Alexander Orlov

By Edward P. Gazur

Subjects: Soviet Union. Komitet gosudarstvennoĭ bezopasnosti, Biography, Spies, Intelligence officers, Soviet Union, Soviet Espionage, United States, United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Defectors, Intelligence service, History

Description: "Executions, kidnappings, the assassination of Leon Trotsky, the plunder of gold from the Spanish treasury, Joseph Stalin's "horrible secret" - historical events and classified matters like these are cast in startling new light by KGB General Alexander Orlov, the subject of this riveting and unprecedented memoir by FBI Special Agent Edward Gazur.". "A veteran in East European counter-espionage investigations, Gazur was the final agent assigned to one of the FBI's most fascinating cases - that of the highest-ranking KGB defector ever, General Alexander Orlov. The two men met in 1971, and over the course of their debriefing sessions Gazur learned more of the astonishing details behind the story of Orlov's spectacular disappearance from Soviet intelligence at the height of the Spanish Civil War. With the mine of information he had amassed about his superiors and Stalin's official purges, Orlov fled in 1938 to the United States, where he lived in hiding from both the FBI and KGB for fifteen years. In 1953 he came in from the Cold War, and many of his revelations to the FBI about Stalin's Soviet and life behind the Iron Curtain later found their way into Orlov's best-selling book, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes, as well as a special issue of Life magazine.". "Gazur did more than debrief Orlov, however. He also befriended the Bolshevik general - and thus became the sole possessor and literary executor of Orlov's as yet unpublished memoir, "The March of Time," in which he recorded other, darker secrets about the dictator behind the brutal Soviet purges and repressive policies. Alexander Orlov: The FBI's KGB General reveals those secrets for the first time in a compelling and authentic account of Stalin's brutal regime and KGB operations in the Cold War. At the same time, it unfolds the chronicle of the FBI's investigation into the life and mysterious death of one man whom even Stalin feared."--BOOK JACKET.