The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission To Infiltrate the West

Veteran journalist and Russian expert Walker (The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past) traces what he terms a uniquely Russian espionage and intelligence strategy of training and preparing mostly Russian nationals to infiltrate, on a long-term basis, other nations disguised as ordinary citizens. He describes how since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Russia infiltrated men and women (commonly described as “the Illegals”) into the USA, European countries, South America, and Africa to carry out intelligence gathering. Walker argues that despite changing the target countries, intelligence goals, and agent training over the decades, there were very few success stories. Most often, the impossible tasks given to the infiltrators and the paranoia and mistrust of the agents’ Moscow overseers, he argues, prevented success. A most important exception and a radically different approach, he points out, was the huge success of Putin’s 21st-century social media effort which flooded the U.S. and Europe with misinformation and seeded mistrust of Western establishments. Walker gives a very full account of the Illegals from 1917 until now.