Best of Enemies

The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War

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By Eric Dezenhall

By Gus Russo

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$11.99

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$15.99 CAD

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The thrilling story of two Cold War spies, CIA case officer Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko — improbable friends at a time when they should have been anything but.

In 1978, CIA maverick Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko were new arrivals on the Washington, DC intelligence scene, with Jack working out of the CIA’s counterintelligence office and Gennady out of the Soviet Embassy. Both men, already notorious iconoclasts within their respective agencies, were assigned to seduce the other into betraying his country in the urgent final days of the Cold War, but instead the men ended up becoming the best of friends-blood brothers. Theirs is a friendship that never should have happened, and their story is chock full of treachery, darkly comic misunderstandings, bureaucratic inanity, the Russian Mafia, and landmark intelligence breakthroughs of the past half century.

In Best of Enemies, two espionage cowboys reveal how they became key behind-the-scenes players in solving some of the most celebrated spy stories of the twentieth century, including the crucial discovery of the Soviet mole Robert Hanssen, the 2010 Spy Swap which freed Gennady from Soviet imprisonment, and how Robert De Niro played a real-life role in helping Gennady stay alive during his incarceration in Russia after being falsely accused of spying for the Americans. Through their eyes, we see the distinctions between the Russian and American methods of conducting espionage and the painful birth of the new Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, dreams he can roll back to the ideals of the old USSR.

Genre:

On Sale
Oct 2, 2018
Page Count
352 pages
Publisher
Twelve
ISBN-13
9781538761328

Eric Dezenhall

About the Author

Eric Dezenhall is the author of ten books, including Glass Jaw: A Manifesto for Defending Fragile Reputations in an Age of Instant Scandal, and Damage Control: Why Everything You Know about Crisis Management Is Wrong (with John Weber). He has written for publications including the New York TimesWall Street JournalWashington PostLA TimesNew Republic, and Huffington Post.

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Gus Russo

About the Author

Gus Russo is the author of nine books, including Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America’s Hidden Power Brokers and The OutfitThe Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Making of Modern America. He has written for theBaltimore SunNationWashington PostBook ForumVariety, and Huffington Post.

 

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