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List Price: $29.95 | | Publisher: Thorndike Press
Salesrank: 2304550
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| Our Price: $58.67 |
| Used Price: $0.36 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
Cassidy's Run is the riveting story of one of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War--an espionage operation mounted by Washington against the Soviet Union that ran for twenty-three years. At the highest levels of the government, its code name was Operation shocker.
Lured by a double agent working for the United States, ten Russian spies, including a professor at the University of Minnesota, his wife, and a classic "sleeper" spy in New York City, were sent by Moscow to penetrate America's secrets. Two FBI agents were killed, and secret formulas were passed to the Russians in a dangerous ploy that could have spurred Moscow to create the world's most powerful nerve gas.
Cassidy's Run tells this extraordinary true story for the first time, following a trail that leads from Washington to Moscow, with detours to Florida, Minnesota, and Mexico. Based on documents secret until now and scores of interviews in the United States and Russia, the book reveals that:
¸ more than 4,500 pages of classified documents, including U.S. nerve gas formulas, were passed to the Soviet Union in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars
¸ an "Armageddon code," a telephone call to a number in New York City, was to alert the sleeper spy to an impending nuclear attack--a warning he would transmit to the Soviets by radio signal from atop a rock in Central Park
¸ two FBI agents were killed when their plane crashed during surveillance of one of the Soviet spies as he headed for the Canadian border
¸ secret "drops" for microdots were set up by Moscow from New York to Florida to Washington
More than a cloak-and-dagger tale, Cassidy's Run is the spellbinding story of one ordinary man, Sergeant Joe Cassidy, not trained as a spy, who suddenly found himself the FBI's secret weapon in a dangerous clandestine war.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR CASSIDY'S RUN
"Cassidy's Run shows, once again, that few writers know the ins and outs of the spy game like David Wise. . . his research is meticulous in this true story of espionage that reads like a thriller."
--Dan Rather
"The Master hsa done it again. David Wise, the best observer and chronicler of spies there is, has told another gripping story. This one comes from the cold war combat over nerve gas and is spookier than ever because it's all true."
--Jim Lehrer
Description of Cassidy's Run: The Secret Spy War over Nerve Gas:
David Wise has written three spy novels and a number of nonfiction books about U.S. intelligence and espionage, and in Cassidy's Run he vividly merges both genres to create a true story that reads like a thriller. In 1959, Joseph Cassidy was an ordinary army sergeant with no training in intelligence or espionage when he was handpicked by the FBI to operate as a double agent. He spent the next 20 years passing U.S.-approved information to the Soviets about chemical and biological weapons and U.S. troop movements. Dubbed Operation Shocker, some of the information he passed involved an experimental, unstable nerve gas that U.S. scientists believed could not be used. This assumption proved to be a high-stakes gamble since much accurate information was mixed with the false in order to lend credence to the charade. U.S. intelligence may never know whether the information they gave the Soviets actually spurred on Russian chemical weapons development. Part of the objective of the operation was to uncover the Soviets' spy network, and in this respect it was successful, eventually flushing out 10 agents living in the United States. Throughout his time as a double agent, only Cassidy's wife knew of his activities--even his children were unaware--allowing him to retire quietly in Florida with his friends and relatives none the wiser. Cassidy's Run is a fascinating tale of cold-war intrigue publicly unknown until now. --Linda Killian
Cassidy's Run: The Secret Spy War over Nerve Gas Reviews:
Interesting Story At Several Levels 
2005-12-27 - Wise wrote an interesting account covering many years. The factual components of the story appear well researched. However, the author wanders off into speculation that the materials supplied by double agent Cassidy actually caused the USSR to develop more deadly nerve gas. Given the now disclosed facts that the USSR had a massive chemical and biological research and production effort, it is unlikely that any of the well scrubbed stuff given to the USSR had any real impact.
What is outstanding is the appreciation for the level of effort and detail put into a spy case. The endgame is very inconclusive as the two Mexican leftists who were engaged in espionage on behalf of the USSR were allowed to depart the US and escape prosecution. Probably because the case came to a head at an inopportune time when the FBI was being scrutinized for searches and intelligence gathering related to anti war activists.
Cassidy, a non commissioned officer in the Army, does a great job under tremendous stress in convincing the Russians that he is really a loyal ( or at least loyal to the dollars offered) agent. Hollow rocks, microdots, shortwave radios, scanning cameras and invisible ink are all introduced into the process.
Highly recommended.
Informative, interesting and accurate 
2005-08-31 - This book is very informative and it is accurate as far as I know. It is interesting because it tells a real story, an important story that had wider repercussions than most people probably realize.
Uncle Joe
2004-04-07 - An awesome book about my Uncle Joe. Most of the family didn't know for years what he endured. This book is a great tribute to our family history. Our family is very proud. I doubt this review will help you much in deciding whether or not to buy the book, but several of my friends have read it and had a hard time putting it down until finished.
More details would be fine
2003-11-16 - Although this book does not reveal the precise chemical formulas for the Novichok class of nerve agents it introduces into the hidden world of russian chem-bio weapon designers. The intelligence still fears to make public that Novichoks belong to organophosporus compounds containing the double halogenated oxime like -O-N=C(F)Cl group and that beside P.P.Kirpichev also I.V.Martnov and Yu.A.Kruglak from GosNIOKhT developed the principle of these extremely toxic OP oximes during the mid 60's already (and published also) which resist reactivation by other oximes. These chemicals an be made by heating only of substituted 1,3,2-dioxaphospholanes indicated slighly in this book. Hopefully int'l organizations will make public more details for the protection of other citizens than just army soldiers soon.
A True and Well Written Story of a 20 Year Double Agent
2003-05-14 - This is an amazing story from the very real (and too soon slipping from memory) Cold War. It is principally the story of Joe Cassidy, a rather normal sergeant in the US Army, who was recruited to become a dangle for a Soviet Agent. The ploy worked and Cassidy became a double agent for more than twenty years. Of course, these kinds of stories rather quickly become rather entangled with lots of personalities and different threads of action. The author, David Wise, does an especially fine job in telling this tale and helping us keep straight who is doing what when and to whom.
The details of surveillance and spycraft are fascinating because they are so mundane but in their context seem so strange. This story demonstrates so many of the critical factors in running a counter intelligence operation: the importance of selecting the right agent (in this case Joe Cassidy), the necessity of patience and letting some things slip away in order to keep after the big thing, the chess like thinking of move and countermove in planning operations, the never-quite-sure aspects of whom to trust and what is real or what is a plant, and the role of just plain dumb luck. It isn't like Hollywood, but in many ways is more strange than a movie. If you tried to put some of this stuff in a movie people would complain that it was too far fetched. Yet this is all real.
The book also has some rather chilling information on Nerve Agents, which was the whole point of this many year effort by the FBI and other government agencies. It also has a lot of fascinating information on the devices of spy tradecraft including hollow rocks, rollover cameras, dead drops, micro dots, secret writing, and more.
Because the book is so well written it is a rather easy read. This is a real achievement because of the complexity of the story, but David Wise has long experience as a skilled reporter and writer about intelligence work and knows how to tell these tales. I recommend this book to everyone because it is just plain interesting, because I believe we should keep the reality and sacrifices of the Cold War in our collective memory, and because real people paid with their lives for our security.
