In the Belly of the Bear

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a historic turning point when many, especially those who grew up during the Cold War, began to let go of their long-held fears and embrace feelings of hope for the future. That included agents of the FBI, who were, by necessity, busy building bridges with their former adversaries in response to a flood of Russian criminals pouring into the United States. In The Belly of the Bear chronicles this collaboration through the eyes of a key FBI agent who was on the frontlines in Russia. Jeff Iverson explores obstacles he and his colleagues faced on our former rivals’ home turf, including counterintelligence challenges that have traditionally posed a danger to American government officials and/or businesspeople traveling to Russia. Part cultural history, part international relations thriller, Iverson’s account details successful criminal and terrorism investigations between the FBI and former Soviet authorities, and the nature of the FBI’s fraught relationship with one of those agencies — the FSB, Russia’s modern-day version of the Soviet KGB. Iverson closes with a focus on the worrying parallels between Russia’s return to autocracy and our current American political discourse. This book will appeal to readers interested in the history of US and Russian relations as well and the history of the FBI.
Jeffrey Iverson spent twenty-two years as a Special Agent of the FBI. The last half of his career was devoted exclusively to events in the former Soviet Union as a street agent working Russian organized crime, supervisor of the Russian organized crime squad in San Francisco, and as Legal Attaché in charge of FBI offices at US embassies in Central Asia and Moscow. Throughout those years, he was also an instructor at the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, where he taught former Soviet bloc police managers on strategies to dismantle organized criminal enterprises.

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