Summary of Eric Haseltine's The Spy in Moscow Station

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Sample Book Insights:

#1 Gus Hathaway, a case officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, was thinking of asking the National Security Agency for help with a problem in Moscow. The culture of the DO was to keep their mouths shut to outsiders, and the NSA had become CIA’s bureaucratic enemy over turf fights about which agency should collect signals intelligence.

#2 The previous year, the KGB had arrested two CIA assets in Moscow. One asset, a Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs staffer named Aleksandr Ogorodnik, had committed suicide during his interrogation at Lubyanka prison with the cyanide L pill his CIA case officer, Martha Peterson, had supplied him.

#3 The CIA had to operate in the heart of Moscow, where the KGB could bring every tool in its vast espionage arsenal to bear. The embassy staff, including guards, switchboard operators, travel coordinators, cooks, maids, and drivers, were all Soviet citizens who were guaranteed to be either KGB informants or outright KGB officers.

#4 The microwaves attacks continued, and the chimney scraping noises were heard by a secretary for the State Department’s Regional Security Office. She asked the Marine guards at the embassy to investigate, but they couldn’t see any birds or other animals in the chimney.