I Spy With My Little Eye
Perhaps spying seems So Cold War – or at least did, until June 27 2010 when the FBI arrested 10 people as part of a Russian espionage ring. These sleeper agents had been living peacefully in Yonkers, Boston and Virginia, passing themselves off as common garden-variety suburbanites. Only one oddity – the agents never passed any classified information to Moscow. So, as we can’t accuse them of really spying (perhaps because they did a bit too much sleeping), we can return them to sender and so we did. In return, Russia released four men who had been convicted and imprisoned for real, down and dirty espionage. If you are now intrigued, you are not alone. There is a rich literature on the US-Soviet/Russian espionage – and fact is often more fantastic than fiction!
Putin's labyrinth: spies, murder, and the dark heart of the new Russia by Steve LeVine. Recently, much more dangerous and lethal action has taken place - there have been (probably) Russian state sponsored assassinations of critics of the regime. Check out this harrowing tale – from the nuclear poisoning of the former KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 to the street style execution of soviet whistle blower and journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Journalist LeVine interviews intended victims who risk all to criticize Russia’s leadership (particularly Putin) and its amoral tactics. Critics praise LeVine’s revelations of the “all-too-real machinations and bloodthirstiness from which espionage thrillers are made is both unnerving and intriguing.”
The terminal spy: a true story of espionage, betrayal, and murder by Alan S. Cowell. This is a more detailed account of the life and death Alexander Litvinenko – including his career in the KGB, his relationship with tycoon Boris Berezovsky, his exile in London's Russian expat community, and his final denouncements from his deathbed of Russian President Vladimir Putin as his killer. The mystery goes unsolved, and Cowell argues for various possible conspiracies. Or peruse Death of a dissident: the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the return of the KGB by Alex Goldfarb; (with Marina Litvinenko) for more of the stranger-than-fiction- cloak-and-dagger true life tale of how the radioactive poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko left a trail that eventually led to another Russian former agent, with links all the way back to Moscow.
And in the last 50 years of the 20th century, Comrade J (aka of Sergei Tretyakov) was the chief Russian mole in the US for SVR (the successor to the KGB) intelligence in New York City. He personally managed all covert operations against the U.S. and its allies in the United Nations. He handled every Soviet / Russian intelligence officer in New York. But there was a twist - Comrade J also was a playing both sides. For three years, Comrade J served U.S. intelligence interests and stole secrets from the Russians. Later he defected and only recently has his role as a double agent come to light. For all the dark details – check out Comrade J: the untold secrets of Russia's master spy in America after the end of the Cold War by Pete Earley.
Aldrich Hazen Ames, a former Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst, was convicted in 1994 of spying for the Soviet Union and, later, Russia since 1985. Ames, who spoke Russian and was a specialist in Russian intelligence operations, did unique damage to the US in his nine years of treachery, was paid millions of dollars by Russia. His betrayals resulted in the arrest of Russian agents working for the US – some originally recruited by Ames – who were later executed by the Soviets. Ames is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. According to Wikipedia, Ames is Federal Bureau of Prisons prisoner #40087-083 and interned in a high security US Penitentiary near Allenwood, Pennsylvania. With 50 hours of live interviewing of Ames and trips to Russia to meet with Ames’s KGB contacts, Pete Earley has written the very detailed and riveting account of the spy’s dirty dealings in Confessions of a spy: the real story of Aldrich Ames.
For more double dealing by Americans, take a look at Spy: the inside story of how the FBI's Robert Hanssen betrayed America by David Wise. Memory refresher: Robert Philip Hanssen is a former American FBI agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services for 22 years (1979 – 2001). He was dramatically arrested in Foxstone Park in Vienna, Virginia as he clandestinely placed a package of highly classified information at a pre-arranged dead drop site for pick-up by his Russian handlers. Hanssen is currently serving a life sentence at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Maximum facility in Florence, Colorado. What were the motives of Hanssen – what kind of man is he? Author David Wise interviewed Hanssen’s case psychiatrist and offers informed insight into what creates the spy next door.
And for a chilling riveting view from the other side – read Spy handler: memoir of a KGB officer: the true story of the man who recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames by Victor Cherkashin with Gregory Feifer. Cherkashin, a retired senior KGB officer and Feifer, a former Moscow correspondent for Radio Free Europe, profile the spy industry from just after World War II through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Cherkashin emphasizes the mundane and plodding nature of most spy work, but he also spices up the mix with: secret meetings, blackmail, paranoia. Although the main theme is Soviet espionage, Cherkashin's book includes incisive portraits of Americans Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen and details about U.S. spying and counterspying.
The haunted wood: Soviet espionage in America-- the Stalin era by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev is an account of the "golden age" of Soviet spying from 1933-1945. Drawing deeply on recently declassified Russian archives, Historian Weinstein and retired KGB agent Vassiliev offer new background on the iconic Cold War flashpoints: Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. According to the authors, unlike recent spies (Aldrich Ames, Philip Hanssen), Stalin-era moles were motivated primarily by ideology, not lucre – believing that that the USSR. was a workers’ paradise or that the Soviet Union as the necessary evil, serving as the bulwark against European fascism. Many experts believe that the greatest Soviet spy success was the theft of atomic secrets from the Manhattan Project, a coup that enabled an acceleration of the Soviet nuclear program. Check out this tale of cloak-and-dagger subversion and betrayal.
Are you paranoid yet? If not, read Venona: decoding Soviet espionage in America by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. The authors provide extensive evidence that the KGB had operatives at all levels of American society and government during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Haynes and Klehr describe an astonishing level of spying! Venona was the codename for the National Security Agency operation that by 1946 had broken the Soviet decryption code – thus allowing the US to decipher Soviet cable traffic. The Verona project was so secret that its existence was revealed to the public only in 1995. Some of the first decoded Venona cables provided conclusive evidence that Soviet spies had managed to penetrate America's most closely guarded wartime effort, the Manhattan Project. Later decoded messages lead F.B.I. agents to an American involved in atomic espionage, a man assigned the alias Liberal by his Soviet handlers -- but whose real name was Julius Rosenberg.
And finally, let’s go back a few generations to the time of The lost spy: an American in Stalin's secret service by Andrew Meier. This is the story of Cy Oggins, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants to the US, graduate of Columbia University, and like many of his generation, caught up in the radicalism of the 1920s. In 1923, Oggins became a Communist and in no short time, he joined the Soviet underground, went abroad and spied for the Russians in Europe and China. But Oggins ran afoul of the Soviet state, was arrested and imprisoned for eight years in one of the bleakest camps of the Gulag Archipelago. Probably because the State Department had been trying to secure his release and the Russians feared he would betray secrets to the US, Oggins was executed by lethal injection just as he was finishing his prison term. This sad story, buried in the secret files of the KGB and the FBI came to light in 1992 when Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over documents about Oggins to the joint U.S.-Russian commission searching for American victims of Soviet abuses.
Putin's labyrinth: spies, murder, and the dark heart of the new Russia by Steve LeVine. Recently, much more dangerous and lethal action has taken place - there have been (probably) Russian state sponsored assassinations of critics of the regime. Check out this harrowing tale – from the nuclear poisoning of the former KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 to the street style execution of soviet whistle blower and journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Journalist LeVine interviews intended victims who risk all to criticize Russia’s leadership (particularly Putin) and its amoral tactics. Critics praise LeVine’s revelations of the “all-too-real machinations and bloodthirstiness from which espionage thrillers are made is both unnerving and intriguing.”
The terminal spy: a true story of espionage, betrayal, and murder by Alan S. Cowell. This is a more detailed account of the life and death Alexander Litvinenko – including his career in the KGB, his relationship with tycoon Boris Berezovsky, his exile in London's Russian expat community, and his final denouncements from his deathbed of Russian President Vladimir Putin as his killer. The mystery goes unsolved, and Cowell argues for various possible conspiracies. Or peruse Death of a dissident: the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the return of the KGB by Alex Goldfarb; (with Marina Litvinenko) for more of the stranger-than-fiction- cloak-and-dagger true life tale of how the radioactive poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko left a trail that eventually led to another Russian former agent, with links all the way back to Moscow.
And in the last 50 years of the 20th century, Comrade J (aka of Sergei Tretyakov) was the chief Russian mole in the US for SVR (the successor to the KGB) intelligence in New York City. He personally managed all covert operations against the U.S. and its allies in the United Nations. He handled every Soviet / Russian intelligence officer in New York. But there was a twist - Comrade J also was a playing both sides. For three years, Comrade J served U.S. intelligence interests and stole secrets from the Russians. Later he defected and only recently has his role as a double agent come to light. For all the dark details – check out Comrade J: the untold secrets of Russia's master spy in America after the end of the Cold War by Pete Earley.
Aldrich Hazen Ames, a former Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst, was convicted in 1994 of spying for the Soviet Union and, later, Russia since 1985. Ames, who spoke Russian and was a specialist in Russian intelligence operations, did unique damage to the US in his nine years of treachery, was paid millions of dollars by Russia. His betrayals resulted in the arrest of Russian agents working for the US – some originally recruited by Ames – who were later executed by the Soviets. Ames is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. According to Wikipedia, Ames is Federal Bureau of Prisons prisoner #40087-083 and interned in a high security US Penitentiary near Allenwood, Pennsylvania. With 50 hours of live interviewing of Ames and trips to Russia to meet with Ames’s KGB contacts, Pete Earley has written the very detailed and riveting account of the spy’s dirty dealings in Confessions of a spy: the real story of Aldrich Ames.
For more double dealing by Americans, take a look at Spy: the inside story of how the FBI's Robert Hanssen betrayed America by David Wise. Memory refresher: Robert Philip Hanssen is a former American FBI agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services for 22 years (1979 – 2001). He was dramatically arrested in Foxstone Park in Vienna, Virginia as he clandestinely placed a package of highly classified information at a pre-arranged dead drop site for pick-up by his Russian handlers. Hanssen is currently serving a life sentence at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Maximum facility in Florence, Colorado. What were the motives of Hanssen – what kind of man is he? Author David Wise interviewed Hanssen’s case psychiatrist and offers informed insight into what creates the spy next door.
And for a chilling riveting view from the other side – read Spy handler: memoir of a KGB officer: the true story of the man who recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames by Victor Cherkashin with Gregory Feifer. Cherkashin, a retired senior KGB officer and Feifer, a former Moscow correspondent for Radio Free Europe, profile the spy industry from just after World War II through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Cherkashin emphasizes the mundane and plodding nature of most spy work, but he also spices up the mix with: secret meetings, blackmail, paranoia. Although the main theme is Soviet espionage, Cherkashin's book includes incisive portraits of Americans Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen and details about U.S. spying and counterspying.
The haunted wood: Soviet espionage in America-- the Stalin era by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev is an account of the "golden age" of Soviet spying from 1933-1945. Drawing deeply on recently declassified Russian archives, Historian Weinstein and retired KGB agent Vassiliev offer new background on the iconic Cold War flashpoints: Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. According to the authors, unlike recent spies (Aldrich Ames, Philip Hanssen), Stalin-era moles were motivated primarily by ideology, not lucre – believing that that the USSR. was a workers’ paradise or that the Soviet Union as the necessary evil, serving as the bulwark against European fascism. Many experts believe that the greatest Soviet spy success was the theft of atomic secrets from the Manhattan Project, a coup that enabled an acceleration of the Soviet nuclear program. Check out this tale of cloak-and-dagger subversion and betrayal.
Are you paranoid yet? If not, read Venona: decoding Soviet espionage in America by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. The authors provide extensive evidence that the KGB had operatives at all levels of American society and government during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Haynes and Klehr describe an astonishing level of spying! Venona was the codename for the National Security Agency operation that by 1946 had broken the Soviet decryption code – thus allowing the US to decipher Soviet cable traffic. The Verona project was so secret that its existence was revealed to the public only in 1995. Some of the first decoded Venona cables provided conclusive evidence that Soviet spies had managed to penetrate America's most closely guarded wartime effort, the Manhattan Project. Later decoded messages lead F.B.I. agents to an American involved in atomic espionage, a man assigned the alias Liberal by his Soviet handlers -- but whose real name was Julius Rosenberg.
And finally, let’s go back a few generations to the time of The lost spy: an American in Stalin's secret service by Andrew Meier. This is the story of Cy Oggins, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants to the US, graduate of Columbia University, and like many of his generation, caught up in the radicalism of the 1920s. In 1923, Oggins became a Communist and in no short time, he joined the Soviet underground, went abroad and spied for the Russians in Europe and China. But Oggins ran afoul of the Soviet state, was arrested and imprisoned for eight years in one of the bleakest camps of the Gulag Archipelago. Probably because the State Department had been trying to secure his release and the Russians feared he would betray secrets to the US, Oggins was executed by lethal injection just as he was finishing his prison term. This sad story, buried in the secret files of the KGB and the FBI came to light in 1992 when Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over documents about Oggins to the joint U.S.-Russian commission searching for American victims of Soviet abuses.
- Karen S.
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