The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre
Review
I found this book very enjoyable, it reads very easily, as if reading a Tom Clancy novel. It is stuffed with interesting historical background on communist Russia, the KGB and British intelligence services. Loads of attention to detail and also just a mesmerizing story of itself. Highly recommended read!
The Spy and the Traitor
5. A Plastic Bag and a Mars Bar
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The Soviet Union was in effect an enormous prison, incarcerating more than 280 million people behind heavily guarded borders, with over a million KGB officers and informants acting as their jailers
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Fear by night, and a feverish effort by day to pretend enthusiasm for a system of lies, was the permanent condition of the Soviet citizen,’ writes Robert Conquest.
8. Operation RYAN
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this was information of the highest grade, trustworthy and valuable. MI6 did not tell the CIA that the intelligence came from within the KGB. But it probably did not need to. So began one of the most important intelligence-sharing operations of the twentieth century.
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Slowly, carefully, with quiet pride and subdued fanfare, MI6 began drip-feeding America with Gordievsky’s secrets