By Boris Volodarsky
This can be the background of an exceptional deception operation - the largest KGB deception of all time. It hasn't ever been advised in complete formerly.
General Alexander Orlov, Stalin's such a lot dependable and relied on henchman throughout the Spanish Civil conflict, was once additionally the Soviet handler controlling Kim Philby, the British undercover agent, defector, and member of the infamous 'Cambridge Five'. Escaping Stalin's purges, Orlov fled to the USA within the overdue Nineteen Thirties and lived underground. He purely dared display his id to the area after Stalin's demise, in his 1953 best-seller The mystery background of Stalin's Crimes, and then he grew to become possibly the simplest recognized of all Soviet defectors, a lot written approximately, hugely praised, and honored by means of the united states Congress on his demise in 1973.
But there's a twist within the Orlov tale past the goals of even the main inventive undercover agent novelist: normal Alexander Orlov by no means truly existed. the guy often called Orlov used to be actually born Leiba Feldbin. And whereas he was a devoted servant of Stalin and the controller of Philby, he was once by no means a normal within the KGB, by no means actually defected to the West after his flight from the USSR, and remained a faithful Soviet agent till his loss of life. The Orlov tale because it has been authorised before was once principally the discovery of the KGB - and one perpetuated lengthy after the tip of the chilly warfare.
In this meticulous new biography, Boris Volodarsky, himself a former Soviet intelligence officer, now tells the real tale at the back of Orlov for the 1st time. An fascinating story of Russian espionage and deception, stretching from the time of Lenin to the Putin period, it is a tale that might ship shockwaves during the world's intelligence organisations.
Read Online or Download Stalin's Agent: The Life and Death of Alexander Orlov PDF
Best intelligence & espionage books
Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack
White condo speechwriter Marc Thiessen was once locked in a safe room and given entry to the main delicate intelligence while he used to be tasked to jot down President George W. Bush’s 2006 speech explaining the CIA’s interrogation application and why Congress may still authorize it. Few be aware of extra approximately those CIA operations than Thiessen, and in his new booklet, dating catastrophe, he files simply how potent the CIA’s interrogations have been in foiling assaults on the US, penetrating al-Qaeda’s excessive command, and offering our army with actionable intelligence.
The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan
On a moonless evening simply weeks after September eleven, 2001, U. S. particular Forces group ODA 574 infiltrates the mountains of southern Afghanistan with a doubtless most unlikely challenge: to foment a tribal riot and strength the Taliban to give up. Armed exclusively with the gear they could keep on their backs, shockingly scant intelligence, and their mastery of guerrilla battle, Captain Jason Amerine and his males haven't any selection yet to belief their in basic terms best friend, a little-known Pashtun statesman named Hamid Karzai who has again from exile and is being hunted by means of the Taliban as he travels the nation-state elevating a armed forces.
Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR's White House Triggered Pearl Harbor
Lately declassified proof and never-before-translated files inform the genuine tale of the day that FDR memorably declared might stay in infamy, exploring how Joseph Stalin and the KGB used an enormous community of double brokers and communist sympathizers—most significantly Harry Dexter White—to lead Japan into struggle opposed to the U.S., featuring Soviet involvement in the back of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Intelligence and Intelligence Analysis
This e-book tracks put up 9-11 advancements in nationwide safeguard and policing intelligence and their relevance to new rising components of intelligence perform reminiscent of: corrections, biosecurity, deepest and regulatory environments. advancements are explored thematically throughout 3 large sections: utilising intelligence realizing constructions constructing a self-discipline.
Extra resources for Stalin's Agent: The Life and Death of Alexander Orlov
Sample text
10 The Polish army reconquered Central Lithuania with Vilnius (ceded to the Lithuanians by the Red Army), western White Ruthenia, western Wolhynia, and eastern Galicia, before the armistice of October 1920. The Soviet government finally recognized this border unconditionally in the Peace of Riga a few months later. At the beginning of 1921, Nikolsky was posted to the counter-intelligence section, known as the Osoby Otdel (OO) or Special Section, of the Soviet Border Guard troops in the city of Archangel.
Among this group was Johannes ‘Johnny’ de Graaf, a German communist who worked for both the Comintern and Soviet military intelligence in Britain, China, and Germany. Keith Jeffery’s MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service devoted several pages to ‘The Jonny Case’, and unsurprisingly the book Johnny: A Spy’s Life was published during the same year in America. But it turned out that MI5 was interested in a different ‘Johnny’, whose name was also Johannes de Graaf (in the photogragh) and who it suspected was a German spy.
Operation express, 1933, one of the first in a chain of unsuccessful espionage operations assigned to Lev Nikolsky (who was not yet Orlov), was an attempt to recruit a member of the famous French Deuxie`me Bureau, where Soviet intelligence had already been developing a source codenamed joseph. A group that included a young operations officer, Alexander Korotkov, posing as a Czech student, his wife, Maria Wilkowyska (both in the picture), and Nikolsky, posing as an American businessman, set up a base in Geneva and focused full time on clandestinely spotting their target ‘with access to vital intelligence’.