John Daniel

So we're going to focus now on this element of Kit Bennett's work for CIA, his operation against a GRU officer.

As he says, they're military intelligence.

And while Vladimir Putin might be ex-KGB, his old outfit were pulled apart after backing the wrong horse in the 1990s.

But the GRU have gone straight through from the USSR to Russia, from Stalin and Khrushchev through Gorbachev and now Putin.

Yeah, they make the KGB look quite cuddly by comparison.

One GAU defector from the 1980s wrote a book saying part of his initiation into the unit was watching a video of a traitor strapped into a stretcher being fed into a crematorium while still alive.

So when you go in to meet him in Manila, you already know that he is GAU and you've got the introduction already from your friend at the Soviet Embassy in Wellington, the KGB guy.

And so you go in to meet him in what, a bar or something?

Kip Bennett has been given a list of Soviet embassy people who might be interested in his sheepskin wares.

He's fed the names back to CIA, and they've identified this man, operating in cover as a Soviet trade representative in Manila, as GRU.

So this guy is a perfect target.

There's a legitimate reason to approach him as a trade representative.

You can start asking him how to get things like import licences.

Yeah, that would also be a pretty standard quid pro quo for an exporter hoping to get access to a lucrative market.

So generally, you're just going to start to get to know the target a little better.

And so who was leading to start with?

One lunch turns into another and they're often quite liquid.

Kip Bennett says he wasn't looking to use blackmail, just to find out whether his target was prepared to live dangerously.

So they have a few drinks one afternoon, and that rolls into the evening.

And Kit Bennett suggests they move on to a kind of first base of bad behaviour.