Codename: Hero: The True Story of Oleg Penkovsky and the Cold War's Most Dangerous Operation


Jeremy Duns - 2012
    His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. He handed them a bulky envelope and pleaded with them to deliver it to the American embassy. Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. MI6 and the CIA ran Penkovsky jointly, in an operation that ran through the showdown over Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis. He provided crucial intelligence, including photographs of rocket manuals that helped Kennedy end the Cuba crisis and avert a war. Codenamed HERO, Penkovsky is widely seen as the most important spy of the Cold War, and the CIA-MI6 operation, run as the world stood on the brink of nuclear destruction, has never been bettered. But how exactly did the Russians detect Penkovsky, and why did they let him continue his contact with his handlers for months afterwards? Could it be that the whole Cuban Missile Crisis was part of a Soviet deception operation - and has another betrayal hidden in plain sight all these years? Thrilling, evocative and hugely controversial, Codename: Hero blows apart the myths surrounding one of the Cold War's greatest spy operations.

A Spy's Journey: A CIA Memoir


Floyd Paseman - 2004
    From spy in the field to the top ranks of the Company's career agents, he experienced it all as well as seven different presidential administrations. While Paseman's account of his long service has enough real-life derring-do to keep the reader engaged, of even greater interest, however, are Paseman's observation on politics and the CIA, especially how change of presidential administrations could bring sweeping, and often negative changes to the agency.- Johnson - declined to run for a second full term, broken by Vietnam- Nixon - resigned in disgrace after ending Vietnam and opening relations with China- Ford - never elected caretaker - Carter - hoist on the petard of fundamentalist Islam in Iran- Reagan - first full, two-term president since Eisenhower and declared war on the evil empire and brought the USSR to its knees with the threat of a still fanciful Star Wars- Bush the father - "won" the Cold War as the Soviet Union collapsed and "coalitioned" Saddam out of Iraq- Clinton - leader of the new world order, peace in our time, and dead Rangers in the streets of Mogadishu- Bush the son - 9/11, Afghanistan, and IraqIn March 1967 author Paseman joined the CIA following successful service as an army armor officer in Germany. Highly trained in the Chinese language, most of his service was in the far east. Paseman served as chief of the East Asia division at Langley and was also station chief Germany, considered the agency's toughest Cold War field posting.About the AuthorFloyd L. Paseman retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in January 2001 after a thirty-five year career in operations. He now lives in southern Virginia outside Williamsburg where he works as an international security consultant.

Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton


William F. Buckley Jr. - 2000
    Founder of U.S. counter-intelligence, hunter of moles and foes of America, his name has become synonymous with skulduggery and subterfuge. Angleton pursued his enemies, real and imagined, with a cool, calculating intelligence. Eventually convinced that there was a turncoat within the highest reaches of the U.S. government, Angleton turned all of his considerable skills to finding and exposing him. The result was a near-victory for U.S. Intelligence-and total defeat for himself. A brilliant re-creation of a world that included Soviet defectors, the infamous traitors Burgess, MacLean, and Philby, and American presidents from Truman to Carter, Spytime traces the making-and unmaking-of a man without a peer and, at the end, a man without a country to serve.

Enter the Past Tense: My Secret Life as a CIA Assassin


Roland W. Haas - 2007
    He underwent intensive training to prepare for insertion into hostile areas, including High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) parachuting and weapons instruction. In the course of his first mission (to East and West Germany, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bulgaria, Romania, and Austria), he assassinated several international drug dealers. On his return, he was thrown into an Iranian prison, where he was physically and psychologically tortured. Over the next thirty years, he served the agency on an as-needed basis, engaging in such activities as hunting down and eliminating members of the Red Army Faction and extracting Soviet Spetsnaz officers from East Germany. His cover jobs included being a part owner of an Oakland health club, which brought him into close contact with steroid abuse in professional athletics, drug abuse in general, and the Hell’s Angels, whom he believes tried to have him killed. He also served in Germany as site commander for the Conventional Forces in Europe weapons treaty. His most recent cover was as the deputy director of intelligence in the U.S. Army Reserve Command, which involved him with the Guantanamo detention facility.A true story that pulls no punches, Enter the Past Tense also chronicles Haas’s descent into, and recovery from, alcoholism that resulted from the stress of this extraordinary life. It is an eye-opening look at the dark, but many would argue necessary, side of intelligence work—and one that readers won’t soon forget.

You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger


Roger Hall - 1957
    First published in 1957 to critical and popular acclaim, his memoir has become a cult favorite in intelligence circles. He chronicles his experiences from his time as a junior officer fleeing a tedious training assignment in Louisiana to his rigorous OSS training rituals in the United States, England, and Scotland for its Special Operations unit. Quick to pick up on the skills necessary for behind-the-lines intelligence work, Hall became an expert instructor, but was only reluctantly given operational duties because of his reputation as an iconoclast. In his droll storytelling style, Hall describes his first parachute jump in support of the French resistance as a comedy of errors that terminated prematurely. His last assignment in the war zone came when then Capt. William Colby, the future head of the CIA, handpicked him to lead the second section of a Norwegian special operations group into Norway via Sweden.

A Spy For All Seasons: My Life in the CIA


Duane R. Clarridge - 1997
    "Dewey" Clarridge--lays bare the fascinating particulars of the covert operations he planned and carried out around the world during his long career. 16 pp. of photos. 320 pp.

Kim Philby: The Unknown Story of the KGB's Master Spy


Tim Milne - 2014
    He was a Soviet spy at the heart of British intelligence, joining Britain's secret service, MI6, during the war, rising to become head of the section tasked with rooting out Russian spies and then head of liaison with the CIA. Philby betrayed hundreds of British and US agents to the Russians and compromised numerous operations inside the Soviet Union.Protected by friends within MI6 who could not believe the service's rising star was a traitor, he was eventually dismissed in 1951, but continued to work for the service surreptitiously until his defection in 1963. His admission of guilt caused profound embarrassment to the British government of the day and its intelligence service, from which neither fully recovered.Tim Milne, Philby's close friend since childhood and recruited by him into MI6 to be his deputy, has left us a memoir that provides the final and most authoritative word on the enduring and fascinating story of Kim Philby the legendary Soviet master spy. It is a riveting read, with new detail on Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two other members of the Cambridge spy ring, and on Konstantin Volkov, the would-be KGB defector who was betrayed by Philby, one of several hundred people who died as a direct result of Philby's treachery.Tim Milne retired from SIS in October 1968 and never spoke publicly of his friendship with Kim Philby.

Whisper Mountain


Vivian Higginbotham Nichols - 2017
    Because it was extremely difficult to verbalize the events to her own children years later, her adult family knew very little of the details until 30 years after her passing in 1967. That is when her granddaughter discovered her writings and promised to tell the story of what she endured.

CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files


Jefferson Morley - 2016
    Kennedy, Jefferson Morley is asked, “So who killed JFK? What’s your theory?” Morley, a former reporter for the Washington Post and author of Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, invariably disappoints. “I don’t know. It’s too early to tell.” Fifty-plus years after JFK’s death, this answer is laughable but serious. The JFK story remains unsettled well into the 21st century, no matter what the various conspiracy and anti-conspiracy theorists may proclaim. Indeed, the complex reality of how a president of the United States came to be gunned down on a sunny day, and no one lost his liberty — or his job — continues to live and grow in popular memory. This is a book that reveals deceit and deception on the part of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination and why the CIA should reveal to the American people what it is still keeping secret. Employing his investigative reporting skills through interviews and examination of long-secret records, Morley reveals that the CIA was closely monitoring the movements of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the months preceding the assassination of President Kennedy. Questions naturally arise: Did the CIA suspect that Oswald was up to no good? Or was its surveillance part of a CIA scheme to frame Oswald for the assassination of President Kennedy? Why did the CIA keep its surveillance secret from the Warren Commission?Morley also reveals a close relationship between the CIA and an American anti-Castro group that began advertising Oswald’s connections to communism and the Soviet Union immediately after the assassination? That raises questions: Why didn’t the CIA reveal that relationship to official agencies investigating the assassination of President Kennedy? Why did a federal judge and the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations accuse the CIA of deceit and deception?The U.S. government retains almost 3,600 assassination-related records, consisting of tens of thousands of pages that have never been seen by the public. More than 1,100 of these records are held by the CIA.What is in those secret files? What do they reveal about JFK’s death? Why has the CIA been so reluctant to release them? And when will they finally be revealed to the public? Will they answer the disturbing questions that the revelations in this book raise?

Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief


Tennent H. Bagley - 2013
    Kondrashev was a major player in Russia’s notorious KGB espionage apparatus. Rising through its ranks through hard work and keen understanding of how the spy and political games are played, he “handled” American and British defectors, recruited Western operatives as double agents, served as a ranking officer at the East Berlin and Vienna KGB bureaus, and tackled special assignments from the Kremlin.During a 1994 television program about former spymasters, Kondrashev met and began a close friendship with a former foe, ex–CIA officer Tennent H. “Pete” Bagley, whom the Russian asked to help write his memoirs.Because Bagley knew so about much of Kondrashev’s career (they had been on opposite sides in several operations), his penetrating questions and insights reveal slices of never-revealed espionage history that rival anything found in the pages of Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, or John le Carré: chilling tales of surviving Stalin’s purges while superiors and colleagues did not, of plotting to reveal the Berlin Tunnel, of quelling the Hungarian Revolution and “Prague Spring” independence movements, and of assisting in arranging the final disposition of the corpses of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. Kondrashev also details equally fascinating KGB propaganda and disinformation efforts that shaped Western attitudes throughout the Cold War.Because publication of these memoirs was banned by Putin’s regime, Bagley promised Kondrashev to have them published in the West. They are now available to all who are fascinated by vivid tales of international intrigue.

Spies Beneath Berlin


David A.T. Stafford - 2002
    In Spies Beneath Berlin, David Stafford-whom the New York Times Book Review calls "a superb researcher who has a feel for when 'secret' meant 'significant' and when it did not,"-tells the fascinating, in-depth account of one of the most audacious and intriguing covert operations of the Cold War: Operation Stopwatch/Gold. Called by CIA chief Allen Dulles, "one of the most valuable and daring projects ever undertaken," Operation Stopwatch/Gold was carried out from a secret tunnel half a mile long under the Russian sector of Cold War Berlin as, for more than a year, the CIA tuned into German Red Army intelligence. This was an almost impossible trick: apart from the technical wizardry needed, any noise or vibration could have given the game away. When snow fell, panic measures were taken to prevent it thawing in a tell-tale line leading to the target building. Added complexity comes from the fact that Stopwatch/Gold was a joint CIA/MI6 project, and after Burgess and Maclean it was clear that truth, even between allies, was dangerous. And indeed, there was a mole in the British secret services, thus the KGB knew about the tunnel even before it was built-yet the Germans couldn't let on that they knew about the tunnel, which would have jeopardized the position of their prized mole. Whether or not Operation Stopwatch/Gold was a success has been a point of contention over the years, as new information about KGB mole George Blake and the Cold War has been uncovered. Now, for the first time, using eyewitness interviews and the full range of source material-from KGB files to CIA documents-Stafford reveals the thrillingly complex story of this operation.

Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying


James M. Olson - 2006
    But who decides what is necessary for the public good, and is it really true that any kind of service is permissible for the public good? These questions are at the heart of James M. Olson’s book, Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying. Olson, a veteran of the CIA’s clandestine service, takes readers inside the real world of intelligence to describe the difficult dilemmas that field officers face on an almost daily basis. Far from being a dry theoretical treatise, this fascinating book uses actual intelligence operations to illustrate how murky their moral choices can be. Readers will be surprised to learn that the CIA provides very little guidance on what is, or is not, permissible. Rather than empowering field officers, the author has found that this lack of guidelines actually hampers operations. Olson believes that U.S. intelligence officers need clearer moral guidelines to make correct, quick decisions. Significantly, he believes these guidelines should come from the American public, not from closed-door meetings inside the intelligence community. Fair Play will encourage a broad public debate about the proper moral limits on U.S. intelligence activities.

Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War's Most Important Agents


David C. Martin - 1980
    c

Inside the CIA


Ronald Kessler - 1992
    Sessions. Now, in this unparalleled work of investigative journalism, Kessler reveals the inner world of the CIA. Based on extensive research and hundreds of interviews, including two with active Directors of Central Intelligence, William H. Webster and Robert M. Gates, and with three former DCI's Inside the CIA is the first in-depth, unbiased account of the Agency's core operations, its abject failures, and its resounding successes Kessler reveals how:•CIA analysts botched the job of foreseeing the Soviet economy's collapse•the Agency spies on every country in the world except Great Britain, Australia, and Canada•the CIA undertakes covert action to influence or overthrow foreign governments or political parties•the Agency trains its officers to break the laws of other countriesInside the CIA is an extraordinary guide ot the world's most successful house of spies.“Mr. Kessler has written an overview that my spook friends say is an accurate account of the way the Agency does its business.”—Joseph C. Goulden, Washington Times“…definitely one of the most important books on the U.S. intelligence community in some years.”—BooklistExpanded and updated: Includes details of the CIA's colossal incompetence that allowed Aldrich Ames to spy for eight years

Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment


Stephen E. Ambrose - 1981
    Eisenhower's public image was that of a wide-grinning Daddy Warbucks who preferred the golf course over the cabinet room. He was perceived as a military bureaucrat who never held a combat command. A Republican sandwiched between two Democratic administrations, he lacked the political vigor of his predecessor Harry S. Truman and the star quality of his successor JFK.Yet behind the placid image he was a sly fox who ran the most efficient espionage establishment in the world. His goal was to keep the Free World free. To do so, he fostered the growth of the CIA, overthrew governments, flew spy flights, and hatched assassination plots. At the top of the intelligence pyramid, Ike shouldered some of the greatest coups in espionage history, as well as some of its most ignominious failures.Among Ike's successes: The "Man Who Never Was" strategem, the ULTRA-guided ambush of the German counterattack at Mortain, which opened the Allies' way to the Rhine, the 1954 overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman's government of Guatemala, Operation AJAX, which toppled Iran's Mossadegh, and the U-2 flights over Russia. But Ike can be credited likewise for miscalculations: the failure to predict the German attack during the Battle of the Bulge, the Francis Gary Powers fiasco, and the tragic and irresponsible encouragement of freedom fighters in Hungary, Indonesia, and Cuba.In writing this revealing probe into the 1950s spy world, Stephen E. Ambrose, the author of the most acclaimed full-scale biography of Eisenhower, interviewed the president and many of his agents and had access to much previously unpublished archival material. "The story he tells," said the New York Review of Books in 1981 when the book was first published, "is one of some very low deeds done in the name of high moral principles."Stephen E. Ambrose was Director Emeritus of the Eisenhower Center, Boyd Professor of History at the University of New Orleans, and president of the National D- Day Museum. He was the author of many books, most recently The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisana Purchase to Today. His compilation of 1,400 oral histories from American veterans and authorship of over 20 books established him as one of the foremost historians of the Second World War in Europe. He died October 13, 2002, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.