Home » Family of Spies

Sergei Tretyakov, Nathan Hale, and Benedict Arnold? Is there a difference between our traitors and their’s?

by
The CIA turncoat, Aldrich Ames told me that one country’s traitor is another country’s hero.
But is that true?
Ames said it was true because the end result was betrayal — the breaking of an oath and allegiance to one’s homeland.

Sergei Tretyakov, Russian Spy ‘Comrade J,’ Dead at 53

by
I am sorry to announce that my good friend, Sergei Tretyakov, the subject of my book, Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War, died unexpectedly on June 13th in his home with his wife, Helen.
Sergei was 53.
Helen asked those of us who were his friends to not immediately reveal his death until an autopsy could be performed under the supervision of the FBI. She was concerned that Sergei’s former colleagues in Russia’s SVR, which replaced the KGB as Russia’s foreign intelligence service, might attempt to use his unexpected death for propaganda purposes.

Publishers and Money

by
A friend in publishing sent me an email saying he felt my blog entitled Do Publishers Owe Us More was unfair. You might recall that I suggested that publishers had an obligation to print books exposing social problems even if those books might not be profitable.
“70 % of all books published do not earn back their advances,” my friend wrote. “What other business operates with those losses? To incur more losses – regardless of the importance of the subject matter – would further weaken the industry.”
I’ve always been suspicious of that 70% figure.  Here’s why.Click to continue…