Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games

Amazon Significant Seven, May 2007: Utterly compelling from page one, Tennent H. Bagley's Spy Wars documents the strange case of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB agent who approached the CIA in the early 1960s (apparently) ready to divulge a treasure trove of secrets, including information on Soviet intelligence operations, KGB surveillance tactics, and even Lee Harvey Oswald’s time in Russia. But was Nosenko a source of legitimate information, or a KGB loyalist sent to misdirect CIA efforts? It's a controversial question to this day, but one that Bagley, as a scion of a storied Navy family and then supervisor of the CIA’s operations against the KGB, is uniquely qualified to dissect. Along the way, he vividly recounts the chess match between the rival intelligence agencies during the opening salvoes of the Cold War, and it’s as cloak-and-dagger as any LeCarre fan could hope--double-agents, miniature cameras hidden behind neckties, microfilm, and other trappings of the spy game abound in this fascinating and fast-paced real-life thriller. --Jon Foro