The Liar : How a Double Agent in the CIA Became the Cold War's Last Honest Man
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Overview
The Cold War meets Mad Men in the form of Karel Koecher, a double agent whose shifting loyalties and over-the-top hedonism reverberated from New York to Moscow.
In the mid-1970s, the CIA and KGB were both watching Karel Koecher closely--and they were both convinced he was working for the enemy. They were both right. Traveling with his wife, Hana, Koecher posed as a Czechoslovak asylum seeker and arrived in the US as a Communist sleeper agent. After parlaying a doctorate from Columbia into a job at the CIA, Koecher proceeded to operate as a double agent at the height of the Cold War.
Shunning a low profile, the Koechers embraced Manhattan's high life -- with cocaine, swinging and parties emblematic of the times and their penchant for risk. Hana, who was no more than a shy teenager when she arrived, grew into a sophisticated international diamond dealer that relayed messages to Karel's handlers. Riding a wave of euphoria, the Koechers felt unstoppable. But it was too good to last.
Using newly declassified documents, interrogation tapes and extraordinary first-hand accounts from the Koechers themselves, Cunningham reconstructs their double lives and the fading Cold War, where a strange moral fog made it hard to know what truth was being fought for, and to what end.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781668618233
- ISBN-10: 1668618230
- Publisher: Public Affairs
- Publish Date: August 2022
- Dimensions: 5.6 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.5 pounds
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