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Widows: Four American Spies, the Wives They Left Behind, and the KGB's Crippling of American Intelligence
Details four major compromises of American intelligence, revealing how moles penetrated the CIA and seriously weakened the agency and much of Western intelligence.
479 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 16, 2008
John Paisley may or may not have been a KGB mole. Authors William Corson, Susan Trento and Joseph Trento don't prove that as conclusively as they'd like to have proven it in "Widows - Four American Spies, The Wives They Left Behind and the KGB's Crippling of American Intelligence". What is fact, though, is that Paisley worked for CIA and was involved with several intelligence bungles, and had a peripheral connection to the Watergate burglars. One day, Mr. Paisley decided to kill himself. How, one wonders, does a longtime CIA veteran kill himself? Well, first he takes his sailboat out for the night, and takes some classified files with him, then he straps a bunch of weights on himself, sits on the bow of the boat, shoots himself in the back of the head behind the ear, making sure not to get any blood anywhere, and then he falls off the boat and, with the help of the weights, sinks to the bottom. Officially ruled a suicide. Sounds odd, but hey, this is the world of espionage, and there are plenty of strange suicides out there. Take Ralph Sigler, for example. He was a spy for the Army and FBI, and then a double agent. By the end of his story, it is likely that the Russians thought he was working for us and we thought he was working for them. He got a little bummed by all this, and decided to kill himself. How, one wonders, does a longtime double agent kill himself? Well, he gets really, really drunk, somewhere, but leaves no trace of where he got drunk, then he beats himself up, by himself, from inside a locked room, then he strips some wire from a lamp and wraps it around his arms, flips the switch with his elbow, and electrocutes himself. Officially ruled a suicide. There's also Nick Shadrin. Shadrin defected to the United States and got so chummy with everyone that it wasn't long before he was hanging out with intelligence heads, congressmen and testifying before HUAC about the evil commie plots to take over the west. Then one day he up and vanished, only to show up again years later at the funeral of the Soviet Admiral whose daughter he had married. All of this is mixed up in a confusing story of incompetence on the part of western intelligence services, a KGB spy operation of some sort, and the ultimate duping of the FBI into giving the Soviets all the military and technological secrets they needed to build their stellar Navy. Corson has experience in military intelligence, and he brings a spy's eyes to the articulate arguments laid out in "Widows". However, despite the extensive footnotes, references and the more than 500 interviews completed to research the work, the end conclusions are murky, at best. The authors acknowledge this in the introduction, explaining that they are presenting one of many possible theories. One suspects that the complex tales of John Paisley and Ralph Sigler, and particularly the odd story of Nick Shadrin, can never be fully told by anyone who hasn't seen a lifetime's worth of classified files. It does, however, stand out in that its events, whether interpreted correctly or not, make clear the need for a sound counter-intelligence division in our intelligence agencies. We'd better fill it with paranoid schizophrenics, too. Because nobody else is going to be able to follow this insanity.
NC
NC
July 29, 2013
Visiting Vermont and needing something to read after finishing Manchester's American Caesar, I saw this at the Chester Library booksale. Having had spies and spying as a hobby since reading The Secret Government, and a dozen Ian Fleming books as a child, the book's purchase was a sure thing.
Ostensibly, this is a book about John Arthur Paisley, a CIA officer; Nicolay Fedorovich Artamonov (aka Nick Shadrin), a double or triple agent; and Ralph Joseph Sigler, a double agent, and their widows. Hence, the rather misleading title as the focus is on counter-intelligence, not on those the missing/dead/defected spies left behind.
On the one hand, the book is easy reading it being constituted by three straight narratives. On the other hand, the book is difficult because there are so many names, aliases and acronyms to keep track of. Fortunately, there's an index.
If there's a lesson to be learned it is that one ought to avoid counter-intelligence work for any agency of the United States government. The agencies which come up in this book--CIA, FBI, DIA, Army, Navy--all come across as basically incompetent and inhumanly cruel despite the humanity of some of their members. The KGB is consistently portrayed as more competent, though just as cruel on an institutional, but not necessarily personal, level. As regards the three case studies presented, the authors proffer their own hypotheses, but they are tentative, not conclusive.
Ostensibly, this is a book about John Arthur Paisley, a CIA officer; Nicolay Fedorovich Artamonov (aka Nick Shadrin), a double or triple agent; and Ralph Joseph Sigler, a double agent, and their widows. Hence, the rather misleading title as the focus is on counter-intelligence, not on those the missing/dead/defected spies left behind.
On the one hand, the book is easy reading it being constituted by three straight narratives. On the other hand, the book is difficult because there are so many names, aliases and acronyms to keep track of. Fortunately, there's an index.
If there's a lesson to be learned it is that one ought to avoid counter-intelligence work for any agency of the United States government. The agencies which come up in this book--CIA, FBI, DIA, Army, Navy--all come across as basically incompetent and inhumanly cruel despite the humanity of some of their members. The KGB is consistently portrayed as more competent, though just as cruel on an institutional, but not necessarily personal, level. As regards the three case studies presented, the authors proffer their own hypotheses, but they are tentative, not conclusive.
May 23, 2020
This was a really interesting and very detailed look into the "cat and mouse" game played by the CIA and the KGB at the height of the Cold War.
The authors' disclaimer, that the morass of intelligence and counter-intelligence is hard to satisfactorily untangle into a coherent, black-and-white or good-versus-bad narrative, is unfortunately true. They do a good job of trying to untangle the threads in the cases, though it is difficult to know how reliable are the authors (I haven't looked much into it).
If the evidence they present is indeed correct and reliable, then it is very supportive of their claims.
For me, the single biggest missing piece was additional context for *why* they chose these spies and why the evidence for their double-dealing was more compelling than others. I think they came closest to this in the point that they made about Sigler and the fact that literally no one else had ever chosen to commit suicide by electrocuting his- or herself in the manner he'd chosen. That fact alone, while not conclusive (there's always a first time), certainly lends a lot more credence to the notion he might've instead been killed by the KGB than if, for instance, suicide of this type was the n-th most-common form up to that point in time.
Similarly, when looking into the Paisley case, I think there could have been more detail given about the other potential double agents. The Kissinger case was certainly very intriguing, and while I realize that it was not the point of the book (and the authors/editors/publishers may have been concerned about its length), it was such a high-profile person to accuse of conspiracy that I felt it warranted more space than it was given. OR they could have cut it out altogether and either referred the reader to another book which examined that case or written such a book themselves.
At any rate, I would like to have known more about the other high-profile double agents and defectors, especially any who had died under mysterious circumstances, in order to better understand just how far outside the "norm" were the cases that the book focused on. I realize this may be a product of its time: given the publication of the book around the time of the end of the Cold War, there may have been "common knowledge" about the other high-profile KGB operatives in the US that I simply don't have, or don't have in as much detail as the intended readers of such a tome would have been rightly expected to know. So while I understand that may be the reason some of this detail was excluded, a few additional paragraphs here and there, or more explanation in the Notes, would have helped me and better assured the book's long-term readability. I mean, in another generation's time, I expect hardly anyone will be reading this book specifically and will likely be reading more-general histories of the Cold War, espionage, or the agencies themselves (CIA, FBI, KGB, GRU, etc.).
One minor gripe about the title: it's not really *about* the widows, and really there are only 3, not 4, which are covered in detail in the text. The 4th spy is mentioned in the beginning, but it's not delved into to the same degree as the other 3. The 4th felt a bit shoe-horned in.
Overall, this is a very in-depth and intriguing read for anyone interested in the topic.
The authors' disclaimer, that the morass of intelligence and counter-intelligence is hard to satisfactorily untangle into a coherent, black-and-white or good-versus-bad narrative, is unfortunately true. They do a good job of trying to untangle the threads in the cases, though it is difficult to know how reliable are the authors (I haven't looked much into it).
If the evidence they present is indeed correct and reliable, then it is very supportive of their claims.
For me, the single biggest missing piece was additional context for *why* they chose these spies and why the evidence for their double-dealing was more compelling than others. I think they came closest to this in the point that they made about Sigler and the fact that literally no one else had ever chosen to commit suicide by electrocuting his- or herself in the manner he'd chosen. That fact alone, while not conclusive (there's always a first time), certainly lends a lot more credence to the notion he might've instead been killed by the KGB than if, for instance, suicide of this type was the n-th most-common form up to that point in time.
Similarly, when looking into the Paisley case, I think there could have been more detail given about the other potential double agents. The Kissinger case was certainly very intriguing, and while I realize that it was not the point of the book (and the authors/editors/publishers may have been concerned about its length), it was such a high-profile person to accuse of conspiracy that I felt it warranted more space than it was given. OR they could have cut it out altogether and either referred the reader to another book which examined that case or written such a book themselves.
At any rate, I would like to have known more about the other high-profile double agents and defectors, especially any who had died under mysterious circumstances, in order to better understand just how far outside the "norm" were the cases that the book focused on. I realize this may be a product of its time: given the publication of the book around the time of the end of the Cold War, there may have been "common knowledge" about the other high-profile KGB operatives in the US that I simply don't have, or don't have in as much detail as the intended readers of such a tome would have been rightly expected to know. So while I understand that may be the reason some of this detail was excluded, a few additional paragraphs here and there, or more explanation in the Notes, would have helped me and better assured the book's long-term readability. I mean, in another generation's time, I expect hardly anyone will be reading this book specifically and will likely be reading more-general histories of the Cold War, espionage, or the agencies themselves (CIA, FBI, KGB, GRU, etc.).
One minor gripe about the title: it's not really *about* the widows, and really there are only 3, not 4, which are covered in detail in the text. The 4th spy is mentioned in the beginning, but it's not delved into to the same degree as the other 3. The 4th felt a bit shoe-horned in.
Overall, this is a very in-depth and intriguing read for anyone interested in the topic.
August 12, 2025
First of all, this isn't my type of book. I was drawn by the cool cover, cheap price and it was near Memorial Day.
For starters, the chapters were simply WAY too long! I've read comic books with fewer pages than some of these chapters. Additionally, with each agent, there are a series of photos that are just in weird places. I believe that they should be scattered throughout the book to help break it up some more have at least a small photo at the start of each new agent.
But like I mentioned at the start of my review; this isn't my type of book.
For starters, the chapters were simply WAY too long! I've read comic books with fewer pages than some of these chapters. Additionally, with each agent, there are a series of photos that are just in weird places. I believe that they should be scattered throughout the book to help break it up some more have at least a small photo at the start of each new agent.
But like I mentioned at the start of my review; this isn't my type of book.
October 3, 2022
An interesting insight into international espionage and the innocent, shattered lives it can leave behind.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews