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The CIA's Russians

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John Hart is unusual in that he retired after an apparently distinguished career at the CIA and wrote an officially authorized public version of his last assignment (which started in 1971): An analysis of the personalities and psychological profiles of a number of Soviet defectors. His goal was to identify any common characteristics that might be useful in targeting future defectors and evaluating their potential to provide useful and reliable intelligence.

Hart describes three publicly known defectors in depth, one identified only as Mikhail, briefly, and an additional six in a very cursory manner, apparently because their cases are still sensitive. He then seeks to identify common traits among the 10 cases, concluding that they were characterized by many of the following: (1) All were senior and relatively successful members of the Soviet intelligence community, KGB or GRU, having attained a typical rank of colonel, (all but one of the ten were military officers), (2) they felt resentful toward the Soviet system either because of its failure to recognize and promote them further or because it left them feeling excluded from its elite, (3) they were not motivated to defect by politics, religion, or idealism, (4) most had placed themselves in a compromised situation by poor management of personal or government funds and were seeking money to resolve these dilemmas with western funds, and (5) most thought that they were too smart to be caught by Soviet counterintelligence until it was too late. Of the four cases in which Hart reports the outcome, three were executed by the Soviets, only one successfully defected.

In relating these stories, Hart produces some fascinating insights.

Oleg Penkovsky, undoubtedly the most capable of the ten, provided intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of the Soviet leadership during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that were probably key to President Kennedy's decision to face down Khrushchev's threats. Based on Penkovsky's reports, it was apparent that Khrushchev was bluffing.

Yuri Nosenko, the sole successful defector, was caught up in the paranoid webs spun by James Jesus Angleton who was then the head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton saw Soviet plots behind virtually everything, including Nosenko, despite the fact that Nosenko had identified the locations of numerous listening devices in the US embassy in Moscow. Nosenko was imprisoned for much of his first two years in the US and subjected to solitary confinement and harsh interrogation. Eventually, Director Richard Helms intervened to end the mistreatment. Happily, Nosenko was exonerated and placed on the CIA payroll.

Hart also offers the fascinating hypothesis that Lenin, in forcing Russia to adopt the European industrial model, transformed Russia, perhaps permanently, from a Eurasian to a European society and nation, ending the Slavophile-Modernizer debate. It will be interesting to see if this theory is correct.

This is a small book -- speaking comparatively with reference to other histories of espionage. It is easy to read and fascinating.

Each chapter is given to a different person in the service of the Soviet Union who became a spy for the United States -- some successfully, some disastrously not so.

If you are looking for a grand view of Cold War espionage, it is not here. Instead, you will find, perhaps, some psycological insights into the different kinds of characters who betrayed the Soviet Union and the unique and very dangerous possibilities that they had to deal with. You may also pick up some details of "the craft" as it was practiced by the CIA at the height of the Cold War.

Some of the characters are tragic, some sympathetic, and others will just plain leave you cold.

All in all, the book is a small but quite useful contribution to understanding a crucial time and an epochal struggle that is rapidly ebbing from the collective memory.