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Biography & Autobiography. History. Politics. Nonfiction. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER �?� The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, 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 CARR�? 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… (more)
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Like Penkovsky, Oleg Gordievsky was a Soviet
I certainly have not read every espionage memoir or case history ever written, but I’ve read a fair number, and Macintyre’s book is simply the best book on a spy case I’ve ever read. Macintyre not only has a nice turn of phrase but also delves into the psychology of the spy. This is a book that examines the complex motives – more complicated than the acronym MICE (money, ideology, compromise, and ego) would suggest – of the spy, and their intimate relationships with the case officers who “run” them. Macintyre shows the KGB and MI6 and the CIA as bureaucracies full, to varying degrees, of time servers, those psychologically unsuited for the work, and, of course, the usual bureaucratic tendency to bury failure or shift blame for it.
And he talks about the high personal cost Gordievsky paid for his defection to the West.
Yet, it’s also full of specific details like how to shake surveillance on the street or how the KGB elaborately secured access to their archives or how a KGB car could be spotted by its incomplete washing.
Macintyre, of course, had the advantage of being able to interview his subject. Gordievsky is still alive and has written his own memoir. Macintrye also interviewed those in the three intelligence services who worked with Gordievsky as well as his ex-wife.
Macintyre even gets away with something that I normally don’t like. He repeats himself at times. To be precise, he repeats himself like a novelist to develop his themes.
This may not only be the greatest Cold War spy case. It’s got almost all the possible complications: double agents in the CIA, MI6, and the KGB; rivalry between American and British intelligence; bureaucratic snafus; truth serum interrogation; and, of course, that daring exfiltration.
But Gordievsky did something no other spies got to do. He not only advised America to continue with the Strategic Defense Initiative because the Soviet economy could not counter it. He also stage managed, through covert briefings, both sides of the famous meeting between Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev, the one where the British Prime Minister declared Gorbachev was a “man we can do business with”.
Gordievsky was born to the KGB. His father served in it. His brother was a KGB illegal who worked to suppress the Czechoslovakian Revolution and Gordievsky’s first thoughts of rebellion, his first overtures to Western intelligence services, was motivated by that revolution while he was stationed in Denmark. His first marriage was to a fellow KGB agent.
Since I knew the broad outlines of the Gordievsky case already and had heard Macintyre talk about his book, the chapter most engrossing for me, the part of the story I was unfamiliar with, was “Cat and Mouse” when Gordievsky, under suspicion of being a double agent based on information provided the KGB by CIA officer Aldrich Ames, returns to Moscow and the fear and anxiety of the surprisingly legalistic KGB attempts to prove his guilt or get a confession.
A theme of Macintyre’s book is the mirror images of Ames and Gordievsky, both spies and traitors. There is a fascinating encounter between the men and Gordievsky’s impressions of the man who, unknown to him, almost got him killed.
But Ames is far from the only intriguing character we meet in the KGB, MI6, and the CIA. Plenty of them are quoted about their impressions of Gordievsky and their thoughts on his case though many of the British characters are not identified under their real name.
Several black and white and color photographs are included as well as maps relevant to Gordievsky’s escape.
The traitor in the title is Aldrich Ames, the moral cretin that
Also, here’s a fun tip on how to determine if the Volga GAZ-3102 following you is in fact the K.G.B. The K.G.B. car wash apparently has some defect that keeps the brushes from reaching all the way across the hood, so every car that goes through it has an identical triangular patch of dirt in the middle of the hood. Look for it.
There are non-fiction books that are described as 'thrilling', but this is the rare case of one that actually is, even if it turns out that Gordievsky was wrong about Foot and Jones. By the first page of the book you realise that Gordievsky is going to wind up safely in Britain after years of secretly spying for the west, and yet the long and detailed account of his exfiltration from the USSR in the mid-1980s is full of tension and suspense. A fascinating story, extremely well told.
In the world of smoke and mirrors that constitutes the fragmented world of the intelligence agencies, the truth is often stranger than fiction and often way beyond that. No one would have thought that pillars of the establishment would have spied for the Russians, but when Philby and his cohorts defected it was realised that your background was not a passport to trust. The same logic could have been applied to Oleg Gordievsky. His father and brother were KGB officers and staunch supporters of the regime but he carried a secret that not even his KGB wife knew. For the past eleven years, he had been a spy for MI6.
In this book, Macintyre takes us right through Gordievsky's life, from his earliest days in the KGB, his realisation that the regime that he worked for did not suit his growing liberal outlook the horror he experience when he was there when the Berlin Wall went up. He has his first contact with MI6 in the early 1970s when he was based in Denmark. For MI6 it seemed too good to be true and they took a while to realise that he was not going to be a double agent, but he was for real and had a genuine and personal reason for passing on the information that he did. As he rose in the rank he managed to get a posting to the UK, ideal for MI6 as they could meet him under much more relaxed circumstances. That was until he was recalled to Moscow suddenly, he knew he had been betrayed, but he didn't know just by who or how much.
MI6 knew that things were not right and set about implementing the escape plan that they had codenamed Pimlico to snatch Gordievsky right from under the noses of the KGB and spirit him across the border to freedom.
The book is pieced together from a series of interviews that Macintyre has completed with the people involved in his unique case. The actual files concerning Gordievsky are still secret and I guess that they will remain that way for a long time. It reads like an actual spy thriller most of the time, including a stunning ending as they try to get him out of the Soviet Union. Gordievsky is still alive and well and living under an assumed name somewhere in the home counties. Given the reach of the FSB, his home is under 24-hour surveillance. One countries spy is another countries traitor, but from the accounts in here, it could be said that he helped stop nuclear war and bring about the demise of the totalitarian state. Another stunning book from Macintyre. 4.5 stars
Eventually, Gordievsky’s identity was ferreted out by US CIA agent Aldrich Ames who betrayed him o the Russians. This necessitated Gordievsky’s escape from Moscow, leaving his wife, children and aging mother behind. The escape plan was a paper-thin shot-in-the- dark that could have been foiled at many steps. Even MI6 thought it was probably doomed to failure.
Engrossing and enlightening book that reads like a fast-paced thriller. A real page turner.
Ben Macintyre has written many books on this and similar subjects, and always undertakes extensive and detailed research. I do, however, always find with his books that he seems to have a relentless capacity to render potentially thrilling subjects rather mundane. I don’t know if it is a consequence of his rather pedestrian prose, or simply that his extensive familiarity with his subject matter leaves him unaware of how exciting it might seem to those less well versed in the area.
I enjoyed the story, but almost found myself thinking, ‘Well, so what?’ throughout, when I should have been thinking, ‘Wow!’.
That said, Gordievsky was instrumental in the espionage that was used by the West in revealing much of the information that we have about the KGB and their methods so he is revered by the espionage community. The audio of this book was excellent and the part that detailed his escape was heart pounding. Highly recommended.
Gordievsky, raised in a family where working for the KGB is the family business, becomes disenchanted with Soviet hypocrisy. Posted to Denmark, he has a tantalizing taste of what life is like when lived outside a surveillance society. A British MI6 agent, working in Copenhagen under classic diplomatic cover, notices him and several modest bits of outreach are made by the two of them, but nothing comes of it. Gordievsky, however, sees his future and when he returns to Moscow, works at becoming accepted into the KGB’s English-language training program. Finally, he succeeds. After a few years, he’s posted to London.
Then the connection is made, and over at least a dozen years, he secretly works for MI6.
The intelligence he provides and particularly his insights into the Soviet mindset are pivotal in the late Cold War era, and he provides significant background for Margaret Thatcher’s meetings with Soviet leaders. His advice helps her craft proposals they can accept. It’s vital and thrilling diplomacy, all accomplished well out of public view.
I especially enjoyed the intriguing nuggets of tradecraft Macintyre drops as he follows Gordievsky’s twisting path. That level of detail is just one feature inspiring confidence in the narration and investment in the protagonist’s fate.
Throughout his years spying for Britain, Gordievsky is, of course, acutely aware that Soviet paranoia is ever on the lookout for leaks and traitors. MI6 is so protective of him, they do not even reveal his identity to the Americans. Good thing, too, because the head of counterintelligence in the CIA at the time—Aldrich Ames—is himself a double agent. Ames ultimately betrays more than two dozen Western spies inside Soviet intelligence, effectively signing their death warrants. His motive? Money.
Every so often, Gordievsky and his family are required to return to the Soviet Union for a term of months or years. This is the normal rotation to prevent personnel from becoming too attached to their place of posting. In case he comes under suspicion while inside the Iron Curtain, MI6 prepares an elaborate escape plan. No one is truly confident this plan can work, least of all Gordievsky. A breakdown at any point will be disastrous.
But once Ames fingers him, they must give it a try, and that whole episode is a real nail-biter.
Macintyre’s book won the 2019 Gold Dagger for nonfiction, an award sponsored by the UK Crime Writers’ Association. John Le Carré calls it, “The best true spy story I have ever read.”
Review of the Random House Audio audiobook (Sept. 2018) released simultaneously with the original hardcover edition
The Spy and the Traitor is the story of KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky and American CIA traitor Aldrich Ames. The tie-in is that it was Ames' betrayals that led to the KGB
Macintyre tells an excellent story and the dramatic suspense built into the recounting of Gordievsky's escape is worthy of a novel in itself. Gordievsky was sentenced to death in absentia and that sentence has never been rescinded. The fact that it was associates of Vladimir Putin who were blamed for the bungling of the spy catching is all the more chilling in the present day climate (2010-2020s) where rivals and foes of Putin, whether in politics, business or journalism are regularly murdered, poisoned or imprisoned.