Untangling the web of deception

This is perhaps the most amazing non-fiction spy book that has ever appeared during or after the Cold War. There is little doubt that all intelligence historians interested in the past 50 years of espionage games played by the CIA and the KGB will read it as we did — in one take:

A day in the 1990s must count as one of the extreme low points of CIA counter- intelligence. When this KGB provocateur and deceiver concluded a lecture to CIA staff personnel in their Langley auditorium, the audience — all professional American intelligence officers — rose as one, eager-faced and thrilled, to give Yuri Nosenko a standing ovation.

What a wonderful grand finale! And this is not a story about some withered human wreck who passed away years ago and is hardly remembered, but about a living, healthy US intelligence veteran. And the writer’s name is not Philip Agee or that of another service whistleblower.