The CIA's Russians

By John L. Hart

During the Cold War a number of high-ranking Soviet citizens spied for the CIA, providing the United States with valuable information while putting themselves and their families in great danger. In this book a seasoned CIA field operator and station chief looks at what drove these agents to betray their own country. Unlike many authors who write about spies, John Hart knows the espionage profession first-hand, and his penetrating analysis of the motivations involved is based on top-secret operational files. Four major Soviet agents -Yuri Nosenko, the dissident KGB agent who disclosed the bugs in the American Embassy in Moscow and claimed the KGB had no connection to the assassination of President Kennedy; Oleg Penkovsky, one of the West's most important agents who was eventually executed by the Soviets; and Pyotr Popov and Mikhail -are examined in depth, and the cases of six others are discussed. The stories of each reveal a great deal about the realities of the intelligence craft. Hart became so intrigued with the reasons behind the agents' spying activities that he asked then-CIA director Richard Helms for time off to investigate the cases. For a full year he searched for common denominators in the personalities of these Soviet moles that would explain their willingness to take such life-threatening risks. He had complete access to their operational files, including psychological profiles. He studied not only documentation of the material the agents provided but also their own accounts of their thoughts and emotions when they divulged secrets that could damage their homeland. This behind-the-headlines look at what makes spies tick is aimed at every reader with a penchant for good spy stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781612513249

John L. Hart

John L. Hart has been a practicing psychotherapist for more than forty years, starting in Vietnam where he was a psychology specialist and then receiving his doctorate from the University of Southern California. John is an internationally respected lecturer, has been a consultant to the nation of Norway for their Fathering Project, and maintained a private practice in Los Angeles for over twenty years. He is the author of Becoming a Father from HCI Books and co-author of Modern Eclectic Therapy (Springer). John’s poetry has appeared in many literary journals and magazines such as Verve and Rivertalk. John divides his time between Hawaii where he is an artist at the Mauna Kea Hotel and Vancouver Island, B.C., where he is Executive Director of Spirit Bear Art Farm and adjunct associate professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Olivia Rupprecht is an award-winning, best-selling author whose novels have sold worldwide. She lives in a historic tavern on a lake in Wisconsin.

Book preview

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Pyotr Popov

The Tribulations of Faith

1953: A SOVIET VOLUNTEER IN VIENNA

On New Year’s Day 1953 as he enters his car in the International Sector of occupied Vienna, a young American vice consul discovers an envelope addressed to the American high commissioner. Vienna is a city on edge, occupied militarily by the four powers who were Allies during the war. There is no longer any unity; everyone knows that the World War II alliance has become a fiction and the subject of sick humor. What is a war hero? Austrians ask bitterly. To which the answer is, Two Russians and a liter of vodka! The aging and increasingly eccentric Stalin still rules; the Soviet Zone is rigorously separated from the areas designated for the French, British, and U.S. forces. On the other hand the so-called International Sector is a carefully delimited district where people of all nationalities are free to mix, however uneasily.

Cautiously opening the envelope, the vice consul finds a note written in Russian dated 28 December 1952. Once translated it appeared to be a muted plea for help:

I am a Soviet officer. I wish to meet with an American officer with the object of offering certain services. Time: 1800 hours. Date: 1 January 1953. Place: Plankengasse, Vienna 1. Failing this meeting, I will be at the same place, same time, on successive Saturdays.

Delivering that letter to a U.S. citizen was only the first of many risks Maj. Pyotr Semyonovich Popov (soon to be Lieutenant Colonel Popov) was to take over the next six years while assigned to Soviet headquarters in Vienna. It was far from being his last dangerous gamble but, as Popov later remarked, "He who does not make any mistakes is not