Special tasks : the memoirs of an unwanted witness - a Soviet spymaster

According to KGB archives, Pavel Sudoplatov directed the secretive Administration for Special Tasks. This department was responsible for kidnapping, assassination, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare during World War II; it also set up illegal networks in the United States and Western Europe, and, most crucially, carried out atomic espionage in the United States, great Britain, and Canada. Sudoplatov served the KGB for over fifty years, at one point controlling more than twenty thousand guerrillas, moles, and spies. But his involvement with the most nefarious Soviet activities - and the rulers who ordered them - made Sudoplatov an unwanted witness, and he was arrested in 1953 after Beria's fall. Despite torture and solitary confinement he refused to "confess," disavowing any criminal actions. He spent fifteen years in prison, then struggled two decades more for rehabilitation. Special Tasks is an astonishing memoir and a singular historical document of a man who knew and did too much for the Soviet empire. Sudoplatov's book--the first full-scale memoir by a high-level Soviet intelligence official from the Stalinist period--set off a firestorm of controversy in the U.S. when it was published in 1994. This updated edition answers critics and provides new evidence, including recently released documents, that bolsters his accusations about atomic espionage. 10 pages of photos. The "broad spectrum of problems" in which Soviet intelligence officers Pavel Sudoplatov and Leonid Eitingon were engaged was truly extraordinary: kidnapping and assassination; sabotage and guerrilla warfare during World War II; the establishment of illegal networks in the United States and Western Europe; and, most crucially, atomic espionage in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Special Tasks, the astonishing memoir of Pavel Sudoplatov, is a singular historical document. Among its revelations: How Western scientists Oppenheimer, Fermi, Szilard, Gamow, and Pontecorvo provided, or knowingly allowed transfer of, scientific information essential to the USSR's atom bomb project; how on Stalin's direct orders Sudoplatov organized Trotsky's assassination; the Rosenbergs' real role in Soviet atomic espionage; how Raoul Wallenberg died; how Sudoplatov planted a mole to feed disinformation to the German high command; why Stalin invented the Doctor's Plot and Zionist conspiracy, how he destroyed Soviet Jewry; how Stalin created the Berlin crisis to keep Truman from using nuclear weapons against the imminent Chinese Communist victory; and how Khrushchev and his colleagues engineered Beria's arrest and execution to whitewash their own complicity in Stalin's crimes. TASKS CONTENTS FOREWORD INTRODUCTION EVOLUTION OF THE SOVIET SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE SERVICE PROLOGUE: REVEALING A SECRET 1 BEGINNINGS 2 SPAIN: CRUCIBLE FOR REVOLUTION AND PURGES 3 PURGE YEARS 4 THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY 5 STALIN AND HITLER: PRELUDE TO WAR 6 THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR: DECEPTION GAMES AND GUERRILLA WARFARE 7 ATOMIC SPIES 8 THE COLD WAR 10 THE JEWS: CALIFORNIA IN THE CRIMEA 11 FINAL YEARS UNDER STAUN, 1846-1953 12 THE FALL OF BERIA AND MY ARREST 13 THE TRIAL APPENDICES APPENDIX 1. STALIN'S VISITORS, JUNE 21 AND JUNE 22,1941 APPENDIX 2. ATOMIC ESPIONAGE DOCUMENTS, 1941-1946 APPENDIX 3. TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF THE AMERICAN ATOMIC BOMB PROJECT APPENDIX 4. FIRST AMERICAN ATOMIC ROMR TEST APPENDIX 5. BASIS FOR THE KATYN FOREST MASSACRE APPENDIX 6. REHABILITATION DOCUMENTS OF PAVEL SUDOPLATOV INDEX