CASSIDY'S RUN

A solidly told tale of a 22-year espionage operation aimed at foiling attempts by the Soviet Union to pilfer nerve-gas secrets. Though journalist Wise (Molehunt, 1992) works hard to make the story more spectacular than it actually is—after all, the annals of spying are chock-full of long-term agents—he does create a compelling portrait of Joe Cassidy, an American army officer recruited to serve as a “dangle” for the KGB. Cassidy met his Soviet handlers at a YMCA volleyball game in 1959, and for the next 22 years, through a series of secret signals, codes, and message drops like hollowed-out rocks, passed them countless secrets, all carefully vetted by a top-secret Pentagon committee that weighed each bit of information and misinformation. The operation had three purposes: to flush out the Soviet spies Cassidy would come in contact with, to learn how the Soviets functioned in the US, and to occupy them so they would have less time to recruit real agents. In addition, questions the USSR agents asked of Cassidy would reveal gaps in their knowledge that the US agents could exploit. Though Wise’s subtitle is “The Secret War Over Nerve Gas,” only a portion of Cassidy’s career, and this book, deals with nerve gas. Cassidy starts by passing information about the nuclear-power plant at Fort Belvoir, Maryland, then moves on to the nerve-gas arsenal at Edgewood before rounding out his double life by leaking authorized secrets of the US strategic command in Vietnam. A fascinating portrait of Cassidy’s double life, emphasizing particularly the toll the spy’s career had on his personal life over a prolonged period, though Wise falls flatter when placing the significance of Cassidy’s spy operations in the big picture of the cold war.