Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 364
EAN: 9780300136241
ISBN: 0300136242
Label: Yale University Press
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2008-05-27
Publisher: Yale University Press
Studio: Yale University Press

In this rapidly paced book, a former CIA chief of counter intelligence breaks open the mysterious case of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko's 1964 defection to the United States. Still a highly controversial chapter in the history of Cold War espionage, the Nosenko affair has inspired debate for more than forty years: was Nosenko a bona fide defector with the real information about Lee Harvey Oswald's stay in Soviet Russia, or was he a KGB loyalist, engaged in a complex game of deception?As supervisor of CIA operations against the KGB at the time, Tennent H. Bagley directly handled Nosenko's case. This insider knowledge, combined with information gleaned from dozens of interviews with former KGB adversaries, places Bagley in a uniquely authoritative position. He guides the reader step by step through the complicated operations surrounding the Nosenko affair and shatters the comfortable version of events the CIA has presented to the public. Bagley unveils not only the KGB's history of merciless and bloody betrayals but also the existence of undiscovered traitors in the American camp. Shining new light on the CIA-KGB spy wars, he invites deeper thinking about the history of espionage and its implications for the intelligence community today.
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

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Damningly Informative
Comment: Just finished this book today. I would give it 5 starts but for the occaisionally difficult presentation - note to author: add a series of timelines with people/ops in any future edition.

The bottom line is this - if you take the author at his word concerning the interviews and documents he was involved in, as well as those of others, there is no way one can see Nosenko as anything but a false defector. However, the question in my mind is why they would willingly send someone so blatantly unprepared - certainly they thought better of CIA than that? I have to wonder if the actual decision to 'defect' was in fact Nosenko's - he was a drunk and womanizer and going no where fast at KGB. His 1962 Geneva trip was probably a real KGB operation, but the subsequent trip could have seen Nosenko go off reservation figuring he had a ticket to a better life (ultimately) in the US if he defected rather than work in place as a 'double' as per KGB orders. This would have put KGB in quite the difficult situation.

Anyone interested in intelligence opertations, especially those of the cold war period should read this book. We can only hope now that Nosenko is dead that the CIA will release *all* the files, at least those that were not destroyed in the late 1960s.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Missing Something
Comment: It could have been better, but maybe the author has no knowledge of the massive KGB infiltration of the CIA that was exposed in 1984.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book, Perfectly Suitable for General Reader
Comment: This book is exceptionally well-written, and well-organized. Bagley's argument is very persuasive. Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes covers Nosenko in a couple of non descript passages.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Serious Important Book
Comment: While this book is likely not written for the general public , in my opinion it is one of the most important books written in the past few years. I also am a former intelligence officer . I had a number of dealings with James Angleton during my 20 plus years of service. The numermous allegations that Angleton was paranoid constituted total nonsense. The fact that Pete Bagley and Jim Angleton who served the the people of america so honorably were so denigrated not only by the media but in some cases by their former collegues is shameful . The facts that Mr. Bagley has documented in this book should , in my opinion , be the basis for a blue ribbon commission to ascertain the true state of affairs. The American public and for that matter the world public needs to know more about assassination as a tool of statecraft as practiced by the Soviet Union's KGB .

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Gripping, informative book proves point but perpetuates assassination myth
Comment: I refer the reader to the other reviews for more background, as I will focus only on a few points. In general, I enjoyed the book, and learned much about the history of KGB in all its guises, and much about counter-intelligence tradecraft. On the other hand, Mr. Bagley doesn't reveal much about CIA, but I wouldn't expect him to. What he does reveal towards the end of the book should not come as a surprise to anyone following the news lately. I grew to admire the 80+ year-old "Pete" Bagley, even as I was questioning some of his claims and his motivation for writing this book. In the end, and after some additional research, I came to question his detractors more than I did him.

His primary motivation would seem to be setting the record straight about Yuri Nosenko. I see no reason to doubt the detailed narrative that reveals the inconsistencies in Nosenko's statements. I suspected Nosenko was a phony right from his first walk-in, even before Mr. Bagley voiced his doubts. By the end of the book, I was thoroughly convinced.

As Mr. Bagley points out, even the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) report stated "flatly" that Nosenko was lying; this despite the fact that Nosenko testified that the KGB was not involved in President Kennedy's assassination, a view that the committee would have welcomed. Nosenko must have been a pretty bad witness, indeed.

I looked at the HSCA report for myself, which the reader can easily do by searching the on-line US government archive file. I found some information that Mr. Bagley didn't mention in regard to the HSCA and Nosenko. There are two references to Nosenko, one on p. 101, the other on p. 255. Yes, they did say that they couldn't buy Nosenko's testimony, but they said more, too. In effect, they blamed his poor testimony on the "hostile interrogation" and "solitary confinement" that he received while in CIA custody! CIA had obviously been very successful in their propaganda campaign to convert Nosenko into a valuable CIA asset in every sense of the word, and to smear Bagley and his colleagues who had interrogated Nosenko.

I am quite prepared to believe the worst about intelligence agencies, in particular, how they handle people in their custody, but I find myself taking Mr. Bagley's side in this story. In the chapter entitled "Crunch Time", the author provides the rationale for questioning Nosenko as long and hard as they did. It may not have made any difference in the end, and what is worse, by holding Nosenko for as long as they did, Bagley and Co. only made it easier for their later detractors to smear him and build Nosenko's legend.

The final chapters present a very gloomy picture of CIA. As with other reports we've heard about CIA, the FBI and other intel agencies, it's impossible for outsiders to know where the incompetence, inertia and careerism stops and possible subversion from within and without begins. However, Mr. Bagley's lamentations should be viewed as constructive criticism from a loyal (former) agent, and not as the kind of criticism I think CIA deserves.

Mr. Bagley reveals himself to be one of the people, now said to form only 10 - 15% of the American public, who still subscribe to the government myth surrounding President Kennedy's assassination. He describes Oswald as the assassin, not as the accused assassin, and refers to the Warren Commission as though it were an investigative body, not the coverup cabal it was. Mr. Bagley wrote that the primary reason the USSR dispatched Nosenko to the US in 1964 was probably the USSR's urgent need to deny any part in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK.

The other side of that coin that goes unexamined in this book is the US's need to promote the "lone nut" assassin theory. Mr. Bagley mentions "back channel" messages that circulated between the two superpowers, but that something more overt than diplomatic chit-chat was required. Declaring Nosenko not only legitimate but valuable worked very well for both countries. This episode reminded me of a "walk-in" (really a "fly-in") that occurred only 23 years before Nosenko's - that of Rudolf Hess's arrival in Scotland. Whatever truly lay behind Hess's actions, the common declaration that Hess was a "lone nut" suited both Britain and Germany. Britain had some of their own Fascists (including Royals) they wanted to keep under wraps, and once Hess's flight became public knowledge, Hitler certainly wanted to deny any responsibility.

The USSR's claims that they had nothing to do with the JFK assassination are most likely true. They were simply afraid that the US might use Oswald's Russian sojourn and professed Communist sympathies as excuses to heat up the Cold War. Anyway, there were already plenty of home-grown assassination conspirators who needed no help from the USSR.

What would have been a five star book for me gets two stars removed for needlessly perpetuating the Oswald myth and missing some obvious conclusions by doing so.

---