The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—A Tragedy in Three Acts

by Scott Anderson

Over the next few days, Gouzenko laid out before astounded Canadian intelligence officers—soon joined by their American and British counterparts—the story of an elaborate Soviet spy ring that had been in operation across Canada and the United States for years. The ring involved dozens of spies and informants, and its activities ranged from industrial espionage, to monitoring émigré communities, to unlocking some of the most closely guarded military secrets the Soviet’s wartime allies possessed; as was soon determined, these spilled secrets included details on the Manhattan Project. Ultimately, the Gouzenko affair would lead to the arrest in the West of over three dozen on charges of espionage, and would be cited by many as the opening salvo of the Cold War. For a man like Frank Wisner, here at last was prima facie evidence of the kind of Soviet skullduggery he had been warning about since Bucharest;