Agent Sniper The Cold War superagent and the ruthless head of the CIA

Tim Tate

Book - 2021

"The thrilling never-before-told story of Agent Sniper, one of the Cold War's most effective counter-agents Michal Goleniewski, cover name Sniper, was one of the most important spies of the early Cold War. For two and a half years at the end of the 1950s, as a Lt. Colonel at the top of Poland's espionage service, he smuggled more than 5,000 top-secret Soviet bloc intelligence and military documents, as well as 160 rolls of microfilm, out from behind the Iron Curtain. In January 1961, he abandoned his wife and children and made a dramatic defection across divided Berlin with his East German mistress to the safety of American territory. There, he exposed more than 1600 Soviet bloc agents operating undercover in the West-more th...an any single spy in history. The CIA called Goleniewski "one of the West's most valuable counterintelligence sources," but in late 1963, he was abandoned by the US government because of a split in the agency over questions about his mental stability and his trustworthiness. Goleniewski bears some of the blame for his troubled legacy. He made baseless assertions about his record, notably that he was the first to expose Kim Philby. He also bizarrely claimed to be Tsarevich Aleksei Romanoff, heir to the Russian Throne who had miraculously survived the 1918 massacre of his family. For more than fifty years, American and British intelligence services have sought to erase Goleniewski from the history of Cold War espionage. The vast bulk of his once-substantial CIA and MI5 files remain closed. Only fragments of his material crop up in the de-classified dossiers on the KGB spies he exposed or the memoirs of CIA officers who dealt with him. A never-before-told story, Tim Tate's Agent Sniper is a crackling page-turner that takes readers back to the post-war world and a time when no one was what they seemed"--

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Subjects
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Tim Tate (author)
Edition
First U.S. edition
Physical Description
xvi, 398 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781250274663
  • Prelude: 4 January 1961
  • Introduction
  • 1. 'Sniper'
  • 2. The Intelligence Gap
  • 3. 'Dear Mr Director'
  • 4. London
  • 5. Stockholm
  • 6. Tel Aviv
  • 7. Munich
  • 8. Washington
  • 9. Warsaw
  • 10. Berlin
  • 11. Flight
  • 12. Reverberations
  • 13. Oldenburg
  • 14. 'Betrayal of the Homeland'
  • 15. Lambda 1
  • 16. Felfe
  • 17. Glory Days
  • 18. Monster
  • 19. HR 5507
  • 20. Downfall
  • 21. Exposed
  • 22. Dirty Tricks
  • 23. Romanoff
  • 24. Support
  • 25. Wilderness
  • 26. Teletechnik
  • 27. Mole Hunts
  • 28. Double Eagle
  • 29. Who Really Was Michal Goleniewski?
  • Afterword
  • Notes
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Acknowledgements
  • Picture Credits
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this well-researched but somewhat dull Cold War espionage saga, journalist and filmmaker Tate (Body for Rent) details the brilliant and tragic career of Michał Goleniewski, a lieutenant colonel in Poland's intelligence service and KGB spy who defected to the U.S. in 1961. Citing declassified Polish sources along with British and American materials, Tate recounts how Goleniewski exposed George Blake, Harry Houghton, and other spies who had infiltrated Western intelligence agencies after WWII. Unfortunately, potentially dramatic moments, such as Goleniewski's journey to West Berlin to defect, are anticlimactic, and Goleniewski himself remains a shadowy figure. Instead, Tate focuses on the rivalries within intelligence communities and draws a sharp portrait of Goleniewski's nemesis, CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton, who believed the Soviet bloc spy was passing on "bogus leads and fake intelligence." Tate alleges that Angleton's distrust of Goleniewski was unfounded, and that he mishandled the spy and the East German mistress with whom he defected, contributing to Goleniewski's waning mental health and bizarre claims to be Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, the heir to the Russian throne. Though Tate rescues Goleniewski from obscurity and sheds light on the inner workings of the CIA, this granular history is best suited to completists. (Dec.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

In the late 1950s, Michal Goleniewski, a Polish lieutenant colonel who ranked high in his country's espionage service, smuggled more than 5,000 top-secret Soviet bloc intelligence and military documents, plus 160 rolls of microfilm, to the West. When he defected in 1961, he went on to expose more than 1,600 Soviet bloc agents operating undercover in the West. Yet he was finally cut lose by the U.S. government because of apparent mental instability. A multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist, and history book author (Hitler's Forgotten Children), Tate tells the full story. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The gripping and deeply unedifying account of "the best defector the US ever had." Documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist Tate, who has written many books on both spycraft and true crime, has turned up a riveting spy story focused on Michal Goleniewski, a senior official in Poland's intelligence service who also answered to the KGB. In a 1958 letter to the American Embassy in Switzerland, he offered "enticing leads to Soviet Bloc spies, which…would excite American counterintelligence interest." The CIA responded, and there followed a bonanza in which Sniper (his code name) smuggled microfilm and thousands of top-secret Soviet documents to the West before defecting with his mistress in 1961. His debriefing produced more priceless information, but matters eventually went sour. The problem was not Goleniewski but rather the faction-ridden CIA. The agency's Soviet and East European sections accepted Sniper's bona fides, but the counterintelligence branch, led by James Jesus Angleton, did not. Famously paranoid, Angleton believed that the CIA was riddled with KGB agents that included nearly every defector. For three years, the CIA showered money and benefits on Goleniewski and used his revelations to arrest numerous traitors and their handlers around the world. Much of what followed remains classified, but Tate theorizes that Angleton's faction assumed dominance within the agency, because in January 1964, it abruptly eliminated Goleniewski's salary and protection and suspended him, subject to an "internal review" that never happened. Cast out, Goleniewski floundered for a time before developing severe psychosis, declaring himself the son of the czar of Russia who had been executed along with his family in 1918. In the final 100 pages, Tate chronicles 30 years of bizarre behavior until Goleniewski's 1993 death, alternating with wildly dysfunctional CIA behavior, an ongoing theme throughout the book. Fascinating dirty linen from the early decades of the CIA. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.