Best of Enemies

Best of Enemies PDF

Author: Gus Russo

Publisher: Twelve

Published: 2018-10-02

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1538761327

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The thrilling story of two Cold War spies, CIA case officer Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko -- improbable friends at a time when they should have been anything but. In 1978, CIA maverick Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko were new arrivals on the Washington, DC intelligence scene, with Jack working out of the CIA's counterintelligence office and Gennady out of the Soviet Embassy. Both men, already notorious iconoclasts within their respective agencies, were assigned to seduce the other into betraying his country in the urgent final days of the Cold War, but instead the men ended up becoming the best of friends-blood brothers. Theirs is a friendship that never should have happened, and their story is chock full of treachery, darkly comic misunderstandings, bureaucratic inanity, the Russian Mafia, and landmark intelligence breakthroughs of the past half century. In Best of Enemies, two espionage cowboys reveal how they became key behind-the-scenes players in solving some of the most celebrated spy stories of the twentieth century, including the crucial discovery of the Soviet mole Robert Hanssen, the 2010 Spy Swap which freed Gennady from Soviet imprisonment, and how Robert De Niro played a real-life role in helping Gennady stay alive during his incarceration in Russia after being falsely accused of spying for the Americans. Through their eyes, we see the distinctions between the Russian and American methods of conducting espionage and the painful birth of the new Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, dreams he can roll back to the ideals of the old USSR.

The Spy and the Traitor

The Spy and the Traitor PDF

Author: Ben Macintyre

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1101904208

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War. “The best true spy story I have ever read.”—JOHN LE CARRÉ Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist • Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in Nonfiction If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets. Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.

American Spies

American Spies PDF

Author: Michael J. Sulick

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 1647120373

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A history of Americans who spied against their country and what their stories reveal about national security What’s your secret? American Spies presents the stunning histories of more than forty Americans who spied against their country during the past six decades. Michael Sulick, former head of the CIA’s clandestine service, illustrates through these stories—some familiar, others much less well known—the common threads in the spy cases and the evolution of American attitudes toward espionage since the onset of the Cold War. After highlighting the accounts of many who have spied for traditional adversaries such as Russian and Chinese intelligence services, Sulick shows how spy hunters today confront a far broader spectrum of threats not only from hostile states but also substate groups, including those conducting cyberespionage. Sulick reveals six fundamental elements of espionage in these stories: the motivations that drove them to spy; their access and the secrets they betrayed; their tradecraft, or the techniques of concealing their espionage; their exposure; their punishment; and, finally, the damage they inflicted on America’s national security. The book is the sequel to Sulick’s popular Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War. Together they serve as a basic introduction to understanding America’s vulnerability to espionage, which has oscillated between peacetime complacency and wartime vigilance, and continues to be shaped by the inherent conflict between our nation’s security needs and our commitment to the preservation of civil liberties. Now available in paperback, with a new preface that brings the conversation up to the present, American Spies is as insightful and relevant as ever.

The Billion Dollar Spy

The Billion Dollar Spy PDF

Author: David E. Hoffman

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2016-05-10

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0345805976

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year • Drawing on previously classified CIA documents and on interviews with firsthand participants, The Billion Dollar Spy is a brilliant feat of reporting and a riveting true story of intrigue in the final years of the Cold War. It was the height of the Cold War, and a dangerous time to be stationed in the Soviet Union. One evening, while the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station was filling his gas tank, a stranger approached and dropped a note into the car. The chief, suspicious of a KGB trap, ignored the overture. But the man had made up his mind. His attempts to establish contact with the CIA would be rebuffed four times before he thrust upon them an envelope whose contents would stun U.S. intelligence. In the years that followed, that man, Adolf Tolkachev, became one of the most valuable spies ever for the U.S. But these activities posed an enormous personal threat to Tolkachev and his American handlers. They had clandestine meetings in parks and on street corners, and used spy cameras, props, and private codes, eluding the ever-present KGB in its own backyard—until a shocking betrayal put them all at risk.

Last of the Cold War Spies

Last of the Cold War Spies PDF

Author: Roland Perry

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 2008-12-17

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0786741244

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The most damaging spy network of the Cold War, the infamous Cambridge Spy Ring, comprised several influential British citizens-and one American, Michael Straight. While a student at Cambridge University in the 1930s, Straight fell in with the circle of notorious spies, including the infamous Kim Philby. For the next several decades, Michael Straight led the secret life of a secret agent: While working at the State Department, he passed intelligence reports to a Russian agent; while running his family's magazine, The New Republic, he funded several Communist fronts; and while serving U.S. presidents, he continued to meet with Soviet agents around the world. Despite Straight's 1963 "confession" to the F.B.I. that his covert activity ceased in 1941, investigative journalist and author Roland Perry has unearthed a different story-the full and complete portrait of Michael Straight, last of the Cold War spies.

Early Cold War Spies

Early Cold War Spies PDF

Author: John Earl Haynes

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-08-28

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1139460242

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Communism was never a popular ideology in America, but the vehemence of American anticommunism varied from passive disdain in the 1920s to fervent hostility in the early years of the Cold War. Nothing so stimulated the white hot anticommunism of the late 1940s and 1950s more than a series of spy trials that revealed that American Communists had co-operated with Soviet espionage against the United States and had assisted in stealing the technical secrets of the atomic bomb as well as penetrating the US State Department, the Treasury Department, and the White House itself. This book, first published in 2006, reviews the major spy cases of the early Cold War (Hiss-Chambers, Rosenberg, Bentley, Gouzenko, Coplon, Amerasia and others) and the often-frustrating clashes between the exacting rules of the American criminal justice system and the requirements of effective counter-espionage.

Queen of Spies

Queen of Spies PDF

Author: Paddy Hayes

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2016-01-19

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 1468313258

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This “fascinating and long overdue” biography reveals the remarkable life of a Baroness who was one of Britain’s most celebrated spies (Washington Post). From living in a shack in Tanzania to becoming Baroness Park of Monmouth, Daphne Park led a most unusual life—one that consisted of a lifelong love affair with the world of Britain’s secret services. In the 1970s, she was appointed to Secret Intelligence Service’s most senior operational rank as one of its seven Area Controllers. In Queen of Spies, Paddy Hayes recounts the evolution of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from World War II to the Cold War through the eyes of Daphne Park, one of its outstanding and most unusual operatives. It is a fascinating and intimate narrative of how the modern SIS went about its business whether in Moscow, Hanoi, or the Congo, and shows how Park was able to rise through the ranks of a field that had been comprised almost entirely of men. Queen of Spies captures all the paranoia, isolation, and deception of Cold War intelligence work, and combines it with the personal story of one extraordinary woman trying to navigate this secretive world. It is “as exciting as any good spy thriller—but it’s all true” (Kirkus, starred review).

Bridge of Spies

Bridge of Spies PDF

Author: Giles Whittell

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-01-20

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0857201654

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THE DRAMATIC EVENTS BEHIND THE FILM BRIDGE OF SPIES. 'Riveting, meticulously researched and beautifully written, Bridge of Spies unlocks one of the most fascinating espionage mysteries of the Cold War' - Ben Macintyre, author of Agent Zigzag and SAS Rogue Heroes Bridge of Spies is a gripping, entertaining, hair-raising and comical story, which moves effortlessly from the hardware of high-flying planes and new missiles to the geopolitics of the nuclear stand-off and through the poignant personal stories of its central protagonists: Powers, the all-American hero, blacklisted for not having killed himself on his descent to earth; a KGB spy who has spent aimless and lonely years achieving nothing in the US; and the opposing leaders Khrushchev and Eisenhower, both trapped in a spiral of confrontation neither wants. Telling the true story that inspired Le Carré's famous scene, Bridge of Spies is a brilliant take on the absurdity and heroism of the Cold War days that will appeal to a new generation of readers unfamiliar with the history but drawn in by the compelling and vividly recreated narrative.

Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe

Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe PDF

Author: Valentina Glajar

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2019-08

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1640121986

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During the Cold War, stories of espionage became popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, capturing the imagination of readers and filmgoers alike as secret police quietly engaged in surveillance under the shroud of impenetrable secrecy. And curiously, in the post-Cold War period there are no signs of this enthusiasm diminishing. The opening of secret police archives in many Eastern European countries has provided the opportunity to excavate and narrate for the first time forgotten spy stories. Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe brings together a wide range of accounts compiled from the East German Stasi, the Romanian Securitate, and the Ukrainian KGB files. The stories are a complex amalgam of fact and fiction, history and imagination, past and present. These stories of collusion and complicity, betrayal and treason, right and wrong, and good and evil cast surprising new light on the question of Cold War certainties and divides.