The Spy Who Knew Too Much: An Ex-CIA Officer’s Quest Through a Legacy of Betrayal

Did the KGB have a mole with access to some of the CIA’s most sensitive information who was never caught? That tantalizing question is at the heart of this nail-biting account from former New York Times investigative reporter Blum (Night of the Assassins: The Untold Story of Hitler’s Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin). Starting in 1950, Pete Bagley was the deputy head of the CIA’s Soviet Bloc division and came to suspect that Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected to the U.S. soon after President Kennedy’s assassination, was a plant, but was unable to persuade his superiors of that conclusion. Instead, Bagley himself came under suspicion of providing intelligence to the Soviets. Bagley searched for the real mole and continued his hunt even after leaving the CIA in 1972. The suspicious death of John Paisley, a CIA analyst whose body was found in Chesapeake Bay in 1978, ruled a suicide despite contrary evidence, led Bagley to pursue clues that Paisley was the mole—and that Nosenko had “defected” to help conceal Paisley’s treachery. Blum’s access to Bagley’s writings and a myriad of other sources enables him to craft a page-turning narrative. This reads like a John le Carré novel come to life. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (June)