Book review | The Konkari journalist's take from the espionage book is complete, but the giant work is prone to small mistakes

Nonfiction book

Jukka Rislakki: Intelligence and espionage. Doctrines, Operations, Agents. Docendo. 478 pp.

If you consider yourself in your field grand old manwhen the final stretch is looming, you can remember that you still need it magnum opus, a summary of your achievements. When it's a book, it's often tough as Osmo Jussilan Grand Duchy of Finlandbut sometimes a miracle-like distillation emerges like by Sheila Fitzpatrick The Shortest History of the Soviet Union (2022).

The old man doesn't sit there Jukka to Rislakkithat despite his age (soon to be 79 years old), he still has boyishness in him.

On the other hand, the feel of the summary and the coverage of the title are strong Intelligence and espionage. Doctrines, Operations, Agents not a single word has been left in the partitive, because the extract is total. And this author is a pioneer in his field, having published extensively for almost half a century.

Rislakki started During the Vietnam War as a CIA critic, as he mentioned as a friend Philip Agee from within the agency. It caught the eye of the US embassy.

“Line reporter” Rislakki considers the more recently documented measures to be surprising. The CIA chief in Helsinki was recruited by a journalist Seppo Heikinheimo to spy on a colleague. We wanted to wash the rotten egg to sniff out the wild boar, if it's okay to use these as pseudonyms.

There is hardly any reason to doubt Rislak's assurance that he and his co-author, now deceased Jorma Lindfors were not directly clients of the opposing party's KGB. Although a KGB officer and diplomat who worked in Helsinki for a long time Viktor Vladimirov this cannot be proved. It can still be considered probable that the KGB, at least through intermediaries, tried to convey the “facts” it liked to the young whistleblowers.

Calculated disinformation projects in this field have been presented Thomas Rid in his book Active Measures (2021). Thence Sofi Oksanen appears to have drawn on New Year's Eve in his HS essay.

Since then, Rislakki has cast his critical gaze on the KGB as well, which may have been contributed by his marriage to the Latvian ambassador Anna Žīguren with and with it a deepening into the history and human destinies of the Baltic countries.

As is appropriate expect in Helsingin Sanomat After 33 years of initiation, Rislak's trump card is the tireless footwork of a journalist: requests for information, interviews, carefully noting everything heard and keeping his own archive in order.

There are no references in the book, which disturbs the reader who appreciates accuracy, but based on the extensive bibliography, it is often possible to conclude where some information has been obtained. The person who hears orally often means “according to” or “to the knowledge”.

The list of those who gave information is from a long time, because the list of 155 names includes many deceased people.

A new work is divided into four main sections: first the doctrines and techniques of espionage, then operations in the eastern direction, next in the western direction, and finally, the most extensive of the sections, Finland.

The structure is basically logical, but it is blurred by the division of the main episodes into very short sub-chapters, where you quickly jump from one thing to another, also beyond the boundaries of the main chapters and without consistently relying on chronology.

The list-like structure could perhaps have been taken even further by building an encyclopedia of intelligence and espionage, where the material would be in search terms, alphabetically in the print version and clickable in the electronic version. Atomic espionage, or Golitsyn, AM KGB major, defector, or Chinese espionage, and so on. Could work.

In short the subsections contain a lot of what Rislak (or others) has already published. On the other hand, the author keeps the reader who has been following things on his guard by throwing in some new or forgotten information or a juicy quote.

When knocked out in 1920 Hella Wuolijoki visa application Britain's head of internal security Major-General Vernon Kell stated that the woman was “cunning and dangerous, close to the Germans, too red and also short and ugly.”

A forgotten fact is also that by George Orwell scathingly anti-Soviet satire sponsored by the CIA Animal Revolutionwas still 1969 KOM theater's second premiere, as a director Kaisa Korhonen. A small but enlightening piece of information is from Supo's chief Seppo Tiitisen distribution of business trips: 88 times to the west, 25 to the east.

Usually Rislakki gives people's names and even pseudonyms. His first name has remained Elasticwho was allowed to be recruited by the KGB for intelligence, even though he was a communist.

Such an exception was allowed for the KGB's illegal line (N-line), but it was necessary to obtain the general secretary of the SKP Ville Pessin consent. It remains unclear why the surname of this Helsinki civil protection official should be withheld when it has already been published before.

Is the reason that there is no court decision on the matter, because after visiting Supo in 1996, 45-year-old Kimmo died of a massive aortic rupture?

Also left unnamed are two youth politicians for whom the CIA Gloria Steinem gave $35,000 in an envelope to oppose the 1962 festivals. They “reportedly” did not account for the use of the money.

The author knows the names of these, unlike the two possibly Finnish diplomats who received perhaps the most important spy of the Cold War in Moscow Oleg Penkovsky information and handed them over to the British in Helsinki.

So broad and a work reaching out in every direction is an open target for the searcher for small errors. I noticed a few, but it is unnecessary to list them here.

In general, you can say that the closer you get to the present, the thinner the material becomes, and thus the text as well. The same applies to some special themes, such as espionage technology or Chinese operations.

All in all, though, it's wonderful that this magnum opus is now before our eyes.

The author is a professor emeritus of political history at the University of Helsinki.

Read more: Sofi Oksanen writes: Russia knows Finland's weak point and will continue to attack it