Reading 'Tradecraft, Tactics And Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence And Putin's Secret War'

I’ve begun reading Sean M. Wiswesser’s most interesting book, Tradecraft, Tactics and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War, which is published by the Naval Institute Press.

The book is a primer on Russian intelligence operations and should be read by every American concerned with America’s adversary and the dictator Vladimir Putin.   

Wiswesser (seen in the above photo), a former CIA senior operations officer and fluent Russian speaker, served on multiple overseas tours and many other deployments on temporary duty, including war-zone service. He has also served as a CIA chief of station and had multiple joint-duty assignments with other intelligence agencies. 

Sean M. Wiswesser knows Russia, and he knows Russian intelligence. 

My interest in Russian intelligence operations began when I was a teenager in the 1960s and read Ian Fleming’s James Bond thrillers after seeing the movies Dr. No and From Russia with Love. I was pleased to discover that the Fleming novels were darker and more complex than the films. The Bond novels lead me to read espionage nonfiction and history books about the Cold War.

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy when I was 17 in 1970 and served on the USS Kitty Hawk as the aircraft carrier operated on “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. I worked in the Radio Communications Division performing administrative security tasks, and I was able to read classified traffic messages about the war. I was most interested in reading traffic about how Soviet intelligence was aiding the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. 

When the carrier was not launching and recovering aircraft, I would go up on the flight deck, and looking through binoculars, I saw the ubiquitous Soviet trawler off our stern. The trawler, using a transparent cover as a commercial fishing vessel, was an intelligence gathering ship that shadowed the aircraft carriers.

After my Navy service, I did security work as a Defense Department civilian. I was trained to guard our secrets from the Soviet’s GRU and the KGB, and I received regular briefings from the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the DIA and other agencies from the intelligence community on the Soviet threat. I also read such valuable books as John Barron’s KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin’s The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, and other illuminating book on Russian intelligence. 

Later, as a writer, I interviewed many FBI special agents, CIA officers, and other Soviet/Russian experts, including the CIA’s former director of the National Clandestine Service, Michael J. Sulick (seen in the above photo), who wrote the introduction to Mr. Wiswesser’s book. I also met briefly Russian defector and former KGB General Oleg Kalugin at the Spy Museum in Washington D.C.

Yet, even with my lifelong interest and fair knowledge of Russian intelligence operations, there is much I’m learning from Mr. Wiswesser’s book.

Once I've finished reading his book, I plan to interview Sean M. Wiswesser for Counterterrorism magazine. I'll post the interview here once it comes out.   

You can read more about Trdecraft, Tactics and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War by visiting the Naval Institute Press via the link below:

 Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks | U.S. Naval Institute

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine with former CIA official Michael J. Sulick via the link below: 

 Paul Davis On Crime: My Q&A With Michael Sulick, Former Director Of The CIA's National Clandestine Service & Author Of 'Spying In America'