RUSSIA

Soviet Spies

General

Carran, Edward. The Soviet Spy Web. London: Ampersand, 1961.

Wilcox: "Popular paperback account of Soviet espionage around the world, particularly in England."

Copp, Dewitt. Famous Soviet Spies: The Kremlin's Secret Weapon. Washington, DC: US News and World Report, 1973. [Petersen]

Dobbs, Michael, and R. Jeffrey Smith. "The KGB's Keystone Kops: How the FBI Penetrated Moscow's Washington Spy Ring." Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 8-14 Mar. 1993, 11-12.

This article keys off interviews with Yuri Shvets, a former KGB officer who served in Washington 1985-1987. "A combination of treachery, bureaucratic incompetence and effective FBI penetration of the [Washington 'residency'] enabled U.S. authorities to smash long-standing Soviet spy rings and carry out a spectacular expulsion of KGB officers in October 1986.... Over the past few years, the KGB has managed to put its Washington operation back together, but it lacks the aggressive bite it once had, according to sources in Washington and Moscow."

Duff, William E. A Time for Spies: Theodore Stephanovich Mally and the Era of the Great Illegals. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999.

According to Powers, NYRB (11 May 2000) and Intelligence Wars (2004), 99-100, Mally was "a Hungarian captured by the tsarist armies during World War I and freed by the Bolsheviks, who recruited him to the Communist cause and a career in the running of spies.... He performed his most important job during the two years (1935-1937) he spent handling the Cambridge Five in London....Much of Mally's life is still unknown, but the character of the man emerges clearly in Duff's wonderful book."

Goedeken, Library Journal, 15 Oct. 1999, finds that the author is "at times overly detailed in his presentation"; nevertheless, "Duff provides the reader with a sophisticated analysis of ... Mally and his work as an undercover agent for Stalin."

Barron, IJI&C 14.3, notes that although this "well-documented treatise" focuses on Mally, it "is really an exposition of overall operations of Soviet Illegals during the 1930s."

Halebian, Olivia. "New Light on Old Spies: A Review of Recent Soviet Intelligence Revelations." Studies in Intelligence 9, no. 4 (Fall 1965): 77-92.

"For the first time since the Revolution the espionage exploits of the Soviet military intelligence service [GRU] and state security [KGB] have [recently] been officially acknowledged." This is a dramatic revision of official policy that the USSR does not engage in foreign espionage activities. Halebian looks at new works on Richard Sorge; GRU officer Col. Lev Manevich; executed GRU chief Semen Uritskiy; the German portion of the Rote Kapelle; Col. Rudolf Abel; Feliks Dzerzhinskiy; and a few other lesser known Chekists. In addition, there have been works published on the Trust operation of the 1920s.

Hutton, J. Bernard [Pseud., Joseph Heisler]. School for Spies: The ABC of How Russia's Secret Service Operates. London: Spearman, 1961.

Chambers: Czech defector.

Kessler, Ronald. Spy vs. Spy: Stalking Soviet Spies in America. New York: Scribner's, 1988. Spy vs. Spy: The Shocking True Story of the FBI's War Against Soviet Agents in America. New York: Pocket Books, 1988.

Cram says this is an "interesting and useful compendium" that constitutes a "valuable contribution to counterintelligence literature on the FBI experience."

According to Evans, IJI&C 3.3, Spy vs. Spy is "easy for laymen to read and entertains." However, the subtitle is misleading because the case of the Koechers, who were Czech spies, takes up "a large part or all of five of the nineteen chapters." Pollard, who spied for Israel, takes up most of Chapter 13. And Chapter 14 belongs to Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a PRC spy. The book "reflects ... many institutional prejudices and parochial viewpoints, especially regarding the CIA."

NameBase comments that "[m]ost of this book recounts the story of Karl F. Koecher and his wife Hana, whom Kessler interviewed in 1987. In 1965 they orchestrated a phony defection from the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service, after which Karl became anaturalized U.S. citizen, worked full-time for the CIA beginning in 1973, and continued as a contract agent after 1977. He ... spent many of his weekends as a 'swinger' at spouse-swapping parties with Hana. By 1982 the FBI's counterintelligence squad was getting suspicious. In 1984 Karl Koecher admitted that he had been spying for the East all along, and in 1986 he and Hana were traded for Natan Sharansky."

Lewis, Donald. Sexpionage: The Exploitation of Sex by Soviet Intelligence. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1976.

Constantinides: Although the operational use of sex is a legitimate topic for research, this book "can only be described as a potpourri of fact, rumor, and speculation."

Newman, Bernard C.

1. Famous Soviet Spies: The Kremlin's Secret Weapon. Washington, DC: U.S. News & World Report, 1976. [Petersen]

2. The Red Spider Web: The Story of Russian Spying in Canada. London: Latimer House, 1947. [Wilcox]

3. Soviet Atomic Spies. London: Robert Hale, 1952. [Petersen]

Rees, Mervyn. "The Spy Who Knew It All." Daily Mail (London), 20 Nov. 1983, 1-2, 31-34.

Rocca and Dziak describe this article as "[a]n in-depth account of the ... case of Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, a long-standing Soviet penetration of the South African naval establishment."

According to Polmar and Allen, Gerhardt spied for the GRU from 1960 until his arrest in 1981. He was found guilty of high treason and espionage and sentenced to life in prison in December 1983.

Schecter, Jerrold L. and Leona Schecter. Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2002.

According to Goulden, AFIO WIN 35-02, 2 Sep. 2002, the authors believe that the activities of Soviet intelligence agents certainly affected U.S. policy and changed U.S. history. Their effort to document that viewpoint makes Sacred Secrets "an important contribution to intelligence literature." In addition, "their analysis of VENONA is the best yet published."

Holmes, Library Journal, Jul. 2002, finds that Sacred Secrets "is a touch oversold.... While it adds some details to the historical literature, little new ground is actually broken.... [I]t is less a path-breaking work than an incremental addition to the Cold War literature."

For Haynes, I&NS 17.4, the absence of an explanation of how the authors obtained Soviet intelligence documents opens the door for doubters to reject them but, for his part, he is willing to "accept[] them as authentic." Although "[a]n inattention to detail has allowed minor errors to creep into the text..., students of Soviet espionage ... would be foolish to ignore" this book.

Bath. NIPQ 19.4, sees Sacred Secrets as a "well-researched view of some of the murkier aspects of Cold War espionage." Although he is "not sure" that he agrees "with all their conclusions," the reviewer finds that "they make a plausible case."

Shipley, Peter. Hostile Action: The KGB and Secret Soviet Operations in Britain. London: St Martin's, 1989. New York: St Martin's, 1990.

Surveillant 1.1 says that the author "documents well the activities and the response of the British authorities to the perceived dangers."

For Kerr, I&NS 7.4, this "general yet lively historical survey" is "a useful contribution to scholarship" on Soviet active measures. The author's central thesis is that "from Lenin to Gorbachev, there has been more continuity than discontinuity in the strategic aims, tactics and methods of Soviet hostile action against Britain." However, Shipley's assessment of Soviet propaganda efforts "exaggerates the effect or success of the propaganda."

van der Rhoer, Edward. The Shadow Network. New York: Scribner's, 1983.

Wilcox: Account of Soviet spies, including Orlov, Abel, Gouzenko, Petrov, and Deriabin.

Verbitsky, Anatole, and Dick Adler. Sleeping with Moscow: The Authorized Account of the KGB's Bungled Infiltration of the FBI by Two of the Soviet Union's Most Unlikely Operatives. New York: Shapolsky, 1987. [Petersen]

West, Nigel. [Rupert Allason] The Illegals: The Double Lives of the Cold War's Most Secret Agents. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993. [pb] London: Coronet Books, 1994.

Surveillant 3.4/5: "On the well-known examples,... West supplies new information, and he identifies other less-familiar and far more recent cases."

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