Comrade J
Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War
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Narrated by:
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Michael Prichard
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By:
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Pete Earley
About this listen
In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, the cold war ended, and a new world order began. We thought everything had changed. But one thing never changed: the spies.
From 1995 to 2000, a man known as "Comrade J" was the highest-ranking operative in the SVR - the successor agency to the KGB - in the United States. He directed all Russian spy action in New York City and personally oversaw every covert operation against the United States and its allies in the United Nations. He recruited spies, planted agents, penetrated security, manipulated intelligence, and influenced American policy - all under the direct leadership of Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin. He was a legend in the SVR, the man who kept the secrets.
Then, in 2000, he defected - and it turned out he had one more secret. For the previous two years, he had also been a double agent for the FBI.
He has never granted a public interview. The FBI and CIA have refused to answer all media questions about him. He has remained in hiding. He has never revealed his secrets. Until now.
Comrade J, written by the best-selling author of Family of Spies and The Hot House, is his story, a direct account of what he did in the United States after we all assumed the spying was over - and of what Putin and Russia continue to do today. The revelations are stunning. It is also the story of growing up in a family of agents dating back to the revolution; of how Russia molded him into one of its most high-flying operatives; of the day-to-day perils of living a double, then triple, life; and finally, of how his growing disquiet with the corruption and ambitions of the "new Russia" led him to take the most perilous step of all.
Many spies have told their stories. None has the astonishing immediacy, relevance, and cautionary warnings of Comrade J.
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From Berlin to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the stories of the agents on the front lines of British intelligence. And the truth is often more remarkable than fiction.
MI6 has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created a hundred years ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.
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Good details but lacks thorough research
- By Unapologetic on 09-06-17
By: Gordon Corera
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Collusion
- Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win
- By: Luke Harding
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Russia expert Luke Harding lays out the most in-depth look to date at the Trump campaign's dealings with Russia. Beginning with a meeting with Christopher Steele, the man behind the shattering dossier that first brought the allegations to light, Harding probes the histories of key Russian and American players with striking clarity and insight. Harding exposes the disquieting details of the Trump-Russia story - a saga so huge it involves international espionage, offshore banks, sketchy real estate deals, mobsters, money laundering, disappeared dissidents, and more.
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Good summation, but gaps, patched with spin
- By Philo on 11-24-17
By: Luke Harding
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The Main Enemy
- The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB
- By: Milton Bearden, James Risen
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, The Main Enemy is the inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them. Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War.
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A masterpiece of espionage history
- By kucherv on 08-21-18
By: Milton Bearden, and others
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The Spy and the Traitor
- The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6.
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John Lee is GREAT!
- By David on 09-21-18
By: Ben Macintyre
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Good Hunting
- An American Spymaster's Story
- By: Jack Devine
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story is the spellbinding memoir of Devine's time in the CIA, where he served for more than 30 years, rising to become the acting deputy director of operations, responsible for all of the agency's spying operations. This is a story of intrigue and high-stakes maneuvering - all the more gripping when the fate of our geopolitical order hangs in the balance. But this audiobook also sounds a warning to our nation's decision makers.
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Fascinating, An education on spying
- By Anthony on 12-13-15
By: Jack Devine
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The Man Without a Face
- The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to its own people and to the world.
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A Preview of Authoritarianism in the USA
- By Jimmy O on 06-08-19
By: Masha Gessen
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Family of Secrets
- The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America
- By: Russ Baker
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 24 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said that "words are loaded pistols". In the hands of Russ Baker, they are hydrogen bombs. On each and every page of his masterpiece, Family of Secrets, he explodes the myths and lies that powerful forces have perpetrated on the American consciousness. He digs beneath the surface in a form of journalistic archeology to reveal the hidden history of one of America's most powerful families, leaving no stone unturned.
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Still Relevant, Impossible to Put Down
- By Emilio Largo on 12-14-12
By: Russ Baker
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Into the Lion's Mouth
- The True Story of Dusko Popov: Word War II Spy, Patriot, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond
- By: Larry Loftis
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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James Bond has nothing on Dusko Popov. A double agent for the Abwehr, MI5 and MI6, and the FBI during World War II, Popov seduced numerous women, spoke five languages, and was a crack shot, all while maintaining his cover as a Yugoslavian diplomat....
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A boring account of exciting events.
- By Amazon Customer on 11-30-18
By: Larry Loftis
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A Very Expensive Poison
- The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War with the West
- By: Luke Harding
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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On November 1, 2006, journalist and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. He died twenty-two days later. The cause of death? Polonium—a rare, lethal, and highly radioactive substance. Here Luke Harding unspools a real-life political assassination story—complete with KGB, CIA, MI6, and Russian mobsters.
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Cover-To-Cover, This'll Have You Mindblown!
- By Gillian on 02-03-17
By: Luke Harding
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The Terror Years
- From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer, Lawrence Wright
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. This collection draws on several articles he wrote while researching that book as well as many that he's written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread.
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Contains much old material from "Looming Tower"
- By peter on 09-21-16
By: Lawrence Wright
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Backstabbing for Beginners
- My Crash Course in International Diplomacy
- By: Michael Soussan
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Soon to be a major motion picture starring Ben Kingsley and Theo James, the gripping true story of a young program coordinator at the United Nations who stumbles upon a conspiracy involving Iraq's oil reserves. "What made this episode in our collective history possible was not so much the lies we told one another, but the lies we told ourselves". Breaking a conspiracy of silence that had prevailed for years, Soussan sparked an unprecedented corruption probe into the Oil-for-Food program.
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Eye-opener history made entertaining
- By Shelly Dee on 12-20-16
By: Michael Soussan
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Best of Enemies
- The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War
- By: Gus Russo, Eric Dezenhall
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1978, CIA maverick Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko were new arrivals on the Washington, D.C., intelligence scene, with Jack working out of the CIA's counterintelligence office and Gennady out of the Soviet Embassy. Both men were assigned to seduce the other into betraying his country in the final days of the Cold War, but instead the men ended up becoming the best of friends. Theirs is a friendship that never should have happened, and their story is chock full of treachery, darkly comic misunderstandings, bureaucratic inanity, and landmark intelligence breakthroughs.
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Really?
- By M.E. on 01-13-19
By: Gus Russo, and others
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In the late 1970s, the National Security Agency still did not officially exist - those in the know referred to it dryly as the No Such Agency. So why, when NSA engineer Charles Gandy filed for a visa to visit Moscow, did the Russian Foreign Ministry assert with confidence that he was a spy? Outsmarting honey traps and encroaching deep enough into enemy territory to perform complicated technical investigations, Gandy accomplished his mission in Russia but discovered more than State and CIA wanted him to know.
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Betrayal in Berlin
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Its code name was “Operation Gold”, a wildly audacious CIA plan to construct a clandestine tunnel into East Berlin to tap into critical KGB and Soviet military telecommunication lines. The tunnel, crossing the border between the American and Soviet sectors, would have to be 1,500 feet (the length of the Empire State Building) with state-of-the-art equipment, built and operated literally under the feet of their Cold War adversaries.
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Fascinating Book
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What listeners say about Comrade J
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Shopaholic
- 09-21-08
Some Inaccuracies, but still good
Of particular interest from the US point of view, the book reveals that for three years before his defection in October 2000 Tretyakov worked for the FBI, providing details of residency operations and personnel. Ten months before his defection, the FBI encouraged him to leave but could not tell him the reason: it was hunting a mole who might learn about him. When Tretyakov's defection became public on 30 January 2001 and Robert Hanssen was arrested on 18 February 2001, the press presumed Tretyakov was the one who gave him up. The FBI assured Earley that this was not the case.
Finally, as with all unsourced defector memoirs, one must deal with the question of accuracy. In this case, the narrative contains two technical errors worth noting: (1) reference to Tretyakov as a double agent is incorrect, and (2) the statement that the CIA calls its employees'agents is wrong. Recognizing that independent assessment of Tretyakov's story is desirable, Earley includes a chapter with comments from a high-ranking US intelligence official that addresses the kinds of material Tretyakov provided and affirms that it included names and saved American lives. Further detail is attributed to other intelligence sources, as, for example, the fact that the bug planted in the State Department conference room in the late 1990s had a miniature battery recharged with a laser beam. If correct, someone would have had to have line-of-sight access to the battery, but no comment is made on this point.
In the end, although Earley has provided another well told espionage case study, he leaves the curious hoping for a second volume containing more details of Tretyakov&'s work for US intelligence.
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12 people found this helpful
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- King Pseudonymous IV
- 05-04-15
Informative, if not very exciting
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
It was an ok use of time. It helped me get a better general sense of what a Russian agent in the US actually does, and what are the day-to-day challenges and frustrations. It also gave some sense of how the KGB and its successors work/ed (e.g. its agents were trained, how centralized things were, how the truth did not always matter to upper management).
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- Harold
- 03-18-15
Excellent book, compelling story
Great reality check. This courageous man is a better American than most of us. I wish them well...
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- A. M.
- 05-24-22
Better than expected
Even though it was first published in 2007, I could see how it was going to impact a lot of lives for the worse, most deservedly. The Russians are a scourge on the world, and so much energy has been devoted to combating them day in and day out. This book reveals in detail Sergei Tretyakov's defection from the SVR. In doing so, it paints a detail rich picture of life working for the corrupt and brutal Siloviki machine post-Cold War.
It is naive to think Russia will ever escape the paranoia and brutality that is baked into its creed. Such different people they are from us.
And "Nuclear Winter" is uncovered as Soviet disinformation, who knew?
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-06-21
must read
fascinating read, very well produced, well written, an important look at Russian attitudes and policies.
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- Rick
- 02-15-23
Good lesson on modern Russia
A good account from someone that was part of the Russian Intelligence with first hand knowledge and participation in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the folly of our mutual interests.
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- Barry M.
- 07-26-22
A Good Informative & Interesting Listen
Moreso an informative and descriptive book than a 'thriller'. That isn't a criticism. It's interesting and well worth the time. It's more than a shame that it's audience likely won't include many who could benefit all of us by listening to it, but it's still helpful to those that do.
Much of the theme may not be surprising to people who follow these topics, but it's another interesting personal account with it's own worthwhile contributions. Personally I appreciated the Oil for Food program corruption explanation the most.
Narration: The narration was good as well but just occasionally a bit difficult to follow when the volume rose & fell in places seemingly because the distance from the mike changed.
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- Jessie
- 05-12-23
Phenomenal listen!
Once I started I didn't want to stop listening. This is a book that anyone who is interested in Russia, the government , or Russia and US relations should listen to. Between the information provided in this book, and also in a book called Russians Among Us, US citizens should be very very wary of what they hear and what they believe.
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- Paul
- 07-20-08
The Russians are still coming
Here's a work that shows how naive Americans are about the intentions of the Russian state, especially under Vladimir Putin. After Gorbachev and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Russians were suddenly our friends. Think again. There's a reason why Putin, a former high-ranking KGB officer, still runs the show. This is an excellent story, well told and well-narrated. Strongly recommended for anyone with an interest in current affairs.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Andras
- 02-28-23
Great read
Fantastic insight into the KGB, and SVR. A fascinating story about espionage, geopolitics and personal insights from a communist turned capitalist.
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