The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB

by Milton Bearden, James Risen

A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, The Main Enemy is the dramatic inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them.

Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose through the ranks to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War. The clandestine operations they masterminded took them from the sewers of Moscow to the back streets of Baghdad, from Cairo and Havana to Prague and Berlin, but the action centers on Washington, starting in the infamous "Year of the Spy"—when, one by one, the CIA’s agents in Moscow began to be killed, up through to the very last man.

Behind the scenes with the CIA's covert operations in Afghanistan, Milt Bearden led America to victory in the secret war against the Soviets, and for the first time he reveals here what he did and whom America backed, and why. Bearden was called back to Washington after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and was made chief of the Soviet/East Euro-pean Division—just in time to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe, and the implosion of the Soviet Union.

Laced with startling revelations—about fail-safe top-secret back channels between the CIA and KGB, double and triple agents, covert operations in Berlin and Prague, and the fateful autumn of 1989—The Main Enemy is history at its action-packed best.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Espionage, Russia, Politics, American History, Cia

704 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 6, 2003

Reviews

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this book. Bearden was a CIA operative of long-standing and well placed, and these are his reminiscences, joined with research (oral and written). It is very well informed. I found the first part fascinating -- dealing the mole hunts from Angleton to Aldrich Ames. Part II (the book was published in 2003) was a triumphalist view of Charlie Wilson's War -- the American support for the Mujahadeen in the Soviet-Afghan war -- which looks like a catastrophic blunder in hindsight. Yet Bearden, who was on the ground there, takes credit for thus winning the Cold War. Part III deals with the collapse of the Soviet Union -- has much interesting detail, but again missed the dangers inherent in the collapse of Gorbachev's regime.

Because of these complaints I found the book somewhat of a slog at time, despite the crisp writing and wealth of detail. Those who can overlook these faults will enjoy this book enormously. Those, like myself, who cannot, well...

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written and interesting story that flows well.

This book of Bearden and Risen though, is one that both popular historians and casual reader alike can get into. They show that often intelligence services make educated guesses on fragments of information that may or may not be compromised by the enemy. Concerned with a period of global turmoil that was surprisingly governed by understood rules of intelligence gathering and other activities, this book brings the reader into the world of the CIA. Far from the James Bond style killing and counter killing by the Allies and Soviet Empire, it was one of limited violence between the two principal powers. A busted or captured agent was interrogated briefly and put on a plane for home, no killing and seldom more than a mild roughing up.

The dying days of the Soviet Empire were ironically the period that that the KGB (with help from American traitors like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hannsen)had wiped out most of the CIA operatives in Russia. The Americans had been sent home and the Russian agents of the Americans killed. The US had virtually no human intel assets behind the Iron Curtain. This is some of the most interesting parts of the book, seeing how much damage a couple of American traitors did as we blindly tried to understand what was going on. The bewildered KGB agents simply cannot believe their Empire is collapsing while they have gotten the upper hand over their Western enemies.

Bearden makes much of the delivery of the "120mm Spanish mortar" to the Mujahideen in 1987, and elaborates on how teams were trained in applying GPS readings to precisely deliver their ordnance beyond visual range. "It came...with a ranging system worked out by Langley...that fused the low-tech mortar with the high-tech world of satellite guidance." And "Once their exact coordinates had been calibrated, the leader of the team would feed the GPS data into a small computer, add the coordinates of the target, and then query the computer for the precise compass direction and elevation..." This procedure, GPS and all, supposedly led to devastating night attacks on the Spetsnaz battalion at Chagasaray on 28 Nov 1987 and 15 Dec 1987.

Problem: Although initial use of GPS was reported in 1990, it did not become operational until 1993. In 1987 the satellites had not been launched yet (this was during the Challenger stand-down).

This book illustrates a critical period in our history. Depicting intelligence services being blindsided by events is something critics should remember happens far too often. No intel service of any country has a 100% batting average, not even the legendary Mossad of Israel and that is something Congress and the American public too often forget.

[Michael Huang · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very entertaining story showing how CIA battles KGB throughout the latter part of Cold War. Both side would have spies defecting to the other side and both side would dangle fake defectors just to mess with the other side. Sometimes spies would even have a personal friendship without actual defection. There were many characters involved and their specific stories aren’t that interesting. But there are many unexpected tidbits that I found very interesting.

When a CIA case officer finally retired from field work in the Soviet bloc, he may even left some gifts for the KGB guys surveilling him.

Beardon worked with Mujahideen during Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and supplied them with stinger missiles that shot down many soviet helicopters. After the Soviet withdrawal, CIA and KGB wanted to work together on common interests such as drug trafficking. Beardon would ride in one of those helicopters close to the soviet boarder with Pakistan and Afghanistan. The pilot would tell KGB colonel traveling with Beardon to explain to the guest why they were flying so low (to avoid the Afghan bandit from shooting them down using stingers). Beardon asked the colonel what he said back to the pilot. The answer: “he already knew about that”.

In 1990, many Soviet tourists visiting Berlin would want to seek asylum at the US embassy there. CIA spies would spend time vetting each one and it became quite boring until a fighter pilot showed up and almost treated as yet another tourist. But this pilot turns out to have a lot of info to share.

Günter Schabowski (a politbureau member) is not well prepared about East Germany’s new supposedly less heavy-handed travel control. At a televised press conference, he vastly simplified the rules and to reporters present, it sound like anybody can travel to West Germany. Pressed about timing from the reporters, he said “immediately”. That understandably confused boarder control guards and some East Germans tested the new rule at the boarder and did get through. Amplified by TV reports from West Germany, soon thousands knew and started to cross the border.

Combined, these tidbits portray a picture: spies or country leaders, these are in some sense just jobs. Seen from distance, there are plenty materials for a sitcom.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir of retired CIA employee Bearden was vetted by the agency and so may not be entirely accurate. Still, that being said, it was an engrossing read.

The period covered ranges from the premiership of Andropov to the dissolution of the USSR, with some forward glances to the date of publication. The focus, however, is on 1985, a year when a host of CIA assets were deactivated by the KGB, and on the efforts to uncover the moles in the CIA and FBI responsible.

Despite this on-going theme, the text is basically chronological, following author Bearden's career during this period, a good deal of which had him in Pakistan, messing with the Soviets. Readers of 'Charlie Wilson's War' will be interested in his take on this (mis)adventure.

[Abe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly well researched, the book even includes conversations recovered from Politburo meeting minutes. The time flow gets a bit jumbled - understandable given how much sheer material there is - but the jumble leads to the co-authors accidentally repeating information hundreds of pages apart. Some tighter editing could have helped there.

[Daphne · Rating 4 out of 5]

My one qualm with this book is that the title gives the impression that the book focuses on one central event between the CIA and KGB. The reality is that this book is a neat chronology of key events in the CIA-KGB relationship/rivalry across geographical theaters between 1985 and 1991. Otherwise, the book was extremely insightful, in large part due to the author’s inclusion of personal experiences.

[Tyrfingur Kiyomizu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great memoir for those who love tales of tradecraft, betrayal and handing agents. This is not a James Bond Novel. If you are looking for vanishing pellets and grappling hooks; look elsewhere.

The real story is just as interesting (and dangerous). The mid-70s to early 90's USSR were a golden-age in terms of the CIA's ability to actually' run' agents in Moscow.

For a long time Moscow was considered not only impossible but also too dangerous for the Soviet spy on the other end. That began to change.

The Moscow section of the book is easily the best; whether dodging KGB radio vans; checking dead drops or gathering intel gold; it's continually gripping.

The author also worked in Afghanistan. However, I was. already very familiar with the role that the CIA, the ISI and the Saudis played in giving Ivan a black eye. As such I haven't covered this as much.

The storytelling is taut; matter of fact and happily devoid of "Up With America!" nonsense or flowery language in general.

Intelligence /Spy Nerds will love this. However, I recommend it to any one with a interest in US/Soviet History.

My only critique is something unavoidable. I listened on Audible and frequently had to rewind in order to figure 'x' operation or what happened to Vlad Vladimirovich Vladimirovichski.

On the other hand that same critique could easily apply to any Military/Diplomatic History ever written; whether listened to or read.

Simply put, I've read quite a few tomes on the intelligence war and this is easily one of the best

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was excellent.

[Tomasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty good picture of the Agency in 1980s, this is a fast, interesting read, if lightish on substance (for obvious reasons). A major improvement on the Devine memoirs (because light on Devine, heh), obviously confrontational in regard to Mohammed Yousaf, and strangely copacetic as to the accounts of KGB officers, but co-written by a competent author, and it shows.

[Jared Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent summary of CIA operations in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Detailed accounts of the political machinations behind each spy and counter spy.

I finished each section still interested even though the encounters seemed to blend together after a while.

I recommend it for any readers who want to know more about international spy intrigue.

Highly recommend. 4 solid stars.

[G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a long account of the public domain information on the intelligence rivalry between the CIA and the KGB in last decade or so before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is coauthored by a former CIA agent, who was involved in many of the episodes included within the middle and final parts of the book.

Because documents were used to reconstruct some of the occurrences, it provides a somewhat more broad view of what occurred on both sides of the intelligence conflict. It leaves the reader with a fair, though slightly superficial, understanding of at least one of the primary factors that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Milt Bearden was directly involved in the CIA support of the mujahideen through coordination with Pakistani intelligence (ISI), and he provides an interesting perspective of the CIA involvement.

No specific operational details are provided in this account, but it includes enough information for an uninitiated reader to learn general details of the motivations, challenges, and overall strategy of a section of the CIA during the 1980s and early 1990s.

The beginning of the book feels more fragmented, perhaps because it concerns operations that Milt Bearden was not personally involved in. Each chapter has several sub-sections with time and place headings that manage to impart a somewhat dramatic, theatrical atmosphere, but this occasionally fails as a narrative, for there is seemingly haphazard movement from one place to another with many new names presented, and it becomes difficult to see the relevance or importance of events or how they are connected. This makes it hard to follow the overall narrative, but things improve once the action moves from Moscow and Virginia to Afghanistan in the middle part of the book.

I would recommend this book to readers with an interest in the CIA and the history of the final decade of the Cold War, particularly from the point of view of the conflict between the intelligence services.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bearden's book is part biographical, part historical account of the CIA and KGB in the late Cold War period. In between Bearden's account of the various positions he held at CIA in the 1980s and 1990s are stories of CIA and KGB case officers and agents who passed secrets between the two sides during the Cold War. Overall, his narrative offers fascinating first-hand insights into the loss of CIA spys in 1985 due to Ames and Hanssen, the CIA's involvement in the Soviet/Afghan War, and of the final days of the Soviet Union. Bearden also does an exceptional job providing the Soviet perspective on the period.

However, the narrative is a little disjointed as Bearden inserts stories of captured spys from both sides into his own biographical narrative. Although Bearden relied on many interviews of CIA and KGB officers to inform his book, it is still necessarily reflective of his own experiences and biases. Lastly, it would have been interesting for Bearden to have reflected more deeply on the after effects of his experiences. Despite this book being written after 9/11, Bearden does not attempt to explain how his actions in the mid-1980s helped shape the Afghanistan that gave rise to the Taliban, haven to bin Laden, and resulted in 9/11. Bearden also does not take the opportunity to look out the mischaracterizations the Soviets and Americans had of each other during the Cold War, and the extraordinary waste of resources and lives in the battlefields of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and among the spys that were the result.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of a memoir by Milton Bearden of his Soviet and Afghanistan postings - less any sort of history of the 'final showdown' - or much of a history at all.

The style used is short, action-oriented sections which jump around in time and space - akin to books about combat or covert action in the first person. The problem with this style is the narrative - to the extent there is one - doesn't really match to the subject. It's not any kind of comprehensive story and without any real scholarship - just Bearden's recollection of his role in the CIA impacting the fall of the Soviet Union.

There's some value in learning about mid-level management and activities in the CIA in the 1980s. But, nothing particularly new or insightful.

I did find Bearden's POV interesting as it related to politics and personalities. Bearden is a clear Reagan conservative and fan of William Casey. His views on the Carter administration and the grand sweep of American, Soviet, Afghan, and Pakistani history 1950 to the present are an interesting insight into how someone from that camp sees the world. Bearden doesn't bother justifying any of those views - just reports them as fact - which is probably another interesting insight.

If you're deep into CIA history and want the perspective of a mid-level manager at the CIA 1980-2000 it's worth a read. But, not useful as an entry point to the CIA, fall of the Soviet Union, or geopolitics during the period.

[Marcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had this book in my collection for a while now. I recently read the book and saw the movie, "Charlie Wilson's War," which peaked my interest. So I picked up this book and began reading. It is divided into two sections. Section one is a reviting insider's look at the Cold War during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Bearden's "on the front lines" look into the "war" between the CIA and the KGB is detailed but interesting. Especially compelling is his discussion of, "The Year of the Spy." During 1985, almost all of the CIA's spies inside the KGB were rolled up. The Moscow bureau became a virtual storage facility because they were not getting any information. Of course we all now know that it was Robert Hanssen who was betraying the KGB spies as well as American CIA agents in the USSR.

The second half of the book looks at Bearden's time as the Station Chief in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Learning the about the dealings behind the scenes and the people and countries involves is amazing or rather frightening; however, it gives the reader a better insight into the minds of the terrorists who haunt us now.

[Tanner Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a disappointing read of one of Tom Clancy’s later books (Red Rabbit, if you’re morbidly curious), I decided I wanted to read something with a little more bite. I selected this book based on reviews and subject matter.

I probably couldn’t have selected a better book. Not only is this book a “great yarn” (like one Tom Clancy novel was famously called), but it’s also true! Milt does a fantastic job of describing the nail-biting situations and scenarios in which the CIA and KGB fought over the last decade of the Cold War. He chronicles stories that range from high-stakes counter-espionage in Moscow and Washington, DC to teetering diplomatic missions in Central Asia.

If you’re interested in what the CIA really did during some of the tensest years in American history, check this book out.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this ages ago. It was pretty good, but the only thing I really remember is a story about how the KGB and the CIA in Berlin used to show that they knew each other's secret drop sites by leaving each other beer. They even did this occasionally to say farewell when it was known that a station head or some other higher up in the enemy's service was leaving for another post. It sounded rather good natured - or at least, the impression I got was that the two services had a good deal of sympathy for one another because they alone knew the absurdity of the situation in which they found themselves.

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this to be an entertaining and informative read. Bearden provides a good overview of many of intelligence cases that significantly impacted both the CIA and their counterparts in the Soviet union during the Cold War. The scope of the book was too broad to get into specific espionage trade craft but we do get a look at the how each sides psychology influenced their approach and response.

[Monzenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Six stars. If this were a very strong fictional novel, it would be good enough. Icing on cake is that these are (supposedly) real events. The thrills and spills are complete and satisfying. Best part is that I saw the activities from a centralized corporate perspective, with narratives starting and ending at different times. Reminded me of the best Op Center books.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a complete nor thorough overview of the subject in question, but nevertheless an engaging journalistic oral history told from the point of view of one of the key players on the CIA side of things.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best best overview of CIA KGB operations 85-91 I have read, set to a riveting narrative structure.
Very interesting to read After Bobo Baer's 'Fourth Man' with the consideration that Redmond may be a russian spy or we have an unreliable narrator.

[Robert Levitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

Shows a side of the Cold War not known to many. It also shows the ups and downs faced by the CIA and KGB during that time.

[Chuckdee · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent writing on on the end of the Cold War

[Brian Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read.

[Bruce Bean · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE MAIN ENEMY: THE CIA, THE KGB AND A WAR THAT DID NOT END

The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB, by Milton Bearden and James Risen (Random House, 2003)

I first read The Main Enemy when it came out in 2003. I have just read it again, and it has improved with age, though not in the way its authors would have intended.

Milt Bearden was a senior officer in the CIA's clandestine service. He ran the agency's covert support for the Afghan resistance in the late 1980s, and then headed the Soviet/East European Division as the Soviet Union collapsed. James Risen was an intelligence reporter for the New York Times. Together they tell the story of the last decade of the Cold War. The book follows Bearden and his CIA colleagues, and it also follows their KGB counterparts, among them Rem Krasilnikov in counterintelligence and Leonid Shebarshin, later head of the First Chief Directorate. The book is broken into short sections, each headed by place, date and time, so it reads like a thriller.

The central story is the disaster of 1985, the "Year of the Spy." By June of that year the CIA had more highly placed agents inside the Soviet Union than ever before, most of them volunteers who had walked in rather than been recruited. One of them was Adolf Tolkachev, an aviation engineer who handed over thousands of pages of documents on Soviet fighter radar. Within six or seven months, the CIA lost most of these agents, and many of them were executed. Many years later the agency traced the losses to two traitors. One was Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer his colleagues dismissed as a "terminal GS-14," but who beat the CIA’s polygraph and managed to explain away how he paid cash for a half-million-dollar house in Arlington. The other was the FBI’s Robert Hanssen. The book also describes how Edward Lee Howard, a fired CIA trainee, slipped FBI surveillance and escaped to Moscow. It tells the story of Vitaly Yurchenko. He defected, leaving his family behind, then went back to Moscow after his former lover told him she had loved "a KGB colonel, not a traitor."
The Afghanistan chapters are the heart of Bearden's own story: the Stinger missiles, the Chinese mules, the unreliability of our Pakistani partners and Congressman Charlie Wilson, "a Texan who could strut while sitting down." The chapters on the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and then of the USSR in 1991 are just as good. An East German Politburo member, Günter Schabowski, opened the Berlin Wall almost by accident. He was briefing reporters on new travel rules, adlibbing that they took effect "immediately." It seems clear that Schabowski had never read the new rules!

Then came the August 1991 coup and the symbolic toppling of the Dzerzhinsky statue outside the Lubyanka, the KGB headquarters in Moscow. The book also has its share of humor, such as the MiG-29 pilot who refused the CIA’s choice of code name for him, "Spaniel," because it was a dog, and the East German defector who agreed to bring out a surface-to-air missile if the CIA would "bring a big truck." [They did.]

Reading the book again in 2026, two passages stand out. Acting CIA Director Dick Kerr told the KGB chairman that the 20th century "began in 1914 in the Balkans and ended in August '91 in Moscow." It was a fine line, but it was wrong. More prophetic was the note that KGB officers painted on the empty pedestal where the Dzerzhinsky statue had stood a few days earlier. "Dear Felix, we are sorry that we couldn't save you, but you will remain with us." As the book says, that turned out to be true. Within a decade a former KGB lieutenant colonel was running Russia, and he still is. The epilogue also celebrates the rout of the Taliban in less than five weeks in 2001. The Taliban came back to Kabul in August 2021.

Having lived and worked in Moscow in the years that followed the events of this book, I read it as a first-rate account of the end of one chapter of a long rivalry, not the end of the story. It is well written, well sourced and, strangely, often quite funny. I recommend it highly.

[Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

# The Main Enemy
---

## The Book in 1 Sentence
The authoritative bible of CIA vs. KGB espionage activity during the last decade of the Cold War.

## Brief Review
I wish I had started with this book for my spy history series that I have stumbled into. It covers so much information with such clarity that there isn't a lot of speculation speaking that the information is from either interviews or memoirs from both sides.

## Why I Read this book
I love spy stories. From my time in the Marines, the number of times I have heard stories about some of these in particular Aldrich Ames, I would like to know more about what lead to the fall of the KGB.

## In-Depth Review
I. Loved. This. Book. The high level narrative story telling in chronological format makes you solely invested into what is going on. The fact that between a CIA agent and a journalist that were active in that time makes you understand and see where things are going. I wish I had read this and only this to start my spy book series. I think it still would have led me to [[The Spy and the Traitor]], but I would have avoided [[A Spy Named Orphan]].

The writing of the book is so well presented that you get to feel the headaches and frustrations as well as the triumphs of each team, both the CIA and KGB. The amount of back and forth that happened with spies and insiders giving information away to one side or the other is crazy.

What I found most interesting is that I feel like the Soviet Union failed more because their internal backstabbing than it did because of CIA involvement. The exception to that I believe is the first domino. The USSR losing in Afghanistan because of CIA provisioning Stinger Missiles to the Mujahideen. The USSR not having a plan on how to win in Afghanistan after the initial invasion is also a contributing factor into the civilian uprising around the Soviet Bloc.

## How my life / behavior / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.
If you have been paying attention to the world for the last couple of years, you will recognize that the words I said just above are an exact match to what happen to the United States with its invasion of Afghanistan. We had the same issue. In the epilogue of the book, the authors talk about their concerns in a one-year post 9/11 world in Afghanistan stating “The CIA will have to rebuild relationships with the Pashtuns and undertake measures to convince the boarder population to take a larger stake in the New Afghanistan, and it's reconstruction, but failure could allow the country to become a haven for terrorism.” Written two decades ago with the prophetic accuracy of the Fates from Greek mythology. The only difference between the US and the USSR for their time in Afghanistan is the amount of time the US took to realize they didn't have the plan to win.

## Rating
This is outstanding. The Afghanistan portion of the book was dry and slow, much like the country in the summer, but was so pivotal it had to be told. I enjoyed and looked forward to listening to the stories presented in the book and thought that for the most part they were not dragged out. Just hits of facts. So for that and well crafted narrative, this is an easy 8. It's a little dry, but still worth the read.

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[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Main Enemy" by Milton Bearden and James Risen is a riveting account of the CIA-KGB spy wars that defined the latter years of the Cold War. This gripping narrative offers readers an unprecedented glimpse into the clandestine world of espionage, told through the eyes of those who lived it. Bearden, a 30-year CIA veteran, and Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, have crafted a masterful blend of firsthand experience and investigative reporting. Their collaboration results in a book that is both deeply informative and intensely thrilling. The authors take us on a global journey, from the sewers of Moscow to the back streets of Baghdad, Cairo, Havana, Prague, and Berlin. However, the heart of the action lies in Washington D.C., beginning with the infamous "Year of the Spy" when CIA agents in Moscow were systematically eliminated. One of the book's most compelling aspects is its focus on the human element of espionage. Readers are granted access to the thoughts and motivations of CIA officers as they navigate dangerous missions, dodge surveillance, and face violent ambushes in hostile territory. Bearden's firsthand account of leading America's covert operations in Afghanistan against the Soviets is particularly fascinating. For the first time, he reveals the strategies employed and the rationale behind America's choices of allies in this secret war. The book is replete with startling revelations, including details about top-secret back channels between the CIA and KGB, the intricate world of double and triple agents, and covert operations in various European cities. The authors' account of the fateful autumn of 1989, which saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, is especially gripping. “The Main Enemy" is more than just a spy thriller; it's a meticulously researched historical document. Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, it offers a balanced and nuanced view of this shadowy world. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Cold War history, espionage, or simply those who enjoy a well-crafted, action-packed narrative. Bearden and Risen have succeeded in creating a work that is both enlightening and entertaining, offering readers a front-row seat to one of the most fascinating periods in modern history.

[Brett Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do we remember from the Cold War except constant paranoia? Nuclear weapons threaten to rain from the sky, proxy wars break out across the globe, and as an open society whose fetishistic intellectuals adored Communism in the 1920s onward, we found ourselves constantly looking under every pillow for fifth columnists of various types. Sure, there were the fellow travelers in the unions and progressive orgs who thought that Communism was cognitively the clear answer, the poseurs smoking dope in their cold-water flats and talking Utopia, and the theorists who wanted a bipartisan "third way" that hopefully was not as abusive as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Robespierre, Hitler, and Mussolini, but there were also Moscow Centre hoods cruising around, buying secrets, and worst of all, pretending to be patriots. This book concerns the double- and triple-agents who swarmed the CIA in an effort to drive it insane while carrying out subversion of the West even as the parabolic arc of the Communist balistic process turned toward Earth and forgot the stars. It is hard to view subsequent history as anything but confusion when the depth of the permeation is revealed. If you are a Cambridge Five scholar, or just a Whittaker Chambers weekend reader, this book will stoke your paranoia and make it more grounded at the same time.

[Paul T Koenig Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and readable first person tale of historical world events that were big news daily in the late eighties/early nineties. Theses sometimes anecdotal and mildly self serving stories serve to go behind what was in the public domain at the time.

Spy/counterspy aspects of the efforts of CIA and KGB are humanized and sanitized, but the outcomes were too often fatal. Mistakes were made, plans were revealed to the other side by insiders and turncoats on both sides variously for money or or revenge or liberty, and the result was arrest, incarceration interrogation (often enhanced by what we now know is torture) and sometimes execution by the KGB. My guess is that all involved know and did things yet to be disclosed, but my overwhelming impression is that what is revealed it true, accurate and enlightening. Besides being a captivating read it is well worth the time. The characters are named and known to anyone who followed these events. They are interesting and important historical actors brought to life in these pages.

Glad I read this one. James Risen helped Milt Bearden make it easy to follow the events in which he participated. Well worth the time to read it.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Partly autobiographical, partly history and backed by extensive interviews with Russian sources as well as CIA communications cleared for public consumption.

The author stays within his lane, so we get a long journey through Afghanistan and not really enough on the sequence of economic problems slowly throttling the last years of the Soviet Union.

Don't read this book if you'd like to know much more about the role of Reagan, Thatcher, Bill Casey and Pope John Paul II in setting the stage for the uprising in Eastern Europe. If you're interested in the Ames and Hanssen cases, again, look elsewhere for the play by play of unmasking them, even though the problems they created overhang much of this work.

Do read it for part of a story which hasn't been told often enough, the death throes of the Evil Empire.

[Too Many Toys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely can an autobiographic author get out of their own way and accept some help. It is also rare that a co-author, even a knowledgeable one can preserve the authenticity of the stories participants. The authors were able to accomplish both in this story. They used good judgement as to the right level of detail to promote understanding without becoming tedious. I am not in the intelligence field, but I was able to appreciate the characters and stories. The authors seemed to resist the urge to sensationalize, be too proud or too humble in a way that would reduce their credibility. If the topic is of interest, I highly recommend this book. I would liken it to a Michael Shaara work in the sense that it is factual, but reads like a novel.