My Washington Times Review of Ben Macintyre's 'The Spy And The Traitor'

The Washington Times published my review of Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War.

John le Carre, the author of the classic spy thrillers “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” called Ben Macintyre’s book “The best true spy story I have ever read.”

Now out in paperback, Mr. Macintyre’s “The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War” is the true story of Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB colonel who spied for the British and later defected to the United Kingdom in 1985.

“Oleg Gordievsky was born into the KGB: Shaped by it, loved by it, twisted, damaged, and very nearly destroyed by it. The Soviet spy service was in his heart and in his blood. His father worked for the intelligence service all his life, and wore his KGB uniform every day, including weekends. The Gordievskys lived amid the spy fraternity in a designated apartment block, ate special food reserved for officers, and spent their free time socializing with other spy families. Gordievsky was a child of the KGB,” Mr. Macintyre writes in the beginning of the book.

The author notes that the KGB — the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnnosti, or Committee for State Security — was the most complex and far-reaching intelligence agency ever created. The KGB had the role of both foreign and domestic intelligence gathering, as well as internal security enforcement and state police. The KGB controlled every aspect of life in the Soviet Union.

Gordievsky moved up the chain in the KGB to become the “rezident,” the senior KGB intelligence officer in London, working out of the Soviet embassy. For more than 10 years he was also working as a double agent for the British.       

As Mr. Macintyre points out in his outstanding book, Gordievsky became disillusioned with Soviet communism while posted in Copenhagen. The Soviet police state paled in comparison to the freedom of the West. His disillusionment became total after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and he decided to spy for the British.  

His intelligence was so valuable that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan were given briefings on Gordievsky’s insights into the KGB and Soviet political leadership. The CIA was not told who the Brit spy was, so they launched an investigation to learn who the valuable British asset was. 

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/30/book-review-spy-and-traitor/ 

The Spy And The Traitor: How A KGB Officer Stopped The Soviets From Launching A Nuclear Attack On The West

Cole Moreton at the Daily Mail offers a piece on the former KGB officer who helped prevent WWIII.

We’re walking through a park in London where a Soviet spy once carried out a secret drop – just before he saved the world. ‘Most people have no idea how close we were to nuclear war at that time,’ says Ben Macintyre, author of The Spy And The Traitor, which tells the extraordinary true story of a KGB agent turned British informant called Oleg Gordievsky (seen in the above photo). ‘He was able to crack open the inner secrets of the Kremlin. No spy had ever done that for Britain before.’

Gordievsky worked undercover for the KGB – the Soviet secret service – in London in the early Eighties, sending reports back to Moscow. But he was also, bravely, spying for the West. ‘If Oleg had been caught he would have been tortured and executed, and most of his family would have been rounded up as well.’ 


Then came Able Archer 83, a NATO war-game training exercise in November 1983, leading up to a simulated nuclear attack. The Soviets thought it was real. ‘Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric about the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” was interpreted in Moscow as a direct threat. The Kremlin genuinely believed the West was going to launch a first nuclear strike.’

The Soviets panicked and prepared to launch their missiles first, believing it was the only way to save themselves. Gordievsky heard all about it as a senior KGB operative, but quickly passed word on to his handlers, who took it to the highest level.

‘People in Downing Street and the Oval Office didn’t believe it at first, but Oleg managed to convince them it was true – and say that unless they calmed down the fighting talk, the West would effectively press the button on its own destruction.’

Moves were made to calm down the Soviets, who never fired. ‘A lot of what spies do doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. This is one of the few cases in which spying changed history.’

Gordievsky was even more intimately involved in the next historic development, when the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to London in 1984 for a meeting with the Prime Minister that would hasten the end of the Cold War. ‘Oleg was briefing both sides. He was telling Thatcher what to say to Gorbachev and he was telling Gorbachev to say to Thatcher. Extraordinary.’

Gordievsky had been brought up a loyalist, the son of a KGB agent, but his stomach was turned by the sight of the Berlin Wall going up while he was stationed there. ‘He came to believe that he was serving a corrupt, barbarian regime. He didn’t do it for money; he did it purely for ideological reasons.’

All this is laid out in The Spy And The Traitor, which is about to be released in paperback. So I’m walking with Macintyre, a short, bespectacled 55-year-old with a tweed jacket and a fierce intelligence, through Coram’s Fields near Holborn. This is where Gordievsky carried out his last dead-drop, hiding £8,000 in the bushes for a newly arrived Soviet spy. ‘He brought his kids as cover. They would have been aged three and six. He left them on the swings, went behind the hedge and dropped a brick with the notes, wrapped in a plastic bag.’

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-7035959/Historian-Ben-Macintyre-reveals-gripping-story-KGB-agent-saved-Armageddon.html 

You can also read my review of The Spy and the Traitor via the below link:

www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2019/01/my-review-of-spy-and-traitor.html 

Spy Who Came In From The Cold: True Story Of KGB Defector More Gripping Than Le Carre

Guy Walters at the British newspaper the Daily Mail reports on the true and dramatic story of Oleg Gordievsky, co-author of KGB: The Inside Story, who escaped and defected from the Soviet Union.

You can read the story and view a video clip via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3151625/Spy-came-cold-thanks-packet-cheese-onion-crisps-true-story-gripping-Le-Carre.html 

Revealed: How A Mars Bar, A Dirty Nappy And A Plastic Bag From Safeway Helped KGB Defector Gordievsky Flee The Soviet Union

Elaine O'Flynn at the British newspaper the Daily Mail offers a piece on former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky, co-author of KGB: The Inside Story, and how he was able to defect to the United Kingdom.

A Cold War double agent has revealed for the first time how a Mars bar and a dirty nappy helped him escape capture when he fled the USSR in 1985.

 

Thirty years to the month after his daring escape, Oleg Gordievsky has revealed how he managed to flee the Soviet Union with the help of MI6 when he realised his cover was blown.

 

Now 76 and still living in England, the KGB chief spent more than a decade covertly passing insider information to the British authorities, including active operations and the identities and whereabouts of Soviet spies, helping them to learn about the country's tactics during the Cold War.

When he was betrayed in 1985 and subsequently interrogated, Gordievsky put into motion an elaborate plan to help him escape Moscow, he told Ben Macintyre of The Times Magazine.

'Operation Pimlico' was triggered if he stood with a Safeway plastic carrier bag at 7.24am on a Tuesday morning by a designated bakery on Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow, where he could be spotted by a MI6 officer.

 

There, he would wait for his next signal - a man, wearing a shirt and carrying a green Harrods bag, who would bite into a Mars bar as he caught Gordievsky's eye.

 

You can read the rest of the piece and view photos and a video clip via the below link:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3149447/How-Mars-Bar-dirty-nappy-plastic-bag-Safeway-helped-KGB-defector-Gordievsky-flee-Soviet-Union.html