NO DATELINE APPEARANCE FOR ME

The producer who interviewed me for DATELINE about Sergei Tretyakov told me today that I will NOT be on the program Sunday when it airs. The show is about the ten Russian illegals who were shipped back to Moscow and since I told DATELINE that Sergei Tretyakov was not responsible for tipping off the FBI about the case (read this post), I am ending up on the cutting room floor.

I guess I should have fudged.

Meanwhile if you want to read more about Sergei and his career check out these stories:

The New York Times

The Washington Post

There is also more information in my book, Comrade J. The piece of literature in which Sergei and I became friends as well as collaborators.

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

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.

A Never Ending Debate

Mental Health America asked me to moderate a thought-provoking panel that featured four nationally-known activists during its annual convention in Washington D.C.

Kay Redfield Jamison doesn’t need an introduction.  Her memoir,  An Unquiet Mind, was the first book I read after my son, Mike, became ill, and it spent five months on the New York Times bestseller list.  She is not only brilliant and well-spoken, but also unassuming.

The other three panelists were new to me.

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NAMI Changed My Life

When I was a Washington Post reporter, I did not believe in joining groups or organizations. I needed to be independent in order to be objective. Then my son, Mike, got sick and the first thing I did after I finished writing my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, was join the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI.)

Why?

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