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Comrade J | 
 enlarge | Author: Pete Earley
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy Used: $7.69
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Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 71638
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 0399154396
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.1247073092
EAN: 9780399154393
ASIN: 0399154396
Publication Date: January 24, 2008
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Product Description
Spymaster, defector, double agent-the remarkable true story of the man who ran Russia's post-Cold War spy program in America.
In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War ended, and a new world order began. We thought everything had changed. But one thing never changed: the spies.
From 1997 to 2000, a man known as "Comrade J" was the highest-ranking operative in the SVR-the successor agency to the KGB-in the United States. He directed all Russian spy action in New York City, and personally oversaw every covert operation against the United States and its allies in the United Nations. He recruited spies, planted agents, penetrated security, manipulated intelligence, and influenced American policy, all under the direct leadership of Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin. He was a legend in the SVR, the man who kept the secrets.
Then in 2000, he defected-and it turned out he had one more secret. For the previous two years, he had also been a double agent for the FBI: "By far the most important Russian spy that our side has had in decades." He has never granted a public interview. The FBI and CIA have refused to answer all media questions about him. He has remained in hiding. He has never revealed his secrets . . .
Until now.
Comrade J, written by the bestselling author of Family of Spies and The Hot House, is his story, a direct account of what he did in the U.S. after we all assumed the spying was over, and of what Putin and Russia continue to do today. The revelations are stunning. It is also the story of growing up in a family of agents dating back to the revolution; of how Russia molded him into one of its most high-flying operatives; of the day-to-day perils of living a double, then triple, life; and finally of how his growing disquiet with the corruption and ambitions of the "new Russia" led him to take the most perilous step of all.
Many spies have told their stories. None has the astonishing immediacy, relevance, and cautionary warnings of Comrade J.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 superb January 26, 2008
Harriet Klausner
25 out of 40 found this review helpful
The Wall and the Curtain are down as the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union break apart. However, Russia continued its espionage efforts in America even as Yeltsin and the West became allies of a sort. Pete Early (author of true espionages like FAMILY OF SPIES) provides the biography of Russian spy Sergei Tretyakov, code-named Comrade J, who ultimately defected to the West in 2000. In the late 1990s until he defected Tretyakov was assigned to the Russian embassy in New York; from there he led covert operations across the United States, but became disenchanted with Yeltsin and Putin, who he blames for saddling him with inept political cronies (sounds familiar) and a "corrupt political system" that made Communism seem pure. He also had a personal selfish rationale; desiring a better life for his daughter. Tretyakov became an American double agent before finally publicly defecting. The fascination with this memoir is with the more questionable allegations that Tretyakov makes in his numerous interviews with Pete Earley including accusations inside the State Department that probably brings smiles to Nixon and McCarthy; many as far as this reviewer knows have been verified by an independent third party. Well written and entreating with no shockers as Tretyakov's message is that Putin, after looking into the eyes of Bush to see his soul, believes America is no friend of Russia and reacts accordingly.
Harriet Klausner
Valuable Insights Relevant Today February 10, 2008
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
14 out of 25 found this review helpful
I list some other recommended books below. What this book offers everyone are a few critical insights:
1) Clandestine human intelligence is now and will always be vastly more cost effective, nuanced, and valuable (when undetected), than the tens of billions of dollars we continue to waste on satellites that more often than not fail to launch, don't work once launched, drop to the Earth (with a dirty nuclear energy package that is dangerous), or--more recently--that can easily be disabled by Chinese precision energy pulses.
2) The single greatest advantage America had (lost for now) is its standing as a moral, legitimate society that truly epitomized the best of democracy, entrepreneurship, and civil free society. That is what attracted walk-ins before, and that is what will attract walk-ins in the future.
3) Last but not least, recruiting spies while they are in the USA is vastly easier, less risky, less expensive, and more valuable over-all, than fumbling around the way CIA does today, sending puppies in and out of official US Government buildings where both the gate guards and most of the clerical personal are indigenous nationals required to collaborate with their national counterintelligence service.
To be crystal clear: I believe that instead of wasting $60 billion of the taxpayers hard-earned dollars as we do today on satellites and spies and secrecy ($10 billion to keep "safe" all that information, 50% of which is not secret in the first place), we should give the spy service (banned from propaganda and influence ops)$6 billion a year and give the other $6 billion to an Open Source Agency under diplomatic auspices (ideally with the Multinational Decision Support Center in Tampa, occupying the rapidly vacating new furnished building that houses the Coalition Coorindation Center until it is finally phased out). The latter would have world class processing and sense-making, and support the UN, NGOs, Foundations, all legitimate governments and all legitimate corporations, with free early warning and pro-peace, pro-prosperity decision support.
See the images above. I am not making this up! Years of professional practice and study in just a handful of slides.
Apart from my own books, which I try not to link to:
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Blond Ghost
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
A good, true spy yarn April 11, 2008
Lou Novacheck (Milwaukee WI - for now)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Just about any average adult in the United States now knows that the only time politicians lie is when their lips are moving. The average adult also knows that a large portion of both private business and government, particularly those who speak to the press, often give, shall we say, misleading, incomplete, or not quite true summaries of whatever it is on the news that particular day. At best, it's their side of the story, told how they want to tell it, and relating how much they're willing to give you. In many cases, they're giving you disinformation. Disinformation is what ordinary people call lies.
All that said, I -- having spent many years working for various U.S. Government intelligence agencies, including NSA, both overseas and in the U.S. -- found Pete Earley's Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War to be very informative and revealing. In some cases, irritating and exasperating. Not with the facts as presented, not with the author, and not with the subject of the book -- Russian spymaster, defector, and double agent Sergei Tretyakov -- but with what the author and Tretyakov, code-named Comrade J, tell us about the sorry state of affairs within our own government.
Now for some specifics. First, an example of sorting out the truth. Early in the book, Tretyakov says, according to the author, "... Russian intelligence targeted President Clinton's deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, and ran a carefully calculated campaign designed to manipulate him." Talbott, in a written reply, said, "... he knew that Mamedov was relaying all of their conversations ..." back to Russian intelligence.
The following paragraph says, "Just the same, the FBI took the accusations about Talbott seriously ... In 1999, FBI officials asked Secretary (of State) Albright not to share information with Talbott ..." Talbott, as then described, was tagged by the SVR, Russia's new name for the KGB, "... as a `specific unofficial contact' - a specific term that the SVR used to identify its most secret, highly placed intelligence sources." "Specific unofficial contact" also means a person who's passing classified, or inside, or both, information.
See what I mean? Obviously, there's a little more to the story in Untold Secrets, but nothing that would unmuddy the waters.
An example of self-serving words is this, when Earley was introduced by his "FBI contact" to Tretyakov: " `Our only purpose here today is to introduce you. We are not encouraging him to tell his story, nor are we discouraging him (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). He wanted to meet you and we agreed to facilitate it. We will have no part in your talks.' " All this verbiage in diplospeak means is, "He can spill his guts because we think it will serve our purposes."
Think back. When has the FBI or CIA or any of the alphabet soup agencies ever set up a meeting between a defector and a reporter, or writer, before they had their case built? Let me save you some time. The answer is never. If they don't have the defector in their pocket, whether it's with money (the usual way), or with threats (who knows?), or patriotism towards his new country (HA!), he flat does not speak to anybody. Often, the people "protecting" him don't let him see even his own family.
So where's the truth here? I sure as hell don't know. All I can do is guess, just like you.
On the very next page, Tretyakov is quoted. "As a people, you (Americans) are very naive about Russia and its intentions. You believe because the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia now is your friend. It isn't, and I can show how the SVR is trying to destroy the U.S. even today and even more than the KGB did during the Cold War." That is the Gospel according to Saint Tretyakov, and you can assuredly take it to the bank.
Tretyakov goes on to give up the SVR, the old KGB, family jewels about a number of UN officials who were in Russia's pocket, and some who still are. He names a few Canadians who were regular sources of Comrade J, and who've never been outed. He clears up some anomalies that U.S. intelligence has wondered about, but were never able to pin down. He was a double agent for several years before he defected, turning over thousands of SVR Top Secret cables, the highest classification possible, and hundreds of SVR reports, also Top Secret. He relates how and when a Russian spy inside the UN siphoned off as much as a half-billion dollars meant for starving Iraqi women and children before Saddam's fall, and was given an award for it by Vladimir Putin, because he lined quite a few pockets, including possibly Putin's, in the process.
In addition, Tretyakov tells how the USSR had once intended to rid itself of nuclear and chemical waste by taking them to a remote Arctic island and destroying them by setting off a nuclear bomb. (!!) He tells how some people had given the businessman who was arranging this disposal a nuclear weapon, because they couldn't pay him. And he tells how all of this was endorsed by the Kremlin. I could go on for another couple of paragraphs, but I urge you to read Untold Secrets for yourself. Some of you will say I told you so. Others will be amazed. And some of you may feel bound to do something about it.
Gripes. Earley makes a couple of minor mistakes, for instance incorrectly saying that the KGB and SVR always called their operatives intelligence "officers," while the CIA called theirs intelligence "agents." [CIA operatives are called officers; the people who spy for them are called agents.] He also leaves a few gaps in parts of his narrative which leave the reader guessing as to the outcome. I can excuse the minor mistakes, since Earley was first a reporter, then an author, and not necessarily knowledgeable about intelligence. The holes in the story, however, should have been addressed, either by him or his editor. Many didn't seem to be germane to Tretyakov's story, for the most part, so I can see how they could have been overlooked. But since they were brought up, they should have been seen through, or readers should have been told they're unanswerable, at least for now. Many of them look like they could have been cleared up with as little as an additional sentence or two.
My big gripes, however, are the lack of a glossary and an index. Untold Secrets is a complicated read, especially for those without a background in intelligence. A glossary would have made looking up the uncommonly used and heard terms and acronyms a simple matter, and would have been an even simpler matter to include. The author is good about explaining acronyms and uncommon terms the first time they're used, but after that you're on your own. There's no glossary to look them up in, and there's no index to refer to.
The index in a book of this complexity is absolutely essential. Again, Earley explains who a person is and his connections the first time he introduces that person. Later references, particularly in a book of this length and one that tells us a gripping, but convoluted and complicated story, again leave you on your own. If you don't recall the particulars of the person, place or event that's brought up a second or third time, then you have two choices. Forget it, which could mean a gap in your comprehension, or go through it again, page by page, trying to locate the original reference. The absences of the index and the glossary are major shortcomings. Particularly nowadays, when, in creating the index, you don't have to do much beyond hitting the "Find" key and let the machine do most of the rest of your work for you.
All that said, however, I still highly recommend Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War to anybody's who interested in the future of the country, or an otherwise untold part of the recent past. Or to anybody who's interested in a good spy yarn. A good, true spy yarn, that is. After all, Tretyakov is still, by far, the most important spy ever to come over. The last chapter pretty much summarizes his importance.
One last thing. Remember when I scoffed about a spy defecting because of patriotism towards his new country (HA!)? I may have to change my mind on that.
The book is great so far. What happened to the Kindle books for $9.99 February 5, 2008
Christopher J. Gait (Nokesville, VA USA)
4 out of 10 found this review helpful
I bought this in Kindle format. It's a book of interest to me on several fronts. But it's not $9.99 like the rest of the Kindle bestsellers, but over $15.
I suspect a KGB/FSB conspiracy. By raising the price they hope to deflect attention from the book. :)
All kidding aside, it is my understanding that Canada has banned this book because of revelations of nefarious activities there. So read the book in the US and enjoy the freedom.
Good behind the scenes tour of Russia's SVR and KGB February 10, 2008
Plasma Man
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is a biography of a Russian KGB/SVR officer. It has interesting behind-the-scenes coverages of a number of international events that either the KGB or SVR had significant roles. I found the book very interesting and read it in one evening.
Strengths: good coverage of the life of a KGB/SVR officer and his experiences. The book generally has good flow and adequate depth of coverage. Very exciting sections that implicate US and foreign officials for roles in spying. The best section discussed historical events that demonstrated corruption at the leadership levels in Russia.
Weaknesses: it appears the officer exaggerates some of his experiences. There are a number of sections that left me confused as to what happened, i.e., some details were clearly been absent. A number of sections did appear censored. Some of the historical details on Russian corruption were clearly exaggerated, but conveyed the spirit to the reader.
Recommended for: those that have an interest in contemporary Russian events, foreign affairs, intelligence, KGB, SVR, CIA, etc...
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