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Welcome to SpyC, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum.

I'm Dr. Mark Stout, filling in for Sasha Ingber today, and we're stepping into the hidden world of the International Spy Museum. I'm Dr. Mark Stout, filling in for

Sasha Ingber today, and we're stepping into the hidden world of spies shaping events around the

world. One of the more notorious German spies of the 20th century, Lothar Witska, lived a life

of intrigue, from escaping the death penalty in the First World War to joining the Nazi party in the second.

It's a story that Robert Hornick and Paul Friedland stumbled on by chance. With help from

Vitska's grandchildren and mining through archives, these lawyers pieced together Vitska's story,

sifting the fact from the fiction and figuring out what made this infamous figure tick.

Citizen of the Shadows, The Lives and Lives of Lotar Witska, is out now.

Paul Friedland, Robert Hornick, welcome to Spycast to talk about your new book.

Lotar Witska, aka Pablo Vobersky, the subject of your your book hasn't really been a household name for over a century now.

So I'm curious how you heard about him and what the genesis of this really excellent book project is.

Maybe we can start with Robert.

Sure. We originally intended to write a book about presidential pardons.

And in putting together a list of interesting people who had

received pardons, we read about Vitska and found him particularly interesting and gradually realized

we were more interested in writing a book about him than about presidential pardons. So we were off.

Sounds good. As everybody who's written intelligence history knows, you'll about him than about presidential pardons. So we were off.

Sounds good.

As everybody who's written intelligence history knows,

you usually don't have all the sources

...