by Joseph Trento
2005 (SC), Car­roll & Graf
ISBN 0786715006
560 pages.

From NameBase.org
This book cov­ers roughly three inter­min­gled top­ics. The first is the CIA’s early years at the Berlin base, where high-flying cor­rup­tion and Soviet pen­e­tra­tion was ram­pant, and even seemed to help one’s CIA career. William Har­vey was a key player here. The sec­ond involves the migra­tion of some of these play­ers to Viet­nam, and also to Chile. The pri­mary source on Chile is Edward Korry, whose story is told here in some detail. The third aspect of this book is the mole wars, where Angle­ton plays a major role. Trento makes a strong case that Igor Orlov and George Weisz deserve top billing as moles, but is less con­vinc­ing when he describes Angleton’s the­o­ries about Oswald. In the end, the point of the book — that the Sovi­ets con­sis­tently ran cir­cles around a cor­rupted and incom­pe­tent CIA — is rock solid. It wasn’t our self-serving Key­stone Cops who won the Cold War; it was sim­ply that our arms race out­lasted the Soviet economy.

Joseph Trento has been an inves­tiga­tive reporter on the national secu­rity beat since 1968. He had some scoops in the 1970s, and kept at it through the 1980s and 1990s by cul­ti­vat­ing insid­ers such as James Angle­ton, William Cor­son, and Robert Crow­ley. Through them he man­aged to inter­view dozens of other retired spooks. Now he is pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter in Wash­ing­ton DC.

THIS BOOK IS IN PRINT.
Avail­able com­mer­cially. Learn more about Joseph J. Trento.