11) Family Is Our Weakness
2024-06-11 00:43:38
<p>Imagine you were a fly on the wall at a dinner between the mafia, the CIA, and the KGB. That’s where this unprecedented story begins. A journey through the dark world of Russian intelligence where, for the first time, a professed “sex spy” tells her story. All of it. </p> <p>Host Neil Strauss (Rolling Stone, The New York Times) brings listeners into the dangerous world of sexpionage, where enemies of the State are not the only victims. So too are the spies themselves, brainwashed to believe that their bodies belong to Russia and meticulously trained to become “the perfect weapons.” Who is Aliia Roza? From the creators of the hit podcast series To Live and Die in LA, this is To Die For.</p>
I'm John Walczak, host of the new podcast, Missing in Arizona.
And I'm, Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world.
We cloned his voice using AI. In 2001,. police say I killed my family and rigged my house to explode. Before escaping into the wilderness, police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. Join me.
I'm going down in the cave. As I track down clues. I'm going to call the police and have you removed.
Hunting. One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.
Robert Fisher. Do you recognize my voice?
Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories. Firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.
Listen to Betrayal weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Warning.
The following episode contains explicit language and sexual themes.
Listener discretion is advised.
I was very sick. Just fever, but very heavy virus.
And I was alone, and I couldn't contact anyone. Like, no one at all. Because I was hiding that time.
And I remember I had such a strong fever that I passed over and I saw all these ghosts. All these, like, souls of people whom I had to terminate.
They all were standing in front of me, and they told me, It's your time, we are taking you with us.
And I felt like I was lifted by them. And I went to the space, I reckon it was hell or something like that, because I felt pain in every single of my cores of my body.
It was so painful that you cannot even handle it. And I said, like, stop, stop, stop, I can't do this. And they said, well, that's what you deserve.
But then there was another soul or ghost, and it said, let her go. And then it said to me,
you will be back, but you have to complete your mission.
You didn't finish it yet, you have to go back and do it.
And then I woke up, and the next day my fever was gone.
To tear you apart, I had to kill you. Was it so much fun?
Fearless.
And then, when I opened my eyes, I was in that kind of like military hospital, but it wasn't really a hospital, it was just a big room in the building, which was half destroyed. There were many, many different injured soldiers, and some of them, they wouldn't survive.
I had a doctor, maybe like 40, 45-ish years old, and she said, don't cry, everything will be good. You will wear heals very soon, no worry.
And I felt like, I felt like she was like my mom, you know, like, kind of like she cared about me, which, it was nice that she, she gave me this support, that moral support.
After a few days, the doctor discharged Aliyah, gave her crutches, and sent her to a hospital closer to her hometown in Russia. As she sat on the train back home, Aliyah thought about her friend and fellow soldier, Rashid, who had died in the attack on Aliyah's base.
I didn't even know where he lived. I didn't know his address or anything. I regretted that I didn't ask. And then at that point, I felt guilty.
The train dropped Aliyah off in her hometown, where she had been cut off by her family. She was taken directly to a hospital to recuperate.
Alone, with no friends or relatives, her thoughts began to fixate on the abusive colonel, whose marriage proposal she'd rejected, and she wondered about his involvement in sending her to Chechnya.
I didn't want to believe that he would send me there for death. You know, I still couldn't believe, I still was thinking that, no, he can't do it, he loves me. He can't, just, like, send me to die. It's probably bad luck. That's what I was telling myself.
And I was struggling. I wanted to hear his voice. I was so curious, but at the same time, I was so devastated if he would really do this to just kill me. And I decided to call him and find out.
Downstairs in the hospital, they had a stationary telephone, and I remember he had his cell number. I even remember it now. I remember a lot of things about him. I remember the date of his birth. Every single day of the year, I remember that.
So I called him, and he picked up. And I said, Hey, this is me.
And it was a long pause. And he said, So did you fix your mind?
Did you learn anything in the war? Did you become more obedient?
And I asked him, Did you know what really happened there? He said, It doesn't matter.
So did you become more obedient? He asked me again. And I said, What do you want exactly? And he said, I want you to listen to me and follow my order. Whatever I say, you have to do.
And he said, And if you didn't learn your lesson, I will give you another one. And I was so angry and frustrated. The way he talked to me, like I, was kind of like a dog on the street. He's like, I'll give you the second lesson. Like, you know, fuck you.
But I couldn't tell him, fuck you. I wish I could.
I just said, Goodbye. And I hung up the phone.
But straight away after this telephone call, I had the feeling inside that, first of all, I was right. He did send me there to die. And second,
what shall I do now?
And then the hospital gave me the paper where they state, Now you are recovered. And now it's time to go back to work. Then they sent this referral to my department, to my commander, and I came back home to my apartment. It was really lonely and it was really empty. I even had some thoughts that time that I wish I could be dead with Rashid and other soldiers.
Part of that wish to no longer be here was because Aliyah knew what was waiting for her back at the Department of Internal Affairs. Her commander, the Lieutenant General, whose advances she'd rejected. And sure enough, as soon as Aliyah was no longer on crutches, the nightmare with him resumed. But this time, it would have a different ending.
By that time, I already didn't have crunches, but I still walked, kind of like limping. And my Lieutenant General, my commander, he let everybody leave. And he said, stay here for a little bit. Where he was sitting, it was quite a big room. And behind, on the wall where he was sitting, there was the President's portrait and the Russian flag.
Very patriotic. So he said, come closer. So I took all my papers and everything and I moved to the chair, which was closer to his table. And he said,
take off your blouse. And I said, excuse me? He said, take off your blouse, like, open your buttons. Oh, don't worry, like, why are you again like a fucking virgin? Just, like, take some, like, buttons.
I just want to see.
I, surprisingly for myself, I started to open some buttons.
And when I was opening, I was, like, thinking, what, what exactly does he want?
And I was in, like, these doubts where I didn't want to go back to the war. I was so tired and exhausted. I didn't want to have any other problems. And I asked myself that moment, could I potentially, potentially, have sex with this man who is so disgusting to me? I was asking my brain, like, can you do it?
You know, just to save ourselves?
I unbuttoned, just, like, first two buttons. And.
he said, listen, I'm not the man who will ask two times. I ask you one time and I'm not the guy who will run after you and trying to chase you. And he said, with my position, I can destroy you or I can reward you like a queen. You choose.
And you know what? I made my choice that moment. And I said inside of myself, you know what? If I survived the war, I'll survive. Fuck you, asshole.
In that moment, Aliya realized that the only power the Lieutenant General had over her was fear. So she did something that her experiences in Chechnya made possible.
I closed my buttons. I turned around and I walked out from the room. And you know what I was thinking? I was thinking it will be the day when I will press the trigger and you'll be dead. You'll see.
The Aliya Rosa that had left for Chechnya was not the same person who had returned. When you've been to hell and back and are no longer afraid to die, threats, punishments, and consequences. hold no power over you. You are, in a sense, free.
Something happened with me after that war where I felt like, you know what? What else can you do? Send me back? No problem, send me back. You know, you want me to be that?
I, kind of, like I already was there. I was almost dead. When you come to the point when you are not scared anymore, I became completely fearless and it gave me so much power and I just felt it. I felt that moment and I said, like, I'm not, I don't, I will never again in my life allow any man to use my body like they used to do it. I will not allow that.
I can only sacrifice my body for some big missions if it has to be done to save some people, but I definitely won't do it just to please some asshole. And that moment, when the lieutenant general like told me, like, take off your blouse and I said inside, no, I'm not doing that. I started to respect myself. It completely shifted and I was proud of myself. I said,
I will fight.
I just had that feeling and I still have it.
There was sleet and hail and snow coming down.
They found my wife's SUV.
right on the reservation boundary.
And my dog blew.
All I could think of.
is him gonna sniper me out of some tree.
But not me.
Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. For two years.
they won't tell you anything.
I've traveled the nation. I'm going down in the cave. Tracking down clues.
They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere.
If you keep asking me this, I'm gonna call the police and have you removed.
Searching for Robert Fisher.
One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.
Do you recognize my voice?
Join an exploding house. The Hunt.
Family annihilation.
Today. And a disappearing act. Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week you'll hear brand new stories. First-hand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.
Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down. From unbelievable romantic betrayals,
The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him.
to betrayals in your own family.
When I think about my dad,
oh, well,
he is a sociopath.
financial betrayal,
This is not even the part.
where he steals millions of dollars. and life or death deceptions.
She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me.
Listen to Betrayal weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
After standing up to her commander, a strong sense of peace overcame Aliyah. That evening, she slept without nightmares for the first time in years.
I woke up feeling better, and I woke up without having nightmares, like I used to have every single night. I was in a good mood when I came to the department, and, as always, 8 a.m., we have our report, morning, I looked at his face, and I always try to hide my eyes, but that morning, I looked straight up to his fucking face, straight to his eyes, and I noticed that he was avoiding looking into my face.
That's because he was planning the same thing he's done in the past when someone rejects his advances, sends them on a mission where the most likely outcome is a bullet in the head. But this time, it wouldn't be Chechnya. It would be another type of war.
In the end of the reporting, our commander, the lieutenant general, said that he signs agents for the special mission, which was to find out places where hearing was supplied and sold from Afghanistan by the criminal gang, which was the biggest, the most violent, the most dangerous, not just in the city, in the whole area. And they monopolize the whole market of drug trafficking and human trafficking. And we're supposed to work on this gang.
That moment, I felt like, oh my God, we are so fucked.
After selecting Aliyah for this mission, the commander then announced her support team, the four youngest, least experienced agents in the department.
So we had a team of losers, basically. But nobody said anything. Everybody was so scared of our commander. And they were just sitting, looking at the floor, and just like doing nothing and just like sweating.
The first half of the 90s was major gang wars, shootouts, explosions, grenades being launched into buildings, people being murdered on the streets. Really a lot of mayhem.
This is Joe Sirio, author of several books on the Russian Mafia, and reportedly the only American to work in the organized crime control department of the Soviet National Police. Before we get into Aliyah and her team's dangerous assignment, I called him to better understand how the Mafia works in Russia, because it's nothing like in the movies.
Cybercrime. It's worse.
And an appetite.
for violence.
A lucrative international enterprise stretching from Moscow.
to Israel.
to Thailand, to the United States.
They have no qualms.
about murdering people.
If they have to kill you,
they'll kill you?
Absolutely. Here's Joe Sirio again, explaining how the breakup of the Soviet Union created a power vacuum that the Russian Mafia then stepped into. As Russians suddenly cut loose from state support, looked for new sources of income, this network of gangs grew in size and influence.
You had these athletes who no longer had the support of the state. You had military that was being demobilized from Afghanistan. You had security services that knew where all the bodies are buried. And toward the end of the 90s and into the 2000s, it started becoming consolidated, especially around the oligarchs and the security services.
So, when the government was ready to reassert itself, not only did it have to work with the Mafia, but there was no telling who was government and who was Mafia anymore. Everybody wanted money and power.
The one critical thing to understand in Putin is that he's not really running a country, he's running a massive.
Mafia state.
And it's often, if not always,
about money.
The one thing that people have to understand is that organized crime, Mafia, in the way that we think about it traditionally, was not an outside invading force. The gangs were part of the landscape. They worked hand in hand with the state. So some gangs were actually made up of prosecutors and cops. Some gangs were former state officials.
Some gangs were the typical criminal gangs that came out of the quote-unquote underworld. You could have one guy who was a gangster and a bureaucrat and a politician, all in the same person. But if you think about organized crime and Mafia as a separate entity, you'll totally come to the wrong conclusions about Russia. So you were operating all the time in this environment of smoke and mirrors.
So, as Aliyah tells this next part of her story through her experience, it may be helpful to zoom out and consider what her commander's real agenda might have been. Perhaps, not just for her death, but for his enrichment.
Russia is about survival. Period. End of story. The mentality is a thousand-year-old mentality. And the mentality among gangs, gangsters, organized crime groups, politicians, people in power is, I will take until you're strong enough to stop me.
And the difficult part of all this is that you have this Mafia mentality in the state and you have this Mafia muscle in terms of gangsters, in terms of firepower. So what do you do with that?
Aliyah was in her early 20s at this time and had lived a very insular life. First, in her strict home and then in the military. So she was unaware of this complicated game of chess being played around her. But those walls were slowly coming down.
A few times, my agents, my colleagues, we were chasing some drug dealers and eventually, when we would like get into the house or like apartment where they would sell drugs, our commander would call us and say, get out of there, like you can't touch them. And we would like understand how like fuck again, like we couldn't touch them because they would give money to our commander because he was bribed. But yet, our commander wanted us to complete five cases a week. How the fuck are we supposed to do that? And of course, like agents, like, what are they supposed to do?
They would take like prostitute or drug dealer, put in the back or like in the pocket like these drugs and then pretend like there is the whole criminal case and send them to the prison and say like, okay, we did five cases, so what?
Despite getting pulled in by this corrupt culture, Ilya still wasn't aware that the problems in Russian intelligence went far beyond bribery and abuse. She was still inspired or brainwashed by the belief that there were bad people and good people out there. And her job, her assignment, was to fight the evil. At least, when the evil wasn't paying a kickback.
By that time, my motivation was to, I don't know, I just, I still have nightmares. I cannot forget these faces of these twelve, ten years old girls being like overdosed and being literally like dead, laying on the floor of different clubs and on the street. So, for me, that time, I thought,
I don't want to live anyway, but at least my life can be for good. You know, when you don't have fear to be killed, you don't have fear of death, you can do crazy things.
Ilya and her team decided to do their best with the mission they'd been given, to bring down one of the biggest drug and human trafficking gangs in the city.
They were then assigned a slightly more experienced team leader who had been undercover in the gang for the last few months as a small-time drug dealer, providing them with escorts. Under his direction, they began a surveillance operation on the gang.
So, we divided, and the first team that would patrol the house, that the criminals would hang out, they would check restaurants, where they go, and basically everyone who is involved. Then, the second team would be doing exactly the same, but with another members of the gang. So, we were just collecting information. The gang was really big, and it took for us like quite a long time because we had to find out all the details and then every single day in the morning, like at 8 a.m. during the report, my commander, he would scream at us and say, like, give me more information.
Like, what did you do? Like, do you do any shit?
Their main target was the leader of this gang, Vladimir.
My colleague brought the photo, and he said, well, this is our guy. This is the leader.
A great danger to themselves, Aliyah and her fellow agents began staking out Vladimir at the boxing gym he owned.
So, we basically learned his daily routine. He would wake up early morning. He lived in the house together with his other guys in the gang.
Then they would drive black trunk, and they would drive to the boxing court.
And then they would have meetings, like meetings with the brothers. And one day, I remember, we were following the car, and we went maybe like 20 kilometers from that city. And it was like closer to the forest.
The meeting was between two criminal leaders for like maybe 10 minutes. Maybe 20 people were standing in front of each other, and there was some tension going on. But then at one moment, everybody took the gun and started to shoot each other.
So the few brothers were killed from both sides. So I thought like, yeah, this is pretty scary, and it's pretty wild.
And it was about to get scarier for Lia, because her team leader, who was undercover in the gang as a sort of pimp, soon gave her a specific assignment.
So he told me, I will bring you, introduce you to Vladimir, and you need to use all your seduction techniques, because you need to establish connection with Vladimir. And I couldn't say no, because he's the boss of our team, you know?
In other words, he would be introducing Lia to their target as an escort, and her job was to somehow, while playing that uncomfortable role, seduce Vladimir into wanting to see her more. Lia thought back to her training in order to figure out her first moves.
In the.
end, knowing this weakness, you can manipulate your target motives, emotions, dreams, desires.
Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand, accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.
From unbelievable romantic betrayals.
to.
betrayals in your own family.
When I think about my dad,
oh, well,
he is a sociopath.
Financial betrayal.
This is not even the part where.
it steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions.
She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me.
Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm John Walczak, host of the new podcast, Missing in Arizona.
And I'm, Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in.
the world. We cloned his voice using AI. In 2001,, police say.
I killed my family.
First mom, then the kids.
And rigged.
my house to explode. In a quiet suburb. This is the.
Beverly Hills of the valley. Before escaping into the wilderness. There was
sleet and hail and snow coming down.
They found my wife's SUV. Right on the.
reservation boundary.
And my dog flew. All I could.
think of is he's going to sniper me out of some tree.
But not me.
Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. For two years.
They won't tell you anything.
I've traveled the nation. I'm going down in the cave. Tracking down clues. They were.
thinking, I picked him up and took him somewhere.
If you keep asking me this, I'm going to call the police and have you removed.
One of the.
most dangerous fugitives in the world.
Do you recognize my voice?
An exploding house.
A family annihilation.
And a disappearing act. Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Aliyah and her team went through one of Vladimir's high school yearbooks and looked for former classmates who they could reach out to. Eventually, they found someone willing to talk.
His former classmate said that Vladimir was coming from a good family, and he graduated his school, and by 18 years old, he was sent to the army. And this is very important information now. He had a sweetheart, a girl from Uzbekistan, and for a few years, they had this boyfriend- this was his first love. Everybody knew that one day they would get married and have children and nice family. But it didn't happen.
When Vladimir went to the army, she didn't wait for him. So, she started to date someone else. She started to date one criminal.
And then he came back from the army, and she was already pregnant from that criminal guy. So, Vladimir was heartbroken, and he went first to the police, but then he quit, and he went to the criminal gang.
And when we heard that story, together we have exactly the same idea. It's the same strategy which we learned in the academy. I will explain. It's a little bit weird, but that's exactly what government does. For example, USSR, what they used to do when they tried to manipulate the whole population.
Although this had begun as a suicide mission, Aliyah felt that through this weakness, she now had a possible way into the gang. She just needed to use one of the key techniques she learned in her training, what psychologist and marketing expert Robert Cialdini explains here as pre-suasion.
Pre-suasion.
is the.
first stage of a suicide mission. So, got a plan. And we created that plan. what if we will program his unconsciousness that there is a happy end, potentially somewhere in another world, in another life, with another woman, but same as her, but just a better version. This is the manipulation technique where you create a virtual reality for the target brain.
I found it interesting and terrifying that these love traps are often set and planted in the target's unconscious mind long before the target has even met the agent.
So I asked some of my friends, my girlfriends, who looked more or less Asian, and we created three couples, kind of couples. Every morning, Vladimir would have his breakfast with his brothers.
So this one couple would go to the same cafe, and they would sit just in front of him in the next table. They would kiss each other and hug each other and just look at each other with the lovable eyes. So it was the first step. The second step, another girl, Asian-looking, and another boy who was wearing a uniform from the army. We put the pillow in her belly, pretending that she was pregnant.
So once Vladimir went out from the boxing court, going to the car, he saw that couple. Third time, we had a little baby, we gave it to another Asian-looking girl, and we had another guy who would wear the uniform from the army, and we put the baby into a carriage, and they would walk around the house where Vladimir lived. So we planted in his head, in some reality, there is a potential happy ending of the story.
Once these subconscious messages were implanted in Vladimir's brain, the next step was the conscious part of the seduction. It was time for Aliyah to turn herself into a version of this woman, a reminder of the path not taken.
We couldn't really find out the way she looked like, but we asked some questions from the classmate. So his first love, she looked Asian, she was very funny, always positive and smiling. She was wearing, like, short skirts, USSR type of uniform, and the white socks. She had long hair, braided. So we started to work on my appearance, and we decided that I should be somebody like a student, but on the side, I would need to be a prostitute, basically.
So I had to play this role, that I don't have money, and I'm a student,
and I need money for my parents, who are sick.
So, still before her first encounter with Vladimir, Aliyah began practicing for the new identity.
I had to create the name of my mom. I had to create her illness. I created the whole background, which never existed in my life, but I just created it in my brain and made my brain believe in it. It's important because sometimes, like, when you sleep, or you're injured, or you're in a high pain unconsciously, you can give your real name. That's why, as an agent, you literally have to become this person.
In addition, whenever her fellow agents arrested prostitutes, Aliyah would speak with them so she could learn and imitate how they dress, walk, talk, and act.
Every time when I would check prostitutes in order to find drugs, in the bag I would find just a few things which always were there. Condoms, lubricant, powder, lipstick, that's it. So I literally started to carry in my bag same stuff. I created that image of that girl who was that good girl, but she needed money, so she desperately needed his help. Somebody who will protect her and somebody who will fall in love.
Aliyah was now ready for the most dangerous seduction of her life. Setting a love trap for a foreign official comes with low consequences. if you're caught in your own country. It's just a failed mission. But with criminals, if her identity as an undercover agent is revealed, there's typically just one consequence, death.
I was preparing for the most important meeting in my life and I knew that I will go to that club same as Vladimir and his brothers go almost every day, and I knew exactly what table it would be, what bar, how I will respond, how I will talk, and I wrote a report to my commander and I said we will do the first contact next Friday and the commander said, okay, I confirm, you can go ahead. And we received the confirmation, so we were ready to go.
Aliyah's story continues in episode 12 as she begins this dangerous mission, infiltrating one of the biggest drug gangs in the city.
He started to kiss me and I just forgot that it was my job.
To Die For is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and written by me, Neil Strauss, with additional writing assistance by Tristan Bangston. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams. Lead producer and editor is Tristan Bangston.
Additional editing by Miles Clark and Christian Brown. Supervising producer, Tracy Kaplan. Consultants include Nushin Felizadeh, Chelsea Gooden, and Jamie Albright. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Mixed and mastered by Dayton Cole. Our theme song is Killer Shangri-La by Psychotic Beats, featuring Patti Amour. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, Oren Siegel, Becky Jensen, The Nord Group, Meredith Stedman, and Alex Vestmasted.
Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction of the world. Listen to Betrayal weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm going down in the cave.
I'm going to call the police and have you removed.
One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.
Do you recognize my voice?
v1.0.0.241112-3_os