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. 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 a naturalized 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."
Knight, Amy. How The Cold War Began: The Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet Spies. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2005. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006.
Peake, Studies 50.2 (2006), finds that the author "adds some new and relatively minor details to the Gouzenko story. While they do not change the substance of the case, they do describe more of Gouzenko’s personal life after the defection.... Only gradually does the real reason Knight wrote [this book] become apparent: [she] argues that the primary product of the Gouzenko defection was the damage done to innocent lives due to the 'unrelenting witch-hunt for spies.'" When the "innocent lives" mentioned include Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, there are some problems.
For Clément, I&NS 21.2 (Apr. 2006), the author's connecting Gouzenko's defection to "American anti-communist witch-hunts" goes down without choking sounds. The reviewer sees the work as "a coherent, engaging analysis of Igor Gouzenko's legacy in the Cold War." Nonetheless, Knight's determination "to denigrate Mackenzie King at every turn" is written off as but a detail.
Goulden, Intelligencer 15.2 (Fall/Winter 2006-2007), comments that "very little is added to our knowledge of the Gouzenko matter in [this] inanely titled" book. Rather, it is "an angry riff on how the Canadians mishandled the case, and how the American Congress and FBI used Gouzenko to touch off an 'anti-communist witch hunt.'"
Krall,
Yung. A Thousand Tears Falling: The True Story of a Vietnamese Family Torn Apart by War, Communism, and the CIA. Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 1995.
Surveillant 4.4/5: Yung Krall, the daughter of an NFLSV official, was a spy for the CIA and also worked with the FBI for which she helped break up the Humphrey-Huong spy ring.
Lamphere, Robert J., and Tom Shachtman. The FBI-KGB War: A Special Agent's Story. New York: Random House, 1986. [pb] New York: Berkley, 1986. New Ed., with Post-Cold War Afterword. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1995. [pb]
Petersen calls The FBI-KGB War "a particularly revealing first-hand account of counterintelligence operations in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s." Miller, IJI&C 1.3, agrees, finding it a "masterful presentation of the reality of counterespionage activities." The reviewer "strongly recommends" it.
To Powers, NYRB 40.9, the book is the "best account of th[e] still fragmentary story [of the Venona material].... Lamphere's book adds much important information to the stories of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,... Klaus Fuchs,... and of the Soviet spy ring which included Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, and Kim Philby."
Cram says Lamphere tells the "story about breaking the KGB ciphers during World War II and the resulting consequences of that achievement in the struggle against Soviet espionage and subversion." This "otherwise excellent history" is marred by the "egregious error" of accepting Pincher's tagging of Hollis as a Soviet agent. The author discusses Hoover's "vengeful actions" against the early CIA and liaison with it. "Although this book has a few errors and the story has perhaps been gilded a bit by Lamphere, it nevertheless remains one of the best histories of US counterintelligence."
According to Surveillant 4.4/5, the 1995 edition includes a 27-page Afterword where Lamphere "reviews the KGB-FBI wars using the latest releases from KGB and U.S. archives."
Commenting in an article published in 2003, Robarge, Studies 47.3/fn.4, says that this "remains the best book on the FBI and counterintelligence."
For a report on some of the difficulties Lamphere experienced in publishing his book, see George Lardner, Jr., "Ex-Agent's Spy Book Tests Secrecy," Washington Post, 27 Oct. 1977, A1.
Lewy,
Guenter. The Cause that Failed: Communism in American Political Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Maldon
Institute. America's Espionage Epidemic. Washington, DC: 1986.
Petersen: "Excellent summary of espionage cases in the mid-1980s."
Martin,
David. "Spy Cases Awaken Interest in Security." ABA Standing
Committee Intelligence Report 7, no. 8 (1985): 1-2, 7. [Petersen]
Morgan, Ted. Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth Century America. New York: Random House, 2003.
Powers, NYRB (12 Feb. 2004) and Intelligence Wars (2004), 109-122, comments that the author "has an appetite for wide reading and a gift for amplitude in narrative.... Morgan's account of the years we remember by McCarthy's name is rich and fast-paced." However, the parts before and after, while "perfectly interesting,... lack[] any clear thematic line and veer[] off at the end into an eighteen-page digression on September 11 and the invasion of Iraq." In addition, "the absence of the victims of McCarthy witch-hunting starves Reds of its real significance."
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