The purpose of the interview was just to gain some more information and maybe get more perspectives. The information should be something you couldn’t get by searching for it and it’s good to get some opinions as well. I was worried about not being able to get an interview or the interviewee giving me bad information, and also nervous about what he would think of me. It was still really exciting to interview an expert, though.

I decided to search for experts on Cold War espionage, but all I found was experts on the History of the Cold War or other things. I wanted to interview an expert called Ian Johnson, but when I looked through his website I found that he was more focused on China than the Cold War. I also thought of another possible interviewee, but found that she was mostly talking about film. Because no one was an expert on Cold War espionage, the thought of interviewing an expert on the Cold War and then an expert on espionage crossed my mind. However, I looked through the expert website again and found someone who was an expert on the Cold War and espionage – they’d probably know at least a bit about Cold War espionage, right? Writing the questions was a little hard because I couldn’t think of anything that may be good to ask, but eventually I figured out 12 questions.

First, I emailed my interviewee, Arne Kislenko. He responded quickly, and then we arranged the date. We were going to go for 12:00 p.m. on Sunday, but he was busy at the time and we instead arranged for 5:00 p.m. on Monday. After that, he said he was too busy for 5:00 p.m. so we decided on 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday. I wanted to make a phone call but after some research, found out that calls from the US to Canada cost a dollar a minute. We decided to do a Zoom meeting instead. At first, when he didn’t come on (I think this was because I sent the Zoom link at 6:07), I thought that maybe we’d need to schedule another date. But luckily, it didn’t turn out that way and he came on at around 6:10. It went even better than expected, and lasted over 40 minutes. He was able to give me a lot of information and I started to understand some spy cases better. For instance, I’d only heard the name “Robert Hanssen” before, but Mr. Kislenko told me a lot more about how much information he gave to the Soviets.

While interviewing a complete stranger was really nerve-wracking, I got through it after some challenges and mishaps. I guess that in life, you just have to get through it as best as you can and then, maybe that’ll help. I did enjoy talking with Mr. Kislenko and it was pretty exciting. Maybe this Capstone unit won’t turn out too bad after all!