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During a six-month period in 1985, three American
intelligence officers put the lives of countless agents
working
abroad in grave danger. Those men-Aldrich Ames, Edward Lee
Howard, and Robert Hanssen-shared much highly
sensitive and classified information with the Soviet Union,
and inflicted an unprecedented amount of damage to U.S.
intelligence operations.
Accounts of their actions have, seventeen years later, been
well documented. But the true story of what happened
to the men and women working in the field against this wave
of treachery has never been told-until now.
For the first time, former CIA officers Antonio and Jonna
Mendez can reveal this story, now that this book has
been reviewed and its publication allowed by the agency. In
spy DUST (Atria Books; September 17, 2002; $26.00),
they offer an amazing insider's account of the CIA's
intelligence operations and disclose their incredible
experiences-both personal and professional-at the height of
one of the CIA's most tumultuous periods. Covering
the last five years of the Cold War when Tony and Jonna
were involved in creating new operational techniques to save
U.S. intelligence operations in Moscow, SPY DUST is
a riveting, detailed, and revealing account of real-life
espionage.
The tale begins in the fall of 1986, as Jonna is working on
a mission providing cover and disguises to CIA
operatives who are plotting to steal a secret
communications device from a Soviet stronghold on the Asian
subcontinent. Tony, back in Washington, DC, is just
beginning to discover the enormous threat to CIA foreign
agents
in Moscow in the wake of Edward Lee Howard's defection and
the massive security lapses that followed. He is asked
to create a new system of techniques ("silver bullets") to
help agents elude the KGB and diffuse their new systems of
surveillance now that they are aware of the identities of
many of the CIA's operatives. Included in the KGB's
seemingly invincible armory, enabling them to predict the
CIA's every move, is an invisible electromagnetic powder
that allows them to keep tabs on anyone who touches it: spy
dust.
Tony must also design and direct a perilous ex filtration
plan for a major in the KGB, code named ORB, who has
worked for the CIA for almost two decades but is now on the
verge of being arrested. Assembling a team of top
intelligence officers Tony recruits Jonna, one of his best
technical operations people. Together they concoct a daring
plan for ORB and his family to escape; a plan that brings
them to the center of Moscow and face-to-face with the
KGB's most ruthless agents.
The mission proves to be one of the most intense and
difficult of their careers. Tony and Jonna explain the
numerous dangers they encountered as well as the incredibly
complex systems of surveillance, counter-surveillance
and deception that they developed and implemented. They
tell of their James Bond-like gadgets, the disguises and
costumes they created for agents, and complicated dead drop
operations. They describe how CIA officers are trained
to behave in foreign cities, how they move without drawing
attention, and how they manage to gather intelligence
without compromising safety. They also reveal the politics
of working for the CIA, including how intelligence officers
must operate inside their own bureaucracy to gain access to
information they need, how careers are made and ruined,
and the deceptive techniques that superiors often employ
against their own people.
SPY DUST is also an emotional look at how the
Mendezes relationship grew from colleagues, to trusted
friends,
to marriage. When their story began, Jonna was coping with
a failing marriage and a difficult supervisor in the field.
Tony had recently lost his wife to cancer and had been
putting in twenty-hour workdays to help numb the pain. They
recount how their professional involvement turned romantic,
and the challenges they faced in keeping their
increasingly intimate relationship hidden from their
colleagues.
At a time when the American public has become intensely
interested in how the CIA gathers intelligence and uses
that intelligence to protect the nation, SPY DUST
reveals with unprecedented openness the risks, dangers, and
seemingly insurmountable obstacles these brave agents face
in conducting their work. As the authors explain, SPY
DUST is more than just a gripping tale of international
intrigue, it is a tribute to the men and women, both
American
and foreign, who have risked or lost their
lives. "Espionage is not a career to be undertaken lightly,
and along the way
there have been and will be human losses," the Mendezes
write. "For reasons of national security many of those who
have been lost cannot even be named in death, who worked
and died so bravely for the cause of freedom. But we can
honor each and every one of them for a job well done. We
hope that this book will further that process."
Included in the book is a sixteen page black and white
illustration section, with photographs of spy gear and
depictions of intelligence operations by KGB artists which
have never before been available to the public.
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