Espionage: The Greatest Spy Operations of the Twentieth Century

This collection of espionage and intelligence stories will entertain a wide variety of readers. Each chapter is a good yarn, from the reconstruction of the ULTRA operation, in which the British solved German coded communications, giving the Allies advance warning of Hitler's military intentions, to the misbegotten OSS operation called Cornflakes, which sought to disrupt German morale with altered postage stamps (``a purely lunatic intelligence enterprise that used vast resources to accomplish absolutely nothing''). Other episodes include the Allied deception that convinced the Germans the Normandy landings were a feint, the intelligence disaster at Pearl Harbor, the story of the Walker family spy ring and the ``mole wars'' between the KGB and the CIA. Volkman (Warriors of the Night) offers a memorable depiction of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, rescuer of Hungarian Jews from the Gestapo; the circumstances of his disappearance in 1945 remain a mystery despite the Russian archival material the author quotes regarding Wallenberg's death. Photos. (Sept.)