I covered the FBI and CIA for years, first as a print reporter in Washington and then as the head of the NBC News investigative unit. So I have covered my fair share of spy scandals, and with my colleague Pete Williams helped NBC break the story of Robert Hanssen’s arrest. I was immediately drawn to the Ana Montes Cuba spy story when it broke and then learned that Montes had bought her condo from my close friend and college roommate, John. That meant I had spent hours inside Ana’s DC apartment, and that odd connection rooted me in her story in a deeper way.
I wrote
Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America's Most Dangerous Female Spy--And the Sister She Betrayed
This book is a fascinating and comprehensive account of one of the worst intelligence disasters in U.S. history. It is about Robert Hanssen, the late FBI Agent and Russian turncoat who was corrupt, sullen, imperious, and endlessly fascinating.
We know about a lot of his misdeeds and personality disorders because of this groundbreaking book by David Wise. David is a brilliant and accomplished espionage writer who died in 2018. He explains how the FBI spent $7 million to steal Hanssen’s personnel files from the KGB. Those secret Russian files led directly to Hanssen’s 2001 arrest.
Wise also conducted exclusive interviews with the psychiatrist who met Hanssen in his jail cell more than 30 times. Finally, Wise chronicles Hanssen’s bizarre sex life, including the hidden video camera he used to record his wife, so he could share the videos with his best friend.
Spy tells, for the first time, the full, authoritative story of how FBI agent Robert Hanssen, code name grayday, spied for Russia for twenty-two years in what has been called the “worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history”–and how he was finally caught in an incredible gambit by U.S. intelligence.
David Wise, the nation’s leading espionage writer, has called on his unique knowledge and unrivaled intelligence sources to write the definitive, inside story of how Robert Hanssen betrayed his country, and why.
Spy at last reveals the mind and motives of a man who was a walking paradox: FBI counterspy, KGB…
If you’re like me, you can’t consume enough news about Robert Hanssen, the FBI Special Agent who sold out his country to Russia.
Elaine Shannon, the longtime Time Magazine correspondent, and Ann Blackman relied on more than 150 interviews in telling Hanssen’s story of deceit and depravity. They reveal the dramatic story of an ex-KGB officer stealing Hanssen’s KGB file, Hanssen’s obsession with kinky sex, and his (ironic) affiliation with the ultra-conservative and moralistic Catholic society, Opus Dei.
Two veteran Time reporters present a riveting glimpse into the life of Robert Hanssen, a seemingly quintessential surburban father and a trusted and loyal FBI agent who, after fifteen years of extremely damaging espionage, betrayed his family, his church, and his country - and got away with it, destroying the confidence of the FBI. 125,000 first printing.
This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search…
Dan Golden is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposes how enemies of the United States are using our universities and graduate schools as recruitment centers for a new generation of spies.
Russian, Chinese, and of course, Cuban intelligence services are having a field day exploiting our open system to identify and turn their newest recruits (yes, our government returns the favor abroad.)
Spy Schools has an excellent chapter on Ana Montes, the Cuban agent who is the subject of my book. There’s also juicy information on the American woman who recruited Ana as a spy when they both were attending SAIS, the Johns Hopkins graduate school in Washington.
Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific ortechnological expertise, they"re wooing higher-level academics, not just as analysts but also for clandestine operations. Deterred by student protests and faculty hostility during the Vietnam era, the ClAand other security agencies are back - driven by…
In fairness, I could not read this 600-page-plus intelligence agency classic in one day. But I sure tried.
This book is a blockbuster, pulling back the curtain on the super-secretive National Security Agency, NSA, in a way no one has before or since. I remember the sensation this book made when it came out, and have had the honor of getting to know Jim Bamford a bit over the years.
In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, James Bamford exposes the inner workings of America's largest, most secretive, and arguably most intrusive intelligence agency. The NSA has long eluded public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking disregard for the law. With detailed information on the NSA's secret role in the Korean Airlines disaster, Iran-Contra, the first Gulf War, and other major world events of the 80s and 90s, this is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage.
When Lara was four years old, her father moved from Rochester, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska, a distance of over 4,000 miles. She spent her childhood chasing after him, flying a quarter of the way around the world to tug at the hem of his jacket.
Jack Devine is the former acting director of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, and ran covert ops that drove the Russians out of Afghanistan. In this book, he shows how the Russians have undermined our democracy for decades and how they’ve now weaponized cyberspace, too. It’s an alarming wake-up call from a true American spymaster.
I have gotten to know Jack over the years, and have gotten a first-hand glimpseat how clever he must have been running secret operations in some of the world’s scariest neighborhoods. Not a guy to ever underestimate; his books are as fascinating as Jack himself.
In Spymaster's Prism: The Fight Against Russian Aggression legendary former spymaster Jack Devine aims to ignite public discourse on our country's intelligence and counterintelligence posture against Russia, among other adversaries. Spymasters are not spies - their mission is to run and handle spies and spy networks. They exist in virtually all sophisticated intelligence services around the world, including the more high-profile services like the CIA, SVR, SIS, MSS, VAJA and Mossad. Without exception, these spymasters are highly trained and broadly experienced top-level government officials who are at the heart of the intelligence business. They make the life and death decisions.…
The incredible true story of Ana Montes, Code Name Blue Wren is a detective tale and an intimate exploration of the dark side of betrayal. Montes blindsided her colleagues with brazen acts of treason.
For nearly 17 years, she had two jobs. By day, she was one of the U.S. government’s top Cuba experts. By night, she was on the clock for Fidel Castro, listening to coded messages over shortwave radio and slipping into Havana wearing wigs. Ana didn’t just deceive her country. Her mercurial father was a former U.S. Army colonel. Her brother and sister-in-law were FBI special agents. Her only sister, Lucy, also spent her entire career with the FBI and even worked on a unit dedicated to catching Cuban spies.
When Miranda’s fiancé, Russ, is being vetted for his dream job in the U.S. attorney’s office, the couple joke that Miranda’s parents’ history as antiwar activists in the Sixties might jeopardize Russ’s security clearance. In fact, the real threat emerges when Russ’s future employer discovers that Miranda was arrested for…
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024…
