The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

by Ben Macintyre

The new wall made a powerful impression on the twenty-two-year-old Gordievsky: “Only a physical barrier, reinforced by armed guards in their watchtowers, could keep the East Germans in their socialist paradise and stop them fleeing to the West.”

Pavel Sudoplatov, one of Stalin’s spymasters, had this advice for his officers seeking to recruit spies in Western countries: “Search for people who are hurt by fate or nature—the ugly, those suffering from an inferiority complex, craving power and influence but defeated by unfavorable circumstances….In cooperation with us, all these find a peculiar compensation. The sense of belonging to an influential and powerful organization will give them a feeling of superiority over the handsome and prosperous people around them.”

For many years, the KGB used the acronym MICE to identify the four mainsprings of spying: Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego.

In part, spying is an act of the imagination.

All spies need to feel they are loved.

Spies want to feel wanted, part of a secret community, rewarded, trusted, and cherished.

Agent BOOT was the Right Honorable Michael Foot, distinguished writer and orator, veteran left-wing MP, leader of the Labour Party, and the politician who, if Labour won the next election, would become prime minister of Britain. The Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition had been a paid KGB agent.

Lenin is often credited with coining the term “useful idiot,” poleznyi durak in Russian, meaning one who can be used to spread propaganda without being aware of it or subscribing to the goals intended by the manipulator.

“Lying is wrong, son, but if it serves a greater good, it’s OK,” said his father, through an increasingly thick fug of bourbon.

Disloyalty was not a sin, but an operational tool. “The essence of espionage is betrayal of trust,” Ames declared.

He was wrong: the essence of successful agent running is the maintenance of trust, the supplanting of one allegiance by another, higher, loyalty.

Paranoia is born of propaganda, ignorance, secrecy, and fear. The KGB’s London station in 1982 was one of the most profoundly paranoid places on earth, an organization imbued with a siege mentality largely based on fantasy.

In an intriguing harbinger of modern times, Moscow was prepared to use dirty tricks and hidden interference to swing a democratic election in favor of its chosen candidate.

Spies tend to make extravagant claims for their craft, but the reality of espionage is that it frequently makes little lasting difference.

The pantheon of world-changing spies is small and select, and Oleg Gordievsky is in it: he opened up the inner workings of the KGB at a pivotal juncture in history, revealing not just what Soviet intelligence was doing (and not doing), but what the Kremlin was thinking and planning, and in so doing transformed the way the West thought about the Soviet Union. He risked his life to betray his country, and made the world a little safer. As a classified internal CIA review put it, the ABLE ARCHER scare was “the last paroxysm of the Cold War.”

Here was a perfect intelligence cycle: Gordievsky was briefing the prime minister on how to respond to the Soviets, and then reporting back the Soviet reaction to that behavior. Spies usually furnish facts, leaving the recipient to analyze them; with his unique perspective, Gordievsky was able to interpret, for the West, what the KGB was thinking, hoping, and fearing. “That is the essence of Oleg’s contribution,” said the MI6 analyst. “Getting inside the minds of others, getting into their logic, their rationality.”

In the words of Sherlock Holmes: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

Among those affected was Vladimir Putin, a product of the Leningrad KGB who saw most of his friends, colleagues, and patrons purged as a direct consequence of Gordievsky’s escape.