
The Spy Who Knew Too Much
An Ex-CIA Officer’s Quest Through a Legacy of Betrayal
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Narrated by:
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Steve Hendrickson
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By:
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Howard Blum
About this listen
“Howard Blum writes history books that read like thrillers.”—New York Times
A retired spy gets back into the game to solve a perplexing case—and reconcile with his daughter, a CIA officer who married into the very family that derailed his own CIA career—in this compulsive true-life tale of vindication and redemption, filled with drama, intrigue, and mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Goodnight, It’s a real-life thriller whose stunning conclusion will make headline news.
On a sunlit morning in September 1978, a sloop drifts aimlessly across the Chesapeake Bay. The cabin reveals signs of a struggle, and “classified” documents, live 9 mm cartridges, and a top-secret “burst” satellite communications transmitter are discovered aboard. But where is the boat’s owner, former CIA officer John Paisley?
One man may hold the key to finding out. Tennent “Pete” Bagley was once a rising star in America’s spy aristocracy, and many expected he’d eventually become CIA director. But the star that burned so brightly exploded when Bagley—who suspected a mole had burrowed deep into the agency’s core—was believed himself to be the mole. After a year-long investigation, Bagley was finally exonerated, but the accusations tarnished his reputation and tainted his career.
When Bagley’s daughter Christina, a CIA analyst, married another intelligence officer who was the son of the man who had played a key role in the investigation into Bagley, it caused a painful rift between the two. But then came Paisley’s strange death. A murder? Suicide? Or something else? Pete, now a retired spy, launches his own investigation that takes him deep into his own past and his own longtime hunt for a mole. What follows is a relentless pursuit to solve a spy story—and an inspiring tale of a man reclaiming his reputation and his family. It’s a very personal quest that leads to a shocking conclusion.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2022 Howard Blum (P)2022 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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- The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin's Russia
- By: Robert Baer
- Narrated by: Robert Baer, Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In the aftermath of the Cold War, American intelligence caught three high-profile Russian spies: Aldrich Ames, Edward Lee Howard, and Robert Hanssen. However, rumors have long swirled of another mole, one perhaps more damaging than all the others combined. Perhaps the greatest traitor in American history, perhaps a Russian ruse to tear the CIA apart, or perhaps nothing more than a bogeyman, he is often referred to as the Fourth Man.
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A Who Done it without The Who Did it
- By Amazon Customer on 05-25-22
By: Robert Baer
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The Spy in Moscow Station
- A Counterspy's Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat
- By: Eric Haseltine
- Narrated by: Eric Haseltine
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late 1970s, the National Security Agency still did not officially exist - those in the know referred to it dryly as the No Such Agency. So why, when NSA engineer Charles Gandy filed for a visa to visit Moscow, did the Russian Foreign Ministry assert with confidence that he was a spy? Outsmarting honey traps and encroaching deep enough into enemy territory to perform complicated technical investigations, Gandy accomplished his mission in Russia but discovered more than State and CIA wanted him to know.
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Dull Dull Dull
- By DVN on 09-02-19
By: Eric Haseltine
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The Hidden History of the White House
- Power Struggles, Scandals, and Defining Moments
- By: Corey Mead
- Narrated by: Lindsay Graham, Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than two centuries, the White House in Washington, DC, has been the stage for some of the most climactic moments in American history. Its walls and portraits have witnessed fierce power struggles, history-altering decisions, shocking scandals, and intimate moments among the First Family, their guests, and the staff.
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Not worth reading
- By Nancy on 02-06-25
By: Corey Mead
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Russians Among Us
- Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin’s Spies
- By: Gordon Corera
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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With intrigue that rivals the best le Carre novels, Russians Among Us tells the urgent story of Russia’s espionage efforts against the United States and the West from the end of the Cold War to the present.
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Should be required reading for every citizen
- By Amazon Customer on 02-27-20
By: Gordon Corera
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The Main Enemy
- The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB
- By: Milton Bearden, James Risen
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, The Main Enemy is the inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them. Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War.
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A masterpiece of espionage history
- By kucherv on 08-21-18
By: Milton Bearden, and others
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The Pity of War
- Explaining World War I
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 21 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces.
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Ferguson wouldn’t know history if it hit him in the head
- By Schen on 10-07-20
By: Niall Ferguson
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60 Songs That Explain the '90s
- By: Rob Harvilla
- Narrated by: Rob Harvilla
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1990s were a chaotic and utterly magical time for music, a confounding barrage of genres and lifestyles and superstars, from grunge to hip-hop, from sumptuous R&B to rambunctious ska-punk, from Axl to Kurt to Missy to Santana to Tupac to Britney. In 60 SONGS THAT EXPLAIN THE '90s, Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.
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My Personal View-Harvilla Rules!
- By Qtsbuster on 11-18-23
By: Rob Harvilla
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A Killer by Design
- Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind
- By: Ann Wolbert Burgess, Steven Matthew Constantine
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Lurking beneath the progressive activism and sex positivity in the 1970 to '80s, a dark undercurrent of violence rippled across the American landscape. With reported cases of sexual assault and homicide on the rise, the FBI created a specialized team - the “Mindhunters”, better known as the Behavioral Science Unit - to track down the country's most dangerous criminals. And yet narrowing down a seemingly infinite list of potential suspects seemed daunting at best and impossible at worst - until Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess stepped on the scene.
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Best insider info of killers thought process
- By Rachael R Brown on 12-27-21
By: Ann Wolbert Burgess, and others
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The Secret War
- Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 30 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Spies, codes, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.
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Better read than listened to
- By B. In -t Veld on 03-25-17
By: Max Hastings
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The Billion Dollar Spy
- A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
- By: David E. Hoffman
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top-secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States.
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Compelling as historical thriller, character study
- By Mr. Pointy on 08-25-15
By: David E. Hoffman
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The Wrong Stuff
- How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned
- By: John Strausbaugh
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of World War II, with America ascendant and the Soviet Union devastated by the conflict, the Space Race should have been over before it started. But the underdog Soviets scored a series of victories—starting with the 1957 launch of Sputnik and continuing in the years following--that seemed to achieve the impossible. It was proof, it seemed, that the USSR had manpower and collective will that went beyond America's material advantages. They had asserted themselves as a world power. But in The Wrong Stuff, John Strausbaugh tells a different story.
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Limited storyline repeated over and over as the book slowly winds along.
- By Dr. Michael B on 05-04-25
By: John Strausbaugh
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The Seven Million Dollar Spy
- How One Determined Investigator, Seven Million Dollars - and a Death Threat by the Russian Mafia - Led to the Capture of the Most Dangerous Mole Ever Unmasked Inside U.S. Intelligence
- By: David Wise
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Seven Million Dollar Spy reveals, for the first time, the inside story of the dramatic US counterintelligence operation that resulted in the capture of the most dangerous mole working for Russia inside US intelligence. Now, the former senior KGB spy, to whom the US paid seven million dollars for Moscow's file on the mole, is identified by both his real and code names.
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Good story, but.... the details
- By Nicole on 11-17-18
By: David Wise
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A Spy in Plain Sight
- The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert Hanssen—America’s Most Damaging Russian Spy
- By: Lis Wiehl
- Narrated by: Lis Wiehl
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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A legal analyst for NPR, NBC, and CNN, delves into the facts surrounding what has been called the “worst intelligence disaster in US history”: the case of Robert Hanssen—a Russian spy who was embedded in the FBI for two decades.
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You almost had me
- By Anonymous User on 07-19-22
By: Lis Wiehl
What listeners say about The Spy Who Knew Too Much
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- Marina
- 07-27-24
Great story
I couldn’t put this down and gulped it in a day, No Hollywood movies can play this real drama and tragedy of clandestine workers, so well written, this is my second book by this author and I am a big fan now
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- Rick
- 07-29-24
An outstanding puzzle assembled with meticulous research
This story is interesting in how the author managed to unpack the nesting dolls of a very neatly packaged cold war saga that has many threads. In the end, the institutional behavior determining our history may be the most interesting lesson for readers to take note of. This is a great account and body of research.
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- DIYhacker
- 02-20-23
Fascinating story of the Cold War spy game
I enjoyed this book, although I found the beginning a bit hard to follow. Really interesting real life story that was pieced together through a lot of research and interviews. Maybe a little too long but the ending was well done.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-17-24
honesty and truth rings out
loved the detail. it was hard to follow at times and I had to rewind and listen a second and sometimes third time
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- Rebecca G.
- 07-14-24
Fascinating and gripping
An excellent true spy story that reads like a thriller. I made excuses to find time to keep listening.
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- R. Alembik
- 07-02-23
I will read it twice
After finishing this audio I realized that the extensive detail provided by the author was actually necessary to fully grasp and appreciate the arc of the narrative. This is a masterful work about not just the “great game” but about the failures of human institutions due to the cognitive biases from which even the most adept of us are not immune. I’d love to watch a serious adaptation of this on a streaming service.
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2 people found this helpful
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- James
- 07-10-22
Better than any fiction novel
True life story told with suspense from pg 1. Highly recommend for anyone into this genre.
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- Arno
- 07-28-22
Ex-spies do not exist
This book shows why. A gripping story with many casualties among those irreversibly involved in this multi-layered complicated world. Recommend book for those interested in this genre.
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- Antonia
- 08-12-22
Moles in the CIA
This is a riveting account of one man’s efforts to identify a Russian mole in the CIA - one that caused incalculable damage to the US. But the CIA brass - under different leaders over the years - not only never wanted to find the mole but persecuted those who did. Why such vengeance? Very unsettling account of a critical US institution. Every US citizen concerned about the country’s security should read this book.
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- Kindle Customer
- 12-29-23
Interesting Perspective on How the CIA Operated
very well written. learned a lot about history of CIA during some very critical years.
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