In the Enemys House, Howard Blum
In the Enemys House, Howard Blum
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In the Enemy's House
The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies

Author: Howard Blum

Narrator: David Colacci

Unabridged: 11 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 02/20/2018


Synopsis

The New York Times bestselling author of Dark Invasion and The Last Goodnight once again illuminates the lives of little-known individuals who played a significant role in America’s history as he chronicles the incredible true story of a critical, recently declassified counterintelligence mission and two remarkable agents whose story has been called ""the greatest secret of the Cold War."" In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Gardner discovered that the KGB was running an extensive network of strategically placed spies inside the United States, whose goal was to infiltrate American intelligence and steal the nation’s military and atomic secrets. Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail of Cold War espionage—the atomic bomb.Opposites in nearly every way, Lamphere and Gardner relentlessly followed a trail of clues that helped them identify and take down these Soviet agents one by one, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But at the center of this spy ring, seemingly beyond the American agents’ grasp, was the mysterious master spy who pulled the strings of the KGB’s extensive campaign, dubbed Operation Enormoz by Russian Intelligence headquarters. Lamphere and Gardner began to suspect that a mole buried deep in the American intelligence community was feeding Moscow Center information on Venona. They raced to unmask the traitor and prevent the Soviets from fulfilling Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s threat: ""We shall bury you!""A breathtaking chapter of American history and a page-turning mystery that plays out against the tense, life-and-death gamesmanship of the Cold War, this twisting thriller begins at the end of World War II and leads all the way to the execution of the Rosenbergs—a result that haunted both Gardner and Lamphere to the end of their lives.

About Howard Blum

With the publication more than fifty years ago of the acclaimed Wanted! The Search for Nazis in America, Howard Blum, a former investigative reporter for the New York Times, established himself as a bestselling author of carefully reported and page-turning nonfiction works. Among his many bestsellers are American Lightning, Dark Invasion, The Last Goodnight, and The Spy Who Knew Too Much. Several of his books are being developed as films, including When the Night Comes Falling, which is being produced as a dramatic series by Village Roadshow Productions. The father of three adult children, he divides his time between a small town in Connecticut and East Hampton, New York.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Cold War Conversations Podcast on March 10, 2018

As good as any fictional spy thriller Howard Blum tells the fascinating story of the race to capture the Soviet spy ring that passed the secrets of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union. The main characters are codebreaker Meredith Gardner and FBI agent Bob Lamphere, and Blum details how Gardner cracked......more

Goodreads review by Mal on June 27, 2018

When I was growing up in Ohio in the 1950s, one of the biggest stories in the news was the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They had been convicted of helping spirit scientific details about the construction of the atomic bomb from American scientists and engineers to KGB officers stationed......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on April 02, 2022

Although I was familiar with the Soviet efforts and successes in acquiring US nuclear weapon technology, this was still interesting to read and had a lot of details that I was unfamiliar with, like exactly how the Soviets encoded their messages and how the US broke that code. Also, how bad at counte......more

Goodreads review by Crystal on August 14, 2021

Audiobook. Non-fiction, spy biography. 3 Stars I did learn a few new things-Finland entered WWII on the side of the Nazis, for one. The thorough description and explanations of spycraft from this era was also informative. Yes, I've heard of dead drops and one time pads but never really got a full edu......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on June 27, 2024

A geeky code breaker at the US Signal Security Agency teams up with a an ambitious, young FBI agent to work on the “Blue Problem,” that is, trying to break the secret code the Soviets used to send messages around the world. This was not a priority toward the end of World War II, as the Soviets were......more