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<blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9286436" data-attributes="member: 86653">I'm working through Spymaster by Tennent Bagley.It's an interesting if odd book. It's told by Bagley (ex-CIA), but it recounts the career of Soviet spymaster Sergey A. Kondrashev in the upper echelons of the KGB. Apparently the two became friends after the USSR fell and Kondrashev solicited Bagley to help him with his memoirs. But it was published almost a decade after Kondrashev's death. It's mostly Bagley talking about how Kondrashev told him X or Y happened. It reads like someone took notes while playing a game of telephone and the topic is the Cold War.It's light on details in important places (major events) and heavy on details in other, unimportant places (minor events). Kondrashev seems to have had a hand in almost every single major event in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Station Chief in East Germany and Austria, involved in supressing the Hungarian Revolution, helped move Hitler's remains, personally served as translator between Kruschev and Kennedy on at least one occasion, and was the main contact for a dozen of the top spies and defectors to the Soviets during the Cold War, among many other episodes.I'm about halfway through the book but I'm not sure if it's good or bad yet.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="overgeeked, post: 9286436, member: 86653"] I'm working through Spymaster by Tennent Bagley. It's an interesting if odd book. It's told by Bagley (ex-CIA), but it recounts the career of Soviet spymaster Sergey A. Kondrashev in the upper echelons of the KGB. Apparently the two became friends after the USSR fell and Kondrashev solicited Bagley to help him with his memoirs. But it was published almost a decade after Kondrashev's death. It's mostly Bagley talking about how Kondrashev told him X or Y happened. It reads like someone took notes while playing a game of telephone and the topic is the Cold War. It's light on details in important places (major events) and heavy on details in other, unimportant places (minor events). Kondrashev seems to have had a hand in almost every single major event in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Station Chief in East Germany and Austria, involved in supressing the Hungarian Revolution, helped move Hitler's remains, personally served as translator between Kruschev and Kennedy on at least one occasion, and was the main contact for a dozen of the top spies and defectors to the Soviets during the Cold War, among many other episodes. I'm about halfway through the book but I'm not sure if it's good or bad yet. [/QUOTE]

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