The Spy Who Was Left Out In The Cold by Tim Tate

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

When the cold war was taking place after World War II, the Allies and the Soviet Bloc were all vying for information and intelligence. The stories of the Cambridge spy ring and others are well known, but apart from the odd one or two Soviet spies, like, Oleg Tsarev not much is known about those that chose to betray their home nations. One of those who almost nothing is known about is Michal Goleniewski.

By those in the world of smoke and mirrors, he was considered to be one of the most important spies of the Cold War. He has been written out of the official histories of this time, but Tim Tate thought that there was a story in there that still needed to be told.

In this fascinating book, he has drawn on a ream of documents that until now had not been published. These documents show how this unknown individual began passing Soviet and Polish secrets to the west in 1958. The intelligence that he provided exposed hundreds of agents working in the West. He exposed the Portland Spy ring, and numerous others, including a NATO office and agents working in the States. His information was gold dust, As their agents were blown, the KGB was starting to follow the trail of secrets. He knew that he didn’t have long and made the decision to defect.

The plan to extract him was put into place but was complicated by him wanting to bring his mistress, but it worked and he was soon to set foot in America, but wouldn’t be a free man for a while yet. He brought with him vast quantities of documents that he had snaffled just before he left, and the CIA poured over these. He was given a new identity and effectively disappeared from the clutches of the KGB and their goons. But the Americans squandered their asset and his expert knowledge was overlooked in favour of another defector whose material was mostly fiction.

Tim Tate has written a fine book about Michal Goleniewski and this is a tribute to the work he did. The writing is good, it feels like the research has been painstakingly undertaken and he tries not to sensationalise the man, but rather looks at him with a considered view. He also shows just how misguided the CIA were that they would not trust this guy who had provided vast quantities of material that could be verified and yet trusted this other defector. If you want to learn about a spy who is very little known about then this is a great book to read.