A TRAFFIC OF SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200560002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Sequence Number: 2
• Content Type: MAGAZINE (OPEN SOURCE)

Approved For Relea 2969p(1 Pa1 f88-0135
A trb i `c of c) pies
SPY T (?A[:1?.
'By E. I-1. Cookridge.
Hodder and Stoughton. 288 pages.
#2.50.
GtNLEN: SPY OF'li-12 C::N-rU21Y
By E. H. Cook ridgo.
Hodder and Stoughton. 424 pages.
#3.75.
The beauty of spies is in the eye of
the beholder. Mine are fine, Until
they get caught. Yours are black-
guards ; or so, at least, governments
and spy 'trial judges conventionally
pretend. In the eyes of most of us
spies are -remote outsiders, though
worth a second glance should you ever
surely recognise one.. And Mr Cook-
ridge observes in the opening chapter
of " Spy Trade " that it is not only
the richly ornamental spy of-fiction
who excites pleasurable curiosity.
How it happens that many a " real
life " spy has been able to turn profit-
able publicist instead of having to
languish in jail for as long as his
captors had originally intended he
should, is amply explained in " Spy
Trade." The author discusses over a
score of postwar cases of governments
bartering captive foreign agents
against their own incarcerated men.
For in the end, it seems, no govern-
ment is quite so beastly as to disown
altogether a man who has supplied it
with valuable intelligence,' however dis-
reputable he may have been made to
look subsequently.
A delicate matter in?these exchanges
is the comparative worth of the
hostages. available. When equally big
fish are' not at hand several small fry
have the good luck to be thrown in
to balance the scales. Mr Cookridge
devotes seven of his 21 chapters to the
intricate circumstances in which
Moscow' exploited the windfall of Mr
..Gary Powers and, the U-2 shot clown
over Siberia to effect the release in
February, icf62, of Colonel Rudolf
Ivanovich Abel, the highly competent.
Soviet spy in the United States, who
had been sent to prison for. 30 years.
Among other comparable cases con- .
sidered by the author are those of
Messrs Greville Wynne and Gordon
Lonsdale, the Krogers and Mr Gerald
Brooke, and Mr Alfred Frenzel, (a
'rncaltiu-ie-minded Bundestag deputy
who had sold defence secrets to the
Warsaw Pact coiuntries) and the com-
paratively insignificant west German
archaeologist, Frat; Martina Kischke.
The book is aptly illustrated with 40
photographs.
Like the rest of us, spies are mostly
weird birds, variously impelled by the
exigencies not only of mating, feed-
ing and drinking (preferably the hard
stuff) but also by patriotism, religious
or political belief, some personal
grievance against society, or, above all,
by the desire to be somebody different
and. important. Even- the fabulously
competent and studiedly aloof General
Gehlen displays in his recently pub-
lished autobiography an undignified
itch to play to the gallery, not merely
for the lolly. -that t knowled ,eable
agent (literary) can rake from the
international market but also for
personal vindication in the face of
latter-day disparagement.
Mr Cookridge, perhaps in deference
to his publishers, calls his other book
Gehlen : Spy of the Century.". But
in fact Reinhard Gehlen himself
never crossed 'a frontier tp spy out'
the nakedness, of the land' of military
apparel. General Gelilen controlled a
far-reaching network. of agents' and
shrewdly fitted their bits and pieces
of information into a'cohcrent picture.
In Berlin, during 'the second world
Nvur, he was the organiser and
co-ordinator of intelligence or t e.'
Wehrmacht on the eastern front. (It,
was not his fault that 1-litler dis-
regarded unpleasant news.) In.Bavaria,
after the war; Gehlcn put: his exper-
ience and knowledge at the disposal
of. the west, first the, United States,
and then the Federal German
I.Repiublic. As head of the Federal
Intelligence Service he tapped sources
of invaluable information ? from
the rival cast German Democratic
Republic, especially in the days when
it was expanding much of its " People's
Police " into. a " People's Army "
tutored by Soviet officers. In March,
1968, Gehlcn was the first to predict,
on the strength of contacts in the
Soviet Union, that Moscow would dis-
place the Dubc.ek regirire in PraV-ue by
force. Eventually he came in for heavy
public ct'iticisrn for high-handed ways
and undiscriminating choice of staff,
including some former SS officers and
such costly double agents as Heinz
Felfe:
It is in all a fascinating story and
Mr Cookridgc tells it well. The text
is adequately documented. But there
are a. few mildly irritating mistakes.
Herr Brandt, for-instance, spells ? his
first name Willy not Willi. And there
cannot have been a rendezvous at
Milestone to-1 on the autobahn ; there
are only kilometre posts.
STATINTL
Approved For Release 2006/Q6/19: CIA-R?P88-0135OR000200560002-1