The Spy in Moscow Station

June 15, 2019
A National Security Agency engineer attempts to uncover a leak in the American Embassy in Moscow in this real-life Cold War thriller. In 1978, Gus Hathaway, the CIA chief of station at the U.S. Embassy in the Soviet capital, made an unconventional decision that was unlikely to win him either friends or approval: He asked another intelligence agency, the National Security Agency, for help. The stakes for Hathaway, though, were immeasurably high--the KGB was discovering and executing American assets, and he suspected a leak somewhere within the Moscow embassy. It was a reasonable hypothesis, as the "KGB bugging of the embassy was an accepted fact of life." Also, he knew that the KGB transmitted microwaves into the most information-sensitive areas of the building, although the CIA couldn't figure out why. To make matters worse, American operatives discovered that a chimney shaft, from which one could sometimes hear "mysterious scraping noises," wasn't connected to any actual fireplaces; it was likely a KGB listening post of some kind. Hathaway recruited the help of Charles Gandy, an engineer at the NSA who'd risen to the highest levels of civilian authority and was a ranking member of R9, a group considered the "most prestigious and glamorous at NSA." Haseltine (Brain Safari, 2018, etc.), with all the painstaking scrupulousness of an investigative journalist, details Gandy's remarkable efforts to produce a "smoking gun" that could prove the Soviets were spying on the embassy--evidence that could justify a complex countermission that he himself had designed. Haseltine is a former director of research for the NSA--his boss there, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, contributes a foreword--and his expertise is beyond reproach. His research here is breathtaking, drawing on a bevy of sources, including his own interviews with Gandy as well as declassified U.S. governmental documents, often reproduced here at great length. In fact, his thoroughness can be a bit overwhelming at times; readers will often find themselves buried under mounds of minute detail, much of it forbiddingly technical. Even so, the story as a whole has all the power and intrigue of a cinematic thriller. In one memorable scene, for instance, Gandy was visited in his working quarters at the embassy by a "KGB honey trap," a beautiful woman who attempted to gain access to his room; no one could figure out how she--and her male escort--managed to make it past embassy guards. The story isn't only about the contest between Americans and Russians, but also about the turf-war rivalry of the CIA and the NSA. One declassified CIA memorandum, in shockingly explicit terms, notes the "NSA's new feeling of importance" and its "ceaseless effort to assert itself more vigorously in the intelligence process." Gandy, in particular, emerges as a captivatingly complicated figure--endlessly motivated to defeat his adversaries but also impressed by their ingenuity. The book ends with provocative reflections on what Americans can learn from the Russians about espionage today and on interagency cooperation. An immersive, dramatic, and historically edifying work.

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October 15, 2018

Former director of research at the National Security Agency (NSA), Haseltine tells the story of NSA engineer Charles Gandy, who was accused of spying by the Soviets at a time when the NSA did not officially exist. Evidently, there was a leak in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

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