Battleground Berlin : CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Battleground Berlin is the product of an unprecedented collaboration between two veteran intelligence officers--one with the CIA, the other with the KGB--who worked on opposite sides in postwar Berlin. With the help of journalist George Bailey, they have told what will likely stand as the definitive account of those remarkable years. The KGB had the advantage of existing, in one form or another, since the Russian Revolution, while the CIA was a fledgling agency. But KGB agents and analysts were under chronic pressure to twist their intelligence reports for political reasons, which evened the scales somewhat.
Armed with information from numerous interviews, access to previously secret documents (many reproduced in the book), extensive research, and their own recollections, the authors roam the existing Cold War literature, correcting lies and false conclusions, putting rumors to rest, and exposing ignorance--in short, setting the record straight. They provide definitive accounts of many key episodes, including the double defection of Otto John, the head of West German counterespionage, and the famous tunnel incident of 1955-56, in which an American tunnel into the Soviet sector was exposed by a highly placed informant and then "discovered" in an elaborate ploy to protect the agent. Battleground Berlin is a remarkable amalgam. It is a fascinating, sometimes gripping spy story, complete with safe houses, forged identities, double agents, and street-corner rendezvous; it is also a scrupulously researched piece of historical scholarship and analysis.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
The New York Times Book Review, Joseph E. Persico
Battleground Berlin is hardly a romp for the general reader. Microscopic descriptions of cogs within cogs in the spy bureaucracies, a flood of acronyms and a rain of polysyllabic Russian names create, at times, pages that only a Sovietologist could love. Yet the book does present a remarkably balanced view of the Berlin spy wars.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Battleground Berlin : CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War
Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War,David E. Murphy,Sergei A. Kondrashev,George Bailey,Yale University Press,0300078714,History,History - General History,History: World,International Relations - General,Military - Intelligence/Espionage,Military - Other,Political Freedom & Security - International Secur,Biography: general,Espionage & secret services,Germany,History / General,Russia,USA,c 1945 to c 1960,c 1960 to c 1970
Books Report:
Recommended Books