Customer Reviews

Cassidy's Run: The Secret Spy War Over Nerve Gas

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I do not remember much of my father. Most of my sentiments have come from stories told by my mother, grandma, aunts and uncles. My whole life I have known that my father was involved in something honorable and patriotic, but until "Cassidy's Run" I was without understanding of the details, depth and nobility of it all. David Wise has unfolded a story that is worthy of all our family's pride and reverence. It is with extreem gratitude in finally knowing the truth about my father's death that I would encourage all to read this true account. To do so honors those who have given their lives in the service of ours. It is a story worth being told, and one that every patriot should be proud of.

Perhaps it is because of my closeness to the subject matter, but I for one have felt a stronger obligation to be the "good man" my mother swore she would raise at my father's funeral. While I don't think the FBI is for me, the lives of service all those in "Cassidy's Run" displayed are exemplary to each of us.

An excellent book by a well-know reporter and critic of America's intelligence establishment.

The book details how for over 20 years, a dedicated group of FBI agents "dangled" and then "ran" US Army Sgt. Cassidy against the GRU (the Soviet equivalent of the US DIA). It is a book about an ordinary soldier's extraordinary dedication to duty and country, and how he helped his country in the darkest days of the Cold War against the "Evil Empire" (and evil, it was). America was very fortunate to have men such as Cassidy and the FBI agents he worked with. None of them did it for money (Cassidy did not keep any of the hundreds-of-thousands of dollars the GRU gave him) or fame -- these men kept secrets, in some cases they even took them to their graves. The book ends on a frustrating note as Washington bureaucrats step in at the end and do not allow the case to run its full course.

The only flaw with the book is that I would have liked to have gotten to know Cassidy a bit better. But, overall, an excellent and well-documented read with some interesting twists-and-turns (e.g., the involvement of a current Mexican Congressman -- read it, you'll see) and one which shines some light on some of the men who won the Cold War for us and for freedom. The good guys do win on occasion!

Nerve Gass kills by inhibiting the production of Cholinestrase, which keeps the nervous system at a regular and moderate pace. Without cholinestrase, the nervous system goes into hyperspeed, causing a system wide failure the body's ability to breath, pump blood, and in short to live. David Wise has written of a 20+ year effort to misslead the Soviet Union through the use of a remarkable double agent, Joseph Cassidy. This is a book that is frightening- there is inconclusive evidence that information leaked by this agent may have spured the Soviet's CW industry to create the most powerfull nerve agent known to man- a deadly binary in the tradition of VX.

All in all a great read that will bring a neglected aspect of history to light while memoralizing those heros who fought in the shadows of the greatest intelligence war to date.

Smoothly written and absorbing. Not my usual kind of book, but well worth picking up. In 1959, at the height of the Cold War, the FBI decided to dangle a prospect in front of a Soviet embassy employee named Polikarpov. Policarpov, a GRU officer, took the bait and enlisted Sergeant Joseph Cassidy as a for-cash agent. The relationship continued for twenty-three years, during which Cassidy solicited information that netted ten other Soviet spies and funneled an enormous mass of true, false, misleading, and trivial intelligence eastward. Much of the intelligence concerned the nerve gas research and production facility at Edgewood Arsenal, and may have led the Soviets into expensive and dangerous blind alleys. Details of the operation, especially the capture and release of two Mexican nationals who were confessed spies, make an interesting account of a US intelligence success not previously publicized.

This is an amazing story from the very real (and too soon slipping from memory) Cold War. It is principally the story of Joe Cassidy, a rather normal sergeant in the US Army, who was recruited to become a dangle for a Soviet Agent. The ploy worked and Cassidy became a double agent for more than twenty years. Of course, these kinds of stories rather quickly become rather entangled with lots of personalities and different threads of action. The author, David Wise, does an especially fine job in telling this tale and helping us keep straight who is doing what when and to whom.

The details of surveillance and spycraft are fascinating because they are so mundane but in their context seem so strange. This story demonstrates so many of the critical factors in running a counter intelligence operation: the importance of selecting the right agent (in this case Joe Cassidy), the necessity of patience and letting some things slip away in order to keep after the big thing, the chess like thinking of move and countermove in planning operations, the never-quite-sure aspects of whom to trust and what is real or what is a plant, and the role of just plain dumb luck. It isn't like Hollywood, but in many ways is more strange than a movie. If you tried to put some of this stuff in a movie people would complain that it was too far fetched. Yet this is all real.

The book also has some rather chilling information on Nerve Agents, which was the whole point of this many year effort by the FBI and other government agencies. It also has a lot of fascinating information on the devices of spy tradecraft including hollow rocks, rollover cameras, dead drops, micro dots, secret writing, and more.

Because the book is so well written it is a rather easy read. This is a real achievement because of the complexity of the story, but David Wise has long experience as a skilled reporter and writer about intelligence work and knows how to tell these tales. I recommend this book to everyone because it is just plain interesting, because I believe we should keep the reality and sacrifices of the Cold War in our collective memory, and because real people paid with their lives for our security.

This book will open your eyes to the real world of espionage, carried out over many years during the height of the Cold War. This time, the spying is about nerve gas, and provides a sobering realization of the games being played without the public knowing about it. This book also shows how politics can destroy the best efforts of catching spies in the U.S.

An awesome book about my Uncle Joe. Most of the family didn't know for years what he endured. This book is a great tribute to our family history. Our family is very proud. I doubt this review will help you much in deciding whether or not to buy the book, but several of my friends have read it and had a hard time putting it down until finished.

To realize this really happened and possibly still happens makes this tale very scary. Very well written and documented

Wise wrote an interesting account covering many years. The factual components of the story appear well researched. However, the author wanders off into speculation that the materials supplied by double agent Cassidy actually caused the USSR to develop more deadly nerve gas. Given the now disclosed facts that the USSR had a massive chemical and biological research and production effort, it is unlikely that any of the well scrubbed stuff given to the USSR had any real impact.

What is outstanding is the appreciation for the level of effort and detail put into a spy case. The endgame is very inconclusive as the two Mexican leftists who were engaged in espionage on behalf of the USSR were allowed to depart the US and escape prosecution. Probably because the case came to a head at an inopportune time when the FBI was being scrutinized for searches and intelligence gathering related to anti war activists.

Cassidy, a non commissioned officer in the Army, does a great job under tremendous stress in convincing the Russians that he is really a loyal ( or at least loyal to the dollars offered) agent. Hollow rocks, microdots, shortwave radios, scanning cameras and invisible ink are all introduced into the process.

Highly recommended.

Although this book does not reveal the precise chemical formulas for the Novichok class of nerve agents it introduces into the hidden world of russian chem-bio weapon designers. The intelligence still fears to make public that Novichoks belong to organophosporus compounds containing the double halogenated oxime like -O-N=C(F)Cl group and that beside P.P.Kirpichev also I.V.Martnov and Yu.A.Kruglak from GosNIOKhT developed the principle of these extremely toxic OP oximes during the mid 60's already (and published also) which resist reactivation by other oximes. These chemicals an be made by heating only of substituted 1,3,2-dioxaphospholanes indicated slighly in this book. Hopefully int'l organizations will make public more details for the protection of other citizens than just army soldiers soon.