The names, we sometimes say, have been changed "to protect the innocent". As regards those agents in KGB networks in the U.S. during and following World War II, their presence and their deeds (or misdeeds) were known, but their names were not. The FBI-KGB War is the exciting, true (which often really is stranger than fiction), and authentic story of how those names became known and how the not-so-innocent persons to whom those names belonged were finally called to account. Following World War II, FBI Special Agent Robert J. Lamphere set out to uncover the extensive American networks of the KGB. Lamphere used a large file of secret Russian messages intercepted during the war. The FBI-KGB War is the detailed (but never boring) story of how those messages were finally decoded and made to reveal their secrets, secrets that led to persons with such now-infamous names as Judith Coplon, Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
In this memoir of espionage and deceit a Finnish American who had returned to the Soviet Union in 1933 tells of his recruitment by the KGB after service in World War II. Because Kaarlo Tuomi was born in Michigan he had the most prized possession Soviet espionage could ask for: a legitimate American passport and native fluency in English. Tuomi was trained and sent back to the United States in the late 1950s as a "sleeper" but he was quickly identified and "turned" by the FBI that was soon feeding him doctored intelligence to transmit to his KGB bosses. This is an amazing double agent story told by the protagonist in his own words. The book has an introduction by historian John E. Haynes, co-author, with Harvey Klehr, of Spies and many other books on espionage.
An FBI agent who knew Alexander Orlov, a high-ranking KGB defector who was feared by Stalin, recounts Orlov's career and offers information on Stalin's regime, KGB operations, and the FBI's intelligence campaigns.
"Chasing Spies" confirms that professionalism and accountability are part of the FBI's long history. The book suggests that the FBIUs request for added powers of surveillance in a time of national emergency demands careful scrutiny.
An ex-Soviet KGB agent details his primary mission to work undercover in the United States for over a decade and discusses his change of allegiance and defection from the KGB. --Publisher's description.
"A career special agent of the FBI concentrating on Eastern European counter-espionage investigations, Edward Gazur was selected for one of the most fascinating assignments of the cold war - to protect, befriend and debrief the highest-ranking KGB defector of all time, General Alexander Orlov. Despite their different backgrounds, Orlov and Gazur became firm friends, and the old Bolshevik, who had finally settled in Cleveland, Ohio, entrusted many secrets to his FBI confidant." "Orlov was a senior KGB officer who was the Soviet representative in Spain during the Civil War and in charge of guerrilla warfare training there. Horrified by the great purges taking place in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, in which hundreds of his colleagues and friends were executed on Stalin's orders, and ultimately in fear for his life, Orlov defected in 1938 with his wife and daughter and went into hiding in the United States. Worried about the safety of his relatives still in the USSR, he was not able to reveal to the world the true nature of Stalin's crimes until 1953, with the publication of a series of articles in Life magazine. Still in danger from KGB revenge squads - especially after two attempts to contact him in 1969 and 1971 - he maintained secrecy on a number of KGB operations, which he later revealed to his friend Gazur." "During their remarkable conversations, Orlov cast new light on many well-known cases - including the removal of gold from the Spanish Treasury to the Soviet Union during the Civil War, Stalin's 'terrible secret', the assassination of Trotsky and the kidnapping of General Miller. Gazur describes these as well as detailing Orlov's career in the Spanish Civil War, the background to Orlov's defection and his flight to the US, and Orlov's many years in hiding - and on the move - during which tragedy hit his family. The story that emerges is a truly authentic insider's account of Stalin's brutal regime, how the KGB waged its war on the West, and the courage of one man's stand against dictatorship." "Only rarely had the FBI allowed one of its counter-intelligence experts to write his memoirs, and alongside Orlov's story Gazur also reveals details of his FBI career, describes his close relationship with the General, and puts forward his own conspiracy theory regarding Orlov's death in 1973."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Victor Cherkashin's incredible career in the KGB spanned thirty-eight years, from Stalin's death in 1953 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In this riveting memoir, Cherkashin provides a remarkable insider's view of the KGB's prolonged conflict with the United States, from his recruitment through his rising career in counterintelligence to his prime spot as the KGB's number- two man at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Victor Cherkashin's story will shed stark new light on the KGB's inner workings over four decades and reveal new details about its major cases. Cherkashin's story is rich in episode and drama. He took part in some of the highest-profile Cold War cases, including tracking down U.S. and British spies around the world. He was posted to stations in the U.S., Australia, India, and Lebanon and traveled the globe for operations in England, Europe, and the Middle East. But it was in 1985, known as "the Year of the Spy," that Cherkashin scored two of the biggest coups of the Cold War. In April of that year, he recruited disgruntled CIA officer Aldrich Ames, becoming his principal handler. Refuting and clarifying other published versions, Cherkashin will offer the most complete account on how and why Ames turned against his country. Cherkashin will also reveal new details about Robert Hanssen's recruitment and later exposure, as only he can. And he will address whether there is an undiscovered KGB spy-another Hanssen or Ames-still at large. Spy Handler will be a major addition to Cold War history, told by one of its key participants.
Prophetic when first published, even more relevant now, Wedge is the classic, definitive story of the secret war America has waged against itself. Based on scores of interviews with former spies and thousands of declassified documents, Wedge reveals and re-creates -- battle by battle, bungle by bungle -- the epic clash that has made America uniquely vulnerable to its enemies. For more than six decades, the opposed and overlapping missions of the FBI and CIA -- and the rival personalities of cops and spies -- have caused fistfights and turf tangles, breakdowns and cover-ups, public scandals and tragic deaths. A grand panorama of dramatic episodes, peopled by picaresque secret agents from Ian Fleming to Oliver North, Wedge is both a journey and a warning. From Pearl Harbor, McCarthyism, and the plots to kill Castro through the JFK assassination, Watergate, and Iran Contra down to the Aldrich Ames affair, Robert Hanssen's treachery, and the hunt for Al Qaeda -- Wedge shows the price America has paid for its failure to resolve the conflict between law enforcement and intelligence. Gripping and authoritative -- and updated with an important new epilogue, carrying the action through to September 11, 2001 -- Wedge is the only book about the schism that has informed nearly every major blunder in American espionage.
The New York Times bestselling author of Dark Invasion and The Last Goodnight once again illuminates the lives of little-known individuals who played a significant role in America’s history as he chronicles the incredible true story of a critical, recently declassified counterintelligence mission and two remarkable agents whose story has been called "the greatest secret of the Cold War." In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Gardner discovered that the KGB was running an extensive network of strategically placed spies inside the United States, whose goal was to infiltrate American intelligence and steal the nation’s military and atomic secrets. Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail of Cold War espionage—the atomic bomb. Opposites in nearly every way, Lamphere and Gardner relentlessly followed a trail of clues that helped them identify and take down these Soviet agents one by one, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But at the center of this spy ring, seemingly beyond the American agents’ grasp, was the mysterious master spy who pulled the strings of the KGB’s extensive campaign, dubbed Operation Enormoz by Russian Intelligence headquarters. Lamphere and Gardner began to suspect that a mole buried deep in the American intelligence community was feeding Moscow Center information on Venona. They raced to unmask the traitor and prevent the Soviets from fulfilling Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s threat: "We shall bury you!" A breathtaking chapter of American history and a page-turning mystery that plays out against the tense, life-and-death gamesmanship of the Cold War, this twisting thriller begins at the end of World War II and leads all the way to the execution of the Rosenbergs—a result that haunted both Gardner and Lamphere to the end of their lives.
“This important new book . . . based on archival material . . . shows the huge extent of Soviet espionage activity in the United States during the 20th century” (The Telegraph). Based on KGB archives that have never been previously released, this stunning book provides the most complete account of Soviet espionage in America ever written. In 1993, former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev was permitted unique access to Stalin-era records of Soviet intelligence operations against the United States. Years later, Vassiliev retrieved his extensive notebooks of transcribed documents from Moscow. With these notebooks, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have meticulously constructed a new and shocking historical account. Along with valuable insight into Soviet espionage tactics and the motives of Americans who spied for Stalin, Spies resolves many long-standing intelligence controversies. The book confirms that Alger Hiss cooperated with the Soviets over a period of years, that journalist I. F. Stone worked on behalf of the KGB in the 1930s, and that Robert Oppenheimer was never recruited by Soviet intelligence. Uncovering numerous American spies who never came under suspicion, this essential volume also reveals the identities of the last unidentified American nuclear spies. And in a gripping introduction, Vassiliev tells the story of his notebooks and his own extraordinary life.
