A01=Steve Vogel
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American author and journalist
American Russian relations
American Secret Service
army
Author_Steve Vogel
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Britain
British secret history
British Secret Service
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBTW
Category=NHTW
CIA
Cold War
Cold War Berlin
cold war spies
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
double agents
double cross
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eq_history
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
espionage
espionage books
European history
George Blake
KGB
Language_English
Lies and Exile in Russia: The Extraordinary Story of George Blake
military
mystery
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Price_€10 to €20
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Pulitzer Prize finalist 2002 for journalism
recommended wartime books
Russian history
Russian spies
Second World War
secret intelligence
secret military operations
Simon Kuper
softlaunch
Soviet espionage
Soviet history
The Happy Traitor
The Happy Traitor: Spies
thriller spy stories
thrillers on kindle
treachery
Twentieth century history
Washington Post writer
WW2
Product details
- ISBN 9781473647510
- Weight: 400g
- Dimensions: 130 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 06 Aug 2020
- Publisher: John Murray Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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'Riveting and vivid ... At the heart of the book is Blake's own remarkable story, which Vogel tells with some sympathy, if not approval. It reads like a Hollywood screenplay' Foreign Affairs
'A fascinating account of Blake's career as a spy ... Blake's story has been told before, as has the tunnel's, but Steve Vogel pulls them together accessibly and comprehensibly, along with the wider political context and entertaining detail about personalities of the period' Spectator
'Excellent... although there are other books on Blake, Mr. Vogel's handling of his tale is original and rewarding... meticulously researched and full of vivid detail' Wall Street Journal
'A spy thriller that kept me up all night. Magnificent story-telling' Peter Snow
A true Cold War espionage thriller set around the ultra-secret Berlin Tunnel - where British officer George Blake must run a high-stakes double cross to maintain his cover.
The ultra-secret "Berlin Tunnel" was dug in the mid-1950s from the American sector in southwest Berlin and ran nearly a quarter-mile into the Soviet sector, allowing the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) to tap into critical KGB and Soviet military underground telecommunication lines.
George Blake, a trusted officer working in a highly sensitive job with SIS, was privy to every aspect of the plan. Over the course of eleven months from May 1955 to April 1956, when the Soviets discovered the tunnel, "Operation Gold" provided seemingly invaluable intelligence about Soviet capabilities and intentions. The tunnel was celebrated as an astonishing CIA coup upon its disclosure, and the agency basked in its new reputation as a bold and capable intelligence agency that had, for once, outwitted the KGB. But in 1961, a Polish defector shocked the CIA and SIS by revealing that Blake was a double agent who had disclosed plans for the tunnel to the KGB before it was even built. Blake was arrested and sentenced in 1961 to 42 years in prison, the longest term ever imposed under modern English law. In the years since, the tunnel has been labelled a failure, based on the assumption that the Soviets would never have allowed any information of importance to be transmitted through the tapped lines. Not so.
In a work of remarkable investigative reporting, Steve Vogel now reveals that the information picked up by the CIA and SIS was more valuable than even they believed. But why would the Soviets, knowing full well that the tunnel existed, have let slip many of their most valuable secrets? Or did they actually know?
Steve Vogel was born in Berlin, where his father, a CIA case officer, served from 1957 to 1962, during some of the tensest days of the Cold War. As a reporter for the Washington Post for two decades, he wrote frequently about military affairs and the treatment of veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His reporting about the war in Afghanistan was part of a package of Washington Post stories selected as a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. He covered the war in Iraq and the first Gulf War, as well as U.S. military operations in Rwanda, Somalia, and the Balkans, and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon.
