Pre-Mission Briefing
The Haunted Wood - Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev
A trip back back to the early days of Soviet espionage in America during the Stalin era, from the 1930s through the late 1940s, when the KGB's predecessors ran their most productive networks in US history. Its author, Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer turned journalist, was granted supervised access to Stalin-era KGB archives in Moscow in the mid-1990s under a deal with the SVR, providing some fascinating insights.
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Spy Handler - Viktor Cherkashin with Gregory Feifer
KGB officer Viktor Cherkashin spent the 1980s at the Soviet Embassy in Washington and handled the walk-in approaches of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, the two most damaging moles in modern American intelligence history. Spy Handler is his account of how those relationships were managed and provides great insights into the tradecraft of running agents in the heart of the US capital.
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The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown With the KGB - Milton Bearden and James Risen
An insider account, this book provides a counterpoint to Cherkashin’s, covering the period of Ames and Hanssen from the Langley perspective. It tells the story of CIA operations in Moscow, as well Cold War encounters from Cairo and Havana to Prague and Berlin.
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Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed -Â Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille
A fascinating story by two of the CIA officers on the mole-hunting team assembled after the catastrophic 1985–86 losses, when the CIA's Soviet agents began disappearing. It provides a rare insight into a counterintelligence investigation through the eyes of the investigators.
PROFESSOR GIOE'S recommended BACKGROUND READING...
COULD BE WORTH PACKING ONE OR TWO OF THESE TO HELP WHILE AWAY THE LONG HOURS ON A STAKEOUT, OR WHEN LYING LOW...
Safe House Suggestions
The Company - Robert Littell
This heavyweight volume spans the history of the Agency from its founding to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It weaves fact and fiction together, with Angleton, Philby and Colby all appearing, and takes readers to some of the classic Cold War hotspots, including Berlin and Budapest.
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The Seventh Floor - David McCloskey
A modern mole hunt, written by a former CIA analyst who worked in stations across the Middle East. Its unconventional protagonist, the hard drinking Artemis Procter, searches for a traitor amongst the leadership of Langley's Seventh Floor.
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The Manchurian Candidate - Richard Condon
A classic tale of espionage paranoia. A Korean War hero, complete with Medal of Honor, returns home brainwashed, a sleeper assassin controlled by handlers reaching into the highest levels of American politics
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Or if you prefer watching to reading,...
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The Americans - 20th Century Fox
Based on the Soviet sleeper networks exposed in the FBI's 2010 Operation Ghost Stories arrests, this series, which ran for six seasons, is set in the early 1980s, when the Cold War was still in full swing. Its central characters are KGB ‘illegals’ - deep-cover officers posing as an ordinary American couple - running operations in Reagan-era Washington. It’s widely regarded as one of the best television espionage dramas.Â
For those seeking further inspiration, we recommend checking out Spybrary
Some suggested spots to duck into to check plans or lose a tail...
Key Locations
Mr Smith’s of Georgetown, 3205 K Street NW, Washington DC
This popular spot, then trading as Chadwick’s, was the location of the fateful lunch in June 1985 between CIA traitor Aldrich Ames and his new KGB handler. Ames took the risk of handing over ‘the Big Dump’, Tyson plastic bags of top secret material. Ames was paid $50,000 for his trouble. His treachery compromised more than a hundred CIA operations and resulted in the execution of at least ten CIA agents.
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Wooden Footbridge, Foxstone Park, Vienna, Virginia.
Still standing, check out its underside where FBI traitor Robert Hanssen left a stream of top secret material for his Soviet handlers over many years. He followed ‘Moscow Rules’, leaving a marker tape on the park’s entrance sign when he had loaded his drop. The sign is still there. Hanssen was arrested on 18 February 2002 after loading the drop for the final time.
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The Watergate Hotel, 2650 Virginia Avenue NW, Washington DC.
Made famous by its role in the 19 June 1972 break-in. The hotel makes the most of the association - even its phone number is 844-617-1972. Try a Nixon cocktail in the hotel bar, reputedly what the President was drinking on the night in question. Be cautious though, it’s quite lethal: seven parts, gin, one part dry vermouth, three olives, shaken not stirred.
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The International Spy Museum, 700 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Washington DC.
An independent non-profit that bills itself as holding the largest collection of international espionage artifacts on public display, covering the tradecraft, history and present-day role of intelligence work across some 39 countries and from the 16th century through the cyber era. A must for your Spycation.
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The National Cryptologic Museum, 8290 Colony Seven Road, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701
Just two blocks from NSA headquarters at Fort George G. Meade, the museum holds thousands of artifacts spanning George Washington’s Revolutionary War ciphers, the Zimmermann Telegram, Native American code talkers, and the Cold War and cyber eras. Star exhibits include working WWII German Enigma machines, a couple of which visitors can actually operate. It also has a rare-book library holding treasures like Trithemius’s Polygraphiae (1518).