Thursday, June 25, 2020

The Spy and The Traitor by Ben Macintyre

Nine well-meaning English agents struggled through various disguises and meeting signals to join up electronically via a Verizon cell tower in Southwest London.  Their clandestine voices could be heard over the double-decker buses in the vicinity:

Ken – The author MacIntyre descended from royalty: 14th King’s Hussars and his grandmother was a daughter of a Viscount. He attended King’s College – Cambridge and graduated in 1988.
  Why write another version when Oleg published the original history (Next Step – Execution) in 1995? This was Oleg’s second book. He published his first in 1994. It appears MacIntyre had access to MI-6 files

Tom – MacIntyre over-dramatized several things. For example, How could the Russians believe the West was planning to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike?

Jack- I served 20 years in intelligence. SAC -1983 before Able Archer We intercepted lots of chatter in military channels regarding concerns about provocation and intentions.

Dick – I noticed how Dick – I noticed how many times Oleg mentioned the corruption, ineptitude and incompetence by Soviet spies.

Jack – I was amazed how many British politicians were Soviet spies and sympathizers

Tom:  I liked the book, It was a page turner and well written, especially for a nonfiction book.

Dick:  I was bothered by the overkill on information and troubling diversion from the plot. It put me to sleep.

Charlie:  I liked that he stuck to the facts and did not introduce any perceived thoughts of others.

Bob Woods:  I have a Moscow story. I stayed in a hotel in Moscow in a room that a prior guest thought was bugged. He tore apart the room looking for bugging devices. When he removed a brass plate on the floor, the chandelier in the room below his fell down.

Dick:  His research was very impressive. I have done research and his was very competent.

Charlie:  the book relied upon interviews and Oleg’s published book. There was not access to files.

Jack:  He had 100 hours of interviews with Oleg. It was not until the 1970’s that the British admitted the existence of MI-6.

Bob Simon:   I thought the two wives were heroines. Changing the baby and offering the dogs crisps that threw the dogs off Oleg’s scent was brilliant.

Tom:  I was amazed that they used all the normal spy techniques one reads about in spy books, such as chewing gum on a lamp post, strolling eating a Mars bar with a Harrod’s shopping bag.

Dick:  Did MacIntyre over-glorify Gordievsky?

Ken:   He was an important spy. I am amazed it took from 1995 to now for this book to be published.

Charlie:  He was the right guy at the right time. It was the end of the Soviet era, the emergence of Gorbachev.

Jack:  Oleg was also a hero because he was motivated by idealism and not money. The book was just as suspenseful as fiction. I was amazed he hitched to a bar at the Russian border to get a beer while waiting for the escape team. The Brits have avoided publishing his name. I looked for recent articles on Gordiesky and found only one.

Bob Simon:  Ken sent an article on three Russian traitor spies from the Smithsonian that describes Gordievsky’s defiltration from Russia.

Ken:  I was amazed that the British modified the drive shaft of a Land Rover to pass through the door so the hump could be made into a compartment to hide a person.

Bob Simon:   The article also suggests that there are other moles because the events that led to Gordievsky’s defiltration and the other Russian mole’s apprehension occurred in the timeline between Aldrich Ames' first contact with the Russians in April and his big document dump in May. Western intelligence is not sure the Russians got the incriminating evidence from Ames. The article speculates that there may be other American or British moles.

Jack:  There are other issues besides moles. For example, the NSA contracts for lots of services and that creates concerns about motivations, like Snowden’s disclosures.

Charlie:  ... or with electronic surveillance How do you know how information is obtained?

Jack:  I retired from intelligence 37 years ago at the age of 42. In the signal corps we did not mix with Embassy staff.

Bob Woods:  This was a manual for espionage, very detailed.

Karl:  What a story! The level of detail and the clarity of the writing are impressive. I’d wondered whether the amount of detail was necessary to convincingly tell the story of Gordievsky and the relevant snippets on Ames or whether the tale could have been told more crisply by leaving some of them out. After some thought, I’d decided that, while maybe it could, the book is just fine as written. The writing is clear and not overly descriptive. The flow and pacing are good. The story is laid out in a logical manner and not at all confusing.

What gives this book a special place in the espionage archives of the cold war is the inclusion of the implications of the information provided by Gordievsky, not just the information itself. Absolutely fascinating story that should most definitely have been told. And it is told well. The impact that Oleg Gordievsky had on helping the world through the Cold War period should be better known. Thanks to this book, it can be.  A flat out terrific A

Sidebar:  I started reading The Spy and the Traitor about three or four days after finishing The Man who Played with Fire by Jan Stocklassa. That book is about the investigation of the 1986 street corner assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme -- a case that was just officially closed last week after 34+ years with no conclusion. By comparison, that book is poorly constructed, confusing in places and not well crafted. Of course, it was written in Swedish and translated to English. So, while Macintyre's book is way better, the Stocklassa book is just as fascinating. Ollie North, Bill Casey, and P W Botha make small cameo appearances. There's also Apartheid, Iran Contra, Kurdish separatists, and number of right wing nuts, a movie star, gun runners, an ammunition manufacturer. a German car dealer, and more. There's the extensive notes of Illustrator/ journalist/author Stieg Larsson (of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo fame). And, the story takes place in Sweden, England, Northern Cyprus, South Africa, the US, and more. For club members who enjoyed this month's book and are willing to read another fascinating tale, though not one that's especially well written, it's a candidate. I'm not going to use if for my December choice because I can already hear the complaints about there being too many characters, holes in the logic, and two somewhat conflicting objectives of the author -- all of which would be legitimate -- but it's worth a mention, nevertheless, just because the story is so interesting.

Jack:  An incredible, fascinating and well written story. I found it fairly easy to follow in spite of the long list of players and their interrelationships. It was a real page turner for me. I give it an A

Charlie:  Excellent, perfect non-fiction, well researched.  A

Dick:  Grade:  A-.

Tom:  Incredible story. Verging on unbelievable. What was the sequence of events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Strategic arms programs. SDI and neutral particle beam weapons This story is part of a bigger story.  A great story, adequately written.  Grade:  A

Keith: was unable to obtain the book from the library so did not grade the book.

Bob Woods:  Fascinating, well organized, good chronological order, good pictures of how intel works. A personal story – I worked with a team on a top secret project that made a breakthrough that the Soviets copied in one year. Grade:  A

Bob Simon:  I like its authenticity. Grade: A

Ken:  this was a page turner for me both from history and spying Grade:  solid A

Rob: See attached review Grade:   A-



...and from far outside the Central Committee:
I look forward to Ken’s report on how Ben Macintyre got into this project. Since Oleg had already written his story, one would think there was not much more to relate. What inspired Macintyre to essentially start over – and was his book wildly more successful than Oleg’s?

 I had numerous thoughts while reading this book. One recurring ‘vision’ was “Spy vs Spy” in the old Mad comic books. Another was, “Hey, the author is giving away all the tricks – now it will be so much harder for our next exfiltration to succeed. Shouldn’t this account remain classified?”

 I don’t know if I would have ever known the name Oleg Gordievsky if Ken had not selected this book. I’m sure it must have been in the news at one time; but I mainly only remember Aldrich Ames (never heard him referred to as “Rick”) as being a turncoat who accounted for the deaths of many of ‘our’ agents in Russia.  Until this book I never realized how cold-blooded Ames did it just for the money.

This is another of those true stories that I always wonder if it would be told at all if it were not successful, if it did not have a happy ending. Say, for example, when Oleg was called back to Moscow that he just disappeared, never to be heard from again – would this book have been written anyway?

 I was most impressed with the way Macintyre told the story – it was well crafted. I didn’t know PIMLICO was going to be used until it was – in fact, when Oleg was assigned to the London KGB group, I thought, “Well, now it will be easy to get him ‘out’.” And I was never sure until it happened if the kids and Leila were going along or not.

There were many Russian names, many characters, but this did not hinder me from following the story or appreciating the action. I was amazed at the intricacy of signals such as an orange peel left under a park bench. Wow, I will never look at litter the same way again! Perhaps I will clean up the trash outside to help foil some devious Russian plot in Four Hills Village.

I will always want to hear how Oleg’s life is going – is he depressed? Lonely?  Lady friends? Keeping busy with lectures? Is he on Facebook? Any second thoughts? I wonder if his story provides some of those follow-on details, at least as far as 2015. Good job of telling a complex, amazing story: A
                       -  Mike

Mike, your comments sent me to the Web to try and figure out why Macyntyre needed to write his book. Although Oleg’s book, titled “Next Step Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky”, was first published in 1995 and had decent Amazon reviews, it only had 168 reader reviews whereas Macintyre’s 2018 book had 2413 reader reviews in a much shorter lifetime so Oleg’s book was not much of a commercial success.

I tried to find what Macintyre added to the story and, according to interviews, Macintyre said he had substantially more access to the case workers and important players in the CIA, MI-6 and KGB. Because these sources all had signed Official Secrets Acts and similar documents, he said that talking to him was illegal and they shouldn’t have done it. Perhaps it was easier to get them to talk since more than 20 years had passed since Oleg’s book was published.

Oleg wrote a second book in 1994 titled Comrade Kryuchkoy’s Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations 1975-1985. It elicited even fewer reader reviews (4) on Amazon and therefore wasn’t a big seller.
       -  Ken