The disintegration of the USSR is inextricably entwined and intimately related to the life and times, failures and accomplishments, paradoxes and contradictions of the courageous Russian who is the subject of this book — a man with tenacious clarity of purpose and the steely determination to carry on through and accomplish his goal at any price.

The U.S. owes a great debt of gratitude to the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who after ten years of painstaking intelligence work finally led to the location in Pakistan and death of Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011.

This is the second time I have read and perused this magnificent book — and what a momentous and timely book it is! The book reads much like a cliffhanger spy novel, though its nonfiction and its information is true and disturbing. The message is as timely today as it was in 2007 when it was first published.

Robert Eringer's book, Ruse — Undercover with FBI counterintelligence (2007), is a hell of a suspenseful ride! A good patriotic hustler, who risks his life for country and justice, Eringer goes after traitor Edward Lee Howard in post-communist Russia, assists in the capture of notorious killer Ira Einhorn in France, hoodwinks die-hard communist KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov in Moscow, and plays the Great Game skillfully with Cuban Intelligence in Washington and Havana.

In "Alexander Orlov: The FBI's KGB General" (2002), former FBI agent Edward Gazur tries to prove the impossible ­ that KGB Gen. Alexander Orlov was a true defector, a man who switched allegiances from the Soviet Union to America and repudiated international communism.

Gazur ardently believes that Orlov, who became his friend and whom he ultimately came to love as a father figure, genuinely cooperated with the FBI and the CIA. This (his own) book unfortunately proves quite the opposite.