Chosen by William Safire in the New York Times to be the publishing sleeper-seller of the year for 2007. In this rapid-paced book, a former CIA chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence breaks open the mysterious case of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko’s 1964 defection to the United States. Still a highly controversial chapter in the history of Cold War espionage, the Nosenko affair has inspired debate for more than forty years: was Nosenko a bona fide defector with the real information about Lee Harvey Oswald’s stay in Soviet Russia, or was he a KGB loyalist, engaged in a complex game of deception? As supervisor of CIA operations against the KGB at the time, Tennent H. Bagley directly handled Nosenko’s case. This insider knowledge, combined with information gleaned from dozens of interviews with former KGB adversaries, places Bagley in a uniquely authoritative position. He guides the reader step by step through the complicated operations surrounding the Nosenko affair and shatters the comfortable version of events the CIA has presented to the public. Bagley unveils not only the KGB’s history of merciless and bloody betrayals but also the existence of undiscovered traitors in the American camp. Shining new light on the CIA-KGB spy wars, he invites deeper thinking about the history of espionage and its implications for the intelligence community today.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, May 2007: Utterly compelling from page one, Tennent H. Bagley's Spy Wars documents the strange case of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB agent who approached the CIA in the early 1960s (apparently) ready to divulge a treasure trove of secrets, including information on Soviet intelligence operations, KGB surveillance tactics, and even Lee Harvey Oswald’s time in Russia. But was Nosenko a source of legitimate information, or a KGB loyalist sent to misdirect CIA efforts? It's a controversial question to this day, but one that Bagley, as a scion of a storied Navy family and then supervisor of the CIA’s operations against the KGB, is uniquely qualified to dissect. Along the way, he vividly recounts the chess match between the rival intelligence agencies during the opening salvoes of the Cold War, and it’s as cloak-and-dagger as any LeCarre fan could hope--double-agents, miniature cameras hidden behind neckties, microfilm, and other trappings of the spy game abound in this fascinating and fast-paced real-life thriller. --Jon Foro
“Tennent Bagley reveals for the first time the true story of one of the strangest cases in the annals of the CIA’s counterintelligence operations. Bagley was the best-informed CIA officer on Soviet intelligence in the early Cold War period, and he was directly involved in these events.”—David Murphy, former CIA chief in Berlin and author of What Stalin Knew (David Murphy)
"Pete Bagley's Spy Wars is a gripping narrative capturing one of the most controversial espionage sagas of the Cold War. His lively, first-hand account as CIA's former chief of Soviet counter-intelligence provides sobering insights into our dangerous tendency of self-deception."—Frederick Kempe, former Wall Street Journal editor and correspondent (Frederick Kempe)
Chosen by the American Library Association as one of "The Best of the Best from the University Presses: Books You Should Know About," 2008
(The Best of the Best from the University Presses: Books You Should Know About American Library Association (ALA) 2008-06-01)
"Written by a true insider, Spy Wars not only makes an enormous contribution to the study of intelligence, it also tells a thrilling, real spy story."—Edward Jay Epstein, author of Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (Edward Jay Epstein)
About the Author
Tennent H. (“Pete”) Bagley served twenty-two years in the CIA, handling spies and defectors in Clandestine Services and rising to chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence. He is now a writer and researcher based in Brussels, Belgium.
Chosen by William Safire in the New York Times to be the publishing sleeper-seller of the year for 2007.
In this rapid-paced book, a former CIA chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence breaks open the mysterious case of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko’s 1964 defection to the United States. Still a highly controversial chapter in the history of Cold War espionage, the Nosenko affair has inspired debate for more than forty years: was Nosenko a bona fide defector with the real information about Lee Harvey Oswald’s stay in Soviet Russia, or was he a KGB loyalist, engaged in a complex game of deception?
As supervisor of CIA operations against the KGB at the time, Tennent H. Bagley directly handled Nosenko’s case. This insider knowledge, combined with information gleaned from dozens of interviews with former KGB adversaries, places Bagley in a uniquely authoritative position. He guides the reader step by step through the complicated operations surrounding the Nosenko affair and shatters the comfortable version of events the CIA has presented to the public. Bagley unveils not only the KGB’s history of merciless and bloody betrayals but also the existence of undiscovered traitors in the American camp. Shining new light on the CIA-KGB spy wars, he invites deeper thinking about the history of espionage and its implications for the intelligence community today.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, May 2007: Utterly compelling from page one, Tennent H. Bagley's Spy Wars documents the strange case of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB agent who approached the CIA in the early 1960s (apparently) ready to divulge a treasure trove of secrets, including information on Soviet intelligence operations, KGB surveillance tactics, and even Lee Harvey Oswald’s time in Russia. But was Nosenko a source of legitimate information, or a KGB loyalist sent to misdirect CIA efforts? It's a controversial question to this day, but one that Bagley, as a scion of a storied Navy family and then supervisor of the CIA’s operations against the KGB, is uniquely qualified to dissect. Along the way, he vividly recounts the chess match between the rival intelligence agencies during the opening salvoes of the Cold War, and it’s as cloak-and-dagger as any LeCarre fan could hope--double-agents, miniature cameras hidden behind neckties, microfilm, and other trappings of the spy game abound in this fascinating and fast-paced real-life thriller. --Jon Foro
From Booklist
Bagley, who oversaw the CIA's operations against the KGB in the 1960s, takes us deep inside the cold war spy game. He focuses on a notorious case, one he was intimately familiar with: Yuri Nosenko, the KGB officer who approached the Americans in May 1962, offering to divulge secrets to the CIA. Over the next few years, Nosenko supplied the U.S. with plenty of information, including some interesting tidbits concerning Lee Harvey Oswald's time in the Soviet Union. But Bagley, who directly supervised the Nosenko case, eventually became suspicious of the Russian agent and began to suspect that Nosenko, rather than a turncoat, was a KGB plant, spying on the Americans in the guise of a traitor (the debate rages to this day). Bagley doesn't pull any punches here, and readers expecting the usual KGB-as-villain, CIA-as-hero story are in for a whole lot of surprises: Bagley reveals that the good guys were just as duplicitous, traitorous, and nasty as the villains. The spy game has never seemed quite so dirty nor the CIA so villainous. David Pitt
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Review
“Tennent Bagley reveals for the first time the true story of one of the strangest cases in the annals of the CIA’s counterintelligence operations. Bagley was the best-informed CIA officer on Soviet intelligence in the early Cold War period, and he was directly involved in these events.”—David Murphy, former CIA chief in Berlin and author of What Stalin Knew
(David Murphy)
"Pete Bagley's Spy Wars is a gripping narrative capturing one of the most controversial espionage sagas of the Cold War. His lively, first-hand account as CIA's former chief of Soviet counter-intelligence provides sobering insights into our dangerous tendency of self-deception."—Frederick Kempe, former Wall Street Journal editor and correspondent (Frederick Kempe)
Chosen by the American Library Association as one of "The Best of the Best from the University Presses: Books You Should Know About," 2008
(The Best of the Best from the University Presses: Books You Should Know About American Library Association (ALA) 2008-06-01)
"Written by a true insider, Spy Wars not only makes an enormous contribution to the study of intelligence, it also tells a thrilling, real spy story."—Edward Jay Epstein, author of Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (Edward Jay Epstein)
About the Author
Tennent H. (“Pete”) Bagley served twenty-two years in the CIA, handling spies and defectors in Clandestine Services and rising to chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence. He is now a writer and researcher based in Brussels, Belgium.