“Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East vs. West” – with Calder Walton
SpyCast
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The Motivation of Individual Agents in the Cold War
Putin's worldview and his internal thinking are notoriously difficult to understand. But one of the things that I was really struck by researching this book is how actually if you scratch the surface some of the major Soviet intelligence successes during the Cold War were derived from motivation of individual agents, not masterful espionage trade craft. So at a key point with the hunt for the Cambridge Five, as the net was closing in on Philby in particular when he was in Washington, he tried to meet up with his Soviet handler,. who was nowhere to be seen, badly let him down. We also find, scratch the surface, that again, some of the masterful post-war Cold War Soviet intelligence successes like the
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