The Spy Who Knew Too Much
An Ex-CIA Officer’s Quest Through a Legacy of Betrayal
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Howard Blum writes history books that read like thrillers.”—New York Times
A retired spy gets back into the game to solve a perplexing case—and reconcile with his daughter, a CIA officer who married into the very family that derailed his own CIA career—in this compulsive true-life tale of vindication and redemption, filled with drama, intrigue, and mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Goodnight, It’s a real-life thriller whose stunning conclusion will make headline news.
On a sunlit morning in September 1978, a sloop drifts aimlessly across the Chesapeake Bay. The cabin reveals signs of a struggle, and “classified” documents, live 9 mm cartridges, and a top-secret “burst” satellite communications transmitter are discovered aboard. But where is the boat’s owner, former CIA officer John Paisley?
One man may hold the key to finding out. Tennent “Pete” Bagley was once a rising star in America’s spy aristocracy, and many expected he’d eventually become CIA director. But the star that burned so brightly exploded when Bagley—who suspected a mole had burrowed deep into the agency’s core—was believed himself to be the mole. After a year-long investigation, Bagley was finally exonerated, but the accusations tarnished his reputation and tainted his career.
When Bagley’s daughter Christina, a CIA analyst, married another intelligence officer who was the son of the man who had played a key role in the investigation into Bagley, it caused a painful rift between the two. But then came Paisley’s strange death. A murder? Suicide? Or something else? Pete, now a retired spy, launches his own investigation that takes him deep into his own past and his own longtime hunt for a mole. What follows is a relentless pursuit to solve a spy story—and an inspiring tale of a man reclaiming his reputation and his family. It’s a very personal quest that leads to a shocking conclusion.
The Spy Who Knew Too Much includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Did the KGB have a mole with access to some of the CIA's most sensitive information who was never caught? That tantalizing question is at the heart of this nail-biting account from former New York Times investigative reporter Blum (Night of the Assassins: The Untold Story of Hitler's Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin). Starting in 1950, Pete Bagley was the deputy head of the CIA's Soviet Bloc division and came to suspect that Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected to the U.S. soon after President Kennedy's assassination, was a plant, but was unable to persuade his superiors of that conclusion. Instead, Bagley himself came under suspicion of providing intelligence to the Soviets. Bagley searched for the real mole and continued his hunt even after leaving the CIA in 1972. The suspicious death of John Paisley, a CIA analyst whose body was found in Chesapeake Bay in 1978, ruled a suicide despite contrary evidence, led Bagley to pursue clues that Paisley was the mole—and that Nosenko had "defected" to help conceal Paisley's treachery. Blum's access to Bagley's writings and a myriad of other sources enables him to craft a page-turning narrative. This reads like a John le Carré novel come to life.
