The Spy Within: Larry Chin and China's Penetration of the CIA

The Spy Within is the riveting true story of one of the most significant cases in the history of espionage, the longest-running penetration of an intelligence organization ever discovered. In October 1982, the FBI received notice from the CIA that was as cryptic as it was chilling: China was running a spy inside US intelligence. The CIA did not know, however, his identity, the agency he worked for, how long he had spent inside America’s secret community, or what information he was passing to China. Over the next three years, investigators labored frantically to identify the mole, to discover the secrets he had betrayed and the agents he had endangered, and to collect the evidence that would see him prosecuted for his crimes. The FBI’s expansive investigation ultimately revealed that for more than thirty years – years encompassing such pivotal events as the Korean War, the Cultural Revolution, the Vietnam War, and President Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to Beijing – Larry Chin, the CIA’s own top Chinese linguist, had been China’s top spy. Chin’s reports were circulated to China’s senior leadership, read by the likes of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping. The methods employed by the intelligence services of China’s Communist regime – methods still very much in use today even as the two nations have evolved from Cold War enemies to economic rivals – have never before been so clearly and compellingly revealed to a general audience.Tod Hoffman conducted exclusive interviews with key players in the affair, gained access to previously unreleased documents, and applied his own practical expertise as a spy-catcher to spin a captivating cat-and-mouse tale that is sure to become regarded as a classic of intelligence literature.