Overview
For nearly thirty years, CIA case officer George Kisevalter lived the Cold War. Dispatched to Vienna as the Cold War began to rage, Kisevalter ran the first key Soviet agent in CIA history, Pyotr Popov, and gained the U.S. its first view behind the Iron Curtain. More impressive was his next agent, Soviet colonel Oleg Penkovsky, regarded as the most successful spy in CIA history. Penkovsky supplied the West with more than ten thousand pages of unsurpassed intelligence. This top-secret information proved decisive for Kennedy during the showdown of the Cuban missile crisis. More than a biography, CIA SpyMaster is a glimpse into the mind of an espionage genius, a rare view of what it takes to "live in the black" for years at a time under a fictitious identity, torn from friends and family. It's a behind-the-scenes look at spycraft in action, from dead drops and cutoffs to multilayered ciphers, the KGB's secret "spydust," and everything in between. It is a book of ever-increasing tension and suspense, as the rising stakes of the Cold War endow every act of espionage with utmost importance. During his lifetime, George Kisevalter was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the highest award attainable in the CIA without giving one's life. For his work with Penkovsky, he received a Certificate of Merit with Distinction. Less than two months before his death in 1997, he was selected as one of fifty "unique contributors" in the fifty-year history of the CIA and was presented with the newly established Trailblazers Award, the only case officer ever to be so honored.Synopsis
Legendary life George Kisevalter, the agency's top officer, who handled Penkovsky and Popov during the Cold War.
Drawing upon newly released CIA files, conversations with KGB defectors, and interviews with key operatives of the CIA and Secret Intelligence Service, CIA SpyMaster is the inside story of an Agency legend, George Kisevalter.
This authorized biography is the true tale of the man who engineered the CIA's most dramatic successes in the darkest days of the Cold War. The book takes readers behind the scenes of Kisevalter's extraordinary espionage, including the six-year running of agent Pyotr Popov, the first major source inside Soviet military intelligence. The account explores Kisevalter's instrumental role as case officer in the most successful operation in CIA history: the penetration of the Soviet military hierarchy by GRU colonel Oleg Penkovsky, "the spy who saved the world," during the Cuban missile crisis. And the book explores Kisevalter's fascinating role in the extraction and interrogation of controversial KGB defector Yuri Nosenko, who supervised the KGB file of purported JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
More than a biography, CIA SpyMaster is a behind-the-scenes look at spycraft in action, a rare view of what it takes to "live in the black" for years at a time under a fictitious identity, isolated from friends and family. For anyone with an interest in Cold War history, the Cuban missile crisis, the JFK assassination, or the annals of espionage, CIA SpyMaster is a book not to be read but to be savored.