Cassidy's Run: The Secret Spy War Over Nerve Gas

An awesome book about my Uncle Joe. Most of the family didn't know for years what he endured. This book is a great tribute to our family history. Our family is very proud. I doubt this review will help you much in deciding whether or not to buy the book, but several of my friends have read it and had a hard time putting it down until finished.

This is an amazing story from the very real (and too soon slipping from memory) Cold War. It is principally the story of Joe Cassidy, a rather normal sergeant in the US Army, who was recruited to become a dangle for a Soviet Agent. The ploy worked and Cassidy became a double agent for more than twenty years. Of course, these kinds of stories rather quickly become rather entangled with lots of personalities and different threads of action. The author, David Wise, does an especially fine job in telling this tale and helping us keep straight who is doing what when and to whom.The details of surveillance and spycraft are fascinating because they are so mundane but in their context seem so strange. This story demonstrates so many of the critical factors in running a counter intelligence operation: the importance of selecting the right agent (in this case Joe Cassidy), the necessity of patience and letting some things slip away in order to keep after the big thing, the chess like thinking of move and countermove in planning operations, the never-quite-sure aspects of whom to trust and what is real or what is a plant, and the role of just plain dumb luck. It isn't like Hollywood, but in many ways is more strange than a movie. If you tried to put some of this stuff in a movie people would complain that it was too far fetched. Yet this is all real.The book also has some rather chilling information on Nerve Agents, which was the whole point of this many year effort by the FBI and other government agencies. It also has a lot of fascinating information on the devices of spy tradecraft including hollow rocks, rollover cameras, dead drops, micro dots, secret writing, and more.Because the book is so well written it is a rather easy read. This is a real achievement because of the complexity of the story, but David Wise has long experience as a skilled reporter and writer about intelligence work and knows how to tell these tales. I recommend this book to everyone because it is just plain interesting, because I believe we should keep the reality and sacrifices of the Cold War in our collective memory, and because real people paid with their lives for our security.

Smoothly written and absorbing. Not my usual kind of book, but well worth picking up. In 1959, at the height of the Cold War, the FBI decided to dangle a prospect in front of a Soviet embassy employee named Polikarpov. Policarpov, a GRU officer, took the bait and enlisted Sergeant Joseph Cassidy as a for-cash agent. The relationship continued for twenty-three years, during which Cassidy solicited information that netted ten other Soviet spies and funneled an enormous mass of true, false, misleading, and trivial intelligence eastward. Much of the intelligence concerned the nerve gas research and production facility at Edgewood Arsenal, and may have led the Soviets into expensive and dangerous blind alleys. Details of the operation, especially the capture and release of two Mexican nationals who were confessed spies, make an interesting account of a US intelligence success not previously publicized.

To realize this really happened and possibly still happens makes this tale very scary. Very well written and documented

I do not remember much of my father. Most of my sentiments have come from stories told by my mother, grandma, aunts and uncles. My whole life I have known that my father was involved in something honorable and patriotic, but until "Cassidy's Run" I was without understanding of the details, depth and nobility of it all. David Wise has unfolded a story that is worthy of all our family's pride and reverence. It is with extreem gratitude in finally knowing the truth about my father's death that I would encourage all to read this true account. To do so honors those who have given their lives in the service of ours. It is a story worth being told, and one that every patriot should be proud of.Perhaps it is because of my closeness to the subject matter, but I for one have felt a stronger obligation to be the "good man" my mother swore she would raise at my father's funeral. While I don't think the FBI is for me, the lives of service all those in "Cassidy's Run" displayed are exemplary to each of us.