Product Description

The Spy Within is the riveting true story of one of the most significant cases in the history of espionage, the longest-running penetration of an intelligence organization ever discovered.
In October 1982, the FBI received notice from the CIA that was as cryptic as it was chilling: China was running a spy inside US intelligence. The CIA did not know, however, his identity, the agency he worked for, how long he had spent inside America’s secret community, or what information he was passing to China. Over the next three years, investigators labored frantically to identify the mole, to discover the secrets he had betrayed and the agents he had endangered, and to collect the evidence that would see him prosecuted for his crimes.
The FBI’s expansive investigation ultimately revealed that for more than thirty years – years encompassing such pivotal events as the Korean War, the Cultural Revolution, the Vietnam War, and President Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to Beijing – Larry Chin, the CIA’s own top Chinese linguist, had been China’s top spy. Chin’s reports were circulated to China’s senior leadership, read by the likes of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping. The methods employed by the intelligence services of China’s Communist regime – methods still very much in use today even as the two nations have evolved from Cold War enemies to economic rivals – have never before been so clearly and compellingly revealed to a general audience.
Tod Hoffman conducted exclusive interviews with key players in the affair, gained access to previously unreleased documents, and applied his own practical expertise as a spy-catcher to spin a captivating cat-and-mouse tale that is sure to become regarded as a classic of intelligence literature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #621824 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-09
• Released on: 2008-09-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Booklist
One of several American traitors in the national security establishment who were arrested in the mid-1980s, Larry Wu-Tai Chin was convicted of espionage on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. In this reconstruction of the case, Hoffman, a writer who worked in Canadian intelligence, wends the facts adduced at trial though speculations about Chin’s rationalizations for his betrayals. Employed as a translator for three decades by the State Department and then the CIA, Chin claimed a pure motive for his spying: it improved China-U.S. relations. When laying aside his attempts to get inside Chin’s head, Hoffman turns to the main events in Chin’s downfall: an alert to the CIA of a mole in its midst; the FBI’s identification of Chin as the mole; Chin’s admissions to the FBI; and Chin’s trial, conviction, and, well, there was no sentencing because Chin committed suicide in jail. Or was Chin’s death a murder, Hoffman wonders? Sprinkling suspicions of what Chin actually passed to the PRC throughout this account, Hoffman renders a well-researched example of the Chinese approach to espionage. --Gilbert Taylor

Review
"Suspenseful cloak-and-dagger reenectmentment of the FBI sting that exposed a Chinese-American double agent in 1985.... Hoffman possesses a solid command of his material and conveys the secretive nature of espionage agencies with a novelist's panache."
— Kirkus Reviews

"Hoffman is a skilled writer and definitely succeeds in producing a page-turner. It is written much like a screenplay, with a lot of attention paid to describing characters, their thoughts, and their surroundings. He lets you live inside the mind of a Chinese spy, an American traitor, or a stressed and sleep-deprived FBI agent. Hoffman allows you to experience the isolation, the fear, the adrenaline, the disappointment, and the huge responsibility weighing on the shoulders of all of his characters. This book was born to be made into a great spy thriller movie."
— The McGill Daily

About the Author
Tod Hoffman is the author of three previous books, including Le Carre's Landscape and Homicide: Life on the Screen. An eight-year veteran of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Hoffman served for a period on the Counter-Intelligence: China desk. He attended the Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris and earned a master’s degree in political science from McGill University.

Customer Reviews

The Spy Within
I debated about whether to give this book a 4 star for the information and subject matter and a 3 star for the book's organization and writing. The author is inconsistent when he shifts from a non-fiction factual style to a novelistic style of writing. The author certainly has good credentials for writing this book. He has worked in the intelligence field. I hoped that his being Canadian would give a outside party point of view as to why this deep penetration of our CIA went on for so long.
I particularly appreciated the author's addition of information to set the historical background of the Chinese Civil War, Korean War, Cultural Revolution, and Nixon's visit to China. I felt he was weak in explaining China's role in the Vietnam War and Sino-Soviet relations during the Cold War. The author seems to jump to conclusions about reliance on Mr. Chin's spy activities by Chinese top leaders. I especially saw this lacking during the explanation of Chin's role during the Korean War.
Although I find the information about spycraft and the recruitment of spys fascinating, I particularly wanted to find out what motivated Chin to be a spy in the first place. The author, Tod Hoffman, does a good job in the comparison and contrast of Oriental and Western European motivations and values. At the beginning of the book Hoffman briefly describes Chin's ultimate vulnerability, his children. But, there is probably not even a paragraph's worth of information about them for the rest of the book. I am fascinated with someone like Chin who does not seem to be very ideologically motivated and who has been exposed to advantages of living in the USA and yet continues to spy on behalf of the PRC. He is a much more complex person than seen in this book or he is a person who only craves money and recognition.
The book ends with an extensive bibliography and endnotes. In particular, I referred to the endnotes numerous times while reading to find out the source of matters claimed to be fact. The conspiracy allegations in the final chapter left me curious for more information. I tried to locate a copy of Mrs. Chin's book: Death of My Husband, but I was unable to locate it through either my local library or Amazon.com or even the Library of Congress. I am rather curious about this book since Mrs. Chin alleges in the Abatement court documents that she did not speak/read/write English very well and was dependent upon her husband.