Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #603045 in Books
• Published on: 1988-07-01
• Released on: 1988-07-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 496 pages

Customer Reviews

A Lot of Process, Not Much Insight
SPYCATCHER is a methodical, but often intriguing read that details Peter Wright's tenure with the British Intelligence Service, M15--similar to the FBI in the United States. I found it a useful book in that it helped me to begin to understand the way that the "Great Game" of espionage was played during the heyday of spy activities. It describes in excruiating detail the sorts of efforts put forth by British intelligence, and what they believed their Soviet counterparts were accomplishing, and there are a number of rather amusing stories toward the beginning of the book that outline efforts to bug buildings, covertly tail diplomats, and do other types of Bond-esque intelligence work. The final two thirds of the book concern Wright's effort to uncover a Soviet agent that he believes has penetrated the highest echealons of M15. This section, while often fascinating, does not have the same sort of flair that the earlier stories have.

There are a couple of major drawbacks to the work, however: Wright's authorial voice (modified by his co-writer, Paul Greengrass) is often pompous to the point where I would become incredulous. According to himself, he is the only person in British intelligence who has the vision or the capacity to get even the most basic assignments right. That's not exactly a fair summation, but it's often pretty close. He certainly has a knack for determining other's faults, but only rarely notices any that he may have. Secondly, and more importantly, Wright never takes a step backward from his work to examine any of the consequences of the spy game. He never asks what the appropriate role for a domestic spy agency is in a democracy; he never wonders if his life's work has had any sort of negative repercussions in international affairs; he seems incapable of feeling remorse even for the innocents whose life he has (or has helped to become) crippled. I guess I was hoping for at least some philosophical justifications from this man who saw, up close and personal, what exactly were the stakes in these information wars. Instead, I received a "just the facts, ma'am" report.

Still, the book is useful for it's description of process, and to begin to see the scope of the unseen battles fought in the Cold War. Informative, but not illuminating.

Secrets of British Tradecraft Revealed!
This is one of those books that I came to late in the game (It all started with the DVD "Cambridge Spies" last fall.), but after perusing the first page of "Spycatcher", I couldn't put it down for three days! One of the reasons that I waited so long was that various espionage writers have criticized the book for its inaccuracies (So he got the date of Philby's interrogation wrong!). I'm beginning to think that they are suffering from an overdose of sour grapes because Mr. Wright made the New York Times Bestseller List and they did not!

I am actually glad that I read other books such as "My Silent War," "The Philby Files," "Anthony Blunt," "Philby: The Long Road to Moscow," "Crown Jewels," etc. first, because by the time I read "Spycatcher," I was thoroughly familiar with the multifarious cast of characters. However, as much as I enjoyed the other espionage books, "Spycatcher" surpasses them in one respect: it gives details of tradecraft that are impossible in an account of Kim Philby or Anthony Blunt who, by necessity, had to keep silent about the finer particulars of their work in intelligence (whether Soviet or British). Peter Wright lets the reader peek over his shoulder as he installs sophisticated bugs behind convincing false doors at midnight. He also gives the reader a good chuckle when such operations go disastrously awry and floors collapse or cables are cut, and the work has to begin all over again.

The author also writes a wry account of brazen Russian agents importuning numerous passers-by in various London parks in an effort to "turn" them into Soviet assets, until the British police, at Wright's instigation, out-brazen the agents by threatening to arrest them for harassing Her Majesty's subjects. He also informs us of MI5's system of Watchers, who were posted all over London and its environs, and whose chief duty was to tail diplomats and cypher clerks from the Soviet embassy. (A memorable moment occurs when 105 Russians are declared PNG and expelled from Britain in 1971--an event I recall seeing on television).

Peter Wright relates a particularly poignant anecdote of Klop Ustinov (actor Peter's father), who had served British Intelligence so faithfully and effectively (at great peril) throughout World War II, and who was living in penury without a pension until Wright brought the matter to the attention of the director (Wright was cheated out of most of his own promised pension at the end of his career, and Desmond Bristow of MI6 also tells of similar ingratitude on the part of the Intelligence Services in "A Game of Moles.").

As for the allegations about Roger Hollis, the director of MI5, being a Soviet agent, the criticism of this theory usually cites the fact that Hollis never confessed, and therefore the charges are groundless. The same could be said of Kim Philby, who never confessed (despite Nicholas Elliot's claims to the contrary--with the window conveniently open so that the recorded "confession" was inaudible because of the Beirut traffic noises). Philby even wrote an article stating that a spy should never confess, because the case against him had to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt in order to be prosecuted under British law. Whether Hollis was a Soviet agent or not (Desmond Bristow, who believed that the British intelligence agencies were riddled with Soviet penetration agents echoes Wright's suspicions in "A Game of Moles."), Peter Wright builds an intriguing circumstantial case against him, noting that the leaks to the Russians and the ruined operations stopped after Hollis had retired. Wright suggests that the Intelligence services had no interest in pursuing the matter to the end because of the embarrassment caused by the discoveries that Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, Cairncross, Blake, et al, were Soviet penetration agents. As far as Wright is concerned, the case against Hollis was not proven but the suspicion remains.

Great Read
Having just read Trento's "The Secret History of the CIA", which I also enjoyed, it was interesting in itself to see the two sides of some similar stories. The writing styles also followed along cultural lines. Too often we read novels and think that real life works that way and in many cases, the truth really is stranger than fiction.

Spycatcher provides a real look inside the world of counter-espionage. It isn't sugar coated and doesn't try and hype the spy world. Peter Wright shows how the origin of many technical achievements in the spying world and the tempo increases as he reveals how he suspected a mole inside MI5 and the tension increases as he tries to uncover the Mole's identity. At the same time, as with Trento's book, it shows how good people are left on the side, discarded or reduced. It also shows how lives can seem worthless when dedicated to a lie. In Peter Wright's case, dedicated to fighting the soviets, only to find a soviet agent, highly placed, was undoing everything. Just as Trento's treatise shows how Angleton was undone at every corner as well.

If there's one conclusion from these two books, it really showed that the same intelligence that has allowed the Russians to dominate chess, was well applied to espionage. They were streets ahead of the West. Just as well the wall came down.