BIOLOGICAL ESPIONAGE: Special Operations of the Soviet and Foreign Intelligence Services in the West

This modest and readable memoir comes from a former officer of Department 12 of the Soviet KGB's foreign intelligence branch. Department 12 had two duties: conducting biological warfare and spying on everybody else's biowar efforts. Joining the KGB after army service and college in the early '80s, the author became a specialist in running spies, particularly the famous "illegals" who might spend most of their working lives abroad. The efforts of the illegals gave the KGB a steady flow of information on foreign biological research, weapons procurement, immunology and other related subjects (the Human Genome Project was a major target). Department 12's work became particularly demanding after DNA research led to genetic tailoring of biowar agents, then became impossible after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After 9/11, Kouzminov and his wife left Russia with the hope of participating in international cooperation against biological warfare. The author does a good job of portraying the labyrinthine bureaucracy and paranoid secrecy of the espionage world, and he is informative about tradecraft. One wishes he could have told more about people like his wife and the avuncular KGB grouch General Drozdov (who played a large role in the Afghanistan invasion), but the book still offers a useful addition to the literature of late Cold War espionage. (Jan.)