This was a really well done historical nonfiction book, it has a strong concept and was invested in what was being told. The true crime element worked well and was glad it was so well written from Shaun Walker.

Paranoia of Russian Spies Prevents Stopping Legitimate Threats

The “Introduction” begins fittingly with the description of a family going out to dinner in DC and suddenly being busted by shouts, “FBI!” The lesson seems to be: the FBI is paranoid, and has arrested a good random family going about non-criminal tasks of life… But no: the blurb insists this is an example some of the worst criminality in human history… On the next page, there is somewhat of an explanation, a woman who seemed to be the “friendly… Ann Foley” is neither of these things because “She was dead. The real Ann Foley… died seven weeks” after her birth in 1962. As most books of this sort, this one will attempt to prove that the mere use of identity-fraud and passing as a non-Russian is proof of espionage. Such books almost never give any concrete examples of just what these spies achieve after all that education that goes into training them in linguistics etc. A page later there is a broad definition: “The fundamental role of intelligence agencies is to obtain information about other countries not available through open channels.” There is very little of this that can now be found only through migration. There’s plenty of info confessed on social media, and hackers have posted entire private databases of corporations online.
I checked the “Contents” to see if the interior has any meat. Alright, this helps me to understand what these illegals previously did: the assassination of Leon Trotsky (in South America), some assassinations and sabotage in Nazi Germany, and an attempted assassination of Tito. These are kind of standard military intelligence operations with clear enemies being taken out to serve a political agenda, or to start opposition. Obviously, if there are any assassins operating in or outside of Russia, they should be stopped. But then there is the case in chapter “11: The Illegals Go Public: The Abel Trial and the CIA’s First Illegals”. Abel was charged with illegal immigration, being a spy, and “conspiracy to transmit military and atomic secrets”. By this point in 1957 the relatively innocent Rosenbergs were already executed. While these cases from the early USSR are formidable, recently Russia seems to be play-acting at espionage without achieving any great military or political victories through espionage. Russia is still assassinating some of its greatest minds, in prison, or outside. But there are no cases listed in the titles of later chapters that might clearly point to just what all the Russian-spy-hunting by the CIA or FBI is uncovering. The game recently seems to be to file espionage charges against mostly innocent people to use them as bargaining chips in spy-exchanges (on both sides: US and Russia). The 2016 election meddling seems to be a case where Russia took the fault for Republicans’ election-manipulation to put an unqualified and generally repulsive man into the presidency. Russia seems to have helped because they found a rarely completely corruptible guy to support, but Trump did not exactly repay them during his term, as the US has been sponsoring Ukraine’s war against Russia since Trump’s term (Crimea was invaded before he took office). In Russia, the media seems to be more active in outing such media-manipulations, including disclosing the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a troll factory in St. Petersburg: “hundreds of paid workers… cranking out comments on social media that buttressed Kremlin messaging”. There are similar bot/troll-farms that spew support for corrupt American politicians (Democrat and Republican). There are just few American newspapers that mention these enough for them to seem as nefarious as they are. Modern politics, and especially modern espionage drives the world away from “intelligence” and towards universal idiocy. Whatever is the worst possible outcome for average humans is apparently good for those few guys who want to be tyrants or oligarchs. People of the world should see villains in those few who pay for such manipulations to favor their capitalist interests, instead of demonizing whole countries. Troll/bot-farms is a major problem that has been a problem for decades, as these tend to create false beliefs about politics that allow for the corruption of the democratic process. No dent has been made in stopping these across the world, as instead their mere identification has been used to point fingers against regimes, and not against responsible funders.
—Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Fall 2024: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-fall-2024