From the Publisher
Espionage—The Great Game—is about spies. About sabotage. About distortions and lies. About delusions of friendship and cooperation. About the back-room influence of world events.
As war raged in Europe and Asia between 1940 and 1945, such serious disagreements arose between Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt on how to end the war—who would assume control of what, when, and where, and who would relinquish control over what to whom—that the anticipated peace became more a temporary stage prop than historical fact. The need to influence the compromises became preeminent within the alliance. But today we know Stalin held the Ace in the Hole: a well established Influence Apparatus in Washington. Roosevelt's only asset was the blind trust of "Uncle Joe". Stalin won the Great Game. INFLUENCE describes the birth of Russian-Japanese hostility at the turn of the last century. It details wars between Japan and Russia, the future Soviet Union, and how the threat to the USSR by Japan in the east grew to equal Hitler's from the west.
As war grew close, Stalin had two tasks. He knew that because he could not battle invaders on two fronts, he must influence western political strategy to divert the Japanese south, into the Pacific, and away from Siberia. This done, he needed America to join the war against Hitler. Pearl Harbor was the answer.
From the Author
A Note from Author to Reader
The title of this book is INFLUENCE. It is a history of a dangerous espionage technique. Not at all the traditional concept of spying: penetration, stealing secrets, disinformation, recruiting and guiding key assets toward targets.
Rather, INFLUENCE describes the successful use of an intriguing strategy fashioned by a man named Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili who renamed himself Josef Stalin, the Man of Steel, the "mass murderer" who ran the Soviet Union.
From KGB archives: "The task is to penetrate the surroundings of Roosevelt himself." It was enormously successful. On the cover of INFLUENCE there is a photograph of Harry Hopkins, the most senior adviser to Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. Hopkins was not simply the in fact "Co-President" of the United States who lived in the White House, he has now been identified as an agent of Soviet Intelligense, an Agent of Influence for the N.K.V.D.
How, why, when, and where the "Great Game" was born is reported in INFLUENCE.
INFLUENCE is history revisited. At the start of this new millennium, the War of Terrorism may well be blinding traditional intelligence collection. But the techniques described in INFLUENCE should not be overlooked or forgotten. They are alive and well and with us today, coming from many directions.
