David Ignatius (seen in the below photo), Washington Post columnist and author of spy
thrillers such as The Quantum Spy and Body of Lies, offers his take on Ben Macintyre’s nonfiction spy story The
Spy and the Traitor in his Post column
“The Spy and the Traitor” arrives at a moment when the
machinations of Russian intelligence (election meddling, Internet manipulation,
assassination by poison) are the subjects of almost daily news stories. Russia
and its ex-KGB president seem brutally dominant in the intelligence sphere. Ben
Macintyre offers a refreshing reversal of that theme: In this story, it’s the
Russians who get turned inside out by a British mole. It’s the Kim Philby case,
in reverse.
The subtitle of
Macintyre’s latest real-life spy thriller calls it “The Greatest Espionage
Story of the Cold War.” Like pretty much everything in this fine book, the
description is accurate.
The book narrates
the astonishing tale of how Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service recruited a
KGB officer named Oleg Gordievsky in 1974 and ran him as its agent for 11
years, as he rose to become the “rezident,” or station chief, in London. Then
in 1985, because of an appalling blunder by a jealous CIA, Gordievsky was
exposed and recalled to Moscow to face almost certain death.
The book converges on
a final plot twist so implausible that it could happen only in real life:
Gordievsky was exfiltrated across the Finnish border in the trunk of a car by a
plucky MI6 officer and his wife and brought back to London for a secret hero’s
welcome from an adoring Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He survives today in
a protected location in Britain, and one suspects that he’s quite careful about
what doorknobs he touches.
Britain didn’t
invent spying, but as Macintyre recounts in this and other books, it may have
perfected it — producing some of the most sublime manipulators in intelligence
history (along with several of the greatest traitors, such as Philby). This
book recounts what modern SIS officers rightly regard as their finest hour.
You can read the rest
of the column via the below link:
You can also read my
Counterterrorism magazine Q&A with David Ignatius via the below link:
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