Best of
Espionage

1964

Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers


James B. Donovan - 1964
    Donovan began his walk toward the center of the Glienicke Bridge, the famous “Bridge of Spies” which then linked West Berlin to East. With him, walked Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, master spy and for years the chief of Soviet espionage in the United States. Approaching them from the other side, under equally heavy guard, was Francis Gary Powers, the American U-2 spy plane pilot famously shot down by the Soviets, whose exchange for Abel Donovan had negotiated. These were the strangers on a bridge, men of East and West, representatives of two opposed worlds meeting in a moment of high drama.Abel was the most gifted, the most mysterious, the most effective spy in his time. His trial, which began in a Brooklyn United States District Court and ended in the Supreme Court of the United States, chillingly revealed the methods and successes of Soviet espionage.No one was better equipped to tell the whole absorbing history than James B. Donovan, who was appointed to defend one of his country’s enemies and did so with scrupulous skill. In Strangers on a Bridge, the lead prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials offers a clear-eyed and fast-paced memoir that is part procedural drama, part dark character study and reads like a noirish espionage thriller. From the first interview with Abel to the exchange on the bridge in Berlin—and featuring unseen photographs of Donovan and Abel as well as trial notes and sketches drawn from Abel’s prison cell—here is an important historical narrative that is “as fascinating as it is exciting” (The Houston Chronicle).

Report from #24


Gunnar Sonsteby - 1964
    Sonsteby tells his courageous story of espionage and sabotage against the Naziz and of eluding capture through daring, intuition, and a constant slew of changing identities.

An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring


Chalmers Johnson - 1964
    Richard Sorge, whose cover was that of senior German journalist in Tokyo during Worl War II. Ozaki Hotsumi, the second-ranking member of the ring, was also a prominent journalist, a leading authority on China, and a consultant to the Konoye cabinet. When this book was first published in July 1964, the Soviet Union had never acknowledged the existence of Sorge. Two months later, perhaps in response to the book's publication, Sorge was acclaimed as one of the Soviet Union's most illustrious spies and was made a posthumous 'Hero of the Soviet Union'. In an extensive reprise prepared for this new edition, the author analyzes this development in depth, as well as much other significant information that has come to light since the book's original publication.

The Most Dangerous Game


Gavin Lyall - 1964
    When he's hired by a wealthy American hunter, Frederick Wells Homer, to fly into a prohibited part of Finland near the Soviet border, the job seems shady indeed, and when a major crook wants him to go on the hunt for Tsarist treasure, things get messy. With thugs and the Finnish Secret Service already on his tail, matters get worse when Homer's beautiful sister turns up to search for him, and Cary's fellow bush pilots start getting killed off in a series of suspicious accidents. Cary begins to realise that it may all stem from an incident in his wartime past.

The 480


Eugene Burdick - 1964
    Kennedy's assassination, in the run-up to the 1964 national election, Eugene Burdick's blockbuster political novel, The 480, foresaw the rise of social media and 21st century analytical data manipulation, the use of computer-generated voter profiles to shape - for better or for worse - the outcome of a major national election. Burdick - coauthor of The Ugly American and Fail-Safe - was a true socio-political visionary, ahead of his time by more than half a century.Many passages and scenes in The 480 bear eerie resemblances to the social divisiveness, political blockades, and moral and ethical failures that dominate today's news cycles about America's place in the world. This sweeping 13-hour unabridged audiobook is the story of the rise of a morally grounded and ethically driven businessman, John Thatch - a political neophyte - to the heights of party stardom through plots by devious party operatives who hold the keys (IBM punch cards) of voter data, and potentially salacious journals, in their greasy little hands.As noted in the original 1964 cover blurb, "This is the story of an extraordinary presidential campaign, of unwanted fame and public responsibility thrust upon a very private citizen, of love tested and courage found, and a new breed of political expert who believes the voters can be sold a candidate as readily as a housewife is sold a name-brand toothpaste."The story spans the globe-from India and Pakistan to the Philippines and across length and breadth of the United States - in its full spectrum of shady characters, questionable motives, foreign adventure, heart-wrenching romance, and behind-the-podium intrigue. At its 20th-century heart, The 480 asks, and-in light of American politics in the twenty-first century-answers the question, "Could the American voter be masterfully manipulated to select a presidential candidate not by rational consideration, but by hidden design?"