Treason

Treason is a word that often, and appropriately, I think, evokes strong emotions in many people.  Many people are loyal to their country and find it offensive that a fellow countryman would want to harm their homeland.  Leading up to the time of the Revolutionary War, treason was punishable by death in most places.  The crime was taken seriously and applied broadly.  It is now often bandied about as a political epithet, but I wish it carried the weight it once did, at least as far as the United States is concerned.  People should understand the responsibility they have to a nation that provides the freedoms and opportunities America does.

It was those very freedoms and opportunities that prompted the hero of Bill Powell's Treason: How a Russian Spy Led an American Journalist to a U.S. Double Agent (ISBN: 0-7432-2915-0) to betray his native Soviet Union.  This true story chronicles how a journalist (the author) became entangled in a U.S. mole hunt (the mole hunt resulted in the arrest of the traitor Robert Hansson) because of his contact with a former Soviet GRU agent named Vyacheslav Baranov.  Baranov had decided the Soviet life wasn't for him while serving in Bangladesh and made contact with the CIA, giving them a few bits of information.  The CIA hired him, but once he was stationed back in Moscow, his contact with the CIA stopped, although he didn't know why.  He kept trying to make contact, but was eventually arrested.  After spending time in a Russian prison (by the time he was arrested, the Soviet Union had fallen), he wanted to know what had happened and enlisted the author's help by basically recruiting him as a spy would.  They weren't able to figure out for sure who ratted on Baranov, but as he tried to solve the mystery, Hansson was arrested and Baranov learned that the troubles with Ames and Hansson is what made his contact with the CIA so short lived.  The reason for Baranov's original treason, a better life in America, is finally realized at the end of the book, a couple generations later, when he, his wife, their children, and his one grandchild move to America.

The book was really a pretty light read, but it was very interesting even though the story, which was really about Baranov trying to figure out who told on him, wasn't resolved as well as some might like.  I was also intrigued by the story because it tells about how things go when they don't go right, unlike many of the other intelligence-related books out there.  CIA and KGB shortcomings are a major part of the book, although the CIA aspects are ironed out in the end when Baranov and his family move to America.  That part is what really makes the book, though.  Baranov understood early on in his career that socialism and communism just really didn't cut it for people who really wanted to experience opportunity.  Although he hit some major bumps in the road and had reasons to swear off America, he didn't, always remembering the possibilities it held for all.