Molehunt

Christopher Andrew

• Sword and Shield: Soviet Intelligence and Security Apparatus by Jeffrey Richelson
  Harper and Row, 279 pp, £11.95, February 1986, ISBN 0 88730 035 9
• The Red and the Blue: Intelligence, Treason and the University by Andrew Sinclair
  Weidenfeld, 240 pp, £12.95, June 1986, ISBN 0 297 78866 3
• Inside Stalin’s Secret Police: NKVD Politics 1936-39 by Robert Conquest
  Macmillan, 222 pp, £25.00, January 1986, ISBN 0 333 39260 4
• Conspiracy of Silence: The Secret Life of Anthony Blunt by Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman
  Grafton, 588 pp, £14.95, November 1986, ISBN 0 246 12200 5

The vast Soviet-bloc intelligence operation in the West is commonly supposed to consist mainly of running illegals, moles and other agents. In fact, the KGB probably spends more of its time reading the newspapers. Much of the intelligence which can be obtained only by covert means in the East is freely available through open sources in the West. A KGB officer in Washington might begin an average day by reading articles on defence and defence contractors in the Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal, then move on to more detailed scrutiny of Aviation Week and Space Technology, technical magazines and trade publications. By lunchtime the information he has acquired would be sufficient to provoke an espionage trial if gathered in the Soviet Union, where even the telephone directories are classified.