over it or 
under it, that might mean okay, all 
clear; come give me the message. 
Or maybe if the shoe was untied, it 
means you’ve been spotted; get out.
What’s cool about this trick is you 
can have one message on one shoe and a 
different message on another. This 
way the person could send a different 
message depending on the situation.
Like, if one shoe said wait and the 
other shoe said all clear, the person 
could just put out their shoe that had 
the right message on it at the time 
and cover up the other shoe somehow, 
like by sitting on it or something. I 
love hearing about spy tricks and 
methods that they call trade craft, 
and in this episode, we’ll hear a 
story about a spy and how they 
operate.
(INTRO): 
[INTRO MUSIC] These 
are true stories from the dark side of 
the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider.
This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC 
ENDS]
JACK: 
Okay, I don’t even know where 
to start with this story. I’ve got so 
much tape here to play for you, it’s 

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crazy. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m 
not gonna be able to fit it all in one 
episode, so this is just gonna be a 
two-parter. But yeah, seriously, 
where do I even start? Okay, okay, 
I’ll start with my favorite part which 
is not the beginning of the story.
Alright, so one day on Twitter I got 
this message from a guy named Igor.
He said, I listen to your episodes.
Very good pods. Then he says, if I 
can ever help with anything, let me 
know. I said okay, thanks. Well, 
what are you good at? He says he does 
surveillance in New York City. While 
I don’t need anyone to do surveillance 
for me in New York City, I was 
immediately curious to hear more, so I 
called him up.
IGOR: 
Hello?
JACK: 
Hey. This is Jack.
IGOR: 
Hi, how are?
JACK: 
Igor?
IGOR: 
Yeah, this is Igor. Nice to 
meet you.
JACK: 
Nice to meet you, too. What 
are you doing now?

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IGOR: 
Right now I’m sitting in my 
car in Queens in New York. I’m on the 
surveillance, just waiting.
JACK: 
What are you surveiling?
IGOR: 
Oh, this is a – an insurance 
defense job, so we’re waiting for a 
guy who has claimed an injury and he’s 
receiving some benefits from the 
insurance carrier, and they want to 
see how he’s actually physically 
doing, if it’s true with what he’s 
claiming. Their goal is to see 
exactly what’s the real situation, and 
then if it doesn’t match, they have a 
reason to offer him less money or jam 
him in the corner and tell him they’re 
not gonna give him anything, or 
decline his claim, et cetera.
JACK: 
How can you do that and talk 
on the phone at the same time?
IGOR: 
Right now, the person I’m 
watching, he’s inside his house, so 
I’m waiting for him to leave. Until 
he comes out of his house, gets in his 
car, starts the car – I know him 
already, so he warms up the car. So, 
I’ll have about five, six minutes to 
react. I’ll be able to say Jack, I’m 
gonna have to go in a few minutes.
But I’m also working with another guy, 

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so we have two sets of eyes on the 
house and the car.
JACK: 
[MUSIC] That’s how I met Igor.
Igor’s a Ukrainian immigrant and he’s 
a private eye in New York City; 
sitting in cars, watching people and 
buildings. That’s what he does all 
day and sometimes all night. He sees 
a lot. Naturally, I was curious and 
fascinated. I asked if he has any 
interesting stories from doing this 
kind of work and oh boy, does he ever.
IGOR: 
So, I was working with a 
friend of mine, a guy I knew for many 
years, as a subcontractor. We were 
working for Black Cube which is an 
Israeli intelligence company.
JACK: 
Wait, what? Black Cube, the 
Israeli intelligence company? I’m not 
familiar with them, so let’s take a 
quick detour and listen to some news 
clips to hear who Black Cube is.
ILANA: Behind a heavy locked door, a 
high-tech environment, and also the 
salary and benefits of the group of 
brilliant people who sit there, some 
of them are graduates of the Mossad 
and other classified units. But the 
product which they are producing can 
be dark and much more dangerous 
[00:05:00] than what they imagined.

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They are called Black Cube and their 
official goal is to provide business 
intelligence.
JACK: 
That was a clip from the 
Israeli TV show Uvda, and the reporter 
is Ilana Dayan. In that episode, she 
revealed that Black Cube was hired by 
people to carry out different spying 
campaigns. Like, sometimes 
billionaires hire Black Cube to spy on 
political opponents. Sometimes 
foreign countries will hire Black Cube 
to spy on their adversaries. But in 
this case, Black Cube was contacting 
Igor’s boss to do some spying for 
them. This is likely because Black 
Cube probably doesn’t have permission 
to do surveillance in New York, so 
they contracted the work to two New 
York surveillance guys; Igor and his 
boss. See, Igor did not know he was 
working for Black Cube at this point.
He was just working for a guy named 
Roman Khaykin, and it was this Khaykin 
guy who was being contracted by Black 
Cube.
IGOR: 
We were doing different types 
of jobs for them, all involving some 
form of surveillance, and at some 
point they assigned us to follow Ronan 
Farrow and Jodi Kantor.
JACK: 
[MUSIC] Whoa, wait a minute; 
these are some famous names I 

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recognize. Ronan Farrow and Jodi 
Kantor are both journalists for the 
New York Times, and Ronan Farrow’s 
parents are Mia Farrow and Woody 
Allen. At first, Igor didn’t know 
where these people would be, so he 
just went to their house and watched 
their movements from the street.
IGOR: 
My boss Roman Khaykin sent me 
the pictures with the pin drops.
JACK: 
Pin drops are locations on a 
map where these two people are.
IGOR: 
I was sitting on Jodi’s 
Kantor’s house and while I was at Jodi 
Kantor’s house, Khaykin messaged me 
and says hey, the client has new 
information. You need to go to the 
city. We’re gonna try to get Ronan 
Farrow’s location, so let’s meet in 
the city. I’m at a dentist. Once we 
get his location, we’ll go from there.
I said okay, cool. I’ll head to the 
city. We made a little plan, like, 
I’ll head to Ronan Farrow’s house, and 
Khaykin would come to the city and he 
would go to the area closer to 
downtown, so we would kind of – 
whenever we got the location, we would 
not be too far away from any potential 
spot where Farrow may be.

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JACK: 
They were expecting more pin 
drops from Black Cube to know the 
exact location of where Ronan Farrow 
was.
IGOR: 
You know, Black Cube is a 
private intelligence company, so they 
operate in a compartmentalized kind of 
basis. Khaykin wouldn’t tell me 
exactly where they’re coming from, but 
he explained the method to me. The 
method was that a text message with 
some sort of an annoying spam would be 
sent to Ronan Farrow. Farrow would be 
offered two options. Yes, they 
receive more spam; no to stop 
receiving spam. He replies yes or no, 
the geolocation gets received with the 
reply. So, it’s not a constant 
tracking but whenever a target 
replies, the geolocation comes with 
the reply. They were able to do it a 
couple of times.
JACK: 
So, they drive into downtown 
New York City to look for Ronan 
Farrow, but they never actually find 
him. But Igor is a curious person and 
started trying to figure out why 
someone might be paying him to spy on 
Ronan Farrow. So, he starts reading 
all these articles that Farrow is 
putting out. One of the articles he 
publishes says Ronan thinks he’s being 
watched by Black Cube. This is when 
Igor connected the dots.

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IGOR: 
[MUSIC] I went to my boss, my 
friend, my boss, Roman Khaykin. I 
confronted Khaykin and he confirmed 
that we’re working for Black Cube and 
in fact, that we are working on the 
Harvey Weinstein story.
JACK: 
Ronan Farrow was doing a story 
on Harvey Weinstein who was accused of 
sexually harassing women in the 
Hollywood movie industry. Well, his 
investigation uncovered that Harvey 
Weinstein had hired Black Cube to spy 
on his victims that he sexually 
assaulted to try to find information 
on them and discredit them. Somehow, 
Weinstein discovered that Ronan Farrow 
was working on this story and hired 
Black Cube to also spy on Farrow to 
try to discredit him, too. Igor 
realized that he was wrapped up in all 
this and that yeah, he was actually 
working for Harvey Weinstein.
IGOR: 
I felt very uneasy being sent 
to do surveillance on journalists 
because these are publications that I 
respect, The New Yorker and The New 
York Times. I’ve been reading The New 
York Times since I was in high school.
It was a very important thing in my 
life. I enjoyed it. I thought it’s 
very – you know, it’s a very good, 
informative paper. I always thought 
it’s a cool model, you know, all the 

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news that’s fit to print. I felt 
uneasy and in my mind I was thinking, 
I have to follow through with this.
But I think what we’re doing could 
potentially be [00:10:00] a negative 
thing, because I was told that our job 
was to ascertain their sources. I 
knew that if we’re looking for sources 
of two different journalists at two 
different publications, it’s either – 
it’s – could be used to scoop them but 
it could also be probably used to 
basically kill the story or to damage 
them in some way.
I already knew that we’re working for 
a company that’s a little bit iffy and 
I was on guard, but I went through 
with it anyways. I said okay, 
whatever, I’ll continue. No problem.
We continued working together. We 
were doing other jobs for Black Cube, 
and I tried to contact law enforcement 
with very little success. I tried to 
get advice from friends who knew 
people in law enforcement, and nothing 
panned out of it, so at some point I 
felt that there was no outlet for me 
to go to to kind of expose this 
problem of a private intelligence 
company following journalists for a 
rapist to be able to kill their story.
I decided to call Ronan Farrow, so I 
contacted Farrow and we met up. I 
said hey, I’ve been following Jodi 
Kantor. I was assigned to follow you.

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JACK: 
Wow, to be assigned to spy on 
Ronan Farrow but then completely flip 
and actually call Ronan to tell him 
that you’re spying on him, that must 
have been some meeting. As the two 
talked, Ronan did confirm he was 
receiving a lot of spam text, and Igor 
explained that’s how they knew where 
he was.
IGOR: 
Ronan Farrow, I thought I was 
gonna talk to him and say hey, we 
followed you. Your hunch is right.
Be careful; Black Cube seem like bad 
people. Nice to meet you. Good luck.
Maybe text time if I ever see you, 
sign the book that you wrote. I 
bought his book. He says I’m writing 
a book about this Weinstein thing.
You want to stay in touch and help me?
I said okay, I’ll help you. I said, 
you seem like a nice guy. He 
convinced me a little, but then I felt 
it’s a very noble cause.
JACK: 
This is how Igor sort of 
switched sides; one day doing dirty 
work for Harvey Weinstein and the next 
helping journalists like Ronan Farrow 
out.
IGOR: 
After meeting with Farrow, I’m 
talking to him periodically, I’m 
sharing information of what work I’m 
doing with Khaykin from Black Cube.
I’m sharing with him almost like, 

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immediately. Whenever I have 
something from Black Cube, I share 
with Farrow. He tries to figure out 
if this is relevant to him or to 
something he’s working on or whatever.
One day in January, I get – I’m with 
Khaykin and Khaykin tells me that 
[MUSIC] he has to cover a job for 
Black Cube, but he can’t make it 
because he has plans with his 
daughter. I said hey, I’m free. I 
could – you know, it’s an evening job 
or whatever. It’s a late afternoon 
job. I said if you want, I’ll fill in 
for you. He says no, it’s a very 
important job. I have to be there 
myself. I said well, why don’t you 
tell the client you’ll go there with 
me and when you have to leave, you go 
hang out with your daughter?
I’ll go and I’ll stay in your place.
We agree on this plan. We head into 
the city, to the Peninsula Hotel, and 
Khaykin tells me the agent will be 
there. You already know him. He’s 
the guy that you saw last summer that 
wears a goatee and glasses. That’s 
basically kind of how he described 
him, ‘cause they didn’t use names.
They never told me any names. They 
were very secretive about that. I 
said okay, I know that guy. I’ve seen 
him multiple times. I said okay, 
Roman, I recognize who you’re talking 
about. Then he showed me a picture of 

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John Scott-Railton. He said, this is 
the target. So, this is who’s gonna 
be at the meeting who Black Cube is 
targeting.
JACK: 
Oh, John Scott-Railton? JSR 
is the target? That name is very 
familiar. Actually, in Darknet 
Diaries Episode 79 called Dark Basin, 
I interviewed John Scott-Railton to 
hear about how a private intelligence 
company tried to hack and steal 
information from certain targets.
John works for Citizen Lab and does 
investigative work to try to uncover 
hacking campaigns. Of course, when he 
publishes this work, those companies 
he exposes probably get pretty mad for 
having their cover blown. JSR and 
Citizen Lab does amazing investigative 
work, but still, I’m surprised that 
he’s being targeted by Black Cube. Oh 
man, this is just getting deeper.
Well, we’ve gotta call JSR now to find 
out what happens.
JOHN: 
What happened is one of my 
colleagues was basically approached by 
somebody who claimed to be interested 
in financial solutions in banking for 
refugees which is a really important 
problem. If you’re a refugee and you 
flee a conflict, you probably don’t 
flee with access to your bank account.
[00:15:00] So, this is a huge problem 
that refugees face and my colleague 

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was extremely sympathetic to this 
issue. So, he goes to a meeting, 
meets this guy, and what the guy 
really wants to do is not talk about 
refugees and banking, but to quiz my 
colleague on his background, his 
family, his family history, and then 
ask a lot of questions about the 
Citizen Lab. My colleague, Bahr Abdul 
Razzak, is a very thoughtful, smart 
guy. He immediately recognized that 
something was amiss, played it cool, 
and then as soon as he left the 
meeting called me up and said look, 
something really strange is going on 
here. I think I was the target of 
some kind of an operation.
[MUSIC] So, immediately after this 
happened, at the lab we began trying 
to figure out well, who did Bahr meet 
with? Who was this guy? It didn’t 
take long for us to determine the 
digital identity that the guy had 
created was almost paper-thin. There 
was like, an accommodation address 
somewhere in Spain, some company; 
FlameTech. But it all looked fake.
This gave us the impression that we 
were looking at some kind of an 
operative, some kind of an agent. We 
began to ask ourselves like well, so 
who would do this? Going through the 
questions that he asked Bahr, it 
seemed like the main objective was 
learning about Citizen Lab’s work and 

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then potentially finding something 
that could be used against the lab, 
maybe to discredit our work. As we 
were moving on with our investigation, 
we got in touch with a reporter and 
said well, we should – this is a 
really interesting story, researchers 
working on NSO targeted by this weird 
attempt, a mystery man. That story 
was just about ready for publication 
with Raphael Satter, then at the 
Associated Press, when I got a message 
claiming to be from a guy named Michel 
Lambert. Michel pronounced himself 
extremely interested in the work that 
I had been doing almost a decade 
before, using kites to fly robotic 
cameras over West Africa.
JACK: 
See, on JSR’s blog, he has 
this research that he did about using 
kites to conduct aerial photography, 
and this guy Michel was acting very 
fascinated with all the aspects of 
aerial photography using kites, 
seemingly wanting to do this method 
himself to conduct some kind of 
similar research.
JOHN: 
I immediately sensed that 
something was off because anybody, 
even people living under a rock know 
that drones have happened in the 
interim, and there’s no real reason to 
deal with the vicissitudes of the wind 
and some kite and strings and so on.

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Like, what’s that all about? So, I 
contacted Satter and said why don’t 
you hold off on this story? Let’s see 
where this goes.
JACK: 
[MUSIC] Michel wanted to talk 
on the phone, so John gave him his 
phone number.
JOHN: 
[RINGTONG] Hello?
MICHEL: [FRENCH]
JOHN: 
[FRENCH] English as well.
[FRENCH] There’s this little – there’s 
this crazy little detail, so like, 
when the Lambert alias first called me 
on the phone, there was a strange 
moment; he just immediately started 
speaking French to me. The thing is, 
I speak French but I don’t advertise 
it. At that point, it wasn’t really 
something that I felt people knew 
about me. I remember this moment; 
this guy picks up and – bonjour. I’m 
thinking like, do they have some 
dossier on me? They must. Maybe he 
just does it to everyone. But in any 
case, he immediately launched into 
this French conversation.
MICHEL: [FRENCH]

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JACK: 
Of course, JSR being JSR, he’s 
trying to record and document 
everything that this Michel Lambert 
guy is telling him. So, what you’re 
hearing is the actual phone call 
between them, because JSR knows 
something strange is going on here and 
having evidence of it might be really 
helpful at figuring all this out. So, 
the phone call ends with Michel 
wanting to meet up in New York City in 
a swank hotel restaurant to talk about 
how to do aerial photography with 
kites, and JSR agrees to the meeting.
MICHEL: Au revoir.
JOHN: 
Au revoir.
JACK: 
This is when Igor gets told 
about this meeting, and he needs to 
watch the agent Michel and keep an eye 
on the target, JSR.
IGOR: 
So, in my mind, I understand 
the agent is the operative from Black 
Cube and the target is somebody that 
Black Cube is trying to put in a 
situation where they’re trying to 
embarrass them or they’re trying to 
get them to say something racist or 
antisemitic or something that’s 
embarrassing on tape. My job is to 
take pictures with the back of the 
head of the agent and the face of the 

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target. [00:20:00] In case that they 
do get the target to say something 
negative, they could potentially throw 
the story to the press with a nice 
picture of the target just for face 
value, for having a picture on – with 
the story.
Then once they split up, once the 
meeting is over, my job now involves a 
counter-surveillance role, so now I 
follow the Black Cube agent for a few 
blocks and I make sure to check if 
he’s being followed. Because for 
instance, if JSR had suspicions of 
Michel and he decided to go to the 
first meeting without journalists but 
he decided to just go there to see 
what it’s about, and he decided to 
bring a surveillance team to figure 
out who Michel really is, my job was 
to make sure that if somebody’s 
following Michel, I don’t get caught 
but I tell Michel through Khaykin; 
hey, there’s a guy following you.
Then at that point, Black Cube would 
be able to make a decision and would 
be able to understand that the person 
that they met with did not have full 
trust of them, you know?
JACK: 
Oh man, this is about to get 
crazy, because this is becoming a game 
of spy versus spy. Igor will be 
watching the agent’s back, and JSR is 
all set up to spy on the spy. Stay 

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with us because after the break, it 
all goes wrong. A date was set for 
the meeting between JSR and Michel.
JSR hatches a plan.
JOHN: 
The thinking was pretty 
simple; this person is obviously 
coming under a false pretense and they 
may be coming with the objective of 
harming me, harming my colleagues’ 
reputations, but most importantly, 
probably the objective is to deny 
justice to the victims of hacking by 
trying to discredit their research in 
some way, or otherwise create problems 
for the lab. So, we decided that the 
best approach would be to play it into 
a meeting and actually have an in-
person sit down with this character, 
Michel Lambert, but bring some people 
with us, a reporting team led by 
Satter who would at the right time 
confront Lambert while we were meeting 
and ask him some pointed questions 
about why he didn’t really exist and 
why his company didn’t appear to 
exist.
JACK: 
JSR meets up with Raphael 
Satter, the reporter from the 
Associated Press, and prepares for the 
meeting.
JOHN: 
The period before the meeting 
was pretty intense for us because of 
course you’re second-guessing 

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everything. You’re wondering well, 
what on the off-chance you do if 
actually this turns out to be a 
legitimate meeting? [MUSIC] Is the 
person going to guess that we’re onto 
them? Am I gonna be able to maintain 
this deception? I really wanted it to 
work and I felt very strongly that to 
protect my colleagues, it was 
important that I do this job really 
well. So, up to late – or the early 
hours in the night beforehand, I was 
assembling my own video camera 
necktie. The reason was, I had sort 
of felt like, maybe I should bought – 
buy a pen camera or something like 
that, you know? Something I can – 
some spy tech.
Then I thought well, if I buy 
something spy-techy, if this guy’s any 
good, he’s gonna look at it and he’s 
gonna be like well, I know what that 
is, right? He’s pointing a pen camera 
at me. So, I didn’t want a scenario 
where we were both pointing our pen 
cameras at each other or something 
like that so I thought well, I’ll have 
to make my own thing. So, I buy a 
necktie, cannibalize a bunch of the 
things in the hotel room that I’m 
staying at, disassemble a baby video 
monitor and a bunch of other things 
and create a reasonable approximation 
of a covert camera video necktie. So, 
the day of the meeting comes and of 

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course, things start going wrong. I 
had this plan to make a bunch of time 
available so that I’d get there in due 
time but not too early. Wouldn’t want 
to be suspicious. Instead, I shamble 
out and discover that it is pouring 
rain.
As anybody who’s been in New York will 
tell you, getting a taxi in the 
pouring rain ain’t easy. Finally I 
find myself a ride and get in, and I’m 
already wearing my video necktie and 
I’m super jazzed up, but also quite 
concerned. I begin to become 
concerned that I’m gonna be late and 
they’re gonna smell a rat and call it 
off. We’re getting there, getting 
closer, getting closer, and a couple 
blocks away there’s a complete premium 
New York gridlock traffic jam. I just 
sort of say well, to hell with it, and 
pop out and just run [MUSIC] with my 
pockets filled with recording gear 
towards the meeting venue. [00:25:00] 
I had actually managed to break my 
necktie camera. I had to change out; 
I brought a spare, changed out my 
necktie, and make it. I arrive 
soaking wet and feeling about as 
awkward and ill-prepared as I probably 
felt when I took the SAT as a kid.
So, I make it to this swank 
restaurant. I show up and I’m just 
like, I’m evaporating. I’m soaking 

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and exhausted and just sure that the 
whole game is up; everything’s gonna 
fall apart. The maître d’ comes up to 
me and he’s like well, can I help you?
I said yes, I’m – and I realized I 
don’t know what to tell this person.
So, I just – well, I’m here with Mr. 
Michel Lambert. Ah, of course, the 
man says, and walks me to the back.
As we reached the back of the 
restaurant, a man is sitting at a 
table behind a pillar, not visible 
from the front. He stands up and 
greets me and then walks me to another 
table right by the window. So, 
already it’s an awkward piece of stage 
direction footwork. Like, what is 
this weird table-shift that this guy’s 
doing? But he’s very cordial and we 
immediately begin on small talk. I’m 
sitting there evaporating and hoping I 
don’t mess up.
JACK: 
Okay, so where is Raphael 
Satter at this point?
JOHN: 
Well, so, Satter has brought a 
videographer with him, and we have a 
sports photographer stationed outside 
the hotel to sort of catch them if 
they walk out, right? We want close 
and some long shot cover. Satter and 
his colleague didn’t have a budget for 
this and so, I think they ordered – 
this is a fancy restaurant – they 
ordered a shrimp cocktail and some 

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waters, and they are sitting at a 
booth not super-far as luck would have 
it, from where we end up sitting, 
eating their shrimp cocktail. We had 
kind of thought about where these 
operators would have wanted the 
meeting to take place, figuring that 
well, they’re gonna be recording for 
sound and audio, so they’re gonna have 
a certain set of desirables, and we 
kind of guessed where we should put 
Satter and his colleague if at all 
possible to record or catch things.
It ended up working quite well. So, I 
get in and scrupulously avoid looking 
at Satter and his colleague, right?
The plan was for them to arrive before 
even this Lambert alias got there, so 
he wouldn’t necessarily feel a rat, 
right, and just act normal. Somehow, 
despite the fact that they were 
carrying a camera in a duffel bag, 
like a big production camera, nobody 
seems to have noticed them.
JACK: 
As soon as JSR arrives, Michel 
insists that JSR has a martini with 
him.
JOHN: 
No martini for me. You know 
what? Tea would be great, black tea.
JACK: 
But JSR refuses the drink and 
asks for tea instead. They sit down 
near a window where they can both be 

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clearly seen from the street, and 
together they sit and talk in French.
JOHN: 
[FRENCH]
JACK: 
About nothing, really; just 
like, where they both know French from 
and what countries they’ve visited.
It’s meaningless chit-chat, and while 
JSR’s camera necktie was broken, he 
did manage to still record the audio.
They order a fancy meal and eat it 
together.
WAITER: We have lobster bisque.
JOHN: 
Ah, lobster bisque. Okay, 
great.
WAITER: We have nice Beef Bourguignon 
today.
IGOR: 
Let me tell you this part in 
detail. [MUSIC] We arrive, we park.
I park my car in the garage. Khaykin 
parks on the hydrant, and I have to 
jump in Khaykin’s car to keep the car 
from getting a ticket. Khaykin goes 
inside. When you walk inside the 
restaurant, there’s three sections to 
the right and the target and the agent 
are in the furthest section to the 
right. To the left there’s a single 
section which is a bar. I’ve been 

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there before ‘cause we’ve covered a 
few meetings there before, so I know 
the layout very well.
JOHN: 
I tried to be very 
surveillance-unaware. I tried to 
really never stare and never look.
But I did clock a guy holding up his 
cell phone in a really awkward way and 
was pretty convinced that he was 
taking my picture. He was sort of 
behind Michel and to the side. They 
try to have a recorder stationed in 
such a way that the fact of the 
operative is not included in the video 
footage so they don’t have to blur it 
or something or they don’t have 
footage with an operative’s face in 
it.
IGOR: 
Khaykin comes back out a few 
minutes later, maybe twenty minutes 
later. He shows me the pictures that 
he had already sent me by text 
message. I show him the pictures I 
took outside, and Khaykin says to me 
Igor, the meeting is going very well.
[MUSIC] This is very unusual, so this 
is like a very interesting point. My 
ears kind of point up. I’m like, 
okay, the meeting is going very well.
Igor, I want you to sit at the bar 
where you’re going to have a limited 
view. [00:30:00] You’re not gonna be 
able to see the meeting anymore. We 
don’t need to be close to them. We 

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don’t need to be in the restaurant. I 
want you to be in the bar where you’re 
going to have a view of the top of the 
stairs. When the subjects leave, 
right, when the target and the agent 
leave, you are going to follow them.
The meeting is going so well, in fact, 
they might even go to have drinks 
somewhere else. They might go hang 
out. The meeting is going great.
Very unusual. Usually these meetings, 
they split up and they don’t continue 
hanging out. Usually they have a set 
time and once they’re done, they 
leave, and we do the counter-
surveillance bit, and it’s over. I 
say Roman, I understand. Totally, 
totally cool. I’m gonna sit, watch 
the top of the stairs. When I see the 
agent and the target leave, if they 
stay together, I’m gonna follow them 
until they split up. When they split 
up, I’m gonna make sure that the agent 
is not followed and I’m free to go.
Khaykin says Igor, it’s going so 
great, I want you to relax. Again, 
something that usually never happens.
Usually it’s very tense, we’re going 
over possibilities, we’re prepping, 
we’re talking about what could happen, 
we’re discussing who’s parked outside.
Roman says don’t worry; it’s going 
really well. Relax. Have a drink.
Have a burger. Have whatever you 
want. Again, something very unusual 

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because Black Cube are very cheap. I 
mean, these guys are such cheapskates.
They send me to a restaurant to do a 
job that had a prix fixe menu. They 
picked the restaurant and I chose the 
cheapest prix fixe option and they 
questioned me on the bill. I took a 
picture of the menu ‘cause I had a 
feeling that somebody’s gonna ask me 
like, why’d you eat so much, you know?
But in reality, it’s not a lot of 
food; it’s a prix fixe menu. You 
don’t have any options, right? It’s 
very unusual for Black Cube to tell 
Roman or to Roman to have the liberty 
to say hey, go ahead; splurge for a 
latte today. Relax. But I’m thinking 
that since things are going very well 
and the client, he was very particular 
about you following instructions.
They would get very angry if I 
deviated a little bit and I took 
pictures more liberally including the 
face of their agent. They would get 
really pissed at that. So, I go in 
the bar.
JACK: 
When – can you explain what 
kind of equipment you have with the 
pictures and the microphones and 
stuff?
IGOR: 
Oh, yeah. No microphones 
because we can’t eavesdrop by law, and 

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for pictures, I use my phone. I use 
an iPhone.
JACK: 
Okay.
IGOR: 
I have a video camera. I use 
a camcorder. It’s like a prosumer 
Panasonic camcorder. It’s about a 
thousand bucks. So, I go in the hotel 
and Khaykin has to leave. [MUSIC] He 
takes his car off the fire hydrant and 
he drives home to do his thing with 
his daughter. As I walk into the 
hotel, there’s a photoshoot with 
models and professional photographers, 
equipment, people bringing coffee and 
water. We’re talking about a real 
photoshoot, right? It’s in the lobby 
of the hotel. Khaykin just came out 
of the lobby of the hotel. He didn’t 
say anything to me and I think to 
myself, well, it’s a professional 
photoshoot. This is not some kind of 
secret photoshoot to catch the agent, 
right? Because this is a real 
photoshoot.
I talked to the people who work – who 
are working at the photoshoot and they 
tell me that they’re working for the 
hotel magazine. It’s an internal 
magazine for their guests and they’re 
making this photoshoot for that. I’m 
content because they’re working with 
the hotel management. I do a little 
bit of amateur photography, so I know 

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that the equipment they’re using, it’s 
– you know, they’re using lenses that 
are not like telephoto lenses; they’re 
basically using lenses that are for – 
they’re portrait lenses and they have 
a couple of wide angle lenses. I see 
that they use nice Canon cameras.
Sounds good to me. It’s a pro 
photoshoot. Nothing to do with me.
I’m going upstairs to the bar. I get 
into the bar, I watch the stairs, I 
order some stuff, and I’m watching the 
stairs. An hour passes by or so.
JACK: 
Now, Igor can’t see JSR or 
Michel from the bar. He’s just around 
the corner, but he knows this place 
well and knows that there’s only one 
way in and out, so he’s watching the 
exit. He sees the people from the 
photoshoot downstairs come up and have 
a drink. He sits there stationed with 
his eyes on the doorway.
JOHN: 
Within a couple of minutes of 
the conversation starting, he was 
using this weird offensive term to 
refer to the way that Africans speak 
French and trying to get me to laugh 
along. It was the strangest 
conversational gambit. I began to 
feel at this point [00:35:00] that 
this guy maybe wasn’t sure how long 
he’d have me at that table for or how 
long the deception would work, and so, 
he wanted to get me saying something 

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perhaps racist or offensive right 
away, something that could be laughed 
about.
MICHEL: [FRENCH]
JOHN: 
Then the conversation was an 
hour of sort of him semi-boasting, 
semi-chatting, trying to get 
biographical details on me, talking 
about all the African leaders he’d 
met, the time that he’d spent in 
Africa, various other things. But the 
strangest part of this whole 
conversation is that the guy had cue 
cards with him. They were like, green 
and yellow and red pastel cue cards, 
big index cards. [MUSIC] As the 
conversation is going on, the boring 
questions to me are green cue cards.
Then right around the one-hour mark, 
as the conversation starts getting a 
little bit more interesting, as I 
recall it, the yellow cards come out.
Then he’s starting to ask questions 
about Citizen Lab. Up until that 
point, he had been sort of preserving 
the ruse that he’s just a rich guy who 
would really like to hire me to fly 
kites in Africa or something. Then he 
kinda doubles in for the really good 
questions, like oh, tell me more about 
Citizen Lab, and at various times 
tries to prompt me to say things like 
Citizen Lab’s work would be somehow 
motivated by racism or some – I mean, 

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really wild stuff, and deeply 
offensive.
JOHN: 
Who would be using that racist 
element?
MICHEL: You said that it was 
journalists in Mexico, etc, etc.
JOHN: 
Well, that would be very 
upsetting if it were happening, I 
think. I began to feel that he had 
this list on his cards that were like, 
well, if you can’t get some good, 
juicy information about the lab, maybe 
he can get me to say something 
offensive. I felt like he had this 
shopping list. He was going through 
it all and going through it all. Our 
conversation plods on for like, it 
must have been about ninety minutes.
He will come in conversationally on a 
tangent, try to get me to say 
something about the lab or NSO and 
then back right off if I push back a 
little bit. For somebody who, at 
various points in the conversation, 
pretended to have no knowledge of 
technical stuff, he seems remarkably 
well-informed about export controls.
The impression of him as a bumbling 
spy was kinda cemented by the fact 
that he had this pen in his hand, big 
thick pen, and at various points when 
I’d be talking, he’d be like holding 
the tip of the pen pointed at me, like 

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the tip of the pen cap pointed at me.
There was a hole in the middle of the 
pen cap, and I thought it was 
undoubtedly a camera and he wanted to 
get me on video.
I think I learned later that it might 
have been a microphone, but it really 
felt bumbling. As this is going on, I 
am getting messages from the – from 
Satter saying like, everything okay?
Is it going alright? Yeah, yeah, it’s 
going alright. Then I get this 
alarmed message that’s like hey, our 
batteries are running low. Can you 
wrap it up? So, I have to come up 
with some pretext to wrap this – at 
this point ridiculous conversation up.
At one point he invites me to leave 
with him to go to a cigar bar. Like, 
we’ll go together, it’ll be great.
So, I find a way to distract him, 
talking about kites flying and 
buildings. I point at the window next 
to us and I say, look out the window; 
if I was trying to fly a kite on this 
building, here’s what I’d do. You’d 
think like, how could you even use a 
kite out in this? The answer is, it’s 
still possible. You get on the 
rooftops. He dutifully looks out the 
window, and when he looks back at me, 
Raphael Satter is pulling up a chair.
RAPHAEL: 
Hi. My name’s Raphael 
Satter. I’m a journalist with the 

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Associated Press, England. I’d like 
to speak to you about your company, 
CPW Consulting.
MICHEL: I don’t have to speak with 
you.
JOHN: 
Satter then pressures him and 
the guy doesn’t really have any good 
answers about why his company isn’t 
real, why he doesn’t appear to be 
real. So, as Satter is asking him 
questions about who he is, he really 
is, the guy makes a gambit to leave 
and then, realizing his mistake, he 
comes back and tries to pay for the – 
his lunch. [MUSIC] As he’s trying to 
pay, Satter and the camera are right 
there asking questions. By then, the 
restaurant has basically cleared out.
The only people left, I – at this 
point I think, are probably the people 
on his team. That’s what I’m 
thinking, the people on his team or 
the people on my team and maybe a few 
lunch stragglers. So, it’s really a 
crazy scenario. The guy is just 
trying to avoid the camera which is 
really hard to do in a rather limited 
space restaurant while trying to pay.
[00:40:00] So, is peppered by 
questions, and finally you can just 
feel his terror grow and there’s 
almost like a Yakety Sax moment as 
he’s being followed around by me, by 

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the cameraman, by Satter asking him 
all these questions. He finally spots 
an open door in the back to a private 
dining room and goes inside. There’s 
a restaurant staffer there. He tries 
to pull the door closed behind him but 
he’s clearly had such an adrenaline 
dump that he’s just like, tunnel 
vision and doesn’t notice that there’s 
a stopper on the door, so he’s trying 
to pull this door closed, doesn’t get 
it, and asks the restaurant employee 
for help; these people are bothering 
me. So, the restaurant employee 
dutifully pushes out the stopper and 
closes the door, and that’s the last 
we see of this guy.
IGOR: 
At some point, now my phone 
starts ringing and I see it’s Khaykin 
calling. I’m watching the stairs; 
nobody has left, but I see at the top 
of the stairs a guy with bushy hair 
and a guy with a camera, with a video 
camera that they use for news 
broadcasting or something, for live 
news. I think, that’s a little weird 
but considering there’s a photoshoot 
going on here, maybe these guys just 
are working with the photoshoot, you 
know? I pick up the phone. I’m 
looking at those guys, and I’m 
thinking ah, those guys – probably 
doesn’t mean anything. Roman Khaykin 
is screaming into the phone, Igor, 
what’s going on? [MUSIC] Who are 

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those people with the cameras? I go 
Khaykin, what are you worried about?
They’re doing a photoshoot for the 
hotel magazine. I talked with them.
He goes oh, are you sure? I go yeah, 
yeah, I’m looking at them right now.
There’s a dozen people; there’s two 
guys with cameras.
They got lights set up. It’s a 
professional photoshoot. He’s 
waiting, he’s kind of silent, then 
he’s like no, no, no, who are the 
people with the cameras? Who’s the 
journalist? Now it clicks in my mind 
that I’m staring at basically – I’m 
staring at Raphael Satter and the AP 
videographer. But I don’t know them, 
right? I don’t know their names.
I’ve never seen them before but I’m 
staring at them and I’m like, Roman, 
there is a guy here with a big video 
camera and another guy with bushy 
hair. He’s like okay, the agent is in 
trouble. He’s hiding in the back 
somewhere. We need to help get him 
out of there. Help get him out of 
there. Figure out what’s going on.
Take pictures of everybody. This is a 
problem. This is a problem. Where 
did they come from? I said Roman, I 
don’t know. I’m gonna go figure out, 
but they must have been here when you 
arrived because they never came in and 
they never came out. This is the 
first time I’m seeing them. If 

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they’re coming from inside the 
restaurant, clearly they’ve been there 
longer than me and they’ve been there 
when you came in, right?
Okay, figure it out. I’m running 
around now trying to figure things 
out. He’s still yelling into my ear.
I’m calling him back and I’m taking 
videos with my phone. I have an app – 
oh, this is kind of neat; I have an 
app on my phone that you could double-
tap the screen and it turns the screen 
off. So, it can – it’s rolling video 
but the screen is blank. It’s just a 
black screen as if the phone is off.
That’s the kind of – that’s the cool 
feature about it. So, I’m taking 
video of what’s going on, taking 
identifiable video of people, of 
Raphael Satter, of the videographer 
from Associated Press, of John Scott-
Railton, and I’m trying to figure out 
what’s going on, kind of listening 
with – for all the commotion. Roman 
tells me you know, we have to help get 
Michel out of there, but he’s not 
calling him Michel. He say, we have 
to help get the agent out. The agent 
is somewhere; he’s hiding. You need 
to help him get out. I said okay, 
tell me where – tell me what to do.
How do I help him get out? What does 
he need? He goes, I’ll call him back.
You get the video; figure out what’s 
going on. In the meantime, get 

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pictures of everybody so we could 
figure out who’s who later. So, I’m 
doing that.
Periodically Khaykin is calling me, 
yelling into the phone frantically, 
and I’m waiting outside. Raphael 
Satter, John Scott-Railton, and the 
two AP people; the photographer, the 
videographer, gather outside. I get 
some pictures of them, and they split 
up and they leave. I take notice that 
JSR’s wearing a very professional 
outfit and he’s a very smart-looking 
guy. I watch people all the time, so 
I’m thinking this guy’s very smart. I 
hope I get to meet him one day ‘cause 
it looks like he organized all this.
He clearly looks like the smartest guy 
in the room. He knows what’s going 
on. In my mind I put a checkmark; 
JSR, smart guy, smart dress, 
interesting. I look at Raphael Satter 
and I say Raphael Satter, he’s not 
prepared for the weather. We’re in 
New York; it’s cold. It’s wet 
outside. He’s wearing ASICS running 
shoes. [00:45:00] I said, he must be 
the guy who’s here doing something 
else. [MUSIC] I don’t know what his 
role is, but we’ll put a checkmark 
that he’s not prepared to be outside 
for a while. Then the videographer, 
the photographer from the Associated 
Press are dressed like they’re ready 
to hike up Mount Everest.

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They got hiking boots, they got cold 
weather gear, they got good jackets, 
they got – they’re ready to spend a 
lot of time outside. I said okay, 
these guys are the professional 
photographers that are gonna be – that 
were told to be prepared to wait, and 
they were ready to wait outside in the 
cold. I report back to Khaykin. He 
says okay, good, you got their 
pictures. I got their pictures; 
great. Send them to me later. You 
need to go to the Marriott hotel 
around the corner, get your car, pick 
up the agent. I say okay, he was able 
to get out? He says, yeah. He found 
the back exit somewhere? ‘Cause I’m 
standing in the front lobby and I’m 
watching the front. So, he found 
another way to get out of the 
building. He got out, and he made his 
own way to the Marriott hotel around 
the corner. I go get my car and I 
have – my car’s tinted out, so you 
can’t really see inside. Even the 
windshield is tinted, so you can’t 
make faces out when you’re standing 
next to my car. I drive to the 
Marriott hotel.
I tell Khaykin I’m there. The agent 
comes out, gets in the back of my car, 
and Khaykin tells me on the phone, 
whatever he needs, offer him whatever 
he needs. You are to do whatever he 
says. In my mind I’m thinking yeah, 

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yeah, whatever he says, but I’m not 
putting no fucking dead bodies in the 
car. I mean, whatever he says, it’s a 
very wide meaning, but meanwhile I’m 
agreeing with Khaykin. I said yeah, 
of course, Roman. Anything he needs.
The guy gets in the car; he’s a very 
pleasant old man. Kinda reminded me a 
little bit of a grandpa character from 
a movie of some sort. He’s talking 
either in Hebrew or in French. He’s 
not speaking English. He’s talking to 
someone. I shake his hand. He gets 
in the back; he doesn’t introduce 
himself. I say my name is Igor. He 
tells me, go to this hotel. I drive 
to this hotel and I drive around to 
make sure that I’m not being followed.
JACK: 
Are you good at that? Are you 
good at lose – like, seeing if you’ve 
been followed, and you know the way 
around?
IGOR: 
Well, yeah. I follow people 
all the time, so it’s easy for me to 
figure out how to check if I’m being 
followed, right? I guess sometimes we 
get paranoid, so we just check.
JACK: 
Can you explain how to check 
if you’ve been followed, if you’re 
being followed? Like, your – kind of 
your methods?

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IGOR: 
[MUSIC] So, I’ll tell you 
about that specific scenario. We were 
in midtown Manhattan where the traffic 
in the evening is pretty heavy.
There’s a lot of traffic lights and 
there’s a lot of movement. So, it’s 
not easy to drive in a – like, ideally 
if you’re driving on the highway, 
right, if you slow down or you speed 
up, the person who’s following you has 
to match what you’re doing, so that’s 
how you could force somebody to show 
themselves that they would be distinct 
from the rest of the traffic. You 
could get off the highway and see who 
gets off the highway with you. You 
could go to a McDonalds drive-through, 
come out, you could go to a bank 
drive-through, come out, and you’re 
seeing who is constantly showing up in 
the same cars? Who’s making the same 
turns?
You get back on the highway; who is 
back on the highway? Who was there a 
half-hour ago? In midtown, you can’t 
do that because there’s so many cars.
You’ll never – you can’t possibly 
remember all the cars. So, in 
midtown, the goal is to drive down 
quiet streets, force somebody to stay 
behind, and then have to chase you 
down when you get to the next corner, 
or go into – in midtown there’s a lot 
of garages that you enter, let’s say, 
at 51st Street, but you exit on 52nd 

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Street, and they’re going in – they’re 
one-way streets, so they’re going in 
opposite directions. The avenues are 
going in opposite directions also.
So, if I go into a garage let’s say on 
51st, exist on 52nd and I come out to 
the avenue, and – so, I’m changing my 
direction of travel and I’m forcing 
someone to go through a garage, 
because there’s no way that they could 
circle that block and get to the 
corner where I’ll come out. You know 
what I’m saying?
JACK: 
Yeah.
IGOR: 
So, I do a couple of those 
things. Rush hour traffic is dying 
down now and everything is cool. I’m 
content. There’s no cars following 
us. He’s the professional; he seems 
content. He’s just talking constantly 
into his phone. I drive to his hotel, 
also in midtown. He gives me a claim 
check to give to the guy in the lobby 
to take his luggage out of storage, 
which immediately in my mind, I say oh 
shit, I’m gonna have this guy’s 
luggage in my hand. [MUSIC] 
[00:50:00] What are the chances that 
this professional spy is gonna have 
his name tag on his luggage in case it 
gets lost? If he has it, I gotta get 
a picture ‘cause I’ll have his name.
The second thing that I’m thinking; 
it’s PM, right? It’s in the evening.

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His luggage is in the hotel lobby in 
storage. That means that he stayed at 
this hotel, but he checked out the 
same morning. So, he had plans to 
leave the hotel and probably leave New 
York tonight.
JACK: 
I love the way a private 
investigator thinks. When you think 
about that – I don’t think about it 
like that, but I love hearing the way 
you think it through.
IGOR: 
Yeah, I mean, it’s just – for 
me, it’s like, I guess we’re 
overthinking everything. It’s just 
helpful at work. So, whatever, I give 
the guy five bucks because I want the 
guy to get the luggage and not make me 
wait. I have Michel in my car. It’s 
parked illegally. It’s tinted out; 
nobody could see him, and I explained 
that to him before I leave. I say 
look, the car has tinted windows. No 
one can see your face. Stay in the 
car; no one will see you. We were not 
followed. I get the luggage in the 
lobby, I look at the – this guy, this 
fucker has a name tag on the luggage 
and I’m thinking, are you a – 
seriously, are you a spy? I look; it 
has his name tag and his address on 
the luggage.
JACK: 
His luggage did not say Michel 
Lambert. It had a completely 

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different name.
IGOR: 
I think alright, I’m gonna 
snap a picture of this, but I’m not 
gonna do it in the lobby ‘cause I 
don’t know where Michel is, ‘cause now 
I left him uncontrolled. He’s in my 
car but I don’t know if he came out, 
if he’s looking over my shoulder. I’m 
gonna put the luggage in the trunk.
When I put the luggage in the trunk, 
Michel’s head is going to be facing 
forward ‘cause I have an SUV. He’s 
not gonna see me. I put my camera app 
on with the black screen and I snap a 
picture of the luggage when I put it 
in the trunk, and I close the trunk.
I swipe my finger and the app goes 
away. It’s gone, so when I put my 
phone back on the magnet on the 
dashboard, Michel is not gonna see 
that I had the camera app on. He 
tells me to drive him to another hotel 
in the area. I drive him to a hotel, 
but he doesn’t like it. He says, 
where’s the lobby? [MUSIC] I say, 
it’s on the second floor, I think.
This is New York, so sometimes the 
lobby is not gonna be on the first 
floor ‘cause they have a business 
there.
He goes no, no, no, I need a hotel 
with a street-facing lobby. I say 
okay, I understand; you want to be 
able to see outside and you want to be 

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
44/58
able to see what’s going on. I say 
okay, give me a second, there’s 
another hotel around the corner. The 
only thing that he asked me in the car 
– he asked me, who were those people 
at the restaurant? I said I’m not 
sure, but I think the guy you met with 
brought the guy with the bushy hair 
and I think that they brought those 
people with them because those people 
were dressed like paparazzi would 
dress to wait for a celebrity outside.
They might be paparazzi ‘cause they 
had very professional photo equipment.
He says okay, thank you, whatever, and 
he continues talking on the phone.
The only thing that I picked up from 
him talking on the phone is that he 
was trying to get a flight to Israel 
because he was saying the word direct 
Tel Aviv.
Then he was saying some other 
phrasing, and then he would say 
London, Heathrow, or he would say 
Berlin or Paris, and then he would say 
direct Tel Aviv, so I couldn’t 
understand the context, but he was 
offering options of cities where there 
are airports that you could connect a 
flight to Israel. I think he was 
trying to get somebody, whoever was on 
the phone, to get him home, to get him 
to Israel. Later, analyzing this 
post-fact, I realized that they’re a 
very economic company, so what I have 

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
45/58
a feeling was going on is he probably 
had another gig lined up, so he had 
travel plans to go somewhere else.
But because the operation went to 
shit, there were photographers taking 
his picture and the journalist talking 
to him, he believed that his face 
could end up being on TV or in a 
publication tomorrow. So, in the 
scenario where an intelligence 
operative gets his picture taken, it’s 
the worst thing. Intelligence 
operatives typically don’t want their 
picture taken because it prevents them 
from doing things covertly.
So, he needed to get home just in 
case. I don’t think that there was a 
risk that he was gonna get thrown in 
jail, but I think as a standard 
operative procedure, when you get your 
picture taken, you gotta go to a safe 
place which for him was Israel. I 
take him to the Riu Plaza in New York 
which has a very big glass lobby, and 
I thought right – but once he told me 
he wants a street-facing lobby, 
[00:55:00] I tell him there’s a spot 
around the corner with a big glass 
lobby and you could sit in the 
restaurant or the bar and you could 
see the street and you could be far 
away, removed from the street, that 
nobody would see you. I take him 
there, I shake hands, and that was it.

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
46/58
He went on his way and I went on my 
way.
JACK: 
Well, after all this, Raphael 
Satter went back to the Associated 
Press to investigate this Michel 
person. At the same time, Igor was 
sending all this information to Ronan 
Farrow.
IGOR: 
I send Farrow all the pictures 
and I say Ronan, I don’t know what 
happened here. Do you know anybody in 
these pictures? He goes yeah, in 
fact, I do know them. One of them is 
a reporter for the Associated Press, 
Raphael Satter, and one of them is a 
researcher, John Scott-Railton. I go, 
great. As me and Farrow are talking, 
a couple hours later, Farrow tells me 
that Raphael Satter happened to send 
all of their media to Farrow to review 
just because Satter knew that Farrow 
was working on the story. They 
decided to I guess share or discuss, 
and Farrow was looking at pictures of 
Khaykin and other pictures from the – 
that Satter and JSR took. I asked 
Farrow; I said Farrow, is my picture 
in there or no? He goes, your picture 
is not in there but your boss is. I 
said, good for my boss. I’m glad my 
picture is not in there. That’s 
awesome.

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The Spy – Darknet Diaries
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JACK: 
So, Raphael Satter puts all 
this together and publishes the story 
in The New York Times, titled The Case 
of the Bumbling Spy: A Watchdog Group 
Gets Him on Camera. The story 
explains that they reached out to 
Uvda, that Israeli investigative 
journalism show, which you actually 
heard a clip from earlier in this 
episode. Uvda recognized the photo of 
Michel and was able to identify him as 
someone who works for Black Cube.
JOHN: 
What happened rather quickly 
after the initial story is that people 
saw his face and people saw his face 
in his home country of Israel and 
tipped off reporters. Within a few 
days, The New York Times had the story 
that he was a former Israeli 
intelligence officer or official named 
Aharon Almog-Assoulin. He also was 
some kind of a city councilman in his 
city, or had been. This of course was 
bad news for the guy because not only 
was he named, which is obviously 
poison if you’re a – an intelligence 
operative, but also he seemed to be 
uniquely ill-prepared for what was 
going on, and bumbling.
IGOR: 
Next day, I’m meeting up with 
Khaykin and Khaykin tells me that 
because of what happened, we’re gonna 
have a team meeting with Black Cube 
next week on Wednesday. I say okay, 

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
48/58
cool. I’m thinking in my head, next 
week Wednesday I’m gonna get to meet a 
manager from Black Cube which will be 
awesome. They’re probably going to 
give us some professional training and 
explain to us what we did wrong.
There’s probably gonna be a debrief of 
this situation. This is great. So, I 
get in touch with Farrow. I tell him 
next week on Wednesday there’s gonna 
be a manager from Black Cube coming 
here. We’re gonna have a team 
meeting. I can’t wait; I’m so 
excited. So, as we get into next 
week, Khaykin tells me tomorrow you’re 
gonna be polygraphed. Don’t have any 
alcohol and don’t take any drugs 
tonight.
JACK: 
[MUSIC] Long story short, he 
gets a lawyer who tells him not to 
take the polygraph.
IGOR: 
So, whatever, I gave them an 
excuse why I’m not gonna be taking the 
polygraph, and Khaykin was very upset.
He tried to convince me to go there.
When I told him finally I’m definitely 
not going there, he asked me the 
polygraph questions on the phone and I 
think somebody from Black Cube was 
listening in on the call, like kind of 
on a three-way call. Some of the 
questions they asked me is they wanted 
to know how much the journalists paid 
me.

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
49/58
JACK: 
They thought that JSR or 
Raphael Satter paid him to tip them 
off that Michel wasn’t who he said he 
was. They had no idea how JSR was so 
prepared and figured all this out.
IGOR: 
That totally made – that 
totally blew my mind up inside. I 
wanted to really throw something at 
them through the phone, you know? I 
got so angry. I was thinking these 
people are so, so ignorant of the way 
that the American system of 
journalism, of our freedom that they 
don’t have this concept. They think 
the journalists paid for stories? It 
really pissed me off. [01:00:00] Of 
course, I didn’t show that I told 
them. I said Khaykin, what do you 
think I’m worth? I said, I don’t know 
anybody’s name. I don’t know what 
we’re doing. I don’t know anything.
I said, why would anybody pay me?
Plus, I don’t even know in advance 
what we’re gonna be doing tomorrow.
It’s always last-minute, which is also 
kind of a way to compartmentalize. If 
I’m the guy on the ground, they don’t 
tell me anything in advance. Khaykin 
may know in advance that there’s a job 
for tomorrow but he’s not gonna tell 
me until the day before. So, I don’t 
have time to tell anybody else, you 
know? I was just very offended by 
that, that they had this concept that 

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
50/58
they believed journalists would pay 
for a story or pay a source to be a 
source. So, whatever.
I told him, I said listen; they didn’t 
pay me anything. I’m worthless. I 
said, why would any journalist want to 
talk to me? What am I gonna tell 
them? My name is Igor. I live in New 
Jersey. I said you know, these guys, 
they need to get off their high horse 
and – or take me down from the 
pedestal. I forget what I said, but I 
basically said – I said, this is 
nonsense. Why would any journalist 
care about Igor? I said ah, I – and I 
explained to Khaykin – because Raphael 
Satter’s story already printed, I 
explained to him that in the story, 
Raphael Satter explains how John 
Scott-Railton figured out that he was 
being targeted by Black Cube because 
his colleagues were being targeted and 
other people were being targeted.
They were recycling the plot. It was 
easy for JSR to catch onto that, and 
once they started looking into the 
fact that this guy’s company, the 
company – I think it was called CPL 
Consulting or something, that the 
company was fake, there was nothing at 
that address and all these things, and 
they figured out that yeah, this was 
really – this was truly a ploy to get 
information out of John Scott-Railton.
But Roman didn’t want to hear that.

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
51/58
He was just – kept asking me how much 
the journalists paid me. I mean, at 
some point I told him this 
conversation is going in a circle, so 
I said okay, I’m not taking the 
polygraph. You want to fire me? Fire 
me. He said well, the client is gonna 
fire me. I said well, tell them you 
fired me and maybe they wouldn’t fire 
you. But what do you want me to tell 
you? I said, I gave you a heads-up 
back like, three, four months ago or 
six months ago. I said when they’re 
gonna need a guy to blame, you’re 
gonna be the blame guy. [MUSIC] So, 
you’re not seeing that because you’re 
not looking at this from the side, but 
when Black Cube are gonna need a fall 
guy, when they’re gonna need a guy to 
point the finger and say he broke the 
law, they’re gonna say you broke the 
law. You’re the guy who has a license 
in New York. They’re gonna say that 
you knew the law and you did something 
illegal. They’re not gonna say we did 
something illegal. They’re gonna say 
we’re in Israel, we’re a foreign 
company, we’re untouchable in New York 
but you guys got Roman over there; 
he’s the lawbreaker. It ended up kind 
of being that way.
At some point later, I talked to Ronan 
Farrow and when they called for 
comment from Black Cube, Black Cube 
said oh, that illegal stuff with the 

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
52/58
phone tracking, oh, we weren’t doing 
that. That was all Roman’s idea. So, 
it’s kind of – that’s – anyways, 
that’s how it played out. I didn’t 
meet JSR for a long time. I kept 
asking Farrow to introduce me to 
Raphael Satter, but Farrow was ready 
to book it. He didn’t want to get 
scooped, so he kept telling me he’ll 
introduce me to Raphael later. I just 
wanted to shake Raphael’s hand and 
just shake John’s hand and say guys, 
you did a great job. I happened to be 
there and I thought it was amazing.
You guys are awesome. I’ve been 
reading about you. I’m your biggest 
fan. You guys are amazing guys.
Farrow kept delaying the meeting, so 
at some point I just messaged Raphael 
and I started talking to him. I sent 
him some pictures from that day so he 
knew that I was really there. He 
introduced me to JSR and I said we 
should all hang out sometime, have 
dinner in New York. At some point we 
arranged to do that.
JOHN: 
It’s a remarkable thing; when 
you’re in a situation like that, not 
that I’ve been in very many, but this 
one was stressful and fraught. I feel 
like I remember most of the moments 
from it better than many things that 
have happened in my life. [01:05:00] 
Yeah, this was a very intense 
experience for me. Of course, I had 

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
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spent hours, hours and hours trying to 
think about the opposition, trying to 
figure out what – and put myself in 
the mind of whoever was planning on 
the Black Cube side, whoever was doing 
the organizing and the thinking, who 
might be responsible for that. I had 
another sense of a person outside of 
the hotel who, when we left and did a 
regroup, who kind of monitored us and 
was very attentive to us. I 
remembered his clothing really well.
That turned out to be Igor. So, 
during the conversation I had with 
Igor, there was a moment where I was 
like, were you wearing this?
I remember you when you were talking 
to the doorman. Yes, yes. But to set 
the stage emotionally, this was a 
thing where I had spent a lot of time 
trying to figure out who was on the 
other side and what they might have 
been thinking, and to not only get an 
opportunity to meet one of them but 
one of them who had done a righteous 
and good thing by turning 
whistleblower, was a profound 
experience for me. I had deep respect 
for Igor and his choice to turn 
whistleblower when he realized that 
this was really bad. [MUSIC] So, 
meeting him was in some ways like a 
beautiful coda to what had been an 
attempt to try to subvert my work and 
that of my colleague and the ability 

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The Spy – Darknet Diaries
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of the victims that we support to get 
justice, and turns out I pick up a 
friend in the process. So, no 
complaints.
JACK: 
Yeah. So, what does this mean 
that Black Cube was spying on you, I 
guess?
JOHN: 
Well, I think it raises the 
obvious question; a lot of money was 
clearly spent to make this happen.
Who spent that money and what were 
they interested in? Why was 
discrediting us so worth it? As we 
learned, the story doesn’t end there.
Others including lawyers representing 
victims of NSO Group were also 
targeted by the same operation, also 
to meetings or attempted to be lured 
into meetings.
JACK: 
Well, so, hold on, how does 
this tie into NSO?
JOHN: 
Well, the lawyers representing 
a group of victims of NSO spyware in 
court cases brought in Israel and 
elsewhere, those lawyers were also 
targeted by spies, by anonymous spies 
who tried to wine and dine them and 
get them to say things about the case.
JACK: 
So, this might have been in 
connection with the NSO Group? It’s 

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
55/58
not clear exactly if it is and there 
isn’t any hard evidence which 
definitely links it, but we can infer 
that it was them. I mean, NSO did 
come up in their meeting quite a few 
times, so it’s a strong theory. But 
this means just as we were about to 
get to the bottom of this story, the 
bottom just fell out because JSR has 
been investigating the NSO Group for 
years and years and has published 
multiple reports about what the NSO 
has done. So yeah, let’s talk about 
them next. Who is the NSO Group and 
why has JSR been investigating them 
for years? That’s exactly where we’ll 
pick up in the next episode. John, do 
you have any closing thoughts?
JOHN: 
I think at the end of the day, 
the experience that I had gave me 
something really interesting which is 
I had ten years of my life working 
with victims of spyware, people who 
were targeted by spyware as part of 
the efforts of their repressive 
government to mute their voice. I had 
heard countless stories of victims and 
of what it felt like to know that you 
were being targeted by a government or 
by spyware. In the smallest of ways, 
what this moment gave me was a bit of 
a sense of what that feels like, to be 
in a city and to not know whether 
someone is following you, to have the 
sense that there’s a well-resourced 

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18/08/2021
The Spy – Darknet Diaries
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/99/
56/58
entity that’s trying to dig up dirt on 
you, maybe to discredit you, to target 
your friends and your colleagues, it’s 
a terrible feeling and I wouldn’t wish 
it on anyone.
(OUTRO): 
[OUTRO MUSIC] 
[01:10:00] A big thank you to Igor and 
JSR for sharing this crazy story with 
us. If you found this episode 
interesting, you might want to check 
out Ronan Farrow’s podcast called The 
Catch and Kill. In fact, Episode 1 of 
that podcast is the story you just 
heard, but from Ronan Farrow’s 
perspective. It even has JSR and Igor 
as the guests in it. Igor is who 
brought me this story, though. I only 
heard the podcast after I did my 
interviews with him. Anyway, after 
Episode 1 of The Catch and Kill 
podcast, it goes into all the Harvey 
Weinstein stuff which is a different 
path than where we’re going. We’re 
going to be veering directly into the 
NSO Group in the next episode.
Do you get mad when you’re all caught-
up on new episodes and have to wait 
two weeks for the next one? Look, if 
that’s the case, it obviously means 
you really like the show and should 
consider donating to it to help it 
along. Donations to independent 
creators really go a long way at 
helping get new content out to you, so 

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please visit 
patreon.com/darknetdiaries and 
consider supporting the show, or you 
can subscribe to Darknet Diaries Plus 
on Apple Podcasts. Thank you. This 
show is made by me, the secret 
squirrel, Jack Rhysider. Sound design 
this episode was done by the sound of 
silence, Andrew Meriwether. Editing 
help this episode by the feline 
supernova, Damienne, and our theme 
music is by the 3D waffle, Breakmaster 
Cylinder. Even though they never 
caught the hacker, why? Well, because 
he ran somewhere, this is Darknet 
Diaries.
[OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]
[END OF RECORDING]
Transcription performed by Leah Hervoly
www.leahtranscribes.com
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