Publishers Weekly
10/04/2021
In this well-researched but somewhat dull Cold War espionage saga, journalist and filmmaker Tate (Body for Rent) details the brilliant and tragic career of Michał Goleniewski, a lieutenant colonel in Poland’s intelligence service and KGB spy who defected to the U.S. in 1961. Citing declassified Polish sources along with British and American materials, Tate recounts how Goleniewski exposed George Blake, Harry Houghton, and other spies who had infiltrated Western intelligence agencies after WWII. Unfortunately, potentially dramatic moments, such as Goleniewski’s journey to West Berlin to defect, are anticlimactic, and Goleniewski himself remains a shadowy figure. Instead, Tate focuses on the rivalries within intelligence communities and draws a sharp portrait of Goleniewski’s nemesis, CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton, who believed the Soviet bloc spy was passing on “bogus leads and fake intelligence.” Tate alleges that Angleton’s distrust of Goleniewski was unfounded, and that he mishandled the spy and the East German mistress with whom he defected, contributing to Goleniewski’s waning mental health and bizarre claims to be Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, the heir to the Russian throne. Though Tate rescues Goleniewski from obscurity and sheds light on the inner workings of the CIA, this granular history is best suited to completists. (Dec.)
From the Publisher
"Totally gripping . . . a masterpiece. Tate lifts the lid on one of the most important and complex spies of the Cold War, who passed secrets to the West and finally unmasked traitor George Blake."
—Helen Fry, author of MI9: A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two
"A wonderful and at times mind-boggling account of a bizarre and almost forgotten spy—right up to the time when he's living undercover in Queens, New York and claiming to be the last of the Romanoffs."
—Simon Kuper, author of The Happy Traitor
"A highly readable and thoroughly researched account of one of the Cold War's most intriguing and tragic spy stories."
—Owen Matthews, author of An Impeccable Spy
Gripping . . . . Fascinating dirty linen from the early decades of the CIA. —Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
07/01/2021
In the late 1950s, Michal Goleniewski, a Polish lieutenant colonel who ranked high in his country's espionage service, smuggled more than 5,000 top-secret Soviet bloc intelligence and military documents, plus 160 rolls of microfilm, to the West. When he defected in 1961, he went on to expose more than 1,600 Soviet bloc agents operating undercover in the West. Yet he was finally cut lose by the U.S. government because of apparent mental instability. A multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist, and history book author (Hitler's Forgotten Children), Tate tells the full story. With a 40,000-copy first printing.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-09-29
The gripping and deeply unedifying account of “the best defector the US ever had.”
Documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist Tate, who has written many books on both spycraft and true crime, has turned up a riveting spy story focused on Michal Goleniewski, a senior official in Poland’s intelligence service who also answered to the KGB. In a 1958 letter to the American Embassy in Switzerland, he offered “enticing leads to Soviet Bloc spies, which…would excite American counterintelligence interest.” The CIA responded, and there followed a bonanza in which Sniper (his code name) smuggled microfilm and thousands of top-secret Soviet documents to the West before defecting with his mistress in 1961. His debriefing produced more priceless information, but matters eventually went sour. The problem was not Goleniewski but rather the faction-ridden CIA. The agency’s Soviet and East European sections accepted Sniper’s bona fides, but the counterintelligence branch, led by James Jesus Angleton, did not. Famously paranoid, Angleton believed that the CIA was riddled with KGB agents that included nearly every defector. For three years, the CIA showered money and benefits on Goleniewski and used his revelations to arrest numerous traitors and their handlers around the world. Much of what followed remains classified, but Tate theorizes that Angleton’s faction assumed dominance within the agency, because in January 1964, it abruptly eliminated Goleniewski’s salary and protection and suspended him, subject to an “internal review” that never happened. Cast out, Goleniewski floundered for a time before developing severe psychosis, declaring himself the son of the czar of Russia who had been executed along with his family in 1918. In the final 100 pages, Tate chronicles 30 years of bizarre behavior until Goleniewski’s 1993 death, alternating with wildly dysfunctional CIA behavior, an ongoing theme throughout the book.
Fascinating dirty linen from the early decades of the CIA.
