{"product_id":"the-main-enemy-isbn-9780345472502","title":"The Main Enemy","description":"\u003cb\u003eA landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer  Prize–winning journalist, \u003ci\u003eThe Main Enemy\u003c\/i\u003e is the dramatic inside story of the CIA-KGB  spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Based on hundreds  of interviews with operatives from both sides, \u003ci\u003eThe Main Enemy\u003c\/i\u003e puts us inside the  heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in  Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow  of the Cuban missile crisis and rose through the ranks to run the CIA and KGB in  the last days of the Cold War. The clandestine operations they masterminded took  them from the sewers of Moscow to the back streets of Baghdad, from Cairo and Havana  to Prague and Berlin, but the action centers on Washington, starting in the infamous  \"Year of the Spy\"—when, one by one, the CIA’s agents in Moscow began to be killed,  up through to the very last man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Behind the scenes with the CIA's covert operations  in Afghanistan, Milt Bearden led America to victory in the secret war against the  Soviets, and for the first time he reveals here what he did and whom America backed,  and why. Bearden was called back to Washington after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan  and was made chief of the Soviet\/East Euro-pean Division—just in time to witness  the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe, and  the implosion of the Soviet Union.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Laced with startling revelations—about fail-safe  top-secret back channels between the CIA and KGB, double and triple agents, covert  operations in Berlin and Prague, and the fateful autumn of 1989—\u003ci\u003eThe Main Enemy\u003c\/i\u003e is  history at its action-packed best.\"Risen, the journalistic outsider, and Bearden,  the clandestine insider, have combined their insight and knowledge to give us a compelling  account of the last fierce days of Cold War machinations between Soviet and American  intelligence. This is history very up close and very personal.”\u003cb\u003e—Seymour M. Hersh\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Fascinating stuff . . . an inside view of a complex world . . . it doesn't get  any better than this. It's great.\"\u003cb\u003e—Robert De Niro\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Some study war from an armchair;  others through field glasses. The best go into the firing line. Milt Bearden of the  CIA was one of those. For those of us who recall the Cold War, this is fascinating  stuff. For those who are too young, read and learn.\"\u003cb\u003e—Frederick Forsyth, author of  \u003ci\u003eThe Day of the Jackal\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e The Dogs of War\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eA thirty-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine services, Milt Bearden was chief of the Soviet\/East European Division at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. As CIA chief in Pakistan, he supplied the Afghan freedom fighters who overthrew the Soviets. He received the Donovan Award and the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA's highest honor. He is featured in the Discovery Channel's \u003ci\u003eSecret Warriors\u003c\/i\u003e and the BBC's \u003ci\u003eCovert Action\u003c\/i\u003e. He was born in Oklahoma and spent his childhood in Washington State, where his father worked on the Manhattan Project. He served in the Air Force before joining the CIA in 1964 and currently lives outside Washington, D.C., with his French-born wife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJames Risen covers national security for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e. He was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2002 for coverage of September 11 and terrorism, and he is coauthor of \u003ci\u003eWrath of Angels\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife and three sons.\u003cb\u003ePART ONE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e THE YEAR OF THE SPY\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Washington, D.C., 1830 Hours, June 13, 1985\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There  was nothing more he could do, Burton Gerber told himself again. The run had been  choreographed like a ballet, of this he was certain. He had imposed his own iron  discipline on the night's operation and had personally signed off on every detail,  every gesture. Now that the route had been selected, he could close his eyes and  visualize each intersection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Gerber knew Moscow as well as any American, and from  the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters half a world away, he routinely insisted  on approving each turn to be followed on the operational run from Moscow's city center  through the bleak outer neighborhoods. Night after night during his own years in  Moscow, he had taken his wife, Rosalie, to obscure Russian theaters in distant parts  of town rarely frequented by foreigners. His knowledge of Russian and his reputation  as a movie buff had served him well. A good case officer has to learn his city, he  told himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e From his office in Langley, Virginia, Gerber had approved the script  for the conversation that was to take place at the end of tonight's run, during the  ten-minute meeting in the shadows of the Stalinist apartment blocks on Kastanayevskaya  Street that was the sole object of the operation. Finally, Gerber had demanded that  rigorous rehearsals be conducted inside the cramped working spaces on the fifth floor  of the U.S. embassy in Moscow before the run was launched.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A wraith-thin Midwesterner,  Jesuitical in his approach to his work, Gerber was one of the most demanding spymasters  the CIA had ever sent against its main enemy, the Soviet Union's KGB. As chief of  the CIA's Soviet\/East European Division for the past year, he had made his mark.  His exacting attention to the details of espionage tradecraft and his impatience  with those who failed to meet his standards were legendary. Some critics called him  a screamer who berated subordinates, but most respected his single-minded devotion  to his job and, in an old-fashioned sense, to duty. Gerber was a complex man who  evoked a jumble of emotions from those who worked for him. Longtime Soviet\/East European  hands studied him with the same intensity they brought to their analysis of the Soviet  leaders in the Kremlin. What were they to make of a man whose greatest avocation  was for the care, feeding, and preservation of wild wolves?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The truth was that Burton  Gerber was a deeply spiritual man, a Roman Catholic who felt a moral obligation to  the Russian agents he and his case officers were running. He lit a candle at Mass  for each one of his agents unmasked and arrested by the KGB. He had come home from  serving as station chief in Moscow three years earlier, so he understood the dangers  of operating inside the Soviet bloc better than most at CIA headquarters. He believed  that nothing less than perfection was owed to America's Russian agents, and if he  yelled at case officers who failed to meet his standards, so be it. Cable traffic  between Langley and Moscow was frequently dominated by a tense running debate between  Gerber and his Moscow station chief, Murat Natirboff, over the minutiae of operations.  There were some in SE Division who whispered that Natirboff was miscast as Moscow  station chief, and it was increasingly clear that Gerber didn't trust him to get  things done right. He seemed to believe he had to run Moscow operations himself-so  much so that to some within SE Division, it sometimes felt as if Burton Gerber had  never left Moscow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But at some level, beneath the rigorous precision so necessary  to a successful spy, Gerber also believed in both faith and fate. And so, after he  signed off on the night's run, he closed the door to his fifth-floor office at CIA  headquarters and smoothly turned his mind to other duties.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was almost perfect  late spring weather in Washington. The day was ending quietly as Gerber left for  his home in a graceful old apartment building in Washington's Kalorama neighborhood.  He had planned a modest dinner that night, after which he had promised to join a  night training exercise.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e At the very moment one of his officers would be winding  his way through Moscow to meet the CIA's most valuable Soviet spy, Gerber would be  watching green trainees playacting espionage on the streets of Washington. Better,  he thought, that he devote his time to making certain that the next crop of officers  be properly schooled than waste his energy fretting over details of a run he could  no longer control. Gerber willed himself to stop worrying, to move on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This was  no routine training course, to be sure. Like the Navy's famed Top Gun school for  fighter pilots, the CIA's \"Internal Operations\" course was the most arduous training  program the agency had to offer. It was restricted to a handpicked elite-case officers  slated for assignments in Moscow, Warsaw, Prague, and other capital cities in the  Soviet empire. These were among the most difficult jobs in the CIA. The physical  and mental stresses that came with the constant surveillance, the threat of exposure  and arrest, meant that \"inside work\" was a young case officer's game.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After searching  for some time for new tactics to defeat the KGB's suffocating surveillance in Moscow,  the agency hit upon the idea of adding some green officers to the Moscow pipeline,  recruits who wouldn't be easily recognized from other tours of duty. The decision  to send rookies to Moscow placed an added burden on the IO course. It had to provide  the most realistic training possible for officers who had never before faced a hostile  opposition, much less the professional spy catchers of the KGB's Second and Seventh  Chief Directorates.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Run by Jack Platt, a gruff ex-Marine and longtime Soviet targets  officer, the six-week course simulated \"Moscow Rules.\" The new case officers had  to pass messages and receive documents from \"spies\" even as they were being trailed  through Washington by teams of FBI agents playing the part of a hostile counterintelligence  service. The FBI agents played hard-because the course kept them sharp for following  real Soviet spies. Still, the best-trained CIA officers in the course could defeat  the FBI, often through the use of sophisticated electronic devices, such as burst  transmission equipment, that allowed them to pass messages without face-to-face contact.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But the FBI always had a lesson in store. The trainees-often with their spouses  in tow-would go out on what they thought was an ordinary operation and walk into  an explosive surprise arrest. They'd be roughed up and charged with drug dealing  by FBI agents who were totally convincing in making it seem as though the bust had  nothing to do with the IO course. After a few hours of questioning, only the most  controlled students had the will to hold back their CIA connections. Invariably,  some would try to talk their way out by explaining that there had been some horrible  mistake: You see, Officer, I was loitering on a deserted street corner late at night  with this woman, who happens to be my wife, as part of a CIA training exercise, not  to sell drugs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Gerber had invited Jim Olson, who had served with him in Moscow,  to join him for dinner before they both went and played their parts in the training  exercise. Olson, chief of internal operations for the Soviet Division, had amassed  a remarkable record in Moscow and was now one of Gerber's most trusted lieutenants.  But when he arrived at Gerber's apartment, Olson brought devastating news: Paul Stombaugh  had been arrested in Moscow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Olson's words hit Gerber like a gut shot. He knew instinctively  what Stombaugh's arrest meant: The CIA's most important spy in twenty-five years  had been rolled up by the KGB. It meant that Adolf Tolkachev, the billion-dollar  agent, code-named GTVANQUISH, the man Stombaugh was supposed to meet, had been fatally  compromised.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Typically, when an operation was carried off successfully in the heart  of Moscow, right in the middle of a rolling sea of KGB surveillance, Langley wouldn't  hear about it until the next morning. To keep the KGB from guessing that an important  operation was under way, case officers returning from a late-night run would simply  \"get black,\" disappear into the city, and wait until the next morning to reinsert  themselves into their cover jobs at the embassy. So only when the officer reported  to work the next day would he go through a thorough debriefing, while the tape recordings  of his brief encounter with the agent were transcribed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That was when a flurry of  messages would come pulsing into Langley, providing the details of how the run had  unfolded the night before. Adrenaline would be pumping across the cable traffic,  and well into the next day it would infect the small circle in the SE Division managing  the case. Days later, the tape recordings of the agent meeting would arrive by diplomatic  pouch, allowing senior SE Division managers to hear the tense voices and feel the  strained emotions of the Moscow street encounter for themselves. They could then  try to gauge the state of mind of an agent most of them had never met, as well as  the performance of a case officer trying to ask all the right questions while constantly  scanning his surroundings for signs of the KGB.","brand":"Presidio Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304481018085,"sku":"NP9780345472502","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345472502.jpg?v=1767740376","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-main-enemy-isbn-9780345472502","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}