The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War Hardcover – September 18, 2018

A truly superb work of true life spy craft. Other reviewers have more than adequately outlined the content of this work. I will just comment on my continued amazement at how during the Cold War so many liberals in the West were Soviet apologists blaming the West for all the world's problems. In the UK particularly, so many in the Labour Party took money from Moscow while undermining democratic institutions. The Soviet Union was a hell hole from beginning to end. How anyone could support it in any way is inexplicable.

The Spy and The Traitor is touted in its subhead as "the greatest espionage story ever told." That isn't just publisher hype. The real events and the story of Oleg Gordievsky, KGB officer and diplomat reads like something from a John LeCarre or Robert Ludlum story...except it's true and marvelously documented. Raised by a father and older brother who both served devotedly and unquestioningly in the KGB (dad worked through Stalin's purges and survived in the KGB's precursor agency). Loyalty to the service then would seem to be a given--betraying the agency and its million members (you read that right) would be like sabotaging the family's business. Yet events and history continue to flummox human expectations.First the invasion of Hungary, then the erection of the Berlin Wall (which Gordievsky was present to see) and finally the brutal crushing of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia all drove this KGB officer further and further away from the party. Exposure to the West in Copenhagen and later in London provided a first hand taste of liberty and freedom. It served as the final push into the eager and eternally grateful arms of his M16 handlers. The double agent provided them with not merely a trove of concrete information but invaluable insight into the workings of the KGB and planning of the Soviet Leadership. It is no exaggeration to say Gordievsky was our Kim Philby. The details of these meetings, contacts, "drops", etc. and how spies operated from the end WWII until the dissolution of the Soviet empire is fascinating and novelistic in the telling. Gordievsky's escape or "exfiltration" from the USSR by M16 is nothing short of breathtaking--a Bourne Identity moment.Best of all though is the historical and moral context that gives readers a perspective of events' meanings. Ben McIntyre is a masterful storyteller and detailed chronicler. He thoroughly but concisely points out the import and value of Grodievsky's insights--particularly warning the Brits and thereby the Americans that the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov genuinely believed the West was intent upon a first nuclear strike. Appreciating that paranoia can be as perilous as animus, first Thatcher and then Reagan worked to assuage Soviet fears. It was Gordievsky who prepped both sides for successful summits in the 80s and it was he who counseled wisely to neither disband nor include the USSR in the SDI or Star Wars initiative. Rather, ratchet up the pressure and they would go bankrupt trying to keep up, which is precisely what happened.Gordievsky certainly didn't single handedly end the cold war--there were dozens of events and officials who played a significant role. But Oleg Gordievsky was surely in the first rank of those who made a valuable contribution earning the appreciation of Reagan, Thatcher, the CIA, M16 and yes, QEII (the monarch, not the ocean liner). Best of all, McIntryre doesn't put a patriotic gloss on his subject's behavior. What Gordievsky did was of enormous benefit to democracy and the West but it destroyed his marriage, implicated his wife and children as well as family and friends who all paid some price for his defection. In short, his actions both saved and ruined lives and the choices he made can be rightfully regarded as both morally defensible and appalling or enraging to those who knew him. Unsurprisingly, his marriage failed and most Russian friends regard him with disdain and disgust. In the western intelligence community he is a hero.This is terrific, important history and a wonderfully well-told tale. Enjoy!

I thought I had read all the important main books on the Cold War, but Ben Macintyre comes through and gives us a true life narrative of one of the West's greatest heroes - Oleg Gordievsky. A man who helped, particularly the UK, inform the goings on of the KGB and all the Boris and Natasha's and helped hasten the end of that nasty politik.This would be best read in the autumn on a train in the UK. Knowing that something good came out of all this, after all. Ben Macintyre probably will be sitting behind you. He has your back covered.

It is not for nothing that John Le Carre noted in a front cover blurb “the best true spy story I have ever read.” Ben Macintyre’s biography of KGB Colonel and MI6 spy Oleg Gordievsky reads like a novel. His description of Gordievsky’s exfiltration from Moscow by MI6 under the watchful eyes of the KGB has all the hallmarks of a tension-packed Hollywood spy drama and that alone is worth the price of the book.The story begins with Gordievsky growing up as the son of a KGB general who becomes disillusioned with life under Soviet communism. He follows in his father’s footsteps and is recruited by the KGB. He is initially stationed in Denmark and there he is willingly recruited by MI6. As he rises in the KGB bureaucracy he become ever more important to the British. Along the way he marries, divorces remarries and has two daughters.Where Gordievsky enters history is when he becomes a senior political officer in the KGB’s London rezindentura in the early 1980s. While there he reports to his MI6 handlers that the Soviets actually believed that the United States was going to launch a first strike on the Soviet Union. So paranoid is KGB head and future general secretary Yuri Andropov that he sets up Operation RYaN to find evidence of plans for a first strike. As in most bureaucracies the KGB spies produce such evidence thereby exacerbating his paranoia. The same thing happened with the CIA when it was ordered to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq twenty years later.Compounding the problem was that at about the same time in 1983 NATO ordered up its massive Able Archer exercise which was a practice drill to deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. To the Russians it looked like a precursor to war. It was Gordievsky who tells the British of the Russian fears who then relay that information to the CIA. Several authors have noted that had not both sides deescalated, nuclear war was on the table. Gordievsky’s information to bothThatcher and Reagan was influential in bringing about from the de-escalation.As the Soviet heir apparent, Gorbachev met with Margaret Thatcher in London in 1984. Here Gordievsky’s role is crucial because be briefed both Thatcher and Gorbachev as MI6 spy and KGB political officer on negotiating strategy. The meeting was a big success and Thatcher noted that Gorbachev was a man she could do business with. The end of the Cold War was now more than a pipe dream. Later, after his exfiltration, Gordievsky meets with Reagan to advise him on negotiating strategy for an upcoming meeting with Gorbachev.But wait, what caused Gordievsky to be exfiltrated from Moscow, especially after he was made the Rezident of the KGB’s London office? In very short form the CIA is jealous of MI6 and wants to know who their source is. They soon find out and his name ends up on the desk of Aldrich Ames who was selling secrets to KGB officers in Washington. His betrayal leads to the death of scores of CIA operatives and sources in Russia and ultimately to the KGB investigation of Gordievsky. In Macintyre’s view Ames is a traitor who sold out his country for big bucks and Gordievsky is an honorable spy seeking to better his country.This is a great book that I couldn’t put down and I highly recommend it. As an added plus you learn quite a bit of tradecraft.

It is rare that any book keeps my interest through the entire story, but this is one of them. Because the story is true, it is better than even the best spy novel with made up characters and plot contrivances. Here everything was real and in many instances Oleg's life depended on decisions made by his handlers. The real-life spy dramas are one of my favorite genres. By the end of the book, I really felt sorry for Oleg's wife and daughters, who through no fault of their own, ended up in a nightmare when Oleg left them behind in Russia only to be retrieved 6 years later with disastrous results.I'll be reading A Spy Among Friends next, which I hear is even better.

I came to this book via “A Spy Among Friends”, Ben McIntyre’s fine book on Kim Philby with extensive references to the Cambridge spy ring. Although there is no-one of the extraordinary, and charismatic nature of Guy Burgess here, the book is utterly compelling. Quite apart from its deadly serious matter, the book is an enthralling read. I cannot think of a spy novel to rival it.Essentially it concerns the remarkable Oleg Gordievsky, but we also learn a great deal about the KGB and British and American espionage and counter espionage.Gordievsky’s father was a dyed in the wool KGB agent, and as such Oleg grew up in a family that was “well-fed, privileged and secure”. He seemed to be ideally set to follow his father and his older brother, Vasily, into the party machine, and indeed the talented young Oleg joined the Komsomol, with his brother already established as a rising figure in the KGB. All seemed to be set fair for the future. Yet even in his early years he is sensitive to divisions and secrets within the family. His mother, Olga, keeps remote from her husband’s political world and beneath the man for whom the Party was God, Oleg detects in his father, Anton, a “small, terrified man”.With the death of Stalin, Khruschev assumes power in the Soviet Union. At first there is much talk of the Khruschev Thaw, but the new leader is a tough man, who while purging the Party of many Stalinists and releasing political prisoners, has no intention of loosening the hold on the Soviet bloc. During this time Oleg is beginning to cultivate his yearning for foreign travel and becomes a regular listener to the BBC’s World Service. He is beginning to see a world beyond the confines of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, he idolises his elder brother and his prospects in the party machine are further enhanced by his acceptance at the KGB’s elite training school, specialising in the preparation of “illegals”, the secret, undercover agents as opposed to those who openly hold positions in consulates etc.In the early 1960s we have the Molody/Lonsdale affair, the Portland Spy Ring and most importantly, perhaps, the defection of Kim Philby. Philby was the highest in rank of all the spies that emerged in these years. His defection was a major blow to the morale of British and American intelligence and the trust between the two countries in this area. Success in the upper echelons of the KGB presupposed a stable marriage and Gordievsky makes what in effect is a marriage of convenience with Yelena, who is totally committed to the communist cause. While prospering in his KGB career, Oleg is deeply affected by his friendship with the cultivated Czech, Kaplan, by his experiences in East Germany and most of all his time in Denmark, where he delights in the freedom and opens himself to the wonders of classical music and western literature forbidden in Moscow. Vague alienation turns to loathing of the drab conformity of his homeland. Informal contacts are made with the Danish intelligence service PET and Oleg is now disillusioned with his life at home and nourished by western values. He is ripe for turning.At the same time his career is forging ahead. He is promoted to the rank of Major in the KGB, even as he suffers withdrawal symptoms on returning to Moscow. Key events move things on: the defection of Kaplan, the death of his brother, the appearance of Bromhead, who is to initiate Oleg’s defection as the codename SUNBEAM is born, a secret kept from the CIA.Mcintyre now picks up the intrigue that leads to the overcoming of suspicions within the intelligence services and the British government and eventually launches PIMLICO, the escape plan should it be necessary to get Gordievsky out of the USSR in a hurry. There are major obstacles ahead. Oleg’s re-marriage is one of them. The activities of an at first unpromising CIA agent, Aldrich Ames is a far more dangerous one. We are also approaching the 1982 nuclear crisis and Andropov’s assumption of supreme power – an old -fashioned, inward -looking ex-KGB officer.It is not long before Ames will uncover a key KGB agent working for British intelligence, even if his exact identity remains unknown for some time. Ames himself is to rise to become the chief of the CIA’s Soviet counter-intelligence unit and himself to desert to the Soviet cause. Gordievsky is promoted to become Rezident in London, the highest-ranking officer in the KGB in the UK. He is in a position now to pass almost all secret KGB documents to his new friends. Then comes the summons to Moscow. No pressure is placed on Gordievsky but in the end he elects to return. PIMLICO goes on to high alert.Amazingly, despite their knowledge via Ames, the KGB do no more than question Oleg and his new wife before sending the former to an expensive health resort. PIMLICO is now triggered and the exciting finale to the book is under way. McIntyre, sustains the suspense via precise detail while relentlessly turning the screw till it reaches unbearable tension.McIntyre deals fully with the aftermath, the meeting with Mrs Thatcher at Chequers, the conviction for treason and the death sentence passed on Gordievsky, the world tour that McIntyre describes as a “one man intelligence roadshow”, through to Gorbachev’s refusal to discuss the issue of Oleg’s family joining him in Britain. Not least is the loneliness that a man in hiding is unable to avoid.McIntyre, both directly and indirectly gives us a profound insight into the life of an illegal and the lives of espionage agents in general. From early on we see that spies are motivated in many different ways: for ideology, money, sex, blackmail and other far more confused needs. Whereas Ames sends at least 25 people to their deaths for money, others, Gordievsky and Philby among them, were ideologically motivated. As McIntyre tells us at the end, Oleg Gordievsky “is one of the bravest men I have ever met and one of the loneliest.” We are reminded of Kim Philby, who attempted to kill himself. The two, have much in common. Though Philby may have had the sharper intellect and the icier nerve, Gordievsky comes across as the more human figure, a man tortured by his conscience and his personal feelings.McIntyre is a first-rate writer, lucid and forever not just presenting events, but reaching beyond to the human realities that affect his subjects and all of us. This is a remarkable book. I cannot recommend it too highly.

He describes it as the best spy story he had ever read and I agree. I read it over three days, it is a captivating story very well written. The author must have access to some good MI6 material and their support.It is gripping, all the more for recalling the period in which the events took place.In the epilogue the book continues right up to the poisoning of the Skripals.

Wow! What an absolutely fantastic book. They say that sometimes real life is stranger than fiction . Read this book and you will see just that. The author has went to extraordinary lengths to collate all these facts , and to write them down without hyperbole . If you never read another book, read this, it will blow you away.

This is a completely unputdownable read. The narrative hooks you from the start and it really is difficult to remember that you're reading about something that actually happened; it's better than any James Bond. The author has completely captured the real world of our security services and the incredibly resilient people who man them but the driving force is Gordievsky. You live every minute with him and the dilemmas he faces. What I found particularly engrossing was the real effect he had on the cold war and the subsequent thawing of relations between east and west. I now want to read more by this author.

The best spy story ever.Oleg Gordievsky was such a brave man.Ben Macintyre had told this true story so well and I just couldn.t put the book downI am glad Gordievsky was treated so well on his return to Britain as his contribution to this country was enormous.