Portland Public Library

The spy who changed history, the untold story of how the Soviet Union stole America's top secrets, Svetlana Lokhova

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

individual biography

mapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

The spy who changed history

bibliography

1120722130

Svetlana Lokhova

the untold story of how the Soviet Union stole America's top secrets

"On the trail of Soviet infiltrator Stanislav Shumovsky, codenamed Agent BLÉRIOT, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a thrilling journey through Stalin's most audacious intelligence operation. On a sunny September day in 1931, a Soviet spy walked down the gangplank of the luxury transatlantic liner SS Europa and into New York. Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enroll at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education. Recognizing Russia was 100 years behind the encircling capitalist powers, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had sent Shumovsky on a mission to acquire America's vital secrets to help close the USSR's yawning technology gap. The road to victory began in the classrooms and laboratories of MIT. Following his lead, other MIT-trained Soviet spies helped acquire the secrets of the Manhattan Project. By 1949, Stalin's fleet of TU-4s, now equipped with atomic bombs could devastate the US on his command. Appropriately codenamed BLÉRIOT, Shumovsky was an aviation spy. Shumovsky's espionage was so successful that the USSR acquired every American aviation secret from his network of agents in factories and at top secret military research institutes. In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a journey through Stalin's most audacious intelligence operation. She pieces together every aspect of Shumovsky's life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives, exposing how even Shirley Temple and Franklin D. Roosevelt unwittingly advanced his schemes."--Amazon.com

Introduction -- 'Son of the working people' -- 'We catch up or they will crush us' -- 'What the country needs is a real big laugh' -- 'Agent 001' -- 'A nice fellow to talk to' -- 'Is this really my motherland?' -- 'Questionable from conception' -- 'The wily Armenian' -- Whistle stop inspections -- Glory to Stalin's falcons -- Back in the USSR -- Project 'AIR' -- ENORMOZ -- Mission accomplished