Review: To Catch A Spy & Traitor by Toby Oliver

Synopsis: International espionage and the inner workings of the intelligence communities collide in this thriller featuring Russian Secret Service. In this Cold War thriller set in London, a showdown between America and Russia is imminent.

Double agent Alexei Ivanov is the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to work for British intelligence. But now, he’s under surveillance, and his enemy is closing in. The head of the British Internal Arm of the Service orders top field officer Joyce Leader to protect Ivanov. But the threat against Ivanov’s life is not only from the KGB . . . it’s also coming from the ranks of British Intelligence.

On the run, Ivanov and Leader must dodge both sides. No one is safe in this political thriller set during the Cold War. To Catch a Spy and Traitor is a suspense novel set around the Cuban Missile Crisis full of intrigue, action, and an unlikely partnership between two people fighting for their lives.

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Set in 1960s London, this espionage tome takes the reader on a thrilling cat and mouse chase in which a British agent must stay one step ahead of the Russians and keep her double agent alive.

Short chapters keep the narrative flowing as the focus is mainly on chase itself and the agents rather than all the preamble that usually proceeds such affairs. This is action driven and whilst character development is minimal, it works! Without all the 21st century technology, this will definitely take the reader back to a time when street smarts were used to prevail against an all too human enemy.

The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon

From “master of the genre” (The Washington Post) Joseph Kanon, an espionage thriller set at the height of the Cold War, when a captured American who has spied for the KGB is swapped by the British and returns to East Berlin needing to know who arranged his release and what they want from him.

Berlin. 1963. The height of the Cold War. An early morning spy swap, not at the familiar setting for such exchanges, or at Checkpoint Charlie, where international visitors cross into the East, but at a more discreet border crossing, usually reserved for East German VIPs. The Communists are trading two American students caught helping people to escape over the wall and an aging MI6 operative. On the other side of the trade: Martin Keller, a physicist who once made headlines, but who then disappeared into the English prison system. Keller’s most critical possession: his American passport. Keller’s most ardent desire: to see his ex-wife Sabine and their young son.

The exchange is made with the formality characteristic of these swaps. But Martin has other questions: who asked for him? Who negotiated the deal? The KGB? He has worked for the service long enough to know that nothing happens by chance. They want him for something. Not physics—his expertise is out of date. Something else, which he cannot learn until he arrives in East Berlin, when suddenly the game is afoot.

Filled with intriguing characters, atmospheric detail, and plenty of action Kanon’s latest espionage thriller is one you won’t soon forget.

Review: A State of Secrecy by Alison Lewis

Synopsis: Secret police agencies such as the East German Ministry for State Security kept enormous quantities of secrets about their own citizens, relying heavily on human modes of data collection in the form of informants. To date little is known about the complicated and conflicted lives of informers, who often lived in a perpetual state of secrecy. This is the first study of its kind to explore this secret surveillance society, its arcane rituals, and the secret lives it fostered.

Through a series of interlocking, in-depth case studies of informers in literature and the arts, A State of Secrecy seeks answers to the question of how the collusion of the East German intelligentsia with the Stasi was possible and sustainable. It draws on extensive original archive research conducted in the BStU (Stasi Records Agency), as well as eyewitness testimony, literature, and film, and uses a broad array of methods from biography, sociology, cultural studies, and literary history to political science and surveillance and intelligence studies. In teasing out the various kinds of entanglements of intellectuals with power during the Cold War, Lewis presents a microhistory of the covert activities of those writers who colluded with the secret police.

Lewis begins with a rather apt observation that no-one escapes the notice of the Stasi octopus ... informers and collaborators were the Trojan horses of the counter-revolution.

Lewis presents us with five interlaced biographical studies of writes who were Stasi informers - either by choice or by coercion. Through the medium of these cultural icons, Lewis "sets out to explore the secret surveillance society that enabled, controlled and subverted cultural life in the GDR". To this end, this is a well constructed study of the Stasi apparatus and its use of cultural diplomacy as a weapon against the subversive activities of its citizenry. However, by the 1980s, as people found the courage to refuse to collaborate, the Stasi found themselves with a distinct shortage of informers.

We find that through the stories presented that the Stasi preferred to "work" with people with intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivations - patriotism and ideology. All those featured had crossed paths at one point or another during their lifetimes - all joined for varying reasons. We find that the likes of Paul Wiens believed that the emancipation of Jews would come about through communism rather than fascism, and was one who enjoyed the "benefits" of collaboration. His daughter Maya was part of the Stasi machinery from an early period, though as a struggling novelist, became embittered with the struggle against censorship. Student Helga Navak was blackmailed into collaborating, but proved to be the least effective. Paul Gratzik was ideologically motivated, however still enjoyed the financial and materials gains to be had. And lastly Sascha Anderson, whose "employment" is still being questioned today - did he volunteer or was he recruited.  Through these five, Lewis reveals an unholy alliance between the personal and political, and the private and the secret realm.

For those wishing to expand upon and enhance their knowledge and understanding of Stasi activities and the GDR machinery, this will make a compelling read. It is a well researched tome that explores the recruitment process, the motivations and ultimately, the justifications for collaboration. It also demonstrates that the Stasi did not necessarily need to employ "good cop bad cop" thug tactics to get what it wanted - a little sweetner here, a bit of blackmail there worked just as well. As the saying goes, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar - and the Stasi demonstrate this idiom rather well.

There are a number of other books dealing with specific aspects of the Stasi's use of certain societal and cultural segments, and this will prove a valuable addition to that core study group.

Too Secret Too Long by Chapman Pincher

Chapman Pincher, the Cold War and the spy scandals which shocked the nation.

Chapman Pincher, the “lone wolf of Fleet Street”, is now regarded as the godfather of investigative journalism. During the Cold War era he became notorious as a relentless investigator of spies, uncovering the shocking extent of Soviet infiltration of the British Secret Services – and the collusion and incompetence at the heart of the British Establishment.

Pincher’s Their Trade is Treachery, published in 1981, became an instant classic. While helping to unmask the Cambridge five, the conclusion he drew was that there must be someone right at the heart of the Secret Services who allowed these men to go undetected. And he concluded that it could be none other than Roger Hollis, then head of MI5 (as did Peter Wright in his autobiography, Spy Catcher).

In this sequel he presents a compelling case against Hollis, with a torrent of new disclosures about the appalling extent to which the British secret services had been penetrated and manipulated by Soviet agents. Pincher builds evidence that Hollis, the man he calls ‘Spy of the Century’, must have colluded. Working with him was a woman, Moscow trained, of such dedication and courage that she qualifies to be regarded as the most successful female spy ever.

Too Secret Too Long paints a riveting picture of Cold War espionage, of corruption within the British Secret Service and the cover-ups by successive governments.

Review: The Princess Spy by Larry Loftis

Synopsis: When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). 

As the US enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes.

Aline’s life changes when, at a dinner party, she meets a man named Frank Ryan and reveals how desperately she wants to do her part for her country. Within a few weeks, he helps her join the Office of Strategic Services—forerunner of the CIA. With a code name and expert training under her belt, she is sent to Spain to be a coder, but is soon given the additional assignment of infiltrating the upper echelons of society, mingling with high-ranking officials, diplomats, and titled Europeans, any of whom could be an enemy agent. Against this glamorous backdrop of galas and dinner parties, she recruits sub-agents and engages in deep-cover espionage to counter Nazi tactics in Madrid.

Even after marrying the Count of Romanones, one of the wealthiest men in Spain, Aline secretly continues her covert activities, being given special assignments when abroad that would benefit from her impeccable pedigree and social connections.

Filled with twists, romance, and plenty of white-knuckled adventures fit for a James Bond film, The Princess Spy brings to vivid life the dazzling adventures of a remarkable American woman who risked everything to serve her country. 

For me, this was cosy-espionage, a new term I am applying to works on espionage where there is not really a lot of espionage substance.

One cannot take away from Aline that work that she did for the USA whilst she was based in neutral Spain - she was a coder and a field agent of sorts; she underwent the training before being handed a cover story and assigned a task.  Yes, anyone caught spying in Spain was at risk of being arrested, imprisoned and deported - but all, including the Nazi, were on the same playing field. However, the risks associated with her work are a far cry from those who were air-dropped behind enemy lines and were at risk of being captured by the Nazi and executed.

Much of Aline's "work" was social - meeting and mingling with society notables to gain access to any information that might come her way.  The odd bits of derring-do come in the form of being tailed by "associates" of a jealous boyfriend (a bull-fighter of renown) and a short spell of imprisonment.  Her work was carried out in the last year or so of the war in Europe - and with the surrender of the Germans, her work - for all intents and purposes - was over.

By this time, she was more or less ensconced in Spanish society and being courted by a Spanish prince.  Though she claims she wants to do her part, one finds that Aline was more interested in the social aspects that this covert work provided her - so much so she quits to marry her prince.

We are only told that during her marriage that she was working for the CIA - but there are no details that are indeed forthcoming to really give credence to this theory.  Her latter years could be taken from the covers of the gossip columns.

" ... Aline had perfected the art of gathering and keeping friends, weaving them together in a tapestry that spanned from Madrid to Paris to New York to Hollywood ..."

The author himself lets us know quite early on that even he was unsure if her story was even true, and that numerous events in her memoirs are indeed highly imagined. The constant adjustments to her narrative in her own books did not help matters in her favour.  

I would not class her as a war heroine along the lines of say a Nancy Wake, Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan or even Violette Szabo, but one cannot discount that fact that she did serve her country in some capacity (more of a Bletchley Park type role).  I did appreciate the wrap up of the main characters at the end - it is always to see where they ended up after the war.

This is a very readable story of a small town girl, who went from model to spy to novelist to celebrity all in one incredible lifetime.

Review: God's Spies by Elizabeth Braw

Synopsis: East Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the country’s secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful “church department” that—using persuasion rather than threats—managed to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors, seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in the Stasi.

Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name: Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in the country’s predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German Christians, the Stasi couldn’t prevent the church-led protests that erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall.

This presents a very different aspect of Cold War espionage. One simply does not expect this kind of spying when we think of agents and spies - but here they are, local religions figures within the community of not only East Germany, but other Eastern Bloc nations and Scandinavia.

Author Elizabeth Braw injects a personal, human element, through both family recollections and interviews with still living Stasi Officers, in particular, Joachim Wiegard, the Director of the Stasi Church division.

There is a hell of a lot of information to take in ... this is no quick read, despite the almost conversational style of writing. The reader must immerse themselves in the period, the politics, the religion, the mindset of those being the Iron Curtain. Braw writes that " Stasi Church espionage was exhilarating and mysterious and repulsive ...".

The Stasi was a formidable operation, with 1.7 million informants, and literally half the population being spied on in the German Democratic Republic. Christianity was Communism's greatest foe as it it represented a competing world view. The Pastor-spies were focused on social groups and associations who attracted many dissidents, in an effort to keep the Church powerless.

We are introduced to a number of Pastor-spies and their activities, whilst Braw takes us back to her conversations with Wiegard, who never quite reveals all that he knows. These agents, we are told, did not expect to get wealthy - they instead received material and consumers goods (a luxury in the East); travel permits; promotions; medications; cars, books; things we in the West took (and still take) for granted - "... the bonus being an agent in your own country was that your employer can make your life more comfortable..".

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of East Germany, the Stasis files were not completely destroyed - and the identities of the vast network of spies, not just the Pastor-spies, were revealed. Braw notes that whilst the Stasi were experts at collecting information, they were not so good when it came to what to do with it all! There was the presumptions that the GDR would last so there was no haste to destroy anything or put this information beyond reach. People's long hidden pasts was being raised up like a proverbial Lazarus.

A recommend read for all Cold War and espionage enthusiasts.

Review: The Anatomy of a Spy by Michael Smith

Synopsis: Why do people put their lives at risk to collect intelligence? How do intelligence services ensure that the agents they recruit do their bidding and don't betray them? What makes the perfect spy? Drawing on interviews with active and former British, American, Russian, European, and Asian intelligence officers and agents, Michael Smith creates a layered portrait of why spies spy, what motivates them, and what makes them effective.

Love, sex, money, patriotism, risk, adventure, revenge, compulsion, doing the right thing— focusing on the motivations, The Anatomy of a Spy presents a wealth of spy stories, some previously unknown and some famous, from the very human angle of the agents themselves. The accounts of actual spying extend from ancient history to the present, and from running agents inside the Islamic State and al-Qaeda to the recent Russian active measures campaigns and operations to influence votes in the UK, European Union, and United States, penetrating as far as Trump Tower if not the White House.

This is a history of espionage and betrayal, peppered with real stories, predominantly from the 20th century.  Whilst outlining the difference between a spy and an agent, this book explores the motives for espionage under seven main headings, all of which cross over into each other. So why do spies spy: sex, money, tribal loyalty, revenge, control, ideology, compromise, ego, patriotism, adventure or just the right thing to do.

In summary -

(1) Sexual Relationships: the use of the honey trap, sexual coersion and blackmail.

(2) Money: contraband as currency, no loyalty when selling to the highest bidder, the need for money; unreliable method of recruiting and obtaining information.

(3) Patriotism: doing something for the good of your country, use of civilians (expats or business folk), undermining from within to bring down the rival regime (trojan horse), or the recruitment of citizens of occupied territories.

(4) Adventure: risk takers, egotists, fantasists, psychopaths, self obsession, wounded pride.

(5) Revenge: losers in a civil war, death of a loved one, exiled emigre population, anger at the ruling regime.

(6) Right Thing To Do: ideology, moral duty, belief, feeling of belonging, support for the underdog.

(7) Unwitting Agents: exertion of influence, covert use of someone without their knowledge, tactics of deception and confusion, cybercrime, whistle-blowing.

Some of these larger than life characters I was familiar with from prior reading - though not in such detail as provided here. Fleming is well featured as is that near-fictional Reilley Ace of Spies. None of these fantastical schemes would get past HR today and you are often left wondering how so many of them actually succeeded.

I was particularly interested in wartime espionage and the Cold War, as we moved further closer to our own time, my interest waned a little - but that was just me as I found the "old school" spycraft was more interesting - the human element rather than the current, modern day cybercrime and whistle-blowing (spying from a distance).

If this is your genre, it's well worth the read. 

Review: Betrayal In Berlin by Steve Vogel

Synopsis:The astonishing true story of the Berlin Tunnel, one of the West’s greatest espionage operations of the Cold War—and the dangerous Soviet mole who betrayed it.

Its code name was “Operation Gold,” a wildly audacious CIA plan to construct a clandestine tunnel into East Berlin to tap into critical KGB and Soviet military telecommunication lines. The tunnel, crossing the border between the American and Soviet sectors, would have to be 1,500 feet (the length of the Empire State Building) with state-of-the-art equipment, built and operated literally under the feet of their Cold War adversaries. Success would provide the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service access to a vast treasure of intelligence. Exposure might spark a dangerous confrontation with the Soviets. Yet as the Allies were burrowing into the German soil, a traitor, code-named Agent Diamond by his Soviet handlers, was burrowing into the operation itself. . .

Betrayal in Berlin is Steve Vogel’s heart pounding account of the operation. He vividly recreates post-war Berlin, a scarred, shadowy snake pit with thousands of spies and innumerable cover stories. It is also the most vivid account of George Blake, perhaps the most damaging mole of the Cold War. Drawing upon years of archival research, secret documents, and rare interviews with Blake himself, Vogel has crafted a true-life spy story as thrilling as the novels of John le Carré and Len Deighton.

Anyone who is at all interested in this period of history, especially as it relates to Cold War espionage, should pick this up and read it. Don't be put off by the number of pages, at least 100 of them are dedicated to notes, bibliography and a list of interviewees and dates.

I have a whole three shelves dedicated to espionage and spies, a topic I became heavily interested in when my late teens, when there was still a kind of romance about the whole being a spy thing - there was a lot of effort and imagination put into many of the activities undertaken, and reading back on these, one wonders how any of them got away with what they did - very "boys' own adventures" .

There is a hell of a lot of information being presented: on the agencies, their personnel, political history, and a lot of mundane stuff leading up to the building of the Berlin Tunnel. Even afterwards, the lives of those involved peaked and waned, Blake himself drifts in and out of focus, and it is not until events reach their apogee with Blake's arrest and incarceration, that the political merry-go-round starts up again and we are all carried along in its wake.

Vogel's easy manner of disseminating this plethora of information makes for an thrilling and captivating story - the trouble is, this is not fiction but fact!

Heartily recommended .... "mischief, thou art afoot ..."

Who was George Blake: as Vogel himself notes - the ".. decade long adventure he had lived since even before he reached adulthood left him enthralled with deception and espionage ..."  He was a man with a gift for languages and his activities during World War II made him the perfect recruit for MI6 - " .. a gallant past, numerous languages and an ingenious mind ...".  

So why did he turn?  Vogel offers a number of reasons, all very plausible, but it is only conjecture really, as Blake himself puts is down to a dissatisfaction with the governing bodies in the UK and USA.  Blake went from being a religious zealot to Communist adherent in a few years, affected, he said, by the American influence and bombings in Korea, and his disappointment in the church. 

Source: Traitor: British Double Agents 1930-80 By John Frayn Turner

He was never officially approached but volunteered; he was never paid for his double dealings; and yet he was considered the most damaging of the Cold War spies - one whom the Soviets placed great value on and risked a lot to keep him in place.   

Source: The Independent - 7th November 2012

After spying for nearly ten years, it was the defection of another spy that eventually led to his capture, and his capitulation without coersion.  Even his escape was the stuff of legends - Initially it was assumed that he had been ‘sprung’ by Soviet or Eastern Bloc authorities (Special Branch even received a tip off that he was being smuggled out of the country in an instrument case belong to a harpist with the Czechoslovakia State Orchestra). But the evidence suggests arrangements were made by Blake himself, with considerable assistance from sympathetic fellow-inmates in Wormwood Scrubs, where he had been a model prisoner.

more online:

Red Files - Interview with George Blake

Crime Reads - The Daring Plan to Build the Berlin Tunnel

House of Commons (24th October 1966) - the Escape of George Blake

History of Spies - George Blake

Declassified Govt Docs - George Blake

further reading:

The Greatest Traitor: The Secret Lives of Agent George Blake by Roger Hermiston

No Other Choice: An Autobiography by George Blake

The Springing of George Blake by Sean Bourke

George Blake: Double Agent by EH Cookridge

Traitor: British Double Agents 1930-80 by John Frayn Turner 

Espionage, Security, and Intelligence in Britain, 1945-1970 edited by Richard James Aldrich 

The Springing of George Blake by Sean Bourke

The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton

From History News Network:

If you asked the average American to name a CIA agent, he or she would probably go blank. One might list one of the Watergate burglars: E. Howard Hunt, James McCord or Gordon Liddy. A few new junkies might be able to name the current CIA Director, Dan Coats or his predecessor, Mike Pompeo (now secretary of state). 

Almost no one, however, would be able to identify James Jesus Angleton, despite his key role as leader of the agency’s head of counter-intelligence (CI) operations during the height of the Cold War. Angleton had a profound impact on the agency’s operating procedures during its formative years. A fervent anti-Communist, he was obsessed by the KGB and (he falsely believed) its constant attempts to plant agents in the CIA. Operating without hard evidence, he wrongly accused many CIA colleagues of disloyalty and ruined dozens of careers. 

The Ghost, a new biography of Angleton by Jefferson Morley, a Washington journalist, provides an intriguing look at this powerful, enigmatic Cold Warrior. He earned the nickname “the Ghost” because he was rarely seen outside his high-security office, yet had a major impact on the agency’s strategy and tactics. 

read more from James Thornton Harris @ History News Network