Corson,W. Trento,S.& J. Widows. 1989

Corson, William R.; Trento, Susan B.; and Trento, Joseph J. Widows. New York: Crown Publishers, 1989. 465 pages.

In the late 1980s, a slew of "insider" books appeared on the KGB, some by defectors and others by conservative U.S. authors with intelligence connections. Most tended to be anecdotal and alarmist. Then the USSR collapsed and the entire genre ended up in the proverbial dustbin.

"Widows" trades on the same theme, but the authors have a habit of excellence so the quality is better. They deal in depth with three specific cases; if the names John Paisley (134 pages), Nicholas Shadrin (155 pages), and Ralph Sigler (131 pages) don't mean anything to you, then it might not be useful. "We wrote this book to try to show the citizens of the West just how difficult and demanding a task it is to protect ourselves from the Soviet intelligence services. Our point is that sometimes in doing this job we seem to forget what makes our system different from the Soviet system. That's when we get into trouble as a nation. That's when we become a threat to ourselves." This sounds like a cautious approach to unconvinced readers.

Corson is a former intelligence professional who wrote "Armies of Ignorance" (1977), a highly-regarded overview of U.S. intelligence. Susan Trento is the author of "The Power House" (1992), and her husband Joseph Trento has racked up several scoops on CIA misdeeds since the 1970s.
ISBN 0-517-57235-4