Quick, informative read on CIA spying in Moscow in the '70 and '80s ( )

Good historical information about CIA tradecraft and technology developed for and deployed in operations in Russia curing the Cold War. Interesting that stage magicians were collaborators with CIA, as well as the various challenges with working with agents, resourcing problems, and specific field operations. A few of the interesting techniques were using non-CIA personnel as cover, where CIA case officers would take the identities of normal embassy staff to leave the embassy without intensive surveillance, and the extensive use of couples to avoid suspicion. A few of the blackest marks against the intelligence community (moles inside CIA, specifically Ames and Hansen) were included, as well as some smaller problems with Marines having relations with Russian staff and the extensive infiltration of Russian staff (and later complete withdrawal). The embassy fire where CIA officers guarded critical items from KGB "firefighters" was a great counterpoint and example of extreme bravery and patriotism. ( )

One of my favorite books of the year! I honestly could not put this one down.
Mendez and his wife were CIA employees (yes, spies), in Moscow during the 1970's (combined, they served for 52 years!). The USSR, thanks to the KGB, had an (almost) impenetrable society at the time. Constant surveillance of foreigners, as well as it's own citizens, made spying impossible. They had no limits on the resources they could expend on counter-surveillance. Add to that the awful damage done by "moles" (traitors) from our own country, and it was darned difficult to find out what was going on there.
Mendez relates his (and his wife's) experiences, failures, and successes during their careers. Fascinating narratives that read like the best James Bond novels, except that they are true! Edge of your seat reading that you will not be able to put down!
And, through it all, he relates everything to a series of rules they followed, called the "Moscow Rules". They are a series of 42 simple rules, used to help them succeed. Things like: Murphy is right; never go against your gut, technology will always let you down, and betrayal may come from within.
This is just an incredible, fascinating book. I have to wonder, given the current state of Russian affairs, if a whole new set of rules is in play.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough! ( )

You’re in a gloomy city, Moscow. The natives, out of self preservation, don’t like to talk to you. Everywhere you go, you are followed. In fact, if you’re a diplomat or a CIA agent operating under diplomatic cover, there are tens of thousands of KGB agents in the city to watch you every time you step out. They’ve bugged your embassy. They’ve bugged your apartment. They’ve bugged your phone.

Go out and chat up the local Russians and try to recruit them to be spies? If you do manage to recruit any, if they actually volunteer to give you information, authentic information and not “dangles” meant to embarrass you to create a diplomatic incident or feed you misinformation, how are you going to get it? A dead drop when your surveilled by multiple teams of KGB agents? A brush contact?

You might as well try to try to recruit agents on Mars. In fact, that’s just what your boss, Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms, said.

You remember what happened in that Oleg Penkovsky case? He was that member of the Russian military intelligence, the GRU, that gave very valuable information to the CIA on Soviet missiles during the Cuban Missile Crisis. You know what happened to him? Well, KGB legend says he was burned alive, an event filmed to give show what "death to traitors” means. (This book doesn’t actually note his reputed method of execution.) That was back in 1963.

And can you really trust any agent from the Soviet bloc? They just want to feed you misinformation. That’s what the CIA’s famous chief of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton, held.

That was how things stood if you were a CIA agent in Moscow in the early 1970s.

This book was how that all changed. How the CIA developed the Moscow Rules for conducting intelligence in the “denied area” of the Soviet capitol. How you can use surveillance to lure the watchers into complacency. How, if you can just avoid surveillance on the street for 15 or 20 seconds, you can meet up with your agents. How you can even tap a secured communication line running from a military base to the Soviet Ministry of Defense.

It was done with magic. Literally, tricks developed from street and stage magicians. It was done with the help of Hollywood makeup masters like John Chambers.

Antonio Mendez, who started out as a self-employed graphics designer, became a forger in the CIA's Office of Technical Services and, eventually, its master of disguise. In pop culture, he was played by Ben Affleck in the movie Argo based on Mendez’s famous mission to exfiltrate US diplomats from Khomeni’s Tehran.

This is not just his story or the story of his wife Jonna Mendez but also the story of how CIA administrators and technical staff developed the Moscow Rules, and CIA agents on the ground put the Moscow Rules into practice and refined them.

And it’s the story of how it all came tumbling down from traitors within the CIA and the inevitable countertechniques the KGB developed.

This book is full of the nitty-gritty of tradecraft and chockful of spy gadgets: miniature cameras, disguise kits, hidden radios, "spy dust", burst transmitters (the world’s first Blackberry in effect). There's sex dolls and cyanide pills – which the CIA really didn’t like giving to its Russian agents -- too.

Even if you are familiar with the stories of traitors Aldrich Ames and Edward Lee Howard (I had heard Howard’s name but knew little about his characters), that level of detail and meeting lesser known CIA agents like Marsha Petersen, the first to put the Moscow Rules into effect on a mission, make this must reading for fans of espionage history.

My only small complaint is that this is another modern espionage history still tinged by the Cold War assumption that Russia is still America’s main adversary (the book opens with an attack by Federal Security Bureau (the descendent of the KGB) agents on an American diplomat in 2016). That would seem to be China these days, but it’s understandable that Antonio Mendez, whose CIA career ended in 1991, would still retain the attitudes of a Cold Warrior. ( )