Cold War Spy Games & McCarry’s The Miernik Dossier

From yesterday’s Guardian article “Russia to expel US diplomat accused of spying:”

Russia has said it will expel a US diplomat accused of working as a spy after he was arrested while trying to recruit a Russian agent for the CIA, in an elaborate raid that revealed the American was carrying a bizarre arsenal of suspected spyware.

Ryan Fogle, the third secretary at the US embassy in Moscow, was paraded in footage aired on state-run television after being detained late on Monday night by officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB), a successor to the Soviet-era KGB. He stands accused of being a CIA spy and was declared persona non grata by the foreign ministry on Tuesday.

"A classic spy arsenal was discovered, as well as a large sum of money that doesn't just expose a foreign agent caught red-handed, but also raises serious questions for the American side," the ministry said. "Such provocative actions in the spirit of the cold war in no way help to strengthen mutual trust."

Fogle was said to be carrying two wigs, three pairs of glasses, a compass and map of Moscow, as well as a knife, lighter, stacks of €500 notes and his US embassy ID.

For a novel about Cold War era CIA spying, try The Miernik Dossier by Charles McCarry:

The Miernik Dossier is presented as a series of documents that trace the progress of a “typical” spy operation. There are letters, telegrams, reports from different intelligence services, transcripts from listening devices, descriptions of photographs, and so on.

It tells the story of a Polish man, Tadeusz Miernik, who is living in Geneva and who may or may not be a Russian operative. He comes to Paul Christopher, anxious not to be deported back to Poland. A coincidence (or is it?) sends Miernik, along with Christopher, an English spy, and an African prince on a trip to the Sudan in an air-conditioned Cadillac. Their adventures — rescuing Miernik’s sister from Poland, an apparently random attack by bandits, meeting an acquaintance in Cairo — make up the story.

As the book goes on, the pieces of the operation begin to fall into place. No person within the operation has all the pieces of evidence; you as the reader are the only one with all the clues and therefore with the ability to understand what really happened and why.

CIA in Pakistan & Ignatius' Bloodmoney

From yesterday's New York Times editorial "How a Single Spy Helped Turn Pakistan Against the United States:"

...Davis had been navigating dense traffic in Lahore... Groups that had focused most of their energies dreaming up bloody attacks against India were now aligning themselves closer to Al Qaeda and other organizations with a thirst for global jihad. Some of these groups had deep roots in Lahore, which was why Davis and a C.I.A. team set up operations from a safe house in the city.

But now Davis was sitting in a Lahore police station, having shot two young men who approached his car on a black motorcycle, their guns drawn, at an intersection congested with cars, bicycles and rickshaws...

More than two years later, the Raymond Davis episode has been largely forgotten in the United States. It was immediately overshadowed by the dramatic raid months later that killed Osama bin Laden — consigned to a footnote in the doleful narrative of America’s relationship with Pakistan. But dozens of interviews conducted over several months, with government officials and intelligence officers in Pakistan and in the United States, tell a different story: that the real unraveling of the relationship was set off by the flurry of bullets Davis unleashed on the afternoon of Jan. 27, 2011, and exacerbated by a series of misguided decisions in the days and weeks that followed. In Pakistan, it is the Davis affair, more than the Bin Laden raid, that is still discussed in the country’s crowded bazaars and corridors of power.

For a novel about the CIA in Pakistan, try Bloodmoney by David Ignatius:

Someone in Pakistan is killing the members of a new CIA intelligence unit that is trying to buy peace with America's enemies. It falls to Sophie Marx, a young CIA officer with a big chip on her shoulder, to figure out who's doing the killing and why. Her starting point is Alphabet Capital, the London hedge fund that has been providing cover for this secret operation, but the investigation soon widens to include the capitals of the Middle East and the cruel hills of South Waziristan.

Sophie thinks she has the backing of her hard-nosed boss, Jeffrey Gertz, and his genial mentor at headquarters, Cyril Hoffman. In addition, she gets help from the well-mannered lieutenant general heading Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. But the closer Sophie gets to her quarry, the more she realizes that nothing in this gallery of mirrors is quite what it seems. This is a theater of violence and retribution, in which the last act is one that Sophie could not have imagined.

Pinochet Secrets Revealed & Gething’s Under a False Flag

 From Sunday’s BBC story “Chile's Gen Pinochet 'tried to cling to power' in 1988:”

Late Chilean military leader Augusto Pinochet wanted to hold on to power when he lost a referendum on his rule in 1988, newly declassified documents in the US suggest. They say Gen Pinochet sought the support of his closest military allies to overthrow the results. But they refused and Gen Pinochet had to accept defeat. The following year, Chileans elected a civilian government and Gen Pinochet was replaced in 1990.

Speaking of recently declassified documents, papers declassified in the early 2000s serve as the basis for Tom Gething’s Under a False Flag, a fast-paced CIA novel based in Chile.  Pro: a well-paced novel based on Pinochet’s overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende.   Con: doesn’t provide the Chilean perspective about life after life after the Pinochet takeover. Description:

October, 1972. Will Porter joins the CIA’s secret war against Chile’s Marxist president, Salvador Allende. Working under cover, Will’s job is to manage the dirty money going to fund the opposition and disrupt the Chilean economy. A budding friendship with university student Ernesto Manning and his beautiful sister, Gabriela, complicates Will’s job and threatens to blow his cover. In a turbulent world of deceivers and deceived, Will must choose between friendship and betrayal, truth and lies, love and duty.

A book that delves more into what Pinochet’s rule was like is Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile. Pro: it was written by one of Chile’s most famous novelists. Con: it uses an experimental narrative, so if you want a straight-forward story, this might not be for you. Description:

As through a crack in the wall, By Night in Chile's single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of Church and State in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel—Roberto Bolano's first work available in English—recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet, but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest…assigned—after the destruction of Allende—the secret, never-to-be-disclosed job of teaching Pinochet, at night, all about Marxism, so the junta generals can know their enemy.