Tuesday, August 26, 2008

THE LOST SPY : AN AMERICAN IN STALIN'S SECRET SERVICE
by Andrew Meier

Isaiah "Cy" Oggins was an undergraduate at Columbia University when he joined the Communist Party in 1920. Soviet intelligence recruited him in 1926 and that is when his travels and undercover schemes began.
In Berlin he posed as an antiquarian dealer so that he could run a safe house.
While he was in Paris he spied on the Romanovs.
He went to China and Manchuria spying on the Japanese occupiers and their puppet emperor, Pu-Yi.
Despite his long, devoted service to the Soviets, he was arrested and sent to an Arctic gulag and languished there for eight years. Then, on orders from Stalin, he was brutally murdered.
Author Andrew Meier began his quest in 2000 while researching information for his previous book about post-Soviet Russia and heard about an American from elderly camp survivors.

Eight years later, he has written a masterpiece.
The Lost Spy is a tremendous story.
Highly recommended.