Memoir of a KGB Officer: The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames
December 1, 2004
It's not surprising that a book on spying would be tinged with irony. Midway through this gripping but soberly written expose on the Cold War spy game, the author, a former KGB agent, recalls some advice he gave back in the 1990s to former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who wanted to know how Cherkashin was able to recruit CIA agents like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen as KGB spies and whether it was possible to prevent treason. "The only way to be entirely safe is to remove people from intelligence gathering," Cherkashin offered-an intriguing comment given the recent renewed emphasis on human intelligence. But throughout the book, Cherkashin proves his point, showing just how porous these agencies are and how operatives deftly remain effective as spies for both sides. Recruited in 1985, Ames and Hanssen made the initial overtures to the KGB, and Cherkashin was there to receive them and their boilerplate motivations for wanting to cross over-money and a sort of renegade patriotism that resolves itself by punishing the very country they serve. While Cherkashin's relationships with Ames and Hanssen are explained, almost more intriguing is the picture he paints of a time when spying was predominantly a human intelligence affair ripe with sex and blackmail. The author, who clearly believes in respect for the enemy, sometimes sounds like an apologist for his country's actions, as well as the actions of Ames and Hanssen. But this lack of sentimentality is what makes the book stand out. 16 page photo pull-out.
February 1, 2005
Signing on a year before Stalin died, the author was posted to KGB stations in Australia, India, and Lebanon and served in high-level positions in Moscow. Cherkashin relates how much of his effort was concerned with low-level agents, propaganda activities, working against the United States, and countering CIA operations. But his most exciting work was in Washington, where he ran U.S. traitors Robert Hanssen (FBI) and Aldrich Ames (CIA). Both sides had tactical successes, embarrassing failures, and wasteful bureaucratic infighting, but the Communist collapse had little to do with intelligence agencies. The great game continues, and an individual's complex personality and desires prove to be more important than security procedures or ideology. Experts and lay readers alike should enjoy the details of espionage. Suitable for all espionage collections.-Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL
Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 15, 2004
Cherkashin, a retired senior KGB officer, working with Feifer, a former Moscow correspondent for Radio Free Europe, gives readers an insider's view of the spy business from just after World War II through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. This is at once fascinating and chilling. Cherkashin emphasizes the painstaking, plodding nature of spy work, but he also spikes his account with the stuff of a le Carre thriller: secret meetings, paranoia over others' reactions, and tales of blackmail and seduction in the service of turning selected targets into KGB agents. Although the focus is on Soviet spycraft, Cherkashin's story--especially the recruitment and handling of Americans Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen--is interlaced with details about U.S. spying and counterspying. Cherkashin's perspective on Ames' and Hanssen's psyches and on what led to their downfalls is especially riveting. Read this not just as a spy expose but also as a social history of an especially volatile period in Russia.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)