PETER WRIGHT - Spycatcher (the Candid autobiography)

New York, NY, U.S.A., Viking Penguin Group, 1987. First US Edition, Binding: Cloth & Boards, Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall 0670820555 Hardback Hardcover FEP removed Peter Wright initially joined Britain's Secret Service, known as MI5 in 1955 in the capacity of the organization's principal scientist, and devoted himself in the early years to the invention of various gadgets for use in the espionage trade. Along the way, he deomstrated a brilliant flair for the art of counter-intelligence. The identity of the so-called Fifth Man Soviet spy puzzled and fascinated many for decades. In Spycatcher, Peter Wright shares his conviction that the Fifth Man was none other than Sir Roger Hollis, long the head of MI5 itself!. The story of how he and many of his MI5 colleagues came to this conclusion makes for some of the best reading found anywhere in the vast literature on espionage. As a result of a great many trips Peter Wright made to the United States in his capacity as Britain's principal liason with American intelligence officials, his book is replete with sharply etched and sometimes humerous anecdotes about such notables as J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, Bill Sullivan, William Harvey, and, above all, James Jesus Angleton, Wright's insights about the CIA and the FBI, their relationships with each other, with the rest of the U.S. government, and with America's allies is riveting stuff. American interest ought to be especially aroused by Peter Wright's charge that there was a conspiracy within MI5 to overthrow then Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the mid-1970s, and that it was instigated from within the CIA. Wright's memoirs is also of interest because it is a firsthand account of the bugging of embassies (of friend and foe alike), as well as other aspects of electronic eavesdropping, codebreaking, and "wet" affairs (assassinations). But the most important aspect of this book is that it offers a rare inside glimpse of the real day-to-day goings-on within the intelligence world over a long period of time from a very high-level, authorative voice. Illustrated.