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The Main Enemy

By: Milton Bearden, James Risen
Narrated by: Christopher Lane
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Publisher's Summary

A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, The Main Enemy is the dramatic inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them.

Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose through the ranks to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War. The clandestine operations they masterminded took them from the sewers of Moscow to the back streets of Baghdad, from Cairo and Havana to Prague and Berlin, but the action centers on Washington, starting in the infamous "Year of the Spy"--when, one by one, the CIA’s agents in Moscow began to be killed, up through to the very last man.

Behind the scenes with the CIA's covert operations in Afghanistan, Milt Bearden led America to victory in the secret war against the Soviets, and for the first time he reveals here what he did and whom America backed, and why. Bearden was called back to Washington after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and was made chief of the Soviet/East European Division—just in time to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe, and the implosion of the Soviet Union.

Laced with startling revelations--about fail-safe top-secret back channels between the CIA and KGB, double and triple agents, covert operations in Berlin and Prague, and the fateful autumn of 1989--The Main Enemy is history at its action-packed best.

©2018 Milton Bearden and James Risen (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

What listeners say about The Main Enemy

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Really interesting

If you’re into stories from the Cold War, particularly during the 1980s then you can’t get much better than this. Really enjoyed it and it covered a number of different incidents, well worth a listen.

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Poorly written

Full of boring unconsequential anecdotes and sadly lacking in vital key facts needed to make a coherent narrative. Appallingly disjointed. Written by a journalist aiming for a word count rather than by an expert giving a cohesive and accurate story.

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1 person found this helpful

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