The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West

In this credible and compelling memoir written with Montaigne, former head of the Philadelphia Inquirer 's Moscow bureau, Kalugin recalls how, in 1958, while a Fulbright exchange student in America, he recruited his first spy--a coup for a KGB novice. Later, in Washington, with a cover job as Soviet press attache, he cultivated ``moles'' and other intelligence assets, and helped handle American spy John Walker (``a huge catch''). Stationed in Moscow, Kalugin became a protege of KGB chief Yuri Andropov and eventually was appointed head of the Foreign Counterintelligence Directorate. His detailed account of the use of sexual entrapment includes the revelation that the KGB virtually controlled the Russian Orthodox Church through the blackmail of its many gay priests. By 1990, concluding that the organization he helped to build was ``rotten beyond salvation,'' Kalugin threw in his lot with the democratic reformers. He is the highest-ranking KGB officer to expose its inner workings. Photos. (Sept.)