Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Tuesday, January 17 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Or fastest delivery January 10 - 12

Arrives after Christmas. Need a gift sooner? Send an Amazon Gift Card instantly by email or SMS.

Want it faster? The Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app. Want to listen? Try Audible.

[{"displayPrice":"$8.99","priceAmount":8.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"8","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"UmoLt%2Bj9ZoGriH%2Bl%2FYK8ozue2S8MyW%2FI7M0O936nwOsTsvtgMd0di771Gzt5heeSzkbB1wjsS%2BS%2BXE%2FM%2Bep41B503Q6nrAoTkxywcrsP7XTY8OtTeiXgez9TIqya3naGpZF7Q2WdjAw%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"},{"displayPrice":"$8.54","priceAmount":8.54,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"8","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"54","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"7lZ664ba2YP7PrDw3GQfD3hymCuTkA7mZpnou3JO6YP1m%2FDsyg1qql%2BHuemiQpU47zWvehSY92sIFSTvMp3kaxgakFR9Tj4P3mnEwfJWcaVI%2BXq9tLZGrU0%2Bn0Sj803wAmeleIXm8LZ6UAgRJtRzXbVripctwumglv8pttYJXTkN7Kkyo5Cykv2lqrfm4dAu","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED"}]

$$8.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Returnable until Jan 31, 2023

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Wednesday, December 28 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Arrives after Christmas. Need a gift sooner? Send an Amazon Gift Card instantly by email or SMS.

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Martistore

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$7.55
+ $4.00 shipping

Sold by: V-King

Added

Not added

$9.61
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: Prime Deals, USA

Added

Not added

$9.64
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: allnewbooks

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

Follow the Authors

Milt Bearden

James Risen

The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB Mass Market Paperback – August 31, 2004

by Milton Bearden (Author), James Risen (Author)

293 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$8.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$46.25

$25.50

$2.59

Paperback

"Please retry"

$23.91

—

Mass Market Paperback

"Please retry"

$8.99

$7.19

$2.22

MP3 CD, Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$13.54

—

Enhance your purchase

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.

Print length

592 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Presidio Press
Publication date

August 31, 2004
Dimensions

4.23 x 1.3 x 6.8 inches
ISBN-10

0345472500
ISBN-13

978-0345472502
See all details

Frequently bought together

+
+

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

by Milton Bearden Mass Market Paperback
$8.99
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
by James M. Olson Paperback
$19.95
Only 10 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Get it as soon as Friday, Dec 23
by Gary Schroen Paperback
$18.00
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Get it as soon as Wednesday, Dec 21

James M. Olson
208
Paperback
64 offers from $4.99
Gary Schroen
330
Paperback
36 offers from $4.86
Ted Shackley
54
Paperback
28 offers from $4.99
Duane R. Clarridge
76
Paperback
38 offers from $7.00
Robert Baer
219
Hardcover
36 offers from $9.00
Allen Dulles
221
Paperback
34 offers from $7.58

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Risen, the journalistic outsider, and Bearden, the clandestine insider, have combined their insight and knowledge to give us a compelling account of the last fierce days of Cold War machinations between Soviet and American intelligence. This is history very up close and very personal.”—Seymour M. Hersh

"Fascinating stuff . . . an inside view of a complex world . . . it doesn't get any better than this. It's great."—Robert De Niro

"Some study war from an armchair; others through field glasses. The best go into the firing line. Milt Bearden of the CIA was one of those. For those of us who recall the Cold War, this is fascinating stuff. For those who are too young, read and learn."—Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day of the Jackal and The Dogs of War

From the Inside Flap

A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prizewinning 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 CIAs 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 Divisionjust 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.

From the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

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.

"From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

A thirty-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine services, Milt Bearden was chief of the Soviet/East European Division at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. As CIA chief in Pakistan, he supplied the Afghan freedom fighters who overthrew the Soviets. He received the Donovan Award and the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA's highest honor. He is featured in the Discovery Channel's Secret Warriors and the BBC's Covert Action. He was born in Oklahoma and spent his childhood in Washington State, where his father worked on the Manhattan Project. He served in the Air Force before joining the CIA in 1964 and currently lives outside Washington, D.C., with his French-born wife.

James Risen covers national security for The New York Times. He was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2002 for coverage of September 11 and terrorism, and he is coauthor of Wrath of Angels. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife and three sons.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PART ONE

THE YEAR OF THE SPY

Washington, D.C., 1830 Hours, June 13, 1985

There was nothing more he could do, Burton Gerber told himself again. The run had been choreographed like a ballet, of this he was certain. He had imposed his own iron discipline on the night's operation and had personally signed off on every detail, every gesture. Now that the route had been selected, he could close his eyes and visualize each intersection.

Gerber knew Moscow as well as any American, and from the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters half a world away, he routinely insisted on approving each turn to be followed on the operational run from Moscow's city center through the bleak outer neighborhoods. Night after night during his own years in Moscow, he had taken his wife, Rosalie, to obscure Russian theaters in distant parts of town rarely frequented by foreigners. His knowledge of Russian and his reputation as a movie buff had served him well. A good case officer has to learn his city, he told himself.

From his office in Langley, Virginia, Gerber had approved the script for the conversation that was to take place at the end of tonight's run, during the ten-minute meeting in the shadows of the Stalinist apartment blocks on Kastanayevskaya Street that was the sole object of the operation. Finally, Gerber had demanded that rigorous rehearsals be conducted inside the cramped working spaces on the fifth floor of the U.S. embassy in Moscow before the run was launched.

A wraith-thin Midwesterner, Jesuitical in his approach to his work, Gerber was one of the most demanding spymasters the CIA had ever sent against its main enemy, the Soviet Union's KGB. As chief of the CIA's Soviet/East European Division for the past year, he had made his mark. His exacting attention to the details of espionage tradecraft and his impatience with those who failed to meet his standards were legendary. Some critics called him a screamer who berated subordinates, but most respected his single-minded devotion to his job and, in an old-fashioned sense, to duty. Gerber was a complex man who evoked a jumble of emotions from those who worked for him. Longtime Soviet/East European hands studied him with the same intensity they brought to their analysis of the Soviet leaders in the Kremlin. What were they to make of a man whose greatest avocation was for the care, feeding, and preservation of wild wolves?

The truth was that Burton Gerber was a deeply spiritual man, a Roman Catholic who felt a moral obligation to the Russian agents he and his case officers were running. He lit a candle at Mass for each one of his agents unmasked and arrested by the KGB. He had come home from serving as station chief in Moscow three years earlier, so he understood the dangers of operating inside the Soviet bloc better than most at CIA headquarters. He believed that nothing less than perfection was owed to America's Russian agents, and if he yelled at case officers who failed to meet his standards, so be it. Cable traffic between Langley and Moscow was frequently dominated by a tense running debate between Gerber and his Moscow station chief, Murat Natirboff, over the minutiae of operations. There were some in SE Division who whispered that Natirboff was miscast as Moscow station chief, and it was increasingly clear that Gerber didn't trust him to get things done right. He seemed to believe he had to run Moscow operations himself-so much so that to some within SE Division, it sometimes felt as if Burton Gerber had never left Moscow.

But at some level, beneath the rigorous precision so necessary to a successful spy, Gerber also believed in both faith and fate. And so, after he signed off on the night's run, he closed the door to his fifth-floor office at CIA headquarters and smoothly turned his mind to other duties.

It was almost perfect late spring weather in Washington. The day was ending quietly as Gerber left for his home in a graceful old apartment building in Washington's Kalorama neighborhood. He had planned a modest dinner that night, after which he had promised to join a night training exercise.

At the very moment one of his officers would be winding his way through Moscow to meet the CIA's most valuable Soviet spy, Gerber would be watching green trainees playacting espionage on the streets of Washington. Better, he thought, that he devote his time to making certain that the next crop of officers be properly schooled than waste his energy fretting over details of a run he could no longer control. Gerber willed himself to stop worrying, to move on.

This was no routine training course, to be sure. Like the Navy's famed Top Gun school for fighter pilots, the CIA's "Internal Operations" course was the most arduous training program the agency had to offer. It was restricted to a handpicked elite-case officers slated for assignments in Moscow, Warsaw, Prague, and other capital cities in the Soviet empire. These were among the most difficult jobs in the CIA. The physical and mental stresses that came with the constant surveillance, the threat of exposure and arrest, meant that "inside work" was a young case officer's game.

After searching for some time for new tactics to defeat the KGB's suffocating surveillance in Moscow, the agency hit upon the idea of adding some green officers to the Moscow pipeline, recruits who wouldn't be easily recognized from other tours of duty. The decision to send rookies to Moscow placed an added burden on the IO course. It had to provide the most realistic training possible for officers who had never before faced a hostile opposition, much less the professional spy catchers of the KGB's Second and Seventh Chief Directorates.

Run by Jack Platt, a gruff ex-Marine and longtime Soviet targets officer, the six-week course simulated "Moscow Rules." The new case officers had to pass messages and receive documents from "spies" even as they were being trailed through Washington by teams of FBI agents playing the part of a hostile counterintelligence service. The FBI agents played hard-because the course kept them sharp for following real Soviet spies. Still, the best-trained CIA officers in the course could defeat the FBI, often through the use of sophisticated electronic devices, such as burst transmission equipment, that allowed them to pass messages without face-to-face contact.

But the FBI always had a lesson in store. The trainees-often with their spouses in tow-would go out on what they thought was an ordinary operation and walk into an explosive surprise arrest. They'd be roughed up and charged with drug dealing by FBI agents who were totally convincing in making it seem as though the bust had nothing to do with the IO course. After a few hours of questioning, only the most controlled students had the will to hold back their CIA connections. Invariably, some would try to talk their way out by explaining that there had been some horrible mistake: You see, Officer, I was loitering on a deserted street corner late at night with this woman, who happens to be my wife, as part of a CIA training exercise, not to sell drugs.

Gerber had invited Jim Olson, who had served with him in Moscow, to join him for dinner before they both went and played their parts in the training exercise. Olson, chief of internal operations for the Soviet Division, had amassed a remarkable record in Moscow and was now one of Gerber's most trusted lieutenants. But when he arrived at Gerber's apartment, Olson brought devastating news: Paul Stombaugh had been arrested in Moscow.

Olson's words hit Gerber like a gut shot. He knew instinctively what Stombaugh's arrest meant: The CIA's most important spy in twenty-five years had been rolled up by the KGB. It meant that Adolf Tolkachev, the billion-dollar agent, code-named GTVANQUISH, the man Stombaugh was supposed to meet, had been fatally compromised.

Typically, when an operation was carried off successfully in the heart of Moscow, right in the middle of a rolling sea of KGB surveillance, Langley wouldn't hear about it until the next morning. To keep the KGB from guessing that an important operation was under way, case officers returning from a late-night run would simply "get black," disappear into the city, and wait until the next morning to reinsert themselves into their cover jobs at the embassy. So only when the officer reported to work the next day would he go through a thorough debriefing, while the tape recordings of his brief encounter with the agent were transcribed.

That was when a flurry of messages would come pulsing into Langley, providing the details of how the run had unfolded the night before. Adrenaline would be pumping across the cable traffic, and well into the next day it would infect the small circle in the SE Division managing the case. Days later, the tape recordings of the agent meeting would arrive by diplomatic pouch, allowing senior SE Division managers to hear the tense voices and feel the strained emotions of the Moscow street encounter for themselves. They could then try to gauge the state of mind of an agent most of them had never met, as well as the performance of a case officer trying to ask all the right questions while constantly scanning his surroundings for signs of the KGB.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Presidio Press; NO-VALUE edition (August 31, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345472500
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345472502
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.23 x 1.3 x 6.8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #436,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #285 in Espionage True Accounts
- #564 in Intelligence & Espionage History
- #651 in Political Intelligence

Customer Reviews:
293 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Milt Bearden
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
See more on the author's page
James Risen
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
James Risen (born April 27, 1955) is an American journalist for The New York Times who previously worked for the Los Angeles Times. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion. Risen is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. By Miller Center (RS3J7284) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
See more on the author's page

Customer reviews

5 star		70%
4 star		20%
3 star		5%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Hamilton Beck

Legends in Their Own Minds

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 12, 2016

Verified Purchase

"The Main Enemy" reads almost like an espionage novel, full of drama and high-stakes scenes. Though it has not been turned into a film, co-author Milt Bearden has dipped his toe into both movies and television. He was credited as "CIA technical advisor" to "The Good Shepherd," one of the best movies dealing with the Angleton era. And Hollywood knows how to reciprocate – the dust jacket of "The Main Enemy" features a blurb from Robert de Niro, who appears in "The Good Shepherd" as a fictional version of Wild Bill Donovan.

The Discovery channel has shown Bearden recounting his story of turning out the light in his Kabul office as the last Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan – for years he had left it on as a signal that he was working tirelessly to achieve their defeat. Although "The Main Enemy" pays a kind of grudging respect to Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, mostly he appears as someone who grabs more credit than he deserves. Still, the message here is quite similar to that of "Charlie Wilson's War" (in which Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a character much like Milt Bearden) – the US squandered its victory over the USSR. Once the last Soviet tank crossed that bridge, we lost interest and left a fractured country to the warring Afghan factions, with results that are all too familiar.

Though the Central Asian parts of this long but briskly-paced book have gotten the most attention, what I want to concentrate on here are the other locations, the ones set in New York, Washington, Moscow and Berlin.

It's hardly classified information that the world presented here is viewed from the top floors at Langley. The dust jacket describes Bearden as a "thirty-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine services… chief of the Soviet/East European Division at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union." While it is understandable that Bearden and co-author James Risen admire many of the agents they describe, the reader is left wondering how a number of them could manage to be both legendary and clueless. For it must be said the actions detailed here frequently reveal something short of total competence.

Take the disgruntled agent Edward Lee Howard, whose escape to Russia sealed the doom of the Agency's greatest asset there, Adolf Tolkachev, or the bungled handling of the defector Vitaly Yurchenko. Langley's Soviet Division officer in charge of Eastern European counterintelligence and one of Yurchenko's main debriefers simply messed up when it came to his re-defection back to Moscow. That unfortunate officer was punished, but Gerber should have borne the responsibility, especially since he was also involved in the Howard disaster. Ultimately, of course, it was William Casey, Milt Bearden's mumbling buddy, who was most at fault: "Casey did take the darkest stories of the Soviets at face value. Arguing against him could be dangerous for a CIA officer's career." (pg. 155) That's about the strongest criticism of him to be found in this book.

So it should be clear that the authors are not exactly neutral, objective historians. Which is not necessarily a problem – readers can accept that fact and still enjoy the book for the inside information it reveals (or more accurately: that it has been cleared to reveal). But again, caution is advised. Take, for instance, the numerous dramatic conversations presented here. While they appear in quotation marks, neither they nor the many excerpts from secret cables should be treated as verbatim transcripts. "Where there is dialogue in the book, it corresponds to the specific recollections of one or more of the people present in the room. Beyond this, we have taken the liberty of reconstructing several CIA cables… these are not actual cables but are reconstructions by Milt Bearden based on his thirty years of reading and writing CIA cables…" (Foreword, pg. viii) In other words, the historical record has been trimmed and tightened, the script already primed for theatrical treatment.

That explains why there are no footnotes: After all, screenplays are not annotated. Some of the conversations presented here are "based on" recollections that may come from a single, unidentified participant remembering things many years on. As the "Note on Sources" reveals at the back of the book, this is fundamentally "an oral history based on hundreds of interviews with dozens of intelligence officers…" (pg. 537) None of whom, naturally, were motivated by anything as petty as the desire to make themselves look good in retrospect.

In sum, the reader is left with a wealth of information that cannot be checked, marred by a rather hyped presentation. (For a longer version of this review, see my blog at hamiltonbeck dot wordpress dot com)

12 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mikeabq

Cold War Commentary

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 1, 2022

Verified Purchase

An excellent read. Great "inside" perspectives on the Cold War. Reads like a Clancy or Thor novel - but it's for real.

Helpful

An oral history of the last years of the CIA-KGB struggle

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 18, 2012

Verified Purchase

This is what appears to be an extremely authentic and insightful look at the last decades of the struggle between Russian and American intelligence. The author writes with authority and conviction in an engaging manner that makes this book a very enjoyable read. Overall, one comes away from this one with the impression that the KGB somewhat edged out the CIA in terms of competence, but that the CIA, as the author says, at the end of the day was "good enough" to protect America until the Soviet system imploded. Both agencies penetrated the other at various times, but the KGB, with Aldrich Ames within the CIA and Robert Hanssen within the FBI, appears to have gotten the better of the CIA. Nonetheless the CIA was not without its victories, although many "KGB turncoats" turned out to be double agents who fed the CIA disinformation.

The author is particularly engaging when writing about the US effort to subvert the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the final days of the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan the Soviets learned in full why that country has been termed "the graveyard of Empires." (A lesson America is learning today.) We learn that when the East Bloc and Soviet systems came to their abrupt ends that American intelligence did not see it coming and neither did the Soviets. The Soviet system was apparently appallingly weak economically and no longer able to bear the burdens of a corrupt inefficient economy, aid to Soviet satellite states, and irrationally high military expenditures. The CIA should doubtless have understood this better but did not.

One ominous conclusion of the author is that Hanssen and Ames were not the only Russian moles within American intelligence. He believes that there were others who were never found and thus may be in place today.

I deprived this excellent piece of one star because of its chaotic organization. It jumps from event to event in abrupt style, switching between first and third person in an occasionally confusing manner. Nonetheless, this is a good read that those interested in international espionage should not miss. Recommended. RJB.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Harvey Follender

Milt Bearden's recounting of inside happenings as the US-USSR competition ended

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 28, 2022

Verified Purchase

Milt Bearden was a key actor in events that shaped US-USSR relations in Afghanistan and elsewhere as the Cold War wound down. His recollections and candid interviews with friends and foes, form an invaluable record of that transformational period.

Helpful

Amazon Customer

awesome Cold War play by play

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 9, 2022

Verified Purchase

Milt Beardon is one of those historical names from the days of spy vs spy. He tells first hand stories that fill in the blanks from a lot of great stories told by other principles of that era. Thoroughly enjoyed and recommended reading for all you spy buffs out there.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Germangeoff

Spies Can Tell Some Good Stories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 27, 2017

Verified Purchase

I saw this book referenced elsewhere in a negative way which meant I approached it with low expectations - it soon proved to be most unfair so I award it 5 stars - but would plump for 4.5 if I could, however it closer to the full five than only four.

This is an extremely well written book, assuming it is true, detailing the life and times of a pretty big cheese in the CIA and his working life tackling Russian secret agents working in America, then he moves on to his work in Afghanistan giving exhaustive accounts of events like the Stinger missile used by the Mujaheddin shooting down Russian helicopters, the book closes with the end of the Cold War in eastern Europe and the attempted coup which failed but hastened the end of Soviet Russia. My reservation concerns how the various storylines interconnect and we might be introduced to a character at one stage then, as it is written in rigid chronological order, pick up with this person again months or years later. This is however a minor quibble in an otherwise excellent work.

York

Informative great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 11, 2019

Verified Purchase

An excellent edge of your seat read,

S. L.

The wages of triumphalism

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 26, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is a very useful and interesting book for a layperson like myself to learn about the how spy agencies operate and to better understand the the fascinating period that surrounded the fall of the Soviet empire. However, I cannot avoid a deep unease about how the failings of the CIA that permeate this account mirrored and exaggerated those of the US at large. The greed and incompetence that both drove and enabled the Ames treason to go on for so long. The triumphalism of the post-Cold War era leading to the rise of Al-Qaeda, the invasion of Iraq, the rise of ISIS, the transformation of Russia into a revanchist mafia state. The moral rot of Iran-Contra , Oliver North taking the Fifth and now leading the NRA. The Clinton e-mail pseudo-scandal and the Comey letter joining forces with Russian subversion to bring Donald Trump to power. Is the Dotard the final epilogue of this long downward spiral or is there still more corruption and suffering to come? How many more Aldrich Ames' will the Trump era bring into the American intelligence agencies now that ''treason is awesome'' according the GOP?

One person found this helpful

Andrew Andersen

Good book but... poorly printed

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 13, 2014

Verified Purchase

Pages 1-116 are followed by pp.373-436 which, in turn, are followed by pp.181-561.
How can one read it and where the hell are pp. 116-181?
I understand that degeneration of our society results in the disappearance of professionalism in all spheres including the publishing but even considering that fact it is totally unacceptable.

Kiko

What a book!

Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on May 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

Dense, thorough, and thought-provoking on a human level about values and ethics. Most of all it is entertaining and, incredibly, all true.

See all reviews

Buy new: $8.99$8.99 FREE delivery: Tuesday, Jan 17 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used: $8.54

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Authors

The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB Mass Market Paperback – August 31, 2004

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the Inside Flap

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

About the authors

Milt Bearden

James Risen

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$8.99

FREE delivery: Tuesday, Jan 17 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Ships from: Amazon.com

Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used:

$8.54