Return to Transcripts main page

The Amanpour Hour

Interview with Chief of Staff of Former Vice President Mike Pence, Marc Short; Interview with Bestselling Author Anand Giridharadas; Passengers Detail Fightback after Pilot Stabbed; Interview with "Redwood" Author Ben MacIntyre; The Angst Before German Reunification; The TV Anchor Who would be King. Aired 11a-12p ET

Aired October 03, 2026 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:00:38]

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.

Here's where were headed this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Exactly one month until the decisive U.S. midterms, Republicans face an uphill battle amid Trump's sinking approval ratings, rising costs and wars on distant shores.

Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, joins me.

Then, holding up a mirror to a deeply divided nation. Bestselling author Anand Giridharadas tells me how the killing of a homeless man on a New York subway exposed the fractures within America.

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, AUTHOR, "MAN IN THE MIRROR": In a country that can't agree on anything, the thing we can agree on is taking matters into our own hands.

AMANPOUR: And the heroic people who saved a flight from crashing into Israel after a cockpit stabbing. We hear from the passengers in their own words.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we start falling. We drag down five -- 15,000 feet.

Also ahead, as a split Germany celebrates Unity Day, from my archives, when the world feared what might happen if Germany reunified.

And when all that stood between the world and nuclear Armageddon was a bad case of erectile dysfunction, seriously. Ben MacIntyre tells me the very strange story of one Soviet spy in Iran.

BEN MACINTYRE, AUTHOR, "REDWOOD": And he said, "I have a problem and I hope the West will cure it for me." So -- AMANPOUR: And the problem?

MACINTYRE: The problem was erectile dysfunction.

AMANPOUR: You've got to be kidding me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

With so much chaos afoot, wars, ever-rising energy prices for consumers, it is not surprising the eyes of the world are on America and the upcoming midterm elections and what's increasingly viewed as a referendum on Donald Trump and his policies.

The signs are troubling for the president. A "Wall Street Journal" poll this week found Trump's approval ratings to be at 37 percent, which is the lowest for any president ahead of the midterms since its polling began 36 years ago.

Even Republicans are backing away from Trump's war on Iran for sending energy bills soaring at a time when affordability is a top voter concern.

Trump says he'll unleash the MAGA coffers and travel around the country to campaign for his fellow Republicans. But he shows little outward signs of a course correction on the war abroad or unpopular deportations at home.

Marc Short is chairman of Advancing American Freedom, and he was chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. I got his take when he joined me from Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Marc Short, welcome back to the program.

MARC SHORT, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: Thank you, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: This Iran war is really now becoming something that Republicans can't just sort of sit back and kind of look at that. A lot of them anyway, actively distancing themselves from the fallout. Talk to me a little bit about the impact that's having on the midterms.

SHORT: Well, I think it's hard to divorce the war from the president's trade policy in a lot of ways, Christiane, because I think there's a lot of focus right now on how high diesel prices are and the impact that's having on farmers, what's happening to fertilizer costs.

But so much of that was already -- was already a precursor in the sense that the trade policy created a big challenge for farmers because as part of the retaliation from this global war on trade is a lot of their markets then were shut down and they didn't have anywhere to export them.

So, now you're compounding that with the extra prices. And I think what you're seeing in America is what were reliably Red Republican states in the heartland of America where you have some of the most contested races this fall.

And so, undoubtedly the price of the war of Iran is something Americans are feeling from an affordability perspective. But I think in a lot of ways it was already elevated because of the trade war.

AMANPOUR: So, of course, by trade war, you mean the thing that involved all these tariffs and cause such pain to the actual Americans as well.

SHORT: The so-called -- Yes. The so-called liberation day. Yes.

[11:04:46]

AMANPOUR: Right. Yes.

I'll let you say "so-called". It certainly has backfired on many American businesses and farmers, as you say, and frankly, the whole global economy, as we can see.

Let's drill down on some -- on some specific issues.

The whole country -- ok, I'm exaggerating. But there's significant pushback in the country, bipartisan pushback, on data centers, significant fear about the future of A.I. and what these data centers particularly will do in Ohio.

75 percent of voters oppose construction and other states share that trend. But he claims all of this is a hoax. Is he -- how do you explain that for a president trying to lead his party to success?

SHORT: I think when it comes to the data centers, the reality is that China wants to win this war on A.I. They want to be ahead of us.

And there's actually reporting out today about how China, Russia, Iran collaborating to sow more and more discontent amongst Americans about data centers and the growth of A.I.

We're in a global competition here with China who would like nothing more than for the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., to regulate it and to slow it down.

And I don't think, again, that there's been a cohesive argument provided other than to simply, you know, dismiss the complaints as a hoax.

And when a lot of Americans have concerns and fears, you need to do more than say it's simply a hoax, you need to explain here's what -- here's again what the alternative is, here's who we're competing with, and here's why it's important that America stay in front in this race.

And now, I think you just see simply a lot of Republicans who are fearful about the midterm results, and they're trying to glob on to kind of a populist appeal. And I think it looks fairly opportunistic at this point.

AMANPOUR: Many people voted for him because of his promise about securing the border.

But that, according to many Americans, has gone too far. And even some of his most loyal Republican, you know, backers, legislators from some of the most important states, like Florida, for instance. You know, Representative Salazar, has come out and tried to tell him, not attacking him, but tried to tell him that his policy has just gone too far, and Hispanics are really reacting.

Here's what she said about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR (R-FL): Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policies. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Ok. So, that's a campaign ad, but it's pretty explosive. It's directly talking to the president, not attacking him, but saying you need better advice and better advisers.

SHORT: Yes.

AMANPOUR: What do you think about that, and does the president need better advice and better advisers?

SHORT: I think that the president had historic gains among the Hispanic community in '24. And I think contrary to what a lot of people perceive, the reality is that for many Hispanics, they came here legally, and they were very concerned about how out of control the border was during the Biden years. They wanted it fixed.

But Christiane, I think the disconnect is that I think Americans wanted the border fixed, but there was never the same support for deportations.

Many of my friends on the right will suggest that we should be continuing at the same level, and I'm not going to argue the policy as much as the politics and the messaging here, in that Americans wanted the border secure. And Trump was, I think, able to do that with executive action quickly.

The support for deportations, you know, has not been there publicly. And so, I think what you're seeing is that the president has had significant erosion among his Hispanic support. And I think that the issue that was a significant strength for him is a little bit upside down now. AMANPOUR: I think that's a really important distinction because in many countries, including over here, secure borders, very important political issues, and surely that is the case in the U.S.

But you're saying the deportation part of it, the ugliness on the streets, especially sometimes against American citizens, is just, you know, a step too far. So, I hear you on that.

Finally, if they get a shellacking, as President Obama admitted he got back in 20-whatever it was, what should the Republicans do? What is the future of the Republican Party, especially post-Trump, who's dominated the Republican Party for 10 years?

SHORT: Well, Christiane, I think there's going to be a real soul- searching. I think you've seen a rise of the populist right. And I think that there's a lot of, I think, a growing consensus that we need to get back to those time-honored and limited-government principles that made the Republican Party as successful as it was.

I would add to that I think that right now it's confusing because I think one of our strongest arguments in this cycle is that the Democrats have actually nominated candidates who fly under the banner of Democrat Socialists of America.

And I think that many of their policies pose significant threats to our country and are wrongheaded.

[11:09:48]

SHORT: But it's difficult when we, this administration, is basically having more and more record numbers of government taking over private sector companies, pushing for price controls.

The vice president, J.D. Vance, most recently talked about expansion of entitlement programs, record spending in significant debts, a trade policy that's supported by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

And so when you're basically putting forward these policies, it's hard for us to make the case, hey, look at how dangerous the Democrat Socialists are because, candidly, we're blurring the lines. We're not offering a clear contrast to say here's a vision for a freer economy, for greater prosperity, and for a limited government.

What this administration's been pushing in the economy is so much government interference that, frankly, you know, it makes Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren blush.

AMANPOUR: On that note, Marc Short, thank you so much for being with us.

SHORT: Thank you, Christiane.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Coming up next, could a horrible 2023 subway killing in New York be a symptom of a growing sense of abandonment by the government? I'm joined by journalist Anand Giridharadas.

And later in the program, the Russian agent who turned on the Soviet Union and prevented nuclear war, all motivated by his struggle with impotence. It is truly stranger than fiction.

[11:11:09]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Is the world facing an age of abandonment? Across continents, people are feeling unseen by their own governments as crises mount, a solitude only amplified by increasingly polarized society.

So what is the way forward? It's something my next guest is digging into, bestselling author Anand Giridharadas. His new book, "Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City", is getting rave reviews for its take on this topic.

It centers around a tragic event that became a flashpoint when a homeless man was killed on a New York subway after a former Marine in the carriage put him in a chokehold.

And I asked the author, why this moment opened his eyes to life in America.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Anand Giridharadas, welcome to the program.

GIRIDHARADAS: I'm so happy to be back with you.

AMANPOUR: Great to have you back because you have a really interesting, you know, disposition on the American story right now. What is the basis of the issue that took place on the New York subway that made you want to write about it?

GIRIDHARADAS: To me, this was a small story that illuminated and explained and got to the heart of what was happening in a big country.

Three years ago, in Manhattan, New York, on an uptown F train on the subway, a black mentally-ill homeless man named Jordan Neely, who was once a beloved Michael Jackson impersonator in New York City streets, known to tourists in Times Square and in the subway system and who had since fallen in harder times and active psychiatric crisis.

He entered the subway car. He began -- he threw his jacket to the ground. He began screaming at people, saying he was hungry, ready to go back to prison, ready to die.

And a white former Marine named Daniel Penny came up behind him, put him in a choke hold, dropped him to the ground, held him for six minutes, most of which took place after the train got to the next station and many people left, and ultimately killed Jordan Neely. And from the moment that that kind of news wafted up from the subway, it was immediately an American Rorschach test, right? You either saw in Daniel Penny a hero standing up against, you know, cities that were kind of run amok or a vigilante in Trump's America.

You either saw Jordan Neely as a kind of vagrant, hobo, career criminal, as some framed him as, and others as someone who kind of embodied the cruelties of those on the margins of the margins of the American dream.

And I decided I wanted to spend three years investigating this case, living inside that subway car, because I believed from the beginning that you could tell an everything story about America.

The way America works, what has happened in an age of permission for kind of taking matters into your own hands. What has happened with so many failing systems of care to hold those who need the most care. The racial hostilities and other tensions that have been fomented in this country in these years.

I believe that if you could understand what happened there and what created that moment, you could understand some fundamental things about the inner life, the emotional inner life of this authoritarian age in America.

AMANPOUR: Well, that is quite something, the emotional inner life of this authoritarian age in America. It's really a statement.

First I want to read a little extract from the piece. So, you basically -- you know, this is fleshing out this Rorschach test that you say.

"The supporters of Penny and of Neely had disagreed on every dimension of the case. The basic facts -- race, class, mental health, homelessness, policing, crime, and more.

But if you step back from some of their arguments to hear the deeper stories they were telling, there were certain echoes. They shared the sense of being undefended. They shared the sense that the cavalry was not coming."

[11:19:47]

AMANPOUR: So, for me, that last line is -- seems to be what is happening right now, whether it's in the United States or elsewhere, that some politicians are reacting to. The idea that Americans or British or wherever you go are on their own.

So, I first want to ask you, what did you see? You say you spent three years riding that train trying to investigate. What did you find after doing that for three years?

GIRIDHARADAS: You know, I did spend a lot of time riding the trains and understanding what happened in that train car. And one of the things that's striking, this is an age of division. But I think one of the things we have in common around the world right

now is this sense of abandonment. And if you look inside that subway car, just starting in that subway car that day, this was an experience that everybody in that subway car had in common, despite all the differences.

Jordan Neely, you know, mentally-ill, homeless man, felt abandoned by the systems of care. Daniel Penny felt abandoned by a lack of police and a lack of law enforcement that forced him, in his mind, to step up and step in.

The passengers on that train, when they testified in the trial, eventually spoke of their own sense of abandonment and kind of being left to their own devices.

And Christiane, I think that sense of abandonment, that sense that the cavalry is not coming, the sense that we're on our own, the sense that maybe somebody do something because no one who should be doing anything is doing anything, I believe, Christiane, that is the defining political emotion of this age.

It is maybe the most dangerous emotion in a democracy because it starts to tempt people with the thought that if nobody's coming, I must fill the void. In this case, it was Daniel Penny filling a void in a subway in New York.

As this case was wrapping up, right during the jury deliberations, there was a shooting in midtown Manhattan of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, and a lot of the reporters who I covered this trial with were immediately deployed to cover that next case. That was their next case. The same arguments started to develop on the far-left that had developed on the far-right that supported Daniel Penny.

On the far-left, people were saying, Luigi Mangione, the assassin, stepped into the void of the American healthcare system and the cruelty of that system.

And then when this case ended, in the sort of section you quoted, some of the defenders of Jordan Neely and his family stepped up and said, if they're going to have white vigilantes, we need black vigilantes. We need to make our own schools, make our own media outlets.

And I was standing there in the spitting rain on that final day thinking, gosh, this has become a final thread of American common culture in a country that can't agree on anything, the thing we can agree on is taking matters into our own hands. The thing we can agree on is DIY violence.

If you're one of those people watching this who kind of wishes we were in another timeline, who kind of wishes we were in a whole other era with a different logic, I think you have to start with the inner life of these times and a kind of politics of empathy for what people feel and what it would look like to see and recognize and humanize people around the world again in our politics.

AMANPOUR: Well, the storytelling is vital, and let us hope that this becomes real food for thought for the policymakers.

Anand Giridharadas, thank you so much for being with us.

GIRIDHARADAS: Thank you for having me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: When we come back, it's the story everyone has been talking about this week, the extraordinary fight back by passengers on an Israel-bound flight that prevented utter disaster. Jeremy Diamond reports. That's next.

[11:23:29]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

Passengers on FlyDubai Flight 1073 to Tel Aviv knew that something was wrong, of course, when the plane started plummeting. Few could have imagined, though, what was really going on inside the cockpit. The pilot had been attacked by his copilot.

The next few minutes were critical, but disaster was averted thanks to some very brave passengers aboard.

Jeremy Diamond met some of them at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport when they returned safe and sound.

Here's his report and a warning that some of the images you're going to see are disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How much time you need? How much time we need?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: The wounded man being treated aboard this bloodstained aircraft isn't a passenger. He's the pilot.

And lying just a few feet away from him, also wounded, is the man who allegedly stabbed him and tried to hijack the plane, his co-pilot.

Flydubai Flight 1073 was bound for Tel Aviv from Dubai. About two hours and 15 minutes later, the plane plummets, dropping more than 17,000 feet in under two minutes.

Passengers aboard this Israel-bound flight say the plane began spinning out of control before diving toward the ground until a few brave passengers and crew rushed to the cockpit.

ASSAF RAJUAN, SUBDUED ATTACKER (through translator): We are here on the plane right now. We've taken control of the terrorists. We are about to land.

DIAMOND: Assaf Rajuan is one of those passengers. Together, he says, they took down the would-be hijacker and restrained him for nearly an hour.

RAJUAN: It wasn't a prolonged battle. We neutralized him very quickly. There was no real fight. We aren't heroes. I'm no Van Damme.

[11:29:44]

RAJUAN: I was terrified for my life and my family's lives. And I didn't have total confidence until things started to clear up and I saw that the pilot had truly regained control of the plane.

DIAMOND: His shirt still bloodied, Yaniv Hayoun tells the Israeli prime minister how he put the attacker in a chokehold.

YANIV HAYOUN, SUBDUED ATTACKER (through translator): The plane's nose was pitched like this. I called out to a bunch of Israelis on board, and two other guys came over.

We pinned him down. I jumped back, grabbed the controls and started pulling back the handles.

DIAMOND: Celebrations in Israel greeting the plane's 174 passengers who are still reeling from their brush with death.

PELEG ITALI, FLYDUBAI PASSENGER: I was flying and I see the ground. Then I see the wing of the plane and the brakes, the brakes of the -- on the wing of the plane they come up and all of the plane tilts. It tilts to the other side and we start falling. We drag down five -- 15,000 feet.

(CROSSTALK)

ITALI: You feel of the G-force. You feel it on you and you squeeze into the chair.

MIKA BAUMAN, ISRAELI-AMERICAN PASSENGER: Children crying and it was just like death in front of our eyes moment. We didn't actually know what was happening until we landed, which was like a few hours later.

DIAMOND: The plane's captain, who managed to open the cockpit door as he was being attacked, was identified as Smit Machchhar from India.

Dr. Shota Musaev, a dentist who worked to stabilize him on board, said Machchhar barely survived the ordeal.

DR. SHOTA MUSAEV, TREATED INJURED PILOT (through translator): If we had waited even a few more moments, we would have lost him. His blood pressure had plummeted. He suddenly lost consciousness and there was blood everywhere.

DIAMOND: The plane was diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. On the ground you can see clear damage to the plane's rudder. Both pilots were rushed to a hospital.

Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv.

(END VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR: The emergency landing of this Israel-bound flight into Saudi Arabia marked a rare mass arrival of Israelis in the Kingdom. They have no diplomatic relations at all although they were well welcomed by the Saudis and dispatched swiftly back home.

All of this comes as President Trump is trying to push the Abraham Accords, a normalization of relations with Israel. But Saudi Arabia rejects joining those accords without a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

Coming up, how a Russian double agent might have saved the world from nuclear Armageddon hoping for western medical help with his sexual health. The extraordinary story behind the spy known as "Redwood" next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MACINTYRE: It was a radical, extremely perilous plan, which was that he was going to walk into the British embassy, agree to spy for them for a year. They would cure him. That was the plan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:32:43]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

Now, all this week, the United States and Iran have so far unsuccessfully been trading proposals for a ceasefire and a resolution to the war that's been dragging on since February.

Back in the Cold War, when the United States supported Iran against the Soviet Union, a real-life spy story almost led to nuclear war. And believe it or not, it was foiled only by the spy's impotence.

In his new book, "Redwood", the award-winning and bestselling author Ben MacIntyre digs into the life and times of that Russian spy who saved the world.

And MacIntyre told me all about it when I met up with him.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Ben Macintyre, welcome back to our program with yet another thrill-seeker and a page-turner anyway.

BEN MACINTYRE, AUTHOR, "REDWOOD": Thank you.

AMANPOUR: So, "Redwood," one day in October 1981, a tall Russian in Tehran walks into the British embassy. Take it from there.

MACINTYRE: This is Major Vladimir Kuzichkin of the KGB. He's one of the most experienced intelligence officers that the Soviets have in Tehran. He's running all their illegals networks, which are the undercover spies that are running throughout the Middle East.

And he walked into the British embassy across the road. I mean, the British embassy was directly across the road from the Soviet embassy.

AMANPOUR: I grew up there.

MACINTYRE: Of course. So, you would know that.

So, Kuzichkin walked in and offered his services to MI6. Now, a walk- in in spy parlance is a very dangerous quality because somebody who volunteers to spy may be a --

AMANPOUR: Double and triple --

MACINTYRE: -- double or triple agent, maybe a provocation. So, initially, MI6 was very concerned about this offer.

AMANPOUR: And what was the offer? What was he doing? What was his main job in Tehran?

MACINTYRE: He was --

AMANPOUR: Because really, this was right after, like a year or so after the Islamic revolution.

MACINTYRE: Absolutely. So, this is 1981. So, it's the Ayatollah has come to power. The Islamists are in the ascendant, but they don't have full control of the country. There are still different factions fighting, including the Communist Party, which was then very powerful still, very well-funded. They had weapons and so on.

But they were tolerated by the Islamic regime. So, it's a time of great ferment. And the British have one spy in the country.

[11:39:43]

AMANPOUR: And just to remind the sort of geopolitical moment -- I mean, I remember growing up that the British, the Americans, at all costs, wanted to fend off any Soviet encroachment into Iran and threatening the Persian Gulf --

MACINTYRE: Absolutely.

AMANPOUR: -- which they wanted to own since Peter the Great died. We grew up knowing this.

MACINTYRE: Yes. I mean, Iran, as you know, had always been a kind of center of the great game, the battle between czarist Russia and imperialist Britain to try and control the country, Central Asia and the oil fields, latterly.

So, it had been a crucial battleground of the Cold War. And while the shah was in power, the CIA and MI6 and SAVAK, the brutal secret police of the shah's regime, were in control. It was all going great. Then the shah is toppled and the KGB moved into the vacuum. They began to build up power in the country. And secretly, this is what Kuzichkin revealed, secretly, they were planning to set up the Communist Party to take over the government and then the Red Army would come in to support them.

Now, this was a -- this was a long-term nightmare for Western analysts, because had the Red Army come in and taken over Iran, had they got control of the warm water ports and the oil fields and the Strait of Hormuz, they would have won the Cold War.

So, America had contingency plans in place to deal with just such an eventuality. They didn't have enough conventional weapons or troops in the region, really, to hold back a Soviet advance. So, the contingency plan was nuclear.

AMANPOUR: Really?

MACINTYRE: Yes. There was already plans in place. Now, these were contingency plans. They weren't necessarily hard plans that were going to be put into effect.

But a man called Bob "Blowtorch" Komer, long now forgotten, but was then a very senior official in the Pentagon, had drawn up a series of responses, the least radical of which, in nuclear terms, was to send special forces into Iran, armed with man-packed nukes, literally portable nuclear weapons, that they would then set off and bring down the mountain ranges in the north, the Alborz Mountains, and block the passes so that the Soviets couldn't get in.

So, this is one of those what-ifs of history, but it was on the drawing board very firmly for the KGB.

AMANPOUR: So, given the way, you know, you're describing that moment in history and how hugely dangerous a moment it was, with a very, I mean, the Islamists were pretty dug in, but they hadn't fully consolidated, you know, power. They had, but there was all sorts of fights internally.

It was a huge big deal, and this guy, was he up to the job, this Redwood? Did he -- was he into it? Why did he defect?

MACINTYRE: Well, his reasons for defecting are complicated and extremely unlikely. I mean, Kuzichkin -- Vladimir Kuzichkin, is not your James Bond spy. He was six foot four. He was incredibly handsome. He was a tough cookie. He was deputy head of the whole operation in the KGB of that region.

But he had a problem, and he explained it to his case officer the minute they got together, so he and Ian McCready. And he said, I have a problem, and I hope the West will cure it for me. So --

AMANPOUR: And the problem?

MACINTYRE: The problem was erectile dysfunction.

AMANPOUR: You've got to be kidding me.

MACINTYRE: I promise you not. I promise you not.

AMANPOUR: The great game depended on erectile dysfunction?

MACINTYRE: In a sense, yes. I mean, he -- that was his main motivation. It was destroying his marriage. He was desperate. He loved his wife dearly, and he was trying to save their relationship.

Like many Soviet citizens at the time, he had a kind of almost mystical faith in Western medicine. He believed that Western medicine could cure anything.

And so, it was a radical, extremely perilous plan, which was that he was going to walk into the British embassy, agree to spy for them for a year. They would cure him. That was the plan.

And then he would defect with his wife Galina, and they would start a new life in the West. It was based on this assumption that the West had already invented Viagra, which they had not, because Viagra wouldn't be invented for another 14 years. But Kuzichkin didn't know that.

AMANPOUR: But he never said, hey, you're not making me better. What's in it for me?

MACINTYRE: He didn't. Because he was a sort of soldier, Kuzichkin. And I think once he'd swapped sides, once he had thrown in his lot with the West,

I think he also realized that he didn't have much chance of backing out at this point, that he was reliant on them, that he really was going to do what he had to do.

And he was an extraordinary spy. I mean, he was able, over the course of nine months, to provide MI6 with the kind of intelligence they had never had before.

AMANPOUR: And finally, Redwood, of course, because of his massive size and the famous trees.

MACINTYRE: Yes, he was six-foot-four. He was broad as a bullet. You know, he was a huge, huge man. Yes. So, Redwood was the code name. I mean, spies do this all the time.

I mean, there's a convention in the spy world and in all the agencies that you're not supposed to use a code name that gives away the story, that gives any hint of what you're talking about.

[11:44:50]

MACINTYRE: And spies around the world violate this rule all the time. I mean, every spy agency does it. And Redwood was the perfect name for him because he was six-foot-four.

There was also, of course, another meaning to Redwood, which to this day MI6 maintains was accidental because, of course, in fact, it's probably even a triple entendre. So, Red, because he was Communist, and Wood, because that was the problem.

AMANPOUR: Right.

MACINTYRE: I'm sorry. You may not want to put that in there.

AMANPOUR: Yes, yes, yes. Turn around.

MACINTYRE: That may have to be dropped.

AMANPOUR: Maybe not. We'll leave it to our viewers' imagination. Ben Macintyre, thank you very much indeed.

MACINTYRE: It's been a huge pleasure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Extraordinary stuff. The book is out now. And like all his others, it is sure to become a TV drama or a movie.

Coming up, as politics pulls people apart, in Germany, we look back to when East and West reunited.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm kind of afraid of the unification of the two Germany.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:45:53]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Today marks German Unity Day. This was a big deal 36 years ago when the Berlin wall came down and Europe wondered and worried what a reunified Germany would do with its power. But peace reigned.

Today, German politics is worrying Europe again, as the far-right AfD recently scored unprecedented postwar electoral victories which challenged the political center and the current chancellor.

So let's go back in time to the heady days of 1990, when a divided Germany was getting ready to reunite.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Nearly nine months after the Berlin wall came tumbling down, a new united German nation is about to be born. The two countries already have merged their economies, and this week West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev who allowed Germany to choose its military alliance. And he calmed the Poles by formally recognizing their postwar borders. It's been quite a year for Helmut Kohl, but the euphoria has been

tempered somewhat by fear. Fear vented by a senior British minister who called reunification a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe.

Although the minister recanted and resigned over his remarks, the specter of a united Germany has touched a raw nerve and sparked mixed feelings.

In Britain, which is marking the 50th anniversary of the battle of Britain.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it will be very powerful and very hard to disagree with.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that's a great hope that Germany will not become a nationalistic, intransigent power because of the institutions of the common market.

AMANPOUR: In France, which was occupied by the Nazis.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm kind of afraid of the unification of the two Germanys because it might be a threat, you know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If I'm not sure, I hope that it will be a good thing, a very good thing for peace in the future.

AMANPOUR: And in East Germany, where workers fearing massive unemployment are staging mass protests, many see reunification as a takeover. And even West Germans admit they have an image problem.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody was (INAUDIBLE) the history. Well, the history has created certain situation. But Germany is in linked -- is in the western world. So I don't think why you should fear it.

AMANPOUR: Chancellor Kohl has gone out of his way to dismiss the idea of a united Germany pursuing nationalist goals. Still, the Bonn government does fear a possible anti-German backlash.

And so it is launching a massive public relations campaign designed to promote the image of unity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: November, 1990.

AMANPOUR: The government has commissioned television commercials. It has placed ads in the newspapers. It has published books and pamphlets on the politics and democracy of the new era.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the real yearning you find in the Germans, and their test is we want to exit the 20th century in a better shape than we entered it.

AMANPOUR: Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Bonn, West Germany.

(END VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR: And as we said, of course, 36 years later, the worst fears did not come true. A reunified Germany is peaceful and democratic, and it never threatened its neighbors.

But the former East Germany has felt left out of the economic prosperity that came to the western part and concerned by the influx of immigrants. And that is propelling not just the AfD to power in Germany, but the far-right in other West European nations as well, like France.

When we come back, a Ugandan kingdom crowns a new royal and his resume may not be what you expect at all.

[11:54:21]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: And finally, it has most certainly not been an easy year for journalists. Dissed and disrespected all over the world, even in the land of the free press and the First Amendment.

But not for one TV anchor in Uganda. 56-year-old Edward Rukidi Kijanangoma was crowned king of Uganda's Tooro Kingdom this week after a succession dispute in a traditional ceremony that included the slaughtering of a bull and the sprinkling of a hen's blood.

The new royal is a familiar face in the country, as longtime anchor and editor at the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation.

[11:59:44]

AMANPOUR: The king has no political power, but he will serve as an influential symbol of identity and heritage.

Before being crowned, he told a local newspaper, heritage must be matched by discipline and hard work.

That's all we have time for.

Don't forget that you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at cnn.com/audio and on all other major platforms.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching. I will see you again next week.