Soviet Union

Season 5 of the acclaimed FX Series The Americans has returned after a 9-month hiatus, and it might be hard to follow if you start at this point.  I’ve watched religiously over the past four seasons, and I found the new episode hard to understand, at least for the first ...

The Cipher Brief sat down with David Hoffman to discuss his new book, The Billion Dollar Spy.  He gave us his thoughts on storytelling and what he’s learned after years of covering Russia as a journalist. The Cipher Brief:  How did you make the transition from journalism to writing books ...

The Cipher Brief sat down with Rob Richer, the CIA's former Associate Deputy Director for Operations, to talk about the evolution of espionage and the value of human intelligence. TCB: Does Hoffman’s book, the Tolkachev story, bring you back to the good old days of the Cold War? RR: First of ...

For years, when I was asked to describe the intensity of the relationship between a CIA handler and his/her foreign sources, I would often refer to a seminal spy case handled on the streets of Moscow in the early 1980s.  I told the story of an agent whose efforts to ...