SPY: The Story of Modern Espionage

by Clifford & Herbert Burkholz Irving ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 1969

It's possible, after reading here that some spy books are written as propaganda tools, to look on the rest with suspicion--and it's possible too, on learning that even American agents are everywhere, to start looking over your shoulder between chapters. But these tensions are dispelled with the recognition that this is hardly a pro-government study in the wake of its assault on the CIA, exposing the Bay of Pigs incident, the Guatemala episode, the infiltration of the National Student Association, the tactics of Allen Dulles, and the host of other ugly truths that Ronald Seth lip-serves and Burke Wilkinson ignores in their coverage of the subject in Spies and Cry Spy! respectively (see below). The Russian organization is also attacked feverishly but less directly since there's first a muddle of alphabetical disorder to wade through regarding its slow transition from OGPU to KGB. Rudolf Abel, Richard Sorge, Kim Philby, U-2 Powers, and the nuclear-secret sharers of the 1940's are among the dramatic personae whose stories are told in this analysis of the major networks (Britain is the third) and their preparations and procedures for espionage. The book suffers from a rather disjointed outline-type structure: there are casual references not followed up to Profumo, Ben Barka, and Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, and spotty mention of other cases not fully explained until later. But frame of reference is a problem in all of the spy stories; at least in this most forthright one there's something uncovered under cover.

Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION