Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games
by Tennent H. Bagley
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tennent H. BagleyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-27
ISBN: 0300136242
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Yale University Press
Book Reviews of Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games
Book Review: Overdone
Summary: 2 Stars
I've been on a roll recently, reading true story spy books. Bagley's Spy Wars is the seventh of eight books that I have picked up so far and it is the only one I stopped reading and gave up on without finishing.
It is an extremely informative and often very interesting book by a former high ranking CIA counterintelligence official. While a variety of material is provided about counterintelligence in general, the main purpose of the book is to prove that a specific Russian defector, who fed a lot of information to the Americans, was a fraud who actually provided disinformation. A number of people in the CIA and elsewhere believed that the Russian was legit and Bagley wants to set them straight (perhaps to justify himself to those in the agency that doubted him regarding this issue). He does build a good case and it would appear that his point is correct as far as I can tell.
I read most of the book. Where it did not work for me was that I got tired of looking through an electron microscope at this Russian guy page after page and reading the same points over and over. The book became too much effort for me to read so I gave up on it.
Book ratings like these are somewhat subjective and others have given this book high ratings on amazon.com, so I am sure many people would love this book. It just didn't work for me.
Summary of Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games
In this rapidly paced book, a former CIA chief of counter intelligence breaks open the mysterious case of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko's 1964 defection to the United States. Still a highly controversial chapter in the history of Cold War espionage, the Nosenko affair has inspired debate for more than forty years: was Nosenko a bona fide defector with the real information about Lee Harvey Oswald's stay in Soviet Russia, or was he a KGB loyalist, engaged in a complex game of deception?As supervisor of CIA operations against the KGB at the time, Tennent H. Bagley directly handled Nosenko's case. This insider knowledge, combined with information gleaned from dozens of interviews with former KGB adversaries, places Bagley in a uniquely authoritative position. He guides the reader step by step through the complicated operations surrounding the Nosenko affair and shatters the comfortable version of events the CIA has presented to the public. Bagley unveils not only the KGB's history of merciless and bloody betrayals but also the existence of undiscovered traitors in the American camp. Shining new light on the CIA-KGB spy wars, he invites deeper thinking about the history of espionage and its implications for the intelligence community today.Amazon Significant Seven, May 2007: Utterly compelling from page one, Tennent H. Bagley's Spy Wars documents the strange case of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB agent who approached the CIA in the early 1960s (apparently) ready to divulge a treasure trove of secrets, including information on Soviet intelligence operations, KGB surveillance tactics, and even Lee Harvey Oswald?s time in Russia. But was Nosenko a source of legitimate information, or a KGB loyalist sent to misdirect CIA efforts? It's a controversial question to this day, but one that Bagley, as a scion of a storied Navy family and then supervisor of the CIA?s operations against the KGB, is uniquely qualified to dissect. Along the way, he vividly recounts the chess match between the rival intelligence agencies during the opening salvoes of the Cold War, and it?s as cloak-and-dagger as any LeCarre fan could hope--double-agents, miniature cameras hidden behind neckties, microfilm, and other trappings of the spy game abound in this fascinating and fast-paced real-life thriller. --Jon Foro
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