Operation Solo: The Fbi's Man in the Kremlin Book

From OPERATION SOLO

"The FBI effaced all records of the death of Morris Childs of 'Agent 58.' No newspaper published even a three line obit. The United States had kept the secret for thirty years and the FBI intended for it to remain a secret. The communists never knew what had happened to Morris after he vanished and they had hunted him in vain; let them keep looking for him, and wondering...

"Morris Childs, the FBI's 'Agent 58,' risked his life on fifty-two missions into the Soviet Union and other parts of its empire, most lasting several weeks. for more than twenty years, the highest Soviet rulers—from Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Yuri Andropov on down—treated him as a intimate friend. They confided to him their innermost thoughts, ambitions, and apprehensions; their strategy and plans; what they would do and dared not do; their reactions to world events and their real attitudes toward the United States and its leaders.

"The voluminous secrets Morris stole from the Kremlin for more than two decades enabled the United States to read the minds of the men who ran the Soviet Union, to anticipate their actions, and to exploit their problems...It was like playing poker, knowing which cards everyone else at the table held."