"The Cold War: a time when microdots and wiretaps were the height of espionage technology, when weapons of mass destruction threatened the end of the world, and where the ability to break a code could mean the difference between stopping a war and starting one. But in this fifty-year conflict between America and Russia, the most valuable weapons were people, not spy gadgets. From suave MI6 officers to cheerful families in Moscow to traitorous KGB...

According to KGB archives, Pavel Sudoplatov directed the secretive Administration for Special Tasks. This department was responsible for kidnapping, assassination, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare during World War II; it also set up illegal networks in the United States and Western Europe, and, most crucially, carried out atomic espionage in the United States, great Britain, and Canada. Sudoplatov served the KGB for over fifty years, at one point controlling...