Cassidy's Run : The Secret Spy War over Nerve Gas by David Wise - used book

Cassidy's Run is the riveting story of one of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War—an espionage operation mounted by Washington against the Soviet Union that ran for twenty-three years. At the highest levels of the government, its code name was Operation shocker.

Lured by a double agent working for the United States, ten Russian spies, including a professor at the University of Minnesota, his wife, and a classic "sleeper" spy in New York City, were sent by Moscow to penetrate America's secrets. Two FBI agents were killed, and secret formulas were passed to the Russians in a dangerous ploy that could have spurred Moscow to create the world's most powerful nerve gas.

Cassidy's Run tells this extraordinary true story for the first time, following a trail that leads from Washington to Moscow, with detours to Florida, Minnesota, and Mexico. Based on documents secret until now and scores of interviews in the United States and Russia, the book reveals that:

 ¸         more than 4,500 pages of classified documents, including U.S. nerve gas formulas, were passed to the Soviet Union in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars

 ¸         an "Armageddon code," a telephone call to a number in New York City, was to alert the sleeper spy to an impending nuclear attack—a warning he would transmit to the Soviets by radio signal from atop a rock in Central Park

 ¸         two FBI agents were killed when their plane crashed during surveillance of one of the Soviet spies as he headed for the Canadian border

 ¸         secret "drops" for microdots were set up by Moscow from New York to Florida to Washington

More than a cloak-and-dagger tale, Cassidy's Run is the spellbinding story of one ordinary man, Sergeant Joe Cassidy, not trained as a spy, who suddenly found himself the FBI's secret weapon in a dangerous clandestine war.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR CASSIDY'S RUN

"Cassidy's Run shows, once again, that few writers know the ins and outs of the spy game like David Wise. . . his research is meticulous in this true story of espionage that reads like a thriller."
—Dan Rather

"The Master hsa done it again. David Wise, the best observer and chronicler of spies there is, has told another gripping story. This one comes from the cold war combat over nerve gas and is spookier than ever because it's all true."
—Jim Lehrer, David Wise has written three spy novels and a number of nonfiction books about U.S. intelligence and espionage, and in Cassidy's Run he vividly merges both genres to create a true story that reads like a thriller. In 1959, Joseph Cassidy was an ordinary army sergeant with no training in intelligence or espionage when he was handpicked by the FBI to operate as a double agent. He spent the next 20 years passing U.S.-approved information to the Soviets about chemical and biological weapons and U.S. troop movements. Dubbed Operation Shocker, some of the information he passed involved an experimental, unstable nerve gas that U.S. scientists believed could not be used. This assumption proved to be a high-stakes gamble since much accurate information was mixed with the false in order to lend credence to the charade. U.S. intelligence may never know whether the information they gave the Soviets actually spurred on Russian chemical weapons development. Part of the objective of the operation was to uncover the Soviets' spy network, and in this respect it was successful, eventually flushing out 10 agents living in the United States. Throughout his time as a double agent, only Cassidy's wife knew of his activities--even his children were unaware--allowing him to retire quietly in Florida with his friends and relatives none the wiser. Cassidy's Run is a fascinating tale of cold-war intrigue publicly unknown until now. --Linda Killian