cover image The Perfect English Spy: The Unknown Man in Charge During the Most Tumultuous, Scandal-Ridden Era in Espionage History

The Perfect English Spy: The Unknown Man in Charge During the Most Tumultuous, Scandal-Ridden Era in Espionage History

Tom Bower. St. Martin's Press, $26.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-312-13584-3

The only person to serve successively as chief of MI5 and SIS, Sir Dick White (1909-1993) dominated British intelligence for 35 years. With the cooperation of former U.S. and Soviet intelligence officers and interviews with White himself, Bower has written an authoritative account of the crises and scandals that plagued Britain's secret service throughout the Cold War, with emphasis on the defections of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Bower reveals White's central role in the major ``mole-hunt'' inspired by the CIA's counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton. To White's dismay, the hunt threw suspicion on Sir Roger Hollis, White's successor as director-general of the British security service, a suspicion that lingers still. The book covers White's expert handling of Oleg Penkovsky, perhaps the most important of all Soviet defectors, as well as White's long struggle to expose Kim Philby as a traitor. Readers will find an abundance of new material here on the rivalry between MI5 and SIS (roughly analogous to our CIA and FBI) and the compromise of their security procedures. Bower, who lives in England, wrote Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyons. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)